THE WRITINGS OF



THOMAS JEFFERSON







Definitive Edition



CONTAINING HIS



AUTOBIOGRAPHY, NOTES ON VIRGINIA, PARLIAMENTARY 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. XII.







ISSUED UNDER THE AUSPICES OF



THE THOMAS JEFFERSON MEMORIAL ASSOCIATION



OF THE UNITED STATES



WASHINGTON, D. C.



1907











COPYRIGHT, 1905, BY 



THE THOMAS JEFFERSON MEMORIAL ASSOCIATION

















JEFFERSON'S PASSPORTS TO



IMMORTALITY.(1)











Gentlemen of the Jefferson Club:­I have discharged with pleasure the duty which

your kindness assigned me, and we now look upon the bust of him whose genius

and prophetic foresight gave to our country the soil upon which this great city

stands. 



Thomas Jefferson wrote his own epitaph. Amongst his papers, after death, was

found a rough sketch in ink of an obelisk to be made in granite, eight feet in

height, with the inscription: 



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.







It is a significant epitaph, and worthy of him who wrote it. Jefferson had been

a member of the Virginia House of Burgesses and of the Continental Congress,

Governor of Virginia, Minister to France, 







(1) An address delivered by Hon. George G. Vest before the Jefferson Club of

St. Louis, Mo., October 31, 1895, on the occasion of unveiling a bronze bust of

Thomas Jefferson, by Benjamin Harney. 













ii Jefferson's Passports to Immortality







Secretary of State, Vice-President and President of the United States, but none

of these honors or titles are upon the stone which marked his grave. True to

his convictions, shown by every public and private act, the sworn enemy of

parade, sham and ostentation, the stern old Democrat wanted, living or dead,

none of the tinsel and trappings of heraldic pomp or titular glory. He named

for himself his passports to immortality­the rights of man, religious liberty,

and universal education. 



Jefferson was charged by the enemies who pursued him during life, and assailed

his memory after death, with being a communist who appealed to the ignorant and

poor against the educated and wealthy. He was by birth, lineage, education, and

association, an aristocrat. He had in his veins the blue blood of the

Randolphs, who, as Jefferson tells us in his Autobiography, " trace their

pedigree far back in England and Scotland, to which let every one ascribe the

faith and merit he chooses." Besides, he was born a land and slave owner,

educated at the College of William and Mary, an institution established and

endowed by royalty, and when a student in the old town of Williamsburg, the

first capital of Virginia, was the favorite protege of Francis Fanquier, the

royal governor, at .whose table he was a constant guest. 



Passionately devoted to music, sculpture and painting, an accomplished Greek,

Latin and French scholar, whilst in the higher mathematics, philosophy 

















Jefferson's Passports to Immortality iii







and the sciences, he was without an equal amongst public men, Jefferson was

naturally drawn by such tastes and pursuits away from the people, as they were

then contemptuously called, and to the privileged classes who claimed by

inheritance a monopoly of wealth, education and culture. 



From Monticello, Jefferson went forth to make untiring and relentless war upon

tyranny and oppression in every shape.- For nearly fifty years his form towered

in the front of every battle for civil and religious liberty, and there was not

one single moment in which he ceased to struggle for human rights. It is almost

impossible after so many years, and under circumstances so changed, to realize

the appalling difficulties which confronted the advocates of civil and

religious freedom in the last century, and especially in Virginia. 



New Virginia was then but the gross caricature of old England. The rakehelly

Cavaliers who fought under Prince Rupert were reproduced in an exaggerated form

in the young planters of the province. To primogeniture, entail and the union

of Church and State, had been added the curse of African slavery; and to raise

tobacco, clear more land and buy more slaves, all to be at last squandered in

riotous living, seemed to be the chief end of the Virginia gentleman. 



Loyal to king and church, these fox-hunting, deep-drinking and gallant

Virginians were ready to risk life and limb against any odds, in defence 









iv  Jefferson's Passports to Immortality 







of the divine right of kings, and the ecclesiastical supremacy of the Church of

England. 



From his four years' study of the law, and after mastering completely Coke on

Lyttleton, which he had read and re-read and carefully annotated, Jefferson

stepped into a world of crystallized wrong and robbery, made up from ages of

legal precedent, and sanctified by so-called religion; but not in vain had he

studied the black-letter pages of that sterling old Whig text-book, of which

Jefferson afterwards wrote: 



"Coke Lyttleton was the universal law book of students, and a sounder Whig

never wrote, nor of profounder learning in the orthodox doctrines of the

British Constitution, or in what was called British liberties. 



" Our lawyers were then all Whigs. But when his black-letter text and uncouth

but cunning learning got out of fashion, and the honeyed Mansfieldism of

Blackstone became the student's hornbook, from that moment that profession (the

nursery of our Congress) began to slide into Toryism, and nearly all the young

brood of lawyers are now of that line. They suppose themselves, indeed, to be

Whigs, because they no longer know what Whigism or Republicanism means." 



When, therefore, in 1765, young Jefferson, fresh from Coke Lyttleton, stood at

the door of the lobby of the House of Burgesses, in Williamsburg, and heard

Patrick Henry denounce in burning words 









Jefferson's Passports to Immortality v







the Stamp Act and the whole system of kingcraft, the seed fell into ground well

prepared for the truth. 



In 1769 Jefferson entered public life as a member of the House of Burgesses

from his native county of Albemarle. His first measure was to provide for the

gradual emancipation of slaves; but it resulted in utter failure, and is now

only valuable as indicating the settled opinions of Jefferson upon the subject

of slavery, and his fearlessness in grappling with the overwhelming public

sentiment of his State in its favor. 



Whilst a slave owner all his life, Mr. Jefferson was opposed to the institution

and desired its gradual extinction. Like many intelligent men in the

slaveholding States, he deprecated the existence of slavery, but resented the

statement that the people of these States were alone responsible for the evil,

or that those who had originally introduced slaves through their own avarice

had the right to interfere afterwards with the property of the citizens to whom

the slaves had been sold. 



With prophetic vision, Jefferson saw the dreadful panorama of war and

desolation which must accompany the end of slavery, unless peaceful means were

adopted for that purpose. Speaking of gradual emancipation, he says in his

Autobiography, written when he was seventy-seven years old: 



" It was found that the public mind would not yet bear the proposition, nor

will it bear it even at this day. Yet the day is not distant when it









 vi Jefferson's Passports to Immortality







must bear and adopt it, or worse will follow. Nothing is more certainly written

in the book of fate than that these people are to be free, nor is it less

certain that the two races, equally free, cannot live in the same government." 



One portion of this prediction has been verified, and African slavery has been

drowned in the tears and blood of both North and South. 



At the same time it is not difficult to realize how utterly beyond the

imagination of any mortal man fifty years ago, must have been the idea, not of

emancipation, but that the emancipated slave would grasp the ballot and

participate in the government of the country. 



We know now that the negro race, with its parasitic tendencies and strong local

attachments, will never submit to colonization, and that this philanthropic

dream has vanished before the logic of events. The negro is a component part of

our civilization, and must so remain. 



It is the very irony of history that of all the slaveholding States, Virginia

should have suffered most in defending an institution forced upon her people by

the greed of Old and New England, in opposition to the judgment and wishes of

her most distinguished men. 



As far back as 1770, Virginia had protested against the introduction of African

slaves, but the protest was silenced by the royal edict, and the traffic went

on.









Jefferson's Passports to Immortality vii







In 1776 Jefferson framed with his own hand an indictment of the King of Great

Britain, in the following words: 



" He has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred

rights of life and liberty, in the persons of a distant people who never

offended him; captivating them and carrying them into slavery in another

hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither. 



" This piratical warfare, the opprobrium of infidel powers, is the warfare of

the Christian King of Great Britain. Determined to keep open a market where men

should be bought and sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing

every legislative attempt to prohibit or restrain this execrable commerce. 



"Arid that this assemblage of horrors might want no fact of distinguished die,

he is now exciting those very people to rise in arms among us and to purchase

that liberty of which he has deprived them by murdering the people on whom he

has obtruded them, thus paying off former crimes committed against the

liberties of one people with crimes which he urges them to commit against the

lives of another. " 



These burning sentences were a part of the Declaration of Independence as

originally written by Jefferson and reported to Congress; but so strong was the

influence of South Carolina, Georgia and New England, in favor of the slave

trade, that the words were stricken out, and the Declaration was adopted as we

now see it. 









viii Jefferson's Passports to Immortality







In 1778, two years later, Virginia made it a felony to import slaves into her

limits, and in 1787, when she gave to the Union the Northwest Territory, the

most princely gift in all " the annals of recorded time," Jefferson prepared

the ordinance, and incorporated in its provisions the condition, "that after

the year 1800 of the Christian era, there shall be neither slavery nor

involuntary servitude in any of the said States, otherwise than in punishment

of crimes, whereof the party shall have been duly convicted to have been

personally guilty." 



Again, in the Convention which framed the Federal Constitution of 1789, when

the question of permitting further importation of slaves was under discussion,

Mr. Mason, of Virginia, said: 



" This infernal traffic originated in the avarice of British merchants. The

British Government constantly checked the attempt of Virginia to put a stop to

it. Maryland and Virginia had already prohibited the importation of slaves

expressly, and North Carolina had done the same in substance." 



Declaring then in the strongest terms his opposition to slavery, he concluded

by stating that "he lamented that some of our Eastern brethren had, from a lust

of gain, embarked in this nefarious traffic. " 



Luther Martin, of Maryland, declared the - slave trade " to be inconsistent

with the principles of the Revolution and dishonorable to the American

character to have such a feature in the Constitution " 









Jefferson's Passports to Immortality ix







In this state of things, Gouverneur Morris, adverting to the circumstance that

the sixth section of the same article, then under consideration, contained a

provision " that no navigation act should pass without the consent of

two-thirds of the members present in each House"­a provision particularly

affecting the interests of the New England States­ suggested that this,

together with the fourth and fifth sections, should be referred to a committee,

in order that a bargain might be formed between the parties out of these

elements of special local interest on the one side and the other. 



The suggestion was adopted, and on the second day afterward the committee

reported, extending the slave trade to 1800, and striking out the provision

requiring a two-thirds vote to enact a navigation law. 



When the report came up in the Convention, General Pinckney, of South Carolina,

moved to extend the slave trade to 1808, and the motion was seconded by Mr.

Gorham, of Massachusetts. 



Mr. Madison earnestly and eloquently opposed the motion, declaring it to be

dishonorable to the American character, but his opposition was in vain. 



Hand in hand, Massachusetts and South Carolina led the- cohorts of slavery, and

the motion prevailed, in all the New England States, with South Carolina,

Georgia, Maryland and North Carolina voting for it, and Virginia, Pennsylvania,

New Jersey and Delaware voting against it. 





x   Jefferson's Passports to Immortality







Luther Martin was a member of the committee to which I have alluded, and in a

letter afterward to the Maryland House of Delegates, says: 



" I found the Eastern States, notwithstanding their aversion to slavery, were

very willing to indulge the Southern States, at least with a temporary liberty

to prosecute the slave trade, provided the Southern States in their turn would

gratify them by laying no restriction on the navigation acts." 



Grand, even in her desolation, Virginia, noblest of ancient or modern

commonwealths, can ,point to this record and hear in contemptuous silence the

taunts and sneers of the political Pharisees, who "mock at her calamity." 



Although Jefferson had failed in his attack on African sl^very, he did not for

a moment relax in his opposition to the arbitrary and oppressive measures of

the British King. 



In 1772 the people of Rhode Island began the Revolution by burning the British

war vessel Gaspé, in Narragansett Bay, and when the ministers of George the

Third claimed the right to transport the persons accused from Rhode Island to

England for trial, Jefferson saw at once that the time had come for joint and

concerted action between all the colonies. To concede this claim as to the

humblest citizen, was to surrender the liberties of all. In the early part of

March, 1772, Patrick Henry, Richard Henry Lee, Francis Lightfoot Lee, Dabney

Carr and Thomas Jefferson met at the Raleigh Tavern, in 









Jefferson's Passports to Immortality xi







Williamsburg, Virginia, and drew up the famous resolutions pledging Virginia to

stand by Rhode Island, and creating a committee of eleven, whose duty it should

be to correspond with the other colonies, and concert measures for the general

defence. 



It is singular with what pertinacity amidst all the passionate debates and

resolves of this eventful period, Jefferson and his associates still clung to

the idea of loyalty to the king. Not till 1775 did he reluctantly come to the

conclusion that the colonies must separate from the mother country. 



Thus had the Commons of England advanced step by step until the head of Charles

the First rolled from his shoulders before his palace at White Hall, and thus

had the Girondists given place to the Revolution, until Louis the Sixteenth and

Marie Antoinette died beneath the axe of the guillotine. In 1774 the people of

Boston threw into the harbor the famous shipment of tea, and the King of

England retaliated by closing the port. Again, Jefferson and his associates met

at the Raleigh Tavern, and resolved to stand by New England. Massachusetts and

Virginia then stood shoulder to shoulder, and who could have believed that in

less than a century the same States would grapple in deadly conflict? 



On June 21st, 1775, Jefferson took his seat as a member of the Continental

Congress, and in June, 1776, wrote, with his own hand, the Declaration of

American Independence? the most sub-









xii Jefferson's Passports to Immortality







lime enunciation, save one, ever made to the human 



race. 



That "all governments derive their just powers from the consent of the

governed," is but a corollary from the divine injunction, "All things

whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them." 



Together these two great truths embrace all the rights and duties of mankind. 



The Declaration, having been reported to Congress, was debated on the second,

third and fourth days of July, and adopted on the afternoon of the fourth,

every member present signing it, except Mr. Dickinson. 



In after years, Mr. Jefferson related with great humor a ludicrous event

connected with this solemn transaction. Near the hall in which Congress

assembled was a large livery stable, and the weather being extremely warm, the

bloodthirsty and aggressive flies, which swarmed through the open windows,

attacked our patriotic fathers, in abbreviated pants and thin silk stockings,

with such pertinacity as to terminate the debate.  



So near to the sublime is the ridiculous; and so wonderfully do the most

insignificant creatures influence the destiny of man. 



Thirteen States had now sprung into being, with institutions and laws not only

varying as between themselves, but with some utterly opposed to the genius and

spirit of the Declaration of Independence.









Jefferson's Passports to Immortality xiii







In none of the colonies were abuses so rife and firmly established as in

Virginia. Primogeniture and entail had created a class of thoughtless elder

brothers and vagabond heirs, who were reckless and self-indulgent to the very

verge of lawlessness. 



The union of Church and State had destroyed the rights of conscience, and a

licentious clergy, so far from " leading the way to Heaven, " were merely

adjuncts to the great houses, where high play and old Madeira rewarded their

complaisant ministry. 



The world, for hundreds of years, had listened to the clanking of chains and

shrieks of martyrs, whilst fire and fagot irradiated the deadly work of

religious bigotry. 



Even the Pilgrims, flying from persecution, " having landed on Pilgrim Rock,

fallen on their knees and then on the aborigines," no sooner found themselves

firmly established in New England, than they began to torture in the name of

God. 



To deny any book of the Old or New Testaments to be the word of God was

punished by fire or by stripes, and blasphemy left the delinquent without his

ears and with his tongue bored by a red-hot iron. Men were pilloried, branded

and executed for non-conformity to the established church, and in but three out

of the thirteen colonies was there religious toleration­Rhode Island, Maryland

and Pennsylvania. 



Mr. Jefferson graphically describes the condition of Virginia: 









xiv Jefferson's Passports to Immortality







" The first settlers of this country were emigrants from England of the English

Church, just at a point of time when it was flushed with complete victory over

the religion of all other persuasions. Possessed, as they became, of the power

of making, administering and executing the laws, they showed equal intolerance

in this country with their Presbyterian brethren who had emigrated to the

northern government. The poor Quakers were flying from persecution in England;

they cast their eyes on these new countries as asylums of civil and religious

freedom, but they found them free only for the reigning sect. 



"General acts of the Virginia Assembly of 1659, 1662 and 1693, had made it

penal in parents to refuse to have their children baptized; had prohibited the

unlawful assembly of Quakers; had made it penal for any master of a vessel to

bring a Quaker into the State; had ordered those already here, and such as

should come thereafter, to be imprisoned until they should abjure the country;

provided a milder punishment for their first and second return, but death for

their third; had inhibited all persons from suffering their meetings in or near

their houses, entertaining them individually, or disposing of books which

supported their tenets. 



" If no executions took place here, as did in New England, it was not owing to

the moderation of the church or spirit of the legislature, as may be inferred

from the law itself, but to historical circumstances that have not been handed

down to us. 









Jefferson's Passports to Immortality xv







" By our own Act of Assembly of 1705, if a person brought up in the Christian

religion denies the existence of a God, or the Trinity, or asserts there are

more Gods than one, or denies the Christian religion to be true, or the

Scriptures to be of divine authority, he is punishable on the first offence by

incapacity to hold any office or employment, ecclesiastical, civil or military;

on the second, by disability to sue, to take any gift or legacy, to be

guardian, executor or administrator, and by three years' imprisonment without

bail. 



"A father's right to the custody of his own children being founded in law on

his right of guardianship, this being taken away, they may of course be severed

from him and put by the authority of the court into more orthodox hands." 



Amidst a storm of opposition and obloquy, such as was never before seen on this

continent, Jefferson resolutely attacked primogeniture, entail, and the union

of Church and State. 



From October the 11th to December the 5th the battle raged daily in the

Virginia Assembly, and resulted in a substantial victory for Jefferson,

although the statute for religious toleration did not finally become a law

until 1786. When nearly eighty years old, Mr. Jefferson spoke of this as the

most terrible contest of his long and stormy career. Against him were arrayed

the wealthy families whose large estates were held by entail, the elder sons

whose patrimonies were taken from them, and 









xvi Jefferson's Passports to Immortality







more than all, the clergy and established church, who resented the statute for

religious toleration as a blasphemous attack upon religion and a personal

outrage upon themselves. Jefferson was denounced as a communist, an atheist, a

foe to all religion, and the bitter enmities engendered by this conflict

harassed him during life and assailed his memory after death. 



No one knew better than Jefferson how unrelenting is religious intolerance, and

how dangerous the charge of infidelity or atheism to a public man; but so true

was he to the rights of conscience, that in his long life, and under all

assaults, he made no reply to his enemies. He absolutely denied the right of

any being, except his Maker, to call in question his religious belief, and thus

he lived and died. 



In a private letter to Dr. Benjamin Rush, dated April 21st, 1803, he wrote of

his religious opinions: 



" They are the result of a life of inquiry and reflection, and very different

from that anti-Christian system imputed to me by those who know nothing of my

opinions. To the corruptions of Christianity I am indeed opposed, but not to

the genuine precepts of Jesus Himself. I am a Christian in the sense in which

He wished any one to be, sincerely attached to His doctrines in preference to

all others, ascribing to Himself every human excellence, and believing He never

claimed any other." 









Jefferson's Passports to Immortality xvii







To his young grandson, when life had almost faded away, and he could feel upon

his aged brow the breath of eternity, he wrote: 



" This letter will be to you as one from the dead. The writer will be in the

grave before you can weigh its counsels. Your affectionate father has requested

that I would address you something which might possibly have a favorable

influence on the course of life you have to run, and I, too, as a namesake,

feel an interest in that course. 



"Few words will be necessary with good dispositions on your part. Adore God.

Reverence and cherish your parents. Love your neighbor as yourself, and your

country more than yourself. Be just. Be true. Murmur not at the ways of

Providence, so that the life into which you have entered be the portal to one

of eternal and ineffable bliss. And if to the dead it be permitted to care for

the things of this world, every action of your life will be under my regard." 



If this be atheism or infidelity, what honest man or pure woman will not pray

that the world be filled with unbelief ? 



To Jefferson the doctrines of primogeniture, entail, and an established church

were but part and parcel of the system which gave to certain families the

divine right of governing their fellow men, and against this heresy, with all

its incidents and corollaries, he made untiring and relentless war until the

end of life.









 xviii Jefferson's Passports to Immortality







 To him there was but one creed in matters spiritual or temporal:







"All governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed." 



In addition to the legislation abolishing primogeniture, entail, and an

established church, Jefferson, at the same session of the Assembly, introduced

and passed a bill fixing the terms upon which foreigners should be admitted as

citizens of Virginia, and this act became the model for the general

naturalization law of the United States. Under a resolution introduced by

himself in October, 1776, he commenced the next summer, in connection with

Edmund Pendleton and George Wythe, a revision of the laws of Virginia, and in

1779, after three years of arduous labor, the work was completed. 



But his great ambition was to establish a system of common schools, which

should place a liberal education within the reach of every child in Virginia,

to create high schools, found a library at Richmond, at a cost of two thousand

pounds a year, and change William and Mary College into a University. With

indefatigable zeal he perfected all the details, but the war absorbed the

entire resources of the commonwealth, and long years of eventful history passed

before he realized any part of his cherished plans. 



On June 1st, 1779, Jefferson was inaugurated Governor of Virginia, succeeding

Patrick Henry, the first executive of the State. From the day of his 









Jefferson's Passports to Immortality xix







inauguration to the hour when he retired from office, he was overwhelmed with

difficulties, before which an ordinary man would have shrunk appalled and

hopeless. 



Without navy, arms or money, Jefferson was expected to defend an exposed

seaboard, furnish supplies to the Virginia troops in the field, and prevent the

horrors of an Indian war on the western border. 



All that could be done by unflagging energy and the wisest forethought he

accomplished, but in 1780 the storm of war burst with relentless fury upon

Virginia. 



Gates was defeated at Camden, the traitor Arnold sailed up the James, burning

and pillaging on either side, until he captured Richmond, whilst news came that

Washington's army was on the eve of dissolution. 



In 1781 Cornwallis invaded Virginia from the South, and a troop of cavalry

dashed upon Monticello with the hope of capturing Governor Jefferson. Five

minutes before their arrival Jefferson escaped, and his faithful slaves

refused, under bribes and threats, to give information of the route he had

taken. 



As always in the hour of national calamity, a scapegoat was necessary to

appease the popular disquietude, and Jefferson was in this instance the victim.

Conscious of his faithful discharge of duty, he chafed under these assaults as

never before or 









xx Jefferson's Passports to Immortality







after, and although acquitted by the unanimous vote of the Assembly, declared

that he would never accept another public trust, and that, with the close of

the war, his political career had ended. 



Surrounded at Monticello by his family, to whom he was tenderly attached, and

with his books and flowers, Jefferson looked forward to years of quiet

happiness, such as every man, worn with the battle of life, has pictured in his

day dreams of the future. But Providence had destined otherwise. 



In the spring of 1782 death robbed him of a wife whose beauty and

accomplishments gave to Monticello the most charming mistress that ever blessed

a Virginia home, and from a stupor of grief Jefferson awoke, anxious to leave

the scenes which constantly reminded him of his irreparable loss. 



Again he plunged into the vortex of politics, and in 1783 we find him at

Annapolis, ready to take his seat in Congress, to which he had been recently

elected. Again he devoted himself with untiring assiduity to public business,

and, as chairman of the Committee on Coins and Currency, gave to his country

and the world a system of coinage on the decimal basis, the most perfect known

amongst men. 



At the same session he introduced the celebrated ordinance, afterwards enacted

in 1787, by which Virginia gave to the Union the great States of Ohio, Indiana,

Illinois, Michigan and Wisconsin. 



On May 17th, 1781, Jefferson was appointed Envoy Extraordinary to assist Mr.

Adams and Dr. Frank 









Jefferson's Passports to Immortality xxi







fin, then abroad, in concluding commercial treaties with Great Britain,

Holland, and other governments, on "the footing of the most favored nation,"

and on March 10th, 1785, he succeeded Dr. Franklin as Minister to France. 



Jefferson remained in Europe five years, residing in Paris, and watching with

deepest interest the great drama of the French Revolution. He witnessed the

fall of the Bastile, and the massacre of the Swiss Guards; but, like Charles

James Fox, he saw through the blood and horror the outlines of liberty; and,

unlike Burke, he beheld in the French queen, not only a beautiful and

unfortunate woman, but the reckless, self-indulgent cause of her husband's

ruin. 



" This angel, as gaudily painted in the rhapsodies of Burke, " he wrote forty

years afterwards, " with some smartness of fancy, but no sound sense, was

proud, disdainful of restraint, indignant at all obstacles to her will, eager

in the pursuit of pleasure, and firm enough to hold to her desires or perish in

their wreck. 



" Her inordinate gambling and dissipations, with those of the Count d'Artois

and others of her clique, had been a sensible item in the exhaustion of the

treasury, which called into action the reforming hand of the nation; and her

opposition to it, her inflexible perverseness and dauntless spirit, led herself

to the guillotine, drew the king on with her, and plunged. the world into

crimes and calamities which









xxii Jefferson's Passports to Immortality







will forever stain the pages of modern history. I have ever believed that, had

there been no queen, there would have been no revolution; no force would have

been provoked or exercised." 



Like John Knox, in the days of Mary, Queen of Scots, Jefferson could not

appreciate the beauty which looked, without pity, on the starving multitude,

and listened, without emotion, to the cries of her unfortunate people. 



Jefferson looked with contemptuous amazement upon the French court feasting and

dancing at Versailles, while the hungry people roared and surged through the

streets of Paris. 



" Slowly comes a hungry people, as a lion creeping nigher 



Glares at one that nods and winks behind a slowly dying fire." 



The glamour of royalty did not seem to affect this stern republican, who

rejected with scorn the divine right of kings. 



In one of his letters he writes thus of the monarchs then occupying the

proudest thrones of earth: 



"While I was in Europe I often amused myself in contemplating the characters of

the then reigning sovereigns of Europe. Louis the Sixteenth was a fool, of my

own knowledge, and in despite of the answers made for him at his trial. The

King of Spain was a fool, and of Naples the same. They passed their lives in

hunting, and despatched two couriers a week over one thousand miles to let each

other know what game they had killed the preceding









Jefferson's Passports to Immortality xxiii







days. The King of Sardinia was a fool. All these were Bourbons. The Queen of

Portugal, Braganza, was an idiot by nature, and so was the King of Denmark.

Their sons, as regents, exercised the powers of government. The King of

Prussia, successor to Frederick the Great, was a mere hog in body as well as in

mind. 



"Gustavus of Sweden, and Joseph of Austria, were really crazy, and George of

England, you know, was in a straight waistcoat. There remained then none but

old Catherine, who had been too lately picked up to have lost her common sense.





" In this state Bonaparte found Europe, and it was the state of the rulers

which lost it without a struggle. These animals had become without mind and

powerless, and so will every hereditary monarch be after a few generations." 



Every fibre of Jefferson's being sympathized with the unfortunate people whose

sweat and blood had been wrung fro~n them for centuries, to feed these royal

animals, and every hour in Europe added to his hatred of the monarchical

system. 



In February, 1787, he left Paris, and traveled incognito through the fairest

provinces of France, investigating the home life of the people, their houses,

food and modes of agriculture. 



Besides attending to his diplomatic duties and making commercial treaties with

all the principal nations of Europe, Jefferson found time to correspond with

leading scientists upon chemistry, astron 









xxiv Jefferson's Passports to Immortality







omy, geology and natural history. He collected and shipped to the United States

seeds and plants of all kinds suitable to our soil and climate, and procured

for Buffon, the great naturalist, specimens of the animals and birds peculiar

to this continent. 



When in France, he wrote and published his celebrated "Notes on Virginia,"

which attracted universal attention, and passed through several editions. 



Whilst making treaties, writing philosophical essays, and watching the

revolution, this remarkable man invented an improved plough, which was awarded

a medal by the Royal Agricultural Society of the Seine, and was exhibited to

William C. Rives, Minister to France in 1853, as " The Prize Plough of Thomas

Jefferson;" afterwards he invented the revolving chair, now found in so many

offices and households. 



Rice was largely consumed in France, and anxious to know why the American

article was unable to compete successfully with that raised in Southern Europe,

he made a journey across the Alps in 1787, into the rice-growing districts, and

being unable to procure some improved seed rice, which he discovered there, on

account of laws prohibiting its exportation, he filled the pockets of his coat

and overcoat with the best rice, of the best rice-producing district of Italy,

and sent it to Charleston. It came to hand safely, was distributed in

quantities of ten and twelve grains to planters, and being carefully 









Jefferson's Passports to Immortality xxv







tended, furnished South Carolina the best rice in the world. 



After five years of unremitting toil for his country and mankind, Jefferson was

compelled to give some attention to his private affairs, and left Paris in

October, 1789, with his two daughters, expecting to return within a year. On

November 17, 1789, he landed safely at Norfolk, and found an invitation from

Washington to become Secretary of State. 



With reluctance, but acting under a sense of public obligation, he accepted the

office, and entered upon its duties. 



Accustomed, as Jefferson must have been, to the uncertainty of political events

and the mutations of public sentiment, he was profoundly astonished to find

that a powerful party~had come into existence in the United States, which

distrusted the people, and favored a strong, if not monarchical government. At

the head of this party was the Secretary of the Treasury, Alexander Hamilton. 



It was not possible that harmony, nor any relation except that of antagonism,

should exist between Jefferson and Hamilton. They were both men of great

ability, positive convictions, and with views utterly irreconcilable as to the

government. 



Jefferson was the incarnate principle of Democracy, pure and simple, without

alloy. Hamilton h~d no sympathy with the people or popular government. 



Notwithstanding the great authority of Wash-









xxvi Jefferson's Passports to Immortality







ington, and the influence which his character exercised upon all who approached

him, there soon occurred an open rupture between the Secretary of State and the

Secretary of the Treasury. 



In February, 1792, Jefferson mentioned to the President his intention to retire

from the Cabinet, and, when pressed for his reasons, frankly stated that it was

impossible for Colonel Hamilton and himself to continue together in the

administration, and that now a proposition had been brought forward, the

decision of which must definitely determine " whether we live under a limited

or unlimited government. " 



" To what proposition do you allude ? " asked the President. 



" To that, " replied Jefferson, " in the report of manufactures (by Hamilton),

which, under color of giving bounties for the encouragement of particular

manufactures, meant to establish the doctrine that the Constitution, in giving

power to Congress to provide for the general welfare, permitted Congress to

take everything under their charge which they should deem for the public

welfare. If this was maintained, then the enumeration of powers in the

Constitution does not at all constitute the limits of their authority." 



If Jefferson should now revisit the earth he would find the same doctrine

advanced even amongst those who claim to be exponents of his principles and

teaching. 









Jefferson's Passports to Immortality xxvii







In the meantime all Europe was preparing to attack France, and the question

presented to Washington's Cabinet was whether the United States should remain

neutral or assist the people who had assisted us in our struggle for

independence. 



On April 22d, 1793, the proclamation for neutrality was issued, and on the same

day Citizen Genet arrived in a French frigate as Minister to the United States

from the French Republic. 



He was received with such tumultuous acclamation as was never before or since

given to any ambassador or visitor to our shores. Public meetings, banquets,

oratory and music evidenced the deep feeling of the American people for the

cause of France. A storm of indignation burst upon Washington and his Cabinet

for refusing to give immediate assistance to our allies of the War for

Independence, then struggling against the combined despotism of Europe, led by

England. 



It is impossible for us to realize now the popular excitement of those eventful

days, or the clamor raised about the government; but Washington and his Cabinet

stood firm, and the result justified the wisdom of their course. 



Jefferson's correspondence with Genet and the English Minister, afterwards

published by order of Congress, stands to-day and will forever remain the most

wonderful exhibition of learning, skill and moderation to be found in the

annals of diplomacy. 



Jefferson retired from Washington's Cabinet on









 xxviii Jefferson's Passports to Immortality







January the 1st, 1794, the acknowledged leader of the Republican party, and

with the compliments and plaudits of his countrymen. Even his enemies were

forced to admit that his correspondence with Genet had exhibited the highest

order of ability, and had shown him to be both patriot and statesman. 



In 1796 he was called from Monticello to become Vice-President, Mr. Adams

having received in the Electoral College seventy-one votes and Mr. Jefferson

sixty-eight, which resulted, as the Constitution then provided, in making the

former President and the latter Vice-President of the United States. 



To the duties of this office he brought the same industry and learning as to

every other position. 



When a young lawyer, beginning his public career as a member of the Virginia

House of Burgesses, he had adopted the practice of noting down in a small

leather-bound volume rules and precedents in parliamentary law, and upon this

as a basis he now prepared his " Manual of Parliamentary Practice," the highest

authority in legislative proceedings known to the civilized world. 



In the meantime the Federalists and Republicans were marshaling their forces

for the Presidential contest of I 800. The conservative and mediatory influence

of Washington had been withdrawn, and party spirit raged untrammeled. 



The press was in the hands of the Federalists, and Jefferson the mark at which

all their arrows 









Jefferson's Passports to Immortality xxix







were aimed. He was pictured as an atheist, libertine, a monster in human form.

One of the favorite charges against him was that he was an ally of Napoleon

Bonaparte, the Corsican tyrant. The political preacher had already appeared in

the Presidential canvass, and although not so alliterative as in modern times,

was equally as sensational. 



The great preacher then in New York was Dr. John Mason, and he was shocked

beyond measure to find from the " Notes on Virginia" that Jefferson had doubts

as to there having been a universal deluge. Some days before the election Dr.

Mason published a pamphlet entitled, " The Voice of Warning to Christians on

the Ensuing Election," in which he exclaimed: "Christians! It is thus that a

man whom you are expected to elevate to the chief magistracy insults yourself

and your Bible." 



We can imagine what sort of partisan this reverend politician must have been

when we learn that in one of his sermons he paused and with uplifted hands and

eyes burst into prayer: 



" Send us, if Thou wilt, murrain upon our cattle, a famine upon our land,

cleanness of teeth in our borders; send us pestilence to waste our cities; send

us, if it pleases Thee, the sword to bathe itself in the blood of our sons, but

spare us, Lord God Most Merciful, spare us that curse­most dreadful of all

curses­an alliance with Napoleon Bonaparte." 



As he uttered these words the blood gushed from his nostrils, but putting his

handkerchief to his









xxx Jefferson's Passports to Immortality







face he then waved it aloft as if a bloody banner in the coming contest. 



Through all this scandal and vituperation, temporal and ecclesiastical, the

people, as they always do, discerned the true issue, and the Republicans were

successful. Jefferson and Burr each received seventy-three votes in the

Electoral College to sixty-five for Adams, sixty-four for Pinckney, and one for

Jay; and after some weeks of great excitement the House of Representatives

ratified the will of the people by making Jefferson President and Burr

Vice-President. The alien and sedition laws had done their work, and the first

Republican administration assumed control of the government. 



The new President rode to the Capitol on horseback, hitched his steed to the

palings, and quietly took the oath of office. There was no procession, no

inaugural ball, no show and parade. Right or wrong, this was Jefferson's idea

of a Republic, and the commencement of a Republican administration. 



During the administrations of Washington and Adams the absurd custom of

Congress being opened by the President with a personal address had been

adopted, in imitation of the English system, but Jefferson quietly transmitted

his message in writing, and such has been the custom ever since. 



He also refused to hold weekly levees, where a mob of sweating and

uncomfortable people, in tawdry finery, torture each other and the President

until life becomes a burden, but this travesty on 









Jefferson's Passports to Immortality xxxi







common sense has since returned to plague the Chief Executive and disgust the

sensible public. 



Jefferson sought to simplify the, government and relieve it from the display

and extravagance by which monarchy aimed to dazzle the people and conceal the

outrages inflicted upon them. 



The trinity of his political faith was a strict construction of the

Constitution, economy in expenditures, and honest men in office. 



His inaugural on March the 4th, 1801, should be treasured with Washington's

Farewell Address. 



" Equal and exact justice to men of whatever state or persuasion, religious or

political, peace, commerce and honest friendship with all nations, entangling

alliances with none; the support of the State Governments in all their rights,

as the most competent administration for our domestic concerns, and the surest

bulwarks against anti-republican tendencies; the preservation of the General

Government in its whole constitutional vigor as the sheet anchor of our peace

at home, and safety abroad; a jealous care of the right of election by the

people­a mild and safe corrective of abuses, which are lopped by the sword of

revolution, when peaceable remedies are unprovided; absolute acquiescence in

the decision of the majority, the vital principle of republics from which there

is no appeal but to force, the vital principle and immediate source of

despotism; a well-disciplined militia, our best reliance in peace and for the

first moments of 









xxxii Jefferson's Passports to Immortality







war, till regulars may relieve them; the supremacy of the civil over the

military authority; economy in the public expense that labor may be lightly

burdened; the honest payment of our debts and sacred preservation of the public

faith; encouragement of agriculture, and of commerce as its handmaid; the

diffusing of information and the arraignment of all abuses at the bar of public

reason; freedom of religion; freedom of the press; freedom of persons under the

protection of the habeas corpus, and trial by juries impartially selected." 



The first important act of Mr. Jefferson's administration was to dispatch three

frigates and one sloop of our small navy to the Mediterranean, for the purpose

of overaweing the Algerine pirates and terminating their daring attacks upon

American commerce. 



When Minister to France, he had been annoyed and irritated by the fact that the

United States and other nations were compelled to pay tribute to these

buccaneers. One bill sent to Mr. Jefferson for the ransom of an American crew

was as follows: 



For three captains, $6,000 each, $18,000; for two mates, $4,000 each, $8,000;

for two passengers, $4,000 each, $8,000; for fourteen seamen, $1,400 each,

$19,600; total, $53,600. 



Jefferson was determined that this national disgrace should be obliterated, and

history shows how well and thoroughly the gallant Decatur carried out the

instructions of his chief. 









Jefferson's Passports to Immortality xxxiii







The most splendid achievement of Jefferson's administration, however, was the

acquisition by purchase from Napoleon of the Louisiana Territory, which

extended our limits from ocean to ocean and gave us the mouth of the

Mississippi. 



When the treaty was signed at Paris, Mr. Livingstone, one of the Commissioners,

said: 



" We have lived long, but this is the noblest work of our whole lives. The

treaty which we have just signed has not been obtained by art nor dictated by

force. It will change vast solitudes into flourishing districts, and from this

day the United States take their place among the powers of the first rank. * *

* The instruments which we have just signed will cause no tears to be shed.

They prepare ages of happiness for innumerable generations of human creatures. 



"The Mississippi and Missouri will see them succeed one another and multiply,

truly worthy of the regard and care of Providence, in the bosom of equality,

under just laws, freed from the errors of superstition and bad government." 



" If to the dead it be permitted to care for the things of this world," with

what satisfaction must the spirit of Jefferson to-day look down upon this vast

domain acquired by his patriotic foresight; a land of plenty, filled with happy

homes, and temples devoted to education, science and art. 



After acquiring Louisiana, including the vast region stretching to the Pacific,

Mr. Jefferson's next









xxxiv Jefferson's Passports to Immortality







object was to ascertain the nature and resources of these possessions, and for

this purpose the expedition of Lewis and Clarke left St. Louis in 1805, came up

the Missouri, and for two years, four months, and ten days was lost to

civilization, and exposed to danger and hardships, the recital of which equals

the stories of romance. 



Not many months after the acquisition of Louisiana, intelligence reached the

President of the treasonable design of Aaron Burr to seize upon the mouth of

the Mississippi, invade Mexico, and establish a southwestern empire. After the

death of Hamilton, Burr had served out his term as Vice-President, presiding at

the impeachment trial of Judge Chase, and then finding his public career ended,

his restless ambition had conceived the scheme which ruined Blennerhassett, and

made himself an outcast and wanderer. 



Party rancor attempted at the time to make Burr a martyr and Jefferson a

tyrant, but impartial history has long since entered the judgment that the

President was right, and that Burr was guilty of the designs attributed to him.





The latter part of Jefferson's second term was clouded with the prospect of war

with England, and with the distress caused by the embargo, which he enforced to

the end of his administration, in the hope of averting an expensive and ruinous

conflict of arms. 



In 1809, with the country four times greater in resources and territory than in

I 800, his second 









Jefferson's Passports to Immortality xxxv







term as President closed, and after forty-four years' public service he

transferred the government to his friend, James Madison, and went back to

Monticello, and to the labor of love, which had been amongst the dreams of his

early ambition. His whole energies were now devoted to establishing the

University of Virginia, upon a system singularly illustrative of that equality

and liberty which formed the leading characteristic of Jefferson's life and

opinions. The University differs from other American colleges in these

particulars: There is no president, and all the professors are of equal rank

except that one of them is elected chairman of the faculty. The University is

simply a group of schools, and the student himself chooses the studies he

elects to pursue. Unlike other institutions, there is no rule requiring a

student to attend religious exercises, but his conduct in this regard is

governed entirely by his own sense of right. 



The ruling idea in every detail is an absence of coercion, and an appeal to

manhood and conscience. 



Jefferson lived seventeen years after the close of his public career, and his

last hours were embittered by the pressure of debts which he was unable to

satisfy. His splendid library, a portion of it left him by George Wythe, was

sold to the United States, and he was finally compelled to ask the legislature

of Virginia to authorize him to dispose of his lands by lottery, in order to

meet the harassing liabilities pressing upon him.









xxxvi Jefferson's Passports to Immortality







Although an exact man, Jefferson practiced the hospitality which prevailed in

Virginia everywhere at that time, and he had never learned the modern methods

by which a public officer can in a few years become a millionaire upon a small

salary. When he left Washington City he was forced to borrow ten thousand

dollars to pay debts contracted for household expenses, and whilst we may

deprecate the style of living which necessitated such outlay, we must admire

the integrity that procured the money to meet the debt by a mortgage upon

Monticello, rather than by a raid upon the public treasury. 



On July the 4th, 1826, as the accentuating cannon and the glad acclaim of a

free people saluted the birthday of American Independence, Jefferson's life

ended peacefully and serenely at Monticello. On the same day at his home in

Massachusetts, John Adams passed away. 



No longer rivals nor political opponents, they met together the last enemy of

all our race. 



Gentlemen of the Jefferson Club, you have taken the name and are pledged to the

principles of him who established the Democratic party. No responsibility can

be greater, for the defeat of these principles and the destruction of the

organization based upon them, means the end of free institutions upon this

continent. 



The Democratic party holds that there should be no partnership between the

government and any individual or class, but that all the benefits and 









Jefferson's Passports to Immortality xxxvii







burdens of the government should be equally and justly distributed, every

citizen being protected in life, liberty and property, and made the architect

of his own fortune. 



It holds that all property should be taxed in proportion to the protection

received from the government; and it does not believe in the system under which

a capitalist pays no more upon his hundreds of millions to support the national

government, than does the poorest citizen who must in war risk life and limb to

protect these millions. 



The Democratic party is national, not sectional, and cannot exist on one issue.

It is coexistent with the whole Union and with the autonomy of our government. 



You may believe in the single gold standard and I in the free coinage of silver

at the ratio of 16 to 1, but if we are Jeffersonian Democrats, there is no

other political home for us than the old party which has existed for a hundred

years in peace and war, sunshine and shadow, in every township, county, and

State of the entire Union. 



No greater calamity could come to this country or the world than the disruption

of the great organization which was founded by the author of the Declaration of

American- Independence. 



Upon the canvas of the past, Washington and Jefferson stand forth the central

figures in our struggle for independence. The character of the former was so

rounded and justly proportioned, that xxxviii Jefferson's Passports to

Immortality







so long as our country lives, or a single community of Americans can be found,

Washington will be " First in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of

his countrymen." 



To Washington we are more indebted than to any one man for national existence;

but what availed the heroism of Bunker Hill, the sufferings of Valley Forge, or

the triumph of Yorktown, if the government they established had been but an

imitation of the monarchy from which we had separated? 



To Jefferson we owe eternal gratitude for his sublime confidence in popular

government, and his unfaltering courage in defending at all times and in all

places, the great truth, that "All governments derive their just powers from

the consent of the governed." 



The love of liberty is found not in palaces, but with the poor and oppressed.

It flutters in the heart of the caged bird, and sighs with the worn and wasted

prisoner in his dungeon. It has gone with martyrs to the stake, and kissed

their burning lips as the tortured spirit winged its flight to God! 



In the temple of this deity Jefferson was high priest! 



For myself, I worship no mortal man living or dead; but if I could kneel at

such a shrine, it would he with uncovered head and loving heart at the grave of

Thomas Jefferson. 











        (signed) George Graham Vest 







        CONTENTS.















JEFFERSON'S PASSPORTS TO IMMORTALITY.  By            Hon.George Graham Vest.,

Ex-Senator from Missouri...







LETTERS WRITTEN AFTER His RETURN TO THE



UNITED STATES, 1789-1826        1-441







To Albert Gallatin, March 2 , 1808        1



To His Excellency Governor James Sullivan,



March 3, 1808                2



To Colonel James Monroe, March 10, 1808        3



To Richard M. Johnson, March 10, 1808        9



To James Madison, March 11,  1808        11



To Governor William H. Cabell, March 13, 1808.        12



To Albert Gallatin, March 17, 1808        12



To W. C. Nicholas, March 20, 1808        14



To Doctor Caspar Wistar, March 20, 1808        15



To the Democratic Citizens of the County of



Adams, Pennsylvania, March 20, 1808        17



To Albert Gallatin, March 23, 1808        18



To Monsieur La Vavasseur, March 23, 1808        19



To Levi Lincoln, March 23, 1808        20



To Albert Gallatin, March 26, 1808        22



To Charles Pinckney, March 30, 1808        22



To Albert Gallatin, March 31, 1808        24



To Robert Smith, April 1, 1808        26



To Albert Gallatin, April 2, 1808        26



To Albert Gallatin, April 8, 1808        27



To John Jacob Astor, April 13, 1808        28



To Albert Gallatin, April 14, 1808                                            

29







 



        xl                        Contents







LETTERS WRITTEN AFTER His RETURN TO THE



UNITED STATES, 1789-1826-Continued.        PAGE



To Albert Gallatin, April 19, 1808                29



To Albert Gallatin, April 19, 1808                30



To Albert Gallatin, April 22, 1808                31



To Albert Gallatin, April 23, 1808                32



To the Secretary of State (James Madison), April 23, 1808        34



To Albert Gallatin, April 23, 1808                35



To Caesar A. Rodney, April 24, 1808                36



To Colonel William A. Washington, April 24,1808        37



To the Secretary of the Treasury (Albert Gallatin), April 30, 1808        38



To General Henry Dearborn, April 29, 1808                 40



To the Secretary of State (James Madison), April 30, 1808        40



To  William Lyman, April 30, 1808                41



To  General John Armstrong, May 2, 1808                43



To  General Thaddeus Kosciusko, May 2, 1808        44



To  Robert Smith, May 3, 1808                46



To  Governor Daniel D. Tompkins, May 4, 1808..        47



To ---, May 5, 1808                49



To the Governors of New Orleans, Georgia, South



Carolina, Massachusetts and New Hampshire, May 6, 1808        51



To Albert Gallatin, May 6, 1808                52



To the Secretary of War (Henry Dearborn), May12, 1808        54



To the Secretary of the Treasury (Albert Gallatin), May 15, 1808        56



To the Secretary of the Treasury (Albert Gallatin), May 17, 1808        56



To the Secretary of State (James Madison), May 19, 1808        58







 



Contents        xli







LETTERS WRITTEN AFTER His RETURN TO THE



UNITED STATES, 1789-1826-Continued.        PAGE



To the Secretary of the Treasury (Albert Galla-



tin), May 20, 1808                59



To the Secretary of War (Henry Dearborn), May 20, 1808        61



To General Benjamin Smith, May 20, 1808        61



To the Secretary of State (James Madison), May 24, 1808        62



To General Henry Dearborn, May 25, 1808        63



To Mr. Leiper, May 25, 1808                65



To the Secretary of the Treasury (Albert Gallatin), May 27, 1808        66



To James Bowdoin, May 29, 1808                68



To the Secretary of State (James Madison), May 31, 1808        70



To the Secretary of the Navy (Jacob Crowninshield), June 15, 1808        71



To  Shelton Gilliam, June 19, 1808                73



To  Christopher Colles, June 19, 1808        74



To  James Pemberton, June 21, 1808                74



To  Walter Franklin, June 22, 1808                 75



To  Doctor Thomas Leib, June 23, 1808        76



To  General James Wilkinson, June 24, 1808                                     

                      8



To  Colonel Daniel C. Brent, June 24, 1808        78



To  Albert Gallatin, July 4, 1808                79



To  His Excellency Governor W. C. C. Claiborne,



July 9, 1808                80



To the Secretary of the Treasury (Albert Gallatin), July 12, 1808        81



To Monsieur De La Cepede, July 14 1808        83



To Monsieur Sylvestre, July 15 1808                88



To Monsieur Lasteyrie, July 15, 1808



        To the Secretary of the Navy (Jacob Crowninshield), July 16, 1808      

 93







 



xlii                      Contents







LETTERS WRITTEN AFTER His RETURN TO THE



UNITED STATES, 1789-1826-Continued.        PAGE







To Robert Smith, of the War Office, July 16, 1808        94



To His Excellency Governor James Sullivan, July 16, 1808        95



To His Excellency Governor W. C. C. Claiborne, July 17, 1808        96



To Governor Meriwether Lewis, July 17, 1808        99



To the Secretary of War (Henry Dearborn), July 18, 1808        101



To His Excellency Governor Charles Pinckney, July 18, 1808        102



To the Secretary of the Treasury (Albert Gallatin), July 25, 1808        106



To William B. Bibb, July 28, 1808                107



To the Secretary of the Treasury (Albert Gallatin), July 29, 1808        109



To the Secretary of State (James Madison), July 29, 1808        111



To the Secretary of War (Henry Dearborn), August 5, 1808        113



To the Secretary of War (Henry Dearborn), August 6, 1808        116



To Messrs. Kerr, Moore and Williams, Commissioners of the Western Road, August

6, 1808 ...                117



To the Secretary of the Treasury (Albert Gallatin), August 6, 1808        118



To the Secretary of War (Henry Dearborn), August 9, 1808        119



To the Secretary of the Treasury (Albert Gallatin), August 9, 1808        120



        To the Secretary of the Navy (Jacob Crowninshield), August g, 1808     

  121



To Albert Gallatin, August II, 1808                121



        To the Secretary of the Navy (Jacob Crowninshield), August 12, 1808    

   123







 



Contents        xiiii







LETTERS WRITTEN AFTER His RETURN TO THE



UNITED STATES, 1789-1826-Continued.        PAGE











To the Secretary of War (Henry Dearborn), August 12, 1808        125



To the Secretary of State (James Madison), August 12, 1808        126



To His Excellency Governor James Sullivan, Aug.12, 1808        127



To Robert Fulton, August 15, 1808                130



To Israel Smith, August 15, 1808                131



To His Excellency Governor Daniel D. Tompkins,August 15, 1808        131



To the Secretary of the Treasury (Albert Gallatin), August 15, 1808        133



To Governor W. C. C. Claiborne, August 1 6, 1808        135



To the Secretary of the Treasury (Albert Gallatin), August 19, 1808        136



To the Secretary of War (Henry Dearborn), August 20, 1808        139



To Governor Meriwether Lewis, August 2 1, 1808.        141



To the Honorable Levi Lincoln, August 22, 1808.        145



To Governor Meriwether Lewis, August 24, 1808.        147



To the Secretary of War (Henry Dearborn), August 25, 1808        149



To the Secretary of the Treasury (Albert Gallatin), August 26, 1808        149



To Captain M'Gregor, August 26, 1808                151



To the Secretary of War (Henry Dearborn), August 27, 1808        152



To the Emperor of Russia, August 29, 1808        153



To General James Wilkinson, August 30, 1808 ..        154



To the Secretary of the Treasury (Albert Gallatin), August 30, 1808        155



To the Secretary of State (James Madison), September 5, 1808        156







 



xliv                    Contents







LETTERS WRITTEN AFTER His RETURN TO THE



UNITED STATES, 1789-1826-Continued.        PAGE







To the Secretary of War (Henry Dearborn), September 5, 1808                    

    57



To the Secretary of State (James Madison), September 6, 1808                   

   158



To William Short, September 6, 1808                                            

                  159



To the Secretary of the Treasury (Albert Gallatin),September 9,1808            

   160



To Simeon Theus, September 10, 1808                                            

           162



To the Secretary of State (James Madison), September 13, 1808                  

  165



To the Secretary of the Navy (Jacob Crowninshield), September 16, 1808      

167



To the Secretary of the Treasury (Albert Gallatin), September 20, 1808         

  167



To Albert Gallatin, October 14, 1808                                           

            169



To Robert L. Livingston, October 15, 1808                                      

                 170



To Albert Gallatin, October 16, 1808                                           

            171



To George Blake, October 17, 1808                                              

         172



To Albert Gallatin, October 18, 1808                                           

                            172



To Robert Smith, October 19, 1808                                              

         173



To Albert Gallatin, October 19, 1808                                           

            174



To James Main, October 19, 1808                                                

       174



To Captain Matthew C. Groves, October 19, 1808                                 

        175



To Albert Gallatin, October 21, 1808                                           

            178



To Dr. Thomas Cooper, October 27, 1808                                         

              180



To Doctor James Brown, October 27, 1808                                        

               182



To              , October 28, 1808                                             

            185



To Governor W. C. C. Claiborne, October 29, 1808                               

       186



To Albert Gallatin, November 3, 1808                                           

              187



To General Henry Dearborn, November 5, 1808                                    

         188



To His Excellency Governor Charles Pinckney, November 8, 1808                  

190



To Mr. Letue, November 8, 1808                                                 

        190



 











Contents        xlv











LETTERS WRITTEN AFTER His RETURN TO THE



UNITED STATES, 1789-1826-Continued.                         PAGE











To His Excellency Governor William H. Cabell,



November 13, 1808                        192



To Albert Gallatin, November 13, 1808                        193



To Lieutenant-Governor Levi Lincoln, November 13, 1808                       

194



To the Hon. Joseph B. Varnum, November 18,1808                            196



To Thomas Jefferson Randolph, November 24,1808                            196



To the Vice-Presidents of the American Philosophical Society, 



November 30, 1808                        202



To Samuel Hawkins (Kingston), November 30, 1808                        203



To Doctor Benjamin Waterhouse, December 1,1808                        204



To Thomas Monroe, December 4, 1808                        206



To Albert Gallatin, December 7, 1808                        208



To Albert Gallatin, December 8, 1808                        210



To Albert Gallatin, December 8, 1808                        211



To Albert Gallatin, December 20, 1808                        211



To Albert Gallatin, December 22, 1808                        212



To Wilson C. Nicholas, December 22, 1808                        213



To Governor William H. Harrison, December 22, 1808                        213



To Joel Barlow, December 25, 1808                        216



To Charles Thomson, December 25, 1808                        217



To Albert Gallatin, December 27, 1808                        218



To Doctor George Logan, December 27, 1808                        219



To Albert Gallatin, December 28, 1808                        220



To Edmund Randolph, December 28, 1808                        221



To December 31, 1808                                223



To Henry Guest, January 4, 1808                        224



To Albert Gallatin, January 9, 1808                        225







xlvi                            Contents







LETTERS WRITTEN AFTER His RETURN TO THE



UNITED STATES, 1789-1826-Continued.        PAGE







To the Secretary of War (Henry Dearborn), January 12, 1808        225



To General Dearborn, January 12, 1808        226



To Doctor William Eustis, January 14, 1808        227



To Thomas C. James, Secretary of the American



Philosophical Society, January 14, 1808        230



To Doctor Mease, January 15, 1808        230



Circular Letter from the Secretary of War, to the



Governors, prepared by Thomas Jefferson, January 17, 1808        232



To Washington Boyd, January 20, 1808        233



To His Excellency Governor John Tyler, January 20, 1809        234



To Colonel David Humphreys, January 20, 1808-                                 

235



To Thomas Leiper, January 21, 1808        236



To Colonel Charles Simms, Collector, January 22, 1809        239



To Colonel James Monroe, January 28, 1808        240



To His Excellency Governor John Sevier, January 31, 1809        243



To M. Amelot De La Croix, Boston, February 3,1808        244



To Captain Armistead T. Mason, February 3, 1808            246



To Captain Armistead T. Mason, February 3, 1808        247



To Thomas Mann Randolph, February 7, 1809 ...        248



To His Excellency Governor John Tyler, February 16, 1808        249



To Benjamin Stoddart, February 18, 1809        249



To John Hollins, February 19, 1808        252



To M. Henri Gregoire, Eveque et Senateur á Paris,February 25, 1808        254



To M. Ruell, Ancien Agent Dipiomatique, Rue



D'Argentine, No. 38, @ Paris, February 25, 1808        256







Contents        xlvii







LETTERS WRITTEN AFTER His RETURN TO THE



UNITED STATES, 1789-1826-Continued.                        PAGE



To Thomas Mann Randolph, February 28, 1808.                        256



To Messrs. Gregg and Leib, Senators of Pennsylvania, 



Mr. Smilie, March 2, 1808                        258



To Monsieur Dupont De Nemours, March 2, 1809                        258



To General John Armstrong, March 5, 1809                        260



To Baron Alexander von Humboldt, March 6, 1808                        263



To William Short, March 8, 1808                        264



To the President of the United States (James



Madison), March 17, 1809                        266



To William M'Andless, March 9, 1809                        268



To the Inhabitants of Albemarle County, in Virginia, April 3, 1809             

       269



To Governor James Jay, April 7, 1808                        270



To Colonel Larkin Smith, April 15, 1808                        271



To the President of the United States (James



Madison), April 19, 1808                        273



To the President of the United States (James



Madison), April 27, 1808                        274



To Horatio G. Spafford, May 14, 1808                        278



To John Wyche, May 19, 1808                        282



To the Honorable judge Woodward, May 27, 1809                        283



To William Lambert, May 28, 1809                        254



To Doctor Elijah Griffith, Philadelphia, May 28,1809                        285



To the Hon. Robert Smith, Secretary of State, June 10, 1809                    

   286



To Wilson C. Nicholas, June 13, 1809                        287



To General Henry Dearborn, June 14, 1808                        291



To Monsieur Dupont De Nemours, June 28, 1809.                        293



To the President of the United States (James



Madison), July 12, 1809                        296



To Skelton Jones, July 28, 1808                        297



To André de Daschkoff, August 12, 1809                        303







         xlviii                     Contents







LETTERS 'WRITTEN AFTER His RETURN TO THE



UNITED STATES, 1789-1826- Continued.        PAGE







To the President of the United States (James



Madison), August 17, 1809        304



To John W. Campbell, September 3, 1808        307



To General William Clarke, September 10, 1808.        309



To the President of the United States (James



Madison), September 12, 1808        311



To Doctor B. S. Barton, September 21, 1808        312



To James Fishback, September 27, 1808        314



To Messrs. Bloodgood and Hammond, September 30, 1808        316



To Don Valentine De Foronda, October 4, 1809. .        318



To Joel Barlow, October 8, 1808        321



To Albert Gallatin, October 1 1, 1809        323



To the Chevalier Luis De Onis, November 4, 1809        326



To George Washington Irving, November 23, 1808        326



To the President of the United States (James



Madison), November 26, 1808        328



To the President of the United States (James



Madison), November 30, 1808        330



To Mr. Charles F. Welles, December 3, 1808        333



To the President of the United States (James



Madison), December 7, 1808        334



To  Dr. N. Chapman, December 11, 1809        338



To  W. C. Nicholas, December 16, 1808        340



To  Samuel Kercheval, January 15, 1810        341



To  John Wayles Eppes, January 17, 1810        343



To  Samuel Kercheval, January 19, 1810        345



To  William Baldwin, January 19, 1810        348



To  Thomas T. Hewson, January 21, 1810        348



To  the Honorable Paul Hamilton, January 23,1810        349



To Joel Barlow, January 24, 1810        350



To Gideon Granger, January 24, 1810        352







Contents        xlix







LETTERS WRITTEN AFTER His RETURN TO THE



UNITED STATES, 1789-1826-Continued.                PAGE







To  J. Garland Jefferson, January 25, 1810                353



To  judge David Campbell, January 28, 1810                355



To  Caesar A. Rodney, February 10, 1810                357



To  Rev. Samuel Knox, February 12, 1810                359



To  W. D. G. Worthington, February 24, 1810 .                        361



To  William A. Burwell, February 25, 1810                363



To  General Thaddeus Kosciusko, February 26,1810                365



To Doctor Walter Jones, March 5, 1810                370



To Governor John Langdon, March 5, 1810                373



To  Abbé Salimankis, March 14, 1810                379



To  Robert Fulton, March 17, 1810                380



To G. Voolif, Perpetual Secretary of the First Class



of the Royal Institute of Sciences, of Literature



and of Fine Arts, at Amsterdam, May 2, 1810. .                    381



To His Excellency Governor W. C. C. Claiborne,May 3, 1810                383



To His Excellency Governor W. C. C. Claiborne,May 3, 1810                384



To Messrs. Hugh L. White, Thomas M'Corry,



James Campbell, Robert Craighead, John N.



Gamble, Trustees for the Lottery of East Tennessee College, 



May 6, 1810                        386



To the President of the United States (James Madison), May 13, 1810        389



To Governor John Tyler, May 26, 1810                391



To His Excellency Count Pahlen, Envoy Extraordinary



 and Minister Plenipotentiary of Russia, July 13, 1810                394



To C. G. G. Botta, July 15, 1810                396



To William Lambert, July 16, 1810                397



To General Henry Dearborn, July 16, 1810                398



To judge Thomas Cooper, August 6, 1810                401







         Contents







LETTERS WRITTEN AFTER His RETURN TO THE



UNITED STATES, 1789-1826-Continued.        PAGE



To Colonel William Duane, August 12, 1810        404



To  Albert Gallatin, August 16, 1810        409



To Colonel William Duane, September 16, 1810. .        413



To  J. B. Colvin, September 20, 1810        418



To  the Secretary of State (Robert Smith), September 22, 1810        422



To the Attorney-General of the United States



(Caesar A. Rodney), September 25, 1810        424



To Albert Gallatin, September 27, 1810        427



To Captain Isaac Hillard, October 9, 1810                                      

                431



To Colonel William Duane, November 13, 1810        432



To James Ronaldson, December 3, 1810        435



To David Howell, December 15, 1810        436



To Thomas Law, January 15, 1811        437











        CORRESPONDENCE.







        LETTERS WRITTEN AFTER HIS RETURN



        TO THE UNITED STATES.



        1789-1826.



        (CONTINUED.)







JEFFERSON'S WORKS.











        TO ALBERT GALLATIN.







WASHINGTON, March 2, 1808.







        On considering the papers which James Brown sent us, containing a

statement of the parcels of property in and adjacent to New Orleans, to which

the United States claims, we thought it safest to await the report of 'the

commissioners, with their list of the property.  The papers received yesterday

by express from New Orleans, and now enclosed to you, give us a list of the

property, and grounds of claim from the common council of the city.  Having

thus the statement, as it were, from both parties, suppose we may consider the

list as complete.  It would therefore be only losing a year to wait for the

report of the commissioners, and especially as the property is suffering.  What

shall we do?  T here are two questions,-first, which of these parcels do

















 



2        Jefferson's Works







really belong to the United States?  Second, how shall they be disposed of?  On

the first question, I presume Congress will not decide themselves, but either

leave it to the present commissioners, or appoint others of higher standing and

abilities, at least for the future, which is of too much value, and too much

involved in prejudices there, to be safely trusted to the present

commissioners.  On the second question, perhaps Congress might now desire the

Executive, so soon as the titles are decided, to state to them the parcels

which should be kept for the government use, and then give to the city such as

they need, and dispose of the rest as they see best.



        Will you favor me with your ideas what is best to be done? 

Affectionate salutations.







TO HIS EXCELLENCY GOVERNOR JAMES SULLIVAN.



                WASHINGTON, March 3, 1808.



        DEAR SIR,-Your favor of February 8th, covering the resolutions of the

Legislature of Massachusetts, was received in due time.  It is a circumstance

of great satisfaction that the proceedings of the government are approved by

the respectable Legislature of Massachusetts, and especially the late important

measure of the embargo.  The hearty concurrence of the States in that measure,

will have a great effect in Europe.  I derive great personal consolation from

the assurances in your friendly letter, that the electors of Massachusetts

would still

















        Correspondence                    3







have viewed me with favor as a candidate for a third presidential term But the

duty of retirement is so strongly impressed on my mind, that it is impossible

for me to think of that.  If I can carry into retirement the good will of my

fellow-citizens, nothing else will be wanting to my happiness.



        Your letter of February 7th, with a recommendation for Salem, and that

of the 8th recalling it, were both received.  I dare say you have found that

the solicitations for office are the most painful incidents to which an

executive magistrate is exposed.  The ordinary affairs of a nation offer little

difficulty to a person of any experience; but the gift of office is the

dreadful burden which oppresses him.  A person who wishes to make it an engine

of self-elevation, may do wonders with it; but to one who wishes to use it

conscientiously for the public good, without regard to the ties of blood or

friendship, it creates enmities without numbers, many open, but more secret,

and saps the happiness and peace of his life.



        I pray you to accept my friendly salutations, and assurances of great

esteem and respect.







        TO COLONEL JAMES MONROE.







                WASHINGTON, March 10, 1808.



        DEAR SIR,-







        From your letter of the 27th ultimo, I perceive that painful

impressions have been made on your

















4               Jefferson's Works







mind during your late mission, of which I had never entertained a suspicion.  I

must, therefore, examine the grounds, because explanations between reasonable

men can never but do good.  1. You consider the mission of Mr. Pinckney as an

associate, to have been in some way injurious to you.  Were I to take that

measure on myself, I might say in its justification, that it has been the

regular and habitual practice of the United States to do this, under every form

in which their government has existed.  I need not recapitulate the multiplied

instances, because you will readily recollect them.  I went as an adjunct to

Dr. Franklin and Mr. Adams, yourself as an adjunct first to Mr. Livingston, and

then to Mr. Pinckney, and I really believe there has scarcely been a great

occasion which has not produced an extraordinary mission.  Still, however, it

is well known that I was strongly opposed to it in the' case of which you

complain.  A committee of the Senate called on me with two resolutions of that

body, on the subject of impressment and spoliations by Great Britain, and

requesting that I would demand satisfaction.  After delivering the resolutions,

the committee entered into free conversation, and observed, that although the

Senate could not, in form, recommend any extraordinary mission, yet that as

individuals, there was but one sentiment among them on the measure, and they

pressed it.  I was so much averse to it, and gave them so hard an answer, that

they felt it, and spoke, of it, But







Correspondence            5







it did not end here.  The members of the other House took up the subject, and

set upon me individually, and these the best friends to you, as well as myself,

and represented the responsibility which a failure to obtain redress would

throw on us both, pursuing a conduct in opposition to the opinion of nearly

every member of the Legislature.  I found it necessary, at length, to yield my

own opinion to the general use of the national council, and it really seemed to

produce a jubilee among them; not from any want of confidence in you, but from

a belief in the effect which an extraordinary mission would have on the British

mind, by demonstrating the degree of importance which this country attached to

the rights which we considered as infracted.



 2. You complain of the manner in which the treaty was received.  But what was

that manner?  I cannot suppose you to have given a moment's credit to the stuff

which was crowded in all sorts of forms into the public papers, or to the

thousand speeches they put into my mouth, not a word of which I had ever

uttered I was not insensible at the time of the views to mischief, with which

these lies were fabricated.  But my confidence was firm, that neither yourself

nor the British government, equally outraged by them, would believe me capable

of making the editors of newspapers the confidants of my speeches or opinion@. 

The fact was this.  The treaty was communicated to us by Mr. Erskine on the day

Congress was to rise.  Two of the







 



6                Jefferson's Works







Senators inquired of me in the evening, whether it was my purpose to detain

them on account of the treaty.  My answer was, " that it was not: -that the

treaty containing no provision against the impressment of our seamen, and being

accompanied by a kind of protestation of the British ministers, which would

leave that government free to consider it as a treaty or no treaty, according

to their own convenience, I should not give them the trouble of deliberating on

it." This was, substantially, and almost verbally, what I said whenever spoken

to about it, and I never failed when the 'Occasion would admit of it, to

justify yourself and Mr. Pinckney, by expressing my conviction, that it was all

that could be obtained from the British government; that you had told their

commissioners that your government could not be pledged to ratify, because it

was contrary to their instructions; of course, that it should be considered but

as a project; and in this light I stated it publicly in my message to Congress

on the opening of the session.  Not a single article of the treaty was ever

made known beyond the members of the administration, nor would an article of it

be known at this day, but for its publication in the newspapers, as

communicated by somebody from beyond the water, as we have always understood. 

But as to myself, I can solemnly protest, as the most sacred of truths, that I

never, one instant, lost sight of your reputation and favorable standing with

your country, and never omitted







Correspondence          7







to justify your failure to attain our wish, as one which was probably

unattainable.  Reviewing therefore, this whole subject, I cannot doubt you will

become sensible, that your impressions have been without just ground.  I

cannot, indeed, judge what falsehoods may have been written or told you; and

that, under such forms as to command belief.  But you will soon find, my dear

Sir, that so inveterate is the rancor of party spirit among us, that nothing

ought to be credited but what we hear with our own ears.  If you are less on

your guard than we are here, at this moment, the designs of the mischief-makers

will not fail to be accomplished, and brethren and friends will be made

strangers and enemies to each other, without ever having said or thought a

thing amiss of each other.  I presume that the most insidious falsehoods are

daily carried to you, as they are brought to me, to engage us in the passions

of our informers, and stated so positively and plausibly as to make even doubt

a rudeness to the narrator, who, imposed on himself, has no other than the

friendly view of putting us on our guard.  My answer is, invariably, that my

knowledge of your character is better testimony to me of a negative, than any

affirmative which my informant did not hear from yourself with his own ears. 

In fact, when you shall have been a little longer among us, you will find that

little is to be believed which interests the prevailing passions, and happens

beyond the limits of our own senses.  Let us not then, my dear







 



8        Jefferson's Works







friend, embark our happiness and our affections on the ocean of slander, of

falsehood and of malice, on which our credulous friends are floating.  If you

have been made to believe that I ever did, said, or thought a thing unfriendly

to your fame and feelings, you do me injury as causeless as it is afflicting to

me.  In the present contest in which you are concerned, I feel no passion I

take no part, I express no sentiment.  Whichever of my friends is called to the

supreme cares of the nation, I know that they will be wisely and faithfully

administered, and as far as my individual conduct can influence, they shall be

cordially supported For myself I have nothing further to ask of the world, than

to preserve in retirement so much of their esteem as I may have fairly earned,

and to be permitted to pass in tranquillity, in the bosom of my family and

friends, the days which yet remain for me.  Having reached the harbor myself, I

shall view with anxiety (but certainly not with a wish to be in their place)

those who, are still buffeting the storm, uncertain of their fate.  Your voyage

has so far been favorable,, and that it may continue with entire prosperity, is

the sincere prayer of that friendship which I have ever borne you, and of which

I now assure you with the tender of my high respect and affectionate

salutations.







        Correspondence         9







        TO RICHARD M. JOHNSON.



        WASHINGTON, March 10, 1808.



SIR,-I am sure you can too justly estimate my occupations, to need an apology

for this tardy acknowledgment of your favor of February the 27th.  I cannot but

be deeply sensible of the good opinion you are pleased to express of my conduct

in the administration of our government.  This approbation of my

fellow-citizens is the richest reward I can receive. I am conscious of having

always intended to do what was best for them; and never, for a single moment,

to have listened to any personal interest of my own.  It has been a source of

great pain to me, to have met with so many among our opponents, who had not the

liberality to distinguish between political and social opposition; who

transferred at once to the person, the hatred they bore to his political

opinions.  I suppose, indeed, that in public life, a man whose political

principles have any decided character, and who has energy enough to give them

effect, must always expect to encounter political hostility from those of

adverse principles.  But I came to the government under circumstances

calculated to generate peculiar acrimony.  I found all its offices in the

possession of a political sect, who wished to transform it ultimately into the'

shape of their darling model, the English government; and in the meantime, to

familiarize the public mind to the change, by administering it on







 



10             Jefferson's Works







        English principles, and in English forms.  The elective interposition

of the people had blown all their designs, and they found themselves and their

fortresses of power and profit put in a moment into the hands of other

trustees.  Lamentations and invective were all that remained to them.  This

last was naturally directed against the agent selected to execute the

multiplied reformations, which their heresies had rendered necessary.  I became

of course the butt of everything which reason, ridicule, malice and falsehood

could supply.  They have concentrated all their hatred on me, till they have

really persuaded themselves, that I am the sole source of all their imaginary

evils.  I hope, therefore, that my retirement will abate some of their

disaffection to the government of their country, and that my successor will

enter on a calmer sea than I did.  He will at least find the vessel of state in

the hands of his friends, and not of his foes.  Federalism is dead, without

even the hope of a day of resurrection.  The quondam leaders, indeed, retain

their rancor and principles; but their followers are amalgamated with us in

sentiment, if not - in name.  If our fellow-citizens, now solidly republican,

will sacrifice favoritism t(--wards men for the preservation of principle, we

may hope that no divisions will again endanger a degeneracy in our government.







        I pray you to accept my salutations, and assurances of great esteem and

respect.







Correspondence               11







TO JAMES MADISON.







        WASHINGTON, March 11, 1808.







        I suppose we must despatch another packet by the 1st of April at

farthest.  I take it to be an universal opinion that war will become preferable

to a continuance of the embargo after a certain time.  Should we not then avail

ourselves of the intervening period to procure a retraction of the obnoxious

decrees peaceably, if possible?  An opening is given us by both parties,

sufficient to form a basis for such a proposition.



        I wish you to consider, therefore, the following course of proceedings

to wit:



        To instruct our ministers at Paris and London, by the next packet, to

propose immediately to both those. powers a declaration on both sides that

these decrees and orders shall no longer be extended to vessels of the United

States, in which case we shall remain faithfully neutral; but, without assuming

the air of menace, to let them both perceive that if they do not withdraw these

orders and decrees, there will arrive a time when our interests will render war

preferable to a continuance of the embargo; that when that time arrives, if one

has withdrawn and the other not, we must declare war against that other; if

neither shall have withdrawn, we must take our choice of enemies between them. 

This it will certainly be our duty to have ascertained by the time Congress

shall meet in the fall







 



12              Jefferson's Works 







        or beginning of winter; so that taking off the embargo, they may decide

whether war must be declared, and against whom.  Affectionate salutations.







        TO GOVERNOR WILLIAM H. CABELL.



        WASHINGTON, March 13, 1808.







        DEAR SIR,-I received last night your favor of the 10th.  There can

certainly be no present objection to the forwarding the letters therein

mentioned, according to their address.



        We have nothing new of importance, except that at the last reading of

an amendatory bill a few days ago, the House of Representatives were surprised

into the insertion of an insidious clause permitting any merchant having

property abroad, on proving it to the executive, to send a ship for it.  We are

already overwhelmed with applications, and there is real danger that the great

object of the embargo in keeping our ships and seamen out of harm's way, will

be defeated; and every vessel and seaman sent out under this pretext, and

placed in the prize of the belligerent tyrants.  I salute you with friendship

and respect.











        TO   ALBERT GALLATIN.







        WASHINGTON, March 17, 1808.



        I think it will be impossible to form general rules for carrying into

execution the seventh section of







        Correspondence                         13







        the law of March 12th, without a fuller view of the number and nature

of the cases which are to come under it.  I have waited in expectation the

applications would multiply so as to give one a general view, but I have

received but about half a dozen.  But, indeed, nothing short of a knowledge of

all the cases can enable us to provide for them.  I have been wishing,

therefore, to converse with you on this proposition; to wit, to direct the

collectors to advertise in their respective ports, that all persons desiring

the benefit of that law, must immediately deliver to him a statement of the

place where they have property, its amount, whether cash or goods,







        and what kind of goods, and in whose hands, on oath, but without

exhibiting other proofs till further







        called -on.  These particulars may be stated in a tabular view; for

cash we might authorize vessels to go immediately, but for goods rules must be

framed on a view of all circumstances.



        With respect to the constitution of the act, there are cases in the

books where the word " may" has been adjudged equivalent to "shall," but the

term " is authorized, " unless followed by " and required, " was, I think,

never so considered.  On the contrary, I believe it is the very term which

Congress always use toward the executive when they mean to give a power to him,

and leave the use of it to his discretion.



        It is the very phrase on which there is now a difference in the House

of Representatives, on the bill







 



        14                Jefferson's Works







for raising 6,000 regulars, which says "there shall be raised," and some desire

it to say " the President is authorized to raise," leaving him the power with a

discretion to use it or not.  It is to be observed also that the one

construction puts it in the power of individuals to defeat the embargo in a

great measure, while the other leaves a power to combine a due regard to the

object of the law with the interests of individuals.  I like your idea of

proportioning the tonnage of the vessel to the value (in some degree) of the

property, but its bulk must also be taken into consideration.  On the whole, I

should be for giving prompt permission to bring home money, because one vessel

will bring for all those who have cash at the same port; but the bringing

property in other forms, will require a fuller view and digest of rules. 

Affectionate salutations.







        TO W. C. NICHOLAS, ESQ.







        WASHINGTON, March 20, 1808.







DEAR SIR,-Your favor of the 18th is duly received.  Be assured that I value no

act of friendship so highly as the communicating facts to me, 'which I am not

in the way of knowing otherwise, and could not therefore otherwise guard

against.  I have had too many proofs of your friendship not to be sensible of

the kindness of these communications, and to receive them with peculiar

obligation.  The receipt of Mr. Rose's answer has furnished the







        Correspondence'                       15







happiest occasion for me to present to Congress a complete view of the ground

on which we stand with the two principal belligerents, and, with respect to

France, to lay before them, for the public, every 'communication received from

that government since the last session, including those heretofore sent, in

order that they also may be published, and let our constituents see whether

these papers gave just ground for the falsehoods which have been so impudently

advanced.  We shall hope to see you today. Affectionate salutations.











        TO DOCTOR CASPAR WISTAR.







        WASHINGTON, March 20, 1808.







DEAR SIR,-Yours of the 12th is received.  Congress, I think, will rise in about

three weeks,-say about the 11th of April, and I shall leave this five or six

days after, on a visit of some length to Monticello. This illy accords with

your journey to the westward in May; but can you not separate your excursion to

this place from the western journey?  Between Philadelphia and this place is

but two days, and the roads are already fine.  I would propose, therefore, that

you should come a few days before Congress rises ' so as to satisfy that

article of your curiosity.  The bones are spread in a large room, where you can

work at your leisure, undisturbed by any mortal, from morning till night,

taking your breakfast and dinner with us.  It is a







 



16               Jefferson's Works







precious collection, consisting of upwards of three hundred bones, few of them

of the large kinds which are already possessed.  There are four pieces of the

head, one very clear, and distinctly presenting the whole face of the animal. 

The height of his forehead is most remarkable.  In this figure, the indenture

at the eye gives a prominence of six inches to the forehead.  There are four

jaw-bones tolerably entire, with several teeth in them, and some fragments;

three tusks like elephants; one ditto totally different, the largest probably

ever seen, being now from nine to ten feet long, though broken off at both

ends; some ribs; an abundance of teeth studded, and also of those of the

striated or ribbed kind; a fore-leg complete; and then about two hundred small

bones, chiefly of the foot.  This is probably the most valuable part of the

collection, for General Clarke, aware that we had specimens of the larger

bones, has gathered up everything of the small kind.  There is one horn of a

colossal animal.  The bones which came do not correspond exactly with General

Clarke's description; probably there were some omissions of his packers. 

Having sent my books to Monticello, I have nothing here to assist you but the "

Encyclopedie Methodique.  " I hope you will make this a separate excursion; and

come before Congress rises, whenever it best suits you.  I salute you with

friendship and respect.







Correspondence                        17







        TO THE DEMOCRATIC CITIZENS OF THE COUNTY OF ADAMS, PENNSYLVANIA.







        WASHINGTON, March 20, 1808.







I see with pleasure, fellow-citizens, in your address of February 15th, a sound

recurrence to the first principles on which our government is founded; an

examination by that test of the rights we possess, and the wrongs we have

suffered; a just line drawn between a wholesome attention to the conduct of

rulers, and a too ready censure of that conduct on every unfounded rumor;

between the love of peace, and the determination to meet war, when its evils

shall be less intolerable than the wrongs it is meant to correct.  With so just

a view of principles and circumstances, your approbation of my conduct, under

the difficulties which have beset us on every side, is doubly valued by me, and

offers high encouragement to a perseverance in my best endeavors for the

preservation of your peace, so long as it shall be consistent with the

preservation of your rights.  When this ceases to be practicable, I feel entire

confidence in the arduous exertions which you pledge in support of the measures

which may be called for by the exigencies of the times, and in the known

energies and enterprise of our countrymen in whatsoever direction they are

pointed.  If these energies are embodied by an union of will, and by a

confidence in those who direct it, our nation, so favored in its situation, has

nothing to fear from any quarter.  To







 



18              Jefferson's Works







that union of effort may our citizens ever rally, minorities falling cordially,

on the decision of a question, into the ranks of the majority, and bearing

always in mind that a nation ceases to be republican only when the will of the

majority ceases to be the law.  I thank you, fellow-citizens, for the

solicitude you kindly express for my future welfare.  A retirement from the

exercise of my present charge is equally for your good and my own happiness. 

Gratitude for a p St favors, and affectionate concern for the liberty and

prosperity of my fellow-citizens, will cease but with life to animate my

breast.







        TO ALBERT GALLATIN.







        WASHINGTON, March 23, 1808.



        It is a maxim of our municipal law, and, I believe,



of universal law, that he who permits the end, permits of course the means,

without which the end cannot be effected.  The law permitting rum, molasses,

and sugar, to be imported from countries which have not packages for them,

would be construed in the most rigorous courts to permit them to be carried. 

They would consider the restriction to ballast and provisions as a restriction

to necessaries, and merely equivalent to a declaration that they shall carry

out nothing for sale.



This is certainly one object of the law, and-the second is to import the

property; and to these objects all constructions of it should be directed.  I

have







        Correspondence                           19







no doubt, therefore, that Messrs.  Low and Wallace, and others, should be

allowed to carry out the necessary and sufficient packages.  But a right to

take  care that the law is not evaded, allows us to prescribe



that kind of package which can be best guarded against fraud.  Boxes ready made

could not, perhaps, be so easily probed, to discover if they contained nothing

for exportation.  Casks filled. with water can be easily sounded from the

bunghole. if you think, therefore, that one kind of package is safer than

another, it may be prescribed; for that nothing for sale shall be exported is

as much the object of the law, as that their property shall be imported. 

Reasonable attention is due to each object.  Affectionate salutations.











        TO MONSIEUR LE VAVASSEUR.







        WASHINGTON, March 23, 1808.







SIR,-I am sensible of the extraordinary ingenuity and merit of the work which

you offer to the acquisition of our government.  It would certainly be an

ornament to any country.  But with such an immense extent of country before us,

wanting common improvement to render it productive, the United States have not

thought the moment as yet arrived when it would be wise in them to divert their

funds to objects less pressing; no law has yet authorized acquisitions of this

character.  The idea of rendering the Greek and Latin languages living, has

certainly







 



20               Jefferson's Works







some captivating points.  The experiment has, I believe, been tried in Europe

as to the Latin language, but with what degree of success I am not precisely

informed.  I suppose it very possible to reform. the language of the modern

Greeks to the ancient standard, and that this may one day take place.  But in

our infant country objects more urgent force themselves on our attention, and

call for the aid of all our means.  These peculiarities of our situation

deprive us of the advantage of availing our country of propositions which, in a

more advanced stage of improvement, might be entitled to consideration.



Permit me to tender my salutations, and assurances of respect











        TO LEVI LINCOLN.







        WASHINGTON, March 23, 1808.



Dear SIR,-Your letter on the subject of Mr. Lee came safely to hand.  You know

our principles render federalists in office safe, if they do not employ their

influence in opposing the government, but only give their own vote according to

their conscience.  And this principle we act on as well with those put in

office by others, as by ourselves.



We have received from your presses a very malevolent and incendiary

denunciation of the administration, bottomed on absolute falsehood from

beginning to end.  The author would merit exemplary punishment for so

flagitious a libel, were not







        Correspondence                       21







tile torment of his own abominable temper punishment sufficient for even as

base a crime as this.  The termination of Mr. Rose's mission, re infects, put

it in my power to communicate to Congress yesterday, everything respecting our

relations with England and France, which will effectually put down Mr.

Pickering, and his worthy coadjutor Mr. Quincy.  Their tempers are so much

alike, and really their persons, as to induce a supposition that they are

related.  The embargo appears to be approved, even by the federalists of every

quarter except yours.  The alternative was between that and war, and in fact,

-it is the last card we have to play, short of war.  But if peace does not take

place in Europe, and if France and England will not consent to withdraw the

operation of their decrees and orders from us, when Congress shall meet in

December, they will have to consider at what point of time the embargo,

continued, becomes a greater evil than war.  I am inclined to believe, we shall

have this summer and autumn to prepare for the defence of our seaport towns,

and hope that in that time, the works of defence will be completed which have

been provided for by the Legislature.  I think Congress will rise within three

weeks.



        I salute you with great affection and respect.







 



        22        Jefferson's Works







                TO ALBERT GALLATIN. WASHINGTON, March 26, 1808.



        Mr. Madison happening to call on me just now, I consulted him on the

subject of Hoffman's letter.  We both think that it would be neither just nor

expedient that the supplies necessary to the existence of the Indians should be

cut off from them; and that if no construction of the embargo law will permit

the passage of their commerce, and if that law could, and did intend to control

the treaty, (the last of which is hardly to be believed,) then an amendment

should be asked of Congress.  I have no copy of the law by me, and indeed am

too unwell for very close exercise of the mind.  Affectionate salutations.











        TO CHARLES PINCKNEY.







        WASHINGTON, March 30, 1808.



        DEAR SIR,-Your letter of the 8th was received on the 25th, and I

proceed to state to you my views of the present state and prospect of foreign

affairs, under the confidence that you will use them for your own government

and opinions only, and by no means let them get out as from me.  With France we

are in no immediate danger of war.  Her future views it is impossible to

estimate.  The immediate danger we are in of a rupture with England, is

postponed for this year.  This is effected by the embargo, as







        Correspondence                     23







        the question was, simply between that and war.  That may go on a

certain time, perhaps through the year, without the loss of their property to

our citizens, but only its remaining unemployed on their hands.  A time would

come, however, when war would be preferable to a continuance of the embargo. 

Of this Congress may have to decide at their next meeting.  In the meantime, we

have good information, that a negotiation for peace between France and England

is commencing through the medium of Austria.  The way for it has been smoothed

by a determination expressed by France (through the Moniteur, which is their

government paper) that herself and her allies will demand from Great Britain no

renunciation of her maritime principles; nor will they renounce theirs. 

Nothing shall be said about them in the treaty, and both sides will be left in

the next war to act on their own.  No doubt the meaning of this is, that all

the Continental powers of Europe will form themselves into an armed neutrality,

to enforce their own principles.  Should peace be made, we shall have safely

rode out the storm in peace and prosperity.  If we-have anything to fear, it

will be after that.  Nothing should be spared from this moment in putting our

militia in the best condition possible, and procuring arms.  I hope, that this

summer, we shall get our whole seaports put into that state of defence, which

Congress has thought proportioned to our circumstances and situation; that is

to say, put hors d'insulte from a mari-







 



        24              Jefferson's Works







time attack, by a moderate squadron.  If armies are combined with their fleets,

then no resource can be provided, but to meet them in the field.  We propose to

raise seven regiments only for the present year, depending always on our

militia for the operations of the first year of war.  On any other plan, we

should be obliged always to keep a large standing army.  Congress will adjourn

in about three weeks.  I hope Captain McComb is getting on well with your

defensive works.  We shall be able by mid-summer, to give you a sufficient

number of gunboats to protect Charleston from any vessel which can cross the

bar; but the militia of the place must be depended on to fill up the complement

of men necessary for action in the moment of an attack, as, we shall man them,

in ordinary, but with their navigating crew of eight or ten good seamen.



        I salute you with great esteem and respect.















        TO ALBERT GALLATIN.







        WASHINGTON, March 31, 1808.



        If, on considering the doubts I shall suggest, you shall still think

your draught of a supplementary embargo law sufficient, in its present form, I

shall be satisfied it is so, for I have but one hour in the morning in which I

am capable of thinking, and that is too much crowded with business to give me

time to think.







        Correspondence                   25







        1.        Is not the first paragraph against the Constitution, which

says no preference shall be given to the ports of one State over those of

another?  You might put down those parts as ports of entry, if that could be

made to do.



        2.        Could not your second paragraph be made to answer by making

it say that no clearance shall be furnished to any vessel laden with provisions

or lumber, to go from one port to another of the United States, without special

permission, etc.? In that case we might lay down rules for the necessary

removal of provisions and lumber, inland, which should give no trouble to the

citizens, but refuse licenses for all coasting transportation of those articles

but on such applications from a Governor as may ensure us against any

exportation but for the consumption of his State.  Portsmouth, Boston,

Charleston, and Savannah, are the only ports which cannot be supplied inland. 

I should like to prohibit collections, also, made evidently for clandestine

importation.



        3.        1 would rather strike out the words "in conformity with

treaty" in order to avoid any express recognition at this day of that article

of the British treaty.  It has been so flagrantly abused as to excite the

Indians to war against us, that I should have no hesitation in declaring it

null, as soon as we see means of supplying the Indians ourselves.  I should

have no objections to extend the exception to the Indian furs purchased by our

traders and sent into Canada.  Affectionate salutes.







 



        26        Jefferson's Works







 TO ROBERT SMITH.



        WASHINGTON, April 1, 1808.







        I approve of your letter to Commodore Murray entirely, and in order to

settle what shall be our course for the summer (now that we are tolerably

clear, that no rupture with England is likely to take place during the summer),

I propose, the first day that I can be well enough, for a couple of hours to

ask a meeting of our colleagues to determine these questions:



        Shall the proclamation be renewed or suffered to



expire?



        Shall the harbors of ordinary British resort (say New York, Lynhaven,

and Charleston) be furnished with their full quota of gunboats, with their

navigating crews?



        Shall the residue of the 170 gunboats be distributed among the other

ports, with their navigating crews, or I be laid up or left on their stocks?



        Shall the frigates and Wasp be unmanned?



        Affectionate salutations.







        TO ALBERT GALLATIN.



        WASHINGTON, April 2, 1808.



        SIR,-On the amendments to the embargo law, I



        am perfectly satisfied with whatever you have con-



        eluded on after consideration of the subject.  My



        view was only to suggest for your consideration







        Correspondence                        27







        not having at all made myself acquainted with the details of that law. 

I therefore return you your bill, and wish it to be proposed.  I will this day

nominate Elmer.  The delegates of North Carolina expect daily to receive

information on the subject of a Marshal.  Is the Register's office at New

Orleans vacant?  Claiborne says it is, and strongly recommends Robertson the

Secretary.  He will be found one of the most valuable men we have brought into

the public service for integrity, talents and amiability.  Affectionate

salutations.











        TO ALBERT GALLATIN.







        WASHINGTON, April 8, 1808.







        I suppose that Favre can carry his necessary provisions from New

Orleans across the lake in a periagua or some other vessel, which may come

under the exception of vessels under the immediate direction of the President,

and that being an agent of the United States for the transmission of public

intelligence, such a license is perfectly legitimate.  If this were a matter of

doubt, its solution would be to be sought in the intention of the Legislature,

which was to keep our seamen and property from capture, and to starve the

offending nations.  But Favre is our own agent, and we may as well remit

provisions to him as money to our foreign agents.  It appears to me to be so

clearly out of the scope of the prohibitions of the embargo law, and







 



28              Jefferson's Works







within its exceptions, that I should be for allowing



        him to take out his provisions for his family, under the

superintendence of the Collector.  Affectionate salutations.











        TO JOHN JACOB ASTOR.







        WASHINGTON, April       13, 1808.



        Sir,-I have regretted the delay of this answer to your letter of

February 27th, but it has proceeded from circumstances which did not depend on

me.   I learn with great satisfaction the disposition of our merchants to form

into companies for undertaking the Indian trade within our own territories.  I

have been taught to believe it an advantageous one for the individual

adventurers, an I consider it as highly desirable to have that trade centered

in the hands of our own citizens.  The field is immense, and would occupy a

vast extent of capital by different companies engaging in different districts. 

All beyond the Mississippi is ours exclusively, and it will be in our power to

give our own traders great advantages over their foreign competitors on this

side the Mississippi.  You may be assured that in order to get the whole of

this business passed into the hands of our own citizens, and to oust foreign

traders, who so much abuse their privilege by endeavoring to excite the Indians

to war on us, every reasonable patronage and facility in the power of the

Executive will be afforded.  I salute you with respect.







Correspondence                        29







        TO ALBERT GALLATIN.







        WASHINGTON, April 14, 1808.



        I should think Mr. Woodside's application to send provisions for the

family of our consul at Madeira, admissible on the same ground as that lately

to Favre, were the necessity as evident, but, I suppose it can hardly be

doubted that England will procure. provisions for that island, and there is

danger of one precedent in our relaxations begetting another till we may get

out of the limits of the law and its object.



        The application for the establishment of a packet on Lake Champlain

cannot be admitted.  Such an establishment is by no means within the

description of those which we have proposed to license; it would give too great

a facility to evade the law, and the







        builder is in no worse situation than the any others in







        who began their vessels before the embargo law, and who will not be

permitted to use them till that is repeated.  Affectionate salutations.







        TO ALBERT GALLATIN.







        WASHINGTON, April 19, 1808.



        DEAR SIR,-Sincerely sympathizing in your distress, which much

experience in the same school has taught me to estimate, I could not have been

induced to intrude on it by anything short of the urgency of' the case stated

by Penniman on Lake Champlain.  Messrs.  Robinson and Witherall tell me the

whole of







 



30              Jefferson's Works







        the business will be over early in May, when the fall of the water

renders the rapids impassable for rafts.  They think vessels of any kind

desired, can be had on the Lake at a moment's warning, and guns of 6 lbs. ball,

there also, mounted on them by procurement of the collector, and that the

governor would order any assistance of militia on being written to.  Believing

it important to crush every example of forcible opposition to the law, I

propose to ask the other gentlemen to a consultation immediately, and for their

and my guide have to request any ideas on the subject which you can hastily

give me on paper, for which I would not have troubled you, but from a

confidence that your knowledge of the character and means possessed by the

collector there, and of the local circumstances to be attended to, may enable

us to decide on what @ill be most proper and effectual.  I salute you with

affection.







        P.        S. Return me Penniman's letter if you please, to lay before

the gentlemen.











        TO ALBERT GALLATIN.







        WASHINGTON, April 19, 1808.



        We have concluded as follows:



        1st.  That a letter from your department to the collector on Lake

Champlain, shall instruct him to equip and arm what vessels he can and may

think necessary, and luggage as many persons on board







        Correspondence                       31







them as may be necessary, and can be engaged voluntarily by force of arms, or

otherwise, to enforce the law.



        2d. the Secretary of State writes to the Marshal, if the opposition to

the law is too powerful for the collector, to raise his posse, (which, as a

peace officer, he is fully authorized to do on any forcible breach of the

peace,) and to aid in suppressing the insurrection or combination.



        3d. The Secretary at War desires the Governor, if the posse is

inadequate, to publish a proclamation with which he is furnished, and to call

on the militia.  He is further, by a private letter, requested to repair to the

place, and lend the aid of his counsel and authority according to exigencies.



        We have further determined to build two gunboats at Skanesborough. 

Affectionate salutations.







        P.        S. General Dearborn has Penniman's letter to copy for the

Governor.







        TO ALBERT GALLATIN.







        WASHINGTON, April 22, 1808.







        Did I lend you the Pennsylvania act permitting our Western road to pass

through that State?  If I did, or if you have a copy of it, I shall be very

glad to see it.  Mr. Hodge gave me notice yesterday that there would be legal

opposition to that road's passing in any other direction than through Washing-



















        32                  Jefferson's Works











ton, their construction being, that if in fact a good road can be got by

Washington, the law obliges me to direct it through that; and they have got a

survey made on which they affirm the fact to be that a good road may be had.  1

know my determination was not to yield to the example of a State's prescribing

the direction of the road; and 1 understood the law as leaving the route

ultimately to me.  If 1 have misconstrued the law, 1 shall be sorry for the

money spent on a misconstruction, but that loss will be a lesser evil to the

United States than a single example of yielding to a State the direction of a

road made at the national expense and for national purposes. if you have not

the law, 1 must write by this day's post to Mr. Moore, to suspend all further

Proceedings till we can see whether we are really at liberty to pursue the

route we have proposed, or must adopt another which shall not enter the State

of Pennsylvania.



        Affectionate salutations.











        TO ALBERT GALLATIN.







                WASHINGTON, April 23, 1808.



        My ideas on the questions relative to the active







letter of Marque stated in your letter of yesterday, are as follows:







        1st.  Letters of Marque have been considered, ever



since the decisions of 1703, to be of a mixed character



'but that the commercial character predominates;



and as a commercial vessel of private property we







        Correspondence                        33







have in some cases since the proclamation of July, considered them as not

included in its restrictions.



  2d.  The law of 1794, June 5th, certainly exempts the enlistment of

foreigners in this country on board the vessels of their sovereign, from the

penalties of that law, and leaves the subject merely under the law of nations. 

By that law the right of enlistment in a neutral country, given to both

belligerents if they can devise equal advantage from it, is no breach of

neutrality, but otherwise becomes questionable.  We may, justly, 1 think,

permit a vessel of either nation to supply its desertions by new engagements;

but we should be cautious as to permitting them to increase their number, to

carry away more than they brought in.



 3d. It is difficult to draw a line between the two cases where the collector

should consult the government, and where the district attorney.  Where a case

is political, rather than legal, or where it a-rises even on a law whose object

is rather political than municipal, the government should be consulted; and

where the district attorney is the proper resort, still it should be on

consultation by the collector, and not by the party interested.  Affectionate

salutations.















 



         34        Jefferson's Works











        TO THE SECRETARY OF STATE        I



        (JAMES MADISON).







        WASHINGTON, April 23, 1808.



        Notes on the British claims in the Mississippi territory.



        1803, March 3d, act of Congress gave to March 31, 1804, to exhibit

their claims on grants.



        1804, March 27, act of Congress gave to November 30, 1804, and allowed

transcripts instead of originals, etc.



        1805, March 2d, act of Congress gave to December 1, 1805, to file their

grants.  And in fact to Jan. 1, 1807, time when the sale might begin.



        1807, December 15, the British claimants memorialize again.



        On no one of the acts did the British claimant take any step towards

specifying his claim or its location, but remained inactive till the time was

expired, and then remonstrated to his government that we had not given them

time sufficient.  And on the last of 1805, instead of having come forward with

his claims, ready to avail himself of the third term which was then to be

asked, and which was granted nominally to December 1, 1805, but in effect to

January 1, 1807, he stays at home inactive, and on the 15th of December, 1807,

again gives in a memorial that we have not given time enough, but still takes

no step to inform us what and where his claim is.



        Although these titles may have been confirmed by







        Correspondence                      35







        treaty, yet they could not thereby be intended to be withdrawn from the

jurisdiction or conditions on which lands are held even by citizens.  It is

evident that these claimants are speculators, whose object is to make what

profit they can out of the patronage of the government, but to make no

sacrifice of themselves either of money or trouble.  They are entitled,

therefore, to no further notice from either government.  However, Mr. Erskine

may be informed verbally, that as the day of commencing sales of lands there is

now put off to January I, 1809, if any of these claimants will, before that

day, file their claim, with its precise location, . the executive is authorized

to suspend the sale of any particular parcels, and will as to that, till the

proper authority can decide on the title, but that the settlement of that

country in general, is too pressing to be delayed one day by claims under the

circumstances of these.











        TO ALBERT GALLATIN.







        WASHINGTON, April       23, 1808.



        The leading object of the enclosed application from the owners of the

Topaz, is to send witnesses and documents to save the property of the ship and

cargo seized.  But as the Topaz would be insufficient to bring home the whole

property if cleared, the permission of sending a vessel may be on the ordinary

ground of bringing home the property.  But do the restrictions of the embargo

laws (for I







 



36              Jefferson's Works







        have them not) inhibit the passing from port to port as proposed in the

enclosed?  And do they admit, (in case the Topaz and her cargo are condemned,)

that the vessel sent out should bring home other property to cover the expenses

of the ineffectual voyage?  On these questions I must -ask your opinion, as

General Smith will call on me t@morrow.  The questions had been brought to me

originally by Mr. Taylor, because he happened to, come at a moment when you

were confined.  Affectionate salutes.











        TO CAESAR A. RODNEY.







        WASHINGTON, April.24, 1808.



        Thomas Jefferson returns the enclosed to Mr. Rodney, with thanks for

the communication.  It is very evident that our embargo, added to the

exclusions from the Continent, will be most heavily felt in England and

Ireland.  Liverpool is remonstrating, and endeavoring to get the other posts

into motion.  Yet the bill confirming the orders of council is ordered to a

third reading, which shows it will pass.  Congress has just passed an

additional embargo law, on which if we act as boldly as I am disposed to do, we

can make it effectual.  I think the material parts of the enclosed should be

published.  It will show our people that while the embargo gives us double

rations, it is starving our enemies.  This six months' session has worn me down

to a state of almost total







        Correspondence        37







incapacity for business.  Congress will certainly rise to-morrow night, and I

shall leave this for Monticello on the 5th of May, to be here again on the 8th

of June.  I salute you with constant affection and respect. -











TO        COLONEL WILLIAM A. WASHINGTON.







        WASHINGTON, April 24, 1808.



DEAR SIR,-SO uncertain has been the situation of our affairs with England, and

yet so much bearing would they have on those with the Indians, that I have

delayed answering your favor of October 5th until I could see a little way

before me.  At present I think a continuance of our peace till the next meeting

of Congress (November) probable.  I have now. addressed a message to the

Indians in the northwest, in I which I inform them of our-differences with

England, and of the uncertainty how they will issue.  Assure them of the

continuance of our friendship, and advise them in any event to remain- quiet at

home, taking no part in our quarrel, and declaring unequivocally that if any

nation takes up the hatchet against us, we will drive them from the land of

their fathers, and never more permit their return.  With respect to the

prophet, I really believe the opinion you formed of his views is correct.  But

we have heard so many different stories since, that we are awaiting some

information which we expect to receive before we make up a definitive o inion. 

This much, how-







 



        38              Jefferson's Works







        ever, we determine; and he might know that if we



become dissatisfied that his views are friendly, we shall extend to him all the

patronage and good offices in our power, and shall establish a store in his new

settlement; and particularly if we find him endeavoring to reform the morality

of the Indians, and encourage them in industry and peace, we shall do what we

can to render his influence as extensive as possible.  I had been in hopes that

a change in the British ministry, would have produced a revocation of the

orders of council, which called for our embargo, and an European peace, so as

to have removed all danger of our being dragged into the war.  But our advices

to the 14th of March show they still retained a good majority in Parliament. 

Should they continue in office, our peace will continue uncertain.  Accept my

salutations, and assurances of great esteem and respect.







        To THE SECRETARY OF THE TREASURY







        (ALBERT GALLATIN).







        WASHINGTON, April 30, 1808.







        Case of the Fleusburg.







Our laws permit a foreigner to hold any property in our country, except lands. 

A foreigner may contract for a ship to be built for him, so that she will be

his from the time of laying the keel; or he may contract so as that $he shall

be his only when launched,







Correspondence                      39







or when rigged, etc.  The act of delivery to him or his agents fixes, in that

case, the moment when she becomes his property.  If the Fleusburg was delivered

to the agent of the Danish merchant, by such an act of delivery as by our laws

will transfer personal property, before the 22d of December, she was then

Danish property.  The statement says that a bill o' building and sale, dated

December 10th, proved her to be then Danish property.  If the collector shall

find that she was actually Danish property before December 22d, I should think

her entitled as a foreign vessel.  I suppose she did not take out an American

register.  This would be corroborative proof that, though built in America, she

was not meant to be, nor ever became, an American bottom; for I presume the

register is what completes the American bottom.  The matter of fact should be

proved to the collector.



        Rhode Island Packets.







The pretension that the navigation from Newport to New York is entirely a

navigation of rivers, bays, and sounds, would take from language all kind of

certainty.  There is not one point of the coast of Rhode Island, from which a

perpendicular line does not lead into the main ocean.  A very small proportion

of these would lead across Block Island.  But to say that Block Island covers

the whole coast from Martha's Vineyard to Long Island, so as to make it a

Sound, is too gross for any one who casts







 



        40              Jefferson's Works







        his eyes on the maps.  The difference of regulation,



        too, between bay-craft and coasting vessels, since the act of April

25th, is very inconsiderable.











        TO GENERAL HENRY DEARBORN.







        WASHINGTON, April 29,. 1808.







        Thomas Jefferson will thank General Dearborn to consider the enclosed. 

The writer appears to have that sincere. enthusiasm for his undertaking which

will ensure success.  The education of-the common people around Detroit is a

most desirable object, and the proposition of extending their views to the

teaching the Indian boys and girls to read and write, agriculture and mechanic

trades to the former, spinning and weaving to the latter, may perhaps be

acceded to by us advantageously for the Indians, and the bounties paid for them

be an aid to the other objects of the institution.  Affectionate salutations.







        TO THE SECRETARY.  OF STATE







        (JAMES MADISON).







        WASHINGTON, April 30, 1808.







        Notes on such parts of Fronda's letter of April 26th, 1808, as are

worth answering:-







        I.        I know of no recent orders to Governor Claiborne as to the

navigation of the Mississippi, Uberville, and Pontchartrain; he should specify

them, but he may be told that no order has ever been given







        Correspondence                       41







contrary to the rights of Spain.  These rights are, 1st, a treaty right that

"the ships of Spain coming directly from Spain or her colonies, loaded only

with the produce or manufactures of Spain or her colonies, shall be admitted

during the space of twelve years in the ports of New Orleans, and in all other

legal ports of entry within the ceded territory, in the same manner as the

ships of the United States, etc. 2d. A right of innocent passage from the mouth

of the Mississippi to 31' of latitude, exactly commensurate with our right of

innocent passage up the rivers of Florida to 3 I' - of latitude.



        II.        In answer to his question whether we consider Mobile among

the ports of the United States, he may be told that so long as we 'Consider the

question whether the Perdido is not the eastern boundary of Louisiana, as

continuing in a train- of amicable proceedings for adjustment, so long that

part only of the river Mobile, which is above 3 I' of latitude, will be

considered among the ports of the 'United States, withholding the exercise of

jurisdiction on our part within the disputed territory, on the general

principle of letting things remain in statu quo pendente Iite.



There is nothing else in this letter worth answering.







        TO WILLIAM LYMAN, ESQ.



        WASHINGTON, April 30, 1808.



        SIR,-Your favor of the 11th of July came to hand



a little before the meeting of Congress, and soon







 



42             Jefferson's Works







        after I received the apparatus for stylographic writing, which you @ere

so kind as to send me, for which I pray you to receive my particular thanks. .

The invention is certainly very ingenious, and while it compares advantageously

with all others in other circumstances, it has an unrivalled preference as

being so much more profitable.  I had never heard of the invention till your

letter announced it, for these novelties reach us very late, which renders your

attentions on 'the occasion more acceptable, and more entitled to the

acknowledgments which I now tender.  The decrees and orders of the belligerent

nations having amounted nearly to declarations that they would take our vessels

wherever found, Congress thought it best in the first instance to break off all

intercourse with them.  They adjourned on Monday last, having passed an act

authorizing me to suspend the embargo whenever the belligerents should revoke

their decrees or orders as to us. The embargo must continue, therefore, till

they meet again in November, unless the measures of the belligerents should

change.  When they meet .again, if these decrees and orders still continue, the

question which they will have to decide will be, whether a continuance of the

embargo or war will be preferable.  In the meantime great advances are making

in the establishment of manufactures.  Those of cotton will, I think, be so far

proceeded on, that we shall never again have to recur to the importation of

cotton goods for' our own use.  I tender







        Correspondence                     43







        you my salutations, and the assurances of my great respect.











        TO GENERAL JOHN ARMSTRONG.







        WASHINGTON, May 2, 1808.







        DEAR GENERAL,-A safe conveyance offering by a special messenger to

Paris, I avail myself of it to bring up my arrears to my foreign

correspondents.  I give them the protection of your cover, but to save the

trouble of your attention to their distribution, I give them an inner cover to

Mr. Harden, whose attentions heretofore have encouraged me to ask this favor of

him.  But should he not be with you, I must pray you to open my packages to

him, and have them distributed, as it is o -







        If importance that some 'of them should be delivered without delay.  I

shall say nothing to you on the subject of our foreign relations, because you

will get what is official on that subject from Mr. Madison.







        During the present paroxysm of the insanity of Europe, we have thought

it wisest to break off all intercourse with her.  We shall, in the course of

this year, have all our seaports, of any note, put into a state of defence

against naval attacks.  Against great land armies we cannot attempt it but by

equal armies.  For these we must depend on a classified Militia, which will

give us the service of the class from twenty to twenty-six, in the nature of

conscripts, composing a body of about 250,000, to be







 



44              Jefferson's Works







specially trained.  This measure, attempted at a







former session, was passed at the last, and might, I think, have been carried

by a small majority.  But considering that great innovations should not be

forced on a slender majority, and seeing that the general opinion is sensibly

rallying to it, it was thought better to let it lie over to the next session,

when, I trust, it will be passed.  Another measure has now twice failed, which

I have warmly urged, the immediate settlement by donation of lands, of such a

body of militia in the territories of Orleans and Mississippi, as will be

adequate to the defence of New Orleans.  We are raising some regulars in

addition to our present force, for garrisoning our seaports, and forming a

nucleus for the militia to gather to.  There will be no question who is to be

my successor.  Of this be assured, whatever may be said by newspapers and

private correspondences.  Local considerations have been silenced by those

dictated by the continued difficulties of the times.  One word of friendly

request: be more frequent and full in your communications with us.  I salute

you with great friendship and respect.







        TO GENERAL THADDEUS KOSCIUSKO.







        WASHINGTON, May 2,        1808.



        MY VERY DEAR GENERAL,-A safe conveyance



        offering by a special messenger to Paris, Mr. Barnes



        has requested me to avail you of it, by sending a



        Correspondence                       45







remittance of a thousand dollars, for which a draught is under cover.  I shall

not write to you on the subject of our foreign relations, because of the

dangers by sea and the dangers by land.  During the present paroxysm of the

insanity of Europe, we have thought it wisest to break off all intercourse with

her.  We shall, in the course of this year, have all our seaports of any note

put into a state of defence against naval attacks.  Against great land armies

we cannot attempt it but by equal armies.  For these we must depend on a

classified militia, which will give us the service of the class from twenty to

twenty-six, in the nature of conscripts, composing a body of about 250,000, to

be specially trained.  This measure, attempted at a former session, was passed

at the last, and might, I think, have been carried by a small majority; but

considering that great innovations should not be forced on slender majorities,

and seeing that the public opinion is sensibly rallying to it, it was thought

better to let it lie over to the next session,' when I trust it will be passed.

 Another measure has now twice failed, which I have warmly urged, the immediate

settlement by donation of lands of such a body of militia in the territories of

Orleans and Mississippi, as will be adequate to the defence of New Orleans.  We

are raising some regulars in addition to our present force, for garrisoning our

seaports, and forming a nucleus for the militia to gather to.  There will be no

question who, is to be my successor.  Of this be assured, -whatever may be said

by newspapers







 



46              Jefferson's Works







and private correspondences; local 'considerations have been silenced by those

dictated by the continued difficulties of the times.  I salute you with sincere

and constant friendship and great respect.











        TO ROBERT SMITH.







        WASHINGTON, May 3, 1808.







        I enclose you a petition from a woman (Mary







Barnett) who complains that her son of thirteen years of age, is detained

against her will in the naval military service.  Having never before received

an application of the kind in that department, l know not what are the rules

there.  But in the land service we have had many cases of enlistments of

infants, and there the law -is considered to be, and our practice in

conformity, as follows: An infant is considered as incapable of binding himself

by enlistment, and may at any time be reclaimed by a parent, guardian, next

friend, or may quit of his own accord, on complaint from a parent, etc.  We

direct the officer to inquire into the fact of infancy, and if he believes him

under age he discharges him.  If he believes him of full age, we advise the

parent, etc., that he may take out a Habeas Corpus, and have the fact tried

before an impartial judge: if enlisted with the consent of the parent, etc., it

must be by indentures as prescribed by law for an apprentice or servant, this

being the only mode of obligation in which the law will compel specific

execution.  In ca@e of a ver-







        Correspondence                      47







bal or a common written subscription of engagement, even with consent of the

parent, damages only can be recovered for withdrawing from, it.  I presume the

rules in the Navy Department must be the same, as we must conform ourselves to

the law in all departments.  I directed the woman to call on me again

to-morrow.  Will you be so good as to enable me to give her an answer? 

Affectionate salutations.











        TO GOVERNOR DANIEL D. TOMPKINS.







        WASHINGTON, May 4, 1808.   SIR,-I duly received your favor of April

18th, covering an act of the legislature of New York,







appropriating $100,000 to aid and expedite the defence of the city and port of

New York, and $20,000







to aid in, and contribute to, the defence of the northern and western

frontiers, and expressing a desire to receive an opinion on the application of

those sums.



In carrying into execution the provisions of Congress, at their last session,

for fortifying our ports and harbors, we shall distribute the means put into

our hands on a just view of the relative importance of the places, combined

with their degree of exposure, and capability of defence, and in such way as to

require a moderate permanent force of regulars, relying much, in case of sudden

attack, on the aid of the militia.  Among the objects of our care, New York

stands foremost in the points of importance and exposure; and, if permitted, we

shall provide







 



        48             Jefferson's Works







        such defences for it as, in our opinion, will render it secure against

attacks by sea.  The particulars of what is proposed to be done can be made

known to you by Colonel Williams; as it is probable these may not comprehend

everything which the anxieties of the citizens. might think of service in their

defence, I suggest for your consideration, the idea of applying the fund

appropriated to this object, by your legislature, to such supplementary

provisions as in your judgment might be necessary to render ours adequate to

fulfil the views and confidence of your citizens. - Of this however, you are

the best judge.  But I cannot omit to urge that no time should be lost in

deciding on so much of the plan proposed by the Secretary of War, as depends on

a cession from the State authorities.



        It appears to me that it would be well to have a post on the Saint

Lawrence, as near our line as a commanding position could be found, that it

might afford some cover for our most advanced inhabitants.  But if a rupture

takes place now, such a post would too soon lose all its value, to be worth

building at this time.  It is only in the event of a solid accommodation with

Great Britain, and their retaining their present possessions, that it Aught

become worthy of attention.  I do not know that the $20,000 appropriated by the

State of New York, "to aid in, and contribute to, the defence of the northern

and western frontiers," could be better applied than as supplementary to our

provisions in this quarter also.







        Correspondence                      49







        We cannot, for instance, deliver out our arms to the militia, until

called into the field.  Yet it would be a great security had every militia man

on these frontiers a good musket in his hands.  However, here again your

Excellency is the best judge, and I have hazarded these ideas as to the

application of the appropriations, only on the wish you expressed that I would

do it, and on my own desire to interchange ideas with, frankness, and without

reserve with those charged, in common with myself, with the public interests. 

I beg leave to tender you the assurances of my high esteem and respect.



        TO THE PRINCE REGENT OF PORTUGAL.



                WASHINGTON, May 5, 1808.







        GREAT AND GOOD FRIEND,-Having learnt the safe arrival of your Royal

Highness at the city of Rio Janeiro, I perform with pleasure the duty of

offering you my sincere congratulations- by Mr. Hill, a respected citizen of

the United States, who is specially charged with the delivery of this letter.



        I trust that this event will be as propitious to the prosperity of your

faithful subjects as to the happiness of your Royal Highness, in which the

United States of America have ever taken a lively interest.  Inhabitants, now

of the same land, of that great continent which the genius of Columbus has

given to the world, the United States feel sensibly that they stand in new and

closer relations with your Royal



50             Jefferson's Works







        Highness, and that the motives which heretofore nourished the friendly

relations which have so happily prevailed, have acquired increased strength on

the transfer of your residence to their own shores.  They see in prospect, a

system of intercourse between the different regions of this hemisphere of which

the peace and happiness of mankind may be the essential principle.  To this

principle your long-tried adherence, for the benefit of those you governed, in

the midst of warring powers, is a pledge to the new world that its peace, its

free and friendly intercourse, will be your chief concern.  On the part of the

United States I assure you, that these which have hitherto been their ruling

objects, will be most particularly cultivated with your Royal Highness and your

subjects at Brazil, and they hope that that country so favored by the gifts of

nature, now advanced to a station under your immediate auspices, will find, in

the interchange of mutual wants and supplies, the true aliment of an unchanging

friendship with the United States of America.



        I pray to God,-great and good friend, that in your new abode you- may

enjoy health, happiness, and the affections of your people, and that He will

always have you in His safe and holy keeping.



        Done at Washington, etc.







        Correspondence                      51







        TO THE GOVERNORS OF NEW ORLEANS, GEORGIA, SOUTH CAROLINA, MASSACHUSETTS

AND NEW HAMPSHIRE.







        WASHINGTON, May 6, 1808.



        SIR,-The evasions of the preceding embargo laws went so far towards

defeating their objects, and chiefly by vessels clearing out coast-wise, that

Congress, by their act of April 25th, authorized the absolute detention of all

vessels bound coast-wise with cargoes exciting suspicions of an intention to

evade those laws.  There being few towns on our seacoast which cannot be

supplied with flour from their interior country, shipments of flour become

generally suspicious and proper subjects of detention.  Charleston is one of

the few places on our seaboard which need supplies of flour by sea for its own

consumption.  That it may not suffer by the cautions we are obliged to use, I

request of your Excellency, whenever you deem it necessary that your present or

any future stock should be enlarged, to take the trouble of giving your

certificate in favor of any merchant in whom you have confidence, directed to

the collector of any port, usually exporting flour, from which he may choose to

bring it, for any quantity which you may deem necessary for consumption beyond

your interior supplies, enclosing to the Secretary of the Treasury at the same

time a duplicate of the certificate as a check on the falsification of your

signature.  In this way we may secure a







 



52               Jefferson's Works



supply of the real wants of our citizens, and at the same time prevent those

wants from being made a cover for the crimes against their country which

unprincipled adventurers are in the habit of committing.  I trust, too, that

your Excellency will find an apology for the trouble I propose to give you, in

that desire which you must feel in common with all our worthy citizens, that

inconveniences encountered cheerfully by them for the interests of their

country, shall not be turned merely to unlawful profits of the most worthless

part of society.  1 salute your Excellency with assurances of my high respect

and consideration.











        TO ALBERT    GALLATIN,







        WASHINGTON, May 6, 1808.







In the outset @f the business of detentions, 1 think it impossible to form

precise rules.  After a number of cases shall have arisen they may probably be

thrown into groups and subjected to rules.  The great leading object of the

Legislature was, and ours in execution of it ought to be, to give complete

effect to the embargo laws.  They have bidden agriculture, commerce,

navigation, to bow before that object, to be nothing when in competition with

that.  Finding all their endeavors at general rules to be evaded, they finally

gave us the power of detention as the panacea, and I am clear we ought to use

it freely that we may, by a fair experiment, know the power







        Correspondence                        53







of this great weapon, the embargo.  Therefore, to propositions to carry flour

into the Chesapeake, the Delaware, the Hudson, and other exporting places, we

should say boldly it is not wanted there for consumption, and the carrying it

there is too suspicious to be permitted.  In consequence of the letters to the

Governors of the flour-importing States, we may also say boldly that there

being no application from the Governor is a proof it is not wanting 'in those

States, and therefore must not be carried.  As to shuffling of cotton, tobacco,

flax seed, etc., from one port to another, it may be some trifling advantage to

individuals to change their property out of one form into another, but it is

not of a farthing's benefit to the nation at large, and risks their great

object in the embargo.  The want of these at a particular place should be very

notorious to the collector and others, to take off suspicion of illicit

intentions.  Dry goods of Europe, coal, bricks, etc., are articles entirely

without suspicion.  I hazard these things for your consideration, and I send

you a copy of the letter to the Governors, which may be communicated in form to

the collectors to strengthen the ground of suspicion.  You will be so good as

to decide these cases yours elf, without forwarding them to me.  Whenever you

are clear either way, so decide; where you are doubtful, consider me as voting

for detention, being satisfied that individuals ought to yield their private

interests to this great public object.







 



54             Jefferson's Works







        TO  THE SECRETARY OF WAR,



        HENRY DEARBORN).



        MONTICELLO, May 12,      1808.



        DEAR SIR,-My journey and two days' detention on the road by high

waters, gave me time to reflect on our canal at New Orleans, on which I will

therefore hazard some thoughts.



        I think it has been said that the Mississippi, at low water, is many

feet lower opposite New Orleans than Lake Pontchartrain.  But the fact is

impossible,,being in contradiction to the laws of nature; two beds of dead

water connected with the same ocean, in vicinity to one another, must each be

in the level of that ocean, and consequently of one another.  Although

Pontchartrain receives the Amite and some other small streams, they probably do

little more than supply its evaporation.  No doubt, however, that the lake must

receive the small ebb and flow of the sea.  The Mississippi, on the contrary,

even at its lowest tide, always flows downwards to and beyond its mouth; it

must, then, at New Orleans, be one, two, or three feet higher than the sea, and

consequently than Pontchartrain.



        If a simple canal were cut from that of Carondelet to the Mississippi

without lock or gate, there would be two risks. 1. That in high water of the

Mississippi the current would be too strong for a gunboat to ascend or descend.

 This might perhaps be remedied by the, draught of horses. 2. The force of







        Correspondence                      55







        such a current, (unless the whole canal were lined with brick or

masonry,) might convert the canal into a bay, one of an unknown size, and

involve







New Orleans in it.



        On the whole, I suspect our plan is pretty obvious: suppose we want six

feet water; make a canal of that depth below the lowest ebb of Pontchartrain

from the lake to where the lock is to be placed then bring a canal from the

river to the lock, the depth of which shall be six feet below the lowest water

of the Mississippi ever known; at the back there will be a descent suppose of

one, two or three feet, or any other number.  The lock remedies that.  If the

lock were near the lake it would lessen the work by giving nearly the whole

length to the shallowest canal, and it would probably be in a more tranquil and

safe situation.  But it might be inconvenient, perhaps unsafe, to the sides of

the Mississippi canal, to permit such a depth of water as would be in it,

through its whole length, at the time of the high water of that river.  Of the

best position 9 therefore, of the lock, the superintendent must judge on the

spot, as he must indeed of the correctness of all the preceding conjectures,

formed without a knowledge of the localities.  They are hazarded merely to give

us some fixed notions of the nature of the enterprise, and are submitted to

your consideration.  I salute you with affectionate respect.







 



        0







56              Jefferson's Works







TO THE        SECRETARY OF THE TREASURY (ALBERT GALLATIN).



        MONTICELLO, May 15, 1808.



        .DEAR -SIR,-I received yesterday the enclosed letter from a Mr. Wood,

of New York.  I should suppose the fruits of Europe stood nearly on the ground

of the dry goods of Europe, not tempting evasion by exorbitant prices, nor

defeating the object of the embargo in any important degree, even if a

deviation should take place.  I send it to yourself for decision and answer, in

order that there may be an uniformity in the decisions.  I am really glad to

find the collector so cautious, and hope others will be equally so, and I place

immense value in the experiment being fully made, how far an embargo may be an

effectual weapon in future as well as on this occasion.  I salute you with

affection and respect.







        P.        S. Will you send me sixteen copies of my letters to the

Governors of Orleans, Georgia, etc., which I think you proposed to have

printed?  I will enclose it to the other governors with explanations.



        TO THE SECRETARY OF THE TREASURY



        (ALBERT GALLATIN).



        MONTICELLO, May 17, 1808.



        DEAR SIR,-Yours of the 16th came to hand last



        night.  As the lead mines do not press in point of







Correspondence                       57







time, I would rather they should be the subject of a conversation on my return.

It is not merely a question about the terms we have to consider, but the

expediency of working them.  As to the Savannah revenue cutter, I approve of

the proposition in your letter, or whatever else you may think proper to be

done.  The regular traders to New Orleans may be admitted to go as usual, the

characters of the owners being known to be safe, and provisions and lumber

being excepted.  Cotton, perhaps, may be permitted to be brought back on the

consideration that its price in Europe is not likely to be such as that the

adventurers may afford to pay all the, forfeitures.  I presume Mr. Price's,

application, which I enclose you, will fall under this general permission. 

Will you be so good as to have the proper answer given him?  If we change our

rule of tonnage for Mr. Murray's purpose, the next application will be for such

a rate of tonnage as will allow them to. bring back their. property in the form

of hay.  General Dearborn has occasion to send a vessel to Passamaquoddy with

cannon for the batteries, @ and perhaps provision for the troops, and has asked

me to send him a blank license.  But as these licenses are not signed by me, I

refer him to you for the necessary arrangements.



        shall sincerely lament Cuba's falling into any hands but those of its

present owners.  Spanish America is at present in the best hands for-us, and

"Chi sta bene, non si muove" should be our motto.



I salute you with affection.







 58        Jefferson's Works







        TO THE SECRETARY OF STATE







        (JAMES MADISON).







        MONTICELLO, May      19, 1808.







        DEAR SIR,-I now return you the papers reserved



from the last post.  Our regular answer to Mr. Livingston may well be, that the

Attorney General having given an official opinion that the right to the batture

is in the United States, and the matter being now referred to Congress, it is

our duty to keep the grounds clear of any adversary possession, until the

Legislature shall decide on it.  I have carefully read Mr. Livingston's printed

memoir.  He has shaken my opinion as to the line within the road having been

intended as a line of boundary instead of its being a line of admeasurement

only.  But he establishes another fact by the testimony of Fendeau, very fatal

to his claim; to wit, that the high-water mark, "batture, ou viennent battre

les eaux lorsqu elles sont dans leurs plus grandes croissants," is the

universal boundary of private grants on the river.



Your observations on his allegations that Gravier's grant must be under the

Spanish law, because after the cession of the province by France to Spain,

though before delivery of possession, are conclusive.  To which may be added,

that Louis XIV. having established the Constumes de Paris as the law of

Louisiana, this was not changed by the mere act of transfer; on the contrary,

the laws of France continued and







        Correspondence                     59







continues to be the law of the land, except where specially altered by some

subsequent edict o ' f Spain or act of Congress.  He has not in the least

shaken the doctrine that the bed of the river, and all the atterrissements or

banks which arise on it by the depositions of the river,'are the property of

the King by a peculiarity in the law of France; so that nothing quoted from

those of Spain or the.  Roman law is of authority on that point.  Affectionate

salutations.











        TO THE SECRETARY OF THE TREASURY







        (ALBERT GALLATIN).







        MONTICELLO, May 20, 1808.







DEAR SIR,-I return you the papers of Fanning, Lesdernier, and Sacket.  With

respect to Fanning's case, the true key for the construction of everything

doubtful in a law, is the intention of the law-makers.  This is most safely

gathered from the words, but may be sought also in extraneous circumstances,

provided they do not contradict the express words of the law.  We certainly

know. that the Legislature meant that vessels might go out to bring home

property, but not to commence a new career of commerce.  The bringing home the

property being the main object, if it be in an impracticable form, it expects

the intention of the law to let it be commuted into a practicable form; and so

from an inconvenient to a convenient form.  To prevent any abuse of this

accommodation, by entering into a new operation







 



60             Jefferson's Works







        of commerce with it, the discretionary permission is left to the

President.  I think the conversion of the sandal wood into a more portable form

in this case, is fulfilling the object of the law, and that it is immaterial

whether that be done in the Friendly Islands, where the wood now is, or

wherever by the way it can be better done. Consequently, that permission may be

granted.  I hope you will spare no pains or expense to bring the rascals of

Passamaquoddy to justice, and if more force be necessary, agree on the subject

with General Dearborn or Mr. Smith, as to any aid they can spare, and let it go

without waiting to consult me.  Let the successor to Sacket also be

commissioned without waiting for my opinion, which will be yours.  Should a

pardon be granted to Russell, I generally but not invariably require a

recommendation from the judges.   I shall be ready to consider any propositions

you may make for mitigating the embargo law of April 25th, but so only as not

to defeat the object of the law.  I shall be ready to make a distinction

between provisions, timber, naval stores, and such things, as by the

exaggerated prices they have got to in foreign markets, would enable infactors

to pay all forfeitures and still make great profit, and cotton and such other

articles as have not got to such prices.  I am for going substantially to the

object of the law, and no further; perhaps a little more earnestly because it

is the first expedient, and it is of great importance to know its full effect.



        I salute you with constant affection and respect.







        Correspondence                          61







        TO THE SECRETARY OF WAR







        (HENRY DEARBORN).







        MONTICELLO    , May 20, 1808.







        DEAR SIR,-Yours of the 14th came to hand yesterday.  I do not see that

we can avoid agreeing to estimates made by worthy men of our own choice for the

sites of fortifications, or that we could leave an important place undefended

because too much is asked for the site.  And therefore, we must pay what the

sites at Boston have been valued at.  At the same time I do not know on what

principles of reasoning it is that good men think the public ought to pay more

for a thing than they would themselves if they wanted it.  I salute you with

affection and respect.











        TO GENERAL BENJAMIN SMITH.







        MONTICELLO, May 20, 1808.







        SIR,-I return you my thanks for the communication by your letter of

April 19th, of the resolutions of the Grand jury of Brunswick, approving of the

embargo.  Could the alternative of war or the embargo have been presented to

the whole nation, as it occurred to their representatives, there could have

been but the one opinion that it was better to take the chance of one year by

the embargo, within which the orders and decrees producing it may be repealed,

or peace take place in Europe, which may







 



62             Jefferson's Works







secure peace to us.  How long the continuance of the embargo may be preferable

to war, is a question we shall have to meet, if the decrees and orders and war

continue.  I am sorry that in some places, chiefly on our northern frontier, a

disposition even to oppose the law by force has been manifested.  In no country

on earth is this so impracticable as in one where every man feels a vital

interest in maintaining the authority of the laws, ' and instantly engages in

it as in his own personal cause.  Accordingly, we have experienced this

spontaneous aid of our good citizens in the neighborhoods where there has been

occasion, as I am persuaded we ever shall on such occasions.  Through the body

of our country generally our citizens appear heartily to approve and support

the embargo.  I am also to thank you for the communication of the Wilmington

proceedings, and I add my salutations and assurances of great respect.











        TO THE SECRETARY OF STATE







        (JAMES MADISON).







        MONTICELLO, May 24, 1808.







        DEAR SIR,-







What has been already said on the subject of Casa  Calvo, Yrujo, Miranda, is

sufficient, and that these should be seriously brought up again argues extreme

weakness in Cavallos, or a plan to keep things unsettled with us.  But I think

it would not be amiss to take him down from his high airs as to the right of







Correspondence                       63







the sovereign to hinder the upper inhabitants from the use of the Mobile, by

observing, 1st, that- we claim to be the sovereign, although we give time for

discussion.  But 2d, that the upper inhabitants of a navigable water have

always a right of innocent passage along it.  I think Cavallos will not

probably be the minister when the letter arrives at Madrid, and that an eye to

that circumstance may perhaps have some proper influence on the style of the

letter, in which, if meant for himself, his hyperbolic airs might merit less

respect.  I think too that the truth as to Pike's mission might be so simply

stated as to need no argument to show that (even during the suspension of our

claims to the eastern border of the Rio Norte) his getting on it was mere

error, which ought to have called for the setting him right, instead of forcing

him through the interior country. [Sullivan's letter.] His view of things for

some time past has been entirely distempered.



Cathcart's, Ridgeley's, Navour's, Degen's, Appleton's, Lee's, and Baker's

letters, are all returned.  I salute you with great affection and respect.







64              Jefferson's Works







my thoughts to you by letter.  The present summer is too important in point of

preparation, to leave your department unfilled, for any time, as I once thought

might be done; and it would be with extreme reluctance that, so near the time

of my own retirement, I should proceed to name any high officer, especially one

who must be of the intimate councils of my successor, and who ought of course

to be in his unreserved confidence.  1 think too it would make an honorable

close of your term as well as mine, to leave our country in a state of

substantial defence, which we found quite unprepared for it.  Indeed, it would

for me be a joyful annunciation to the next meeting of Congress, that the

operations of defence are all complete.  I know that New York must be an

exception; but perhaps even that may be closed before the 4th of March, when

you and I might both make our bow with approbation and satisfaction.  Nor

should I suppose that under present circumstances, anything interesting in your

future office could make it important for you to repair to its immediate

occupation.  In February my successor will be declared, and may then, without

reserve, say whom he would wish me to nominate to the Senate in your place.  I

submit these circumstances to your consideration, and wishing in all things to

consult your interests, your fame and feelings, it will give me sincere joy to

learn that you will " watch with me to the end.  I salute you with great

affection and respect.







        Correspondence                       65







        TO MR.  LEIPER.







        MONTICELLO, May 25, 1808.







        DEAR SIR,-I received your favor of April 22d a little before I was to

leave Washington, much engaged with despatching the business rendered necessary

by the acts of Congress just risen, and preparatory to a short visit to this

place.  Here again I have been engrossed with some attentions to my own

affairs, after a long absence, added to the public business which presses on me

here as at Washington.  I mention these things to apologize for the long delay

of an answer to the address of the Democratic republicans of Philadelphia,

enclosed in your letter, and which has remained longer unanswered than I

wished.  I have been happy in my journey through the country to this place, to

find the people unanimous in their preference of the embargo to war, and the

great sacrifice they make, rendered a cheerful one from d sense of its

necessity.



        Whether the pressure on the throne from the suffering people of

England, and of their Islands, the conviction of the dishonorable as well as

dishonest character of their orders of council, the strength of their

parliamentary opposition, and remarkable weakness of the defence of their

ministry, will produce a repeal of these orders and cessation of our embargo,

is yet to be seen.  To nobody will a repeal be so welcome as to myself.  Give

us peace till our revenues are liberated from debt, and then, if war be

necessary,















 



66            Jefferson's Works







it can be carried on without a new tax or loan, and during peace we may chequer

our whole country with canals, roads, etc.  This is the object to which all our

endeavors should be directed.  I salute you with great friendship and respect.







        TO THE SECRETARY OF THE TREASURY



        (ALBERT GALLATIN).







        MONTICELLO, May 27, 1808.







DEAR SIR,-I received yesterday yours of the 23d, and now return you Woolsey's

and Astor's letters.  I send you one also which I have received from a Mr.

Thorne, on the evasions of the embargo on Lake Champlain.  The conduct of some

of our officers there, and of some excellent citizens, has been very

meritorious, and I will thank you to express any degree of approbation you

think proper, in my name, for Captain Mayo.  Woolsey appears also to deserve

assurances of approbation.  If you think Thorne's suggestion of some militia at

Point au Fer necessary and proper, be so good as to consult General Dearborn,

who will give any order you and he approve.  With respect to the coasting

trade, my wish is only to carry into full effect the intentions of the embargo

laws.  I do not wish a single citizen in any of the States to be deprived of a

meal of bread, but I set down the exercise of commerce, merely for profit, as

nothing when it carries with it the danger of defeating the objects of the

embargo.  I have more faith,







        Correspondence                       67







too, in the Governors.  I cannot think that any one of them would wink at

abuses of that law.  Still, I like your circular of the 20th, and the idea

there brought forward of confining the shipment to so small a proportion of the

bond as may correspond with the exaggeration of price and foreign markets, and

thus restrain the adventurer from gaining more than he would lose by

dishonesty.  Flour, by the latest accounts, I have observed, sold at about

eight times its cost here, while the legal penalties are but about three

prices-by restraining them to an eighth they will be balanced.  But as prices

rise must not our rules be varied?  Had the practicability of this mode of

restraint occurred before the recurrence to the Governors, I should have

preferred it, because it is free from the objection of favoritism to which the

Governors will be expo@ed, and if you find it work well in practice, we may

find means to have the other course discontinued.  Our course should be to

sacrifice everything to secure the effect of the law, and nothing beyond that.



I enclose you an application of Neilson & Son, to which you will please to have

given whatever answer is conformable to general rules.  The petition of Gardner

and others, masters of the Rhode Island packet ships, which I enclose you, does

not specify the particular act required from us for their relief.  If it be to

declare that the open sea in front of their coast is a bay or a river, the

matter of fact, as well as the law, renders that impossible, I really think







 



68              Jefferson's Works







        it desirable to relieve their case, in any way which is lawful, because

it is one, which though embraced by the words of the law, is not within its

object.  You mention that a principal method of evading the embargo is by

loading secretly and going off without clearance.  The naval department must

aid us against this.  As I shall leave this for Washington in about ten or

twelve days, I now desire the postoffice there to send no letters to this place

after receiving this notice.  All further matters relative to the embargo will

therefore be answered verbally as soon as they could by letter.  I salute you

with great affection and respect.











        TO JAMES BOWDOIN.







        MONTICELLO, May 29, 1808.







        DEAR SIR,-I received the favor of your letter, written soon after your

arrival, a little before I left Washington, and during a press of business

preparatory to my departure on a short visit to this place; this has prevented

my earlier congratulations to you on your safe return to your own country. 

There, judging from my own experience, you will enjoy much more of the tranquil

happiness of life, than is to be found in the noisy scenes of the great cities

of Europe.  I am also aware that you had at Paris additional causes of

disquietude; these seem inseparable from public life, and, indeed, are the

greatest discouragements to entering into or continuing in it.







        Correspondence                       69







        Perhaps, however, they sweeten the hour of retirement, and secure us

from all dangers of regret.  On the subject of that disquietude, it is proper

for me only to say that, however unfortunate the incident, I found in it no

cause of dissatisfaction with yourself, nor of lessening the esteem I entertain

for your virtues and talents; and, had it not been disagreeable to yourself, I

should have been well pleased that you could have proceeded on your original

destination.



        While I thank you for the several letters received from you during your

absence, I have to regret the miscarriage of some of those I wrote you.  Not

having my papers here, I cannot cite their dates by memory; but they shall be

the subject of another letter on my return to Washington.



        You find us on your return in a crisis 'of great difficulty.  An

embargo had, by the course. of events, become the only peaceable card we had to

play.  Should neither peace, nor a revocation of the decrees and orders in

Europe take place, the day cannot be distant when that will cease to be

preferable to open hostility.  Nothing just or temperate has been omitted on

our part, to retard or to avoid this unprofitable alternative.  Our situation

will be the more singular, as we may have to choose between two enemies,, who

have both furnished cause of war.  With one of them we could never come into

contact; with the other great injuries may be mutually inflicted and received. 

Let us still hope to avoid, while we prepare to meet them.







 



70               Jefferson's Works







        Hoping you will find our cloudless skies and benign climate more

favorable to your health than those of Europe, I pray you to accept my friendly

salutations, and assurances of great esteem and consideration.







        TO THE SECRETARY OF STATE



        (JAMES MADISON).







        MONTICELLO, May 31, 1808.



        DEAR SIR,-L return you all the papers received from you by yesterday's

mail, except Mr. Burnley's, which I shall send by the Secretary of War. 

Although all the appointments below field-officers are made, it is possible

some may decline, and open a way for new competition.  I have observed that

Turreau's letters have for some time past changed their style unfavorably.  I

believe this is the first occasion he has had to complain of French deserters

being enlisted by us, and if so, the tone of his application is improper.  The

answer to him, however, is obvious as to our laws and instructions, and the

discharge, not delivery, of the men, for which purpose I presume you will write

a line to the Secretary of War.  Woodward's scruples are perplexing.  And they

are unfounded because, on his own principle, if a law requires an oath to be

administered, and does not say by whom, he admits it may be any judge; if,

therefore, it names a person no longer in existence, it is as if it named

nobody.  On this construction all the territories have practised, and all the

authorities of the







        Correspondence                         71







        national government,-even the Legislature.  It was wrong on a second

ground; no judge ever refusing to administer an oath in any useful case,

although he may not consi'der it as strictly judicial.  If it may be valid or

useful, he administers "ut valeat quantum valer potest." But what is to be

done?  Would it not be well for you to send the case to the Attorney General,

and get him to enclose his opinion to Governor Hull, who will use it with judge

Witherall, or some territorial judge or justice?



        With the quarrel of judge Vandeberg and his bar we cannot intermeddle. 

Mercer's querulous letter is an unreasonable one.  How could his offer of

service be acted on, but by putting it in the hands of those who were to act on

all others?



        I shall to-day direct the post-rider not to continue his route to this

place after to-day, and to take your orders as to the time you would wish him

to continue coming to you.  I salute you with affectionate esteem and respect.







        TO THE SECRETARY OF THE NAVY



        (JACOB CROWNINSHIELD).







        WASHINGTON, June 15, 1808.



        SIR,-I have considered the letter of the director of the mint, stating

the ease with which the errors of Commodore Truxton's medal may be corrected on

the medal itself, and the unpracticability of doing it on the die.  In my

former letter to you on this subject,







 



72             Jefferson's Works







I observed that to make a new die would be a serious thing, requiring

consideration.  In fact, the first die having been made by authority of the

Legislature, the medal struck, accepted, and acquiesced in for so many years,

the powers given by that law are executed and at an end, and a second law would

be requisite to make a second die or medal.  But I presume it will be quite as

agreeable to Commodore Truxton to have his medal corrected in one way as

another, if done equally well, and it certainly may be as well or better done

by the graver, and with more delicate traits.  I remember it was the opinion of

Doctor Franklin that where only one or a few medals were to be made, it was

better to have them engraved.



        The medal being corrected, the die becomes immaterial.  That has never

been delivered to the party, the medal itself being the only thing voted to

him.  I say this on certain grounds, because I think this and Preble's are the

only medals given by the United 'States which have not been made under my

immediate direction.  The dies of all those given by the old Congress, and made

at Paris, remain to this day deposited with our bankers at Paris.  That of

General Lee, made in Philadelphia, was retained in the mint.  I mention this

not as of consequence whether the die be given or retained, but to show that

there can be no claim of the party to it, or consequently to its correction.  I

think, therefore, the medal itself should be corrected by Mr. Reich; that this

is as







        Correspondence                      73



far as we can stretch our authority, and I hope it will be satisfactory to the

Commodore.  I salute you with constant affection and respect.







        TO SHELTON GILLIAM, ESQ.



        WASHINGTON, June 19, 1808.



SIR,-Your favor of the 4th was received on my return to this place, and the

proposition of your correspondent on the subject of fortification was referred

to the Secretary of War, where office and qualifications make him the proper

judge of it.  I enclose you his answer.  The same prudence which in private

life would forbid our paying our own money for unexplained projects, forbids it

in the dispensation of the public moneys.  It is not enough that an individual

and an unknown one says and even thinks he has made a discovery of the

magnitude announced on this occasion.  Not only explanation, but the actual

experiment must be required before we can cease to doubt whether the inventor

is not deceived by -some false or imperfect view of his subject.  Still your

patriotic attention to bring such a proposition under our notice, that it might

be applied to the public good, if susceptible of it, is praiseworthy, and I

return you thanks for it with the assurances of my esteem and respect.







 



74        Jefferson's Works







 TO CHRISTOPHER COLLES.



        WASHINGTON, June 19, 1808.







        SIR,-I thank you for the pamphlet containing your ideas on the subject

of canals constructed of wood; but it is not in my power to give any definite

opinion of its national importance.  If there exists a cement which used as a

lining for cisterns and aqueducts, renders them impermeable to water, (and it

is affirmed that in France they are in the possession and use of such an one,)

then it becomes the common question whether constructions of wood, brick, or

rough stone are cheapest in the end?  A question on which every man possesses

materials for forming his judgment.  I suspect it is the supposed necessity of

using hewn stone in works of this kind which has had the greatest effect in

discouraging their being undertaken.  I tender you my salutations and respects.











        TO JAMES PEMBERTON.







        WASHINGTON, June 21, 1808.







SIR,-Your favor of May 30th was delivered me on my return to this place, and I

now enclose the prospectus of Clarkson's history with my subscription to it.  I

have perused with great satisfaction the Report of the Committee for the

African institution.  The sentiments it breathes are worthy of the eminent

characters who compose the institution,







        Correspondence                     75







        as are also the generous cares they propose to undertake.  I wish they

may begin their work at the right end.  Our experience with the Indians has

proved that letters are not the first, but the last step in the progression

from barbarism to -civilization.  Our Indian neighbors will occupy all the

attentions we may spare, towards the improvement of their condition.  The four

great Southern tribes are advancing hopefully.  The foremost are the Cherokees,

the -upper settlements of whom have made to me a formal application to be

received into the Union as citizens of the United States, and to be governed by

our laws.  If we can form for them a simple and acceptable plan of advancing by

degrees to a maturity for receiving our laws, the example will have a powerful

effect towards stimulating the other tribes in the same progression, and will

cheer the gloomy views which have overspread their minds as to their own future

history.  I salute you with friendship and great respect.











        TO WALTER FRANKLIN.







        WASHINGTON.  June 22, 1808.







        Thomas Jefferson returns his thanks to Mr. Franklin for the address to

the Society of Friends which he was so kind as to send him.  The appeal both to

facts and principles is strong, and their consistency will require an able

advocate.  Conscious that the present administration has been essentially

pacific,







 



76              Jefferson's Works







and that in all questions of importance it has been governed by the identical

principles professed by that Society, it has been quite at a loss to conjecture

the unknown cause of the opposition of the greater part, and bare 'neutrality

of the rest.  The hope, however, that prejudices would at length give way to

facts, has never been entirely extinguished, and @till may be realized in favor

of another administration.











        TO DOCTOR THOMAS LEIB.







        WASHINGTON, June 23, 1808.



SIR,-L have duly received your favor covering a copy of the talk to the Tammany

society, for which I thank you, and particularly for the favorable sentiments

expressed towards myself.  Certainly, nothing Will so much sweeten the

tranquillity and comfort of retirement, as the knowledge that I carry with me

the good will and approbation of my republican fellow-citizens, and especially

of the individuals in unison with whom I have so long acted.  With respect to

the federalists, I believe we think alike; for when speaking of them, we never

mean to include a worthy portion of our fellow-citizens, who consider

themselves as in duty bound to support the constituted authorities of every

branch, and to reserve their opposition to the period of election.  These

having acquired the appellation of federalists, while a federal administration

was in place, have not cared







        Correspondence                         77







about throwing off their name, but adhering to their principle, are the

supporters of the present order of things.  The other branch of the

federalists, those who are so in principle as well as in name, disapprove of

the republican principles and features of our Constitution, and would, I

believe, welcome any public calamity (war with England excepted) which might

lessen the confidence of our country in those principles and forms.  I have

generally considered them rather as subjects for a mad-house.  But they are now

playing a game of the most mischievous tendency, without perhaps being

themselves aware of it.  They are endeavoring to convince England that we

suffer more by the embargo than they do, and if they will but hold out awhile,

we must abandon it.  It is true, the time will come when we must abandon it. 

But if this is before the repeal of the orders of council, we must abandon it

only for a state of war.  The day is not distant, when that will be preferable

to a longer continuance of the embargo.  But we can never remove that, and let

our vessels go out and be taken under these orders, without making reprisal. 

Yet this is the very state of things which these federal monarchists are

endeavoring to bring about; and in this it is but too possible they may

succeed.  But the fact is, that if we have war with England, it will be solely

produced by their maneuvers.  I think that in two or three months we shall know

what will be the issue.



        I salute you with esteem and respect.







 



        78        Jefferson's Works







        TO GENERAL JAMES WILKINSON.



        WASHINGTON, June 24, 1808.



        Thomas Jefferson presents his compliments to General Wilkinson, and in

answer to his letters of yesterday observes that during the course of the Burr

conspiracy, the voluminous communications he received were generally read but

once and then committed to the Attorney General, and were never returned to

him.  It is not in his power, therefore, to say that General Wilkinson did or

did not denounce eminent persons to him, and still less who they were.  It was

unavoidable that he should from time to time mention persons known or supposed

to be accomplices of Burr, and it is recollected that some of these suspicions

were corrected afterwards on better information.  Whether the undefined term

denunciation goes to cases of this kind or not Thomas Jefferson does not know,

nor could he now name from recollection the persons suspected at different

times.  He salutes General Wilkinson respectfully.







        TO COLONEL DANIEL C. BRENT.







        WASHINGTON, June 24, 1808



        DEAR SIR,-The information given to me by Mrs.



        Paradise of letters to me from her grandsons, is without foundation.  I

have not for many years heard a tittle respecting the family at Venice.  Should

any information respecting them come to me I will certainly communicate it to

Mrs. Paradise.







        Correspondence                        79







        That the embargo is approved by the body of republicans through the

Union, cannot be doubted.  It is equally known that a great proportion of the

federalists approve of it; but as they think it an engine which may be used

advantageously against the republican system, they countenance the clamors

against it.  I salute you with great friendship and respect











        TO ALBERT GALLATIN.







        WASHINGTON, July 4, 1808.



        General Turreau's application for two vessels to carry French subjects

to France, must, I think, be granted, because under present circumstances we

ought not on slight grounds to dissatisfy either belligerent.  The vessels may

be back before winter, and their only danger will be of stoppage by the

English, who, however, have no right but to take out the French subjects.



        At the same time, I think it would be well to say to General Turreau

that we reluctantly let our seamen be exposed to capture, or perhaps to a

voluntary engagement with one of the belligerents: that we rely, therefore, on

his so proportioning the vessels to the number of passengers as merely to give

them a reasonable accommodation.  It would be well, too, that he should inform

us after their departure, of the number of persons sent in them.



        Affectionate salutes.







 



80             Jefferson's Works







TO HIS EXCELLENCY GOVERNOR W. C. C.  CLAIBORNE.



                WASHINGTON, July 9, 1808.



SIR,-I have lately seen a printed report of the committee of the Canal company

o f New Orleans, stating the progress and prospects of their enterprise.  In

this the United States feel a strong interest, inasmuch as it will so much

facilitate the passage of our armed vessels out of the one water into the

other.  For this purpose, however, there must be at least five and a half feet

water through the whole line of communication from the lake to the river.  In

some conversations with Mr. Clark on this subject the winter before last, there

was a mutual understanding that the company would complete the canal, and the

United States would make the locks.  This we are still disposed to do; and so

anxious are we to get this means of defence completed, that to hasten it we

would contribute any other encouragement within the limits of our authority

which might produce this effect.  If, for instance, the completion of it within

one year could be insured by our contributing such a sum as one or two thousand

dollars a month to the amount of twenty thousand dollars, in the whole, we

might do it, requiring as a consideration for our justification that the

vessels of the United States should always pass toll-free.  The object of this

letter is to sound the principal members, without letting them know you do it

by instruction from us, and to find out what moderate and reasonable aid on our

part







        Correspondence                       81







would be necessary to get a speedy conclusion of the work, and in what form

that aid would be most useful, and to be so good as to communicate it to me as

soon as the knowledge is obtained by yourself ' I should







be glad to learn, at the same time, what is the perpendicular height of the top

of the levee above the surface of the water in the Mississippi in its lowest

state.  Five and a half feet below this would be indispensable for our

purposes.  I salute you with great esteem and respect.











        TO THE SECRETARY OF THE TREASURY







        (ALBERT GALLATIN).



-          WASHINGTON, July 12, 1809.



        1.        (Peyton Skipwigh's letter.) I approve of the proposition to

authorize the collector of St. Mary's or Savannah to permit vessels to bring to

St. Mary's such supplies as in his opinion are really wanted for the

individuals applying, and where he has entire confidence no fraud will be

committed.  But the vessels should be -reasonably proportioned to the cargo. 

Should this be extended to Passamaquoddy? 2. .(The cases of detention by

Gelston and Turner.) The Legislature finding that no general rules could be

formed which would not be evaded by avarice and roguery, finally authorized the

collector, if there were still circumstances of suspicion, to detain the

vessel.  Wherever, therefore, the collector is impressed with suspicion, from a

view of all circumstances, which 







 



82               Jefferson's Works







are often indescribable, I think it proper to confirm his detention.  It would

be only where, from his own showing, or other good information, prejudice or

false views biassed his judgment, that I should be disposed to countermand his

detention.



        3.        The declaration of the bakers of New York, that their

citizens will be dissatisfied, under the present circumstances of their

country, to cat bread of the flour of their own State, is equally a libel on

the produce and citizens of the State.  The citizens have certainly a right to

speak for themselves on such occasions, and when they do we shall be able to

judge whether their numbers or characters are such as to be entitled to a

sacrifice of the embargo law.  If this prevails, the next application will be

for vessels to go to New York for the pippins of that State, because they are

higher flavored than the same species of apples growing in other States.



        4.        We should by all means appoint a new collector at Sackett's

Harbor.  If the Governor knows nobody there who can be depended on, can he not

find some faithful man in the city or country who would consider the emoluments

acceptable, such as they are.?



        5.        The seizure by Mr. Illsley not being tinder. the embargo law,

will take its course.  With respect to the aid of gunboats, desired by him and

Mr. Holmes of Sunbury, or any military aid, that can always be settled directly

between Mr. Gallatin and the Secretaries of the Navy or War.  Both those

gentlemen know our extreme anxiety to give a full effect to the







        Correspondence                       83







important experiment of the embargo, at any expense within the bounds of

reason, and will, on the application of Mr. Gallatin, yield the aid of their

departments without waiting the delay of consulting me.



I have gone a little into the grounds of these opinions, in order that there

being a mutual understanding on these subjects, Mr. Gallatin during the time of

our separation may decide on the cases occurring, without the delay of

consulting me at such a distance.  My principle is that the conveniences of our

citizens shall yield reasonably, and their taste greatly to the importance of

giving the present experiment so fair a trial that on future occasions our

legislators may know with certainty how far they may count on it as an engine

for national purposes.











        TO MONSIEUR DE LA CEPEDE.



        WASHINGTON, July 14, 1808.







        SIR,-If my recollection does not deceive me, the collection of the

remains of the animal incognitum of the Ohio (sometimes called mammoth),

possessed by the Cabinet of Natural History at Paris, is not very copious. 

Under this impression, and presuming that this Cabinet is allied to the

National Institute, to which I am desirous of rendering some service, I have

lately availed myself of an opportunity of collecting some of those remains. 

General Clarke (the companion of Governor Lewis in his expedition to the

Pacific Ocean) being, on a late journey, to







 



84             Jefferson's Works







pass by the Big-bone Lick of the Ohio, was kind enough to undertake to employ

for me a number of laborers, and to direct their operations in digging for

these bones at this important deposit of them.  The result of these researches

will appear in the enclosed catalogue of specimens which I am now able to place

at the disposal of the National Institute.  An aviso being to leave this place

for some port of France on public service, I deliver the packages to Captain

Haley, to be deposited with the Consul of the United States, at whatever port

he may land.  They are addressed to Mr. Warden of our legation at Paris, for

the National Institute, and he will have the honor of delivering them.  To

these I have added the horns of an animal called by the natives the Mountain

Ram, resembling the sheep by his head, but more nearly the deer in his other

parts; as also the skin of another animal, resembling the sheep by his fleece

but the goat in his other parts.  This is called by the natives the Fleecy

Goat, or in the style of the natural historian, the Pokotragos.  I suspect it

to be nearly related to the Pacos, and were we to group the fleecy animals

together, it would stand perhaps with the Vigogne, Pacos, and Sheep.  The

Mountain Ram was found in abundance by Messrs.  Lewis and Clarke on their

western tour, and was frequently an article of food for their party, and

esteemed more delicate than the deer.  The Fleecy Goat they did not see, but

procured two skins from the Indians, of which this is one.  Their description







        Correspondence                      85







will be given in the work of Governor Lewis, the journal and geographical part

of which may be soon expected from the press; but the parts relating to the

plants and animals observed in his tour, will be delayed by the engravings.  In

the meantime, the plants of which be brought seeds, have been very successfully

raised in the botanical garden of Mr. Hamilton of the Woodlands, and by Mr.

McMahon, a gardener of Philadelphia; and on the whole, it is with pleasure I

can assure you that the addition to our knowledge in every department,

resulting from this tour of Messrs.  Lewis and Clarke, has entirely fulfilled

my expectations in setting it on foot, and that the world will find that those

travellers have well earned its favor.  I will take care that the Institute as

well as yourself shall receive Governor Lewis's work as it appears.



It is with pleasure I embrace this occasion of returning you my thanks for the

favor of your very valuable works, sur les poissons et les cetacées, which you

were so kind as to send me through Mr. Livingston and General Turreau, and

which I find entirely worthy of your high reputation in the literary world. 

That I have not sooner made this acknowledgment has not proceeded from any want

of respect and attachment to yourself, or a just value of your estimable

present, but from the strong and incessant calls of duty to other objects.  The

candor of your character gives me confidence of your indulgence on this head,

and I assure you with truth that no circum-







 



86             Jefferson's Works







        stances are more welcome to me than those which give me the occasion of

recalling myself to your recollection, and of renewing to vou the assurances of

sincere personal attachment, and of great respect and consideration







        Contents of the large square box







        A fibia.



        A radius.



        Two ribs belonging to the upper part of the thorax.



        Two ribs from Iower part of the thorax.



        One entire vertebra.



        Two spinous processes of the vertebra broken from the bodies.



        Dentes molares, which appear to have belonged to the full-grown animal.



        A portion of the under-jaw of a young animal with two molar teeth in

it.



        These teeth appear to have belonged to a first set, as they are small,

and the posterior has but three grinding ridges, instead of five, the common

number in adult teeth of the lower jaw.



        Another portion of the under-jaw, including the symphisis, or chin.  In

this portion the teeth of one side are every way complete; to wit, the

posterior has five transverse ridges, and the anterior three.



        A fragment of the upper-jaw with one molar tooth much worn.



        Molar teeth which we suppose to be like those of the mammoth or

elephant of Siberia.  They are







        Correspondence                      97







        essentially different from those of the mammoth or elephant of this

country, and although similar in some respects to the teeth of the Asiatic

elephant, they agree more completely with the description of the teeth found in

Siberia in the arrangement and size of the transverse lamina of enamel.  This

idea, however, is not derived from actual comparison of the different teeth

with each other, for we have no specimens of Siberian teeth in this country;

but from inferences deduced from the various accounts in and drawings of these

teeth to be found in books.  A few of these teeth have been found in several

places where the bones of the American animal have existed.



        An astragalus.



        An os calcis.



        Os naviculare.



        In the large box in which the preceding bones are, is a small one

containing a promiscuous mass of small bones, chiefly of the feet.



        In the large irregular-shaped box, a tusk of large size.  The spiral

twist in all the specimens of these tusks which we have seen, was remarked so

long ago as the time of Breyneus, in his description of the tusks of the

Siberian mammoth in the Philosophical Transactions, if that paper is rightly

recollected, for the book is not here to be turned to at present.  Many

fragments of tusks have been sent from the Ohio, generally resembling portions

of such tusks as are brought to us in the course of commerce.  But of these

spiral tusks, in a tolerable complete state, we







 



88              Jefferson's Works







        have had only four.  One is found near the head of the north branch of

the Susquehanna.  A second possessed by Mr. Peale, was found with the skeleton,

near the Hudson.  A third is at Monticello, found with the bones of this

collection at the Big-bone Lick of Ohio, and the fourth is that now sent for

the Institute, found at the same place and larger than that at Monticello.



        The smallest box contains the horns of the mountain, ram, and skin of

the fleecy goat.







        TO MONSIEUR SYLVESTRE.







        WASHINGTON, July 15, 1808.







        SIR,-I had received from you on a former occasion the four first

volumes of the Memoirs of the Agricultural Society of the Seine, and since

that, your letter of September 19th, with the 6th, 7th, 8th, and 9th volumes,

being for the years 1804, '5, '6, with some separate memoirs.  These I have

read with great avidity and satisfaction, and now return you my thanks for

them.  But I owe particular acknowledgments for the valuable present of the

Théâtre de Serres, which I consider as a prodigy for the age in which it was

composed, and shows an advancement in the science of agriculture which I had

never suspected to have belonged to that time.  Brought down to the present day

by the very valuable notes added, it is really such a treasure of agricultural

knowledge, as has not before been offered to the world in a single work.







        Correspondence                        89







        It is not merely for myself, but for my country, that I must do homage

to the philanthropy of the Society, which has dictated their destination for me

of their newly improved plough.  I shall certainly so use it as to answer their

liberal views, by making the opportunities of profiting by it as general as

possible.



        I have just received information that a plough addressed to me has

arrived at New York, from England, but unaccompanied by any letter or other

explanation.  As I have had no intimation of such an article to be forwarded to

me from that country, I presume it is the one sent by the Society of the Seine,

that it, has been carried into England under their orders of council, and

permitted to come on from thence.  This I shall know within a short time.  I

shall with great pleasure attend to the construction and transmission to the

Society of a plough with my mould-board.  This is the only part of that useful

instrument to which I have paid any particular attention.  But knowing how much

the perfection of the plough must depend, 1st, on the line of traction; 2d, on

the direction of the share; 3d, on the angle of the wing; 4th, on the form of

the mould-board; and persuaded that I shall find the three first advantages

eminently exemplified in that which the Society sends me, I am anxious to see

combined with these a mould-board of my form, in the hope it will still advance

the perfection of that machine.  But for this I must ask time till I am

relieved from the. cares







 



90              Jefferson's Works







which have now a right to all my time, that is to say, till the next spring. 

Then giving, in the leisure of retirement, all the time and attention this

construction merits and requires, I will certainly render to the Society the

result in a plough of the best form I shall be able to have executed.  In the

meantime, accept for them and yourself the assurances of my high respect and

consideration.











        TO MONSIEUR LASTEYRIE.







        WASHINGTON, July 15,       1808.



SIR,- I have duly received your favor of March 28th, and with it your treatises

on the culture of the sugar cane and cotton plant in France.  The introduction

of new cultures, and especially of objects of leading importance to our

comfort, is certainly worthy the attention of every government, and nothing

short of the actual experiment should discourage an essay of which any hope can

be entertained.  Till that is made, the result is open to conjecture; and I

should certainly conjecture that the sugar cane could never become an article

of profitable culture in France.  We have within the ancient limits of the

United States, a great extent of country.  Which brings the orange to

advantage, but not a foot in which the sugar cane can be matured.  France,

within its former limits, has but two small spots, (Olivreles and Hieres) which

brings the orange in open air, and a fortiori, therefore, none proper for







        Correspondence                       91







the cane.  I should think the maple-sugar more worthy of experiment.  There is

no part of France of which the climate would not admit this tree.  I have never

seen a reason why every farmer should not have a sugar orchard, as well as an

apple orchard.  The supply of sugar for his family would require as little

ground, and the process of making it as easy as that of cider.  Mr. Macaws,

your botanist here, could send you plants as well as seeds, in any quantity

from the United States.  I have no doubt the cotton plant will succeed in some

of the southern parts of France.  Whether its culture will be as advantageous

as those they are now engaged in, remains to be tried.  We could, in the United

States, make as great a variety of wines as are made in Europe, not exactly of

the same kinds, but doubtless as good.  Yet I have ever observed to my

countrymen, who think its introduction important, that a laborer cultivating

wheat, rice, tobacco, or cotton here, will be able with the proceeds, to

purchase double the quantity of the wine he could make.  Possibly the same

quantity of land and labor in France employed on the rich produce of your

Southern counties, would purchase double the quantity of the cotton they would

yield there.  This however may prove otherwise on trial, and therefore it is

worthy the trial.  In general, it is a truth that if every nation will employ

itself in what it is fittest to produce, a greater quantity will be raised of

the things contributing to human happiness, than if 







 



92             Jefferson's Works







every nation attempts to raise everything it wants within itself.  The limits

within which the cotton plant is worth cultivating in the United States, are

the Rappahannock river to the north, and the first mountains to the west.  And

even from the Rappahannock to the Roanoke, we only cultivate for family use, as

it cannot there be afforded at market in competition with that of the more

Southern region.  The Mississippi country, also within the same latitudes,

admits the culture of cotton.



        The superficial view I have yet had time to take of your treatise on

the cotton plant, induces a belief that it is rich and correct in its matter,

and contains a great fund of learning on that plant.  When retired to rural

occupations, as I shall be ere long, I shall profit of its contents

practically, in the culture of that plant merely for household manufacture.  In

that situation, too, I shall devote myself to occupations much more congenial

with my inclinations than those to which I have been called by the character of

the times into which my lot was cast.  About to be relieved from this corvée by

age and the fulfilment of the quadragena stipendia, what remains to me of

physical activity will chiefly be employed in the amusements of agriculture. 

Having little practical skill, I count more on the pleasures than the profits

of that occupation.  They will give me, too, the leisure which my present

situation nearly denies, of rendering such services as may be within my means,

to the Institute, the Agricultural Society of



        Correspondence                       93







the Seine, to yourself, and such other worthy individuals as may find any

convenience in a correspondence here.  I shall then be able particularly to

fulfil the wishes expressed, of my sending to the Society of Agriculture a

plough with my mould-board.  Perhaps I may be able to add some other

implements, peculiar to us, to the collection which I perceive that the Society

is making.  I salute you, Sir, with assurances of great esteem and respect.











        TO THE SECRETARY OF THE NAVY







        (JACOB CROWNINSHIELD).



        WASHINGTON, July 16, 1808.



DEAR SIR,-Complaints multiply upon us of evasions of the embargo laws, by fraud

and force.  These come from Newport, Portland, Machias, Nantucket, Martha's

Vineyard, etc., etc.  As I do consider the severe enforcement of the embargo to

be of an importance, not to be measured by money, for our future government as

well as present objects, I think it will be advisable that during this summer

all the gunboats, actually manned and in commission, should be distributed

through as many ports and bays as may be necessary to assist the embargo.  On

this subject I will pray you to confer with Mr. Gallatin, who will call on you

on his passage through Baltimore, and to communicate with him hereafter,

directly, without the delay of consulting me, and generally to aid this object

with such means of your department as are consistent with its situation.







 



94               Jefferson's Works







        I think I shall be able to leave this place by Wednesday.  I will

mention for your information, that the post for Milton leaves this place on

Tuesdays and Fridays, and arrives at it on Sundays and, I believe, Thursdays.



        I salute you with affection and respect.







        TO ROBERT SMITH, OF THE WAR OFFICE.



        WASHINGTON, July 16, 1808.



        SIR,-The correspondence which you sent me the other day, between the

British commanders and our officers in Moose Island, is now in the hands of Mr.

Madison, and will be delivered to you on application.  On consulting him and

Mr. Gallatin, I find the facts to be that Moose Island has ever been in our

possession, as well before as ever since the treaty of peace with Great

Britain; that in the convention formed between Mr. King and the British

government, about four years ago, wherein our limits in that quarter were

mutually recognized, Moose Island was expressly acknowledged to belong to us;

and, through an account of an article respecting Louisiana, the convention has

not yet been ratified, yet both parties . have acted on the article of these

limits as if it had been ratified,-each party considering the parts then

assigned to them as no longer questioned by the other.



        I think you had better communicate the papers, with a copy of that

article of the convention, to Gen-







        Correspondence                      95







eral Dearborn, with these observations, from whom the answer to our officer

will go with more propriety.  If you will speak on this subject with Mr.

Madison, he will, perhaps, be able to state to you what passed between us on

this subject more fully than I have done.  Accept my salutations.







TO HIS EXCELLENCY GOVERNOR JAMES SULLIVAN.(1)







        WASHINGTON, July 16, 1808.







        SIR,-In my letter of May 6th I asked the favor of your Excellency, as I

did of the Governors of other States not furnishing in their interior country

flour sufficient for the consumption of the State, to take the trouble of

giving certificates, in favor of any merchants meriting confidence, for the

quantities I necessary for consumption beyond the interior supplies.  Having

desired from the Treasury Department a statement of the quantities called for

under these certificates, I find that those of your Excellency, received at the

Treasury, amount to 51,000 barrels of flour, 108,400 bushels of Indian corn,

560 tierces of rice, 2,000 bushels of rye, and, in addition thereto, that there

had been given certificates for either  12,450 barrels of flour, or 40,000

bushels of corn.  As these supplies, although called for within the space of

two months, will undoubtedly furnish the consumption of your State for a much

longer time, I have thought it advisable to ask the favor of your 







@#(1) Governor of Massachusetts.@%







 



96              Jefferson's Works







Excellency, after the receipt of this letter, to discontinue issuing any other

certificates, that we may not unnecessarily administer facilities to the

evasion of the embargo laws; for I repeat what I observed in my former letter,

that these evasions are effected chiefly by vessels clearing coastwise.  But

while I am desirous of preventing the frauds which go to defeat the salutary

objects of these laws, I am equally so that the fair consumption of our

citizens may in nowise be abridged.  It would, therefore, be deemed a great

favor if your Excellency could have me furnished with an estimate, on the best

data possessed, of the quantities of flour, corn, and rice, which, in addition

to your internal supplies, may be necessary for the consumption, in any given

time, of those parts of your State which habitually depend on importation for

these articles.  I ask this the more freely, because I presume you must have

had such an estimate formed for the government, of your discretion in issuing

the preceding certificates, and because it may be so necessary for our future

government.  I salute you with assurance of great respect and esteem.











TO HIS EXCELLENCY GOVERNOR W. C. C. CLAIBORNE(1)







        WASHINGTON, July 17, 1808.  SIR,-After writing my letter of the 9th, I

received one from Mr. Pitot in the name of the New Orleans 







@#(1) Governor of Louisiana Territory.@%







        Correspondence                      97







Canal Company, which ought to have come with the printed report, stating more

fully their views, and more explicitly the way in which we can aid them.  They

ask specifically that we should lend them $50,000, or take the remaining fourth

of their shares now on hand.  This last measure is too much out of our policy

of not embarking the public in enterprises better managed by individuals, and

which might occupy as much of our time as those political duties for which the

public functionaries are particularly instituted.  Some money could be lent

them, but only on an assurance that it would be employed so as to secure the

public objects.  The first interests of the company will be to bring a

practicable navigation from the Lake Pontchartrain through the Bayou St. Jean

and Canal de Carondelet to the city, because that entitles them to a toll on

the profitable part of the enterprise.  But this would answer no object of the

government unless it was carried through to the Mississippi, so that our armed

vessels drawing five feet water might pass through.  Instead therefore of the

ground I suggested in my last letter, I would propose to lend them a sum of

money on the condition of their applying it entirely to that part of the canal

which, beginning at the Mississippi, goes round the city to a junction with the

canal of Carondelet, and we may moreover at our own expense erect the locks. 

The Secretary of War not being here, I cannot propose these or any other terms

precisely, but you may more openly than I proposed in my last















 



98        Jefferson's Works







letter, give these as the general shape of the aid which we contemplate,

collect the ideas of individual members, and communicate them to me,, so that

when I shall have an opportunity of consulting the Secretary of War we ma put

our proposition in the form







        y                 1 1



        most acceptable to them.  On this subject I shall



        wish to hear from you soon.







        Mr. Livingston was here lately, and finding that we considered the

Batture as now resting with Congress, and that it was our duty to keep it clear

of all adversary possession till their decision is obtained, wrote a letter to

the Secretary of State, which, if we understand it, amounts to a declaration

that he will on his return bring the authority, of the court into array against

that of the executive, and endeavor to obtain a forcible possession.  But I

presume that the court knows too well that the title of the United States to

land is subject to the jurisdiction of no court, it having never been deemed

safe to submit the major interests of the nation to an ordinary tribunal, or to

any one but such as the Legislature establishes for the special occasion; and

the Marshal will find his duty too plainly marked out in the act of March 3,

1807, to be at a loss to determine what authority he is to obey.  It will be

well however that you should have due attention paid to this subject, and

particularly to apprise Mr. Grymes to be prepared to take care that the public

rights receive no detriment.







        I salute you with great respect and esteem.







        Correspondence                      99







        TO GOVERNOR MERIWETHER LEWIS.







        WASHINGTON, July 17, 1808.







DEAR SIR,-Since I parted with you in Albemarle in September last, I have never

had a line from you nor I believe has the Secretary of War with whom you have

much connection through the Indian department.  The misfortune which attended

the effort to send the Mandan chief home, became known to us before you had

reached St. Louis.  We took no step on the occasion, counting on receiving your

advice so soon as you should be in place, and knowing that your knowledge of

the whole subject and presence on the spot would enable you to judge better

than we could what ought to be done.  The constant persuasion that something

from you must be on its way to us, has as constantly prevented our writing to

you on the subject.  The present letter, however, is written to put an end at

length to this mutual silence, and to ask from you a communication of what you

think best to be done to get the chief and his family back.  We consider the

good faith, and the reputation of the nation, as pledged to accomplish this. 

We would wish indeed, not to 'd be obliged to undertake any considerable

military expedition in the present uncertain state of our foreign concerns, and

especially not till the new body of troops shall be raised.  But if it can be

effected in any other way and at any reasonable expense, we are disposed to

meet it.







 100             Jefferson's Works







        A powerful company is at length forming for taking up the Indian

commerce on a large scale.  They will employ a capital the first year Of

300,000, and raise it afterwards to a million.  The English Mackinac company

will probably withdraw from the competition.  It will be under the direction of

a most excellent man, a Mr. Astor, merchant of New York, long engaged in the

business, and perfectly master of it.  He has some hope of seeing you at St.

Louis, in which case I recommend him to your particular attention.  Nothing but

the exclusive possession of the Indian commerce can secure us their peace.



        Our foreign affairs do not seem to clear up at all.  Should they

continue as at present, the moment will come when it will be a question for the

Legislature whether war will not be preferable to a longer continuance of the

embargo.



        The Presidential question is clearing up daily, and the opposition

subsiding.  It is very possible that the suffrage of the nation may be

undivided.  But with this question it is my duty not to intermeddle.  I have

not lately heard of your friends in Albemarle.  They were well when I left

there in June, and not hearing otherwise affords presumptions they are well. 

But I presume you hear that from themselves.  We have no tidings yet of the

forwardness of your printer.  I hope the first part will not be delayed much

longer.  Wishing you every blessing of life and health, I salute you with

constant affection and respect.







Correspondence                       101











        TO THE SECRETARY OF WAR







        (HENRY DEARBORN).







        WASHINGTON, July 18, 1808.







        DEAR GENERAL,-I had written to Governor Claiborne according to what had

been agreed between you and myself, after which I received a letter from Pitot

on behalf of the Canal company of New Orleans, which should have accompanied

the printed report I communicated to you.  The letter agrees with the report,

and asks specifically that we should either lend them fifty thousand dollars,

or buy the remaining fourth part of their shares now on hand.  On consultation

with Mr. Madison, Gallatin, and Rodney, we concluded it best to say we would

lend them a sum of money if they would agree to lay out the whole of it in

making the canal from the Mississippi round the town to its junction with the

canal of Carondelet; and I wrote to Claiborne to sound the members of the

company, and to find out if there were any modifications which would render the

proposition more acceptable, to communicate them to me, and that when I should

have an opportunity of consulting you, we would make the proposition in form.



        I send ou a letter of General Wilkinson's, the papers it covered, and

my answer, which will sufficiently explain themselves.  That in cases of

military Operations some occasions for secret service money must arise, is

certain.  But I think that they should







 



102        Jefferson's Works



        be more fully explained to the government than the General has done,

seems also proper.



        Mr. Smith will send you some British complaints on our fortifying Moose

Islands, and the kind of answer recommended on consultation with the heads of

departments.



        We have such complaints of the breach of embargo by fraud and force on

our northern water line, that I must pray your co-operation with the Secretary

of the Treasury by rendezvousing as many new recruits as you can in that

quarter.  The Osage brought us nothing in the least interesting.  I salute you

with affection and respect.







TO HIS EXCELLENCY GOVERNOR CHARLES PINCKNEY.







        WASHINGTON, July 18, 1808.







        DEAR SIR,-Your favor of May 28 has been duly received, and in it the

proceeding of the Court on the mandamus to the collector of Charleston.  I saw

them with great concern because of the quarter from whence they came, and where

they could not be ascribed to any political waywardness.



        The Legislature having found, after repeated trials, that no general

rules could be formed which fraud and avarice would not elude, concluded to

leave, in those who were to execute the power, a discretionary power paramount

to all their general rules.  This discretion was of necessity lodged with the

collector in the first instance, but referred, finally, to the Presi-







        Correspondence                       103







        dent, lest there should be as many measures of law or discretion for

our citizens as there were collectors of districts.  In order that the first

decisions by the collectors might also be as uniform as possible, and that the

inconveniences of temporary detention might be imposed by general and equal

rules throughout the States, we thought it advisable to draw some outlines for

the government of the discretion of the collectors, and to bring them all to

one tally.



        With this view they were advised to consider all shipments of flour

prima facie, as suspicious.  Because, if pretended to be for a State which made

enough within itself, it could not, in these times, but be suspicious, and, if

for a State which needed importations, we had provided, by the aid of the

Governors of those States, a criterion for that case.



        But your collector seems. to have decided for himself that, instead of

a general rule applicable equally to all, the personal character of the shipper

was a better criterion, and his own individual opinion too, of that character.



        You will see at once to what this would have led in the hands of an

hundred collectors, of all sorts of characters, connections, and principles,

and what grounds would have been given for the malevolent charges of favoritism

with which the federal papers have reproached even the trust we reposed in the

first and highest magistrates of particular States.  It has been usual in

another department, after the decision of any point by the superior tribunal is







 



104             Jefferson's Works







known, for the inferior one to conform to that decision.  The declaration of

Mr. Theus, that he did not consider the case as suspicious, founded on his

individual opinion of the shipper, broke down that barrier which we had

endeavored to erect against favoritism, and furnished the grounds for the

subsequent proceedings.  The attorney for the United States seems to have

considered the acquiescence of the collector as dispensing with any particular

attentions to the case, and the judge to have taken it as a case agreed between

plaintiff and defendant, and brought to him only formally to be placed oil his

records.  But this question has too many important bearings on the

constitutional organization of our government, to let it go off so carelessly. 

I send you the Attorney General's opinion on it, formed on great consideration

and consultation.  It is 'communicated to the collectors and marshals for their

future government.  I hope, however, the business will stop here, and that no

similar case will occur.  A like attempt has been made in another State, which

I believe failed in the outset.



        I have seen, with great satisfaction, the circumspection and moderation

with which you have been so good as to act under my letter of May 6th.  I owe

the same approbation to some other of the Governors, but not to every one.  Our

good citizens having submitted to such sacrifices under the present experiment,

I am determined to exert every power the law has vested in me for its rigorous

fulfilment; that we







        Correspondence                       105







may know the full value and effect of this measure on any future occasion on

which a resort to it might be contemplated.







The Osage did not bring us a tittle of anything interesting.  The absence of

the Emperor from Paris makes that a scene of no business; and I do not think we

are to consider the course of the British government as finally decided, until

the nation, as well as the ministry, are possessed of the communications to

Congress of March 22, and our act hanging the duration of the embargo laws on

that of the orders of council.  The newspapers say Mr. Rose is coming over

again.  Mr. Pinckney did not know this at the departure of the Osage.  Yet it

may be so.  It is well calculated to throw dust in the eyes of the nation, and

to silence all attempts of the opposition to force a change of their measures. 

In this view it is a masterly stroke.  The truth is that their debt is become

such as the nation can no longer pay its interest.  Their omnipotence at sea

has bloated their imaginations so as to persuade them they can oblige all

nations to carry all their produce to their island as an entrepot, to pay them

a tax on it, and receive their license to carry it to its ultimate market.  It

is indeed a desperate throw, in the language of Canning, and who knows, says

he, what the dice may turn up?



        I answer, we know.



Since writing so far, I received your favor of June 30th, covering resolutions

of your Legislature.  They are truly worthy of them, and never could declara-







 



106              Jefferson's Works







tions be better timed for dissipating the, delusions in which the British

government are nourished by the federal papers, and prevented from that return

to justice which alone can continue our peace.



        Wishing you every blessing of health and life, I salute you with

assurances of great esteem and respect.











        TO THE SECRETARY OF THE TREASURY







        (ALBERT GALLATIN).







        MONTICELLO, July 25, 1808.







        DEAR SIR,-I enclose you the petition of Somes, to do in it whatever is

agreeable to general rule.



        Punqua Winchung, the Chinese Mandarin, has, I believe, his headquarters

at New York, and therefore his case is probably known to you.  He came to

Washington just as I had left it, and therefore wrote to me, praying permission

to depart for his own country with his property, in a vessel to be engaged by

himself.  I enclose you Mr. Madison's letter, which contains everything I know

on the subject.  I consider it as a case of national comity, and coming within

the views of the first section of the first embargo act.  The departure of this

individual with good dispositions, may be the means of making our nation known

advantageously at the source of power in China, to which it is otherwise

difficult to convey information.  It may be of sensible advantage to our

merchants in that country.  I







        Correspondence                      107







        cannot, therefore, but consider that a chance of obtaining a permanent

national good should overweigh the effect of a single case taken out of the

great field of the embargo.  The case, too, is so singular, that it can lead to

no embarrassment as a precedent.



        I think, therefore, he should be permitted to engage a vessel to carry

himself and his property, under such cautions and recommendations to him as you

shall think best.



        I leave it therefore to yourself to direct all the necessary details

without further application to me, and for this purpose send you a blank

passport for the vessel, etc., and Mr. Graham will obtain and forward you

passports from the foreign ministers here.  I salute you with affection and

respect.











        TO WILLIAM B. BIBB.







        MONTICELLO, July 28, 1808.







        SIR,-I received duly your favor of July 1st, covering an offer of Mr.

McDonald of an iron mine to the public, and I thank you for taking the trouble

of making the communication, as it might have its utility.  But having always

observed that public works are much less advantageously managed than the same

are by private hands, I have thought it better for the public to go to market

for whatever it wants which is to be found there; for there competition brings

it down to the minimum of value.  I have no doubt We can buy brass cannon at

market cheaper than we







 



108           Jefferson's Works







        could make iron ones.  I think it material too, not to abstract the

high executive officers from those functions which nobody else is charged to

carry on, and to employ them in superintending works which are going on

abundantly in private hands.  Our predecessors went on different principles;

they bought iron mines, and sought for copper ones.  We own a mine at Harper's

Ferry of the finest iron ever put into a cannon, which we are afraid to attempt

to work.  We have rented it heretofore, but it is now without a tenant.



        We send a vessel to France and England every six weeks, for the

purposes of public as well as mercantile correspondence.  These the public

papers are in the habit of magnifying into special missionaries for great and

special purposes.  It is true that they carry our public despatches, whether

the subject of the day happens to be great or small.  The Osage was one of

these; but she was charged with nothing more than repetitions of instructions

to our ministers not to cease in their endeavors to have the obnoxious orders

and decrees repealed.  She brought not a tittle of the least interest.  The St.

Michael was another of these vessels, and may now be expected in a few days. 

The schooner Hope was a third, and, sailed a few days ago.  She may be expected

a fortnight before Congress meets, and our ministers are apprised that

whatsoever the belligerent powers mean to do, must be done before that time, as

on the state of things then existing and known to us, Congress will have to







        Correspondence                     109







        act.  I return the letter of Mr. McDonald, as it may be useful for

other purposes, and salute you with esteem and respect.











        TO THE SECRETARY OF THE TREASURY







        (ALBERT GALLATIN).



        MONTICELLO, July 29, 1808.







        DEAR SIR,-I enclose you a letter of information of what is passing on

the Canada line.  To prevent it is, I suppose, beyond our means, but we must

try to harass the unprincipled agents, and punish as many as we can.



        I transmit, also, the petition of Tyson and James, millers of

Baltimore, for permission to send a load of flour to New Orleans, to direct in

it what is regular for I do not see any circumstance in the case sufficiently

peculiar to take it out of the rule.  If their views are honest, as I suppose

them to be', it would be a great relief to them to be permitted, by giving bond

for an increased valuation, to send their flour to its destination, and equal

relief to us from these tormenting applications.  Yet, as the other gentlemen

seemed not satisfied that it would be legal, I would not have it done on my own

opinion alone, however firmly I am persuaded of its legality.  Could you not in

the way of conversation with some of the sound lawyers of New York, find what

would be their prima facie opinion, and if encouraged by that, we may take the

opinion of the Attorney General, and







 



110        Jefferson's Works







others.  The questions to be solved are,-first: To what place should the

valuation refer? and second: Would too high a valuation render the bond null in

law?  On the first, I observe that the law says that bond shall be given in

double the value, etc., without saying whether its value here, or at the place

of sale, is meant; that, generally speaking, its value here would be

understood; but that whenever the words of a law will bear two meanings, one of

which will give effect to the law, and the other will defeat it, the former

must be supposed to have been intended by the Legislature, because they could

not intend that meaning, which would defeat their intention, in passing that

law; and in a statute, as in a will, the intention of the party is to be sought

after.  On the second point we would ask, who is to value the cargo on which

the bond is to be taken?  Certainly the collector, either by himself or his

agents.  When the bond is put in suit it must be recovered.  Neither judge nor

jury can go into the question of the value of the cargo.  If anybody could, it

would be the chancellor; but his maxim is never to lend his power in support of

fraud or wrong.  The common law could only give a remedy on an action for

damages, as, for instance, if a collector, by requiring too large security,

prevents a party from clearing out, damages might be recovered.  But in the

case in question, the consent of the party would take away the error, and

besides, as the voyage takes place, no damages for preventing it can be

recovered.  These are gen-







        Correspondence                     111







eral considerations to be brought into view in such a conversation, which,

indeed would recur to every lawyer who turned his mind to the subject at all. 

It would be a most important construction for the relief of the honest

merchant, to whom the amount of bond is important, and to us, also, in the

execution of the law ; and I think its legality far more defensible than that

of limiting the provisions to one-eighth of the cargo.  My situation in the

country gives me no opportunity to consult lawyers of the first order.  Should

such occur, however, I will avail myself of them.



        I salute you affectionately.











        TO THE SECRETARY OF STATE







        (JAMES MADISON).







        MONTICELLO, July 29, 1808.







DEAR SIR,-The passport for the Leonidas goes by this post, to the collector of

Norfolk.  I return you Jarvis', Hackley's, and Montgomery's letters, and send

you Hull's, Hunt's, Clarke's, and Mr. Short's, for perusal, and to be returned.

 On this last, the following questions arise: When exactly shall the next

vessel go?  Whence?  Is not the secrecy of the mission essential?  Is it not

the very ground of sending it while the Senate is not sitting, in order that it

in may be kept secret?  I doubt the expediency of sending one of our regular

armed vessels.  If we do, she should go to Petersburg direct.







 



112           Jefferson's Works







And yet may there not be advantage in conferences between S. and A." I have

signed the commission and letter of credence, and now enclose them.  Yet I must

say I think the latter is very questionable indeed, in point of propriety.  It

says that the Minister is to reside near his person; but whether we should

establish it at once into a permanent legation is much to be doubted, and

especially in a recess of the Senate.  I should think it better to express

purposes something like the following: " to bear to your Imperial Majesty the

assurances of the sincere friendship of the United States, and of their desire

to maintain with your Majesty and your subjects the strictest relations of

intercourse and commerce; to explain to your Majesty the position of the United

States, and the considerations flowing from that which should keep them aloof

from the contests of Europe; to assure your Majesty of their desire to observe

a faithful and impartial neutrality, if not forced from that line by the wrongs

of the belligerents; and to express their reliance that they will be befriended

in these endeavors by your Majesty's powerful influence and friendship towards

these States." This is hasty,-it is too long, and neither the expressions nor

thoughts sufficiently accurate; but something of this kind, more concise and

correct, may be formed, leaving the permanency of the mission still in our

power.



There is no doubt but that the transaction at New Orleans, between Ortega and

the British officer with







        Correspondence                        113







the prize sloop Guadaloupe, has been a mere fraud, to evade our regulation

against the sale of prizes in our harbors; and his insolent letter intended

merely to cover the fraud.  His ready abandonment of the vessel, and Ortega's

resumption of her, are clear proofs.  Should not, or could not, process be

ordered against Ortega and the vessel?  I think a copy of Reeve's letter to

Governor Claiborne, and of the proceedings of the court, might be sent to Mr.

Erskine, with proper observations on this double outrage, and an intimation

that the habitual insolence of their officers may force us to refuse them an

asylum, even when seeking it in real distress, if the boon is to be abused as

it has been by this insolent and dishonest officer.  And as it is very possible

the rascal may push his impostures to the making complaint to his government,

this step with Mr. Erskine may anticipate it.



        I salute you with sincere and constant affection.











        TO THE SECRETARY OF WAR







        (HENRY DEARBORN).



        MONTICELLO, August       5, 1808.







DEAR SIR,-L enclose you a letter from the Pathkiller and others of the

Cherokees, the object of which I do not precisely see.  I suppose they are of

Van's party.  The sentiments are unquestionably those of a white man.



        Sibley's letters present a disagreeable view.  It











 



114              Jefferson's Works







will be troublesome if we are once compelled to use acts of force against those

people.  It is the more difficult as we should have to pursue them into the

country beyond the Sabine, on which an understanding with the Spaniards would

be necessary.  But what is the meaning of our not pursuing deserters over the

Rio Hondo?  I thought we had so far settled that matter, as that it was

understood by the Spaniards that until a final settlement of boundary, the

Sabine was to be that to which each was to exercise jurisdiction.  On the same

principles ought we not immediately to suppress this -new appointment of a

Spanish Alcalde at Bayou Pierre?  I ask this for information, because I do not

precisely recollect what we finally intended as to Bayou Pierre, and I have not

the papers here.  I suppose the trial and punishment of the guilty Alabamas,

and Sibley's reclamations with the tribe for reparation, wilt give us time till

we meet to consider what is to be done.  Has any and what step been taken for

the recovery of Pike's men?



        Governor Lewis' letter offers something more serious.  The only

information I have on the subject, is his letter to Governor Harrison in a

newspaper, which I cut out and enclose you.  The retirement of White Hairs to

St. Louis is strong proof that the case is serious.  As they are at war with

all nations, and in order to protect them we have been endangering our peace

and friendship with the other nation, would not our best course be to inform

all those







        Correspondence                            115







nations that, however desirous we have been of promoting peace among them, and

however earnest our endeavors have been to restore friendship between them and

the Osages particularly, we have found it impossible to bring that nation to a

just and peaceable conduct towards others?  That therefore we withdraw

ourselves from before them, and leave them to be freely attacked and destroyed

by all those who have cause of war against them?  Would such a written message

from me to the nations at war with them, be advisable? particularly to the

Cherokees, Creeks, Chickasaws, and Choctaws, and such northern tribes as are at

war with them.  I do not recollect those of the latter description.  Would it

not be advisable to aid their war parties with provisions, and ammunition, and

the repairs of their arms at our posts?  Will it be necessary to authorize

expeditions of militia, or only permit volunteers to join the Indian parties?

or shall we leave what respects Militia to Governor Lewis?  We shall certainly

receive further information soon, but in the meantime I have thought we should

turn it in our minds, and interchange ideas on the subject.  I shall therefore

be glad to hear from you on it.  I' salute you with constant affection and

respect.







 



116             Jefferson's Works







TO        THE SECRETARY OF WAR (HENRY DEARBORN).



        MONTICELLO, August 6, 1808.







        DEAR SIR,-A complaint has come to me indirectly on the part of the

Cadets at West Point, that the promotions in their corps are made on other

principles than those of seniority or merit.  They do not charge Colonel

Williams with an unjust selection by himself, but with leaving the selection to

his lieutenant, whose declaration that it was so left to him, they say can be

proved.  It is stated particularly that a young man from the country,

uneducated, and who had been with the corps but three months, and had acquired

little there, was lately made an ensign to the prejudice of much superior

qualifications.  His name was mentioned to me but I have forgotten it. justice

to the officers forbids us to give credit to such amputations till proved; but

justice to the corps requires us so far to attend to them as to make them the

subject of inquiry; and I presume this was the object of the communication to

me.  I now mention it to you, because in returning through New York you may

have an opportunity of inquiring into it.  I 'am much more inclined to impute

to the vanity of the lieutenant the declaration he is said to have made, than

to suppose Colonel Williams has really delegated so important a trust to him. 

I salute you with constant affection.







Correspondence                     117











TO MESSRS.  KERR, MOORE, AND WILLIAMS, COMMISSIONERS OF THE WESTERN ROAD.







        MONTICELLO, August 6, 1808.







GENTLEMEN,-It has been represented to me on behalf of the inhabitants of the

town of Washington in Pennsylvania, that by a survey made at their expense, it

is found that the western road, if carried through their town, to Wheeling,

would be but a mile longer, would pass through better ground, and be made at

less expense; and if carried to Short Creek, instead of Wheeling, the

difference of distance would still be less.  The principal object of this road

is a communication directly westwardly.  If, however, inconsiderable

deflections from this course will benefit particular places, and better

accommodate travellers, these are circumstances to be taken into consideration.

 I have therefore to desire that, having a regard to the funds which remain,

you make as good an examination as they will admit, of the best route through

Washington to Wheeling, and also to Short Creek or any other point on the

river, offering a more advantageous route towards Chillicothe and Cincinnati,

and that you report to me the material facts, with your opinions for

consideration.  I salute you with respect.







 



        118                Jefferson's Works



                        so ,







                TO THE        SECRETARY OF THE TREASURY



                        (ALBERT GALLATIN).



                        MONTICELLO, August 6, 1808.



                DEAR SIR,-On        the subject of the western road,







our first error was the admitting a deviation to Brownsville, and thus

suffering a first encroachment on its principle.  This is made a point d'appui

to force a second, and I am told a third holds itself in reserve, so that a few

towns in that quarter seem to consider all this expense as undertaken merely

for their benefit.  I should have listened to these solicitations with more

patience, had it not been for the unworthy motives presented to influence me by

some of those interested.  Sometimes an o position by force was held up,

sometimes electioneering effects, as if I were to barter away, on such motives,

a public trust committed to me for a different object.  It seems, however, that

our first error having made Brownsville, and no longer Cumberland, the point of

departure, we must now go no further back in examining the claim of Washington.

I have therefore written to the commissioners, the letter of which I enclose

you a copy.  The time saved by sending it to them direct, may be important, as

they may be, near their return.  I am doubtful whether they have money enough

left for a thorough examination If they have, their report will enable us to

decide on this second deflection.  But what will Wheeling say if we take the

road from it, to give it to Washington?







        Correspondence                              119







I do not know its size or importance, nor whether some obstacles to navigation

may not oppose our crossing at a higher place.  I salute you with constant

affection.











        TO THE SECRETARY OF WAR







        (HENRY DEARBORN).







        MONTICELLO, August     9, 1808.







DEAR @IR,-Yours of July 27th is received.  It confirms the accounts we receive

from others that the infractions of the embargo in Maine and Massachusetts are

open.  I have removed Pope, of New Bedford, for worse than negligence.  The

collector of Sullivan is on the totter.  The tories of Boston openly threaten

insurrection if their importation of flour is stopped.  The next post will stop

it.  I fear your Governor is not up to the tone of these parricides, and I

hope, on the first symptom of an open opposition of the law by force, you will

fly to the scene and aid in suppressing any commotion.



I enclose you the letter of Captain Dillard, recommending Walter Bourke for

appointment. I know nothing of the writers of any of the letters exceed Thore,

Jones, and Thweat, who are good men.  I like Meigs' scheme with the Cherokees,

and would wish it success.  But will Congress give such a sum of money?  The

message of the Creek Chief is so far satisfactory, that I think we should give

them time.  Could we engage them to assist us in destroying the











        TO GENERAL HENRY DEARBORN.







        MONTICELLO, May 25, 1808.







DEAR SIR,-There is a subject on which I wished to speak with you before I left

Washington; but an apt occasion did not occur.  It is that of your continuance

in office.  Perhaps it is as well to submit











120             Jefferson's Works







guilty banditti?  The letter enclosed from Cuthbert to Mr. Madison, on the

means of taking Quebec, is worthy notice, and I wish you could, before your

return, have an interview with him.  Your office, and receipt of the letter

from me, will give confidence to his communications.  We have letters from Mr.

Pinckney to May 30, but not one word interesting.  Present me respectfully to

Mrs. Dearborn, and accept my affectionate salutations.











        TO, THE SECRETARY OF THE TREASURY







        (ALBERT GALLATIN).







        MONTICELLO, August 9, 1808.



DEAR SIR,-I enclose you, for your information, letters from General Dearborn,

P. D. Sargent, and Elisha Tracey, on the infractions of the embargo, and their

ideas on the means of remedy.



I pass them through the hands of the Secretary of the Navy, with a request that

he will, in concert with you, give all the aid for the enforcement of the law

which his department can afford.  I think the conduct of Jordan, at Sullivan,

should be inquired into, with a view to his removal if found either undisposed

or negligent.  Indeed, the distance of his residence, if it be fact ' renders

it impossible he should even sufficiently superintend the due execution of the

duties of his office.



We have letters from Mr. Pinckney of the 30th of May, but containing not one

interesting word.  If







        Correspondence                      121







England should be disposed to continue peace with us, and Spain gives to

Bonaparte the occupation she promises, will not the interval be favorable for

our reprisals on the Floridas for the indemnifications withheld?  Before the

meeting of Congress we shall see further.  I salute you with affection and

respect.











        TO THE SECRETARY OF THE NAVY







        (JACOB CROWNINSHIELD).







        MONTICELLO, August 9, 1808.







        DEAR SIR,-







I have some apprehension the tories of Boston, etc., with so poor a head of a

Governor, may attempt to give us trouble.  I have requested General Dearborn to

be on the alert, and fly to the spot where any open and forcible opposition

shall be commenced, and to crush it in embryo.  I am not afraid but that there

is sound matter enough in Massachusetts to prevent an opposition of the laws by

force.  I am glad to see that Spain is likely to give Bonaparte employment. 

Tant mieux pour nous.  Accept affectionate salutations.







        TO ALBERT GALLATIN.



        MONTICELLO, August 11, 1808.



        DEAR SIR,-Your letters of July 29th and August



        5th, came to hand yesterday, and I now return you



        those of Wynne, Wolsey, Quincy, Otis, Lincoln, and







 



122           Jefferson's Works







Dearborn.  This embargo law is certainly the most embarrassing one we have ever

had to execute.  I did not expect a crop of so sudden and rank growth of fraud

and open opposition by force could have grown up in the United States.  I am

satisfied with you that if orders and decrees are not repealed, and a

continuance of the embargo is preferred to war, (which sentiment is universal

here,) Congress must legalize all means which may be necessary to obtain its

end.  Mr. Smith, in enclosing to me General Dearborn's and Lincoln's letters,

informs me that immediately on receiving them he gave the necessary orders to

the Chesapeake, the Wasp and Argus.  Still I shall pass this letter and those

it encloses, through his hands for information.  I am clearly of opinion this

law ought to be enforced at any expense, which may not exceed our

appropriation.  I approve of the instructions to General Lincoln, for selling

the revenue cutter there and buying another, and also of what you propose at

New London and Portsmouth, and generally I wish you to do as to the revenue

cutters what you shall think best, without delaying it to hear from me.  You

possess the details so much better than I do, and are so much nearer the

principal scenes, that my approbation can be but matter of form.  As to

ordering out militia, you know the difficulty without another proclamation.  I

advise Mr. Madison to inform General Turreau that the vessels we allow to the

foreign ministers are only in the character of trans-







        Correspondence                    123







ports, and that they cannot be allowed but where the number of persons bears

the proportion to the vessel which is usual with transports.  You will see by

my last that on learning the situation of affairs in Spain, it had occurred to

me that it might produce a favorable occasion of doing ourselves justice in the

south.  We must certainly so dispose of our southern recruits and armed vessels

as to be ready for the occasion.  A letter of June 5th from Mr. Pinckney says

nothing more than that in a few days he was to have a full conference on our

affairs with Mr. Canning.  That will doubtless produce us immediately an

interesting letter from him.  I salute you affectionately.







        P.        S. I this day direct a commission for General Steele, vice

General Shee, deceased.











        TO THE SECRETARY OF THE NAVY







        (JACOB CROWNINSHIELD).



        MONTICELLO, August I 2, 1808.



DEAR SIR,-Yours Of July 30th came to hand yesterday.  It has consequently

loitered somewhere two posts.  I am glad to learn the prompt aid you have

afforded the Treasury department.  To let you further understand the importance

of giving all the aid we can, I pass through your hands my letter of this day

to Mr. Gallatin, with those it encloses, which I will pray you, after perusal,

to seal and put into







 



        124        Jefferson's Works















the post-office.  In the support of the embargo laws, our only limit should be

that of the appropriations of the department.  A letter of June 5th from Mr.

Pinckney informs us he was to have a free conference with Canning, in a few

days.  Should England get to rights with us, while Bonaparte is at war with

Spain, the moment may be favorable to take possession of our own territory held

by Spain, and so much more as may make a proper reprisal for her spoliations. 

We ought therefore to direct the rendezvous of our southern recruits and

gunboats so as to be in proper position for striking the stroke in an instant,

when Congress shall will it.  I have recommended this to General Dearborn, as I

now do to yourself.  Mr. Fulton writes to me under a great desire to prepare a

decisive experiment of his torpedo at Washington, for the meeting of Congress. 

This means of harbor-defence has acquired such respectability, from its

apparent merit, from the attention shown it by other nations, and from our own

Experiments at New York, as to entitle it to a full experiment from us.  He

asks only two workmen for one month from us, which he estimates at $130 only. 

But should it cost considerably more I should really be for granting it, and

would accordingly recommend it to you.  This sum is a mere trifle as an

encroachment on our appropriation.  I salute you with affection and respect.















        Correspondence              125







        TO THE SECRETARY OF WAR







        (HENRY DEARBORN).







        MONTICELLO, August 12, 1808.







DEAR SIR,-Yours Of July 27th has been received.  I now enclose you the letters

of Hawkins, Harris(,n, Wells, Hull, and Claiborne, received from the War

Office, and as I conjecture, not yet seen by you.   Indian appearances, both in

the northwest and south, are well.  Beyond the Mississippi they are not so

favorable.  I fear Governor Lewis has been too prompt in committing us with the

Osages so far as to oblige us to go on.  But it is astonishing we get not one

word from him.  I enclose you letters of Mr. Griff and Maclure, which will

explain themselves.  A letter of June 5th from Mr. Pinckney, informs us he was

to have a free conference with Canning in a few days.  Should England make up

with us, while Bonaparte continues at war with Spain, a moment may occur when

we may without danger of commitment with either France or England seize to our

own limits of Louisiana as of right, and the residue of the Floridas as

reprisal for spoliations.  It is our duty to have an eye to this in

rendezvousing and stationing our new recruits and our armed vessels, so as to

be ready, if Congress authorizes it, to strike in a moment.  I wish you to

consider this matter in the orders to the southern recruits, as I have also

recommended to the Secretary of the Navy, as to the armed vessels in the South.

 Indeed, I would ask your







 



126            Jefferson's Works







opinion as to the positions we had better take with a view to this with our

armed vessels as well as troops.  The force in the neighborhood of Baton Rouge

is enough for that.  Mobile, Pensacola and St. Augustine, are those we should

be preparing for.  The enforcing the embargo would furnish a pretext for taking

the nearest healthy position to St. Marv's, and on the waters of Tombigbee.  I

salute you with affection and respect.











        TO THE SECRETARY OF STATE







        (JAMES MADISON).







        MONTICELLO, August       12, 1808.







DEAR SIR,-YOURS of the 10th came to hand yesterday, and I return you Fronda's,

Tuft's, Soderstrom's, and Turreau's letters.  I think it is become necessary to

let Turreau understand explicitly that the vessels we permit foreign ministers

to send away are merely transports, for the conveyance of such of their

subjects as were here at the time of the embargo; that the numbers must be

proportioned to the vessels, as is usual with transports; and that all who

meant to go away must be presumed to have gone before now,-at any rate, that

none will be accommodated after the present vessel.  We never can allow one

belligerent to buy and fit out vessels here, to be manned with his own people,

and probably act against the other.  You did not return my answer to Sullivan. 

But fortunately I have received another







        Correspondence                   127







letter, which will enable me to give the matter an easier turn, and let it down

more softly.  Should the conference announced in Mr. Pinckney's letter of June

5th, settle friendship between England and -us, and Bonaparte continue at war

with Spain, a moment may occur favorable, without compromitting us with either

France or England, for seizing our own from the Rio Bravo to Perdido, as of

right, and the residue of Florida, as a reprisal for spoliations.  I have

thought it proper to suggest this possibility to General Dearborn and Mr.

Smith, and to recommend an eye to it in their rendezvousing and stationing the

new southern recruits and gun-. boats, so that we may strike in a moment when

Congress says so.  I @ave appointed General Steele successor to Shee.  Mr. and

Mrs. Barlow, and Mrs. Blayden, will be here about the 25th.  May we hope to see

Mrs. Madison and yourself then, or when?  I shall go to Bedford about the 10th

of September.  I salute you with constant affection and respect.











TO HIS EXCELLENCY GOVERNOR JAMES SULLIVAN.







        MONTICELLO, August 12, 1808.







SIR,-YOUR letter Of July 21st has been received some days; that of July 23d not

till yesterday.  Some accident had probably detained it on the road

considerably beyond its regular passage.  In the former you mention that you

had thought it advisable to continue issuing certificates for the importation

of







128            Jefferson's Works







flour, until you could hear further from me; and in the latter, that you will

be called from the Capital in the fall months, after which it is your desire

that the power of issuing certificates may be given to some other, if it is to

be continued.



In mine of July 16th I had stated that, during the two months preceding that,

your certificates, received at the Treasury, amounted, if I rightly recollect,

to about 60,000 barrels of flour, and a proportionable quantity of corn.  If

this whole quantity had been bona fide landed and retained in Massachusetts, I

deemed it certain there could not be a real want for a considerable time, and,

therefore, desired the issues of certificates might be discontinued.  If, on

the other hand, a part has been carried to foreign markets, it proves the

necessity of restricting reasonably this avenue to abuse.  This is my sole

object, and not that a real want of a single individual should be one day

unsupplied.  In this I am certain we shall have the concurrence of all the good

citizens of Massachusetts, who are too patriotic and too just to desire, by

calling for what is superfluous, to open a door for the frauds of unprincipled

individuals who, trampling on the laws, and forcing a commerce shut to all

others, are enriching themselves on the sacrifices of their honester fellow

citizens;-sacrifices to which these are generally and willingly submitting, as

equally necessary whether to avoid or prepare for war.



        Still further, however, to secure the State against







        Correspondence                     129







all danger of want, I will request you to continue issuing certificates, in the

moderate way proposed in your letter, until your departure from the Capital, as

before stated, when I will consider it as discontinued, or make another

appointment if necessary.  There is less risk of inconvenience in this, as, by

a letter from the Secretary of the Treasury, of May 20th, the collectors were

advised not to detain any vessel, the articles of whose lading were so

proportioned as to give no cause of suspicion that they were destined for a

foreign market.  This mode of supply alone seems to have been sufficient for

the other importing States, if we may judge from the little use they have made

of the permission to issue certificates.



Should these reasonable precautions be followed, as is surmised in your letter

of July 21st, by an artificial scarcity, with a view to promote turbulence of

any sort or on any pretext, I trust for an ample security against this danger

to the character of my fellow citizens of Massachusetts, which has, I think,

been emphatically marked by obedience to law, and a love of order.  And I have

no doubt that whilst we do our duty, they will support us in it.  The laws

enacted by the general government, will have made it our duty to have the

embargo strictly observed, for the general good; and we are sworn to execute

the laws.  If clamor ensue, it will be from the few only, who will clamor

whatever we do.  I shall be happy to receive the estimate promised by







 



        130             Jefferson's Works







        your Excellency, as it may assist to guide us in the cautions we may

find necessary.  And here I will beg leave to recall your attention to a mere

error of arithmetic in your letter Of July 23d.  The quantity of flour

requisite on the data there given, would be between thirteen and fourteen

thousand barrels per month.  I beg you to accept my salutations, and assurances

of high respect and consideration.











        TO ROBERT FULTON.







        MONTICELLO, August 15, 1808.



        SIR,-Immediately on the receipt of your letter of the 5th, I wrote to

the Secretary of the Navy, recommending a compliance with your request of the

workmen.  Although no public servant could justify the risking the safety of an

important seaport, solely on untried means of defence, yet I have great

confidence in those proposed by you as additional to the ordinary means.  Their

small cost, too, in compar' son with the object, ought to overrule those

rigorous attentions to keep within the limits of our appropriations, which have

probably weighed with the Secretary in declining the proposition.  You are

sensible, too, that harassed as the offices are daily by the visions of unsound

heads, even those solid inventions destined to better our condition, feel the

effects of being grouped with them.  Wishing every success to your experiment,

I salute you with esteem and respect.







Correspondence                      131







TO ISRAEL SMITH.







        MONTICELLO, August 15, 1808.



        SIR,-L this moment receive your favor of the 12th, with Captain

Saunders' letter on the acquisition of a site for a battery at Norfolk.  I

think that, instead of acceding to the proposition to take the whole three

acres at $1,500, it will be better to accept the other alternative of Mr.

Thompson, to have the ground valued by proper persons.  In this case, too, it

should be attempted to restrain the purchase to the half acre, as desired by

the Secretary of War, but if the owner insists on selling the whole or none,

the whole should be taken rather than let the works of defence be delayed.  You

will be pleased to give instructions accordingly.



        The despatches hitherto received at the War Office, and forwarded to

me, I have from time to time sent directly to General Dearborn, on the

presumption they had not vet been seen by him.  If this is wrong, be so good as

to notify me of it.  I return you Captain Saunders' letter, and tender you my

salutations.







TO HIS EXCELLENCY GOVERNOR DANIEL D. TOMPKINS.



                MONTICELLO, August 15, 1808.



        SIR,-I have this day received your Excellency's favor of the 9th

instant, and I now return you the papers it enclosed.  The case of opposition

to the embargo laws on the Canada line, I take to be that







 



132            Jefferson's Works







of distinct combinations of a number of individuals to oppose by force and arms

the execution of those laws, for which purpose they go armed, fire upon the

public guards, in one instance at least have wounded one dangerously, and

rescue property held under these laws.  This may not be an insurrection in the

popular sense of the word, but being arrayed in war-like manner, actually

committing acts of war, and persevering systematically in defiance of the

public authority, brings it so fully within the legal definition of an

insurrection, that I should not hesitate to issue a proclamation, were I not.

restrained by motives of which your Excellency seems to be apprised.  But as by

the laws of New York an insurrection can be acted on without a previous

proclamation, I should conceive it perfectly correct to act on it as such, and

I cannot doubt it would be approved by every good citizen.  Should you think

proper to do so, I will undertake that the necessary detachments of militia

called out in support of the laws, shall be considered as in the service of the

United States, and at their expense.  And as it has been intimated to me that

you would probably take the trouble of going to the spot yourself, I will refer

to your discretion the measures to be taken, and the numbers to be called out

at different places, only saying, as duty requires me to fix some limit, that

the whole must not exceed five hundred men without further consulting me. 

Should you be willing to take the trouble of going to the place, you will

render







        Correspondence                     133







a great public service, as I am persuaded your presence there will be such a

manifestation of the public determination to support the authority of the laws,

as will probably deter the insurgents from pursuing their course.  I think it

so important in example to crush these audacious proceedings, and to make the

offenders feel the consequences of individuals daring to oppose a law by force,

that no effort should be spared to compass this object.  As promptitude is

requisite, and the delay of consulting me on details at this distance might

defeat our views, I would rather, where you entertain doubts, that you would

satisfy yourself by conference with the Secretary of the Treasury, who is with

you, and to whom our general views are familiar.  I salute you with esteem and

high respect.



        TO THE SECRETARY OF THE TREASURY



        (ALBERT GALLATIN).







        MONTICELLO, August 15, 1808.







DEAR SIR,-Yours of the 6th and 9th, are just now received, as well as a letter

from Governor Tompkins on the subject of aiding the revenue officers on the

Canada line with militia.  I refer you on this subject to my answer to him, and

pray you to encourage strongly his going to the spot himself, and acting

according to the urgencies which will present themselves there.  Should you

have satisfactory evidence of either mala fides or negli-







 



134            Jefferson's Works







        gence in Pease, he shall be removed without ceremony.  I do not know

the residence of Greene of Massachusetts.  The opinion you have given in the

case stated by Ellery is-certainly correct.  No civil officer of the States can

take cognizance of a federal case.  Considering our determination to let no

more vessels go so far as the Cape of Good Hope, I see nothing in the case of

the brig Resolution, Craycroft, to justify a change of the rule, and therefore

cannot consent to a vessel's being sent there.  The case of the Chinese

Mandarin is so entirely distinct, that it can give no ground for this claim. 

The opportunity hoped from that, of making known through one of its own

characters of note, our nation, our circumstances and character, and of letting

that government understand at length the difference between us and the English,

and separate us in its policy, rendered that measure a diplomatic one in my

view, and likely to bring lasting advantage to our merchants and commerce with

that country.



        I enclose you the rough draught of a letter I have written to Governor

Sullivan, in answer to two of his.  It was done on consultation with Mr.

Madison.



        I informed you in mine of the 11th that I had directed a commission for

General Steele as successor to Shee.  This was certainly according to what had

been agreed upon at Washington, the event of Shee's death being then foreseen

and made the subject of consultation with yourself, Mr. Rodney, and, I believe,

Mr. Madison.  The call for the militia from







        Correspondence                      135







        all the States having been agreed on in April, I have taken for granted

it was going on.  I will look to it, as also to the fortifications of New York.

 I salute you with affection and respect.







        TO GOVERNOR W.  C. C. CLAIBORNE.



        MONTICELLO, August 16, 1808.



        SIR,-General Dearborn being on a visit to the province of Maine, your

letter to him (the date, not recollected) was sent to me from his office, and,

after perusal, was forwarded to him.  As the case of the five Alabamas, under

prosecution for the murder of a white man, may not admit delay, if a conviction

takes place, I have thought it necessary to recommend to you in that case to

select the leader, or most guilty, for execution, and to reprieve the others

till a copy of the judgment can be forwarded, and a pardon sent you; in the

meantime letting them return to their friends, with whom you will of course

take just merit for this clemency, our wish being merely to make them sensible

by the just punishment of one, that our citizens are not to be murdered or

robbed with impunity.



        I have learnt with real mortification that the engineers successively

appointed, have withdrawn from their undertaking to carry on the defensive

works of New Orleans.  It is more regretted as capable persons in that line are

more difficult to be got, and it takes so long for the information to come

here, and







 



136            Jefferson's Works







        the place to be supplied.  Two other persons applied to here have

declined going.  Whether General Dearborn has at length been able to engage one

I am not informed.  I fear that these disappointments will lose us the season

in a work which more than any other it was my desire to have had completed this

year.  Certainly these losses of time shall be shortened by us as far as is in

our power.  I salute you with esteem and respect.







TO THE SECRETARY OF THE TREASURY (ALBERT GALLATIN).







        MONTICELLO, August 19, 1808.



        DEAR SIR,-Yours of August 3d, which ought to have been here on the 8th,

was not received till yesterday.  It has loitered somewhere, therefore, ten

days, during which three mails have been received.  I proceed to its contents.



        Somes's case.  The rule agreed to at our meeting of June 30th was

general, that no permissions should be granted for Europe, Asia, or Africa, and

there is nothing in Somes's case to entitle it to exemption from the rule, more

than will be found in every case that shall occur; as a precedent then, it

would be a repeal of the rule, and in fact of the embargo law.  He might have

sent his proofs to Malta through England, either by the British packets or by

our avisos.  If he has not done it, and cannot now do it. it is his fault; the

permission therefore must be refused.







        Correspondence                     137







        Coquerel's case. 1.  The question whether he had a right to expect a

permit is against him.  None in writing was given; no note or memorandum on any

paper is found warranting the fact, nor is there even any trace of it in the

memory of the collector.  On what evidence then does it rest?  Merely on the

words of the owner and captain that the language of the collector conveyed an

impression on them that they were to have a permit; but we well know where this

sort of evidence would land us.



        2d. But suppose we had had a positive or written permission, why was it

not used?  Could it be believed to be good for this year, next year, or ten

years hence?  The reason of the thing must have shown to every one that it was

good under existing circumstances only, and might become null if not used till

these were changed.  But the written notification of August 1st, giving a final

day, annuls all permits after that day; and not a single circumstance is stated

which entitles them to a prolongation of the time, which would not entitle

every other, and consequently repeal the limitation of time and the law.  I see

no ground, therefore, for relieving him from the operation of the rule.







        I enclose you a letter from a Mr. Ithomel to the Secretary of the Navy.

 I know not who he is, perhaps an officer of the navy.  This is the second

letter he has written, expressing his belief that there is ground to apprehend

insurgency in Massachusetts,







 



138              Jefferson's Works







Neither do I know his politics, which might also be a key to his apprehensions.

 That the federalists



may attempt insurrection is possible, and also that



the Governor would sink before it.  But the republican part of the State, and

that portion of the federalists who approve the embargo in their judgments, and

at any rate would not court mob-law, would crush it in embryo.  I have some

time ago written to General Dearborn to be on the alert on such an occasion,

and to take direction of the public authority on the spot.  Such an incident

will rally the whole body of republicans of every shade to a single point,

-that of supporting the public authority.  Be so good as to return the letter

to Mr. Smith.  He informs me he has left to yourself and Commander Rogers to

order whatever gunboats you think can be spared from New York to aid the

embargo law.  If enough be left there or near there, to preserve order in the

harbor, or to drive out a single ship of, force, it would be sufficient in the

present tranquil state of things.



The principle of our indulgence of vessels to foreign ministers was, that it

was fair to let them send away I all their subjects caught here by the embargo,

and who had no other means of getting away.



General Turreau says there are fifteen hundred French sailors,-deserters, here,

many of whom wish to go home.  I have desired Mr. Madison to inform him that

the tonnage permitted must be proportioned to the numbers, according to the

rules







        Correspondence                      139







in transport service.  On this ground, I do not know that we can do wrong.  We

have nothing yet from Pinckney or Armstrong.  But the first letter from the

former must be so.  I salute you with affection and respect.











        TO THE SECRETARY OF WAR







        (HENRY DEARBORN).



        MONTICELLO, August 20, 1808.







DEAR SIR,-I enclose you a letter of July 1st, from Governor Lewis, received

from the War Office by the last post.  It presents a full, and not a pleasant,

view of our Indian affairs west of the Mississippi.  As the punishment of the

Osages has been thought necessary, the means employed appear judicious.  First,

to draw off the friendly part of the nation, and then, withdrawing the

protection of the United States, leave the other tribes free to take their own

satisfaction of them for their own wrongs.  I think we may go further, without

actually joining in the attack.  The greatest obstacle to the Indian,,,; acting

in large bodies, being the difficulty of getting provisions, we might supply

them, and ammunition also, if necessary.  I hope the Governor will be able to

settle with the Sacs and Foxes without war, to which, however, he seems too

much committed.  If we had gone to war for every bunter or trader killed, and

murderer refused, we should have had general and constant war.  The process to

be, followed, in my







 



140              Jefferson's Works







opinion, when a murder has been committed, is first to demand the murderer, and

not regarding a first refusal to deliver, give time and press it.  If

perseveringly refused, recall all traders, and interdict commerce with them,

until he be delivered.  I believe this would rarely fail in producing the

effect desired; and we have seen that, by steadily following this line, the

tribes become satisfied of our moderation, justice, and friendship to them, and

become firmly attached to us.  The want of time to produce these dispositions

in the Indians west of the Mississippi, has been the cause of the Kanzas, the

Republican, the Great and the Wolf Panis, the Matas, and Poncaras, adhering to

the Spanish interest against us.  But if we use forbearance, and open commerce

for them, they will come to, and give us time to attach them to us.  In the

meantime, to secure our frontiers against their hostility, I would allow

Governor Lewis the three companies of spies, and military stores he desires. 

We are so distant, and he so well acquainted with the business, that it is

safest for our citizens there and for ourselves, after enjoining him to pursue

our principles, to permit him to select the means.  The factories proposed on

the Missouri and Mississippi, as soon as they can be in activity, will have

more effect than as many armies.  It is on their interests we must rely for

their friendship, and not on their fears.  With the establishment of these

factories, we must prohibit the British from appearing westward of the

Mississippi,and southward of







        Correspondence                     141







logarithm degree; we must break up all their factories on this side the

Mississippi, west of Lake Michigan; not permit them to send out individual

traders to the Indian towns, but require all their commerce to be carried on at

their factories,-putting our own commerce under the same regulations, which

will take away all ground of complaint.  In like manner, I think well of

Governor Lewis' proposition to carry on all our commerce west of the

Mississippi, at fixed points; licensing none but stationary traders residing at

these points; and obliging the Indians to come to the commerce, instead of

sending it to them.  Having taken this general view of the subject, which I

know is nearly conformable to your own, I leave to yourself the detailed answer

to Governor Lewis, and salute you with constant affection and respect.











        TO GOVERNOR MERIWETHER LEWIS.







        MONTICELLO, August 21, 1809.







        DEAR SIR,-Your letter to General Dearborn, of July 1st, was not

received at the War Office till a few days ago, was forwarded to me, and after

perusal sent on to General Dearborn, at present in Maine.  As his official

answer will be late in getting to you, I have thought it best, in the meantime,

to communicate to yourself, directly, ideas in conformity with those I have

expressed to him, and with the principles o -n which we have conducted Indian

affairs.  I regret







 



142            Jefferson's Works







        that it has been found necessary to come to open rupture with the

Osages, but, being so, I approve of the course you have pursued,-that of

drawing off the friendly part of the nation,-withdrawing from the rest the

protection of the United States, and permitting the other nations to take their

own satisfaction for the wrongs they complain of.  I have stated to General

Dearborn. that I think we may go further, and as the principal obstacle to the

Indians acting in large bodies, is the want of provisions, we might supply that

want, and ammunition also, if they need it. With the Sacs and Foxes I hope you

will be able to settle amicably, as nothing ought more to be avoided than the

embarking ourselves in a system of military coercion on the Indians.  If we do

this, we



        When a







shall have general and perpetual war. murder has been committed on one of our

stragglers, the murderer should be demanded.  If not delivered, give time, and

still press the demand.  We find it difficult, with our regular government, to

take and punish a murderer of an Indian.  Indeed, I believe we have never been

able to do it in a single instance.  They have their difficulties also, and

require time.  In fact, it is a case where indulgence on both sides is just and

necessary, to prevent the two nations from being perpetually committed in war,

by the acts of the most vagabond and ungovernable of their members.  When the

refusal to deliver the murderer is permanent, and proceeds from the want of

will, and not of ability, we should then interdict all trade and







        Correspondence                      143







        intercourse with them till they give us complete satisfaction. 

Commerce is the great engine by which we are to coerce them, and not war.  I

know this will be less effectual on this side the Mississippi, where 1 1







they can have recourse to the British; but this will



        iv     1







        not be a long-I' ed evil.  By this forbearing conduct 1







towards the Mississippian Indians for seven years past, they are become

satisfied of our justice and moderation towards them, that we have no desire of

injuring them, but, on the contrary, of doing them all the good offices we can,

and they are become sincerely attached to us; and this disposition, beginning

with the nearest, has spread and is spreading itself to the more remote, as

fast as they have opportunities of understanding our conduct.  The Sacs and

Foxes, being distant, have not yet come over to us.  But they are on the

balance.  Those on this side the Mississippi, will soon be entirely with us, if

we pursue our course steadily.  The Osages, Kanzas, the Republican, Great

and-Wolf Panis, Matas, Poncaras, etc., who are inclined to the Spaniards, have

not yet had time to know our dispositions.  But if we use forbearance, and open

commerce with them, they will come to, and give us time to attach them to us. 

In the meantime, to secure our frontiers, I have expressed myself to General

Dearborn in favor of the three companies of spies, and the military supplies

you ask for.  So, also, in the having established factories, at which all the

traders shall be stationary, allowing none to be itinerant, further than

indis--







 



144            Jefferson's Works







pensable circumstances shall require.  As soon as







our factories on the Missouri and Mississippi can be in activity, they will

have more powerful effects than so many armies.  With respect to the British,

we shall take effectual steps to put an immediate stop to their crossing the

Mississippi, by the severest measures.  And I have proposed to General Dearborn

to break up all their factories within our limits on this side the Mississippi,

to let them have them only at fixed points, and suppress all itinerant traders

of theirs, as well as our own.  They have, by treaty, only an equal right of

commerce with ourselves, the regulations of which on our side of the line

belong to us, as that on their side belongs to them.  All that can be required

is that these regulations be equal.  These are the general views which, on the

occasion of your letter, I have expressed to General Dearborn.  I reserve

myself for consultation with him, and shall be very glad to receive your

sentiments also on the several parts of them, after which we may decide on the

modifications which may be approved.  In the meantime you will probably receive

from him an answer to your letter, till which this communication of my

sentiments may be of some aid in determining your own course of







proceeding.                     9



Your friends here are all well, except Colonel Lewis, who has declined very

rapidly the last few months.  He scarcely walks about now, and never beyond his

yard.  We can never lose a better man.  I salute ,You with affection and

respect.







        Correspondence                     145



        TO THE HONORABLE LEVI LINCOLN.







        MONTICELLO, August 22, 1808.







        apprised that in order







        DEAR   SIR,-You are not un



to check the evasions of the embargo laws effected under color of the coasting

trade, we found it necessary to prevent the transportation of flour coastwise,

except to the States not making enough for their own consumption, and that to

place the supplies of these States under some check, a discretionary power was

given to the Governors to give licenses to the amount of what they deemed the

necessary importation.  By a subsequent regulation, the collectors were advised

not to detain suspicious vessels, the articles of whose cargoes were so

proportioned as not to excite suspicion of fraudulent intentions; and

particularly where not more than one-eighth in value was provisions.  This last

regulation has operated so well that in the other importing States

(Massachusetts excepted) little or no use has been made of the power of giving

special licenses.  But the licenses of Massachusetts, in the first two months,

having amounted to 60,000 barrels of flour, the quantity was so much beyond

their consumption, that it was suspected the licenses were fraudulently

perverted to cover exportation.  I therefore requested Governor Sullivan to

discontinue issuing them, as, if the whole quantity was landed and retained in

the State, it could not want for some time, and if exported, it showed we ought

to guard that







 



146             Jefferson's Works







avenue to fraud.  He apprised me, however, by letter, of circumstances which

induced him to continue a moderated issue of licenses till he could hear from

me, and I approved of his doing so till he should leave the capital, which he

informed me he should do in the fall, when, if the power were to be continued,

he wished it to be put into other hands, as his absence would prevent his

exercising it.  On this ground the matter now rests.  He supposes that about

ninety thousand persons in the State subsist on imported flour, which, at a

pound a day, would require between thirteen and fourteen thousand barrels a

month.  Certainly it is not my- wish that the want of a single individual

should be unsupplied a single day; and I presume the well-affected citizens of

Massachusetts would -not wish, by importing a superfluous stock, to open a door

for defeating a law judged by the national authorities necessary for the public

good, and cheerfully submitted to elsewhere in the union.  The question is,

whether, after so great importations, the permission to all coasting vessels to

take one-eighth in provisions will not supply the State?  On this subject I ask

your friendly information.  If it will not, then I must request your

undertaking to issue licenses, on the departure of the Governor, to such

characters as you may not suspect would make a fraudulent use of them.  The

power will, with propriety, devolve on you, on the Governor's declining it. 

You stand next in the confidence, of the State, and certainly second to no







        Correspondence                      147







one in my confidence.  I will therefore ask from you a full communication of

facts, and your opinions on this subject, with an entire disposition on my part

to do whatever, consistently with my duty, I can do to obviate difficulties.  I

pray you to be assured of my constant esteem and attachment.











        TO GOVERNOR MERIWETHER LEWIS.







        MONTICELLO, August 24, 1808.



Dear Sir,-My letter of August 21st being gone to the post-office, I write this

as a supplement, which will be in time to go by the same post.  Isham Lewis

arrived here last night and tells me he was with you at St. Louis about the

second week in July, and consequently, after your letter of the 1st of that

month, that four Iowas had been delivered up to you as guilty of the murder

which had been charged to the Sacs and Foxes, and that you supposed three of

them would be hung.  It is this latter matter which induces me to write again.



As there was but one white murdered by them, I should be averse to the

execution of more than one of them, selecting the most guilty and worst

character.  Nothing but extreme criminality should induce the execution of a

second, and nothing beyond that.  Besides their idea that justice allows only

man for man, that all beyond that is new aggression, which must be expiated by

a new sacrifice of an equivalent number of our people, it is our great object







 



        148             Jefferson's Works







        to impress them with a firm persuasion that all our dispositions

towards them are fatherly; that if we take man for man, it is not from a thirst

for blood or revenge, but as the smallest measure necessary to correct the

evil, and that though all concerned are guilty, and have forfeited their lives

by our usages, we do not wish to spill their blood as long as there can be a

hope of their future good conduct.  We may make a merit of restoring the others

to their friends and their nation, and furnish a motive for obtaining a sincere

attachment.  There is the more reason for this moderation, as we know we cannot

punish any murder which shall be committed by us on them.  Even if the murderer

can be taken, our juries have never yet convicted the murderer of an Indian. 

Should these Indians be- convicted, I would wish you to deliver UP to their

friends at once, those whom you select for pardon, and not to detain them in

confinement until a pardon can be actually sent you.  That shall be forwarded

to you as soon as you shall send me a copy of the judgment on which it shall be

founded.







        I am uneasy hearing nothing from you about the Mandan chief, nor the

measures for restoring him to his country.  That is an object which presses on

our justice and our honor, and further than that I suppose a severe punishment

of the Ricaras indispensable, taking for it our own time and convenience.  My

letter from Washington asked your opinions on this subject.  I repeat my

salutations of affection and respect.







        Correspondence                      149







        TO THE SECRETARY OF WAR







        (HENRY DEARBORN).







        MONTICELLO, August 25, 1808.







        DEAR SIR,-In my letter of the 15th I informed you that I had authorized

Governor Tompkins to order out such aids of militia on Lake Ontario and the

Canada line, as he should find necessary to enforce the embargo, not exceeding

five hundred, he proposing to repair thither himself to select trusty persons. 

I am now to request that you will have measures taken for their pay,

subsistence, and whatever else is requisite.



        I enclose vou applications for military command in favor of John B.

Livingston and John Murphy, a letter from Governor Hull, and one from Howell

Hern, who seems to have just cause of complaint against Captain Armstead; and I

salute you with affection and respect.











        TO THE SECRETARY OF THE TREASURY



        (ALBERT GALLATIN).



        MONTICELLO, August 26, 1808.



        DEAR SIR,-YOURS of the 17th was received only yesterday.  It ought to

have come by the preceding post.  I mention the delay of your letters, as you

may perhaps know how it happens,







         150        Jefferson's Works







 Smissaert's Case.



        The exportation of these doits was refused before, and I see no reason

for a change of opinion.  They are understood to be private property.  I they

were public, we might on a principle -of comity permit their exportation in

their own or any other foreign vessel.  But comity does not require us to send

our ships and seamen into the mouths of captors.  I am not sufficiently

informed of the conduct of the Batavian government towards our vessels at

present, to derive any motive from that to affect the present case.



        Kettridge's letter, with yours to him and Blake, and Burt's letter, are

now returned.  I am in hopes the successes of our armed vessels will check the

evasions of the embargo.  I have received no letter from Governor Tompkins

since that of the 9th, my answer to which, of the I 5th, contained assurances

which would fully meet any case of militia ordered out by him under five

hundred, as to our answering the expense.  I will write immediately to General

Dearborn to provide pay and subsistence, and will send it open to his chief

clerk at Washington, with instructions to him to take order in it immediately,

to prevent the delay from General Dearborn's absence, I will also write to

General Wilkinson to forward the recruits of New York to the positions you have

named.  Your circular for the North Carolina navigation, and the papers

concerning the







        Correspondence                      151







        Mandarin, are not yet received.  Astor's publication in the Aurora has

sufficiently quieted me on that head.







P.        S. No letter yet from Mr. Pinckney.







        TO        CAPTAIN M'GREGOR.







                MONTICELLO, August 26, 1808.







        SIR,-In answer        to the petition which you delivered me from the

officers of merchant vessels belonging to Philadelphia, I must premise my

sincere regret at the sacrifices which our fellow citizens generally, and the

petitioners in particular, have been obliged to meet by the circumstances of

the times.  We live in an age of affliction, to which the history of nations

presents no parallel.  We have for years been looking on Europe covered with

blood and violence, and seen rapine spreading itself over the ocean.  On this

element it has reached us, and at length in so serious a degree, that the

Legislature of the nation has thought it necessary to withdraw our citizens and

property from it, either to avoid, or to prepare for engaging in the general

contest.  But for this timely precaution, the petitioners and their property

might now have been in the hands of spoilers, who have laid aside all regard to

moral right.  Withdrawing from the greater evil, a lesser one has been

necessarily encountered.  And certainly, could the Legislature have made

provision against this also, I should have







 



        152            Jefferson's Works







        had great pleasure as the instrument of its execution, but it was

impracticable, by any general and just rules, to prescribe in every case the

best resource against the inconveniences of this new situation.  The

difficulties of the crisis will certainly fall with greater pressure on some

descriptions of citizens than on others; and on none perhaps with greater than

our seafaring brethren.  Should any means of alleviation occur within the range

of my duties, I shall with certainty advert to the situation of the

petitioners, and, in availing the nation of their ser vices, aid them with a

substitute for their former occupations.  I salute them and yourself with

sentiments of sincere regard.











        TO THE SECRETARY OF WAR







        (HENRY DEARBORN).







        MONTICELLO, August 27, 1808.







DEAR SIR,-In my letter of yesterday I omitted to enclose that of Hern, which I

now do.  I add to it a newspaper from St. Louis, in which is an account of the

surrender of some Indian murderers.  This paper says there were three or four

whites murdered.  But I think Governor Lewis' letter says but one.  On that

ground I wrote to him to recommend, if they should be convicted, to suffer only

one to be executed, unless there was strong reason for doing more, and to

deliver up the rest to their friends, as a proof of our friendship and desire

not to injure







Correspondence                    153







them.  Mr. Woolsey, our Collector on Champlain, has lately been to Montreal. 

He took much pains to find out the British strength in that quarter, and the

following is what, he says, we may rely on:







        At Montreal        450







        Chambly         80



        St John's         40



        Odle Town         14







        Isle Aux Noix         10



        -







                594







He adds, that 10,000 men will take the whole country to within a league of

Quebec.  I salute you with affection and respect.







        TO THE EMPEROR OF RUSSIA.







        UNITED STATES, August 29, 1808.







GREAT AND GOOD FRIEND AND EMPEROR,-Desirous of promoting useful intercourse and

good understanding between your Majesty's subjects and the citizens of the

United States, and especially to cultivate the friendship of your Majesty, I

have appointed William Short, one of our distinguished citizens, to be in

quality of Minister Plenipotentiarv of the United States, the bearer to you of

assurances of their sincere friendship, and of their desire to maintain with

your Majesty and your subjects the strictest relations of amity and commerce:

he will explain to your Majesty the peculiar position of these States, sepa-







 



154             Jefferson's Works







rated by a wide ocean from the powers of Europe, with interests and pursuits

distinct from theirs, and consequently without the motives or the appetites for

taking part in the associations-or oppositions which a different system of

interests produces among them; he is charged to assure -your Majesty more

particularly of our purpose to observe a faithful neutrality towards the

contending powers, in the war to which your Majesty is a party, rendering to

all the services and courtesies of friendship, and praying for the

reestablishment of peace and right among them; and we entertain an entire

confidence that this just and faithful conduct on the part of the United States

will strengthen the friendly dispositions you have manifested towards them, and

be a fresh motive with so just and magnanimous a sovereign to enforce, by the

high influence of your example, the respect due to the character and the rights

of a peaceable nation.  I beseech you, great and good friend and Emperor, to

give entire credence to whatever he shall say to you on the part of these

States, and most of all when he shall assure you of their cordial esteem and

respect for your Majesty's person and character, praying God always to have you

in his safe and holy keeping.







        TO GENERAL JAMES WILKINSON.



        MONTICELLO, August 30, 1808.



        DEAR GENERAL,-The absence of General Dearborn and his great distance

render it necessary to







        Correspondence                     155







recommend a measure which should regularly go from him, but will not admit of

that delay.  The armed resistance to the embargo laws on the Canada line

induced us at an early period to determine that the new recruits of the

northern States should be rendezvoused there, and I presume you received such

instructions from General Dearborn.  In the meantime we have been obliged to

make several detachments of militia to points on that line.  This is irksome to

them, expensive, troublesome, and less efficacious.  Understanding that there

are three companies of new recruits filled, or nearly filled, at New York, I

must pray you to order these, and indeed all the recruits of the State of New

York, to Sackett's Harbor, Oswegatchie, and Plattsburgh, in equal proportions

to each, in order to support the collectors in the execution of their duties,

and this without any avoidable delay, giving notice to Governor Tompkins of

their march and time of probable arrival at their destination, that he may give

corresponding orders respecting the relief of the militia.  I salute you with

esteem and respect.







        TO THE SECRETARY OF THE TREASURY



        (ALBERT GALLATIN).



        MONTICELLO, August 30, 1808.



        DEAR SIR,-



        Mr. Madison and myself on repeated consultations,



        (and some of the other members of the executive







 



156            Jefferson's Works







expressed the same opinion before they left Washington,) have concluded that

the mission to Petersburgh should not be delayed.  Being special, and not

permanent, the waiting the meeting of the Senate is less important, and, if we

waited, that it could not go till spring, and we know not what this summer and

the ensuing winter may produce.  We think secrecy also important, and that the

mission should be as little known as possible, till it is in Petersburgh, which

could not be, if known to the Senate.  Mr. Short goes therefore in the aviso

from Philadelphia, to be engaged for September I 5th.  He is peculiarly

distressed by sickness at sea, and of course more so the smaller the vessel.  I

think, therefore, the occasion justifies the enlargement of our vessel somewhat

beyond what might be necessary for a mere aviso.  The season, too, by the time

of her return, might render it desirable for safety, which circumstance may be

mentioned in your instructions to the collector, to prevent his suspicions of

the real ground.  I salute you with affection and respect.











        TO THE SECRETARY OF STATE







        (JAMES MADISON).







        MONTICELLO, September 5, 1808.







DEAR SIR,-The last post brought me the counter addresses now enclosed.  That

from Ipswich is signed by about forty persons; the -town meeting which voted

the petition consisted of thirty.  There







        Correspondence                     157







are 500 voters in the place.  The counter address of Boston has 700 signatures.

 The town meeting voting the petition is said to have consisted Of 500.  In the

draught of an answer enclosed, I have taken the occasion of making some

supplementary observations which could not with propriety have been inserted in

the answers to the petitions.  The object is that the two together may present

to our own people the strongest points in favor of the embargo in a short and

clear view.  An eye is also kept on foreign nations, in some of the

observations.  Be so good as to make it what it should be, and return it by the

first post.



        I salute you with constant and sincere affection.







        TO THE SECRETARY OF WAR



        (HENRY DEARBORN).







        MONTICELLO, September 5, 1808.







DEAR SIR,-Yours of August 18th is this moment received, and I forward you a

letter of July 16th, from Governor Lewis, from which you will perceive that the

cloud between us, the Iowas, Foxes, and Sacs, is cleared up.  He says nothing

of the Osages; but I presume their enemies have taken advantage of the

withdrawing our protection from them.  Should you not have issued orders for

the 100,000 men, I believe it may rest till we meet in Washington, under

present appearances, that they may not be wanting.  Mr. Pinckney, in a letter

of June 29th,







 



158              Jefferson's Works



        says, " I had a long interview this morning with Mr. Canning, which has

given me hopes that the object(1) mentioned in your letter of April 30th may be

accomplished, if I should authorize the expectation which the same letter(2)

suggests.  " He adds that he waits for the St. Michael, when he will give the

result and details.  He thinks they will also make acceptable satisfaction for

the Chesapeake.  Proposing to leave this on the 28th, I T)resume I had better

reserve future communications for our meeting at Washington.



        I salute you with constant affection and respect.











        TO THE SECRETARY OF STATE



        (JAMES MADISON).







        MONTICELLO, September         6, 1808.







        DEAR SIR,-I return you Pinckney's letter, the complexion of which I

like.  If they repeal their orders, we must repeal our embargo.  If they make

satisfaction for the Chesapeake, we must revoke our proclamation, and

generalize its operation by a law.  If they keep up impressments, we must

adhere to non-intercourse, manufacturers' and a navigation act.  I enclose for

your perusal a letter of Mr. Short's.  I inform him that any one of the persons

he names would be approved, the government never recogniz-







@#(1) Repeal of the orders of council.@%



@#(2) Repeal of the embargo.@%







        Correspondence                        159







        ing a difference between the two parties of republicans in

Pennsylvania.



        I salute you with constant affection.















        TO WILLIAM SHORT.







        MONTICELLO, September 6, 1808.







        DEAR SIR.-I avail myself of the last moment allowed by the departure of

the post to acknowledge the receipt of your letters of the 27th and 31st

ultimo, and to say in answer to the last, that any one of the three persons you

there propose would be approved as to their politics, for in appointments to

office the government refuses to know any difference between descriptions of

republicans, all of whom are in principle, and co-operate, with the government.

 Biddle we know, and have forged an excellent opinion of him.  His travelling

and exercise in business must have given him advantages.  I am much pleased

with the account you give of the sentiments of the federalists of Philadelphia

as to the embargo, and that they are not in sentiment with the insurgents of

the north.  The papers have lately advanced in boldness and flagitiousness

beyond even themselves.  Such daring and atrocious lies as fill the third and

fourth columns of the third page of the United States Gazette of August 31st,

were never before, I believe, published with impunity in any country.  However,

I have from the beginning determined to submit







 



160             Jefferson's Works







        myself as the subject on whom may be proved the impotency of a free

press in a country like ours, against those who conduct themselves honestly and

enter into no intrigue.  I admit at the same time that restraining the press to

truth, as the present laws do, is the only way of making it useful.  But I have

thought necessary first to prove it can never be dangerous.  Not knowing

whether I shall have another occasion to address you here, be assured that my

sincere affections and wishes for your success and happiness accompany you

everywhere.















        TO THE SECRETARY OF THE TREASURY







        (ALBERT GALLATIN).







        MONTICELLO, September 9, 1808.







        DEAR SIR,-Your two letters of the 2d instant were read yesterday

afternoon, and I now return you Penniman's and Gray's papers, and the New

Orleans petition.  Penniman's conduct deserves marked approbation, and there

should be no hesitation about the expenses reasonably incurred.  If all these

people are convicted, there will be too many to be punished with death.  My

hope is that they will send me full statements of every man's case, that the

most guilty may be marked as examples, and the less so suffer long imprisonment

under reprieves from time to time.







        Correspondence         161







        Packet between Vermont and     Ca@a.







        I do not think this is a time for opening new channels of intercourse

with Canada, and multiplying the means of smuggling, and am therefore against

this proposition.







        Mr.  Gray's Case.







        His late rational and patriotic conduct would merit any indulgence

consistent with our duty; but the reason and the rule against permitting long

voyages at present, are insurmountable obstacles.  It is to be hoped some

circuitous means of sending his proofs can be found.  A vessel may go from

England as well as from here.







        New Orleans Petition.







        You know I have been averse to letting Atlantic flour go to New Orleans

merely that they may have the whitest bread possible.  Without honoring the

motives of the petition, it gives us the fact that there is western flour

enough for the New Orleans market.  I would therefore discourage Atlantic

cargoes to that place.



        I send you the petition of Thomas Beatty for Samuel Glen, of

Londonderry, for permission to load a vessel for Ireland.  Mr. Beatty met me in

the road in one of my daily rides.  I gave his paper a hasty perusal, and,

asking time for consideration, I told him I would enclose it to you, who would

give the answer.  On a more deliberate reading of it, I







 



        162             Jefferson's Works







        see nothing to exempt it from the general rules, according to which you

will be so good as to dispose Of it.







        The cases from Charleston require consideration, and our regular post

gives me, in fact, but one forenoon to answer letters.  I will forward them to

Mr. Theus by our extra post of the 13th.



        I salute you with friendship and respect.











        TO SIMEON THEUS, ESQ.







        MONTICELLO, September 10, 1808.







        SIR,-According to the request of Mr. Gallatin's letter, herewith

enclosed, I have considered the petitions of Grove, Himeley, Everingham, and

Ogier & Turner, referred to me by him, and forward you the decisions for your

government.  They are addressed to yourself directly to avoid unnecessary delay

to the parties by passing them through him, as regularly they should have been.







        Grove's Case.







        Although the circular of the St of July limited no precise day for the

departure of vessels under permits, yet in all such cases, a reasonable time

only is to be understood, such as using due diligence, will suffice for the

object.  Such regulations can never be deemed but as temporary, and especially

in times when the political circumstances governing them are liable to daily

change.  The time between the receipt







        Correspondence                                        163







        at Charleston, of the circulars of July 1st and August 1st, was from

the 19th or 20th of July to the 16th of August,-twenty-seven days; and within

this time Mr. Grove states explicitly that he had prepared and cleared out the

ship Pierce Manning, for the Havana, and. that she would have sailed before the

16th of August but for adverse winds.  Considering, therefore, that the

limitation of departure to the isth of August was not known at Charleston till

the 16th, so that not a moment's warning was given of it there, I think that,

satisfactory proof being exhibited to the collector, that she was ready for

sailing, or even very nearly ready on the 16th of August, she may now be

permitted to depart, on condition that she does depart within such time as the

state of her preparation, somewhat of course relaxed during the suspension, may

in the judgment of the collector render necessary.



        The reasons for originally limiting a day, increased by time require

the exaction of this condition.



        Himeley's Case.







        This petition has no date; but it imports to have been written on the

day of the receipt of the circular of August 1st at Charleston, and

consequently on the 16th of August.  It affirms that the brig Three Brothers,

for Matanzas, then had on board the crew and necessary provisions, and assigns

a probable reason why she could not have been ready sooner.  For the reasons,

and on the conditions stated in







 



164             Jefferson's Works







        Grove's case, (that is to say, on -proof of the facts to the collector,

and her prompt departure,) she ought to have a permit.







        Everingham's Case.







        I put entirely out of sight, as having no bearing on this case,

everything which passed prior to the receipt of the circular of July 1st, and

consider the case as beginning de novo then, and under that circular.  The

petitioner declares expressly that on the publication of that circular, (July

20th,) he used every exertion to prepare the ship Diana for a voyage to the

Havana, and had just prepared her therefor when the circular of August 1st was

received.  The expression just prepared, is not absolutely definite.  It may

respect time or degree.  It implies, however, that she was very nearly, if not

quite, prepared.  And if the collector receives satisfactory proof that he was

nearly prepared, although she might not be in absolute readiness at the first

moment of receiving the warning, and on the conditions stated in Grove's case.



        The case of the schooner James is very different.  The petitioner only

states that he had applied to the collector, and obtained leave prior to August

1st, - had begun to use exertions, etc., and had ordered her to be careened and

graved, etc., when the circular of August 1st arrived, to wit, August 16th,

twenty-seven days had therefore intervened, and nothing more than an order

given to careen.  In the other cases we have seen that the twenty-seven days

were







        Correspondence                      165







        sufficient to be in a state of actual readiness, even where a part of

the loading was to be sent for from another State.  No permit, therefore, can

be granted in this case.







        Ogier & Turner's Case.







        The petitioners state that Ogier had time, after the receipt of the

circular of July 1st, to prepare and despatch one vessel; but that they were

only preparing other vessels when the second circular was received, to wit,

August 16th, whereupon the collector refused to let them despatch the vessels

which they had been preparing as aforesaid.  A due diligence then having

enabled them to despatch one vessel in the twenty-seven days, a like diligence,

had it been used, might have despatched others.  But from the . tenor of their

petition, the preparations of the others seem to have been merely incipient,

and not near completion.  They have consequently lost the claims on that equity

which extends relief against rigorous rules, where due exertions have been used

to fulfil them, and have been defeated only by accidental and unavoidable want

of notice.  They are not entitled to permits in this case.







        TO THE SECRETARY OF STATE



        (JAMES MADISON).



        MONTICELLO, September 13, 1808.



        DEAR SIR,-I send you a letter of Short's for peru-



        sal, and one of Edgar Patterson, asking what is.







 



166            Jefferson's Works







        already I presume provided for, and one of General Armstrong, which I

do not well understand, because I do not recollect the particular letter which

came by Haley.  I presume the counsel he refers to is to take possession of the

Floridas.  This letter of June 15th is written after the cession by Carlos to

Bonaparte of all his dominions, when he supposed England would at once pounce

on the Floridas as a prey, or Bonaparte occupy it as a neighbor.  His next,

will be written after the people of Spain will have annihilated the cession,

England become the protector of Florida, and Bonaparte without title or means

to plant himself there as our neighbor.



        Ought I to answer such a petition as that of Rowley?  The people have a

right to petition, but not to use that right to cover calumniating

insinuations.



        Turreau writes like Armstrong so much in the buskin, that he cannot

give a naked fact in an intelligible form.  I do not know what it is he asks

for.  If a transport or transports to convey sailors, there has been no

refusal; and if any delay of answer, I presume it can be explained.  If he

wishes to buy vessels here, man them with French seamen, and send them

elsewhere, the breach of neutrality would be in permitting, not in refusing it.

 But have we permitted this to England?  His remedy is easy in every case. 

Repeal the decrees.  I presume our Fredericksburg rider need riot come after

hi@ next trip.  I salute you affectionately.







        Correspondence                   167







        TO THE SECRETARY OF THE NAVY



        (JACOB CROWNINSHIELD).







        MONTICELLO, September 16, 1808.







        DEAR SIR,@YOU Will perceive by the enclosed papers that an aggression

has been committed on the Spanish territory by, (if I understand the case,)

both our land and sea officers.  I enclose the papers to you that the necessary

orders may be given in your department, and the papers handed on to the War

department that the same may be done there.  I suppose it will suffice for the

present to order the men to be immediately given up, and the officers given to

understand that the conduct of those who committed it will become a subject of

consideration for the Cabinet on its re-assembling at Washington, and that we

will not permit aggressions to be committed on our part, against which we

remonstrated to Spain on her part.



        I expect to be in Washington on the last day of September, or 1st of

October.  I salute you with affection and respect.











        TO THE SECRETARY OF THE TREASURY







        (ALBERT GALLATIN).







        MONTICELLO, September 20, 1808.







        DEAR SIR,-Yours of September 10th and 14th were received yesterday, and

my time being brief, my answer must be so.







 



        168             Jefferson's Works







        Brig Betsey, and the Aurora.







        The first having put back by stress of weather, and inevitable

necessity, ought, I think, to be permitted to sail again; but not to the

Aurora, which put back merely because the -captain was a fool.  They have lost

their chance by their own folly, and have no claim to be excepted out of the

general rule.  If you concur in these opinions be so good as to act on them;

but if you think differently, let them lie till we meet, which will probably be

within two or three days after you receive this.



        Mr.  Soderstrom.







        His application is peremptorily refused, and his lawyer's opinions are

sent 'L-o Mr. Madison, that he may be properly reprimanded.  For a foreign

agent, addressed to the Executive, to embody himself with the lawyers of a

faction whose sole object is to embarrass and defeat all the measures of the

country, and by their opinions, known to be always in opposition, to endeavor

to influence our proceedings is a conduct not to be permitted.  The government

will certainly decide for itself on whose counsel they will settle the

construction of the laws they are to execute.  We are to look at the intention

of the Legislature, and to carry it into execution while the lawyers are

nibbling at the words of the law.  It is well known that on every question the

lawyers are about equally divided, as is seen in the present case, and







        Correspondence                      169







        were we to act but in cases where no contrary opinion of a lawyer can

be had, we should never act.  I send White's petition for better information,

to be acted on when we meet.  Affectionate salutations.











        TO ALBERT GALLATIN.







        WASHINGTON, October 14, 1808.







        As we know that Sullivan's licenses have overstocked the wants of the

eastern States with flour, the proposal to carry more there is of itself

suspicious, and therefore even regular traders ought not to be allowed.  The

regular trade was to supply flour for exportation as well as consumption.  If

the rule of the sixth (or eighth, I believe,) is extended to them, the supply

will be kept up sufficiently for consumption.  The rule of the sixth is a good

one, because if the vessel goes off, the gain will not be more than the loss by

forfeiture, which in that case becomes an efficient penalty.  If they wish to

take more, it furnishes good grounds of suspicion that they mean to pay the

forfeitures out of the gains, and to profit by the surplus.  I should think it

ought to be adhered to, and that the collectors should consider it as a rule to

regulate their discretion, and to give equal measure in all our posts to all

our citizens.







 



        170                Jefferson's Works







                TO        ROBERT R. LIVINGSTON.



                WASHINGTON, October 15, 1808



                SIR,-Your letter of September the 22d waited here for my

return, and it is not till now that I have been able to acknowledge it.  The

explanation of his principles given you by the French Emperor, in conversation,

is correct as far as it goes.  He does not wish us to go to war with England,

knowing we have no ships to carry on that war.  To submit to pay to England the

tribute on our commerce which she demands by her orders of council, would be to

aid her in the war against him, and would give him just ground to declare war

with us.  He concludes, therefore, as every rational man must, that the

embargo, the only remaining alternative, was a wise measure.  These are

acknowledged principles, and should circumstances arise which may offer

advantage to our country in making them public, we shall avail ourselves of

them.  But as it is not usual nor agreeable to governments to bring their

conversations before the public, I think it would be well to consider this on

your part as confidential, leaving to the government to retain or make it

public, as the general good may require.  Had the Emperor gone further, and

said that he condemned our vessels going voluntarily into his ports in breach

of his municipal laws, we might have admitted it rigorously legal, though not

friendly.  But his condemnation of vessels taken on the high seas, by his

privateers,







        Correspondence                         171







and carried involuntarily into his ports, is justifiable by no law, is piracy,

and this is the wrong we complain of against him.



Supposing that you may be still at Clermont, from whence your letter is dated,

I avail myself of this circumstance to request your presenting my friendly

respects to Chancellor Livingston.  I salute you with esteem and respect.











        TO ALBERT GALLATIN.







        WASHINGTON, October          16, 1808.







Massey's Commission. -A half-sighted lawyer might, perhaps, say that a

commission signed with a blank for the name,-afterwards filled up, was a

nullity, because, in legal instruments, any change in a material part of a

bond, deed, etc., after sealing and delivery, nullifies it.  But I am not

certain whether there are not cases, even in ordinary transactions at law,

where it is otherwise,-e. g., a power of attorney sent to a distance, with a

blank for the name, a blank commission, a blank subpoena, etc.  But in matters

of government, there can be no question but that the commission sealed and

signed, with a blank for the name, date, place, etc., is good; because

government can in no country be carried on without it.  The most vital

proceedings of our own government would become null were such a construction to

prevail, and the argumentum ab







 



        172            Jefferson's Works







inconvenienti, which is one of the great foundations of the law, will

undoubtedly sustain the practice, and sanction it by the maxim " qui facit per

alterum, facit per se.  " I would not therefore give the countenance of the

government to so impracticable a construction by issuing a new commission. 

Affectionate salutations.











        TO GEORGE BLAKE, ESQ.







        WASHINGTON, October 17, 1808.







        SIR,-However favorably the enclosed papers represent the case of

Alexander Frost, yet it would be against every rule of prudence for me to

undertake to revise the verdict of a jury on ex parte affidavits and

recommendations.  If the judges and yourself who were present at the trial

think the defendant a proper object of pardon, I shall be ready, on such a

recommendation, to issue it.  I ask the favor of your information on this

subject, and salute you with esteem and respect.











        TO ALBERT GALLATIN.







        WASHINGTON, October 18, 1808.







I think that none of the circumstances, preceding the passage of the embargo

law, stated by Mr. Lorent, make any part of his case.  The misfortunes entering

into the preceding history of that property, not flowing from any act of this

government, authorizes no







        Correspondence                    173







claims on it The embargo law excepted from its own operation articles then

laden on board a foreign ship, without distinguishing between articles of

foreign or national property. it subjected to its operation all articles,

whether foreign or national property, not then laden on board any foreign ship.

 Mr. Lorent's property was not then laden on board of any foreign ship, is

therefore within the words of the law, and as certainly within its purview.  It

is not one of those cases which, though within the words of the law, were

notoriously not within its intention, and are therefore relievable by an

equitable exercise of discretionary power.  Affectionate salutations.







        TO ROBERT SMITH.



        WASHINGTON, October 19, 1808.



I enclose you a petition of the widow Bennet for the liberation of her son at

Boston, a minor, or for a moiety of three months' pay, to enable her to go to

another son.  I think when her case was formerly before us, she was said to be

a woman of ill fame, and that her son did not wish to return to her.  Still,

however, the mother, if there be no father, is the natural guardian, and is

legally entitled to the custody and the earnings of her son.  If she were to

make her demand legally for both or either, she would prevail.  May it not be

for the benefit of the son and of the service, to compromise by paying the







 



        174            Jefferson's Works







sixteen dollars, and taking a regular relinquishment or transfer of her rights

to the body of her son, and his earnings in future, so that we may have no more

to do with her?  This is referred to Mr. Smith's consideration.  Affectionate

salutations.











        TO ALBERT GALLATIN.







        WASHINGTON, October 19, 1808.



Is the case proposed by Mr. Wolcott left by the law at the discretion of

anybody?  The law makes it the duty of the Collector to detain if he suspects

an intention to export to a foreign market, a fortiori if that intention be

avowed.  It is true that the first step proposed is only to go to another

district, but declared to be preparatory to an exportation to the West Indies. 

It is true also that they say they do not mean to export until the law is

repealed.  But ought we under that cover to facilitate those illegal views

which our experience has proved to be so general?  Still, if there be any sound

ground on which the permission can be given, I would rather make it the subject

of consultation with you, than to have the present understood to be a final

decision.  Affectionate salutations.







        TO JAMES MAIN.







        WASHINGTON, October 19, 1808.



        SIR,-Your favor of the 10th has been duly received., Certainly I would

with great pleasure







        Correspondence                    175







contribute anything in my power to render the history you propose to write a

faithful account of the period it will comprehend.  Nothing is so desirable to

me, as that after mankind shall have been abused by such gross falsehoods as to

events while passing, their minds should at length be set to rights by genuine

truth.  And I can conscientiously declare that as to myself, I wish that not

only no act but no thought of mine should be unknown.  But, Sir, my other and

more imperious duties put it out of my power.  So totally is my time engrossed

by the public concerns, that for mere want of time, many of them which I ought

to attend to myself, if my time sufficed, I am obliged, for want of it, to

refer to others.  To withdraw myself from still more of them for any voluntary

object would be a failure in duty.  If you shall think proper, as you say, to

commit to me th-- perusal of the manuscript before it goes to the press, I

shall then probably be in a private station, and master of my own time, and I

will carefully examine, and faithfully offer any corrections or supplements

which I may think will render it a true representation of events.  I salute you

with esteem and respect.







        TO CAPTAIN MATTHEW C. GROVES.



        WASHINGTON, October 19, 1808.



        SIR,-Your two letters of the 11th instant have been received, and I am

obliged to observe that so







 



176             Jefferson's Works







wholly do the indispensable duties of my office engross my whole time, that I

could not give a deliberate reading to two letters so voluminous as these, and

not relating to my particular functions, without withdrawing time from objects

having stricter claims on me.  I have run over them hastily, and perceive that

you are still engaged in the pursuit of the method of finding the longitude at

sea by an observation of Jupiter and his satellites, brought to the horizon by

a double reflection, as in Hadley's quadrant.  That you have written a play to

raise funds for prosecuting this, and wish me to circulate a subscription for

it and print your letters.  I will willingly subscribe myself for a number of

copies to help you, but I have never permitted myself to be the circulator of

any subscription, or to have agency in printing anything, conceiving it

improper in my present office.  And however wishful of your success in raising

funds, I confess I should think them better applied to the comfort of your

family.  After so many better opinions it may be superfluous to offer mine. 

Yet justified by my friendly motives in doing so, I will observe, that to get

the longitude at sea by observation of the eclipses of Jupiter's satellites,

two desiderata are wanting: 1st, a practicable way of keeping the planet and

satellite in the field of a glass magnifying sufficiently to show the

satellites; 2d, a time-piece which will give the instant of time with

sufficient accuracy to be useful.  The bringing the planet and satellite to







        Correspondence                      177







the horizon does not sensibly facilitate the observation, because the planet in

his ascending and descending course is at such heights as admit the direct

observation with entire convenience.  On the other hand, so much light is lost

by the double reflection as to dim the objects and lessen the precision with

which the moment of ingress and egress may be marked.  This -double reflection

also introduces a new source of error from the inaccuracy of the instrument;

2d, the desideratum of a time-piece which, notwithstanding the motion of the

ship, shall keep time during a whole voyage with sufficient accuracy for these

observations, has not yet been supplied.  Fine time-keepers have been invented,

but not equal to what is requisite, all of them deriving their motion from a

spring, and not from a pendulum.  Indeed these pursuits have lost much of their

consequence since the improvement of the lunar tables has given the motion of

the moon so accurately, as to make that a foundation for estimating the

longitude by her relative position at a given moment with the sun or fixed

stars.  Every captain of a ship now understands the method of taking these

lunar observations, and of calculating his longitude by them.



I have gone into these details with the most friendly view of dissuading you

from wasting time, which you represent as so much needed for your family, in a

pursuit which has baffled every human endeavor as yet, and has lost so much of

its importance.  I return you your letters, because you wish 







 



178            Jefferson's Works







to have them published, and conclude with my best wishes for the success of

your endeavors to raise the funds you desire, and for the application of them

which shall be best for yourself and your family.











        TO ALBERT GALLATIN.







        WASHINGTON, October 21 1808.







        The Case of the Martinique Petitioners.







I think it wrong to detain foreigners caught here by the embargo; but in

permitting them to take our vessels to return in, we do what is a matter of

favor, not of right.  Of course we can restrict them to a tonnage proportioned

to their numbers.  In the transport service I believe the allowance is two tons

to every person.  We may allow a little more room; but there ought to be an end

to this, and I think it high time to put an end to it.  What would you think of

advertising that after a certain day, no American vessel will be permitted to

go out for the purpose of carrying persons?  Perhaps this should be

communicated by the Secretary of State to the foreign ministers.







Fronda states that a proprietor of Amelia Island, in Florida, shipped his crop

for a foreign port on board an American vessel.  The vessel was taken by the

Argus, carried into Savannah, and condemned for a breach of the embargo laws,

the cargo pronounced clear.  Probably the vessel had left our







        Correspondence            179







harbors Without a clearance, though that is not stated, nor the cause, of her

condemnation specified.  Permission is asked to send away the cargo.  If the

Spanish proprietor had no agency in drawing the vessel away contrary to the

embargo laws, his employment of her was innocent, and he ought to be permitted

to send his cargo out; because for us to take his property and bring it in by

force, and against his will, and then to detain it under pretext of an embargo,

would be equivalent to piracy or war.  A vessel driven involuntarily into a

port by weather, or an enemy, with prohibited goods, is always allowed to

depart, and even to sell as much of the goods as will make the vessel

sea-worthy, if disabled.  I do not know, however, that in the present case we

are bound to do any more than let one of our vessels be engaged to replace the

cargo in Amelia Island, and certainly we ought not to let it go to any distant

port; but if the proprietor enticed or engaged the vessel to break the embargo

law, he was particcps criminis, and must submit to the loss which he has

brought on himself.  I send you Fronda's note, which should be returned to Mr.

Madison, with information of the order you shall give for inquiring into the

facts, and permission or refusal as they shall turn out.  Affectionate

salutations.







 



        180             Jefferson's Works







        TO THOMAS COOPER, ESQ.







        WASHINGTON, October 27, 1808.







        DEAR SIR,-When I received your letter of the i 6th, I thought I had not

a copy of my report on measures, weights, and coins, except one bound up in a

volume with other reports; but on carefully searching a bundle of duplicates, I

found the one I now enclose you, being the only detached one I possess.  It is

defective in one article.  The report was composed under a severe attack of

periodical headache, which came on every day at sunrise, and never left me till

sunset.  What had been ruminated in the day under a paroxysm of the most

excruciating pain, was committed to paper by candlelight, and then the

calculations were made.  After delivering in the report, it was discovered that

in calculating the money unit § 5 page 49, there was a small error in the third

or fourth column of decimals, the correction of which however brought the

proposed unit still nearer to the established one.  I reported the correction

in a single leaf to Congress.  The copy I send you has not that leaf.



        The first question to be decided is between those who are for units of

measures, weights, and coins, having a known relation to something in nature of

fixed dimension, and those who are for an arbitrary standard.  On this " dice

vexata quaestio" it is useless to say a word, every one having made up his mind

on a view of all that can be said.  Mr.







Correspondence                      181



Dorsey was so kind as to send me his pamphlet, by which I found he was for the

arbitrary standard of one-third of the standard yard of H. G. of England,

supposed to be in the Exchequer of that nation, a fac simile of which was to be

procured and lodged in Philadelphia.  I confess myself to be of the other sect,

and to prefer an unit bearing a given relation to some fixed subject of nature,

and of preference to the pendulum, because it may be in the possession of every

man, so that he may verify his measures for himself.  You will observe that I

proposed alternative plans to Congress, that they might take the one or the

other, according to I the degree of courage they felt.  The first is from page

18 to 38; the second from page 39 to 44.  Were I now to decide, it would be in

favor of the first, with this single addition, that each of the denominations

there adopted, should be divisible decimally at the will of every individual. 

The iron-founder deals in tons; let him take the ton for his unit, and divide

it into 10ths, 100ths, and 1000ths.  The dry-goods merchant deals in pounds and

yards; let him divide them decimally.  The land-measurer deals in miles and

poles; divide them decimally, only noting over his figures what the unit is,

thus: (Tons) 18.943, (Lbs) 18.943, (Yds..) 1.8943, (Miles) 189.43, etc.  I have

lately had a proof how familiar this division into dimes, cents, and mills, is

to the people when transferred from their money to anything else.  I have an

odometer fixed to my carriage,







 



        182              Jefferson's Works







which gives the distances in miles, dimes, and cents.  The people on the road

inquire with curiosity what exact distance I have found from such a place to

such a place; I answer, so many miles, so many cents.  I find they universally

and at once form a perfect idea of the relation of the cent to the mile as an

unit.  They would do the same as to yards of cloth, pounds of shot, ounces of

silver, or of medicine.  I believe, therefore, they are susceptible of this

degree of approximation to a standard rigorously philosophical; beyond this I

might doubt.  However, on this too, every one has an opinion, and I am open to

compromise, as I am also to other plans of reformation, of which multitudes'

have been published.  I can conclude, therefore, candidly with the " si quid

novisti rectius, " etc., and sincerely with assurances of my constant esteem

and respect.







        TO DOCTOR JAMES BROWN.



        WASHINGTON, October 27, 1808.



DEAR SIR,-YOU Will wonder that your letter of June the 3d should not be

acknowledged till this -date.  I never received it till September the 12th, and

coming soon after to this place, the accumulation of business I found here has

prevented my taking it up till now.  That you ever participated in any plan for

a division of the Union, I never for one moment believed.  I knew your

Americanism too well, but as the enterprise against Mexico was







        Correspondence                      183







of a very different character, I had supposed what I heard on that subject to

be possible.  You disavow it; that is enough for me, and I forever dismiss the

idea.  I wish it were possible to extend my belief of innocence to a very

different description of men in New Orleans; but I think there is sufficient

evidence of there being there a set of foreign adventurers, and native

malcontents, who would concur in any enterprise to I separate that country from

this.  I did wish to see these people get what they deserved; and under the

maxim of the law itself, that inter arina silent leges, that in an encampment

expecting daily attack from a powerful enemy, self-preservation is paramount to

all law, I expected that instead of invoking the forms of the law to cover

traitors, all good citizens would have concurred in securing them.  Should we

have ever gained our Revolution, if we had bound our hands by manacles of the

law, not only in the beginning, but in any part of the revolutionary conflict? 

There are extreme cases where the laws become inadequate even to their own

preservation, and where the universal resource is a dictator, or martial law. 

Was New Orleans in that situation?  Although we knew here that the force

destined against it was suppressed on the Ohio, yet we supposed this unknown at

New Orleans at the time that Burr's accomplices were calling in the aid of the

law to enable them to perpetrate its suppression, and that it was reasonable,

according to the state of information there, to act







 



184        Jefferson's Works







        on the expectation of a daily attack.  Of this you



        are the best judge.



        Burr is in London, and is giving out to his friends that that

government offers him two millions of dollars the moment he can raise an ensign

of rebellion as big as a handkerchief.  Some of his partisans will believe

this, because they wish it.  But those who know him best will not believe it

the more because he says it.  For myself, even in his most flattering periods

of the conspiracy, I never entertained one moment's fear.  My long and intimate

knowledge of my countrymen, satisfied and satisfies me, that let there ever be

occasion to display the banners of the law, and the world will see how few and

pitiful are those who shall array themselves in opposition.  I as little fear

foreign invasion.  I have indeed thought it a duty to be prepared to meet even

the most powerful, that of a Bonaparte, for instance, by the only means

competent, that of a classification of the militia, and placing the junior

classes at the public disposal; but the lesson he receives in Spain extirpates

all apprehensions from my mind.  If, in a peninsula, the neck of which is

adjacent to him and at his command, where he can march any army without the

possibility of interception or obstruction from any foreign power, he finds it

necessary to begin with an army of three hundred thousand men, to subdue a

nation of five millions, brutalized by ignorance, and enervated by long peace,

and should find constant reinforcements of thousands after thou-







        Correspondence                      185







        sands, necessary to effect at last a conquest as doubtful as

deprecated, what numbers would be necessary against eight millions of free

Americans, spread over such an extent of country as would wear him down by mere

marching, by want of food, autumnal diseases, etc.? How would they be brought,

and how reinforced across an ocean of three thousand miles, in possession of a

bitter enemy, whose peace, like the repose of a dog, is never more than

momentary?  And for what?  For nothing but hard blows.  If the Orleanese

Creoles would but contemplate these truths, they would cling to the American

Union, soul and body, as their first affection, and we should be as safe there

as we are everywhere else.  I have no doubt of their attachment to us in

preference of the English.



        I salute you with sincere affection and respect.











        TO







        WASHINGTON, October 28, 1808.



        SIR,-I thank you for the copy of General Kosciusko's treatise on the

flying artillery.  It is a branch of the military art which I wish extremely to

see understood here, to the height of the European level.  Your letter of

September 20th was received in due time.  I never received the letter said to

have been written to me by Mr. Malesherbes, in favor of Mr. Masson.  The fact

of such a letter having been written by Mr. Malesherbes, is sufficient ground

for







 



        186        Jefferson's Works







        my desiring to be useful to Mr. Masson on any occasion which may arise.

 No man's recommendation merits more reliance than that of M. de Malesherbes. 

The state and interest of the military academy shall not be forgotten.  I

salute you with esteem and respect.











        TO GOVERNOR W. C. C. CLAIBORNE.







        WASHINGTON, October 29,         1808.







        SIR,-I send the enclosed letter under the benefit of your cover, and

open, because I wish you to know its contents.  I thought the person to whom it

is addressed a very good man when here,-he is certainly a very learned and able

one.  I thought him peculiarly qualified to be useful with you.  But in the

present state of my information, I can say no more than I have to him.  When

you shall have read the letter, be so good as to stick a wafer in it, and not

let it be delivered till it is dry, that he may not know that any one but

himself sees it.  The Spanish paper you enclosed me is an atrocious one.  I see

it has been republished in the Havana.  The truth is that the patriots of Spain

have no warmer friends than the administration of the United States, but it is

our duty to say nothing and to do nothing for or against. either.  If they

succeed, we shall be well satisfied to see Cuba and Mexico remain in their

present dependence; but very unwilling to see them in that of either France or

England, politically or commercially.







        Correspondence                       187







        We consider their interests and ours as the same, and that the object

of both must be to exclude all European influence from this hemisphere.  We

wish to avoid the necessity of going to war, till our revenue shall be entirely

liberated from debt.  Then it will suffice for war, without creating new debt

or taxes.  These are sentiments which I would wish you to express to any proper

characters of either of these two countries, and particularly that we have

nothing more at heart than their friendship.  I salute you with great-,esteem

and respect.











        TO ALBERT GALLATIN.







        WASHINGTON, November 3, 1808.







        A press of business here prevented my sooner taking up the three

bundles of papers now returned; and even now I judge of them from the brief you

have been so good as to make so fully.  This is an immense relief to me.







        The Wabash Saline.







        I think the applications from Nashville, etc., for a share of the salt

had better not be complied with.  I suspect we did wrong in yielding a similar

privilege to Kentucky.  There would be no end to the details of the

partitionary plan, and it will only shift the gains into other hands, adding

the unavoidable inequalities of distribution.  Better leave the distribution to

its former and ordinary course, and the







 



        188              Jefferson's Works







        benefits will taper off from the centre till lost by distance.







 Indiana Lead Mines.







        I think it would be well to authorize Governor Harrison to lease them

to the present applicants, -- the former ones declining.







Intrusions on Public Lands.







 I suspect you have partly forgotten what was agreed on the other day. 1.

Notice was agreed to be given by a register to be appointed to all intruders on

the Tennessee purchase, to disclaim or remove; and in the spring troops are to

be sent to remove all non-compliers.  Those on the Indian lands (except

Doubleheads) to be absolutely removed without the privilege of disclaimer. 2.

As to the intruders on Red River, we agreed to leave them and get Congress to

extend the land law to them.



        I think it will be better you should write to Governor Williams about

the appointment of officers.  Things casually incidental to a main business

belonging to another department, had better be made the subject of a single

instruction.  I am sure the Secretary of State will thank you to take the

trouble.  Affectionate salutations.







        TO GENERAL HENRY DEARBORN.



        WASHINGTON, November 5, 1808.



        I enclose you a charge by Mr. Hanson against Captain Smith and

Lieutenants Davis and Dobbins







        Correspondence                      189







        of the militia, as having become members of an organized company,

calling themselves the Tar Company, avowing their object to be the tarring and

feathering citizens of some description.  Although in some cases the

animadversions of the law may be properly relied on to prevent what is

unlawful, yet with those clothed with authority from the executive, and being a

part of the executive, other preventives are expedient.  These officers should

be warned that the executive cannot tamely look on and see its officers

threaten to become the violators instead of the protectors of the rights of our

citizens.  I presume, however, that all that is necessary will be that their

commanding officer, (General Mason,) finding the fact true, should. give them a

private admonition, either written or verbal, as be pleases, to withdraw

themselves from the illegal association; at the same time I would rather it

should be stated to General Mason only " that information has been received,"

etc., without naming Mr. Hanson as the informer.  My reason is that some

disagreeable feuds have arisen at the Navy Yard which I would rather allay than

foment.  No proof will be necessary to be called for; because if the officers

disavow the fact, it will be a proof they have that sense of propriety to which

only an admonition would be intended to bring them.  I salute you with constant

affection.







 



190           Jefferson's Works



TO HIS EXCELLENCY GOVERNOR CHARLES PINCKNEY.



                WASHINGTON, November 8, 1808.



        DEAR SIR,-I have to acknowledge the receipt of your two letters

September 10th and of blank date, probably about the middle of October, and to

thank you for the communications therein made.  They were handed to the two

persons therein named.  I seize the first moment it is in my power to answer

your question as to our foreign relations, which I do by enclosing you a copy

of my message this moment delivered to the two houses of Congress, in which

they are fully stated.  It is evident we have before us three only

alternatives; 1, embargo; 2, war; 3, submission and tribute.  This last will

at, once be put out of question by every American, and the two first only

considered.  By the little conversation I have had with the members, I perceive

there will be some division on this among the republicans; but what will be its

extent cannot be known till they shall have heard the message and documents,

and had some days to confer and make up their opinions.  Being now all in the

hurry and bustle of visits and business, incident to the first days of the

meeting, I must here close with my salutations of friendship and respect.











        TO MR.  LETUE.







        WASHINGTON, November 8, 1808.







        SIR,--I have to acknowledge the receipt of your favor of October I 4th,

and to thank you for the infor-







Correspondence                               191







        mation it contained.  While the opposition to the late laws of embargo

has in one quarter amounted almost to rebellion and treason, it is pleasing to

know that all the rest of the nation has approved of the proceedings of the

constituted authorities.  The steady union which you mention of our fellow

citizens of South Carolina, is entirely in their character.  They have never

failed in fidelity to the' ir country and the republican spirit of its

constitution.  Never before was that union more needed or more salutary than

under our present crisis.  I enclose you my message to both houses of Congress,

this moment delivered.  You will see that we have to choose between the

alternatives of embargo and war; there is indeed one and only one other, that

is submission and tribute.  For all the federal propositions for trading to the

places permitted by the edicts of the belligerents, result in fact in

submission, although they do not choose to pronounce the naked word.  I do not

believe, however, that our fellow citizens of that sect with you will concur

with those to the east in this parricide purpose, any more than in the

disorganizing conduct which has disgraced the latter.  I conclude this from

their conduct in your legislature in its vote on that question.  Accept my

salutations and assurances of respect.







 



192              Jefferson's Works







TO HIS EXCELLENCY GOVERNOR WILLIAM H. CABELL.



        WASHINGTON, November 13, 1808.



        DEAR SIR,-Between three and four years ago, I received the enclosed

petitions praying for the pardon or the enlargement of Thomas Logwood, then and

still confined in the penitentiary of Richmond, for counterfeiting the bank

notes of the United States.  I consulted Governor Page on the subject, who,

after conferring with his council, informed me that though he was for a pardon

himself, he found a division of opinion on the question, and therefore could

not advise it.  Between three and four years have since been added to his

confinement, and of his conduct during that time has been such as to lessen his

claims to a mitigation. of his sentence, they must certainly stand now on

higher ground, and the more so as two of his accomplices confined here, have by

a very general wish been pardoned more than a year ago.  Will you be so good as

to give me your opinion on the subject, as you are in a situation to know what

his conduct has been?  His wife is represented as a very meritorious character,

and her connections respectable; probably they may be known to you.  His

neighbors, you will observe, ask his restoration to them.  Whether would it be

best to pardon him absolutely, or on condition of giving security for his good

behavior? or shall we open the prison door and let him go out, notifying him

that ff he will continue on his own farm or those next adjoining, and keep







        Correspondence                                       193







        himself from all suspicious intercourse and correspondence, he will not

be molested; otherwise, that he will be retaken and replaced in his present

situation?  Your advice on this subject will much oblige me. I salute you with

great esteem and respect.















        TO ALBERT GALLATIN.







        WASHINGTON, November 13, 1808.



        1st.  The ship Aurora, Captain Rand.  Provisions, lumber and naval

stores being the articles on which we rely most for effect during our embargo. 

Rand's landing, as to the great mass of its articles, seems not to render his

case suspicious.  Keeping therefore the articles of provisions, lumber and

naval stores, within their regular limits, I see no objection to a permit in

the character of his cargo; and the objection drawn from his dislike and

disapprobation of the embargo, has never been considered as an obstacle where

the person has not actually been guilty of its infraction.  I think a permit

should be granted under the regular limitations as to the proportion of

provisions,. etc.



        2d. The schooner Concord, property of John Bell of Petersburg. 

Wherever a person has once been guilty of breaking the embargo laws, we can no

longer have confidence in him, and every shipment made by him becomes

suspicious.  No permit should be granted him; the fact of a prior breach being 







 



194           Jefferson's Works







sufficient without the formality of its being found by jury.



        3d. The schooner Caroline, belonging to Brown and Pilsbury of

Buckstown.  Where every attempt, the Collector says, has been made and still

continues to be made to evade the embargo laws, the nature of the cargo is

sufficient to refuse the permit, being wholly of provisions and lumber.  This

is the first time the character of the place has been brought under

consideration as an objection.  Yet a general disobedience to the laws in any

place must have weight towards refusing to give them any facilities to evade. 

In such a case we may fairly require positive proof that the individual of a

town tainted with a general spirit of disobedience, has never said or done

anything himself to countenance that spirit, But the first cause of refusal

being sufficient, an inquiry into character and conduct is unnecessary.







        TO LIEUTENANT GOVERNOR LEVI LINCOLN.



        WASHINGTON, November 13, 1808.



        DEAR SIR, I enclose you a petition from Nantucket, and refer it for

your decision.  Our opinion here is, that that place has been so deeply

concerned in smuggling, that if it wants, it is because it has illegally sent

away what it ought to have retained for its own consumption.  Be so good as to

bear in mind that I have asked the favor of you to see that your State

encounters no real want, while, at the







        Correspondence                     195







same time, where applications are made merely to cover fraud, no facilities

towards that be furnished.  I presume there can be no want in Massachusetts as

yet, as I am informed that Governor Sullivan's permits are openly bought and

sold here and in Alexandria, and at other markets.  The congressional campaign

is just opening: three alternatives alone are to be chosen from: 1, embargo; 2,

war; 3, submission and tribute.  And, wonderful to tell, the last will not want

advocates.  The real question, however, will lie between the two first, on

which there is considerable division.  As yet the first seems most to prevail;

but opinions are by no means yet settled down.  Perhaps the advocates of the

second may, to a formal declaration of war, prefer general letters of marque

and reprisal, because, on a repeal of their edicts by the belligerent, a

revocation of the letters of marque restores peace without the delay,

difficulties, and ceremonies of a treaty.  On this occasion, I think it is fair

to leave to those who are to act on them, the decisions they prefer, being to

be myself but a spectator.  I should not feel justified in directing measures

which those who are to execute them would disapprove.  Our situation is truly

difficult.  We have been pressed by the belligerents to the very wall, and all

further retreat is impracticable.







        I salute you with sincere friendship.







 



        196        Jefferson's Works







        TO THE HON.  JOSEPH B. VARNUM.







        WASHINGTON, November 18, 1808.



        SIR,-YOU Will perceive in the enclosed petitions, a request, that I

will lay them before Congress.  This I cannot do consistently with my own

opinion of propriety, because where the petitioners have a right to petition

their immediate representatives in Congress directly, I have deemed it neither

necessary nor proper for them to pass their petition through the intermediate

channel of the Executive.  But as the petitioners may be ignorant of this, and,

confiding in it, may omit the proper measure, I have usually put such petitions

into the hands of the Representatives of the State, informally to be used or

not as they see best, and considering me as entirely disclaiming any agency in

the case.  With this view, I take the liberty of placing these papers in your

hands, not as Speaker of the House, but as one of the Representatives from the

State from which they came.  Whether they should be handed on to the

Representatives of the particular districts, (which are unknown to me,)

yourself will be the best judge.  I salute you with affection, esteem and

respect.







        TO THOMAS JEFFERSON RANDOLPH.



        WASHINGTON, November 24, 1808,



        MY DEAR JEFFERSON,-



        Your situation, thrown at such a distance from us,



        and alone, cannot but give us all great anxieties for







        Correspondence                      197







        you.  As much has been secured for you, by your particular position and

the acquaintance to which you have been recommended, as could be done towards

shielding you from the dangers which surround you.  But thrown on a wide world,

among entire strangers, without a friend or guardian to advise, so young too,

and, with so little experience of mankind, your dangers are great, and still

your safety must rest on yourself.. A determination never to do what is wrong,

prudence and good humor, will go far towards securing to you the estimation of

the world.  When I recollect that at fourteen years of age, the whole care and

direction of myself was thrown on myself entirely, without a relation or friend

qualified to advise or guide me, and recollect the various sorts of bad company

with which I associated from time to time, I am astonished I did not turn off

with some of them, and become as worthless to society as they were.  I had the

good fortune to become acquainted very early with some characters of very high

standing, and to feel the incessant wish that I could ever become what they

were., Under temptations and difficulties, I would ask myself what would Dr.

Small, Mr. Wythe, Peyton Randolph do in this situation?  What course in it will

insure me their approbation?  I am certain that this mode of deciding on my

conduct, tended more to correctness than any reasoning powers I possessed. 

Knowing the even and dignified line they pursued, I could never doubt for a

moment which of two courses







 



198             Jefferson's Works







would be in character for them.  Whereas, seeking the same object through a

process of moral reasoning, and with the jaundiced eye of youth, I should often

have erred.  From the circumstances of my position, I was often thrown into the

society of horse racers, card players, fox hunters, scientific and professional

men, and of dignified men; and many a time have I asked myself, in the

enthusiastic moment of the death of a fox, the victory of a favorite horse, the

issue of a question eloquently argued at the bar, or in the great council of

the nation, well, which of these kinds of reputation should I prefer?  That of

a horse jockey? a fox hunter? an orator? or the honest advocate of my country's

rights?  Be assured, my dear Jefferson, that these little returns into

ourselves, this self-catechising habit, is riot trifling nor useless, but leads

to the prudent selection and steady pursuit of what is right.



I have mentioned good humor as one of the preservatives of our peace and

tranquillity.  It is among the most effectual, and its effect is so well

imitated and aided, artificially, by politeness, that this also becomes an

acquisition of first rate value.  In truth, politeness is artificial good

humor, it covers the natural want of it, and ends by rendering habitual a

substitute nearly equivalent to the real virtue.  It is the practice of

sacrificing to those whom we meet in society, all the little conveniences and

preferences which will gratify them, and deprive us of 'nothing worth a

moment's consideration; it is the giving a







Correspondence                    199







pleasing and flattering turn to our expressions, which will conciliate others,

and make them pleased with us as well as themselves.  How cheap a price for the

good will of another!  When this is in return for a rude thing said by another,

it brings him to his senses, it mortifies and corrects him in the most salutary

way, and places him at the feet of your good nature, in the eyes of the

company.  But in stating prudential rules for our government in society, I must

not omit the important one of never entering into dispute or argument with

another.  I never saw an instance of one of two disputants convincing the other

by argument.  I have seen many, on their getting warm, becoming rude, and

shooting one another.  Conviction is the effect of our own dispassionate

reasoning, either in solitude, or weighing within ourselves, dispassionately,

what we hear from others, standing uncommitted in argument ourselves.  It was

one of the rules which, above all others, made Doctor Franklin the most amiable

of men in society, "never to contradict anybody." If he was urged to announce

an opinion, he did it rather by asking questions, as if for information, or by

suggesting doubts.  When I hear another express an opinion which is not mine, I

say to myself, he has a right to his opinion, as I to mine; why should I

question it?  His error does me no injury, and shall I become a Don Quixote, to

bring all men by force of argument to one opinion?  If a fact be misstated, it

is probable he is gratified by a belief of it, and I







        200             Jefferson's Works







have no right to deprive him of the gratification.  If he wants information, he

will ask it, and then I will give it in measured terms; but if he still

believes his own story, and shows a desire to dispute the fact with me, I hear

him and say nothing.  It is his affair, not mine, if he prefers error.  There

are two classes of disputants most frequently to be met with among us. The

first is of young students, just entered the threshold of science, with a first

view of its outlines, not yet filled up with the details and modifications

which a further progress would bring to their knowledge.  The other consists of

the ill-tempered and rude men in society, who have taken up a passion for

politics. (Good humor and politeness never introduce into mixed society a

question on which they foresee there will be a difference of opinion.) From

both of these classes of disputants, my dear Jefferson, keep aloof, as you

would from the infected subjects of yellow fever or pestilence.  Consider

yourself, when with them, as among the patients of Bedlam, needing medical more

than moral counsel.  Be a listener only, keep within yourself, and endeavor to

establish with yourself the habit of silence, especially on politics.  In the

fevered state of our country, no good can ever result from any attempt to set

one of these fiery zealots to rights, either in fact or principle.  They are

determined as to the facts they will believe, and the opinions on which they

will act.  Get by them, therefore, as you would by an angry bull; it is not for

a man of sense







        Correspondence                      201







to dispute the road with such an animal.  You will be more exposed than others

to have these animals shaking their horns at you, because of the relation in

which you stand with me.  Full of political venom, and willing to see me and to

hate me as a chief in the antagonist party, your presence will be to them what

the vomit grass is to the sick dog, a nostrum for producing ejaculation.  Look

upon them exactly with that eye, and pity them as objects to whom you can

administer only occasional ease.  My character is not within their power.  It

is in the hands of my fellow citizens at large, and will be consigned to honor

or infamy by the verdict of the republican mass of our country, according to

that themselves will have seen, not what their enemies and mine shall have

said.  Never, therefore, consider these puppies in politics as requiring any

notice from you, and always show that you are not afraid to leave my character

to the umpirage of public opinion.  Look steadily to the pursuits which have

carried you to Philadelphia, be very select in the society you attach yourself

to, avoid taverns, drinkers, smokers, idlers, and dissipated persons generally;

for it is with such that broils and contentions arise; and you will find your

path more easy and tranquil.  The limits of my paper warn me that it is time

for me to close with my affectionate adieu.







        P.        S. Present me affectionately to Mr. Ogilvie, and, in doing

the same to Mr. Peale, tell him I am







 



202            Jefferson's Works







        writing with his polygraph, and shall send him mine the first moment I

have leisure enough to pack it.















TO THE VICE-PRESIDENTS OF THE AMERICAN PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY.







        WASHINGTON, November 30, 1808.







        GENTLEMEN,-Being to remove within a few months from my present

residence to one still more distant from the seat of the meetings of the

American Philosophical Society, I feel it a duty no longer to obstruct its

service by keeping from the chair members whose' position as well as

qualifications, may enable them to discharge its duties with so much more

effect.  Begging leave, therefore, to withdraw from the Presidency of the

Society at the close of the present term, I avail myself of the occasion

gratefully to return my thanks to the Society for the repeated proofs they have

been pleased to give of their favor and confidence in me, and to assure them,

in retiring from the honorable station in which they have been pleased so long

to continue me, that I carry with me all the sentiments of an affectionate

member and faithful servant of the Society'



        Asking the favor of you to make this communication to the Society, I

beg leave to ten-der to each of you personally the assurances of my great

esteem and respect.







        Correspondence                     203







        TO SAMUEL HAWKINS, KINGSTON.







        WASHINGTON, November 30, 1808.







        SIR,-Business and indisposition have prevented my sooner acknowledging

the receipt of your letter of the 3d instant, which came to hand on the 10th. 

Mr. Granger, before that, had sent here the very elegant ivory staff of which

you wished my acceptance.  The motives of your wish are honorable to me, and

gratifying, as they evidence the approbation of my public conduct by a stranger

who has not viewed it through the partialities of personal acquaintance.  Be

assured, Sir, that I am as grateful for the testimony, as if I could have

accepted the token of it which you have so kindly offered.  On coming into

public office, I laid it down as a law of my conduct, while I should continue

in it, to accept no present of any sensible pecuniary value.  A pamphlet, a new

book, or an article of new curiosity, have produced no hesitation, because

below suspicion.  But things of sensible value, however innocently offered in

the first examples, may grow at length into abuse, for which I wish not to

furnish a precedent.  The kindness of the motives which led to this

manifestation of your esteem, sufficiently assures me that you will approve of

my desire, by a perseverance in the rule, to retain that consciousness of a

disinterested administration of the public trusts, which is essential to

perfect tranquillity of mind.  Replacing, therefore, the, subject of this







 



204             Jefferson's Works







letter in the hands of Mr. Granger, under your orders, and repeating that the

offer meets the same thankfulness as if accepted, I tender you my salutations

and assurances of respect.











        TO DOCTOR BENJAMIN WATERHOUSE.







        WASHINGTON, December 1,        1808.







SIR,-In answer to the inquiries of the benevolent Dr. De Carro on the subject

of the upland or mountain rice, Oryza Mutica, I will state to you what I know

of it.  I first became informed of the existence of a rice which would grow in

uplands without any more water than the common rains, by reading a book of Mr.

De Porpre, who had been Governor of the Isle of France, who mentions it as

growing there and all along the coast of Africa successfully, and as having

been introduced from Cochin-China.  I was at that time (1784-89) in France, and

there happening to be there a Prince of Cochin-China, on his travels, and then

returning home, I obtained his promise to send me some.  I never received it

however, and mention it only as it may have been sent, and furnished the ground

for the inquiries of Dr. De Carro, respecting my receiving it from China.  When

at Havre on my return from France, I found there Captain Nathaniel Cutting, who

was the ensuing spring to go on a voyage along the coast of Africa.  I engaged

him to inquire for this; he was there just after the harvest, procured and sent

me a thirty-







        Correspondence                      205







gallon cask of it.  It arrived in time the ensuing spring to be sown.  I

divided it between the Agricultural Society of Charleston and some private

gentlemen of Georgia, recommending it to their care, in the hope which had

induced me to endeavor to obtain it, that if it answered as well as the swamp

rice, it might rid them of that I source of their summer diseases.  Nothing

came of the trials in South Carolina, but being carried into the upper hilly

parts of Georgia, it succeeded there perfectly, has spread over the country,

and is now commonly cultivated; still, however, for family use chiefly. as they

cannot make it for sale in competition with the rice of the swamps.  The former

part of these details is written from memory, the papers being at Monticello

which would enable me to particularize exactly the dates of times and places. 

The latter part is from the late Mr. Baldwin, one of those whom I engaged in

the distribution of the seed in Georgia, and who in his annual attendance on

Congress, gave me from time to time the history of its progress.  It has got

from Georgia into Kentucky, where it is cultivated by many individuals for

family use.  I cultivated it two or three years at Monticello, and had good

crops, as did my neighbors, but not having conveniences for husking it, we

declined it.  I tried some of it in a pot, while I lived in Philadelphia, and

gave seed to Mr. Bartram.  It produced luxuriant plants with us both, but no

seed; nor do I believe it will ripen in the United States as far north as

Philadelphia.







 



206              Jefferson's Works



Business and an indisposition of some days must apologize for this delay in

answering your letter of October 24th, which I did not receive till the 6th of

November.  And permit me here to add my salutations and assurances of esteem

and respect.











        TO THOMAS MONROE.







                WASHINGTON, December 4, 1808.



The Case of the Sale of City Lots under a Decree of the Chancellor of Maryland.







The deed of the original owners of the site of the city of Washington to

certain trustees, after making provisions for streets, public squares, etc.,

declares that the residue of the ground, laid off in building lots, shall one

moiety belong to the original proprietors, and the other moiety shall be sold

on such terms and conditions as the President of the United States shall

direct, the proceeds, after certain specified payments, to be paid to the

President as a grant of money, and to be applied for the purposes, and

according to the Act of Congress; which Act of Congress (1790, C. 28) had

authorized the President to accept grants of money, to purchase or to accept

land for the use of the United States, to provide suitable buildings, etc.  Of

these residuary building lots, one thousand were sold by the Commissioner to

Greenleaf for $80,000, who transferred them to Morris and Nicholson, with an

express lien on them for the purchase money due to the city.  Under this lien

the







        Correspondence                       207







Chancellor of Maryland has decreed that they s hall be sold immediately for

whatever they will bring; that the proceeds shall be applied first to the costs

of suit and sale, and the balance towards paying the original purchase money. 

The sale has now proceeded, for some days, at very low prices, and must proceed

till the costs of suit and sale are raised.  It is well understood that under

no circumstances of sale, however favorable, can they pay five in the pound of

the original debt; and that if the whole are now forced into sale, at what they

will bring, they will not pay one in the pound; and being the only fund from

which a single dollar of the debt can ever be recovered, (on account of the

bankruptcy of all the purchasers,) of $25,000 which the lots may bring if

offered for sale from time to time pari passu with the growing demand, $20,000

will be lost by a forced sale.  To save this sum is desirable.  And the

interest in it being ultimately that of the United States, I have consulted

with the Secretary of the Treasury and Comptroller, and after due

consideration, I am of opinion it is for the public interest, and within the

powers of the President, under the deed of trust and laws, to repurchase under

the decree, at the lowest prices obtainable, such of these lots as no other

purchaser shall offer to take at what the Superintendent shall deem their real

value, that is to say, what they will in his judgment sell for hereafter, if

only offered from time to time as purchasers shall want them.  The sums so to

be allowed for







 



208             Jefferson's Works







them by the Superintendent to be passed to the credit of Greenleaf, and

retaining a right to the unsatisfied balance as damages due for non-compliance

with his contract; a matter of form only, as not a cent of it is expected ever

to be obtained.  I consider the reconveyance of these lots at the price which

the Superintendent shall nominally allow for them, as replacing them in our

hands, in statu quo prices, as if the title had never been passed out of us;

and that thereafter they will be in the condition of all other lots, sold, but

neither conveyed nor paid for; that is to say, liable to be resold for the

benefit of the city; as has been invariably practised in all other cases.  The

Superintendent is instructed to proceed accordingly.











        TO ALBERT GALLATIN.







        WASHINGTON, December 7, 1808.



        1.        D. W. Coxe and the ship Comet.  The application to send

another vessel to the Havana, to bring home the proceeds of the cargo of the

Comet, charged with a breach of embargo, must be rejected for three reasons,

each insuperable. 1st.  The property was not shipped from the United States

prior to December 22d, 1807, and therefore is -not within the description of

cases in which a permission by the executive is authorized by law. 2d.  The

limitation of time for permissions has been long expired. 3d.  Although, in an

action on the bond of the Comet, the fabricated







        Correspondence                      209







testimony of distress may embarrass judges and juries, tramelled by legal rules

of evidence, yet it ought to have no weight with us to whom the law has

referred to decide according to our discretion, well knowing that it was

impossible to build up fraud by general rules.  We know that the fabrication of

proofs of leaky ships, stress of weather, cargoes sold under duress, are a

regular part of the system of infractions of the embargo, with the manufacture

of which every foreign port is provided, and that their oaths and forgeries are

a regular merchandise in every port.  We must therefore consider them as

nothing, and that the act of entering a foreign port and selling the cargo is

decisive evidence of an intentional breach of embargo, not to be countervailed

by the letters of all the Charles Dixeys in the world; for every vessel is

provided with a Charles Dixey.



My opinion is, therefore, that no permission ought ever to be granted for any

vessel to leave our ports (while the embargo continues) in which any person is

concerned either in interest or in navigating her, who has ever been concerned

in interest, or in the navigation of a vessel which has at any time before

entered a foreign port contrary to the views of the embargo laws, and under any

pretended distress or duress whatever.  This rule will not lead us wrong once

in a hundred times.



        2.        I send you the case of Mr. Mitchell and the ship Neutrality,

merely as a matter of form; for I







 



210              Jefferson's Works







presume it must be rejected on the ground of limitation.  These petitioners are

getting into the habit of calling on me personally in the first instance. 

These personal solicitations being very embarrassing, I am obliged to tell them

I will refer the case to you, and they will receive a written answer.  But I

hope, in your amendments to the law, you will propose a repeal of the power to

give permissions to go for property.











        TO ALBERT GALLATIN.







        WASHINGTON, December 8, 1808.



The idea of regulating the coasting trade (to Now Orleans for instance) by the

quantity of tonnage sufficient for each port, is new to me, and presents

difficulties through which I cannot see my way.  To determine how much tonnage

will suffice for the coasting trade of Boston, Now York, Philadelphia, and the

other ports great and small, and to divide this tonnage impartially among the

competitors of each place, would embarrass us infinitely" and lead to

unavoidable errors and irregularities.  Is it not better to let it regulate

itself as to all innocent articles, and to continue our attentions and

regulations to the articles of provisions' and lumber?  If the rule of the

one-eighth carries too much to New Orleans, and I am sure it does, why not

confine it to the ports between St. Mary's and Passamaquoddy, (excluding these

two,) and trust for New Orleans to the western







        Correspondence                       211







supplies and Governor Claiborne's permits?  I suppose them sufficient, because

Governor Claiborne has assured us that the western supplies are sufficient for

the consumption of New Orleans, and we see that New Orleans has exported flour

the last six months, and that, too, to the West Indies, whither will go also

whatever flour the rule of the one-eighth carries there, or its equivalent in

western flour.  These ideas on the subject are of the first impression; and I

keep the decision open for any further light which can be thrown on it.











        TO ALBERT GALLATIN.







        WASHINGTON, December 8, 1808.



Mr. Harrison will continue in office till the 3d of March.  I send you tit for

tat, one lady application for another.  However our feelings are to be

perpetually harrowed by these solicitations, our course is plain, and

inflexible to right or left.  But for God's sake get us relieved from this

dreadful drudgery of refusal.  Affectionate salutations.







        TO ALBERT GALLATIN.



        WASHINGTON, December 20, 1808.



        The Case of the Schooner Concord, sold by !T.  Bell of



        Petersburg, to M. W. Hancock of Richmond.



        I think it may be concluded from the letters of



        Hancock and the collector, that the purchase of the







 



212           Jefferson's Works







        schooner has been a bona fide one; but it is not even alleged that he

has purchased the cargo, but it appears on the contrary that Bell has the same

concern in that as before.. As, where a person has once evaded the embargo

laws, we consider all subsequent shipments and proposed voyages by him to be

with the fraudulent intention; the present shipment of the cargo of tobacco,

before refused, being still the concern of Bell, must of course be still

suspicious, and refused a permit., But the request of the purchaser of the

schooner, that, after taking out the cargo, he may have a clearance for her to

go in ballast to the district of Richmond, may be granted.











        TO ALBERT GALLATIN.







        WASHINGTON, December 22, 1808.







        The answer to the petition of Percival and others, praying that they

may be permitted to send a vessel or vessels to take up their men from the

desolate islands of the Indian Ocean, and thence to proceed on a trading voyage

to Canton, etc., cannot but be a thing of course, that days having been

publicly announced after which no permissions to send vessels to bring home

property would be granted, which days are past long since, and the rule

rigorously adhered to, it cannot now be broken through.  If Congress continue

the power, it will show that they mean it shall be exercised, and we may then

consider







        Correspondence                      213







        on what new grounds permissions may be granted.  Affectionate

salutations.











        TO WILSON C. NICHOLAS.







        WASHINGTON, December 22, 1808.







        DEAR SIR,-I always consider it as the most friendly office which can be

rendered me, to be informed of anything which is going amiss, and which I can

remedy.  I had known that there had been a very blamable failure in the

clothing department, which had not become known so as to be remedied till the

beginning of October; but I had believed that the remedy had then been applied

with as much diligence as the case admitted.  After the suggestions from

General Smith and Mr. Giles the other day, I made inquiry into the fact, and

have received the enclosed return, which will show exactly what has been done. 

Can I get the favor of you to show it to General Smith and Mr. Giles, to whom I

am sure it will give as much satisfaction as to myself, and to re-enclose it to

me?  I salute you and them with sincere friendship and respect.







        TO GOVERNOR WILLIAM H. HARRISON.



        WASHINGTON, December 22, 1808.



        SIR,-By the treaty of 1803, we obtained from the Kaskaskias the country

as far as the ridge dividing the waters of the Kaskaskias from those of the







 



214            Jefferson's Works







Illinois River; by the treaty of 1804, with the Sacs and Foxes, they ceded to

us from the Illinois to the Ouisconsin.  Between these two cessions is a gore

of country, to wit, between the Illinois River and Kaskaskias line, which I

understand to have belonged to the Piorias, and that that tribe is now extinct;

if both these facts be true, we succeed to their title by our being proprietors

paramount of the whole country.  In this case it is interesting to settle our

boundary with our next neighbors the Kickapoos.  Where their western boundary

is, I know not; but they cannot come lower down the Illinois River than the

Illinois Lake, on which stood the old Pioria fort, and perhaps not so low.  The

Kickapoos are bounded to the south-east, I presume, by the ridge between the

waters of the Illinois and Wabash, to which the Miamis claim, and north-@east

by the Pottawattamies.  Of course it is with the Kickapoos alone we have to

settle a boundary.  I would therefore recommend to you to take measures for

doing this.  You will of course first endeavor with all possible caution to

furnish yourself with the best evidence to be had, of the real location of the

south-west boundary of the Kickapoos, and then endeavor to bring them to an

acknowledgment of it formally, by a treaty of limits.  If it be nothing more,

the ordinary presents are all that will be necessary, but if they cede a part

of their own country, then a price proportioned will be proper.  In a letter to

you of February 27th, 1803, I mentioned that I had heard there was still one







        Correspondence                      215



Pioria man living, and that a compensation making him easy for life should be

given him, and his conveyance of the country by a regular deed be obtained.  If

there be such a man living, I think this should still be done.  The

ascertaining the line between the Kickapoos and us is now of importance,

because it will close our possessions on the hither bank of the Mississippi

from the Ohio to the Ouisconsin, and give us a broad margin to prevent the

British from approaching that river, on which, under color of their treaty,

they would be glad to hover, that they might smuggle themselves and their

merchandise into Louisiana.  Their treaty can only operate on the country so

long as it is Indian; and in proportion as it becomes ours exclusively, their

ground is narrowed.  It makes it easier, too, for us to adopt, on this side of

the Mississippi a policy we are beginning on the other side, that of permitting

no traders, either ours or theirs, to go to the Indian towns, but oblige them

all to settle and be stationary at our factories, where we can have their

conduct under our observation and control.  However, our first object must be

to blockade them from the Mississippi, and to this I ask the favor of your

attention; and salute you with great friendship and respect.







 



216         Jefferson's Works







        TO JOEL, BARLOW.







        WASHINGTON, December 25, 1808.



        DEAR SIR,-l return you Doctor Maese's letter, which a pressure of

business has occasioned me to keep too long.  I think an account of the

manufactures of Philadelphia would be really useful, and that the manufactures

of other places should be added from time to time, as information of them

should be received.  To give a perfect view of the whole, would require a

report from every county or township of the United States.  Perhaps the present

moment would be premature, as they are, in truth, but just now in preparation. 

The government could not aid the publication by the subscription suggested by

Doctor Maese, without a special law for it.  All the purposes for which they

can pay a single dollar, are specified by law.  The advantage of the veterinary

institution proposed, may perhaps be doubted.  If it be problematical whether

physicians prevent death where the disease, unaided, would have terminated

fatally, -- oftener than they produce it, where order would have been restored

to the system by the process, if uninterrupted, provided by nature, and in the

case of a man who can describe the seat of his disease, its character,

progress, and often its cause, what might we expect in the case of the horse,

-- mute, etc., yielding no sensible and certain indications of his disease? 

They have long had these institutions in Europe; has the world received as







        Correspondence                    217







        yet one iota of valuable information from them?  If it has, it is

unknown to me.  At any rate, it may be doubted whether, where so many

institutions of obvious utility are yet wanting, we should select this one to

take the lead.  I return you Gibbon, with thanks.  I send you, also, for your

shelf of pamphlets, one which gives really a good historical view of our

funding system, and of federal transactions generally, from an early day to the

present time.  I salute you with friendship and respect.











        TO CHARLES THOMSON, ESQ.







        WASHINGTON,.  December 25, 1808.



        I thank you, my dear and ancient friend, for the two volumes of your

translation, which you have been so kind as to send me.  I have dipped into it

at the few moments of leisure which my vocations permit, and I perceive that I

shall use it with great satisfaction on my return home.  I propose there, among

my first employments, to give to the Septuagint an attentive perusal, and shall

feel the aid you have now given me.  I am full of plans of employment when I

get there,-they chiefly respect the active functions of the body.  To the mind

I shall administer amusement chiefly.  An only daughter and numerous family of

grandchildren, will furnish me great resources of happiness.  I learn with

sincere pleasure that you have health and activity enough to have performed tho

journey to and from







 



218            Jefferson's Works







Lancaster without inconvenience.  It has added another proof that you are not

wearied with well-doing.  Although I have enjoyed as uniform health through

life as reason could desire, I have no expectation that, even if spared to your

age, I shall at that period be able to take such a journey.  I am already

sensible of decay in the power of walking, and find my memory not so faithful

as it used to be.  This may be partly owing to the incessant current of new

matter flowing constantly through it; but I ascribe to years their share in it

also.  That you may be continued among us to the period of your own wishes, and

that it may be filled with continued health and happiness, is the sincere

prayer of your affectionate friend.











        TO ALBERT GALLATIN.







        WASHINGTON, December         27, 1808.



        The enclosed petition, from Deville, was handed me by General Turreau. 

I told him at once it was inadmissible; that days had been long ago announced,

after which no vessel would be permitted to depart; that in favor of emigrants

we had continued indulgences till very lately; but as there must be an end to

it, that time had come, and we had determined to give no more permissions. 

They had had a complete year to depart, and had not availed themselves of it. 

He appeared satisfied, and perhaps will himself give the answer.  However, an

answer of the







        Correspondence                      219







        above purport may be given from your office.  I have referred the case

of the British boats to the Attorney General for his opinion.  Affectionate

salutations.







        TO DOCTOR GEORGE LOGAN.







        WASHINGTON, December 27, 1808.



        DEAR SIR,-Your favor of the 8th, by Mr. Cunow, was duly received, and I

now return you the letter it covered.  Mr. Cunow's object was so perfectly

within our own views, that it was readily obtained, and I am in hopes he has

left us with a more correct opinion of the dispositions of the administration

than his fraternity has generally manifested.  I have within a few days had

visits from the Pottawattamies, Miamis, Chippewas, Delawares, and Cherokees,

and there arrived some yesterday, of, I believe, the Ottoways, Wyandots, and

others of that neighborhood.  Our endeavors are to impress on them all

profoundly, temperance, peace, and agriculture; and I am persuaded they begin

to feel profoundly the soundness of the advice.



        Congress seems as yet to have been able to make up no opinion.  Some

are for taking off the embargo before they separate; others not till their

meeting next autumn; but both with a view to substitute war, if no change takes

place with the powers of Europe.  A middle opinion is to have an extra session

in May, to come then to a final decision.  I have thought it right to take no

part myself in proposing







 



220            Jefferson's Works



        measures, the execution of which will devolve on my successor.  I am

therefore chiefly an unmeddling listener to what others say.  On the same

ground, I shall make no new appointments which can be deferred till the 4th of

March, thinking it fair to leave to my successor to select the agents for his

own administration.  As the moment of my retirement approaches, I become more

anxious for its arrival, and to begin at length to pass what yet remains to me

of life and health in the bosom of my family and neighbors, and in

communication with my friends, undisturbed by political concerns or passions. 

Permit me to avail myself of this occasion to assure Mrs. Logan and yourself of

my continued friendship and attachment, and that I shall ever be pleased to

hear of your happiness and prosperity, saluting you both with affection and

respect.











        TO ALBERT GALLATIN.







        WASHINGTON, December 28, 1808.







        I enclose you the petition of Jacob Smith of Newport, in the case of

the ship Triumph, which is a new case to me.  Perhaps the practice as to

foreign ships arriving since the embargo laws, with which I am unacquainted,

may facilitate the solution.  What should be done?



        The Atalanta.







        Is not the collector the person who is to search into the fact charged?

 I do not know who it is that







        Correspondence                     221







        does this in case of seizure.  However, I will send the case to Mr.

Smith.



        The petition of Manuel Valder for a vessel to carry off Spanish

subjects, is rejected.



        The cases from St. Mary are really embarrassing.  I sent the papers to

Mr. Madison to ask his opinion.  He had read only one when he called on me this

morning.  He seemed strongly of opinion that it would be most advisable to send

some person to the Governor of East Florida, to enter into some friendly

arrangements with him.  He has the papers still under consideration; in the

meantime we may consider as further means, how it might do to destroy all boats

and canoes on our side the river, paying for them?  To arrest impression, and

bring to regular trial every negro taken in the act of violating the laws? 

This for mere consideration.  Affectionate salutations.







        TO EDMUND RANDOLPH.







        WASHINGTON, December 28, 1808.







        DEAR SIR,-I received yesterday your favor of the 22d.  It was the first

information l had had of the sentence against Moss, the District Attorney not

having written to me as you supposed.  I referred the case to the Postmaster

General, who in his answer says, " His is not a single crime, but a series of

crimes, for months if not years.  There were found upon him between $1,300 and

$1,500, which he had robbed in small sums."







 



222            Jefferson's Works







        You are sensible that the Legislature having made



stripes a regular part of the punishment, that the pardoning them cannot be a

thing of course, as that would be to repeal the law, but that extraordinary and

singular considerations are necessary to entitle the criminal to that

remission.  The information of the Postmaster General marks such an habitual

depravity of mind, as leaves little room to suppose that any facts can

countervail it and the robbery of the mail has now become so frequent and great

an evil, that the moment is unfavorable to propositions of relaxation.  Still

J' shall be ready to receive and consider any testimony in his favor, which his

friends may bring forward, and will do it on whatever I may believe to have

been the intention of the Legislature in confiding the power of pardon to the

Executive.  The opinion of the judges who sat in the cause, I have ever

required as indispensable to ground a pardon.  A copy of the judgment is also

necessary.  I have taken the liberty of troubling you with these observations,

because I have received no application but your letter, and lest, on the

contrary supposition, his case might suffer for want of information.  Accept my

salutations and assurances of friendly esteem and respect.







Correspondence                    223











        TO







        WASHINGTON, December 31, 1808.







SIR,-The General Government of the United States has considered it their duty

and interest to extend their care and patronage over the Indian tribes within

their limits, and to endeavor to render them friends, and in time perhaps

useful members of the nation.  Perceiving the injurious effects produced by

their inordinate use of spirituous liquors, they passed laws authorizing

measures against the vending or distributing such liquors among them.  Their

introduction by traders was accordingly prohibited, and for some time was

attended with the best effects.  I am informed, however, that latterly the

Indians have got into the practice of purchasing such liquors themselves in the

neighboring settlements of whites, and of carrying them into their towns, and

that in this way our regulations so salutary to them, are now defeated.  I

must, therefore, request your Excellency to submit this matter to the

consideration of your Legislature.  I persuade myself that in addition to the

moral inducements which will readily occur, they will find it not indifferent

to their own interests to give us their aid in removing, for their neighbors,

this great obstacle to their acquiring industrious habits, and attaching

themselves to the regular and useful pursuits of life; for this purpose it is

much desired that they should pass effectual laws to restrain their citizens

from







 



        224             Jefferson's Works







vending and distributing spirituous liquors to the Indians.  I pray your

Excellency to accept the assurances of my great esteem and respect.











        TO HENRY GUEST.







        WASHINGTON, January 4, -1809.



        SIR,-A constant pressure of business must be my apology for being so

late in acknowledging the receipt of your favor of November 25th. I am sensible

of the kindness of your rebuke on my determination to retire from office at a

time when our country is laboring under difficulties truly great.  But if the

principle of rotation be a sound one, as I conscientiously believe it to be

with respect to this office, no pretext should ever be permitted to dispense

with it, because there never will be a time when real difficulties will not

exist, and furnish a plausible pretext for dispensation.  You suppose I am " in

the prime of life for rule.  " I am sensible I am not; and before I am so far

declined as to become insensible of it, I think it right to put it out of my

own power.  I have the comfort too of knowing that the person whom the public

choice has designated to receive the charge from me, is eminently qualified as

a safe depository by the endowments of integrity, understanding, and

experience.  On a review therefore of the reasons for my retirement, I think

you cannot fail to approve them.



        Your proposition for preventing the effect of splin-







        Correspondence                     225



ters in a naval action, will certainly merit consideration and trial whenever

our vessels shall be called into serious service; till then the perishable

nature of the covering, would render it an unnecessary expense.  I tender you

my best wishes for the continuance of your life and health, and salute you with

great esteem and respect.







        TO ALBERT GALLATIN.







        WASHINGTON, January 9,.1809.



        I do not recollect the instructions to Governor Lewis respecting

squatters.  But if he had any they were unquestionably to prohibit them

rigorously. have no doubt, if he had not written instructions, that he was

verbally so instructed.  Carr's story has very much the air of an idle rumor,

willingly listened to.  It shows some germ of discontent existing.











        TO THE SECRETARY OF WAR







        (HENRY DEARBORN).







        WASHINGTON, January       12, 1809.



SIR,-I have read with pleasure the letter of Captain Davidson, by which,

according to unanimous resolves of the company of light infantry of the first

legion of the militia of Columbia commanded by him, he tenders their services

as volunteers under the Act of Congress of February 24th, 1807.  I accept







 



226           Jefferson's Works







the offer, and render to Captain Davidson and the other officers and privates

of the company, that praise to which their patriotism so justly entitles them. 

So long urged by the aggressions of the belligerent powers, and every measure

of forbearance at length exhausted, our country must see with sincere

satisfaction the alacrity with which persons will flock to her standard

whenever her constituted authorities shall declare that we take into our own

hands the redress of our wrongs.  Be so good as to communicate in behalf of the

public my thanks to Captain Davidson, the other officers and privates of his

company, and be assured yourself of my affectionate respect.











        TO GENERAL HENRY DEARBORN.







        WASHINGTON, January 12, 1809.







I suppose that in answering Governor Drayton we, should compliment his ardor,

and smooth over our non-compliance with his request; that he might be told that

the President sees, in his present application, a proof of his vigilance and

zeal in whatever concerns the public safety, and will count with the more

confidence on his future attentions and energy whenever circumstances shall

call for them.  That he considers that the power entrusted to him for calling

out the 100,000 militia, was meant to be exercised only in the case of some

great and general emergency, and by no means to be employed merely as







Correspondence                             227







        garrisons or guards in ordinary cases: that there is no apprehension

that England means either to declare or to commence war on us at the present in

moment, and that if the declaration shall be intended to originate with us, he

may be assured of receiving timely notice, with the powers and the means of

placing everything in safety before a state of actual danger commences; that

nevertheless it is of great urgency that the quota of his State be prepared

with all possible diligence, to be ready to march at a moment's warning,

because by that time it is very possible, and scarcely improbable, that their

services may have become actually requisite.  Affectionate salutations.







        TO DOCTOR WILLIAM EUSTIS.







        WASHINGTON, January 14, 1809.







        SIR,-I have the pleasure to acknowledge the receipt of your letter of

December the 24th, and of the resolutions of the republican citizens of Boston,

of the 19th of that month.  These are worthy of the ancient character of the

sons of Massachusetts, and of the spirit of concord with her sister States,

which, and which alone, carried us successfully through the revolutionary war,

and finally placed us under that national government, which constitutes the

safety of every part, by uniting for its protection the powers of the whole. 

The moment for exerting these united powers, to repel the injuries of the,

bellig-







 



228          Jefferson's Works







erents of Europe, seems likely to be pressed upon us.  They have interdicted

our commerce with nearly the whole world.  They have declared it shall be

carried on with such places, in such articles, and in such measure only, as

they shall dictate; thus prostrating all the principles of right which have

hitherto protected it.  After exhausting the cup of forbearance and

conciliation to its dregs, we found it necessary, on behalf of that commerce,

to take time to call it home into a state of safety, to put the towns and

harbors which carry it on into a condition of defence, and to make further

preparation for enforcing the redress of its wrongs, and restoring it to its

rightful freedom.  This required a certain measure of time, which, although not

admitting specific limitation, must, from its avowed objects, have been obvious

to all; and the progress actually made towards the accomplishment of these

objects, proves it now to be near its term.  While thus endeavoring to secure,

and preparing to vindicate that commerce, the absurd opinion has been

propagated, that this temporary and necessary arrangement was to be a permanent

system, and was intended for its destruction.  The sentiments expressed in the

paper you were so kind as to enclose to me, show that those who have concurred

in them have judged with more candor the intentions of their government, and

are sufficiently aware of the tendency of the excitements and

misrepresentations which have been practised on this occasion.  And such, I am

persuaded, will







        Correspondence                     229







be the disposition of the citizens of Massachusetts at large, whenever truth

can reach them.  Associated with her sister States in a common government, the

fundamental principle of which is, that the will of the majority is to prevail,

sensible that, in the present difficulty, that will has been governed by no

local interests or jealousies, that, to save permanent rights, temporary

sacrifices were necessary, that these have fallen as impartially on all, as in

a situation so peculiar they could be made to do, she will see in the 'existing

measures a legitimate and honest exercise of the will and wisdom of the whole. 

And her citizens, faithful to themselves and their associates, will not, to

avoid a transient pressure, yield to the seductions of enemies to their

independence, foreign or domestic, and take a course equally subversive of

their well-being, as of that of their brethren.



The approbation expressed by the republican citizens of the town of Boston, of

the course pursued by the national government, is truly consoling to its

members; and, encouraged by the declaration of the I continuance of their

confidence, and by the assurance of their support, they will continue to pursue

the line of their high duties according to the best of their understandings,

and with undeviating regard to the good of the whole.  Permit me to avail

myself of this occasion of tendering you personally the assurances of my great

esteem and respect.



 



230            Jefferson's Works







        TO THOMAS C. JAMES, SECRETARY OF THE AMERICAN PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY.



        WASHINGTON, January 14, 1809.







        SIR,-I have received your favor of the 6th inst., informing me that the

American Philosophical Society had been pleased, at their late election,

unanimously to re-elect me president of the society.  In desiring, in my letter

to the vice-presidents, that I might be permitted to withdraw from that honor,

I acted from a conscientious persuasion that I was keeping from that important

station members whose position, as well as qualifications, would enable them to

render more effectual services to the institution.  But the society having

thought proper again to name me, I shall obey it with dutifulness, and be ever

anxious to avail myself of every occasion of being useful to them.  I pray you

to be so good as to communicate my thanks to them, with assurances of my

devotion to their service, and to accept those of great esteem and respect for

yourself personally.











        TO DOCTOR MAESE.







        WASHINGTON, January 15, 1809.







        SIR,-The constant pressure of such business as will admit no delay, has

prevented my sooner acknowledging the receipt of your letter of the 2d, and

even now will confine me to the single question, for the answer to which you

wait, before you take any







        Correspondence                     231







        step towards bringing forward the institution you propose for the

advancement of the arts.  That question is whether Congress would grant a

charter of incorporation, and a sum for premiums annually?  It has always been

denied by the republican party in this country, that the Constitution had given

the power of incorporation to Congress.  On the establishment of the Bank of

the United States, this was the great ground on which that establishment was

combated; and the party prevail' g supported it in



        only on the argument of its being an incident to the power given them

for raising money.  On this ground it has been acquiesced in, and will probably

be again acquiesced in, as subsequently ' confirmed by public opinion.  But in

no other instance have they ever exercised this power of incorporation out of

this district, of which they are the ordinary legislature.



        It is still more settled that among the purposes to which the

Constitution permits them to apply money, the granting premiums or bounties is

not enumerated, and there has never been a single instance of their doing it,

although there has been a multiplicity of applications.  The Constitution has

left these encouragements to the separate States.  I have in two or three

messages recommended to Congress an amendment to the Constitution, which should

extend their power to these objects.  But nothing is yet done in it. I fear,

therefore, that the institution you propose must rest on the patronage of the

State in which it is







 



232            Jefferson's Works







to be.  I wish I could have answered you more to my own mind, as well as yours;

but truth is the first object.  I salute you with esteem and respect.







        CIRCULAR LETTER FROM THE SECRETARY OF WAR,



        TO THE GOVERNORS,-PREPARED BY



        THOMAS JEFFERSON.







        WASHINGTON, January 17, 1809.







SIR,-The pressure of the embargo, although sensibly felt by every description

of our fellow citizens, has yet been cheerfully borne by most of them, under

the conviction that it was a temporary evil, and a necessary one to save us

from greater and more permanent evils,-the loss of, property and surrender of

rights.  But it would have been more cheerfully borne, but for the knowledge

that, while honest men were religiously observing it, the unprincipled along

our seacoast and frontiers were fraudulently evading it; and that in some parts

they had even dared to break through it openly, by an armed force too powerful

to be opposed by the collector and his assistants.  To put an end to this

scandalous insubordination to the laws, the Legislature h . as authorized the

President to empower proper persons to employ militia, for preventing or

suppressing armed or riotous assemblages of persons resisting the custom house

officers in the exercise of their duties, or opposing or violating the embargo

laws.  He sincerely hopes that during the short time which these restrictions

are







        Correspondence                       233







expected to continue, no other instances will take place of a crime of so creep

a dye.  But it is made his duty to take the measures necessary to meet it.  He

therefore requests you, as commanding officer of the militia of your State, to

appoint some officer of the militia, of known respect for the laws, in or near

to each port of entry within your State, with orders, when applied to by the

collector of the district, to assemble immediately a sufficient force of his

militia, and to employ them efficaciously to maintain the authority of the laws

respecting the embargo, and that you notify to each collector the officer to

whom, by your appointment, he is so to apply for aid when necessary.  He has

referred this appointment to your Excellency, because your knowledge of

characters, or means of obtaining it, will enable you to select one who can be

confided in to exercise so serious a power, with all the discretion, the

forbearance, the kindness even, which the enforcement of the law will possibly

admit,---ever to bear in mind that the life of a citizen is never to be

endangered, but as the last melancholy effort for the maintenance of order and

obedience to the laws.







        TO WASHINGTON BOYD.



        WASHINGTON, January 20, 1809.



        Thomas Jefferson presents his compliments to Mr. Boyd, and observes

that the enclosed petition of Nicholas Kosieg, has been addressed to Judge







 



234           Jefferson's Works







Cranch, and yet is not recommended by him or the other judges who sat on the

trial.  They are so particularly qualified by having heard the evidence, to

decide on the merits of the petition, that Thomas Jefferson has generally made

the recommendation of judges the foundation of pardon, and sees no reason in

the present case to depart from that rule.  He assures Mr. Boyd of his esteem

and respect.











        TO HIS EXCELLENCY GOVERNOR JOHN TYLER.'







        WASHINGTON, January 20, 1809.







SIR,-The Secretary of War has put into my hand your Excellency's letter of

January 9th, covering one of December 15th from Captain Henry St. John Dixon,

of the volunteer riflemen of the 105th regiment, offering the service of his

company for one year.  The term for which the offer is made shows it intended

to be under the Act of Congress of February 24th, 1807, and not. under that of

March 30th, 1808, which is only for a service of six months under the law of

1807.  The Governors were authorized and requested, on behalf of the President,

to accept the offers made under that act, and to organize the corps when ready

for it, officering it according to the laws of their State.  This authority was

given to your predecessor, and was considered as devolving on yourself.  The

authority and request are now renewed to you, and the letter of Captain Dixon

Governor of Virginia.







        Correspondence                    235







returned for that purpose.  To this I will add another request, that you will

be so good as to endeavor to have a return made to the War Office of all the

corps of twelve-month volunteers which have been accepted in Virginia.  They

began immediately after the attack on the Chesapeake.  I salute you with esteem

and respect.











        TO COLONEL DAVID HUMPHREYS.







        WASHINGTON, January 20, 1809.







SIR,-I have to acknowledge the receipt of your favor of December 12th, and to

return you my thanks for the cloth furnished me.  It came in good time, and

does honor to your manufactory, being as good as any one would wish to wear in

any country.  Amidst the pressure of evils with which the belligerent edicts

have afflicted us, some permanent good will arise; the spring given to

manufactures will have durable effects.  Knowing most of my own State, I can

affirm with confidence that were free intercourse opened again to-morrow, she

would never again import one-half of the coarse goods which she has done down

to the date of the edicts.  These will be made in our families.  For finer

goods we must resort to the larger manufactories established in the towns. 

Some jealousy of this spirit of manufacture seems excited among commercial men.

 It would have been as just when we first began to make our own ploughs and

hoes.  They have certainly lost







 



236             Jefferson's Works







the profit of bringing these from a foreign country.  My idea is that we should

encourage home manufactures to the extent of our own consumption of everything

of which we raise the raw material.  I do not think it fair in the ship-owners

to say we ought not to make our own axes, nails, etc., here, that they may have

the benefit of carrying the iron to Europe, and bringing back the axes, nails,

etc.  Our agriculture will still afford surplus produce enough to employ a due

proportion of navigation.  Wishing every possible success to your undertaking,

as well for your personal as the public benefit, I salute you with assurances

of great esteem and respect.











        TO THOMAS LEIPER.







        WASHINGTON, January 21, 1809.







DEAR SIR,-YOUR letter of the 15th was duly received, and before that, Towers'

book, which you had been so kind as to send me, had come to hand, for which I

pray you to receive my thanks.  You judge rightly that here I have no time to

read.  A cursory view of the book shows me that the author is a man of much

learning in his line.  I have heard of some other late writer, (the name I

forget,) who has undertaken to prove contrary events from the same sources; and

particularly that England is not to be put down; and that this is the favorite

author in that country.  As to myself, my religious reading has long been

confined to the moral branch of religion,







        Correspondence                      237







which is the same in all religions; while in that branch -which consists of

dogmas, all differ, all have a different set.  The former instructs us how to

live well and worthily in society; the latter are made to interest our minds in

the support of the teachers who inculcate them.  Hence, for one sermon on a

moral subject, you hear ten on the dogmas of the sect.  However, religion is

not the subject for you and me; neither of us know the religious opinions of

the other; that is a matter between our Maker and ourselves.  We understand

each other better in politics, to which therefore I will proceed.  The House of

Representatives passed last night a bill for the meeting of Congress on the 2

2d of May.  This substantially decides the course they mean to pursue; that is,

to let the embargo continue till then, when it will cease, and letters of

marque and reprisal be issued against such nations as shall not then have

repealed their obnoxious edicts.  The great majority seem to have made -up

their minds on this, while there is considerable diversity of opinion on the

details of preparation; to wit: naval force, volunteers, army, non-intercourse,

etc.  I write freely to you, because I know that in stating facts, you will not

quote names.  You know that every syllable uttered in my name becomes a text

for the federalists to torment the public mind on by their paraphrases and

perversions.  I have lately inculcated the encouragement of manufactures to the

extent of our own consumption at least, in all articles of







 



238             Jefferson's Works







which we raise the raw material.  On this the federal papers and meetings have

sounded the alarm of Chinese policy, destruction of commerce, etc.; that is to

say, the iron which we make must not be wrought here into ploughs, axes, hoes,

etc., in order that the ship-owner may have the profit of carrying it to

Europe, and bringing it back in a manufactured form, as if after manufacturing

our own raw materials for our own use, there would not be a surplus produce

sufficient to employ a due proportion of navigation in carrying it to market

and exchanging it for those articles of which we have not the raw material. 

Yet this absurd hue and cry has contributed much to federalize New England,

their doctrine goes to the sacrificing agriculture and manufactures to

commerce; to the calling all our people from the interior country to the

sea-shore to turn merchants, and to convert this great agricultural country

into a city of Amsterdam.  But I trust the good sense of our country will see

that its greatest prosperity depends on a due balance between agriculture,

manufactures and commerce, and not in this protuberant navigation which has

kept us in hot water from the commencement of our government, and is now

engaging us in war.  That this may be avoided, if it can be done without a

surrender of rights, is my sincere prayer.  Accept the assurances of my

constant esteem and respect.







Correspondence                     239







        TO COLONEL CHARLES SIMMS, COLLECTOR.







        WASHINGTON, January 22, 1809.







SIR,--I received last night your letter of yesterday, and this being a day in

which all the offices are shut, and the case admitting no delay, I enclose you

a special order, directly from myself, to apply for aid of the militia adjacent

to the vessel, to enable you to do your duty as to the sloop loading with

flour.  But I must desire that, so far as the agency of the militia be

employed, it may be with the utmost discretion, and with no act of force beyond

what shall be necessary to maintain obedience to the laws, using neither deeds

nor words unnecessarily offensive.  I salute vou with respect.







        [The Order Enclosed.]







        THOMAS JEFFERSON, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.







        January, 1809.







UNITED STATES OF AMERICA TO WIT,-Information being received that a sloop, said

to be of one of the eastern States, of about 1,500 barrels burden, is taking in

flour in the Bay of Occoquan in Virginia, with intention to violate the several

embargo laws, and the urgency of the case not admitting the delay of the

ordinary course of proceeding through the orders of the Governors of the

States, I have therefore thought proper to issue these my special orders to the

militia officers of the counties of Fairfax,







 



        240            Jefferson's Works







Prince William, or of any other county of Virginia, or of Maryland, adjacent to

the river Potomac or any of its waters, wherein the said vessel may be found,

and to such particular officer especially to whom these my orders shall be

presented by any collector of the customs, for any district on the said river

or its waters, or by any person acting under their authority, forthwith on

receiving notice, to call out such portion of the militia under his or their

command as shall be sufficient, and to proceed with the same, in aid of the

said collector, to take possession of the said sloop and her cargo, wheresoever

found in the said waters, and to detain the same until she shall be liberated

according to law, for which this shall be his and their warrant.



Given under my hand at Washington, this 22d day of January, 1809.











        TO COLONEL JAMES MONROE.



        WASHINGTON, January 28, 1809.



DEAR SIR,--Your favor of the 18th was received in due time, and the answer has

been delayed as well by a pressure of business, as by the expectation of your

absence from Richmond.



The idea of sending a special mission to France or England is not entertained

at all here.  After so little attention to us from the former, and so insulting

an answer from Canning, such a mark of respect as an extraordinary mission,

would be a degradation against







        Correspondence                     241







which all minds revolt here.  The idea was hazarded in the House of

Representatives a few days ago,,by a member, and an approbation expressed by

another, but rejected indignantly by every other person who spoke, and very

generally in conversation by all others; and I am satisfied such a proposition

would get no vote in the Senate.  The course the Legislature means to pursue,

may be inferred from the act now passed for a meeting in May, and a proposition

before them for repealing the embargo in June, and then resuming and

maintaining by force our right of navigation.  There will be considerable

opposition to this last proposition, not only from the federalists, old and

new, who oppose everything, but from sound members of the majority.  Yet it is

believed it will obtain a good majority, and that it is the only proposition

which can be devised that could obtain a majority of any kind.  Final

propositions will, therefore, be soon despatched to both the belligerents

through the resident ministers, so that their answers will be received before

the meeting in May, and will decide what is to be done.  This last trial for

peace is not thought desperate.  If, as is expected, Bonaparte should be

successful in Spain, however every virtuous and liberal sentiment revolts at

it, it may induce both powers to be more accommodating with us.  England will

see here the only asylum for her commerce and manufactures, worth more to her

than her orders of council.  And Bonaparte, having Spain at his feet, will look

immediately to the







 



242             Jefferson's Works







        Spanish colonies, and think our neutrality cheaply purchased by a

repeal of the illegal parts of his decrees, with perhaps the Floridas thrown

into the bargain.  Should a change in the aspect of affairs in Europe produce

this disposition in both powers, our peace and prosperity may be revived and

long continue.  Otherwise, we must again take the tented field, as we did in

1776 under more inauspicious circumstances.



        There never has been a situation of the world before, in which such

endeavors as we have made would not have secured our peace.  It is probable

there never will be such another.  If we go to war now, I fear we may renounce

forever the hope of seeing an end of our national debt.  If we can keep at

peace eight years longer, our income, liberated from death, will be adequate to

any war, without new taxes or loans, and our position and increasing strength

put us hors d'insulte from any nation.  I am now so near the moment of

retiring, that I take no part in affairs beyond the expression of an opinion. 

I think it fair that my successor should now originate those measures of which

he will be charged with the execution and responsibility, and that it 'is my

duty to clothe them with the forms of authority.  Five weeks more will relieve

me from a drudgery to when I am no longer equal, and restore me to a scene of

tranquillity, amidst my family and friends, more congenial to my age and

natural inclinations.  In that situation, it will always be a pleasure to me to

see you, and to







        Correspondence                     243







        repeat to you the assurances of my constant friendship and respect.







        TO HIS EXCELLENCY GOVERNOR JOHN SEVIER.(1)



        WASHINGTON, January 31, 1809.







        SIR,-The extraordinary and critical situation of our foreign relations

rendering it necessary, in the opinion of the National Legislature, that their

next recess should be short, they have passed an act for meeting on the fourth

Monday of May, of which I enclose you a copy.  As the election of

representatives for the State of Tennessee would not, in the ordinary course,

be in time for this meeting, I have thought it my duty to make you a special

communication of this law.  That every State should be represented in the great

council of the nation, is not only the interest of each, but of the whole

united, who have a right to be aided by the collective wisdom and information

of the whole, in questions which are to decide on their future well-being.  I

trust that your Excellency will deem it incumbent on you to call an immediate

meeting of your Legislature, in order to put it in their power to fulfil this

high duty, by making special and timely provision for the representation of

their State at the ensuing meeting of Congress; to which measures I am bound

earnestly to exhort yourself and them.  I am not insensible of the personal

inconvenience of this special call to







@#(1) Governor of Tennessee.@%







 



244             Jefferson's Works







        the members composing the Legislature of so extensive a State; but

neither will I do them the injustice to doubt their being ready to make much

greater sacrifices for the common safety, should the course of events still

lead to a call for them.- I tender to your Excellency the assurances of my high

respect and consideration.







        TO MONSIEUR AMELOT DE LA CROIX, BOSTON.



        WASHINGTON, February 3, 1809.



        SIR,-I received in due time your favor of December 28th, covering the

tragedy of the unfortunate Louis XVI., and I am sure you are too reasonable not

to have ascribed the delay of answer which has intervened, to its true cause,

the never-ceasing pressure of business which cannot be deferred. 1 have read

the piece with great satisfaction.  I recognize in Louis that purity of virtue

and sincere patriotism which I knew made a part of his real character.  The

sound good sense and exalted sentiments he is made to utter, were proper to his

character, whether actually a part of it or not.  I say nothing of style, not

doubting its merit, and conscious I am no judge of it in a foreign language.  I

believe it impossible, in any but our native tongue, to be so thoroughly

sensible of the delicacy of style, which constitutes an essential merit in

poetical composition, as to criticise them with correctness.



        I wish that, in the prefatory piece, the character







        Correspondence                      245







        which is the subject of it, did not fall still further short of its

representation than that of the principal personage in the main piece.  I have

never claimed any other merit than of good intentions, sensible that in the

choice of measures, error of judgment has too often had its influence; and with

whatever indulgence my countrymen as well as yourself, have been so kind as to

view my course, yet they would certainly not know me in the picture here drawn,

and would, I fear, say in the words of the poet, "Praise undeserved is satire

in disguise." Were, therefore, the piece to be prepared for the press, I should

certainly entreat you to revise that part with a severe eye.



        I believe I mentioned to you, on a former occasion, that the late act

of Congress for raising additional troops required that the officers should all

be citizens of the United States.  Should there be war, however, I am persuaded

this policy must be abandoned, and that we must avail ourselves of the

experience of other nations, in certain lines of service at least.  In that

expectation I shall leave with my successor the papers in my possession, from

which he may be sensible of the benefits he may receive from your aid.



        I pray you to accept my salutations and assurances of respect.











**







        246 Jefferson's Works







        TO CAPTAIN ARMISTEAD T. MASON.



        WASHINGTON, February 3, 1809.



        SIR,-Your letter of January 7th came to my hand on the 23d only of that

month, since which the pressure of business which could not be delayed, has

prevented my sooner acknowledging its receipt.  The offer of service therein

made by the subscribing members of the troop of cavalry, attached to the 57th

regiment of Virginia militia under your command, is worthy of that ardent love

of our country which, I am persuaded, will distinguish its citizens, whenever

its wrongs shall call them to the field.  I tender, therefore, to the

subscribing officers and members of the troop that acknowledgment of their

merit which is so justly due.  At the same time, I must observe that,

considering their offer of service as made under the law of 1808, the power of

accepting it is thereby given to the governor of the State, to whom their

address for acceptance is of course to be made.  A bill for raising a body of

volunteers is now on its progress through Congress.  Should that be passed,

which will soon be known, it may perhaps be more eligible for the subscribing

members to place themselves under the conditions of that law.  I pray you to

accept, for them and yourself, the assurances of my esteem and respect.







Correspondence                      247







        TO CAPTAIN ARMISTEAD T. MASON.







        WASHINGTON, February 3, 1809.



SIR,-I enclose you a letter in answer to that in which you offer the services

of the subscribing members of your troop of cavalry.  I make this separate and

private answer to the very friendly letter addressed to me in your own name

only, and which accompanied the former.  The relation which you bear to my most

valued and worthy friend Stevens T. Mason, gives you a just title to

communicate your wishes to me, and will insure to you any services I can render

you.  The time of my continuance in office is now so short, that it will

scarcely fall to my lot to be useful to you, but I shall leave your letter in

the hands of my successor, than whom nobody cherishes more the memory of your

father.  If the bill mentioned in my other letter passes, there will be little

difficulty in your obtaining appointment.  The engagements that proposes are to

be for one year from the time the volunteers are called on, which will not be

till war is declared, or inevitable, and from that corps a transfer will be

easy into the regular troops, which in that case will be to be raised.



        I am happy in every testimony from my fellow citizens, that my conduct

in the discharge of my duties to them, has given them satisfaction.  Accept my

thanks for the very kind terms in which you have been pleased to express your

dispositions towards myself, and with a request that you will be so good as















**







 







 



248             Jefferson's Works







to present my high respects to Mrs. Mason, with







        whom I have had the happiness of some acquaintance, I salute you with

friendship and esteem.















        TO THOMAS MANN RANDOLPH.







        WASHINGTON, February       7, 1809.







        DEAR SIR,-L thought Congress had taken their ground firmly for

continuing their embargo till June, and then war.  But a sudden and

unaccountable revolution of opinion took place the last week, chiefly among the

New England and New York members, and in a kind of panic they voted the 4th of

March for removing the embargo, and by such a majority as gave all reason to

believe they would not agree either to war or non-intercourse.  This, too, was

after we had become satisfied that the Essex junto had found their expectation

desperate, of inducing the people there to either separation or forcible

opposition.  The majority of Congress, however, has now rallied to the removing

the embargo on the 4th of March, non-intercourse with France and Great Britain,

trade everywhere else, and continuing war preparations.  The further details

are not yet settled, but I believe it is perfectly certain that the embargo

will be taken off the 4th of March.  Present my warmest affections to my

dearest Martha, and the young ones, and accept the assurances of them to

yourself .







        Correspondence                     249







        TO HIS EXCELLENCY GOVERNOR JOHN TYLER.



        WASHINGTON, February 16, 1809.



        SIR,-I have duly received your favor of the 11th, covering resolutions

of the General Assembly of Virginia on our foreign relations, and an address to

myself, on my approaching retirement; and I ask leave, through the same

channel, to return -the enclosed answer.  Nothing can give me more sincere

satisfaction than this kind and honorable testimony from the General Assembly

of my native State,-a State in which I have drawn my first and shall draw my

latest breath, and to which I retire with inexpressible pleasure.  I am equally

sensible of your goodness, in the approving terms in which you have made this

communication.  The concurrence of a veteran patriot, who from the first dawn

of the revolution to this day has pursued unchangeably the same honest course,

cannot but be flattering to his fellow laborers.  I pray you to accept the

assurances of my sincere esteem and respect.











        TO BENJAMIN STODDART.







        WASHINGTON, February 18, 1809.







        SIR,-Your favor of January 25th had been duly received, and I was

waiting in the hope I might find a moment of less pressure in which I might

answer it somewhat in detail, when that of the '4th inst. came to hand. -

Finding that, instead of any relax-







250            Jefferson's Works







ation of business, it crowds more on me as I approach my departure.  I can only

indulge myself in a very brief reply.  As to the rights of the United States as

a neutral power, our opinions are very different, mine being that when two

nations go to war, it does not abridge the rights of neutral nations but in the

two articles of blockade and contraband of war.  But on this subject we have

both probably read and thought so much as to have made up our minds, and it is

not likely that either can make a convert of the other.  With respect to the

interests of the United States in this exuberant commerce which is now bringing

war on us, we concur perfectly.  It brings us into collision with other powers

in every sea, and will force us into every war of the European powers.  The

converting this great agricultural country into a city of Amsterdam,-a mere

headquarters for carrying on the commerce of all -nations with one another, is

too absurd.  Yet this is the real object of the drawback system,-it enriches a

few individuals, but lessens the stock of native productions, by withdrawing

from them all the hands thus employed; it is essentially interesting to us to

have shipping and seamen enough to carry our surplus produce to market; but

beyond that, I do not think we are bound to give it encouragement by drawbacks

or other premiums.  I wish you may be right in supposing that the trading

States would now be willing to give up the drawbacks, and to denationalize all

ships taking foreign articles on board for any other







        Correspondence                      251







destination than the United States, on being secured by discriminating duties,

or otherwise in the exclusive carryage of the produce of the United States.  I

should doubt it.  Were such a proposition to come from them, I presume it would

meet with little difficulty.  Otherwise, I suppose it must wait till peace,

when the right of drawback will be less valued than the exclusive carryage of

our own produce.



No apology was necessary for the letters you were so kind as to write me on

this subject.  I have always received with thankfulness the ideas of judicious

persons on subjects interesting to the public.  In the present case, I thought

I should better fulfil your objects by communicating your letters to my

successor, to whose views I have thought it my duty to give the lead, ever

since his designation, as to all matters which he would have to execute. 

Nothing will probably be done on this subject in the few days between this and

my retirement; and in that situation I shall certainly divorce myself from all

part in political affairs.  To get rid of them is the principal object of my

retirement, and the first thing necessary to the happiness which, you justly

observe, it is in vain to look for in any other situation.  I pray you to

accept my salutations, and assurances of respect.







 



        252        Jefferson's Works







                TO JOHN HOLLINS. WASHINGTON, February 19, 1809.



DEAR SIR,-A little transaction of mine, as innocent a one as I ever entered

into, and where an improper construction was never less expected, is making

some noise, I observe, in your city.  I beg leave to explain it to you, because

I mean to ask your agency in it.  The last year, the Agricultural Society of

Paris, of which I am a member, having had a plough presented to them, which, on

trial with a graduated instrument, did equal work with half the force of their

best ploughs, they thought it would be a benefit to mankind to communicate it. 

They accordingly sent one to me, with a view to its being made known here, and

they sent one to the Duke of Bedford also, who is one of their members, to be

made use of for England, although the two nations were then at war.  By the

Mentor, now going to France, I have given permission to two individuals in

Delaware and New York, to import two parcels of Merino sheep from France, which

they have procured there, and to some gentlemen in Boston, to import a very

valuable machine which spins cotton, wool, and flax equally. The last spring,

the Society informed me they were cultivating the cotton of the Levant and

other parts of the Mediterranean, and wished to try also that of our southern

States.  I immediately got a friend to have two tierces of seed forwarded to

me.  They were consigned to Messrs.







        Correspondence                      253







Falls and Brown of Baltimore and notice of it being given me, I immediately

wrote to them to re-ship them to New York, to be sent by the Mentor.  Their

first object was to make a show of my letter, as something very criminal, and

to carry the subject into the newspapers.  I had, on a like request some time

ago, (but before the embargo,) from the President of the Board of Agriculture

of London, of which I am also a member, to send them some of the genuine May

wheat of Virginia, forwarded to them two or three barrels of it.  General

Washington, in his time, received from the same Society the seed of the

perennial succory, which Arthur Young had carried over from France to England,

and I have since received from a member of it the seed of the famous turnip of

Sweden, now so well known here.  I mention these things, to show the nature of

the correspondence which is carried on between societies instituted for the

benevolent purpose of communicating to all parts of the world whatever useful

is discovered in any one of them.  These societies are always in peace, however

their nations may be at war.  Like the republic of letters, they form a great

fraternity spreading over the whole earth, and their correspondence is never

interrupted by any civilized nation.  Vaccination has been a late and

remarkable instance of the liberal diffusion of a blessing newly discovered. 

It is really painful, it is mortifying, to be obliged to note these things,

which are known to every one who knows anything, and felt with approbation by

every







 



254             Jefferson's Works







one who has any feeling.  But we have a faction, to whose hostile passions the

torture even of right into wrong is a delicious gratification.  Their malice I

have long learned to disregard, their censure to deem praise.  But I observe

that some republicans are not satisfied (even while we are receiving liberally

from others) that this small return should be made.  They will think more

justly at another day; but, in the meantime, I wish to avoid offence.  My

prayer to you, therefore, is, that you will be so good, under the enclosed

order, as to receive these two tierces of seed from Falls and Brown, and pay

them their disbursements for freight, etc., which I will immediately remit you

on knowing the amount.  Of the seed, when received, be so good as to make

manure for your garden.  When rotted with a due mixture of stable manure or

earth, it is the best in the world.  I rely on your friendship to excuse this

trouble, it being necessary I should not commit myself again to persons of

whose honor, or the want of it, I know nothing.



Accept the assurances of my constant esteem and respect.







        TO M. HENRI GREGOIRE, EVEQUE ET SENATEUR



        X PARIS.



        WASHINGTON, February 2-, 1809.



        SIR,-I have received the favor of your letter of



        August I 7th, and with it the volume you were So kind



        Correspondence                      255







as to send me on the "Literature of Negroes." Be assured that no person living

wishes more sincerely than I do, to see a complete refutation of the doubts I

have myself entertained and expressed on the grade of understanding allotted to

them by nature, and to find that in this respect they are on a par with

ourselves.  My doubts were the result of personal observation on the limited

sphere of my own State, where the opportunities for the development of their in

genius were not favorable, and those of exercising it still less so.  I

expressed them therefore with great hesitation; but whatever be their degree of

talent it is no measure of their rights.  Because Sir Isaac Newton was superior

to others in understanding, he was not therefore lord of the person or property

of others.  On this subject they are gaining daily in the opinions of nations,

and hopeful advances are making towards their re-establishment on an equal

footing with the other colors of the human family.  I pray you therefore to

accept my thanks for the many instances you have enabled me to observe of

respectable intelligence in that race of men, which cannot fail to have effect

in hastening the day of their relief; and to be assured of the sentiments of

high and just esteem and consideration which I tender to yourself with all

sincerity.







 



256             Jefferson's Works







TO M. RUELLE, ANCIEN AGENT DIPLOMATIQUE, RUE D'ARGENTINE, NO. 38, Á PARIS.



        WASHINGTON, February 25, 1809.







        SIR,-I have duly received your favors of May 29th and July 11th, and

with this last a copy of your Constitution with the new augmentations.  Our

usages not permitting me to present it formally to the Legislature of the

nation, I have deposited it in their library, where all its members will have

an opportunity of profiting of its truths, and it will be, as you desire, in a

depôt beyond the reach of violence.  No interests are dearer to men than those

which ought to be secured to them by their form of government, and none deserve

better of them than those who contribute to the amelioration of that form.  The

consciousness of having deserved well of mankind for your endeavors to be

useful to them in this line, will be itself a high reward, to which will be

added the homage of those who shall have reaped the benefits of them.  I ask

permission on my part to tender you the assurances of my esteem and great

respect.







        TO THOMAS MANN RANDOLPH.



        WASHINGTON, February 28, 1809.



        MY DEAR SIR,-By yesterday's mail I learn that it would be the desire of

many of the good citizens of our country to meet me on the road on my return







        Correspondence                       257







        home, as a manifestation of their good will.  But it is quite

impossible for me to ascertain the day on which I shall leave this.  The

accumulated business at the close of a session will prevent my making any

preparation for my departure till after the 4th of March.  After that, the

arrangement of papers and business to be delivered over to my successor, the

winding up my own affairs, and clearing out from this place, will employ me for

several days, (I cannot conjecture even how many,) so as to render the

commencement, and consequently the termination of my journey, altogether

uncertain.  But it is a sufficient happiness to me to know that my fellow

citizens of the country generally entertain for me the kind sentiments which

have prompted this proposition, without giving to so many the trouble of

leaving their homes to meet a single individual.  I shall have opportunities of

taking them individually by the hand at our court-house and other public

places, and of exchanging assurances of mutual esteem.  Certainly it is the

greatest consolation to me to know, that in returning to the bosom of my native

country, I shall be again in the midst of their kind affections: and I can say

with truth that my return to them will make me happier than I have been since I

left them.  Nothing will be wanting on my part to merit the continuance of

their good will.  The House of Representatives passed yesterday, by a vote of

81 to 40, the bill from the Senate repealing the embargo the 4th of March,

except against Great Britain and







 



258             Jefferson's Works







France and their dependencies, establishing a nonintercourse with them, and

having struck out the clause for letters of marque and reprisal, which it is

thought the Senate will still endeavor to reinstate.  I send you a paper

containing the last Spanish news.  Yours affectionately.











        TO MESSRS.  GREGG AND LEIB, SENATORS OF PENN-



        SYLVANIA.-MR. SMILIE.



        WASHINGTON, March 2, 1809.



        GENTLEMEN,-I have just received the enclosed



        with a request that I would lay it before both Houses



of Congress.  But I have never presumed to place myself between the Legislative

Houses and those who have a constitutional right to address them directly.  I

take the liberty therefore of enclosing the paper to you, that you may do

therein what in your judgment shall best comport with expediency and propriety.



I pray you to be assured of my high consideration.















        TO MONSIEUR DUPONT DE NEMOURS.







        WASHINGTON, March 2, I 809.







DEAR SIR,-My last to you was of May 2, ; since which I have received yours of

May the 25th, June the 1st, July the 23d, 24th, and September the 5th, and

distributed the two pamphlets according to your







        Correspondence                     259







desire.  They are read with the delight which everything from your pen gives.



After using every effort which could prevent or delay our being entangled in

the war of Europe, that seems now our only resource.  The edicts of the two

belligerents, forbidding us to be seen on the ocean, we met by an embargo. 

This gave us time to call home our seamen, ships and property, to levy men and

put our seaports into a certain state of defence.  We have now ta n o. the

embargo, except as to France and England and their territories, because fifty

millions of exports, annually sacrificed, are the treble of what war would cost

us; besides, that by war we should take something, and lose less than at

present.  But to give you a true description of the state of things here, I

must refer you to Mr. Coles, the bearer of this, my secretary, a most worthy,

intelligent and well-informed young man, whom I recommend to your notice, and

conversation on our affairs.  His discretion and fidelity may be relied on.  I

expect he will find you with Spain at your feet, but England still afloat, and

a barrier to the Spanish colonies.  But all these concerns I am now leaving to

be settled by my friend Mr. Madison.  Within a few days I retire to my family,

my books and farms; and having gained the harbor myself, I shall look on my

friends still buffeting the storm with anxiety indeed, but not with envy. 

Never did a prisoner, released from his chains, feel such relief as I shall on

shaking off the shackles of







 



260             Jefferson's Works







power.  Nature intended me for the tranquil pursuits of science, by rendering

them my supreme delight.  But the enormities of the times in which I have

lived, have forced me to take a part in resisting them, and to commit myself on

the boisterous ocean of political passions.  I thank God for the opportunity of

retiring from them without censure, and carrying with me the most consoling

proofs of public approbation.  I leave everything in the hands of men so able

to take care of them, that if we are destined to meet misfortunes, it will be

because no human wisdom could avert them.  Should you return to the United

States, perhaps your curiosity may lead you to visit the hermit of Monticello. 

He will receive you with affection and delight; hailing you in the meantime

with his affectionate salutations and assurances of constant esteem and

respect.







        P.        S. If, you return to us, bring a couple of pair of true-bred

shepherd's dogs.  You will add a valuable possession to a country now beginning

to pay great .attention to the raising sheep.







        TO GENERAL JOHN ARMSTRONG.



        WASHINGTON, March 5, 1809.



DEAR SIR,-This will be handed you by Mr. Coles, the bearer of public

despatches, by an aviso.  He has lived with me as Secretary, is my wealthy

neighbor at Monticello, and worthy of all confidence.  His







        Correspondence                     261







intimate knowledge of our situation has induced us to send him, because he will

be a full supplement as to all those things which cannot be detailed in

writing.  He can possess you of our present situation much more intimately than

you can understand it from letters.  The belligerent edicts rendered our

embargo necessary to call home our ships, our seamen, and property.  We

expected some effect, too, from the coercion of interest.  Some it has had; but

much less on account of evasions, and domestic opposition to it.  After fifteen

months' continuance it is now discontinued, because, losing $50,000,000 Of

exports annually by it, it costs more than war, which might be carried on for a

third of that, besides what might be got by reprisal.  War therefore must

follow if the edicts are not repealed before the meeting of Congress in May. 

You have thought it advisable sooner to take possession of adjacent

territories.  But we know that they are ours the first moment that any war is

forced upon us for other causes, that we are at hand to anticipate their

possession, if attempted by any other power, and, in the meantime, we are

lengthening the term of our prosperity, liberating our revenues, and increasing

our power.  I suppose Napoleon will get possession of Spain; but her colonies

will deliver themselves to any member of the Bourbon family.  Perhaps Mexico

will choose its sovereign within itself.  He will find them much more difficult

to subdue than Austria or Prussia; because an enemy (even in peace an enemy)

pos-







 



        262             Jefferson's Works







        messes the element over which he is to pass to get at them; and a more

powerful enemy (climate) will soon mow down his armies after arrival.  This

will be, without any doubt, the most difficult enterprise the emperor has ever

undertaken.  He may subdue the small colonies; he never can the old and strong;

and the former will break off from him the first war he has again with a naval

power.



        I thank you for having procured for me the dynamometer which I have

safely received, as well as the plough.  Mr. Coles will reimburse what you were

so kind as to advance for me on that account.  The letters which Will be

written vou by the new Secretary of State (Mr.  Smith) will say to you what is

meant to be official.  For although I too have written on politics, it is

merely as a private individual, which I am now happily become.  Within two or

three days I retire from scenes of difficulty, anxiety, and of contending

passions, to the elysium of domestic affections, and the irresponsible

direction of my own affairs.  Safe in port myself, I shall look anxiously at my

friends still buffeting the storm, and wish you all safe in port also.  With my

prayers for your happiness and prosperity, accept the assurances of my sincere

friendship and great respect.







        Correspondence                     263







        TO BARON ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT.



        WASHINGTON, March 6, 1809.



        DEAR SIR,-I received safely your letter of May 30th, and with it your

astronomical work and political essay on the kingdom of New Spain, for which I

return you my sincere thanks.  I had before heard that this work had begun to

appear, and the specimen I have received proves that it will not disappoint the

expectations of the learned.  Besides making known to us one of the most

singular and interesting countries on the globe, one almost locked up from the

knowledge of man hitherto, precious additions will be made to our stock of

physical science, in many of its parts.  We shall bear to you therefore the

honorable testimony that you have deserved well of the republic of letters.



        You mention that you had before written other letters to me.  Be

assured I have never received a single one, or I should not have failed to make

my acknowledgments of it.  Indeed I have not waited for that, but for the

certain information, which I had not, of the place where you might be.  Your

letter of May 30th first gave me that information.  You have wisely located

yourself in the focus of the science of Europe.  I am held by the cords of love

to my family and country, or I should certainly join you.  Within a few days I

shall now bury myself in the groves of Monticello, and become a mere spectator

of the passing events.  On politics I will say nothing,







 



264            Jefferson's Works







        because I would not implicate you by addressing to you the republican

ideas of America, deemed horrible heresies by the royalism of Europe.  You will

know before this reaches you, that Mr. Madison is my successor.  This ensures

to us a wise and honest administration.  I salute you with sincere friendship

and respect.











        TO WILLIAM SHORT.







        WASHINGTON, March 8, 1809.







        DEAR SIR,-It is with much concern I inform you that the Senate has

negatived your appointment.  We thought it best to keep back the nomination to

the close of the session, that the mission might remain secret as long as

possible, which you know was our purpose from the beginning.  It was then sent

in with an explanation of its object and motives.  We took for granted, if any

hesitation should arise, that the Senate would take time, and that our friends

in that body would make inquiries of us, and give us the opportunity of

explaining and removing objections.  But to our great surprise, and with an

unexampled precipitancy, they rejected it at once.  This reception of, the last

of my official communications to them, could not be unfelt, nor were the causes

of it spoken out by them.  Under this uncertainty, Mr. Madison, on his entering

into office, proposed another person (John Q. Adams).  He also was negatived,.

and they adjourned sine die.  Our subsequent infor-







        Correspondence                     265







        mation was that, on your nomination, your long absence from this

country, and their idea that you do not intend to return to it, had very

sensible weight; but that all other motives were superseded by an unwillingness

to extend our diplomatic connections, and a desire even to recall the foreign

ministers we already have.  All were sensible of the great virtues, the high

character, the powerful influence, and valuable friendship of the emperor.  But

riveted to the system of unentanglement with Europe, they declined the

proposition.  On this subject you will receive the official explanations from

Mr. Smith, the Secretary of State.  I pray you to place me rectus in curia in

this business with the emperor, and to assure him that I carry into my

retirement the highest veneration for his virtues, and fondly cherish the

belief that his dispositions and power are destined by heaven to better, in

some degree at least, the condition of oppressed man.



        I have nothing new to inform. you as to your private friends or

acquaintances.  Our embargo has worked hard.  It has in fact federalized three

of the New England States.  Connecticut you know was so before.  We have

substituted for it a nonintercourse with France and England and their

dependencies, and a trade to all other places.  It is probable the belligerents

will take our vessels under their edicts, in which case we shall probably

declare war against them.



        I write this in the midst of packing and preparing







 



266             Jefferson's Works







        for my departure, of visits of leave, and interruptions of every kind. 

I must therefore conclude with my affectionate adieu to you, and assurances of

my constant attachment and respect.







        TO THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES







        (JAMES MADISON).







        MONTICELLO, March 17, 1809.



        DEAR SIR,-On opening my letters from France, in the moment of my

departure from Washington, I found from their signatures that they were from

literary characters, except one from Mr. Short, which mentioned in the outset

that it was private, and that his public communications were in the letter to

the Secretary of State, which I sent you.  I find, however, on reading his

letter to me (which I did not do till I got home) a passage of some length

proper to be communicated to you, and which I have therefore extracted.



        I had a very fatiguing journey, having found the roads excessively bad,

although I have seen them worse.  The last three days I found it better to be

on horseback, and travelled eight hours through as disagreeable a snow storm as

I was ever in.  Feeling no inconvenience from the expedition but fatigue, I

have more confidence in my vis vitæ than I had before entertained.  The spring

is remarkably backward.  No oats sown, not much tobacco seed, and little done

in the gardens.  Wheat has suffered con-







        Correspondence                      267







        siderably.  No vegetation visible yet but the red maple, weeping willow

and lilac.  Flour is said to be at eight dollars at Richmond, and all produce

is hurrying down.



        I feel great anxiety for the occurrences of the ensuing four or five

months.  If peace can be preserved, I hope and trust you will have a smooth

administration.  I know no government which would be so embarrassing in war as

ours.  This would proceed very much from the lying and licentious character of

our papers; but much, also, from the wonderful credulity of the members of

Congress in the floating lies of the day.  And in this no experience seems to

correct them.  I have never seen a Congress during the last eight years, a

great majority of which I would not implicitly have relied on in any question,

could their minds have been purged of all errors of fact.  The evil, too,

increases greatly with the protraction of the session, and I apprehend, in case

of war, their session would have a tendency to become permanent.  It is much,

therefore, to be desired that war may be avoided, if circumstances will admit. 

Nor in the present maniac s ate of Europe, should I estimate the point of honor

by the ordinary scale.  I believe we shall, on the contrary, have credit with

the world, for having made the avoidance of being engaged in the present

unexampled war, our first object.  War, however, may become a less losing

business than unresisted depredation, With every







 



268             Jefferson's Works







wish that events may be propitious to your administration, I salute you with

sincere affection and every sympathy of the heart.







        TO WILLIAM M'ANDLESS, ESQ., PITTSBURG.



        MONTICELLO, March 29, 1809.







        SIR,-I received on the evening of the 1st of March the resolution

enclosed in your letter of February 20th, for the purpose of being laid before

both Houses of Congress.  Usage, and perhaps sound principle, not permitting

the President to place himself between the representatives and their

constituents, who have a right to address their Legislature directly, I

delivered the next day a cop@- of your resolutions to a member of Pennsylvania

in each House of Congress.  But as that body was to rise on the day ensuing

that, the mass of indispensable business crowding on the last moments of the

session scarcely admitted the opportunity of a compliance with your wishes.



        I avail myself of this occasion of returning sincere thanks for the

kind dispositions towards myself expressed in your letter, and for the

sentiments which it conveys, of approbation of my conduct in the administration

of the public affairs.  If that conduct has met the general approbation of my

country, it is the highest reward I can receive; and I shall ever feel towards

them that gratitude which the confidence they have favored me with so eminently

calls for.  Accept for yourself the assurances of my high







        Correspondence                     269







        TO THE INHABITANTS OF ALBEMARLE COUNTY,



        IN VIRGINIA.







        MONTICELLO, April 3, 1809.







        Returning to the scenes of my birth and early life, to the society of

those with whom I was raised, and who have been ever dear to me, I receive,

fellow citizens and neighbors, with inexpressible pleasure, the cordial welcome

you are so good as to give me.  Long absent on duties which the history of a

wonderful era made incumbent on those called to them, the pomp, the turmoil,

the bustle and splendor of office, have drawn but deeper sighs for the tranquil

and irresponsible occupations of private life, for the enjoyment of an

affectionate intercourse with you, my neighbors and friends, and the

endearments of family love, which nature has given us all, as the sweetener of

every hour.  For these I gladly lay down the distressing burden of power, and

seek, with my fellow citizens, repose and safety under the watchful cares, the

labors and perplexities of younger and abler minds.  The anxieties you express

to administer to my happiness, do, of themselves, confer that happiness; and

the measure will be complete, if my endeavors to fulfil my duties in the

several public stations to which I have been called, have obtained for me the

approbation of my country.  The part which I have acted on the theatre of

public life, has been before them; and to their sentence I submit it; but the

testimony of my native county,







 



270              Jefferson's Works







        of the individuals who have known me in private life, to my conduct in

its various duties and relations, is the more grateful, as proceeding from eye

witnesses and observers, from triers of the vicinage.  Of you, then, my

neighbors, I may ask, in the face of the world, "whose ox have I taken, or whom

have I defrauded?  Whom have I oppressed, or of whose hand have I received a

bribe to blind mine eyes therewith?" On your verdict I rest with conscious

security.  Your wishes for my happiness are received with just sensibility, and

I offer sincere prayers for your own welfare and prosperity.











        TO GOVERNOR JAMES        JAY.







        MONTICELLO,    April 7, 1809.







        DEAR SIR,-Your favor of February 27th came to hand on the 3d of March. 

The occupations of the moment and of those which have followed must be my

apology for this late acknowledgment.  The plan of civilizing the Indians is

undoubtedly a great improvement on the ancient and totally ineffectual one of

beginning with religious missionaries.  Our experience has shown that this must

be the last step of the process.  The following is what has been successful:

1st, to raise cattle, etc., and thereby acquire a knowledge of the value of

property; 2d, arithmetic, to calculate that value; 3d, writing, to keep

accounts, and here they begin to enclose farms, and the men to labor, the women

to spin and weave; 4th, to read







        Correspondence                      271







"Æsop's Fables" and " Robinson Crusoe " are their first delight.  The Creeks

and Cherokees are advanced thus far, and the Cherokees are now instituting a

regular government.



        An equilibrium of agriculture, manufactures, and commerce, is certainly

become essential to our independence.  Manufactures, sufficient for our own

consumption, of what we raise the raw material (and no more).  Commerce

sufficient to carry the surplus produce of agriculture, beyond our own

consumption, to a market for exchanging it for articles we cannot raise (and no

more).  These are the true limits of manufactures and commerce.  To go beyond

them is to increase our dependence on foreign nations, and our liability to

war.



        These three important branches of human industry will then grow

together, and be really handmaids to each other.  I salute you with great

respect and esteem.







        TO COLONEL LARKIN SMITH.



        MONTICELLO, April 15, 1809.



        DEAR SIR,-I have duly received your very friendly letter of March 28th,

and am extremely sensible to the kind spirit it breathes.  To be praised by

those who themselves deserve all praise, is a gratification of high order. 

Their approbation who, having been high in office themselves, have information

and talents to guide their judgment, is a consolation







 



272            Jefferson's Works



deeply felt.  A conscientious devotion to republican government, like charity

in religion, has obtained for me much indulgence from my fellow citizens, and

the aid of able counsellors has guided me through many difficulties which have

occurred.  The troubles in the East have been produced by English agitators,

operating on the selfish spirit of commerce, which knows no country, and feels

no passion or principle but that of gain.  The inordinate extent given it among

us by our becoming the factors of the whole world, has enabled it to control

the agricultural and manufacturing interests.  When a change of circumstances

shall reduce it to an equilibrium with these, to the carrying our produce only,

to be exchanged for our wants, it will return to a wholesome condition for the

body politic, and that beyond which it should never more be encouraged to go. 

The repeal of the drawback system will either effect this, or bring sufficient

sums into the treasury to meet the wars we shall bring on by our covering every

sea with our vessels.  But this must be the -work of peace.  The correction

will be after my day, as the error originated before it.  I thank you sincerely

for your kind good wishes, and offer my prayers for your health and welfare,

with every assurance of my great esteem and respect.







        p.        S. I thank you for the information of your letter of the 4th,

this moment received.  I sincerely wish the British orders may be repealed.  If

they are, it







        Correspondence                    273







will be because the nation will not otherwise let the ministers keep their

places.  Their object has unquestionably been fixed to establish the Algerine

system, and to maintain their possession of the ocean by a system of piracy

against all nations.







        TO THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES (JAMES MADISON).







        MONTICELLO, April 19, 1809.







DEAR SIR,-I have to acknowledge your favor of the 9th, and to thank you for the

political information it contained.  Reading the newspapers but little and that

little but as the romance of the day, a word of truth now and then comes like

the drop of water on the tongue of Dives.  If the British ministry are changing

their policy towards us, it is because their nation, or rather the city of

London, which is the nation to them, is shaken as usual, by the late reverses

in Spain.  I have for some time been persuaded that the government of England

was systematically decided to claim a dominion of the sea, and to levy

contributions on all nations, by their licenses to navigate, in order to

maintain that dominion to which their own resources are inadequate.  The mobs

of their cities are unprincipled enough to support this policy in prosperous

times,'but change with the tide of fortune, and the ministers, to keep their

places, change with them.  I wish Mr. Oakley may not embarrass you with his

conditions of revoking







 



274              Jefferson's Works







the orders of council.  Enough of the non-importation law should be reserved,

1st, to pinch them into a relinquishment of impressments, and 2d, to support

those manufacturing establishments which their orders, and our interests,

forced us to make.



I suppose the conquest of Spain will soon force a delicate question on you as

to the Floridas and Cuba, which will offer themselves to you.  Napoleon will

certainly give his consent without difficulty to our receiving the Floridas,

and with some difficulty possibly Cuba.  And though he will disregard the

obligation whenever he thinks he can break it with success, yet it has a great

effect on the opinion of our people and the world to have the moral right , on

our side, of his agreement as well as that of the people of those countries.



Mr. Hackley's affair is really unfortunate.  He has been driven into this

arrangement by his distresses, which are great.  He is a perfectly honest man,

as is well known here where he was born, but unaccustomed to political

subjects, he has not seen it in that view.  But a respect for the innocence of

his views cannot authorize the sanction of government to such an example.







TO THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES (JAMES MADISON).







        MONTICELLO, April 27, 1809.







        DEAR SIR,-YOURS of the 24th came to hand last



night.  The correspondence between Mr. Smith and







        Correspondence                      275







Mr. Erskine had been received three days before.  I sincerely congratulate you

on the change it has produced in our situation.  It is the source of very

general joy h--re, and could it have arrived one month sooner would have had

important effects, not only on the elections of other States, but of this also,

from which it would seem that wherever there was any considerable portion of

federalism it has been so much reinforced by those of whose politics the price

of wheat is the sole principle, that federalists will be returned from many

districts of this State.  The British ministry has been driven from its

Algerine system, not by any remaining morality in the people, but by their

unsteadiness under severe trial.  But whencesoever it comes, I rejoice in it as

the triumph of our forbearing and yet persevering system.  It will lighten your

anxieties, take from Cabal its most fertile ground of war, will give us peace

during your time, and by the complete extinguishment of our public debt, open

upon us the noblest application of revenue that has ever been exhibited by any

nation.  I am sorry they are sending a minister to attempt a treaty.  They

never made an equal commercial treaty with any nation, and we have no right to

expect to be the first.  It will place you between the injunctions of true

patriotism and the clamors of a faction devoted to a foreign interest, in

preference to that of their own country.  It will confirm the English too in

their practice of whipping us into a treaty.  They did it in jay's case, were

near it in Monroe's,







 



276             Jefferson's Works







and on failure of that, have applied the scourge with tenfold vigor, and now

come on to try its effect.  But it is the moment when we should prove our

consistence, by recurring to the principles we dictated to Monroe, the

departure from which occasioned our rejection of his' treaty, and by protesting

against jay's treaty being ever quoted, or looked at, or even mentioned.  That

form will forever be a millstone round our necks unless we now rid ourselves of

it once for all.  The occasion is highly favorable, as we never can have them

more in our power.



As to Bonaparte, I should not doubt the revocation of his edicts, were he

governed by reason.  But his policy is so crooked that it eludes conjecture.  I

fear his first object now is to dry up the sources of British prosperity by

excluding her manufactures from the continent.  He may fear that opening the

ports of Europe to our vessels will open them to an inundation of British

wares.  He ought to be satisfied with having forced her to revoke the orders on

which he pretended to retaliate, and to be particularly satisfied with us, by

whose unyielding adherence to principle she has been forced into the

revocation.  He ought the more to conciliate our good will, as we can be such

an obstacle to the new career opening on him in the Spanish colonies.  That he

would give us the Floridas to withhold intercourse with the residue of those

colonies, cannot be doubted.  But that is no price; because they are ours in

the first moment of the first war; and until a war they are of no partic-







        Correspondence                       277







ular necessity to us.  But, although with difficulty, he will consent to our

receiving Cuba into our Union, to prevent our aid to Mexico and the other

provinces.  That would be a price, and I would immediately erect a column on

the southernmost limit of Cuba, and inscribe on it a 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 I am

persuaded no constitution was ever before so well calculated as ours for

extensive empire and self-government.  As the Mentor went away before this

change, and will leave France probably while it is still a secret in that

hemisphere, I presume the expediency of pursuing her by a swift sailing

despatch was considered.  It will be objected to our receiving Cuba, that no

limit can then be drawn to our future acquisitions.  Cuba can be defended by us

without a navy, and this develops the principle which ought to limit our views.

 Nothing should ever be accepted which would require a navy to defend it.



Our spring continues cold and backward, rarely one growing day without two or

three cold ones following.  Wheat is of very various complexions from very good

to very bad.  Fruit has not suffered as much as was expected, except in

peculiar situations.  Gardens are nearly a month behind their usual state.  I

thank you for the squashes from Maine; they shall be planted to-day.  I salute

you with sincere and constant affection.







 



278            Jefferson's Works











        TO HORATIO G. SPAFFORD.







        MONTICELLO, May      14, 1809.







        SIR,-L have duly received your favor of April 3d, with the copy of your

"General Geography," for which I pray you to accept my thanks.  My occupations

here have not permitted me to read it through, which alone could justify any

judgment expressed on the work.  Indeed, as it appears to be an abridgment of

several branches of science, the scale of abridgment must enter into that

judgment.  Different readers require different scales according to the time

they can spare, and their views in reading, and no doubt that the view of the

sciences which vou have brought into the compass of a 12mo volume will be

accommodated to the time and object of many who may wish for but a very general

view of them.



        In passing my eye rapidly over parts of  the book, I was struck with

two passages, on which I will make observations, not doubting your wish, in any

future edition, to render the work as correct as you can.  In page 186 you say

the potato is a native of the United States.  I presume you speak of the Irish

potato.  I have inquired much into the question, and think I can assure . you

that plant is not a native of North America.  Zimmerman, in his " Geographical

Zoology," says it is a native of Guiana; and Clavigero, that the Mexicans got

it from South America, its native country.  The most probable account I







        Correspondence                        279







        have been able to collect is, that a vessel of Sir Walter Raleigh's,

returning from Guiana, put into the west of Ireland in distress, having on

board some potatoes which they called earth-apples.  That the season of the

year, and circumstance of their being already sprouted, induced them to give

them all out there, and they were no more heard or thought of, till they had

been spread considerably into that island, whence they were carried over into

England, and therefore called the Irish potato.  From England they came to the

United States, bringing their name with them.



        The other passage respects the description of the . passage of the

Potomac through the Blue Ridge, in the Notes on Virginia.  You quote from

Volney's account of the United States what his words do not justify.  His words

are, " on coming from Fredericktown, one does not see the rich perspective

mentioned in the Notes of Mr. Jefferson.  On observing this, to him a few days

after, he informed me he had his information from a French engineer who, during

the war of Independence, ascended the height of the hills, and I conceive that

at that elevation the perspective must be as imposing as a wild country, whose

horizon has no obstacles, may present.  " That the scene described in the "

Notes" is not visible from any part of the road from Fredericktown to Harper's

ferry is most certain.  That road passes along the valley, nor can it be seen

from the tavern after crossing the ferry; and we may fairly







 



280             Jefferson's Works







infer that Mr. Volney did not ascend the height back of the tavern from which

alone it can be seen, but that he pursued his journey from the tavern along the

high road.  Yet he admits, that at the elevation of that height the perspective

may be as rich as a wild country can present.  But you make him " surprised to

find, by a view of the spot, that the description was amazingly exaggerated.  "

But it is evident that Mr. Volney did not ascend the hill to get a view of the

spot, and that he supposed that that height may present as imposing a view as

such a country admits.  But Mr. Volney was mistaken in saying I told him I had

received the description from a French engineer.  By an error of memory he has

misapplied to this scene what I mentioned to him as to the Natural Bridge.  I

told him I received a drawing of that from a French engineer sent there by the

Marquis de Chastellux, and who has published that drawing in his travels.  I

could not tell him I had the description of the passage of the Potomac from a

French engineer, because I never heard any Frenchman say a word about it, much

less did I ever receive a description of it from any mortal whatever.  I

visited the place myself in October, 1783, wrote the description some time

after, and printed the work in Paris in 1784-5.  I wrote the description from

my own view of the spot, stated no fact but what I saw, and can now affirm that

no fact is exaggerated. it is true that the same scene may excite very

different sensations in different spectators, according to their







        Correspondence                     281







different sensibilities.  The sensations of some may be much stronger than

those of , others.  And with respect to the Natural Bridge, it was not a

description, but a drawing only, which I received from the French engineer. 

The description was written before I ever saw him.  It is not from any merit

which I suppose in either of these descriptions, that I have gone into these

observations, but to correct the imputation of having given to the world as my

own, ideas, and false ones too, which I had received from another.  Nor do I

mention the subject to you with a desire that it should be any otherwise

noticed before the public than by a more correct statement in any future

edition of your work.



You mention having enclosed to me some printed letters announcing a design in

which you ask my aid.  But no such letters came to me.  Any facts which I

possess, and which may be useful to your views, shall be freely communicated,

and I shall be happy to see you at Monticello, should you corn-- this way as

you propose.  You will find me engaged entirely in rural occupations, looking

into the field of science but occasionally and at vacant moments.



I sowed some of the Benni seed the last year, and distributed some among my

neighbors; but the whole was killed by the September frost.  I got a little

again the last winter, but it was sowed before I received your letter.  Colonel

Fen of New York receives quantities of it from Georgia, from whom you may

probably get some through the Mayor of







 



282              Jefferson's Works







        New York.  But I little expect it can succeed with you.  It is about as

hardy as the cotton plant, from which you may judge of the probability cf

raising it at Hudson.



        I salute you with great respect.











        TO JOHN WYCHE.







        MONTICELLO,    May 19, 1809.







        SIR,-YOUR favor of March 19th came to hand but a few days ago, and

informs me of the establishment of the Westward Mill Library Society, of its

general views and progress.  I always bear with pleasure of institutions for

the promotion of knowledge among my countrymen.  The people of every country

are the only safe guardians of their own rights, and are the only instruments

which can be used for their destruction.  And certainly they would never

consent to be so used were they not deceived.  To avoid this, they should be

instructed to a certain degree.  I have often thought that nothing would do

more extensive good at small expense than the establishment of a small

circulating library in every county, to consist of a few well-chosen books, to

be lent to the people of the country, under such regulations as would secure

their safe return in due time.  These should be such as would give them a

general view of other history, and particular view of that of their own

country, a tolerable knowledge of Geography, the elements of Natural

Philosophy, of Agriculture and







        Correspondence 283







Mechanics.  Should your example lead to this, it will do great good. Having had

more favorable opportunities than fall to every man's lot of becoming

acquainted with the best books on such subjects as might be selected, I do not

know that I can be otherwise useful to your society than by offering them any

information respecting these which they might wish.  My services in this way

are freely at their command, and I beg leave to tender to yourself my

salutations and assurances of respect.







        TO THE HONORABLE JUDGE WOODWARD.



        MONTICELLO, May 27, 1809.



        SIR,--I have received, very thankfully, the two copies of your pamphlet

on the Constitution of the U. S., and shall certainly read them with pleasure. 

I had formerly looked with great interest to the experiment which was going on

in France of an executive Directory, while that of a single elective executive

was under trial here.  I thought the issue of them might fairly decide the

question between the two modes.  But the untimely fate of that establishment

out short the experiment.



        I have not, however, been satisfied whether the dissensions of that

Directory (and which I fear are incident to a plurality) were not the most

effective cause of the successful usurpations which overthrew them.  It is

certainly one of the most interesting questions to a republican, and worthy of

great con-



 



284             Jefferson's Works







sideration.  I thank you for the friendly expressions of your letter towards

myself personally, and the sincere happiness I enjoy here, satisfies me that

nothing personal or self-interested entered into my motives for continuing in

the public service.  The actual experiment proves to me that these were all in

favor of returning to my present situation.  I salute you with great esteem and

respect.











        TO WILLIAM LAMBERT.







        MONTICELLO, May 28, 1809.







SIR,-Your favor of March 14th was received in due time.  The apology for so

late an acknowledgment of it must be the multiplied occupations of my new

situation after so long an absence from it.  Truth requires me to add, also,

that after being so long chained to the writing table, I go to it with

reluctance, and listen with partiality to every call from any other quarter.  I

have not, however, been the less sensible of the kind sentiments expressed in

your letter, nor the less thankful for them.  Indeed I owe infinite.

acknowledgments to the republican portion of my fellow citizens for the

indulgence with which they have viewed my proceedings generally.  In the

transaction of their affairs I never felt an interested motive.  The large

share I have enjoyed, and still enjoy of anti-republican hatred and calumny,

gives me the satisfaction of supposing that I have been some obstacle to

anti-republican designs; and







        Correspondence                       285







if truth should find its way into history, the object of these falsehoods and

calumnies will render them honorable to me.  With sincere wishes for your

welfare and happiness, I tender you the assurances of my esteem and respect.







        TO DOCTOR ELIJAH GRIFFITH, PHILADELPHIA.



                MONTICELLO, May 28, 1809.



DEAR SIR,-Your favor of November 14th came to me in due time, but much

oppressed with business then and to the end of my political term, I put it by

as I did the civilities of my other friends, till the leisure I expected here

should permit me to acknowledge them without the neglect of any public duty.  I

am very sensible of the kindness of the sentiments expressed in your letter,

and of the general indulgence with which my republican friends generally, and

those of Pennsylvania particularly,, have received my public proceedings.  I

hope I may be allowed to say that they were always directed by a single view to

the best interests of our country.  In the electoral election, Pennsylvania

really spoke in a voice of thunder to the monarchists of our country, and while

that State continues so firm, with the solid mass of republicanism to the South

and West, such efforts as we have lately seen in the anti-republican portion of

our country cannot ultimately affect our security.  Our enemies may try their

cajoleries with my successor.  They will find him as immovable in his







 



286            Jefferson's Works







republican principles as him whom they have honored with their peculiar enmity.

 The late pacification with England gives us a hope of eight years of peaceable

and wise administration, within which time our revenue will be liberated from

debt, and be free to commence that splendid course of public improvement and

wise application of the public contributions, of which it remains for us to set

the first example.  I salute you with real esteem and respect.











TO THE HON.  ROBERT SMITH, SECRETARY OF STATE.







        MONTICELLO, June 10, 1809.







DEAR SIR,-L enclose you a letter from Mr. Smith of Erie, one of the members of

Pennsylvania, which you will readily perceive ought to have been addressed to

you by himself; as it is official and not personal opinion which can answer his

views.  I am, however, gratified by his mistake in sending it to me, inasmuch

as it gives me an opportunity of abstracting myself from my rural occupations,

and of saluting one with whom I have been connected in service and in society

so many years, and to whose aid and relief on an important portion of the

public cares, I have been so much indebted.  I do it with sincere affection and

gratitude, and look back with peculiar satisfaction on the harmony and cordial

good will which, to ourselves and to our brethren of the Cabinet, so much

sweetened our toils.  From the characters now associated in the administration,

I have no







        Correspondence                     287







doubt of the continuance of the same cordiality so interesting to themselves

and to the public; and great as are the difficulties and dangers environing our

camp, I sleep with perfect composure, knowing who are watching for us.  I pray

you to present me respectfully to Mrs. Smith, and to accept my prayers that you

may long continue  the enjoyment of health and the public esteem in return for

your useful services past and to come.











        TO WILSON C. NICHOLAS.







        MONTICELLO, June 13, 1809.







DEAR SIR,-I did riot know till Mr. Patterson called on us, a few days ago, that

you had passed on to Washington.  I had recently observed in the debates of

Congress, a matter introduced, on which I wished to give explanations more

fully in conversation, which I will now do by abridgment in writing.  Mr.

Randolph has proposed an inquiry into certain prosecutions at common law in

Connecticut, for libels on the government, and not only himself but others have

stated them with such affected caution, and such hints at the same time, as to

leave on every mind the impression that they had been instituted either by my

direction, or with my acquiescence, at least.  This has not been denied by my

friends, because probably the fact is unknown to them.  I shall state it for

their satisfaction, and leave it to be disposed of as they think best.







 



288             Jefferson's Works







        I had observed in a newspaper, (some years ago, I do not recollect the

time exactly,) some dark hints of a prosecution in Connecticut, but, so

obscurely hinted that I paid little attention to it.  Some considerable time

after, it was again mentioned, so that I understood that some prosecution was

going on in the federal court there, for calumnies uttered from the pulpit

against me by a clergyman.  I immediately wrote to Mr. Granger, who, I think,

was in Connecticut at the time, stating that I had laid it down as a law to

myself , to take no notice of the thousand calumnies issued against me, but to

trust my character to my own conduct, and the good sense and candor of my

fellow citizens; that I had found no reason to be dissatisfied with that

course, and I was unwilling it should be broke through by others as to any

matter concerning me; and I therefore requested him to desire the district

attorney to dismiss the prosecution.  Some time after this, I heard of

subpoenas being served on General Lee, David M. Randolph, and others, as

witnesses to attend the trial.  I then f or the first time conjectured the

subject of the libel.  I immediately wrote to Mr. Granger, to require an

immediate dismission of the prosecution.  The answer of Mr. Huntington, the

district attorney, was, that these subpoenas had been issued by the defendant

without his knowledge, that it had been his intention to dismiss all the

prosecutions at the first meeting of the court, and to accompany it with an

avowal of his opinion, that they







        Correspondence                      289







        could not be maintained, because the federal court had no jurisdiction

over libels.  This was accordingly done:        I did not till then know that

there were other prosecutions of the same nature, nor do I now know what were

their subjects.  But all went off together; and I afterwards saw in the hands

of Mr. Granger, a letter written by the clergyman, disavowing any personal ill

will towards me, and solemnly declaring he had never uttered the words charged.

 I think Mr. Granger either showed me, or said there were affidavits of at

least half a dozen respectable men, who were present at the sermon and swore no

such expressions were uttered, and as many equally respectable who swore the

contrary.  But the clergyman expressed his gratification at the dismission of

the prosecution.  I write all this from memory, and after too long an interval

of time to be certain of the exactness of all the details; but I am sure there

is no variation material, and Mr. Granger, correcting small lapses of memory,

can confirm every thing substantial.  Certain it is, that the prosecutions had

been instituted, and had made considerable progress, without my knowledge, that

they were disapproved by me as soon as known, and directed to be discontinued. 

The attorney did it on the same ground on which I had acted myself in the cases

of Duane, Callendar, and others; to wit, that the sedition law was

unconstitutional and null, and that my obligation to execute what was law,

involved that of not suffering rights secured by valid laws, to be pros-















 



290    Jefferson's Works







trated by what was no law.  I always understood that these prosecutions had

been invited, if not instituted, by judge Edwards, and the marshal being

republican, had summoned a grand jury partly or wholly republican; but that Mr.

Huntington declared from the beginning against the jurisdiction of the court,

and had determined to enter nolle prosequis before he received my directions.



I trouble you with another subject.  The law making my letters post free, goes

to those to me only, not those from me.  The bill had got to its passage before

this was observed (and first I believe by Mr. Dana), and the House under too

much pressure of business near the close of the session to bring in another

bill.  As the privilege of freedom was given to the letters from as well as to

both my predecessors, suppose no reason exists for making a distinction.  And

in so extensive a correspondence as I am subject to, and still considerably on

public matters, it would be a sensible convenience to myself, as well as those

who have occasion to receive letters from me.  It happens too, as I was told at

the time, (for I have never looked into it myself,) that it was done by two

distinct acts on both the former occasions.  Mr. Eppes, I think, mentioned this

to me.. I know from the Postmaster General, that Mr. Adams franks all his.

letters.  I state this matter to you as being my representative, which must

apologize for the trouble of it.  We have been seasonable since you left us. 

Yesterday evening and this morning we have had







        Correspondence                    291







refreshing showers, which will close and confirm the business of planting. 

Affectionately yours.











        TO GENERAL HENRY DEARBORN.







        MONTICELLO, June 14, 1809.







DEAR GENERAL,-So entirely are. my habits changed from constant labor at my

writing table, to constant active occupation without doors, that it is with

difficulty I can resolve to take up my pen. must do it, however, as a matter of

duty to thank







        1



you for the dumb-fish you have been so kind as to have forwarded, and which are

received safely and are found to be excellent.  I do it with pleasure also, as

it gives me an opportunity of renewing to you the assurances of my esteem, and

of the friendship I shall ever bear you as a faithful fellow -laborer in the

duties of the Cabinet, the value of whose aid there has been always justly felt

and highly







        1        estimated by me.  I sincerely congratulate you on the late

pacification with England, which while it gives facility and remuneration to

your labors in your new functions, restores calm in a great degree to the

troubles of our country.  Our successors have deserved well of their country in

meeting so readily the first friendly advance ever made to us by England.  I

hope it is the harbinger of a return to the exercise of common sense and common

good humor, with a country with which mutual interests would urge a mutual and

affectionate intercourse, But







 



292              Jefferson's Works







        her conduct hitherto has been towards us so insulting, so tyrannical

and so malicious, as to indicate a contempt for our opinions or dispositions

respecting her.  I hope she is now coming over to a wiser conduct, and becoming

sensible how much better it is to cultivate the good will of the government

itself, than of a faction hostile to it; to obtain its friendship gratis than

to purchase its enmity by nourishing at great expense a faction to embarrass

it, to receive the reward of an honest policy rather than of a corrupt and

vexatious one.  I trust she has at length opened her eyes to federal falsehood

and misinformation, and learnt, in the issue of the presidential election, the

folly of believing them.  Such a reconciliation to the government, if real and

permanent, will secure the tranquillity of our country, and render the

management of our affairs easy and delightful to our successors, for whom I

feel as much interest as if I were still in their place.  Certainly all the

troubles and difficulties in the government during our time proceeded from

England; at least all others were. trifling in comparison with them.



        Some time before I retired from office, I proposed to Mr. Smith of the

War Office, to place your son in the list of some nominations for the new army.

 He called on me and stated that Pickering had prepared materials for an

opposition to his appointment, which he was satisfied would be easily met with

proper information, but without it, might embarrass and endanger the

appointment., We concluded,.



        Correspondence                      293







        therefore, that it was best to put it off to the ensuing session of

Congress, and in the meantime give you notice of it.  He promised to write and

explain the delay to you, and I stated the matter to Mr. Madison, who would

attend to the nomination at the proper time.  Perhaps late events may supersede

all further proceeding as to that army.



        Be so good as to present my affectionate respects to Mrs. Dearborn.  I

hope that her health, as well as your own, may be improved by a return to

native climate; and that you may both enjoy as many years as you desire of

health and prosperity, is the prayer of yours sincerely and affectionately.











        TO MONSIEUR DUPONT       DE NEMOURS.







        MONTICELLO, June 28, 1809.







        DEAR SIR,-The interruption of our commerce with England, produced by

our embargo and nonintercourse law, and the general indignation excited by her

barefaced attempts to make us accessories and tributaries to her usurpations on

the high seas, have generated in this country an universal spirit for

manufacturing for ourselves, and of reducing to a minimum the number of

articles for which we are dependent on her.  The advantages, too, of lessening

the occasions of risking our peace on the ocean, and of planting the consumer

in our own soil by the side of the grower of produce, are so palpable, that no

temporary suspension of injuries on her part, or







 



        294        Jefferson's Works







        agreements        founded on that, will now prevent our



        continuing        in what we have begun.  The spirit of



        manufacture        has taken deep root among us, and its



        foundations are laid in too great expense to be abandoned.  The bearer

of this, Mr. Ronaldson, will -be able to inform you of the extent and

perfection of the works produced here by the late state of things; and to his

information, which is greatest as to what is doing in the cities, I can add my

own as to the country, where the principal articles wanted in every family are

now fabricated within itself.  This mass of household manufacture, unseen by

the public eye, and so much greater than what is seen, is such at present, that

let our intercourse with England be opened when it may, not one half the amount

of what we have heretofore taken from her will ever again ' be demanded.  The

great call from the country has hitherto been of coarse goods.  These are now

made in our families, and the advantage is too sensible ever to be

relinquished.  It is one of those obvious improvements in our condition which

needed only to be once forced on our attention, never again to be abandoned.



        Among the arts which have made great progress among us is that of

printing.  Heretofore we imported our books, and with them much political

principle from England.  We now print a great deal, and shall soon supply

ourselves with most of the books of considerable demand.  But the foundation of

printing, you know, is the type-foundry, and a material essen-







        Correspondence                      295







tial to that is antimony.  Unfortunately that mineral is not among those as yet

found in the United States, and the difficulty and dearness of getting it from

England, will force us to discontinue our type-foundries, and resort to her

again for our books, unless some new source of supply can be found.  The

bearer, Mr. Ronaldson, is of the concern of Binney & Ronaldson, type-founders

of Philadelphia@ He goes to France for the purpose of opening some new source

of supply, where we learn that this article is abundant; the enhancement of the

price in England has taught us the fact, that its exportation thither from

France must be interrupted, either by the war or express prohibition.  Our

relations, however, with France, are too unlike hers with England, to place us

under the same interdiction.  Regulations for preventing the transportation of

the article to England, under the cover of supplies to America, may be thought

requisite.  The bearer, I am persuaded, will readily give any assurances which

may be required for this object, and the wants of his own type-foundry here are

a sufficient pledge that what he gets is bona fide to supply them.  I do not

know that there will be any obstacle to his bringing from France any quantity

of antimony he may have occasion for; but lest there should be, I have taken

the liberty of recommending him to your patronage.  I know your enlightened and

liberal views on subjects of this kind, and the friendly interest you take in

whatever concerns our welfare.  I place Mr. Ron-







 



296                Jefferson's Works







aldson, therefore, in your hands, and pray you to advise him, and patronize the

object which carries him to Europe, and is so interesting to him and . to our

country.  His knowledge of what is passing among us will be a rich source of

information for you, and especially as to the state and progress of our

manufactures.  I Your kindness to him will confer an obligation on me, and will

be an additional title to the high and affectionate esteem and respect of an

ancient and sincere friend.







        TO THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED          STATES







        (JAMBS MADISON).







        MONTICELLO, July 12, 1809.







DEAR SIR,-Your two letters of the 4th and 7th, were received by the last mail. 

I now enclose you the rough draught of the letter to the Emperor of Russia.  I

think there must be an exact fac simile of it in the office, from which Mr.

Short's must have been copied; because, that the one now enclosed has never

been out of my hands, appears by there being no fold in the paper till now, and

it is evidently a polygraphical copy.  I send, for your perusal, letters of W.

Short, and of Warden; because, though private, they contain some things and

views perhaps not in the public letters.  Bonaparte's successes have been what

we expected, although Warden appears to have supposed the contrary possible. 

It is fortunate for Bonaparte, that he has not caught his







        Correspondence                      297







brother Emperor; that he has left an ostensible head to the government, who may

sell it to him to secure a mess of pottage for himself.  Had the government

devolved on the people, as it did in Spain, they would resist his conquest as

those of Spain do.  I expect, within a week or ten days, to visit Bedford.  My

absence will be of about a fortnight.  I know too well the pressure of business

which will be on you at Montpelier, to count with certainty on the pleasure of

seeing.  Mrs. Madison and yourself here; yet my wishes do not permit me to omit

the expression of them.  In any event, I shall certainly intrude a flying visit

on ou during your stay in Orange.  With my respectful devoirs to Mrs. Madison,

I salute you with constant friendship and respect.











        TO SKELTON JONES.



        MONTICELLO, July 28, 1809.







DEAR SIR,-YOUR favor of June 19th, did not come to hand till the 29th, and I

have not been able to take it up till now.  I lent to Mr. Burke, my collection

of newspapers from 1741 to 1760, and the further matter which I suggested I

might be able to furnish him after my return to Monticello, was the collection

of MS. laws of Virginia, which I expected would furnish some proper and

authentic materials for history,. not extant anywhere else.  These I lent the

last year to Mr. Hening, who is now in possession of them and is printing them.

 But though this was within







 



298,             Jefferson's Works







Mr. Burke's period, it is entirely anterior to yours.  The collection of

newspapers which I lent to Mr. Burke, I have never been able to recover, nor to

learn where they are.  They were all well bound, and of course have not

probably been destroyed.  If you can aid me in the recovery, you will oblige

me. I consider their preservation as a duty, because I believe certainly there

does not exist another collection of the same period.  I have examined the

sequel of my collection of newspapers, and find that it has but one paper of

1778. That is one of Piordie's of the month of May.  But my not having them is

no evidence they were not printed; because I was so continually itinerant

during the revolution, that I was rarely in a situation to preserve the papers

I received.  And although there were probably occasional suspensions for want

of paper, yet I do not believe there was a total one at any time.  I think,

however, you might procure a file for that or any other year, in Philadelphia

or Boston.  These would furnish all the material occurrences of Virginia.  You

ask, what has the historian to do with the latter part of 1776, the whole of

1777 and 1778, and a part of 1779?  This is precisely the period which was

occupied in the reformation of the laws to the new organization and principles

of our government.  The committee was appointed in the latter part of 1776, and

reported in the spring or summer of 1779.  At the first and only meeting of the

whole committee, (of five persons), the question was discussed whether







        Correspondence                       299







we would attempt to reduce the whole body of the law into a code, the text of

which should become the law of the land?  We decided against that, because

every word and phrase in that text would become a new subject of criticism and

litigation, until its sense should have been settled by numerous decisions, and

that, in the meantime, the rights of property would be in the air.  We

concluded not to meddle with the common law, i. e., the law preceding the

existence of the statutes, further than to accommodate it to our new principles

and circumstances; but to take up the whole body of statutes and Virginia laws,

to leave out everything obsolete or improper, insert what was wanting, and

reduce the whole within as moderate a compass as it would bear, and to the

plain language of common sense, divested of the verbiage, the barbarous

tautologies and redundancies which render the British statutes unintelligible. 

From this, however, were excepted the ancient statutes, particularly those

commented on by Lord Coke, the language of which is simple, and the meaning of

every word so well settled by decisions, as to make it safest not to change

words where the sense was to be retained.  After setting our plan, Colonel

Mason declined undertaking the execution of any part of it, as not being

sufficiently read in the law.  Mr. Lee very soon afterwards died, and the work

was distributed between Mr. Wythe, Mr. Pendleton and myself.  To me was

assigned the common law, (so far as we thought of altering it,) and the

statutes











300                Jefferson's Works







down to the Reformation, or end of the reign of Elizabeth; to Mr. Wythe, the

subsequent body of the statutes, and to Mr. Pendleton the Virginia laws.  This

distribution threw into my part the laws concerning crimes and punishments, the

law of descents, and the laws concerning religion.  After completing our work

separately, we met, (Mr.  W., Mr. P. and myself,) in Williamsburg, and held a

long session, in which we went over the first and second parts in the order of

time, weighing and correcting every word, and reducing them to the form in

which they were afterwards reported.  When we proceeded to the third part, we

found that Mr. Pendleton had not exactly seized the intentions of the

committee, which were to reform the language of the Virginia laws, and reduce

the matter to a simple style and form.  He had- copied the acts verbatim, only

omitting what was disapproved; and some family occurrence calling him

indispensably home, he desired Mr. Wythe and myself to make it ,what we thought

it ought to be, and authorized us to report him as concurring in the work.  We

accordingly divided the work, and re-executed it entirely, so as to assimilate

its plan and execution to the other parts, as well as the shortness of the time

would admit, and we brought the whole body of British statutes and laws of

Virginia into 1 27 acts, most of them short.  This is the history of that work

as to its execution.  Its matter and the nature of the changes made, will be a

proper subject for the con-,







        Correspondence                    301







sideration of the historian.  Experience has convinced me that the change in

the style of the laws was for the better, and it has sensibly reformed the

style of our laws from that time downwards, insomuch that they have obtained,

in that respect, the approbation of men of consideration on both sides of the

Atlantic.  Whether the change in the style and form of the criminal law, as

introduced by Mr. Taylor, was for the better, is not for me to judge.  The

digest of that act employed me longer than I believe all the rest of the work,

for it rendered it necessary for me to go with great care over Bracton,

Britton, the Saxon statutes, and the works of authority on criminal law; and it

gave me great satisfaction to find that in general I had only to reduce the law

to its ancient Saxon condition, stripping it of all the innovations and

rigorisms of subsequent times, to make it what it should be.  The substitution

of the penitentiary, instead of labor on the high road and of some Other

punishments truly objectionable, is a just merit to be ascribed to Mr. Taylor's

law.  When our report was made, the idea of a penitentiary had never been

suggested; the happy experiment of Pennsylvania we had not then the benefit of.



To assist in filling up those years of exemption from military invasion, an

inquiry into the exertions of Virginia in the common cause during that period,

would be proper for the patriotic historian, because her character has been

very unjustly impeached by







 



302            Jefferson's Works







        the writers of other States, as having used no equal exertions at that

time.  I know it to be false; because having all that time been a member of the

legislature, I know that our whole occupation was in straining the resources of

the State to the utmost, to furnish men, money, provisions and other

necessaries to the common cause.  The proofs of this will be found in the

journals and acts of the legislature, in executive proceedings and papers, and

in the auditor's accounts.  Not that Virginia furnished her quota of

requisitions of either men or money; but that she was always above pa r, in

what was actually furnished by the other States.  A letter of mine written in

1779 or '80, if still among the executive papers, will furnish full evidence of

these facts.  It was addressed to our delegates in answer to a formal complaint

on the subject, and was founded in unquestionable vouchers.



        The inquiries in your printed letter of August, 1808, would lead to the

writing the history of my whole life, than which nothing could be more

repugnant to my feelings.  I have been connected, as many fellow laborers were,

with the great events which happened to mark the epoch of our lives.  But these

belong to no one in particular, all of us did our parts, and no one can claim

the transactions to himself.  The most I could do would be to revise, correct

or supply any statements which should be made respecting public transactions in

which I had a part, or which may have otherwise come within my knowledge.







        Correspondence                     303







        I have to apologize for the delay of this answer.  The active hours of

the day are all devoted to employments without doors, so that I have rarely an

interval, and more rarely the inclination, to sit down to my writing table, the

divorce from which is among the greatest reliefs in my late change of life. 

Still, I will always answer with pleasure any particular inquiries you may wish

to address to me, sincerely desiring for the public good as well as your own

personal concern, to contribute to the perfection of a work from which I hope

much to both; and I beg leave to tender you the assurances of my great esteem

and respect.











        TO ANDRÉ DE DASCHKOFF.







        MONTICELLO, August 12, 1809.







        SIR,-Your favor of July .5th has been duly received,@ and, in it, that

of my friend Mr. Short.  I congratulate you on your safe arrival in the

American hemisphere, after a voyage which must have been lengthy in time, as it

was in space.  I hope you may experience no unfavorable change in your health

on so great a change of climate, and that our fervid sun may be found as

innocent as our cloudless skies must be agreeable.  I hail you with particular

pleasure, as the first harbinger of those friendly relations with your country,

so desirable to ours.  Both nations being in character and practice essentially

pacific, a common interest in the rights of peaceable nations, gives us a

common cause in their







 



        304        Jefferson's Works







        maintenance;        and however your excellent Emperor



        may have been        led from the ordinary policy of his



        government, I trust that the establishment of just principles will be

the result, as I am sure it is the object, of his efforts. -



        When you shall have had time to accommodate yourself somewhat to our

climate our manners and mode of living, you will probably have a curiosity to

see something of the country you have visited, something beyond the confines of

our cities.  These exhibit specimens of London only; our country is a different

nation.  Should your journeyings lead you into this quarter of it, I shall be

happy to receive you at Monticello, and to renew to you in person the

assurances I now tender of my great respect and consideration.







        TO THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES (JAMES MADISON).







                MONTICELLO, August 17, 1809.



        DEAR SIR,-







        I never doubted the chicanery of the Anglomen on whatsoever measures

you should take in consequence of the disavowal of Erskine; yet I am satisfied

that both the proclamations have been sound.  The first has been sanctioned by

universal approbation; and although it was not literally the case foreseen by

the legislature, yet it was a proper







        Correspondence                       305







        extension of their provision to a case similar, though not the same. 

It proved to the whole world our desire of accommodation, and must have

satisfied every candid federalist on that head.  It was not only proper on the

well-grounded confidence that the arrangement would be honestly executed, but

ought to have taken place even had the perfidy of England been foreseen.  Their

dirty gain is richly remunerated to us by our placing them so shamefully in the

wrong, and by the union it must produce among ourselves.  The last proclamation

admits of quibbles, of which advantage will doubtless be endeavored to be

taken, by those for whom gain is their god, and their country nothing.  But it

is soundly defensible.  The British minister assured us, that the orders of

council would be revoked before the 10th of June.  The Executive, trusting in

that assurance, declared by proclamation that, the revocation was to take

place, and that on that event the law was to be suspended.  But the event did

not take place, and the consequence, of course, could not follow.  This view is

derived from the former non-intercourse law only, having never read the latter

one.  I had doubted whether Congress must not be called; but that arose from

another doubt, whether their second law had not changed the ground, so as to

require their agency to give operation to the law.  Should Bonaparte have the

wisdom to correct his injustice towards us, I consider war with England as

inevitable, Our ships







 



        306            Jefferson's Works







        will go to France and its dependencies, and they will take them This

will be war on their part, and leave no alternative but reprisal.  I have no

doubt you will think it safe to act on this hypothesis, and with energy.  The

moment that open war shall be apprehended from them, we should take possession

of Baton Rouge.  If we do not, they will, and New Orleans becomes

irrecoverable, and the western country blockaded during the war.  It would be

justifiable towards Spain on this ground, and equally so on that of title to

West Florida, and reprisal extended to East Florida.  Whatever turn our present

difficulty may take, I look upon all cordial conciliation with England as

desperate during the life of the present king.  I hope and doubt not that

Erskine will justify himself.  My confidence is founded in a belief of his

integrity, and in the * * * * * of Canning' I consider the present as the most

shameless ministry which ever disgraced England.  Copenhagen will immortalize

their infamy.  In genera , their administrations are so changeable, and they

are obliged to descend to such tricks to keep themselves in place, that nothing

like honor or morality can ever be counted on in transactions with them.  I

salute you with all possible affection.







        Correspondence                    307







        TO JOHN W. CAMPBELL.







        MONTICELLO, September 3, 1809.







        SIR,-Your letter Of July 29th came to hand some time since, but I have

not sooner been able to acknowledge it.  In answer to your proposition for

publishing a complete edition of my different writings, I must observe that no

writings of mine, other than those merely official, have been published, except

the Notes on Virginia and a small pamphlet under the title of A Summary View of

the Rights of British America.  The Notes on Virginia, I have always intended

to revise and enlarge, and have, from time to time, laid by materials for that

purpose.  It will be long yet before other occupations will permit me to digest

them, and observations and inquiries are still to be made, which will be more

correct in proportion to the length of time they are continued.  It is not

unlikely that this may be through my life.  I could not, therefore, at present,

offer anything new for that work.



        The Summary View was hot written for publication.  It was a draught I

had prepared for a petition to the king, which I meant to propose in my place

as a member of the Convention of 1774.  Being stopped on the road by sickness,

I sent it on to the Speaker, who laid it on the table for the perusal of the

members.  It was thought too strong for the times, and to become the act of the

convention, but was printed by subscription of the members, with a







 







 



        308              Jefferson's Works







        short preface written by one of them.  If it had any merit, it was that

of first taking our true ground, and that which was afterwards assumed and

maintained.







        I do not mention the Parliamentary Manual, published for the use of the

Senate of the United States, because it was a mere compilation, into which

nothing entered of my own but the arrangement, and a few observations necessary

to explain that and some of the cases.



        I do not know whether your view extends to official papers of mine

which have been published.  Many of these would be like old newspapers,

materials for future historians, but no longer interesting to the readers of

the day.  They would consist of reports, correspondences, messages, answers to

addresses; a few of my reports while Secretary of State, might perhaps be read

by some as essays on abstract subjects.  Such as the report on measures,

weights and coins, on the mint, on the fisheries, on commerce, on the use of

distilled sea-water, etc.  The correspondences with the British and French

ministers, Hammond and Genet, were published by Congress.  The messages to

Congress, which might have been interesting at the moment, would scarcely be

read a second time, and answers to addresses are hardly read a first time.



        So that on a review of these various materials, I see nothing

encouraging a printer to a re-publication of them.  They would probably be

bought by those







        Correspondence                     309







        only who are in the habit of preserving State papers, and who are not

many.



        I say nothing of numerous draughts of reports, resolutions,

declarations, etc., drawn as a member of Congress or of the Legislature of

Virginia, such as the Declaration of Independence, Report on the Money Unit of

the United States, the Act of Religious Freedom, etc., etc.; these having

become the acts of public bodies, there can be no personal claim to them, and

they would no more find readers now, than the journals and statute books in

which they are deposited.



        I have presented this general view of the subjects which might have

been within the scope of your contemplation, that they might be correctly

estimated before any final decision.  They belong mostly to a class of papers

not calculated for popular reading, and not likely to offer profit, or even

indemnification to the re-publisher.  Submitting it to your . consideration, I

tender you my salutations and respects.







        TO GENERAL WILLIAM CLARKE.



        MONTICELLO, September 10, 1809.



        DEAR- GENERAL,-Your favor Of June 2d came duly to hand in July, and

brought me a repetition of the proofs of your kindness to me.  Mr. Fitzhugh

delivered the skin of the sheep of the Rocky Mountains to the President, from

whom I expect to receive







 



310             Jefferson's Works







it in a few days at his own house.  For this, as well as the blanket of Indian

manufacture of the same material, which you are so kind as to offer me, accept

my friendly thanks.  Your donations, and Governor Lewis', have given to my

collection of Indian curiosities an importance much beyond what I had ever

counted on.  The three boxes of bones which you had been so kind as to send to

New Orleans for me, as mentioned in your letter of June 2d, arrived there

safely, and were carefully shipped by the collector, .and the bill of lading

sent to me.  But the vessel put into the Havana, under embargo distress, was

there condemned as unseaworthy, and her enrollment surrendered at St. Mary's. 

What was done with my three boxes I have not learned, but have written to Mr.

Brown, the collector, to have inquiry made after them.  The bones of this

animal are now in such a state of evanescence as to render it important to save

what we can of them.  Of those you had formerly sent me, I reserved a very few

for myself; I got Dr. Wistar to select from the rest every piece which could be

interesting to the Philosophical Society, and sent the residue to the National

Institute of France.  These have enabled them to decide that the animal was

neither a mammoth nor an elephant, but of a distinct kind, to which they have

given the name of Mastodont, from the protuberance of its teeth.  These, from

their forms, and the immense mass of their jaws, satisfy me this animal must

have been arboriverous.  Nature seems not to







        Correspondence                     311







have provided other food sufficient for him, and the limb of a tree would be no

more to him than a bough of a cotton tree to a horse.  You mention in your

letter that you are proceeding with your family to Fort Massac.  This informs

me that you have a family, and I sincerely congratulate you on it, while some

may think it will render you less active in the service of the world, those who

take a sincere interest in your personal happiness, and who know that, by a law

of our nature, we cannot be happy without the endearing connections of a

family, will rejoice for your sake as I do.  The world has, of right, no

further claims on yourself and General Lewis, but such as you may voluntarily

render according to your convenience, or as they may make it your interest.  I

wrote lately to the Governor, but be so good as to repeat my affectionate

attachments to him, and to be assured of the same to yourself, with every

sentiment of esteem and respect.,







        TO THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES (JAMES MADISON).







        MONTICELLO, September 12, 1809.







        DEAR SIR,- *







Canning's equivocations degrade his government as well as himself.  I despair

of accommodation with them, because I believe they are weak enough to intend

seriously to claim the ocean as their conquest, and think to amuse us with

embassies and negotia-







 



312             Jefferson's Works







tions, until the claim shall have been strengthened by time and exercise, and

the moment arrive when they may boldly avow what hitherto they have only

squinted at.  Always yours, with sincere affection.











        TO DOCTOR B. S., BARTON.







        MONTICELLO, September 21, 1809.







DEAR SIR,.-I received last night your favor of the 14th, and would with all

possible pleasure have communicated to you any part or the whole of the Indian

vocabularies which I had collected, but an irreparable misfortune has deprived

me of them.  I have now been thirty years availing myself of every possible

opportunity of procuring Indian vocabularies to the same set of words; my

opportunities were probably better than will ever occur again to any person

having the same desire.  I had collected about fifty, and had digested most of

them in collateral columns,,and meant to have printed them the last of my stay

in Washington.  But not having yet digested Captain Lewis' collection, nor

having leisure then to do it, I put it off till I should return home.  The

whole, as well digest as originals, were packed in a trunk of stationery, and

sent round by water with about thirty other packages of my effects from

Washington, and while ascending James river, this package on account of its

weight and presumed precious contents, was singled out and stolen.  The thief

being disappointed on opening it, threw into







        Correspondence                       313







the river all its contents, of which he thought he could make no use.  Among

them were the whole of the vocabularies.  Some leaves floated ashore and were

found in the mud; but these were very few, and so defaced by the mud and water

that no general use can be made of them.  On the receipt of your letter I

turned to them, and was very happy to find, that the only morsel of an original

vocabulary among them, was Captain Lewis' of the Pani language, of which you

say you have not one word.  I therefore enclose it to you as it is, and a

little fragment of some other, which I see is in his handwriting, but no

indication remains on it of what language it is. It is a specimen of the

condition of the little which was recovered.  I am the more concerned at this

accident, as of the two hundred and fifty words of my vocabularies, and the one

hundred and thirty words of the great Russian vocabularies of the languages of

the other quarters of the globe, seventy-three were common to both, and would

have furnished materials for a comparison from which something might have

resulted.  Although I believe no general use can ever be made of the wrecks of

my loss, yet I will ask the return of the Pani vocabulary when you are done

with it. Perhaps I may make another attempt to collect, although I am too old

to expect to make much progress in it.



I learn with pleasure your acquisition of the pamphlet on the astronomy of the

ancient Mexicans.  If it be ancient and genuine, or modern and rational,







 



314             Jefferson's Works







        it will be of real value.  It is one of the most interesting countries

of our hemisphere, and merits every attention.



        I am thankful for your kind offer of sending the original Spanish for

my perusal.  But I think it a pity to trust it to the accidents of the post,

and whenever you publish the translation, I shall be satisfied to read that

which shall be given by your translator, who is, I am sure, a greater adept in

the language than I am.



        Accept the assurances of my great esteem and respect.







        TO JAMES FISHBACK.







        MONTICELLO, September 27, 1809.



        SIR,-Your favor of June 5th came to hand in due time, and I have to

acknowledge my gratification at the friendly sentiments it breathes towards

myself.  We have been thrown into times of a peculiar character, and to work

our way through them has required services and sacrifices from our countrymen

generally, and to their great honor, these have been generally exhibited, by

every one in his sphere, and according to the opportunities afforded.  With

them I have been a fellow laborer, endeavoring to do faithfully the part

allotted to me, as they did theirs; and it is a subject of mutual

congratulation that, in a state of things such as the world had never before

seen, we have gotten on so far well; and my







        Correspondence                     315







        confidence in our present high functionaries, as well as in my

countrymen generally, leaves me without much fear for the future



        I thank you for the pamphlet you %,ere so kind as to send me.  At an

earlier period of life I pursued inquiries of that kind with industry and care.

 Reading, reflection and time have convinced me that the interests of society

require the observation of those moral precepts only in which all religions

agree, (for all forbid us to murder, steal, plunder, or bear false witness,)

and that we should not intermeddle with the particular dogmas in which all

religions differ, and which are totally unconnected with morality.  In all of

them we see good men, and as many in one as another.  The varieties in the

structure and action of the human mind as in those of the body, are the work of

our Creator, against which it cannot be a religious duty to erect the standard

of uniformity.  The practice of morality being necessary for the well-being of

society, he has taken care to impress its precepts so indelibly on our hearts

that they shall not be effaced by the subtleties of our brain.  We all agree in

the obligation of the moral precepts of Jesus,.and nowhere will they be found

delivered in greater purity than in his discourses.  It is, then, a matter of

principle with me to avoid disturbing the tranquillity of others by the

expression of any opinion on the innocent questions on which we schismatize. 

On the subject of your pamphlet, and the mode of treating it, I permit







 



316             Jefferson's Works







myself only to observe the candor, moderation and ingenuity with which you

appear to have sought truth.  This is of good example, and worthy of

commendation.  If all the writers and preachers on religious questions had been

of the same temper, the history of the world would have been of much more

pleasing aspect.



I thank you for the kindness towards myself which breathes through your letter.

 The first of all our consolations is that of having faithfully fulfilled our

duties; the next, the approbation and good will of those who have witnessed it;

and I pray you to accept my best wishes for your happiness and the assurances

of my respect.







        TO MESSRS.  BLOODGOOD AND HAMMOND.



        MONTICELLO, September 30, 1809.



GENTLEMEN,-The very friendly sentiments which my republican fellow citizens of

the city and county of New York have been pleased to express through yourselves

as their organ, are highly grateful to me, and command my sincere thanks; and

their approbation of the measures pursued, while I was entrusted with the

administration of their affairs, strengthens my hope that they were favorable

to the public prosperity.  For any errors which may have been committed, the

indulgent will find some apology in the difficulties resulting from the

extraordinary state of human affairs, and the astonishing spectacles these







        Correspondence                   317







have presented.  A world in arms and trampling on all those moral principles

which have heretofore been deemed sacred in the intercourse between nations,

could not suffer us to remain insensible of all agitation.  During such a

course of lawless violence, it was certainly wise to withdraw ourselves from

all intercourse with the belligerent nations, to avoid the -desolating

calamities inseparable from war, its pernicious effects on manners and morals,

and the dangers it threatens to free governments; and to cultivate our own

resources until our natural and progressive growth should leave us nothing to

fear from foreign enterprise.  That the benefits derived from these measures

were lessened by an opposition of the most ominous character, and that a

continuance of injury was encouraged by the appearance of domestic weakness

which that presented, will doubtless be a subject of deep and durable regret to

such of our well-intentioned citizens as participated in it, under mistaken

confidence in men who had other views than the good of their own country. 

Should foreign nations, however, deceived by this appearance of division and

weakness, render it necessary to vindicate by arms the injuries to our country,

I believe, with you, that the spirit of the revolution is unextinguished, and

that the cultivators of peace will again, as on that occasion, be transformed

at once into a nation of warriors who will leave us nothing to fear for the

natural and national rights of our country,







 



318           Jefferson's Works







        Your approbation of the reasons which induced me to retire from the

honorable station in which my fellow citizens had placed me, is a proof of your

devotion to the true principles of our Constitution.  These are wisely opposed

to all perpetuations of power, and to every practice which may lead to

hereditary establishments; and certain I am that any services which I could

have rendered will be more than supplied by the wisdom and virtues of my

successor.



        I am very thankful for the kind wishes you express for my personal

happiness.  It will always be intimately connected with the prosperity of our

country, of which I sincerely pray that my fellow-citizens of the city and

county of New York may have their full participation.















        TO DON VALENTINE DE      FORONDA.







        MONTICELLO,   October 4, 1809.



        DEAR SIR,-YOUR favor of August the 26th came to hand in the succeeding

month, and I have now to thank you for the pamphlet it contained.  I have read

it with pleasure, and find the constitution proposed would probably be as free

as is consistent with hereditary institutions.  It has one feature which I like

much: that which provides that when the three co-ordinate branches differ in

their construction of the constitution, the opinion of two







        Correspondence                    319







        branches shall overrule the third.  Our Constitution has not

sufficiently solved this difficulty.



        Among the multitude of characters with which public office leads us to

official intercourse, we cannot fail to observe many, whose personal worth

marks them as objects of particular esteem, whom we would wish to select for

our society in private life. 1 avail myself gladly of the present occasion of

assuring you that I was peculiarly impressed with your merit and talents, and

that I have ever entertained for them a particular respect.  To those whose

views are single and direct, it is a great comfort to have to do business with

frank and honorable minds.  And here give me leave to make an avowal, for

which, in my present retirements there can be no motive but a regard for truth.

 Your predecessor, soured on a question of etiquette against the administration

of this country, wished to impute wrong to them in all their actions, even

where he did not believe it himself.  In this spirit, he wished it to be

believed that we were in unjustifiable co-operation in Miranda's expedition.  I

solemnly, and on my personal truth and honor, declare to you that this was

entirely without foundation, and that there was neither cooperation, nor

connivance on our part.  He informed us he was about to attempt the liberation

of his native country from bondage, and intimated a hope of our aid, or

connivance at least.  He was at once informed, that although we had great cause

of complaint against Spain, and even of war, yet whenever







 



        320         Jefferson's Works







we should think proper to act as her enemy, it should be openly and above

board, and that our hostility should never be exercised by such petty means. 

We had no suspicion that he expected to engage men here, but merely to purchase

military stores.  Against this there was no law, nor consequently any authority

for us to interpose obstacles.  On the other hand, we deemed it improper to

betray his voluntary communication to the agents of Spain.  Although his

measures were many days in preparation at New York, we ' never had the least

intimation or suspicion of his engaging men in his enterprise, until he was

gone; and I presume the secrecy of his proceeding kept them equally unknown to

the Marquis Yrujo at Philadelphia, and the Spanish consul at New York, since

neither of them gave us any information of the ,enlistment of men, until it was

too late for any measures taken at Washington to prevent their departure.  The

officer in the Customs, who participated in this transaction with Miranda, we

immediately removed, and should have had him and others further punished, had

it not been for the protection given them by private citizens at New York, in

opposition to the government, who, by their impudent falsehoods and calumnies,

were able to overbear the minds of the jurors.  Be assured, Sir, that no motive

could induce me, at this time, to make this declaration so gratuitously, were

it not founded in sacred truth; and I will add further, that I never did, or

countenanced, in public life, a single act







        Correspondence          321







inconsistent with the strictest good faith; having never believed there was one

code of morality for a public, and another for a private man.



I receive, with great pleasure, the testimonies of personal esteem which

breathes through your letter; and I pray you to accept those equally sincere

with which I now salute you.











        TO JOEL BARLOW.







        MONTICELLO, October 8, 1809.







DEAR SIR,-It is long since I ought. to have acknowledged the receipt of your

most excellent oration on the 4th of July.  I was doubting what you could say,

equal to your own reputation, on so hackneyed a subject; but you have really

risen out of it with lustre, and pointed to others a field of great expansion. 

A day or two after I received your letter to Bishop Gregoire, a copy of his

diatribe to you came to hand from France.  I had not before heard of it.  He

must have been eagle-eyed in quest of offence, to have discovered ground for it

among the rubbish massed together in the print he animadverts on.  You have

done right in giving him a sugary answer.  But he did not deserve it.  For,

notwithstanding a compliment to you now and then, he constantly returns to the

identification of your sentiments with the extravagances of the Revolutionary

zealots.  I believe him a very good man, with imagination enough to declaim

eloquently,















322            Jefferson's Works







but without judgment to decide.  He wrote to me also on the doubts I had

expressed five or six and twenty years ago, in the Notes of Virginia, as to the

grade of understanding of the negroes, and he sent me his book on the

literature of the negroes.  His credulity has made him gather up every story he

could find of men of color, (without distinguishing whether black, or of what

degree of mixture,) however slight the mention, or light the authority on which

they are quoted.  The whole do not amount, in point of evidence, to what we

know ourselves of Banneker.  We know he had spherical trigonometry enough to

make almanacs, but not without the suspicion of aid from Ellicot, who Was his

neighbor and friend, and never missed an opportunity of puffing him.  I have a

long letter from Banneker, which shows him to have had a mind of very common

stature indeed.  As to Bishop Gregoire, I wrote him, as you have done, a very

soft answer.  It was impossible for doubt to have been more tenderly or

hesitatingly expressed than that was in the Notes of Virginia, and nothing was

or is farther from my intentions, than to enlist myself as the champion of a

fixed opinion, where I have only expressed a doubt.  St. Domingo will, in time,

throw light on the question.



I intended, ere this, to have sent you the papers I had promised you.  But I

have taken up Marshall's fifth volume, and mean to read it carefully, to

correct what is wrong in it, and commit to writing such facts and annotations

as the reading of that work will







        Correspondence                     323







bring into my recollection, and which have not yet been put on paper; in this I

shall be much aided by my memorandums and letters, and will send you both the

old and the new.  But I go on very slowly.  In truth, during the pleasant

season, I am always out of doors, employed, not passing more time at my writing

table than will despatch my current business.  But when the weather becomes

cold, I shall go out but little.  I hope, therefore, to get through this volume

during the ensuing winter; but should you want the papers sooner, they shall be

sent at a moment's warning.  The ride from Washington to Monticello in the

stage, or in a gig, is so easy that I had hoped you would have taken a flight

here during the season of good roads.  Whenever Mrs. Barlow is well enough to

join you in such a visit, it must be taken more at ease.  It will give us real

pleasure whenever it may take place.  I pray you to present me to her

respectfully, and I salute you affectionately.











        TO ALBERT GALLATIN.







        MONTICELLO, October 11, 1809.



DEAR SIR,-I do not know whether the request of Monsieur Moussier, explained in

-the enclosed letter, is grantable or not.  But my partialities in favor of

whatever may promote either the useful or liberal arts, induce me to place it

under your consideration, to do in it whatever is right, neither more







 



324        Jefferson's Works







nor less.  I would then ask you to favor me with three lines, in such form as I

may forward him by



way of answer.



I have reflected much and painfully on the change of dispositions which has

taken place among the members of the Cabinet, since the new arrangement, as you

stated to me in the moment of our separation.  It would be, indeed, a great

public calamity were it to fix you in the purpose which you seemed to think

possible.  I consider the fortunes of our republic as depending, in an eminent

degree, on the extinguishment of the public debt before we engage in any war:

because, that done, we shall have revenue enough to improve our country in

peace and defend it in war, without recurring either to new taxes or loans. 

But if the debt should once more be swelled to a formidable size, its entire

'discharge will be despaired of, and we shall be committed to the English

career of debt, corruption and rottenness, closing with revolution - The

discharge of the debt, therefore, is vital to the destinies of our government,

and it hangs on Mr. Madison and yourself alone.  We shall never see another

President and Secretary of the Treasury making all other objects subordinate to

this.  Were either of you to be lost to the'public, that great hope is lost.  I

had always cherished the idea that you would fix on that object the measure of

your fame, and of the gratitude which our country will owe you.  Nor can I

yield up this prospect to the secondary considerations which assail your tran-







        Correspondence                     325







quillity.  For sure I am, they never can produce any other serious effect. 

Your value is too justly estimated by our fellow citizens at large, as well as

their functionaries, to admit any remissness in their support of you.  My

opinion always was, that none of us ever occupied stronger ground in the esteem

of Congress than yourself, and I am satisfied there is no one who does not feel

your aid to be still as important for the future as it has been for the past. 

You have nothing, therefore, to apprehend in the dispositions of Congress, and

still less of the President, who, above all men, is the most interested and

affectionately disposed to support you.  I hope, then, you will abandon

entirely the idea you expressed to me, and that you will consider the eight

years to come as essential to your political career.  I should certainly

consider any earlier day of your retirement, as the most inauspicious day our

new government has ever seen.  In addition to the common interest in this

question, I feel particularly for myself the considerations of gratitude which

I personally owe you for your valuable aid during my administration of public

affairs, a just sense of the large portion of the public approbation which was

earned by your labors and. belongs to you, and the sincere friendship and

attachment which grew out of our joint exertions to promote the common good;

and of which I pray you now to accept the most cordial and respectful

assurances.







 



326            Jefferson's Works











        TO THE CHEVALIER LUIS DE ONIS.







        MONTICELLO, November 4,       1809.







        Thomas Jefferson presents his respectful compliments to his Excellency

the Chevalier de Onis, and congratulates him on his safe arrival in the United

States, and at a season so propitious for the preservation of health against

the effects of a sensible and sudden change of climate.  He hopes that his

residence here will be made agreeable to him, and that it will be useful in

cementing the friendship and intercourse of the two nations, so advantageous to

both.  He would have been happy to have paid his respects to the Chevalier de

Onis in person, and to have had the honor of forming his acquaintance; but the

distance and bad roads deny him that pleasure.  He learns with great

satisfaction that his venerable and worthy friend, Mr. Yznardi, continues in

life and health, and takes this occasion of bearing testimony to his loyal and

honorable conduct while in the United States.  He salutes the Chevalier de Onis

with assurances of his high respect and consideration.







        TO GEORGE WASHINGTON IRVING, ESQ.



        MONTICELLO, November 23, 1809-



        SIR,-An American vessel, the property of a respectable merchant of

Georgetown, on a voyage to some part of Europe for general purposes of

commerce, proposes to touch at some part of Spain with







        Correspondence                    327







        the view of obtaining Merino sheep to be brought to our country.  The

necessity we are under, and the determination we have formed of emancipating

ourselves from a dependence on foreign countries for manufactures which may be

advantageously established among ourselves, has produced a very general desire

to improve the quality of our wool by the introduction of the Merino race of

sheep.  Your sense of the duties you owe to your station will not permit me to

ask, nor yourself to do any act which might compromit you with the government

with which you reside, or forfeit that confidence on their part which can alone

enable you to be useful to your country.  But as far as that will permit you to

give aid to the procuring and bringing away some of the valuable race, I take

the liberty of soliciting you to do so-it will be an important service rendered

to Your country; to which you will be further encouraged by the assurance that

the enterprise is solely on the behalf of agricultural gentlemen of

distinguished character in Washington and its neighborhood, with a view of

disseminating the benefits of their success as widely as they can.  Without any

interest in it myself, other than the general one, I cannot help wishing a

favorable result, and therefore add my solicitations to the assurances of my

constant esteem and respect.







 



        328        Jefferson's Works







        TO THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES (JAMES MADISON).







        MONTICELLO, November 26, 1809.







        DEAR SIR,-Your letter of the 6th was received from our post office on

the 24th, after my return from Bedford.  I now re-enclose the letters of Mr.

Short and Romanzoff, and with them a letter from Armstrong, for your perusal,

as there may be some matters in it not otherwise communicated.  The infatuation

of the British government and nation is beyond everything imaginable.  A

thousand circumstances announce that they are on the point of being blown up,

and they still proceed with the same madness and increased wickedness.  With

respect to Jackson I hear but one sentiment, except that some think he should

have been sent off.  The more moderate step was certainly mo@e advisable'. 

There seems to be a perfect acquiescence in the opinion of the Government

respecting Onis.  The public interest certainly made his rejection expedient,

and as that is a motive which it is not pleasant always to avow, I think it

fortunate that the contending claims of Charles and Ferdinand furnished such

plausible embarrassment to the question of right; for, on our principles, I

presume, the right of the junta to send a Minister could not be denied.  La

Fayette, in a letter to me expresses great anxiety to receive his formal titles

to the lands in Louisiana.  Indeed, I know not why the proper officers have not

sooner







        Correspondence                        329







        sent on the papers on which the grants might issue.  It will be in your

power to forward the grants or copies of them by some safe conveyance, as La

Fayette says that no negotiation can be effected without them.



        I enclose you a letter from Major Neely, Chickasaw agent, stating that

he is in possession of two trunks Of the unfortunate Governor Lewis, containing

public vouchers the manuscripts of his western journey, and probably some

private papers.  As he desired they should be sent to the President, as the

public vouchers render it interesting to the public that they should be safely

received, and they would probably come most safely if addressed to you, would

it not be advisable that Major Neely should receive an order on your part to

forward them to Washington addressed to you, by the stage, and if possible

under the care of some person coming on?  When at Washington I presume the

papers may be opened and distributed; that is to say, the vouchers to the

proper offices where they are cognizable; the manuscript voyage, etc., to

General Clarke, who is interested in it, and is believed to be now on his way

to Washington; and his private papers, if any, to his administrator-who is John

Marks, his half brother.  It is impossible you should have time to examine and

distribute them; but if Mr. Coles could find time to do it, the family would

have entire confidence in his distribution.  The other two trunks, which are in

the care of Captain Russel at the







 



        330             Jefferson's Works







Chickasaw bluffs, and which Pernier (Governor Lewis' servant) says contain his

private property, I write to Captain Russel, at the request of Mr. Marks, to

forward to Mr. Brown at New Orleans, to be sent on to Richmond under my

address.  Pernier says that Governor Lewis owes him $240 for his wages.  He has

received money from Neely to bring him on here, and I furnish him to

Washington, where he will arrive penniless, and will ask for some money to be

placed to the Governor's account.  He rides a horse of the Governor's, which,

with the approbation of the administration, I tell him to dispose of and give

credit for the amount in his account against the Governor.  He is the bearer of

this letter, and of my assurances of constant and affectionate esteem.











        TO THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES







        (JAMES MADISON).







        MONTICELLO, November 30, 1809.



DEAR SIR,-I received last night yours of the 27th, and rode this morning to

Colonel Monroe's.  I found him preparing to set out to-morrow morning for

London, from whence he will not return till Christmas.  I had an hour or two's

frank conversation with him.  The catastrophe of poor Lewis served to lead us

to the point intended.  I reminded him that in the letter I wrote to him while

in Europe, proposing the Government of Orleans, I also suggested that of

Louisiana, if fears for health should be opposed to







        Correspondence                     331







the other.  I said something on the importance of the post, its advantages,

etc. expressed my regret at the curtain which seemed to be drawn between him

and his best friends, and my wish to see his talents and integrity engaged in

the service of his country again, and that his going into any post would be a

signal of reconciliation, on which the body of republicans, who lamented his

absence from the public service, would again rally to him.  These are the

general heads of what I said to him in the course of our conversation.  The sum

of his answers was, that to accept of that office was incompatible with the

respect he owed himself; that he never would act in any office where he should

be subordinate to anybody but the President himself, or which did not place his

responsibility substantially with the President and the nation; that at your

accession to the chair, he would have accepted a place in the Cabinet, and

would have exerted his endeavors most faithfully in support of your fame and

measures; that he is not unready to serve the public, and especially in the

case of any difficult crisis in our affairs; that he is satisfied that such is

the deadly hatred of both France and England, and such their self-reproach and

dread at the spectacle of such a government as ours, that they will spare

nothing to destroy it; that nothing but a firm union among the whole body of

republicans can save it, and therefore that no schism should be indulged on any

ground; that in his present situation, he is sincere in his







 



332            Jefferson's Works







        anxieties for the success of the administration, and in his support of

it as far as the limited sphere of his action or influence extends; that his

influence to this end had been used with those with whom the world had ascribed

to him an interest he did not possess, until, whatever it was, it was lost, (he

particularly named J. Randolph, who, he said, ha plans of his own, on which he

took no advice;) and that he was now pursuing what he believed his properest

occupation, devoting his whole time and faculties to the liberation of his

pecuniary embarrassments, which, three years of close attention, he hoped,

would effect.  In order to know more exactly what were the kinds of employ he

would accept, I adverted to the information of the papers, which came

yesterday, that General Hampton was dead, but observed that the military life

in our present state, offered nothing which could operate on the principle of

patriotism; he said he would sooner be shot than take a command under

Wilkinson.  In this sketch, I have given truly the substance of his ideas, but

not always his own words.  On the whole, I conclude he would accept a place in

the Cabinet, or a military command dependent on the Executive alone, and I

rather suppose a diplomatic mission, because it would fall within the scope of

his views, and not because he said so, for no allusion was made to anything of

that kind in our conversation.  Everything from him breathed the purest

patriotism, involving, however, a close attention to his own







Correspondence                     333







        honor and grade.  He expressed himself with the utmost devotion to the

interests of our own country, and I am satisfied he will pursue them with honor

and zeal in any character in which he shall be willing







to act.



        I have thus gone far beyond the single view of your letter, that you

may, under any circumstances, form a just estimate of what he would be disposed

to do.  God bless you, and carry you safely through all your difficulties.











        TO MR.  CHARLES F. WELLES.







        MONTICELLO, December 3, 1809.



        Sip,,-I received, within a few days past, your -favor of February 29th,

(for September, I presume,) in either case it has been long on the way.  It

covered the two pieces of poetry it referred to.  Of all the charges brought

against me by my political adversaries, that of possessing some science has

probably done them the least credit.  Our countrymen are too enlightened

themselves, to believe that ignorance is the best qualification for their

service.  If Mr. M. solicits a seat in Congress, I am sure he will be more just

to himself, and more respectful to his electors, than to claim it on this

ground.



        Without pretending to all the merits so kindly ascribed by the more

friendly and poetical answer, I feel the right of claiming that of integrity of

motives.  Whether the principles of the majority of our fellow







 



        334             Jefferson's Works







citizens, or of the little minority still opposing them, be most friendly to

the rights of man, posterity will judge; and to that arbiter I submit my own

conduct with cheerfulness.  It has been a great happiness to me, to have

received the approbation of so great a portion of my fellow citizens, and

particularly of those who have opportunities of inquiring, reading and deciding

for themselves.  It is on this view that I owe you especial acknowledgments,

which I pray you to accept with the assurances of my respect.







        TO THE PRESIDENT Or THE UNITED STATES (JAMES MADISON).







        MONTICELLO, December 7, 1809.



DEAR SIR,-The enclosed letter is from Father Richard, the Director of a school

at Detroit.  Being on a subject in which the departments both of the Treasury

and War are concerned, I take the liberty of enclosing it to yourself as the

centre which may unite these two agencies.  The transactions' which it alludes

to took place in the months of December and January preceding my retirement

from office, and as I think it possible they may not have been fully -placed on

the records of the War Office, because they were conducted verbally for the

most part, I will give a general statement of them as well as my recollection

will enable me.  In the neighborhood of Detroit (two or three miles from the

town) is a farm, formerly the property of one Earnest, a bankrupt







        Correspondence                      335







Collector.  It is now in the possession of the Treasury Department, as a pledge

for a stun in which he is in default to the government, much beyond the value

of the farm.  As it is a good one, has proper buildings, and in a proper

position for the purpose contemplated, General Dearborn proposed to purchase it

for the War Department at its real value.  Mr. Gallatin thought he should ask

the sum for which it was hypothecated.  I do not remember the last idea in

which we all concurred, but I believe it was that, as the Treasury must, in the

end, sell it for what it could get, the War Department would become a bidder as

far as its real value, and in the meantime would rent it.  On this farm we

proposed to assemble the following establishments: 1st.  Father Richard's

school.  He teaches the children of the inhabitants of Detroit-but the part of

the school within our view was that of the young Indian girls instructed by two

French females, natives of the place, who devote their whole time and their own

property, which was not inconsiderable, to the care and instruction of Indian

girls in carding, spinning, weaving, sewing, and the other household arts

suited to the condition of the poor, and as practiced by the white women of

that condition.  Reading and writing were an incidental part of their

education.  We proposed that the War Department should furnish the farm and the

houses for the use of the school gratis, and add $400 a year to the funds, and

that the benefits of the institution should be extended







 



336             Jefferson's Works







        to the boys also of the neighboring tribes, who were to be lodged, fed,

and instructed there. .



        2d.  To establish there the farmer at present employed by the United

States, to instruct those Indians in the use of the plough and other implements

and practices of agriculture, and in the general management of the farm.  This

man was to labor the farm himself , and to have the aid of the boys through a

principal portion of the day, by which they would contract habits of industry,

learn the business of farming, and provide subsistence for the whole

institution.  Reading and writing were to be a secondary object.



        3d. To remove thither the carpenter and smith at present employed by

the United States among the same Indians; with whom such of the boys as had a

turn for it should work and learn their trades.



        This establishment was recommended by the further circumstance that

whenever the Indians come to Detroit on trade or other business, they encamp on

or about this farm.  This would give them opportunities of seeing their sons

and daughters, and their advancement in the useful arts -- of seeing and

learning from example all the operations and process of a farm, and of always

carrying home themselves some additional knowledge of these things.  It was

thought more important to extend the civilized arts, and to introduce a

separation of property among the Indians of the country around Detroit than

elsewhere, because learning to set a high value on their







        Correspondence                      337







        property, and losing by degrees all other dependence for subsistence,

they would deprecate war with us as bringing certain destruction on their

property, and would become a barrier for that distant and isolated post against

the Indians beyond them.  There are beyond them some strong tribes, as the

Sacs, Foxes, etc., with whom we have as yet had little connection, and slender

opportunities of extending to them our benefits -and influence.  They are

therefore ready instruments to be brought into operation on us by a powerful

neighbor, which still cultivates its influence over them by nourishing the

savage habits which waste them, rather than by encouraging the civilized arts

which would soften, conciliate and preserve them.  The whole additional expense

to the United States was to be the price of the farm, and an increase of $400

in the annual expenditures for these tribes.



        This is the sum of my recollections.  I cannot answer for, their

exactitude in all details, but General Dearborn could supply and correct the

particulars of my statement.  Mr. Gallatin, too, was so often in. consultation

on the subject, that he must have been informed of the whole plan; and his

-memory is so much better than mine, that he will be able to make my statement

what it should be.  Add to this that I think I generally informed myself of our

policy and proceedings in the case, as we went along; and, if I am not

mistaken, it was one of the articles of a memorandum I left with you of things

still in fieri, and which would merit your attention.  I have















338            Jefferson's Works







thought it necessary to put you in possession of



these facts, that you might understand the grounds of Father Richard's

application, and be enabled to judge for yourself of the expediency of pursuing

the plan, or of the means of withdrawing from it with justice to the

individuals employed in its execution.  How far we are committed with the

Indians themselves in this business will be seen in a speech of mine to them,

of January 31st, filed in the War Office, and perhaps something more may have

passed to them from the Secretary of War.  Always affectionately yours.











        TO DR.  N. CHAPMAN.







        MONTICELLO, December 11, 1809.







SIR,-Your favor of November 10th did not come to hand till the 29th of that

month.  The subject you have chosen for the next anniversary discourse of the

Linnean Society is certainly a very interesting and also a difficult one.  The

change which has taken place in our climate, is one of those facts which all

men of years are sensible of, and yet none can prove by regular evidence; they

can only appeal to each other's general observation for the fact.  I remember

that when I was a small boy, (say 60 years ago,) snows were frequent and deep

in every winter-to my knee very often, to my waist sometimes-and that they

covered the earth long.  And I remember while yet young, to have heard from

very old men,







        Correspondence                      339







that in their youth, the winters had been still colder, with deeper and longer

snows.  In the year 1772, (37 years ago,).we had a snow two feet deep in the

Champaign parts of this State, and three feet in the counties next below the

mountains.  That year is still marked in conversation by the designation of "

the year of the deep snow." But I know of no regular diaries of the weather

very far back.  In latter times, they might perhaps be found.  While I lived at

Washington, I kept a diary, and by recurring to that, I observe that from the

winter of 1802-3, to that of 1808-9, inclusive, the average fall of snow of the

seven winters was only fourteen and a half inches, and that the ground was

covered but sixteen days in each winter on an average of the whole.  The

maximum in any one winter, during that period, was twenty-one inches fall, and

thirty-four days on the ground.  The change in our climate is, very shortly

noticed in the Notes on Virginia, because 1, had few facts to state but from my

own recollections, then only of thirty or thirty-five years.  Since that my

@hole time has been so completely occupied in public vocations, that I have

been able to pay but little attention to this subject, and if I have heard any

facts respecting it, I made no note of them, and they have escaped my memory. 

Thus, Sir, with every disposition to furnish you with any information in my

possession, I can only express my regrets at the entire want of them.  Nor do I

know of any source in this State, now existing, from which any-







 



        340            Jefferson's Works







        thing on the subject can be derived.  Williams, in his History of

Vermont, has an essay on the change of climate in Europe, Asia, and Africa, and

has very ingeniously laid history under contribution for materials.  Doctor

Williamson has written on the change of our climate, in one of the early

volumes of our philosophical transactions.  Both of these are doubtless known

to you.



        Wishing it had been in my power to have been more useful to you, I pray

you to accept the assurances of my esteem and respect.











        TO W. C. NICHOLAS, ESQ.



        MONTICELLO, December 16, 1809.







        DEAR SIR,-I now enclose you the agricultural catalogue.  I do not know

whether I have made it more or less comprehensive than you wished; but in

either case, you can make it what it should be by reduction or addition-there

are probably other good books with which I am unacquainted.  I do not possess

the Geoponica, nor Rozier's Dictionary.  All the others I have, and set them

down on my own knowledge, except Young's Experimental Agriculture, which I have

not, but had the benefit of reading your copy.  I am sorry to address this

catalogue to Warren, instead of Washington.  Never was there a moment when it

was so necessary to unite all the wisdom of the nation in its councils.  Our

affairs are certainly now at their ultimate point of crisis.







        Correspondence                     341







        I understand the Eastern Republicans will agree to nothing which shall

render non-intercourse effectual, and that in any question of that kind, the

federalists will have a majority.  There remains, then, only war or submission,

and if we adopt the former, they will desert us.  Under these difficulties you

ought not to have left us.  A temporary malady was not a just ground for

permanent withdrawing, and you are too young to be entitled as yet to decline

public duties. . I think there never was a time when your presence in Congress

was more desirable.  However, the die is cast, and we have only to regret what

we cannot repair.  You must indulge me a little in scolding on this subject,

and the rather as it is the effect of my great esteem and respect.











        TO SAMUEL KERCHEVAL.







        MONTICELLO, January 15, 1810.



        SIR,-Your favor of December 12th has been duly received, as was also

that of September 28th.  With the blank subscription paper for the academy of

Frederic county,, enclosed in. your letter of September, nothing has been done.

 I go rarely from home, and therefore have little opportunity of soliciting

subscriptions.  Nor could I do it in the present case in conformity with my own

judgment of what is best for institutions of this kind.  We are all doubtless

bound to contribute a certain portion of our income to the support of

charitable and other useful public







 



        342              Jefferson's Works







institutions.  But it is a part of our duty also to apply our contributions in

the most effectual way we can to secure their object.  The question then is

whether this will not be better done by each of us appropriating our whole

contributions to the institutions within our own reach, under our own eye; and

over which we can exercise some useful control?  Or would it be better that

each should divide the sum he can spare among all the institutions of his

State, or of the United States?  Reason, and the interest of these institutions

themselves, certainly decide in favor of the former practice.  This question

has been forced on me heretofore by the multitude of applications which have

come to me from every quarter of the Union on behalf of academies, churches,

missions, hospitals, charitable establishments, etc.  Had I parcelled among

them all the contributions which I could spare, it would have been for each too

feeble a sum to be worthy of being either given or received.  If each portion

of the State, on the contrary, will apply its aids and -its attentions

exclusively to those nearest around them, all will be better taken care of. 

Their support, their conduct, and the best administration of their funds, will

be under the inspection and control of those most convenient to take cognizance

of them, and most interested in their prosperity.  With these impressions

myself, I could not propose to others what my own judgment disapproved, as to

their duty as well as my own, These considerations







        Correspondence                      343







appear so conclusive to myself, that I trust they will be a sufficient apology

for my not haying fulfilled your wishes with respect to the paper enclosed. 

They are therefore submitted to your candor, with assurances of my best wishes

for the success of the institution you patronize, and of my respect and

consideration for yourself.











        TO JOHN WAYLES EPPES.







        MONTICELLO, January 17, 1810.







DEAR SIR,-Yours of the 10th came safely to hand, and I now enclose you a letter

from Francis; he continues in excellent health, and employs his time well.  He

has written to his mamma and grandmamma.  I observe that the H. of R. are

sensible of the ill effects of the long speeches in their house on their

proceedings.  But they have a worse effect in the disgust they excite among the

people, and the disposition they are producing to transfer their confidence

from the legislature to the executive branch, which would soon sap our

Constitution.  These speeches, therefore, are less and less read, and if

continued will cease to be read at all.  The models for that oratory which is

to produce the greatest effect by securing the attention of hearers and

readers, are to be found in Livy, Tacitus, Sallust, and most assuredly not in

Cicero.  I doubt if there is a man in the world who can now read one of his

orations through but as a piece of task-work, I observe







 



344              Jefferson's Works







        the house is endeavoring to remedy the eternal pro traction of debate

by sitting up all night, or by the use of the Previous Question.  Both will

subject them to the most serious inconvenience.  The latter may be turned upon

themselves by a trick of their adversaries.  I have thought that such a rule as

the following would be more effectual and less inconvenient: " Resolved that at

[viii-I o'clock in the evening (whenever the house shall be in session at that

hour) it shall be the duty of the Speaker to declare that hour arrived,

whereupon all debate shall cease.  If there be then before the house a main

question for the reading or passing of a bill, resolution or order, such main

question shall immediately be put by the Speaker, and decided by yeas and nays.



        " If the question before the house be secondary, as for amendment,

commitment, postponement, adjournment of the debate or question, laying on the

table, reading papers, or a . previous question, such secondary, [or any other

which may delay the main question,] shall stand ipso facto discharged, and the

main question shall then be before the house, and shall be immediately put and

decided by yeas and nays.  But a motion for adjournment of the house, may once

and once only, take place of the main question, and if decided in the negative,

the main question shall then be put as before.  Should any question of order

arise, it shall be decided by the Speaker instanter, and without debate or

appeal; and questions of privilege arising, shall be postponed till the







        Correspondence                       345







main question be deeded.  Messages from the President or Senate may be received

but not acted on till after the decision of the main question.  But this rule

shall be suspended during the [three] last days of the session of Congress. "



No doubt this, on investigation, will be found to  need amendment; but I think,

the principle of it better adapted to meet the evil than an other which has

occurred to me.  You can consider and decide upon, it, however, and make what

use of it you please, only keeping the source of it to yourself, Ever

affectionately yours.











        TO SAMUEL KERCHEVAL.







        MONTICELLO, January 19, 1810'.



        'SIR,-Yours of the 7th instant has been duly received, with the

pamphlet enclosed, for which I return you my thanks.  Nothing can be more

exactly and seriously true than w@at is there stated: that but a short time

elapsed after the death of the great reformer of the Jewish religion, before

his principles were departed from by those who professed to be his special

servants, and perverted into an engine for enslaving mankind, and aggrandizing

their oppressors in Church and State: that the purest system of morals ever

before preached to man has been adulterated and sophisticated by artificial

constructions, into a mere contrivance to filch wealth and power to themselves:

that rational men, not







 



346              Jefferson's Works







being able to swallow their impious heresies, in order to force them down their

throats, they raise the hue and cry of infidelity, while themselves are the

greatest obstacles to the advancement of the real doctrines of Jesus, and do,

in fact, constitute the real Anti-Christ.



You expect that your book will have some effect on the prejudices which the

Society of Friends entertain against the present and late administrations.  In

this I think you will be disappointed.  The Friends are men formed with the

same passions, and swayed by the same natural principles and prejudices as

others.  In cases where the passions are neutral, men will display their

respect for the religious professions of their sect.  But where their passions

are enlisted, these professions are no obstacle.  You observe very truly, that

both the late and present administration conducted the government on principles

professed by the Friends.  Our efforts to preserve peace, our measures as to

the Indians, as to slavery, as to religious freedom, were all in consonance

with their profession.  Yet I never expected we should get a vote from them,

and in this I was neither deceived nor disappointed.  There is no riddle in

this to those who do not suffer themselves to be duped by the professions of

religious sectaries.  The theory of American Quakerism is a very obvious one. 

The mother society is in England.  Its members are English by birth and

residence, devoted to their own country as good citizens ought to be.  The







        Correspondence                       347







Quakers of these States are colonies or filiations from the mother society, to

whom that society sends its yearly lessons.  On these, the filiated societies

model their opinions, their conduct, their passions and attachments.  A Quaker

is essentially an Englishman, in whatever part of the earth he is born or

lives.  The outrages of Great Britain on our navigation and commerce, have kept

us in perpetual bickerings with her.  The Quakers here have taken side against

their own government, not on their profession of peace, for they saw that peace

was our object also; but from devotion to the views of the mother society.  In

1797-8, when an administration sought war with France, the Quakers were the

most clamorous for war.  Their principle of peace, as a secondary one, yielded

to the primary one of adherence to the Friends in England, and what was

patriotism in the original, became treason in the copy.  On that occasion, they

obliged their good old leader, Mr. Pemberton, to erase his name from a petition

to Congress against war, which had been delivered to a Representative of

Pennsylvania, a member of the late and present administration; he accordingly

permitted the old gentleman to erase his name.  You must not therefore expect

that your book will have any more effect on the Society of Friends here, than

on the English merchants settled among us.  I apply this to the Friends in

general, not universally.  I know individuals among them as good patriots as we

have.







 



348             Jefferson's Works







        I thank you for the kind wishes and sentiments towards myself,

expressed in your letter, and sincerely wish to yourself the blessings of

heaven and happiness.







        TO WILLIAM BALDWIN.







        MONTICELLO, January 19, 1810.







        Thomas Jefferson returns to Mr. Baldwin his thanks for the copy of the

letters of Cerus and Amicus just received from him.  He sincerely wishes its

circulation among the Society of Friends may have the effect Mr. Baldwin

expects, of abating their prejudices against the government of their country. 

But he apprehends their disease is too deeply seated; that identifying

themselves with the mother society in England, and taking from them implicitly

their politics, their principles and passions, it will be long before they will

cease to be Englishmen in everything but the place of their birth, and to

consider that, and not America, as their real country.  He is particularly

thankful to Mr. Baldwin for the kind wishes and sentiments expressed in his

letter, and sincerely wishes to him the blessings of health and happiness.







        TO THOMAS T. HEWSON.







        MONTICELLO, January       21, 1810.







        SIR,-I have duly received your favor of the 8th instant, informing me

that the American Philosoph-







        Correspondence'                      349







        ical Society had been pleased again unanimously to re-elect me their

President.  For these continued testimonials of their favor, I can but renew

the expressions of my continued gratitude, and the assurances of my entire

devotion to their service. if, in my present situation, I can in any wise

forward their laudable pursuits for the information and benefit of mankind, all

other duties shall give place to that.







        I pray you to be the channel of communicating these sentiments, with

the expressions of my dutiful respects to the Society, and to accept, yourself,

the assurance of my great esteem and respect.







        TO THE HONORABLE PAUL HAMILTON.



        MONTICELLO, January 23, 1810.







        he enclosed letter would have been more



        SIR,-T







        properly addressed to yourself, or perhaps to the Secretary of War.  I

have no knowledge at all of the writer; but suppose the best use I can make of

his letter, as to himself or the public, is to enclose it to you for such

notice only as the public utility may entitle it to; perhaps I should ask the

favor of you to communicate it, with the samples, and with my friendly

respects, to the Secretary of War, who may know something of the writer.  I

recollect that his predecessor made some trial of cotton tenting, and found it

good against the water.  Its combustibility, however, must be an objection to

it for that purpose,







 



350         Jefferson's Works







        and perhaps even on shipboard.  I avail myself of the occasion which

this circumstance presents of expressing my sincere anxieties for the

prosperity of the administration in all its parts, which indeed involves the

prosperity of us all, and of tendering to yourself in particular the assurances

of my high respect and consideration.











        TO JOEL BARLOW.







        MONTICELLO, January 24, 1810.







        DEAR SIR,-Yours of the 15th is received, and I am disconsolate on

learning my mistake as to your having a dynamometer.  My object being to bring

a plough to be made here to the same standard of comparison by which

Guillaume's has been proved, nothing less would be satisfactory than an

instrument made by the same standard.  I must import one, therefore, but how,

in the present state of nonintercourse, is the difficulty.  I do not know * *

personally, but by character well.  He is the most red-hot federalist, famous,

or rather infamous for the lying and slandering which he vomited from the

pulpit in the political harangues with which he polluted the place.  I was

honored with much of it.  He is a man who can prove everything if you will take

his word for proof.  Such evidence of Hamilton's being a republican he may

bring; but Mr. Adams, Edmund Randolph, and myself, could repeat an explicit

declaration of Hamilton's against which proofs would weigh nothing.







        Correspondence                    351







        I am sorry to learn that your rural occupations impede so much the

progress of your much to be desired work.  You owe to republicanism, and indeed

to the future hopes of man, a faithful record of the march of this government,

which may encourage the oppressed to go and do so likewise.  Your talents, your

principles, and your means of access to public and private sources of

information, with the leisure which is at your command, point you out as the

person who is to do this act of justice to those who believe in the

improvability of the condition of man, and who have acted on that behalf, in

opposition to those who consider man as a beast of burden made to be rode by

him who has genius enough to get a bridle into his mouth.  The dissensions

between two members of the Cabinet are to be lamented.  But why should these

force Mr. Gallatin to withdraw?  They cannot be greater than between Hamilton

and myself, and yet we served together four years in that way.  We had indeed

no personal dissensions.  Each of us, perhaps, thought well of the other as a

man, but as politicians it was impossible for two men to be of more opposite

principles.  The method of separate consultation, practised sometimes in the

Cabinet, prevents disagreeable collisions.



        You ask my opinion of Maine.  I think him a most excellent man.  Sober,

industrious, intelligent and conscientious.  But, in the difficulty of changing

a nursery establishment, I suspect, you will find an insurmountable obstacle to

his removal.  Present.







 



352             Jefferson's Works







        me respectfully to Mrs. Barlow, and be assured of my constant and

affectionate esteem.







        P.        S. The day before yesterday the mercury was at 51' with us, a

very uncommon degree of cold here.  It gave us the first ice for the ice house.











        TO GIDEON GRANGER, ESQ.







        MONTICELLO, January      24, 1810.



        DEAR SIR,-I was sorry, by a letter from Mr. Barlow the other day, to

learn the ill state of your health, and I sincerely wish that this may find you

better.  Young, temperate and prudent as you are, great confidence may be

reposed in ' the provision nature has made for the restoration of order in your

system when it has become deranged; she effects her object by strengthening the

whole system, towards which medicine is generally mischievous.  Nor are the

sedentary habits of office friendly to it. But of all this your own good

understanding, instructed by your experience, is the best judge.  I cannot pass

over this occasion of writing to you, the first presented me since retiring

from office, without expressing to you my sense of the important aid I received

from you in the able and faithful direction of the office committed to your

charge.  With such auxiliaries, the business and burden of government becomes

all but insensible, and its painful anxieties are relieved by the







        Correspondence                          353







        certainty that all is going right.  In no department did I feel this

sensation more strongly than in yours, and though at this time of little

significance to yourself, it is a relief to my mind to discharge the duty of

bearing this testimony to your valuable services.  I must add my

acknowledgments for your friendly interference in setting the public judgment

to rights with respect to the Connecticut prosecutions, so falsely and

maliciously charged on me.  I refer to a statement of the facts in the National

Intelligencer of many months past, which I was sensible came from your hand.  I

pray you to be assured of my great and constant attachment, esteem and respect.







        TO J. GARLAND JEFFERSON.



        MONTICELLO, January 25, 1810.



        DEAR SIR,-Your favor of December 12th was long coming to hand.  I am

much concerned to learn that any disagreeable impression was made on your mind,

by the circumstances which are the subject of your letter.  Permit me first to

explain the principles which I had laid down for my own observance.  In a

government like ours, it is the duty of the Chief Magistrate, in order to

enable himself to do all the good which his station requires, to endeavor, by

all honorable means, to unite in himself the confidence of the whole people. 

This alone, in any case where the energy of the nation is required, can produce

a union of the powers of the whole, and point them in







 



354        Jefferson's Works







        a single direction, as if all constituted but one body and one mind,

and this alone can render a weaker nation unconquerable by a stronger one. 

Towards acquiring the confidence of the people, the very first measure is to

satisfy them of his disinterestedness, and that he is directing their affairs

with a single eye to their good, and not to build up fortunes for himself and

family, and especially, that the officers appointed to transact their business,

are appointed because they are the fittest men, not because they are his

relations.  So prone are they to suspicion, that where a President appoints a

relation of his own however worthy, they will believe that favor and not merit,

was the motive.  I therefore laid it down as a law of conduct for myself, never

to give an appointment to a relation.  Had I felt any hesitation in adopting

this rule, examples were not wanting to admonish me what to do and what to

avoid.  Still, the expression of your willingness to act in any office for

which you were qualified, could not be imputed to you as blame.  It would not

readily occur that a person qualified for office ought to be rejected merely

because he was related to the President, and the then more recent examples

favored the other opinion.  In this light I considered the case as presenting

itself to your mind, and that the application might be perfectly justifiable on

your part, while, for reasons occurring to none perhaps, but the person in . my

situation, the public interest might render it unadvisable.  Of this, however,

be assured that I consid-







        Correspondence                      355







ered the proposition as innocent on your part, and that it never lessened my

esteem for you, or the interest I felt in your welfare.



My stay in Amelia was too short, (only twenty-four hours,) to expect the

pleasure of seeing you there.  It would be a happiness to me anywhere, but

especially here, from whence I am rarely absent.  I am leading a life of

considerable activity as a farmer, reading little and writing less.  Something

pursued with ardor is necessary to guard us from the tedium-viatæ, and the

active pursuits lessen most our sense of the infirmities of age.  That to the

health of youth you may add an old age of vigor, is the sincere prayer of yours

affectionately.















        TO JUDGE DAVID CAMPBELL.







        MONTICELLO, January 28, 1810.







DEAR SIR,-Your letter of November 5th, was two months on its passage to me.  I

am very thankful for all the kind expressions of friendship in it, and I

consider it a great felicity, through a long and trying course of life, to have

retained the esteem of my early friends unaltered.  I find in old age that the

impressions of youth are the deepest and most indelible.  Some friends, indeed,

have left me by the way, seeking, by a different political path, the same

object, their country's good, which I pursued with the crowd along the common

highway.  It is







 



        356        Jefferson's Works







        a satisfaction        to me that I was not the first to leave



        them.  I have        never thought that a difference in



        political, any        more than in religious opinions, should



disturb the friendly intercourse of society.  There are so many other topics on

which friends may converse and be happy, that it is wonderful they would

select, of preference, the only one on which they cannot agree.  I am sensible

of the mark of esteem manifested by the name you have given to your son.  Tell

him from me, that he must consider as essentially belonging to it, to love his

friends and wish no into his enemies.  I shall be happy to see him here

whenever any circumstance shall lead his footsteps this way.  You doubt,

between law and physic, which profession he shall adopt.  His peculiar turn of

mind, and your own knowledge of things will best- decide this question.  Law is

quite overdone.  It is fallen to the ground, and a man must have great powers

to raise himself in it to either honor or profit.  The mob of the profession

get as little money and less respect, than they would by digging the earth. 

The followers of Esculapius are also numerous.  Yet I have remarked that

wherever one sets himself down in a good neighborhood, not pre-occupied, he

secures to himself its practice, and if prudent, is not long in acquiring

whereon to retire and live in comfort.  The physician is happy in the

attachment of the families in which he practices.  All think he has saved some

one of them, and he finds himself everywhere a welcome guest, a home in every

house, If, to the







        Correspondence                      357







consciousness of having saved some lives, he can add that of having at no time,

from want of caution, destroyed the boon he was called on to save, he will

enjoy, in age, the happy reflection of not having lived in vain; while the

lawyer has only to recollect how many, by his dexterity, have been cheated of

their right and reduced to beggary.  After all, I end where I began, with the

observation that your son's disposition and your prudence, are the best

arbiters of this question, and with the assurances of my great esteem and

respect.











        TO CÆSAR A. RODNEY.







        MONTICELLO, February 10, 1810.



MY DEAR SIR,-I have to thank you for your favor of the 31st ultimo, which is

just now received.  It has been peculiarly unfortunate for us, personally, that

the portion in the history of mankind, at which we were called to take a share,

in the direction of their affairs, was such an one as history has never before

presented.  At any other period, the even-handed justice we have observed

towards all nations, the efforts we have made to merit their esteem by every

act which candor or liberality could exercise, would have preserved our peace,

and secured the unqualified confidence of all other nations in our faith and

probity.  But the hurricane which is now blasting the world, physical and

moral, has prostrated all the mounds of reason as well as right.  All those

calcula-







 



358                Jefferson's Works







        tions which, at any other period, would have been deemed honorable, of

the existence of a moral sense in man, individually or associated, of the

connection which the laws of nature have established between his duties and his

interests, of a regard for honest fame and the esteem of our fellow men, have

been a matter of reproach on us, as evidences of imbecility.  As if it could be

a folly for an honest man to suppose that others could be honest also, when it

is their interest to be so.  And when is this state of things to end?  The

death of Bonaparte would, to be sure, remove the first and chiefest apostle of

the desolation of men and morals, and might withdraw the scourge of the land. 

But what is to restore order and safety on the ocean?  The death of George III?

 Not at all.  He is only stupid; and his ministers, however weak and profligate

in morals, are ephemeral.  But his nation is permanent, and it is that which is

the tyrant of the ocean.  The principle that force is right, is become the

principle of the nation itself.  They would not permit an. honest minister,

were accident to bring such an one into power, to relax their system of lawless

piracy.  These were the difficulties when I was with you.  I know they are not

lessened, and I pity you.



        It is a blessing, however, that our people are reasonable; that they

are kept so well informed of the state of things as to judge for themselves, to

see the true sources of their difficulties, and to maintain their confidence

undiminished in the wisdom and







        Correspondence                    359







        integrity of their functionaries.  Macte virtute therefore.  Continue

to go straight forward, pursuing always that which is right, as the only clue

which can lead us out of the labyrinth.  Let nothing be spared of either reason

or passion, to preserve the public confidence entire, as the only rock of our

safety.  In times of peace the people look most to their representatives; but

in war, to the executive solely.  It is visible that their confidence is even

now veering in that direction; that they are looking to the executive to give

the proper direction to their affairs, with a confidence as auspicious as it is

well founded.



        I avail myself of this, the first occasion of writing to you, to

express all the depth of my affection for you; the sense I entertain of your

faithful co-operation in my late labors, and the debt I owe for the valuable

aid I received from you.  Though separated from my fellow laborers in place and

pursuit, my affections are with you all, and I offer daily prayers that ye love

one another, as I love you.  God bless you.











        TO REV.  SAMUEL KNOX.







        MONTICELLO, February 12, 1810.







        SIR,-Your favor of January 22d loitered on the way somewhere, so as not

to come to my hand until the 5th instant.  The title of the tract of Buchanan

which you propose to translate, was familiar to me,







 



360              Jefferson's Works







and I possessed the tract; but no circumstance had ever led me to look into it.

 Yet I think nothing more likely than that, in the free spirit of that age and

state of society, principles should be avowed, which were felt and followed,

although unwritten in the Scottish Constitution.  Undefined powers had been

entrusted to the crown, undefined rights retained by the people, and these

depended for their maintenance on the spirit of the people, which, in that day

was dependence sufficient.  I shall certainly, after what you say of it, give

it a serious reading.  His latinity is so pure as to claim a place in school

reading, and the sentiments which have recommended the work to your notice, are

such as ought to be instilled into the minds of our youth on their first

opening.  The boys of the rising generation are to be the men of the next, and

the sole guardians of the principles we deliver over to them.  That I have

acted through life of those on sincere republicanism I feel in every fibre of

my constitution.  And when men who feel like myself, bear witness in my favor,

my satisfaction is complete.  The testimony of approbation implied in the

desire you express of coupling my name with Buchanan's work, and your

translation of it, cannot but be acceptable and flattering; and the more so as

coming from one of whom a small acquaintance had inspired me with a great

esteem.  This I am now happy in finding an occasion to express.  The times

which brought us within mutual observation were awfully trying.  But truth and

reason are eternal.







        Correspondence                       361







They have prevailed.  And they will eternally prevail, however in times and

places they may be overborne for a while by violence, military, civil, or

ecclesiastical.  The preservation of the holy fire is confided to us by the

world, and the sparks which will emanate from it will ever serve to rekindle it

in other quarters of the globe, numinibus secundis.



Amidst the immense mass of detraction which was published against me, when my

fellow citizens proposed to entrust me with their concerns, and the efforts of

more candid minds to expose their falsehood, I retain a remembrance of the

pamphlet you mention.  But I never before learned who was its author; nor was

it known to me that Mr. Pechin had ever published a copy of the Notes on

Virginia.  But had all this been known, I should have seen myself with pride by

your side.  Wherever you lead, we may all safely follow, assured that it is in

the path of truth and liberty.  Mr. Pechin knew well that your introduction

would plead for his author, and only erred in not asking your leave.  Wishing

every good effect which may follow your undertaking, I tender you the

assurances of my high esteem and respect.







        TO W. D. G. WORTHINGTON, ESQ.



        MONTICELLO, February 24, 1810.



SIR,-I have to thank you for the pamphlet you



 have been so kind as to send me, and especially for its contents so far as

they respect myself personally.







 



362             Jefferson's Works







I had before read your speech in the newspapers, with great satisfaction, and 

the more, as, besides the able defence of the government, I saw that an absent

and retired servant would still find, in the justice of the public counsellors,

friendly advocates who would not suffer his name to be maligned without answer

or reproof.  If, brooding over past calamities, the attentions of federalism

can, by abusing me, be diverted from disturbing the course of government, they

will make me useful longer than I had expected to be so.  Having served them

faithfully for a term of twelve or fourteen years, in the terrific station of

Rawhead and Bloodybones, it was supposed that, retired from power, I should

have been functus officio, of course, for them also.  If, nevertheless, they

wish my continuance in that awful office, I yield, and the rather as it may be

exercised at home, without interfering with the tranquil enjoyment of my farm,

my family, my friends and books.  In truth, having never felt a pain from their

abuse, I bear them no malice.  Contented with our government, elective as it is

in three of its principal branches, I wish not, on Hamilton's plan, to see two

of them for life; and still less, hereditary, as others desire.  I believe that

the yeomanry of the federalists think on this subject with me.  They are

substantially republican.  But some of their leaders, who get into the public

councils, would prefer Hamilton's government, and still more the hereditary

one.  Hinc illa lachrymæ.  I wish them no harm, but







        Correspondence                      363







that they may never get into power, not for their harm, but for the good of our

country.  I hope the friends of republican government will keep strict watch

over them, and not let them want, when they need it, the wholesome discipline

of which you have sent me a specimen.  I commit them with entire confidence to

your care, and salute you with esteem and respect.











        TO WILLIAM A. BURWELL.







        MONTICELLO, February 25, 1810-



DEAR SIR,-Yours, of the 16th, has given me real uneasiness.  I was certainly

very unfortunate in the choice of my expression, when I hit upon one which

could excite any doubt of my unceasing affections for you.  In observing that

you might use the information as you should find proper, I meant merely that

you might communicate it to the President, the Secretaries of State or War, or

to young Mr. Lee, as should be judged by yourself most proper.  I meant

particularly, to permit its communication to Mr. Lee, to enlighten his

enquiries, for I do not know that his father received the medal.  I could only

conduct the information to the completion of the die and striking off a proof. 

With such assurances as I have of your affection, be assured that nothing but

the most direct and unequivocal proofs can ever make me suspect its abatement,

and conscious of as warm feelings towards yourself, I hope







 



364            Jefferson's Works







        you will ever be as unready to doubt them.  Let us put this, then,

under our feet.



        I like your convoy bill, because although it does not assume the

maintenance of all our maritime rights, it assumes as much as it is our

interest to maintain.  Our coasting trade is the first and most important

branch, never to be yielded but with our existence.  Next to that is the

carriage of our own productions in our own vessels, and bringing back the

returns for our own consumption; so far I would protect it, and force every

part of the Union to join in the protection at the point of the bayonet.  But

though we have aright to the remaining branch of carrying for other nations,

its advantages do not compensate its risks.  Your bill first rallies us to the

ground the Constitution ought to have taken, and to which we ought to return

without delay; the moment is the. most favorable possible, because the Eastern

States, by declaring they will not protect that cabotage by war, and forcing us

to abandon it, have released us from every future claim for its protection on

that part.  Your bill is excellent in another view: it presents still one other

ground to which we can retire before we resort to war; it says to the

belligerents, rather than go to war, we will retire from the brokerage of other

nations, and confine ourselves to ,,he carriage and exchange of our own

productions; but we will vindicate that in all its rights-if you touch it, it

is war.



        The present delightful weather has drawn us all







        Correspondence                     365







        into our farms and gardens; we have had the most devastating rain which

has ever fallen within my knowledge.  Three inches of water fell in the space

of about an hour.  Every hollow of every hill presented a torrent which swept

everything before it.  I have never seen the fields so much injured.  Mr.

Randolph's farm is the only one which has not suffered; his horizontal furrows

arrested the water at every step till it was absorbed, or at least had

deposited the soil it had taken up.  Everybody in this neighborhood is adopting

his method of ploughing, except tenants who have no interest in the

preservation of the  soil.



        Present me respectfully to Mrs. Burwell, and be. assured of my constant

affection.











        TO GENERAL THADDEUS KOSCIUSKO.







        MONTICELLO, February 26, 1810.







        MY DEAR GENERAL AND FRIEND,-I have rarely written to you'; never but by

safe conveyances; and avoiding everything political, lest coming from one in

the station I then held, it might be imputed injuriously to our country, or

perhaps even excite jealousy of you.  Hence my letters were necessarily dry. 

Retired now from public concerns, totally unconnected with them, and avoiding

all curiosity about what is done or intended, what I say is from myself only,

the workings of my own mind, imputable to nobody else.







 



366            Jefferson's Works







The anxieties which I know you have felt, on seeing exposed to the jostlings of

a warring world, a country to which, -in early life, you devoted your sword and

services when oppressed by foreign dominion, were worthy of your philanthropy

and disinterested attachment to the freedom and happiness of man.  Although we

have not made all the provisions which might be necessary for a war in the

field of Europe, yet we have not been inattentive to such as would be necessary

here.  From the moment that the affair of the Chesapeake rendered the prospect

of war imminent, every faculty was exerted to be prepared for it, and I think I

may venture to solace you with the assurance, that we are, in a good degree,

prepared.  Military stores for many campaigns are on hand, all the necessary

articles (sulphur excepted), and the art of preparing them among ourselves,

abundantly; arms in our magazines for more men than will ever be required in

the field, and forty thousand new stand yearly added, of our own fabrication,

superior to any we have ever seen from Europe; heavy artillery much beyond our

need; an increasing stock of field pieces, several foundries casting one every

other day each; a military school of about fifty students, which has been in

operation a dozen years; and the manufacture of men constantly going on, and

adding forty thousand young soldiers to our force every year that the war is

deferred; at all our seaport towns of the least consequence we have erected

works of defence, and







        Correspondence                     367







assigned them gunboats, carrying one or two heavy pieces, either eighteen,

twenty-four, or thirty-two pounders, sufficient in the smaller harbors to repel

the predatory attacks of privateers or single armed ships, and proportioned in

the larger harbors to such more serious attacks as they may probably be exposed

to.  All these were nearly completed, and their gunboats in readiness, when I

retired from the government.  The works of New York and New Orleans alone,

being on a much larger scale, are not yet completed.  The former will be

finished this summer, mounting four hundred and thirty-eight guns, and, with

the aid of from fifty to one hundred gunboats, will be adequate to the

resistance of any fleet which will ever be trusted across the Atlantic.  The

works for New Orleans are less advanced.  These are our preparations.  They are

very different from what you will be told by newspapers, and travellers, even

Americans.  But it is not to them the government communicates the public

condition.  Ask one of them if he knows the exact state of any particular

harbor, and you will find probably that he does not know even that of the one

he comes from.  You will ask, perhaps, where are the proofs of these

preparations for one who cannot go and see them.  I answer, in the acts of

Congress, authorizing such preparations, and in your knowledge of me, that, if

authorized, they would be executed.



Two measures have not been adopted, which I pressed on Congress repeatedly at

their meetings.







 



368                 Jefferson's Works







The one, to settle the whole ungranted territory of Orleans, by donations of

land to able-bodied young men, to be engaged and carried there at the public

expense, Who would constitute a force always ready on the spot to defend New

Orleans.  The other was, to class the militia according to the years of their

birth, and make all those from twenty to twenty-five liable to be trained and

called into service at a moment's warning.  This would have given us a force of

three hundred thousand young men, prepared by proper training, for service in

any part of the United States; while those who had passed, through that period

would remain at home, liable@ to be used in their own or adjacent States. 

These two measures would have completed what I deemed necessary for the entire

security of our country.  They would have given me, on my retirement from the

government of the nation, the consolatory reflection, that having found, when I

was called to it, nota single seaport town in a condition to repel a levy of

contribution by a single privateer or pirate, I had left every harbor so

prepared by works and gunboats, as to be in a reasonable state of security

against any probable attack; the territory of Orleans acquired, and planted

with an internal force sufficient for its protection; and the whole territory

of the United States organized by such a classification of its male force, as

would give it the benefit of all its young population for active service, and

that of a middle and advanced age for stationary defence.







        Correspondence                     369







But these measures will, I hope, be completed by my successor, who, to the

purest principles of republican patriotism, adds a wisdom and foresight second

to no man on earth.



So much as to my country.  Now a word as to myself.  I am retired to

Monticello, where, in the bosom of my family, and surrounded by my books, I

enjoy a repose to which I have been long a stranger.  My mornings are devoted

to correspondence.  From breakfast to dinner, I am in my shops, my garden, or

on horseback among my farms; from dinner to dark, I give to society and

recreation with my neighbors and friends; and from candle light to early

bed-time, I read.  My health is perfect; and my strength considerably

reinforced by the activity of the course I pursue; perhaps it is as great as

usually falls to the lot of near sixty-seven years of age.  I talk of ploughs

and harrows, of seeding and harvesting, with my neighbors, and of politics too,

if they choose, with as little reserve as the rest of my fellow citizens, and

feel, at length, the blessing of being free to say and do what I please,

without being responsible for it to any mortal.  A part of my occupation, and

by no means the least pleasing, is the direction of the studies of such young

men as ask it.  They place themselves in the neighboring village, and have the

use of my library and counsel, and make a part of my society.  In 'advising the

course of their reading, I endeavor to keep their attention fixed on the main

objects of all science, the freedom







 



370            Jefferson's Works







and happiness of man.  S o that coming to bear a share in the councils and

government of their country, they will keep ever in view the sole objects -of

all legitimate government.







Instead of the unalloyed happiness of retiring unembarrassed and independent,

to the enjoyment of my estate, which is ample for my limited views, I have to

pass such a length of time in a thraldom of mind never before known to me. 

Except for this, my happiness would have been perfect.  That yours may never

know disturbance, and that you may enjoy as many years of life, as health and

ease to. yourself shall wish, is the sincere prayer of your constant and

affectionate friend.







        TO DOCTOR WALTER JONES.



        MONTICELLO, March 5, 1810



DEAR SIR,-I received duly your favor of the 19th ultimo, and I salute you with

all ancient and recent recollections of friendship.  I have learned, with real

sorrow, that circumstances have arisen among our executive counsellors, which

have rendered foes those who once were friends.  To themselves it will be a

source of infinite pain and vexation, and therefore chiefly I lament it, for I

have a sincere esteem for both parties.  To the President it will be really

inconvenient; but to the nation I do not know that it can do serious injury,

unless we were







Correspondence    371







to believe the newspapers, which pretend that Mr. Gallatin will go out. That

indeed would be a day of mourning for the United States; but I hope that the

position of both gentlemen may be made so easy as to give no cause for either

to withdraw.  The ordinary business of every day is done by consultation

between the President and the Head of the department alone to which it belongs.

 For measures of importance or difficulty, a consultation is held with the

Heads of departments, either assembled, or by taking their opinions separately

in conversation or in writing.  The latter is most strictly in the spirit of

the Constitution.  Because the President, on weighing the advice of all, is

left free to make up an opinion for himself.  In this way they are not brought

together, and it is not necessarily known to any what opinion the others have

given.  This was General Washington's practice for the first two or three years

of his administration, till the affairs of France and England threatened to

embroil us, and rendered consideration and discussion desirable.  In these

discussions, Hamilton and myself were daily pitted in the Cabinet like two

cocks.  We were then but four in number, and, according to the majority, which

of course was three to one, the President decided.  The pain was for Hamilton

and myself, but the public experienced no inconvenience.  I practised this last

method, because the harmony was so cordial among us all, that we never failed,

by a contribution of mutual views on







 



372           Jefferson's Works







the subject, to form an opinion acceptable to the whole.  I think there never

was one instance to the contrary, in any case of consequence.  Yet this does,

in fact, transform the executive into a directory, and I hold ' the other

method to be more constitutional.  It is better calculated, too, to prevent

collision and irritation, and to cure it, or at least suppress its effects when

it has already taken place.  It is the obvious and sufficient remedy in the

present case, and will doubtless be resorted to.



Our difficulties are indeed great, if we consider ourselves alone.  But when

viewed in comparison to those of Europe, they are the joys of Paradise.  In the

eternal revolution of ages, the destinies have placed our portion of existence

amidst such scenes of tumult and outrage, as no other period, within our

knowledge, had presented.  Every government but one on the continent of Europe,

demolished, a conqueror roaming over the earth with havoc and destruction, a,

pirate spreading misery and ruin over the face of the ocean.  Indeed, my

friend, ours is a bed of roses.  And the system of government which shall keep

us afloat amidst the wreck of the world, will be immortalized in history.  We

have, to be sure, our petty squabbles and heart burnings, and we have something

of the blue devils at times, as to these rawheads and bloodybones who are

eating up other nations.  But happily for us, the Mammoth cannot swim, nor the

Leviathan move on dry land; and if we will keep out of their way, they cannot

get







        Correspondence                    373







at us.  If, indeed, we choose to place ourselves within the scope of their

tether, a gripe of the paw, or flounce of the tail, may be our fortune.  Our

business certainly was to be still.  But a part of our nation chose to declare

against this, in such a way as to control the wisdom of the government.  I

yielded with others, to avoid a greater evil.  But from that moment, I have

seen no system which could keep us entirely aloof from these agents of

destruction.  If there be any, I am certain that you, my friends, now charged

with the care of us all, will see and pursue it.  I give myself, therefore, no

trouble with thinking or puzzling about it.  Being confident in my watchmen I

sleep soundly.  God bless you all, and send you a safe deliverance.







        TO GOVERNOR JOHN LANGDON.(1)



        MONTICELLO, March 5, 1810.



Your letter, my dear friend, of the 18th ultimo, comes like the refreshing dews

of the evening on a thirsty soil.  It recalls ancient as well as recent

recollections, very dear to my heart.  For five and thirty years we have walked

together through a land of tribulations.  Yet these have passed away, and so, I

trust, will those of the present day.  The toryism with which we struggled in

'77, differed but in name from the federalism of '99, with which we struggled

also; and the Anglicism of 1808, against







@#(1)        Governor of New Hampshire.@%







 



        374             Jefferson's Works







        which we are now struggling, is but the same thing still in another

form.  It is a longing for a King, and an English King rather than any other. 

This is the true source of their sorrows and wailings.



        The fear that Bonaparte will come over to us and conquer us also, is

too chimerical to be genuine.  Supposing him to have finished Spain and

Portugal, he has yet England and Russia to subdue.  The maxim of war was never

sounder than in this case, not to leave an enemy in the rear; and especially

where an insurrectionary flame is known to be under the embers, merely

smothered, and ready to burst at every point, These two subdued, (and surely

the Anglomen will not think the conquest of England alone a short work,)

ancient Greece and Macedonia, the cradle of Alexander, his prototype, and

Constantinople, the seat of empire for the world, would glitter more in his eye

than our bleak mountains and rugged forests.  Egypt, too, and the golden apples

of Mauritania, have for more than half a century fixed the longing eyes of

France; and with Syria, you know, he has an old affront to wipe out.  Then come

" Pontus and Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia and Bithynia, " the fine countries on

the Euphrates and Tigris, the Oxus and Indus, and all beyond the Hyphasis,

which bounded the glories of his Macedonian rival; -with the invitations of his

new British subjects on the banks of the Ganges, whom, after receiving under

his protection the Mother country, he cannot refuse to visit.  When all this is







        Correspondence                     375







done and settled, and nothing of the old world remains unsubdued, he may turn

to the new one.  But will he attack us first, from whom he will get but hard

knocks and no money?  Or will he first lay hold. of the gold and silver of

Mexico and Peru,. and the diamonds of Brazil?  A republican Emperor, from his

affection to republics, independent of motives of expediency, must grant to

ours the Cyclop's boon of being the last devoured.  While all this is doing,

'we are to suppose the chapter of accidents read out, and that nothing can

happen to cut short or to disturb his enterprises.



But the Anglomen, it seems, have found out a much safer dependence than all

these chances of death or disappointment.  That is, that we should first let

England plunder us, as she has been doing for years, for fear Bonaparte should

do it; and then ally ourselves with her, and enter into the war.  A conqueror,

whose career England could not arrest when aided by Russia, Austria, Prussia,

Sweden, Spain and Portugal, she is now to destroy, with all these on his side,

by the aid of the United States alone.  This, indeed, is making us a mighty

people.  And what is to be our security, that when embarked for her in the war,

she will not make a separate peace, and leave us in the lurch?  Her good faith!

 The faith of a nation of merchants!  The Punica fides of modern Carthage!  Of

the friend and protectress of Copenhagen!  Of the nation who never admitted a

chapter of morality into her political code!  And







 



376            Jefferson's Works







is now boldly avowing that whatever power can make hers, is hers of right. 

Money, and not morality, is the principle of commerce and commercial nations. 

But, in addition to this, the nature of the English government forbids, of

itself, reliance on her engagements; and it is well known she has been the

-least faithful to her alliances of any nation of Europe, since the period of

her history wherein she has been distinguished for her commerce and corruption,

that is to say, under the houses of Stuart and Brunswick.  To Portugal alone

she has steadily adhered, because, by her Methuin treaty, she had made it a

colony, and one of the most valuable to her.  It may be asked, what, in the

nature of her government, unfits England for the observation of moral duties? 

In the first place, her King is a cypher; his only function being to name the

oligarchy which is to govern her.  The parliament is, by corruption, the mere

instrument of the will of the administration' The real power and property in

the government is in the great aristocratical families of the nation.  The nest

of office being too small for all of them to cuddle into at once, the contest

is eternal, which shall crowd the other out.  For this purpose, they are

divided into two parties, the Ins and the Outs, so equal in weight that a small

matter turns the balance.  To keep themselves in, when they are in, every

stratagem must be practised, every artifice used which may flatter the pride,

the passions or power of the nation. justice, honor, faith







        Correspondence                    377







must yield to the necessity of keeping themselves in place.  The question

whether a measure is moral, is never asked; but whether it will nourish the

avarice of their merchants, or the piratical spirit of their navy, or produce

any other effect which may strengthen them in their places.  As to engagements,

however positive, entered into by the predecessors of the Ins, why, they were

their enemies; they did everything which was wrong; and to reverse everything

which they did, must, therefore, be right.  This is the true character of the

English government in practice, however different its theory; and it presents

the singular phenomenon of a nation, the individuals of which are as faithful

to their private engagements and duties, as honorable, as worthy, as those of

any nation on earth, and whose government is yet the most unprincipled at this

day known.  In an absolute government there can be no such equiponderant

parties.  The despot is the government.  His power suppressing all opposition,

maintains his ministers firm in their places.  What he has contracted,

therefore, through them, he has the power to observe with good faith; and he

identifies his own honor and faith with that of his nation.



When I observed, however, that the King of England was a cypher, I did not mean

to confine the observation to the mere individual now on that throne.  The

practice of Kings marrying only in the families of Kings, has been that of

Europe for some centuries. ,Now, take any race of animals,







 



378             Jefferson's Works



confine them in idleness and inaction, whether in a stye, a stable or a

state-room, pamper them with high diet, gratify all their sexual appetites,

immerse them in sensualities, nourish their passions, let everything bend

before them, and banish whatever might lead them to think, and in a few

generations they become all body and no mind; and this, too, by a law of

nature, by that very law by which we are in the constant practice of changing

the characters and propensities of the animals we raise for our own purposes. 

Such is the regimen in raising Kings, and in this way they have gone on for

centuries.  While in Europe, I often amused myself with contemplating the

characters of the then reigning sovereigns of Europe.  Louis the XVI. was a

fool, of my own knowledge, and in despite of the answers made for him at his

trial.  The King of Spain was a fool, and of Naples the same.  They passed

their lives in hunting, and despatched - two couriers a week, one thousand

miles, to let each other know what game they had killed the preceding days. 

The King of Sardinia was a fool.  All these were Bourbons.  The Queen of

Portugal, a Braganza., was an idiot by nature.  And so was the King of Denmark.

 Their sons, as regents, exercised the powers of government.  The King of

Prussia, successor to the great Frederick, was a mere hog in body as well as in

mind.  Gustavus of Sweden, and Joseph of Austria, were really crazy, and George

of England, you know, was in a straight waistcoat. , There







        Correspondence                       379







remained, then, none but old Catharine, who had been too lately picked up to

have lost her common sense.  In this state Bonaparte found Europe; and it was

this state of its rulers which lost it with scarce a struggle.  These animals

had become without mind and powerless; and so will every hereditary monarch be

after a few generations.  Alexander, the grandson of Catharine, is as yet an

exception.  He is able to hold his own.  But he is only of the third

generation.  His race is not yet worn out.  And so endeth the book of Kings,

from all of whom the Lord deliver us, and have you, my friend, and all such

good men and true, in His holy keeping.











        TO ABBÉ, SALIMANKIS.







        MONTICELLO, March 14, 1810.



SIR,-I have duly received your favor of February 27th and am very thankful for

the friendly sentiments therein expressed towards myself, as well as for the

pamphlet enclosed.  That it contains many serious truths and sound admonitions

every reader will be sensible.  At the same time it is a comfort that the medal

has two sides.  I do not myself contemplate human nature in quite so sombre a

view.  That there is much vice and misery in the world, I know; but more virtue

and happiness I believe, at least in our part of it; the latter being the lot

of those employed in agriculture in a greater degree than of other callings. 

That we are overdone with







 



        380        Jefferson's Works







banking institutions, which have banished the precious metals, and substituted

a more fluctuating and unsafe medium, that these have withdrawn capital from

useful improvements and employments to nourish idleness, that the wars of the

world have swollen our commerce beyond the wholesome limits of exchanging our

own productions for our own wants, and that, for the emolument of a small

proportion of our society, who prefer these demoralizing .Pursuits to labors

useful to the whole, the peace of the whole is endangered, and all our present

difficulties produced, are evils more easily to be deplored than remedied. 

They should lead us to direct our prayers, if our philanthropy fails to do it,

for the re-establishment of peace in Europe, when our commerce must of course

return to its proper objects, and the idle to habits of industry.  To these

prayers, in which you will not fail to join, let me add my best wishes and

respects for yourself.











        TO ROBERT FULTON.







        MONTICELLO, March 17, 1810.







DEAR SIR,-L have duly received your favor of February 24th covering one of your

pamphlets on the Torpedo.  I have read it with pleasure.  This was not

necessary to give them favor in my eye.  I am not afraid of new inventions or

improvements, nor bigoted to the practices of our forefathers.  It is that

bigotry which keeps the Indians in a state of







        Correspondence                     381







barbarism in the midst of the arts, would have kept us in the same state even

now, and still keeps Connecticut where their ancestors were when they landed on

these shores.  I am much pleased that Congress is taking up the business. 

Where a new invention is supported by well-known principles, and promises to be

useful, it ought to be tried.  Your torpedoes will be to cities what

vaccination has been to mankind.  It extinguishes their greatest danger.  But

there will still be navies.  Not for the destruction of cities, but for the

plunder of commerce on the high seas.  That the tories should be against you is

in character, because it will curtail the power of their idol, England.



I am thankful to you for the trouble you have taken in thinking of the felier

hydraulique.  To be put into motion by the same power which was to continue the

motion was certainly wanting to that machine, as a better name still is.  I

would not give you the trouble of having a model made, as I have workmen who

can execute from the drawing.  I pray you to accept the assurances of my great

esteem and respect.







        TO G. VOOLIF, PERPETUAL SECRETARY OF THE FIRST CLASS OF THE ROYAL

INSTITUTE OF SCIENCES, OF LITERATURE AND OF FINE ARTS, AT AMSTERDAM.







        MONTICELLO, May 2, 1810.







        SIR,-Your letter of the 10th of May of the last



        year came but lately to my hands, I am duly sen-







 



382             Jefferson's Works







sible of the honor done me by the first class of the Royal Institute of

sciences, of literature, and of fine arts, in associating me to their class,

and by the approbation which his Majesty the King of Holland has condescended

to give to their choice.  His patronage of institutions for extending among

mankind the boundaries of information, proves his just sense of the cares

devolved on him by his high station, and commands the approving voice of all

the sons of men.  If mine can be heard from this distance among them, it will

be through the benefit of the special communication which your position may

procure it, and which I am to request.  I pray you to present also my thanks to

the first class for this mark of their distinction, which I receive with due

sensibility and gratitude.  Sincerely a friend to science, and feeling the

fraternal relation it establishes among the whole family of its votaries,

wheresoever dispersed through nations friendly or hostile, I shall be happy at

all times in fulfilling any particular views which the society may extend to

this region of the globe, and in being made useful to them in any special

services they will be pleased to give me an opportunity of rendering.  To

yourself, Sir, I tender the assurances of my particular respect and high

consideration.







        Correspondence                      383







        TO HIS EXCELLENCY GOVERNOR W. C. C. CLAIBORNE.



                MONTICELLO, May 3, 1810.



        SIR,-Your favor of February 1st lately came to my hands.  It brings me

new proofs, in the resolutions it enclosed, of the indulgence with which the

Legislature of Orleans has been pleased to view my conduct in the, various

duties assigned to me by our common country.  The times in which we have lived

have called for all the services which any of its citizens could render, and if

mine have met approbation they are fully rewarded.



        The interposition noticed by the Legislature of Orleans was an act of

duty of the office I then occupied.  Charged with the care of the general

interest of the nation, and among these with the preservation of their lands

from intrusion, I exercised, on their behalf, a right given by nature to all

men, individual or associated, that of rescuing their own property wrongfully

taken.  In cases of forcible entry on individual possessions, special

provisions, both of the common and civil law, have restrained the right of

rescue by private force, and substituted the aid of







        the civil pow' er. But no 1 aw has restrained the right of the nation

itself from removing by its own arm,







        intruders on its possessions.  On I the contrary, a statute recently

passed, had required that such removals should be diligently made.  The Batture

of New Orleans, being a part of the bed contained between the two banks of the

river, a naked shoal







 



384             Jefferson's Works







indeed at low water, but covered through the whole season of its regular full

tides, and then forming the  around of the port and harbor for the upper

navigation, over which vessels ride of necessity when moored to the bank, I

deemed it public property, in which all had a common use.  The removal, too, of

the force which had possessed itself of it, was the more urgent from the

interruption it might give to the commerce, and other lawful uses, of the

inhabitants of the city and of the western waters generally.



If this aid from the public authority was particularly interesting to the

territory of Orleans, it certainly adds new satisfaction to my consciousness of

having done what was right.



I ask the favor of you to convey to the Legislature of Orleans, my gratitude

for the interest they are so kind as to express in my future happiness; and I

pray to the Governor of the Universe, that He may always have them and our

country in His holy keeping.







TO HIS EXCELLENCY GOVERNOR W. C. C. CLAIBORNE.







        MONTICELLO, May 3, 1810.







DEAR SIR,-Your letters of January 12th and February 1st, came to hand only a

fortnight ago.  The enclosed contains my answer to the latter, for

communication to the legislature.  So many false views on the subject of the

batture have been presented in and out of Congress, that duty to myself,



        Correspondence                     385







        as well as justice to the citizens of New Orleans and of the western

country generally, required that I should avail myself of the occasion these

resolutions presented, of stating, in the fewest words possible, the true

ground of my conduct, and, as I think, of the rights of the western country. 

But the occasion also restricted me to the limits of a short text only, every

word of which would be matter for copious commentary, in a dilated discussion

of the subject.  Has Moreau de l'Isle's opinion ever been printed?  I wish it

were possible to get a copy of it.  Perhaps I might be able to make good use of

it.



        Before the receipt of your letter of January 12th, I had heard of your

great loss, and been impressed with the depth of it.  Long tried in the same

school of affliction, no loss which can rend the human heart is unknown to

mine; and a like one particularly, at about the same period of life, had taught

me to @feel the sympathies of yours.  The same experience has proved that time,

silence and occupation are its only medicines.  Of occupation, you have enough

and of the highest order; that of continuing to make a worthy people happy by a

just and parental government, and of protecting them from the wolves prowling

around to devour them.  Your own example will be the best lesson for the son

which has been left to comfort you, to whose course in life I hope it will give

a shape which shall make him truly a comfort and support to your latter days,

protracted to your own wishes.















 



386                 Jefferson's Works







        I really wish effect to the hints in my letter to you for so laying off

the additions to the city of New Orleans, as to shield it from yellow fever. 

My confidence in the idea is founded in the acknowledged experience that we

have never seen the genuine yellow fever extend itself into the country, nor

even to the outskirts or open parts of a close-built city.  In the plan I

propose, every square would be surrounded, on every side, by open and pure air,

and would, in fact, be a separate town with fields or open suburbs around it.







        TO MESSRS.  HUGH L. WHITE, THOMAS M'CORRY, JAMES CAMPBELL, ROBERT

CRAIGHEAD, JOHN N. GAMBLE, TRUSTEES FOR THE LOTTERY OF EAST TENNESSEE COLLEGE.







        MONTICELLO, May 6, 1810.







        GENTLEMEN,-I received, some time ago, your letter of February 28th,

covering a printed scheme of a lottery for the benefit of the East Tennessee

College, and proposing to send tickets to me to be disposed of.  It would be,

impossible for them to come to a more inefficient hand.  I rarely go from home,

and consequently see but a few neighbors and friends, who occasionally call on

me.  And having myself made it a rule never to engage in a lottery or any other

adventure of mere chance, I can, with the less candor or effect, urge it on

others, however laudable or desirable its object may be.







        Correspondence                       387







        No one more sincerely wishes the spread of information among mankind

than I do, and none has greater confidence in its effect towards supporting

free and good government.  I am sincerely rejoiced, therefore, to find that so

excellent a fund has been provided for this noble purpose in Tennessee.  Fifty

thousand dollars placed in a safe bank, will give four thousand dollars a year,

and even without other aid, must soon accomplish buildings sufficient for the

object in its early stage.  I consider the common plan followed in this

country, but not in others, of making one large and expensive building, as

unfortunately erroneous.  It is infinitely better to erect a small and separate

lodge for each separate professorship, with only a hall below for his class,

and two chambers above for himself; joining these lodges by barracks for a

certain portion of the students, opening into a covered way to give a dry

communication between all the schools.  The whole of these arranged around an

open square of grass and trees, would make it, what it should be in fact, an

academical village, instead of a large and common den of noise, of filth and of

fetid air.  It would afford that quiet retirement so friendly to study, and

lessen the dangers of fire, infection and tumult.  Every professor would be the

police officer of the students adjacent to his own lodge, which should include

those of his own class of preference, and might be at the head of their table,

if, as I suppose, it can be reconciled with the necessary economy







 



388                Jefferson's Works







to dine them in smaller and separate parties, rather than in a large and common

mess.  These separate buildings, too, might be erected successively and

occasionally, as the number of professorships and students should be increased,

or the funds become competent.



I pray you to pardon me if I have stepped aside into the province of counsel;

but much observation and reflection on these institutions have long convinced

me that the large and crowded buildings in which youths are pent up, are

equally unfriendly to health, to study, to manners, morals and order; and,

believing the plan I suggest to be more promotive of these, and peculiarly

adapted to the slender beginnings and progressive growth of our institutions, I

hoped you would pardon the presumption, in consideration of the motive which

was suggested by the difficulty expressed in your letter, of procuring funds

for erecting the building.  But, on whatever plan you proceed, I wish it every

possible success, and to yourselves the reward of esteem, respect and gratitude

due to those who devote their time and efforts to render the youths of every

successive age fit governors for the next.  To these accept, in addition, the

assurances of mine.







        Correspondence                      389







        TO THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES (JAMES MADISON).







        MONTICELLO, May 13, 1810.







DEAR SIR,-I thank you for your promised attention to my portion of the Merinos,

and if there be any expenses of transportation, etc., and you will be so good

as to advance my portion of them with yours and notify the amount, it shall be

promptly remitted.  What shall we do with them?  I have been so disgusted with

the scandalous extortions lately practiced in the sale of these animals, and

with the description of patriotism and praise to the sellers, as if the

thousands of dollars apiece they have not been ashamed to receive were not

reward enough, that I am disposed to consider as right, whatever is the reverse

of what they have done.  Since fortune has put the occasion upon us, is it not

incumbent upon us so to dispense this benefit to the farmers of our country, as

to put to shame those who, forgetting their own wealth and the honest

simplicity of the farmers, have thought them fit objects of the shaving art,

and to excite, by a better example, the condemnation due to theirs?  No

sentiment is more acknowledged in the family of Agriculturists than that the

few who can afford it should incur the risk and expense of all new

improvements, and give the benefit freely to the many of more restricted

circumstances.  The question then recurs, What are we to do with them?  I shall

be willing to concur with



 



390                    Jefferson's Works







you in any plan you shall approve, and in order that we may have some

proposition to begin upon, I will throw out a first idea, to be modified or

postponed to whatever you shall think better.



Give all the full-blooded males we can raise to the different counties of our

State, one to each, as fast as we can. furnish them.  And as there must be some

rule of priority for the distribution, let us begin with our own counties which

are contiguous and nearly central to the State, and proceed, circle after

circle, till we have given a ram to every county.  This will take about seven

years, if we add to the full descendants those which will have passed to the

fourth generation from common ewes.  To make the benefit of a single male as

general as practicable to the county, we may ask some known character in each

county to have a small society formed which shall receive the animal and

prescribe rules for his care and government.  We should retain ourselves all

the full-blooded ewes, that they may enable us the sooner to furnish a male to

every county.  When all shall have been provided with rams, we may, in a year

or two more, be in a condition to give an ewe also to every county, if it be

thought necessary.  But I suppose it will not, as four generations from their

full-blooded ram will give them the pure race from common ewes.



In the meantime we shall not be without a profit indemnifying our trouble and

expense.  For if of our present stock of common ewes, we place with







        Correspondence                   391







the ram as many as he may be competent to, suppose fifty, we may sell the male

lambs of every year for such reasonable price as, in addition to the wool, will

pay for the maintenance of the flock.  The first year they will be half-bloods,

the second three-quarters, the third seven-eighths, and the fourth

full-blooded; if we take care in selling annually half the ewes also, to keep

those of highest blood, this will be a fund for kindnesses to our friends, as

well as for indemnification to ourselves; and our whole State may thus, from

this small stock, so dispersed, be filled in a very few years with this

valuable race, and more satisfaction result to ourselves than money ever

administered to the bosom of a shaver.  There will be danger that what is here

proposed, though but an act of ordinary duty, may be perverted into one of

ostentation, but malice will always find bad motives for good actions.  Shall

we therefore never do good?  It may also be used to commit us with those on

whose example it will truly be a reproof.  We may guard against this perhaps by

a proper reserve, developing our purpose only by its execution.







        Vive, vale, et siquid novisti rectius istis



        Candidus imperti sinon, his ulere mecum.







        TO GOVERNOR JOHN TYLER.



        MONTICELLO, May 26, 1810.



        DEAR SIR@YOUR friendly ; letter of the 12th has



        been duly received.  Although I have laid it down



 



392            Jefferson's Works







as a law to myself, never to embarrass the President with my solicitations, and

have not till now broken through it, yet I have made a part of your letter the

subject of one to him, and have done it with all my heart, and in the full

belief that I serve him and the public in urging that appointment.  We have

long enough suffered under the base prostitution of law to party passions in

one judge, and the imbecility of another.  In the hands of one the law is

nothing more than an ambiguous text, to be explained by his sophistry into any

meaning which may subserve his personal malice.  Nor can any milk-and-water

associate maintain his own dependence, and by a firm pursuance of what the law

really is, extend its protection to the citizens or the public.  I believe you

will do it, and where you cannot induce your colleague to do what is right, you

will be firm enough to hinder him from doing what is wrong, and by opposing

sense to sophistry, leave the juries free to follow their own judgment.







I have long lamented with you the depreciation of law science.  The opinion

seems to be that Blackstone is to us what the Alcoran is to the Mahometans,

that everything which is necessary is in him, and what is not in him is not

necessary.  I still lend my counsel and books to such young students as will

fix themselves in the neighborhood.  Coke's institutes and reports are their

first, and Blackstone their last book, after an intermediate course of two or

three years.  It is nothing more than an elegant digest







        Correspondence                     393







of what they will then have acquired from the real fountains of the law.  Now,

men are born scholars, lawyers, doctors; in our day, this was confined to

poets.  You wish to see me again in the legislature, but this is impossible; my

mind is now so dissolved in tranquillity, that it can never again encounter a

contentious assembly; the habits of thinking and speaking off-hand, after a

disuse of five and twenty years, have given place to the slower process of the

pen.  I have indeed two great measures at heart, without which no republic can

maintain itself in strength. 1. That of general education, to enable every ran

to judge for himself what will secure or endanger his freedom. 2. To divide

every county into hundreds, of such size that ail the children of each will be

within reach of a central school in it.  But this division looks to many other

fundamental provisions.  Every hundred, besides a school, should have a justice

of the peace, a constable and a captain of militia.  These officers, or some

others within the hundred, should be a corporation to manage all its concerns,

to take care of its roads, its poor, and its police by patrols, etc. (as the

selectmen of the eastern townships).  Every hundred should elect one or two

jurors to serve where requisite, and all other elections should be made in the

hundreds separately, and the votes of all the hundreds be brought together. 

Our present captaincies might be declared hundreds for the present, with a

power to the courts to alter them occasionally.  These little







 



394           Jefferson's Works







republics would be the main strength of the great one.  We owe to them the

vigor given to our revolution in its commencement in the Eastern States, and by

them the Eastern States were enabled to repeal the embargo in opposition to the

Middle, Southern and Western States, and their large and lubberly division into

counties which can never be assembled.  General orders are given out from a

centre to the foreman of every hundred, as to the sergeants of an army, and the

whole nation is thrown into energetic action, in the same direction in one

instant and as one man, and becomes absolutely irresistible.  Could I once see

this I should consider it as the dawn of the salvation of the republic, and say

with old Simeon, " nunc dimittis Domine.  But our children will be as wise as

we are, and will establish in the fullness of time those things not yet ripe

for establishment.  So be it, and to yourself health, happiness and long life.







TO        HIS EXCELLENCY, COUNT PAHLEN, ENVOY EXTRAORDINARY AND MINISTER

PLENIPOTENTIARY OF RUSSIA.







        MONTICELLO, July 13, 1810.







SIR,-I have been honored with your letter of the 25th ultimo, and have to

return you my thanks for those of Madame de Tessé and General La Fayette, and

for the print of Baron Humboldt, all of which are come safely to hand, and

present to me the proofs







        Correspondence                     395







and recollections of their much-valued friendships.  To these acknowledgments,

permit me to add my congratulations on your safe arrival in the United States,

after journeys and voyages which, from their length, cannot have been pleasant.

 If, after this, it shall be found that a change of twenty degrees of latitude

shall have no unfavorable influence on your health, it will furnish double

cause of felicitation.



        I am much flattered by the kind notice of the Emperor, which you have

been so obliging as to communicate to me.  The approbation of the good is

always consoling; but that of a sovereign whose station and endowments are so

pre-eminent, is received with the sensibility which the veneration for his

character inspires.  Among other motives of commiseration which the calamities

of Europe cannot fail to excite in every virtuous mind, the interruption which

these have given to the benevolent views of the Emperor is prominent.  The

accession of a sovereign, with the dispositions and qualifications to improve

the condition of a great nation, and to place its happiness on a permanent

basis, is a phenomenon so rare in the annals of mankind, that, when the

blessing occurs, it is lamentable that any portion of it should be usurped by

occurrences of the character of those we have seen.  If, separated from these

scenes by an ocean of a thousand leagues breadth, they have required all our

cares to keep aloof from their desolating effects, I







 



396             Jefferson's Works







can readily conceive how much more they must



occupy those to whose territories they are contiguous.



        That the Emperor may be able, whenever a pacification takes place, to

show himself the father and friend of the human race, to restore to nations the

moral laws which have governed their intercourse' and to prevent, forever, a

repetition of those ravages by sea and land, which will distinguish the present

as an age of Vandalism, I sincerely pray.



        I consider as a happy augury, the choice which the Emperor has made of

a person to reside near our government, so distinguished by his dispositions

and qualifications to cherish the friendship and the interests of both nations.

 With my best wishes that your residence among us may be rendered entirely

agreeable, and be accompanied with the blessing of health, accept the

assurances of my great respect and consideration.











        TO C. G. G. BOTTA.







        MONTICELLO, July 15, 1810.







        SIR,-T am honored with your letter of the 12th of January, and although

the work you therein mention is not yet come to hand, I avail myself of an

occasion, now rendered rare and precarious between our two countries, of

anticipating the obligation I shall owe for the pleasure I shall have in

perusing it, and of travelling over with you the important scenes, quorum pars

minima fui, scenes which have given







        Correspondence                     397







        an impulsion to the world, which, as to ourselves, has been a great

blessing, but whether to Europe or not, can only be estimated by Him who sees

the future as well as the present and past. -We are certainly indebted to those

who think our revolution worthy of their pen, and who will do justice to our

actions and motives; and to yourself I have no doubt we shall owe this

obligation, and I now make you my acknowledgments with confidence and pleasure.

 It will be a worthy preface to the history of this age of revolutions, to be

ended we know not when nor how.  I pray you to accept the assurances of my

great respect and consideration.











        TO WILLIAM LAMBERT.







        MONTICELLO, July 16, 1810.







        SIR,-An indispensable piece of business which has occupied me for a

month past, obliged me to suspend all correspondence during that time.  This

must apologize for my late acknowledgment of your favor of May 19th, and for

the tardy expression of my thanks for so much of the papers you enclosed as

respected myself.  The approbation of my political conduct by my republican

countrymen generally, is a pillow of sweet repose to me, undisturbed by the

noise of the enemies to our form of government.  The political sentiments

expressed by your society, are in the pure spirit of the principles of our

revolution; so long as these prevail, we are safe from







 



        398             Jefferson's Works







        everything which can assail us from without or within.







        Your several communications on the first meridian, have been regularly

handed to the Philosophical Society; not corresponding regularly with any of

the members, I have received no information respecting them.  I have formerly

observed to you that while I entertain no doubt of their accuracy, my own

familiarity with the subject had been too long suspended, to enable me to

render a critical opinion on them.  My occupations here are almost exclusively

given to my farm and affairs.  They furnish me exercise, health and amusement,

and with the recreations of family and neighborly society, fill up most of my

time, and give a tranquillity necessary to my time of life.  With my best

wishes for your prosperity, accept the assurances of my esteem and respect.











        TO GENERAL HENRY DEARBORN.







        MONTICELLO, July 16, 1810.







        DEAR GENERAL AND FRIEND,-Your favor of May the 31st was duly received,

and I join in congratulations with you on the resurrection of republican

principles in Massachusetts and New Hampshire, and the hope that the professors

of these principles will not again easily be driven off their ground.  The

federalists, during their short-lived ascendancy, have nevertheless, by forcing

us from the embargo,







        Correspondence                   399



        inflicted a wound on our interests which can never be cured, and on our

affections which will require time to cicatrize.  I ascribe all this to one

pseudo-republican, Story.  He came on (in place of Crowninshield, I believe)

and staid only a few days; long enough, however, to get complete hold of Bacon,

who, giving, in to his representations, became panic-struck, and communicated

his panic to his colleagues, and they to a majority of the sound members of

Congress.  They believed in the alternative of repeal or civil war, and

produced the fatal measure of repeal.  This is the immediate parent of all our

present evils, and, has reduced us to a low standing in the eyes of the world. 

I should think that even the federalists themselves must now be made, by their

feelings, sensible of their error.  The wealth which the embargo brought home

safely, has now been thrown back into the laps of our enemies, and our

navigation completely crushed, and by the unwise and unpatriotic conduct of

those engaged in it.  Should the orders prove genuine, which are said to have

been given against our fisheries, they too are gone; and if not true as yet,

they will be true on the first breeze of success which England shall feel, for

it has now been some years that I am perfectly satisfied her intentions have

been to claim the ocean as her conquest, and prohibit any vessel from

navigating it, but on such a tribute as may enable her to keep up such a

standing navy as will maintain her dominion over it.  She has hauled in, or let

herself







 



400                 Jefferson's Works







        out, been bold or hesitating, according to occurrences, but has in no

situation done anything which might amount to a relinquishment of her

intentions.  I have ever been anxious to avoid a war with England, unless

forced by a situation more losing than war itself.  But I did believe we could

coerce her to justice by peaceable means, and the embargo, evaded as it was,

proved it would have coerced her had it been honestly executed.  The proof she

exhibited on that occasion, that she can exercise such an influence in this

country as to control the will of its government and three-fourths of its

people, and oblige the three-fourths to submit to one-fourth, is to me the most

mortifying circumstance which has occurred since the establishment of our

government.  The only prospect I see of lessening that influence, is in her own

conduct, and not from anything in our power.  Radically hostile to our

navigation and commerce, and fearing its rivalry, she will completely crush it,

and force us to resort to agriculture, not aware that we shall resort to

manufactures also, and render her conquests over our navigation and commerce

useless, at least, if not injurious to herself in the end, and perhaps salutary

to us, as removing out of our way the chief causes and provocations to war.



        But these are views which concern the present and future generation,

among neither of which I count myself.  You may live to see the change in our

pursuits, and chiefly in those of your own







        Correspondence                     401







        State, which England will effect.  I am not certain that the change on

Massachusetts, by driving her to agriculture, manufactures and emigration, will

lessen her happiness.  But once more to be done with politics.  How does Mrs.

Dearborn do?  How do you both like your situation?  Do you amuse yourself with

a garden, a farm, or what?  That your pursuits, whatever they be, may make vou

both easy, healthy and happy, is the prayer of your sincere friend.







        TO JUDGE THOMAS COOPER.



        MONTICELLO, August 6, 1810.



        DEAR SIR,-The tardiness of acknowledging the receipt of your favor of

May 10th will I fear induce a presumption that I have been 'negligent of its

contents, but I assure you I lost not a moment in endeavoring to fulfil your

wishes in procuring a good geological correspondent in this State.  I could not

offer myself, because of all the branches of science it was the one I had the

least cultivated.  Our researches into the texture of our' globe co@d be but so

superficial, compared with its vast interior construction, that I saw no safety

of conclusion from the one, as to the other; and therefore have pointed my own

attentions to other objects in preference, as far as a heavy load of business

would permit me to attend to anything else.  Looking about,







        my countrymen for some one who therefore, among















 



402            Jefferson's Works







might answer your views, I fixed on Mr. Joseph C. Cabell, not long since

returned from France, where he had attended particularly to chemistry, and had

also attended Mr. Maclure in some of his geological expeditions, as best

qualified.  I wrote to him; unfortunately he was from home, and did not return

till the latter end of July.  I received his answer since our last post only. 

A diffidence in his qualifications to be useful to you, has induced him to

decline the undertaking, having, as he assures me, paid no particular attention

to that branch of science.  I have in vain looked over our State for some other

person who might contribute to your views.  As yet I can think of nobody; and

whatever may be the result of further inquiry, I have thought I ought not

longer to delay informing you of my unsuccessful efforts so far.  Should I be

able to find a subject worthy of your correspondence, I shall not fail to

engage him in it, and to give you notice.  I thank you for the case of Dempsy

v. the Insurers, which I have read with great pleasure, and entire conviction. 

Indeed it is high time to withdraw all respect from courts acting, under the

arbitrary orders of governments who avow a total disregard to those moral rules

which have hitherto been acknowledged by nations, and have served to regulate

and govern their intercourse.  I should respect just as much the rules of

conduct which governed Cartouche or Blackbeard, as those now acted on by France

or England.  If your argument is defective in anything, it is in having







        Correspondence                 403











paid to the antecedent decisions of the British courts of admiralty, the

respect of examining them on grounds of reason; and the not having rested the

decision at once on the profligacy of those tribunals, and openly declared

against permitting their sentences to be ever more quoted or listened to until

those nations return to the practice of justice, to an acknowledgment that

there is a moral law which ought to govern mankind, and by sufficient evidences

of contrition for their present flagitiousness, make it safe to receive them

again into the society of civilized nations.  I hope this will still be done on

a proper occasion.  Yet knowing that religion does not furnish grosser bigots

than law, I expect little from old judges.  Those now at the bar may be bold

enough to follow reason rather than precedent, and ma@ bring that principle on

the bench when promoted to it; but I fear this effort is not for my day.  It

has been said that when Harvey discovered the circulation of the blood, there

was not a physician of Europe of forty years of age, who ever assented to it. I

fear you will experience Harvey's fate.  But it will become law when the resent

judges are dead.  Wishing you health and happiness at all times, accept the

assurances of my constant and great esteem and respect.







 



        404        Jefferson's Works







        TO COLONEL WILLIAM DUANE.







        MONTICELLO, August 12, 1810.







        SIR,-Your letter of July 16th has been duly received, with the paper it

enclosed, for which accept my thanks, and especially for the kind sentiments

expressed towards myself.  These testimonies of approbation, and friendly

remembrance, are the highest gratifications I can receive from any, and

especially from those in whose principles and zeal for the public good I have

confidence.  Of that confidence in yourself the military appointment to which

you allude was sufficient proof, as it was made, not on the recommendations of

others, but on our own knowledge of your principles and qualifications.  While

I cherish with feeling the recollections of my friends, I banish from my mind

all political animosities which might disturb its tranquillity, or the

happiness I derive from my present pursuits.  I have thought it among the most

fortunate circumstances of my late administration that, during its eight years

continuance, it was conducted with a cordiality and harmony among all the

members, which never were ruffled on any, the greatest or smallest occasion.  I

left my brethren with sentiments 'of sincere affection and friendship, so

rooted in the uniform tenor of a long and intimate intercourse, that the

evidence of my own senses alone ought to be permitted to shake them.  Anxious,

in my retirement, to. enjoy undisturbed repose, my







Correspondence                     405







        knowledge of my successor and late coadjutors, and my entire confidence

in their wisdom and integrity, were assurances to me that I might sleep in

security with such watchmen at the helm, and that whatever difficulties and

dangers should assail our course, they would do what could be done to avoid or

surmount them.  In this confidence I envelope myself, and hope to slumber on to

my last sleep.  And should difficulties occur which they cannot avert, if we

follow them in phalanx, we shall surmount them without danger.



        I have been long intending to write to you as one of the associated

company for printing useful works.



        Our laws, language, religion, politics and manners are so deeply laid

in English foundations, that we shall never cease to consider their history as

a part of ours, and to study ours in that as its origin.  Every one knows that

judicious matter and charms of style have rendered Hume's history the manual of

every student.  I remember well the enthusiasm with which I devoured it when

young, and the length of time, the research and reflection which were necessary

to eradicate the poison it had instilled into my mind.  It was unfortunate that

he first took up the history of the Stuarts, became their apologist, and

advocated all their enormities.  To support his work, when done, he went back

to the Tudors, and so selected and arranged the materials of their history as

to present their arbitrary acts only, as the genuine samples of the

constitutional power of the







 



406              Jefferson's Works







crown, and, still writing backwards, he then reverted to the early history, and

wrote the Saxon and Norman periods with the same perverted view.  Although all

this is known, he still continues to be put into the hands of all our young

people, and to infect them with the poison of his own principles of government.

 It is this book which has undermined the free principles of the English

government, has persuaded readers of all classes that these were usurpations on

the legitimate and salutary rights of the crown, and has spread universal

toryism over the land.  And the book will still continue to be read here as

well as there.  Baxter, one of Horne Tooke's associates in persecution, has hit

on the only remedy the evil admits.  He has taken Hume's work, corrected in the

text his misrepresentations, supplied the truths which he suppressed, and yet

has given the mass of the work in Hume's own words.  And it is wonderful how

little interpolation has been necessary to make it a sound history, and to

justify what should have been its title, to wit, " Hume's history of England

abridged and rendered faithful to fact and principle." I cannot say that his

amendments are either in matter or manner in the fine style of Hume.  Yet they

are often unperceived, and occupy so little of the whole work as not to

depreciate it.  Unfortunately he has abridged Hume, by leaving out all the less

important details.  It is thus reduced to about one-half its original size.  He

has also continued the history, but very summarily, to 1801.  The whole







        Correspondence                     407







work is of 834 quarto pages, printed close, of which the continuation occupies

283.  I have read but little of this part.  As far as I can judge from that

little, it is a mere chronicle, offering nothing profound.  This work is so

unpopular, so distasteful to the present Tory palates and principles of

England, that I believe it has never reached a second edition.  I have often

inquired for it in our book shops, but never could find a copy in them, and I

think it possible the one I imported may be the only one in America.  Can we

not have it re-printed here?  It would be about four volumes 8vo.



I have another enterprise to propose for some good printer.  I have in my

possession a MS. work in French, confided to me by a friend, whose name alone

would give it celebrity were it permitted to be mentioned.  But considerations

insuperable forbid that.  It is a Commentary and Review of Montesquieu's Spirit

of Laws.  The history of that work is well known.  He had been a great reader,

and had commonplaced everything he read.  At length he wished to undertake some

work into which he could bring his whole commonplace book in a digested form. 

He fixed on the subject of his Spirit of Laws, and wrote the book.  He

consulted his friend Helvetius about publishing it, who strongly dissuaded it. 

He published it, however, and the world did not confirm Helvetius' opinion. 

Still, every man who reflects as he reads, has considered it as a book of

paradoxes; having, indeed, much of truth







 



        408              Jefferson's Works







and sound principle, but abounding also with inconsistencies, apocryphal facts

and false inferences.  It is a correction of these which has been executed in

the work I mention, by way of commentary and review; not by criticising words

or sentences, but by taking a book at a time, considering its general scope and

proceeding to confirm or confute it.  And much of confutation there is, and of

substitution of true for false principle, and the true principle is ever that

of republicanism.  I will not venture to say that every sentiment in the book

will be approved, because, being in ' manuscript, and the French characters, I

have not read the whole, but so much only as might enable me to estimate the

soundness of the author's way of viewing his subject; and, judging from that

which I have read, I infer with confidence that we shall find the work

generally worthy of our high approbation, and that it everywhere maintains the

preeminence of representative government, by showing that its foundations are

laid in reason, in right, and in general good.  I had expected this from my

knowledge of the other writings of the author, which have always a precision

rarely to be







        7'



met with.  But to give N ou an idea of the manner of its execution, I translate

and enclose his commentary on Montesquieu's eleventh book, which contains the

division of the work.  I wish I could have added his review at the close of the

twelve first books, as this would give a more complete idea of the

extraordinary merit of the work.  But it is too long to







        Correspondence                     409







be copied.  I add from it, however, a few extracts of his reviews of some of

the books, as specimens of his plan and principles.  If printed in French, it

would be of about 180 pages 8vo, or 23 sheets.  If any one will undertake to

have it translated and printed on their own account, I will send on the MS. by

post, and they can take the copyright as of an original work, which it ought to

be understood to be.  I am anxious it should be ably translated by some one who

possesses style as well as capacity to do justice to abstruse conceptions.  I

would even undertake to revise the translation if required.  The original

sheets must be returned to me, and I should wish the work to be executed with

as little delay as possible.



I close this long letter with assurances of my great esteem and respect.











        ALBERT, GALLATIN.







        MONTICELLO, August 16, 1810.



DEAR SIR,-Yours of July 14th, with the welcome paper it covered, has been most

thankfully received.  I had before received from your office and that of State,

all the printed publications on the subject of the batture, that is to say, the

opinion of the Philadelphia lawyers and of G. Livingston himself, the

publications of Derbigny, Thierry, Poydras, and the pieces probantes.  I had

been very anxious to get Moreau's Memoire, which is only in manuscript,







 



410             Jefferson's Works







having heard it was the best of all.  After waiting long and in vain for it, I

was informed by my counsel that they were ruled to plead, and must be furnished

with the grounds of defence.  I was obliged, therefore, to take up the

subject-had got through it and put it into the hands of Mr. Hay, when the

observations you were so kind as to furnish, came to hand.  Although it was too

late to give to everything its shape which these, at an earlier stage, might

have suggested, I was still enabled to avail myself of them usefully.  The

question of the chancery jurisdiction of the Orleans judges had particularly

escaped me, and entirely.  When Mr. Hay returned the paper therefore, I was

enabled, by re-copying a sheet or two at the close, to introduce this question

in its proper place.  I had also, till then, been uninformed of the

circumstances under which Bertrand Gravier left France, and therefore had not

been aware of the reasons for which John Gravier had chosen to come in by

purchase.  This information enabled me to extend and strengthen much of what I

had before said on that subject; and by interleaving and re-copying a part, to

get that also into its proper place.  On the whole, you will see, with the

benefit of these amendments, what I bad conceived to be a true statement of the

fact and law of the case.  But the paper is very voluminous, and I could not

shorten it. It is now in the hands of the President, who will enclose it to you

by the same post which carries this; when you shall have perused it, be so good

as







        Correspondence                     411







        to re-enclose it to me,  as I wish to submit it to our







        other fellow laborers, after such amendments as Mr. Madison and

yourself will be so good as to suggest.  I wish the ground I take to meet all

your approbations.  The uninformed state in which the debates of the last

session proved Congress to be, as to this case, makes me fear they may, at the

next, under the intrigues and urgency of Livingston, be induced to take some

step which might have an injurious effect on the opinion of a jury.  I think,

therefore, to ask a member or two of each house to read this statement, merely

to make themselves masters of the subject, and be enabled to prevent any

unfavorable interference of Congress.  Perhaps, if they see the case in the

light I do, they may think of doing more-of having the Attorney General desired

to attend to the case as of public concern: for really it is so.  I have no

concern at all in maintaining the title to the batture.  It would be totally

unnecessary for me to employ counsel to go into the question at all for my own

defence.  That is solidly built on the simple fact, that if I were in error, it

was honest, and not imputable to that gross and palpable corruption or

injustice which makes a public magistrate responsible to a private party.  I

know that even a federal jury could not find a verdict against me on this head.

 But I go fully into the question of title, because our characters are

concerned in it, and because it involves a most important right of the

citizens, and one which, if decided against them,







 



412            Jefferson's Works







would be a precedent of incalculable evil.  The detention, too, has been so

long the act of Congress itself that for this -reason I have supposed they

might think it entitled to their attention, and direct the Attorney General to

take care of the public interest in it, as has lately been done by the House of

Commons, in the action of Sir Francis Burdett against their Speaker.  But on

this subject I wish to be advised by yourself and my other friends, rather than

trust to my own judgment, too likely to be under bias.  If I send the case to

be perused by two or three members, it will be under a strong injunction not to

let its contents get into other hands, my counsel having strongly advised

against apprising them of the topics of defence, as well from apprehensions of

subornation of witnesses as to material facts, as from other considerations. 

Pray advise me on this head.  My counsel are Hay, Wirt and Tazewell.



I have seen with infinite grief the set which is made at you in the public

papers, and with the more as my name has been so much used in it.  I hope we

both know one another too well to receive impression from circumstances of this

kind.  A twelve years' intimate and friendly intercourse must be better

evidence to each of the dispositions of the other than the letters of foreign

ministers to their courts, or tortured influences from facts true or false.  I

have too thorough a conviction of your cordial good will towards me, and too

strong a sense of the faithful







        Correspondence                     413







and able assistance I received from you, to relinquish them on any evidence but

of my own senses.  With entire faith in your assurance of these truths, I shall

add those only of my constant affection and high respect.











        TO COLONEL WILLIAM DUANE.







        MONTICELLO, September 16, 1810.



DEAR SIR,-Your favor of August '7th arrived the day after I had left this place

on a visit to one I have near Lynchburg, from whence I am but lately returned. 

The history of England you describe is precisely Baxter's, of which I wrote

you; and if you compare him with Hume, you will find the text preserved

verbatim, with particular exceptions only.  The French work will accompany this

letter.  Since writing to you I have gone over the whole, and can assure you it

is the most valuable political work of the present age.  In some details we all

may differ from him or from one another, but the great mass of the work is

highly sound.  Its title would be "A Commentary on Montesquieu's Spirit of

Laws;" perhaps the words " and Review" might be inserted at







the Helvetius' letter on the same work should be annexed, if it can possibly be

procured.







It was contained in a late edition of the works of Helvetius published by the

Abbé de la Roche.  Probably that edition might be found.  I never before heard

of Williams' lectures on Montesquieu







 



414        Jefferson's Works







but I am glad to hear of everything which reduces that author to his just

level, as his predilection for monarchy, and the English monarchy in

particular, has done mischief everywhere, and here also, to a certain degree. 

With respect to the Notes on Virginia, I do contemplate some day the making

additions and corrections to them; but I am inclined to take the benefit of my

whole life to make collections and observations, and let the editing them be

posthumous.  The anecdote respecting the paper put into my hands by Dr.

Franklin has not been handed to you with entire correctness.  I returned from

France in December, 1789, and in March following I went on to New York to take

the post assigned me in the new government.  On my way through Philadelphia I

called on Dr. Franklin, who was then confined to his bed.  As the revolution

had then begun, indeed was supposed to be closed by the completion of a

constitution, and he was anxious to know the part all his acquaintances had

taken, he plied me with questions for an hour or two with a vivacity and

earnestness which astonished me.  When I had satisfied his inquiries, I

observed to him that I had heard, and with great pleasure, that he had begun

the history of his own life, and had brought it down to the revolution (for so

I had heard while in Europe).  "Not exactly so," said he, "but I will let you

see the manner in which I do these things." He then desired one of his small

grandchildren who happened to be in the room, to bring him such a







        Correspondence                     415







paper from the table.  It was brought, and he put it into my hands and said, "

There, put that into your pocket and you will see the manner of my writing." I

thanked him and said " I should read it with great pleasure, and return it to

him safely.  " " No, " said he, "keep it." I took it with me to New York.  It

was, as well as I recollect, about a quire of paper, in which he had I given,

with great minuteness, all the details of his negotiations (informal) in

England, to prevent their pushing us to extremities.  These were chiefly

through Lord Howe and a lady, I think the sister of Lord Howe, but of this I am

not certain; but I remember noting the particulars of her conversation as

marking her as a woman of very superior understanding.  He gave all the

conversations with her and Lord Howe, and all the propositions he passed

through them to their minister, the answers and conversations with the minister

reported through them, his endeavors used with other characters, whether with

the ministers directly I do not recollect; but I remember well that it appeared

distinctly from what was brought to him from the ministers, that the real

obstacle to their meeting the various overtures he made was the prospect of

great confiscations to provide for their friends, and that this was the real

cause of the various shiftings and shufflings they used to evade his

propositions.  Learning, on his death, which happened soon after, that he had

bequeathed all his unpublished writings to his grandson, W. T. Franklin, with a

view to the emolument







 



416             Jefferson's Works







he might derive from their publication, I thought this writing was fairly his

property, and notified to him my possession of it, and that I would deliver it

to his order.  He soon afterwards called on me at New York, and I delivered it

to him.  He accepted it, and, while putting it into his pocket, observed that

his grandfather had retained another copy which he had found among his papers. 

I did not reflect on this till suspicions were circulated that W. T. F. had

sold these writings to the British Minister.  I then formed the belief that Dr.

Franklin had meant to deposit this spare copy with me in confidence that it

would be properly taken care of, and sincerely repented the having given it up;

and I have little doubt that this identical paper was the principal object of

the purchase by the British government, and the unfortunate cause of the

suppression of all the rest.  I do not think I have any interesting papers or

facts from Dr. Franklin.  Should any occur at any time, I will communicate them

freely, nobody wishing more ardently that the public could be possessed of

everything that was his or respected him, believing that a greater or better

character has rarely existed.  I am happy to learn that his blood shows itself

in. the veins of the two of his great-grandchildren whom you mention.  But I

should think medicine the best profession for a genius resembling his, as that

of the elder is supposed to do.  I have received information of Pestalozzi's

mode of education from some European publica-







        Correspondence                      417







tions, and from Mr. Keefe's book which shows that the latter possesses both the

talents and the zeal for carrying it into effect.  I sincerely wish it success,

convinced that the information of the people at large can alone make them the

safe, as they are the sole depository of our political and religious freedom. 

The idea of antimony in this neighborhood is, I believe, without foundation. 

Some twenty or thirty years ago a mineral was found about ten miles from this

place, which one of those idle impostors, who cal themselves mine-hunters,

persuaded the proprietor was gold ore.  The poor man lost a crop in digging

after it.  After fruitless assays of the mineral, some other person, knowing as

little of the matter, fancied it must be antimony.  A third idea was. that it

was black lead.  It was abandoned, and the mine hole filled up, nor can we at

this day hear of any piece of the mineral in possession of any one.



You say in your letter that you will send me the proofs of the commentary on

Montesquieu for revisal.  It is only the translation I should wish to revise. 

I feel myself answerable to the author for a correct publication of his ideas. 

The translated sheets may come by post as they are finished off ; they shall be

promptly returned, the originals coming with them.  Accept the assurances of my

esteem and respect.







 



        418        Jefferson's Works







                TO J. B. COLVIN.







                MONTICELLO, September 20, 1810.



        SIR,-Your 'favor of the 14th has been duly received, and I have to

thank you for the many obliging things respecting myself which are said in it.

If I have left in the breasts of my fellow citizens a sentiment of satisfaction

with my conduct in the transaction of their business, it will soften the pillow

of my repose through the residue of life.



        The question you propose, whether circumstances do not sometimes occur,

which make it a duty in officers of high trust, to assume authorities beyond

the law, is easy of solution in principle, but sometimes embarrassing in

practice.  A strict observance of the written laws is doubtless one of the high

duties of a good citizen, but it is not the highest.  The laws of necessity, of

self-preservation, of saving our country when in danger, are of higher

obligation.  To lose our country by a scrupulous adherence to written law,

would be to lose the law itself, with life, liberty, property and all those who

are enjoying them with us; thus absurdly sacrificing the end to the means. 

When, in the battle of Germantown, General Washington's army was annoyed from

Chew's house, he did not hesitate to plant his cannon against it, although the

property of a citizen.  When he besieged Yorktown, he leveled the suburbs,

feeling that the laws of property must be postponed to the safety of the

nation.  While the army was







        Correspondence                     419







        before York, the Governor of Virginia took horses, carriages,

provisions and even men by force, to enable that army to stay together till it

could master the public enemy; and he was justified.  A ship at sea in distress

for provisions, meets another having abundance, yet refusing a supply; the law

of self-preservation authorizes the distressed to take a supply by force.  In

all these cases, the unwritten laws of necessity, of self-preservation, and of

the public safety, control the written laws of meum and tuum.  Further to

exemplify the principle, I will state an hypothetical case Suppose it had been

made known to the Executive of the Union in the autumn of 1805, that we might

have the Floridas for a reasonable sum, that that sum had not indeed been so

appropriated by law, but that Congress were to meet within three weeks, and

might appropriate it on the first or second day of their session.  Ought he-,

for so great an advantage to his country, to have risked himself by

transcending the law and making the purchase?  The public advantage offered, in

this supposed case, was indeed immense; but a reverence for law, and the

probability that the advantage might still be legally accomplished by a delay

of only three weeks, were powerful reasons against hazarding the act.  But

suppose it foreseen that a John Randolph would find means to protract the

proceeding on it by Congress, until the ensuing spring, by which time new

circumstances would change the mind of the other party.  Ought the







 



420             Jefferson's Works







Executive, in that case, and with that foreknowledge, to have secured the good

to his country, and to have trusted to their justice for the transgression of

the law?  I think he ought, and that the act would have been approved.  After

the affair of the Chesapeake, we thought war a very possible result.  Our

magazines were illy provided with some necessary articles, nor had any

appropriations been made for their purchase.  We ventured, however, to provide

them, and to place our country in safety; and stating the case to Congress,

they sanctioned the act.



To proceed to the conspiracy of Burr, and particularly to General Wilkinson's

situation in New Orleans.  In judging this case, we are bound to consider the

state of the information, correct and incorrect, which he then possessed.  He

expected Burr and his band from above, a British fleet from below, and he knew

there was a formidable conspiracy within the city.  Under these Circumstances,

was he justifiable, 1st, in seizing notorious conspirators?  On this there can

be but two opinions: one, of the guilty and their accomplices; the other, that

of all honest men. 2d.  In sending them to the seat of government, when the

written law gave them a right to trial in the territory?  The danger of their

rescue, of their continuing their machinations, the tardiness and weakness of

the law, apathy of the judges, active patronage of the whole tribe of lawyers,

unknown disposition of the juries, an hourly expectation of the enemy,

salvation of the city, and







        Correspondence                   421







of the Union itself, which would have been convulsed to its centre, had that

conspiracy succeeded; all these constituted a law of necessity and

self-preservation, and rendered the salus populi supreme over the written law. 

The officer who is called to act on this superior ground, does indeed risk

himself on the justice of the controlling powers of the Constitution, and his

station makes it his duty to incur that risk.  But those controlling powers,

and his fellow citizens generally, are bound to judge according to the

circumstances under which he acted.  They are not to transfer the information

of this place or moment to the time and place of his action; but to put

themselves into his situation.  We knew here that there never was danger of a

British fleet from below, and that Burr's band was crushed before it reached

the Mississippi.  But General Wilkinson's information was very different, and

he could act on no other.



        From these examples and principles you may see what I think on the

question proposed.  They do not go to the case of persons charged with petty

duties, where consequences are trifling, and time allowed for a legal course,

nor to authorize them to take such cases out of the written law.  In these, the

example of overleaping the law is of greater evil than a strict adherence to

its imperfect ' provisions.  It is incumbent on those only who accept of great

charges, to risk themselves on great occasions, when the safety of the nation,

or some of its very high interests







 



        422        Jefferson's Works







        are at stake.         An officer is bound to obey orders;



        yet he would        be a bad one who should do it in



cases for which they were not intended, and which involved the most important

consequences.  The line of discrimination between cases may be difficult; but

the good officer is bound to draw it at his own peril, and throw himself on the

justice of his country and the rectitude of his motives.



I have indulged freer views on this question, on your assurances that they are

for your own eye only, and that they will not get into the hands of

newswriters.  I met their scurrilities without concern, while in pursuit of the

great interests with which I was charged.  But in my present retirement, no

duty forbids my wish for quiet.



        Accept the assurances of my esteem and respect.











        TO THE SECRETARY OF STATE







        (ROBERT SMITH).







        MONTICELLO, September 22, 1810.







DEAR SIR,-L have wanted I 'the occasion of the present enclosure to perform the

duty of my thanks for the kind communication of papers from your office in the

question between Livingston and myself.  These have mainly enabled me to give a

correct statement of facts.  I deferred proceeding to a particular

consideration of the case in hopes of the aid of Moreau's Memoire, which I have

understood to be the ablest which has been written.  But I was



        Correspondence                     423







at length forced to proceed without it, my counsel informing me they were ruled

to plead, and must therefore know the grounds of defence.  You will see what I

have made of it by the enclosed, which I forward in the hope you will consider

and correct it. I have done this the rather because I presume all my fellow

laborers feel an interest in what all approved, and because I think I should

urge Will you then do



























nothing which they disapprove.



me the favor to put on paper such corrections as you would. advise, and forward

them to me, handing on the enclosed paper at the same time to Mr. Rodney?  I

wrote him by this post that he may expect it from you, and I ask the same favor

of correction from him, and above all to delay as little as possible, because

time presses to give to this paper its ultimate form.  My counsel press me

earnestly not to let the topics of defence get out, so as to be known to the

adversary.  Although I know Congress will be strongly urged, yet I hope they

will take no measure which may impress a jury unfavorably, by inferences not

intended.  And were the case to be thought to belong to the public, still I

believe it better they should let. it come on, on the footing of a private

action.  I pray you to be assured of my constant affection and respect.







September 26th.  Sent a P. S. verbatim, the same as that to Mr. Rodney.







 



424              Jefferson's Works







        TO THE ATTORNEY GENERAL OF THE UNITED STATES (CÆSAR A. RODNEY).



        MONTICELLO, September 25, 1810.







DEAR SIR,-I have to thank you for your kind letter of June 8th, and the

suggestions it furnished on the question whether Livingston could maintain an

action in Richmond for a trespass committed in Orleans.  This being a question

of common law, I leave it to my counsel so much more recent than I am in that

branch of law.  I have undertaken to furnish them with the grounds of my

defence under the lex loci.  I wished for the aid of Moreau's Memoire because

it is understood to be the ablest of any.  However, my counsel being ruled to

plead, and pressing me for the grounds of defence, I proceeded to consider the

case, meaning at first only an outline, but I got insensibly into the full

discussion, which became very voluminous, and the more so as it was necessary

not only to enter all the authorities at large in the text, because few possess

them, but also translations of them, because all do not understand all the

languages in which they are.  Believing my late associates in the executive

would feel an interest in the justification of a conduct in which all

concurred, and also in the issue of it, I have thought it a duty to consult

them as to the grounds to be taken, and to take none against their advice.  My

statement has therefore been submitted to the President, Mr. Smith and Mr.

Gallatin, and







        Correspondence                       425







will be forwarded to you by Mr. Smith as soon as he shall have read it.  I have

to request your consideration and corrections of it, and that you will be so

good as to furnish them on a separate paper.  I am obliged also to ask an

immediate attention to them, because time presses to give to this paper its

ultimate shape, to plead, and collect the evidence.  Its early return to me

therefore is urging.  I do not know whether my counsel (Hay, Wirt and Tazewell)

have pleaded to the jurisdiction.



The death of Cushing, is opportune, as it gives an opening for at length

getting a republican majority on the supreme bench.  Ten years has the

anti-civism of that body been bidding defiance to the spirit of the whole

nation, after they had manifested their will by reforming every other branch of

the government.  I trust the occasion will not be lost; Bidwell's disgrace

withdraws the ablest man of the section in which Cushing's successor must be

named. The pure integrity, unimpeachable conduct, talents and republican

firmness of Lincoln, leave him now, I think, without a rival.  He is thought

not an able common lawyer.  But there is not and never was an able one in the

New England States.  Their system is sui generis, in which the common law is

little attended to.  Lincoln is one of the ablest in their system, and it is

among them he is to execute the great portion of his duties.  Nothing is more

material than to complete the reformation of the government by this

appointment, which may truly be said







 



        426              Jefferson's Works







        to be putting the keystone into the arch.  In my statement of the law

of Livingston's case, I do not pretend to consider every argument as perfectly

sound.  I have, as is usual, availed myself of some' views, which may have a

weight with others which they have not with me.  I have no right to assume

infallibility, and I present them, therefore, ut valeant ubi possint.  Accept

the assurances of my constant and affectionate esteem.







        P.        S. September 26.  In my letter of yesterday, I have omitted

to observe, with respect to the arrangement of materials in the paper it speaks

of, that it is not such as counsel would employ in pleading a cause.  It was

determined by other considerations.  I thought it very possible the case might

be dismissed out of court by a plea to the jurisdiction.  I determined, on this

event, to lay it before the public, either directly or through Congress. 

Respect for my associates, for myself, for our nation, would not permit me to

come forward, as a criminal under ,accusation, to plead and argue a cause. 

This was not my situation.  This would naturally be by way of narrative or

statement of the facts in their order of time, establishing these facts as they

occur, and bringing forward the law arising on them, and pointing to the

Executive the course he,, was to pursue.  I supposed it more dignified to

present it as a history and explanation of what had taken place.  It does not,

indeed, in that form, display the subject in one







        Correspondence                       427







great whole, but it brings forward successively a number of questions, solving

themselves as they arise, and leaving . no one unexamined.  And the mind, after

travelling over the whole case, and finding as it goes along that all has been

considered and all is right, rests in that state of satisfaction which it is

our object to produce.  In truth, I have never known a case which presented so

many distinct questions, having no dependence on one another, nor belonging

even to the same branches of jurisprudence.











        TO ALBERT GALLATIN.







        MONTICELLO, September 27, 1810.



        DEAR SIR, ours of the 10th came safely to hand, and laid me under new

obligations for the valuable observations it contained.  The error of twelve

feet instead of seven, for the rise of the batture, really sautoit aux yeux,

and how I could have committed it at first, or passed it over afterwards

without discovery, and having copied Pelletier's plan myself, is unaccountable.

 I have adopted also most of your other corrections.  ' You observe that the

arguments proving the batture public, yet prove it of such a character that it

could not be within the scope of the law of March 4th, against squatters.  I

should so adjudge myself; yet I observe many opinions otherwise, and in defence

against a spadassin, it is lawful to use all weapons, Besides, I have no

pretensions







 



428            Jefferson's Works







to be exclusively the judge of what arguments are sound and what not.  I give

them, therefore, that they may weigh with those who think they have weight and

have a right to decide for themselves.  That act of Congress, moreover, was

evidently respected, -particularly in the order under which the removal was

made.



With respect to the arrangement of materials in my statement, I know it is not

such as counsel would employ in pleading such a cause; it is not







such as I would have made myself in that character; it was determined by other

considerations.







thought it possible the case might be dismissed out of court by a plea to the

jurisdiction.  I determined, on this event, to lay it before the public, either

directly or through Congress.  Respect for my associates, for myself, for our

nation, would not permit me to come forward, as a criminal under accusation, to

plead and argue a cause.  This was not my situation.  I had only to state to my

constituents a common transaction.  This would naturally be by way of narrative

or statement of the facts, in their order of time, establishing these facts as

they occur, and bringing forward the law arising on them and pointing to the

Executive the course he was to pursue.  I suppose it more self-respectful to

present it as a history and explanation of what had taken place.  It does not,

indeed, in that form, display the subject in one great whole, but it brings

forward successively a number of questions, solving







        Correspondence                    429







themselves as they arise, and leaving no one unexamined.  And the mind, after

travelling over the whole case, and finding as it goes along that all has been

considered, and all is right, rests in that state of satisfaction which it is

our object to produce.  In truth, I have never known a case which presented so

many distinct questions, having no dependence on one another, nor belonging

even to the same branches of Jurisprudence.  After all, I offer this as

explanation, not justification, of the order adopted.







At length, then, we have a chance of getting a republican majority in the

supreme judiciary.  For ten years has that branch braved the spirit and will of

the nation, after the nation had manifested its will by a complete reform in

every branch depending on them.  The event is a fortunate one, and so timed as

to be a God-send to me.  I am sure its importance to the nation will be felt,

and the occasion employed to complete the great operation they have so long

been executing, by the appointment of a decided republican, with nothing

equivocal about him.  But who will it be?  The misfortune of Bidwell removes an

able man from the competition.  Can any other bring equal qualifications to

those of Lincoln?  I know he was not deemed a profound common lawyer; but was

there ever a profound common lawyer known in any of the Eastern States.  There

never was, nor never can be one from those States, The basis of their law is

neither common







 



430             Jefferson's Works







nor civil; it is an original, if any compound can so be called.  Its foundation

seems to have been laid in the spirit and principles of Jewish law,

incorporated with some words and phrases of common law, and an abundance of

notions of their own.  This makes an amalgam sui generis, and it is well known

that a man, first and thoroughly initiated into the principles of one system of

law, can never become pure and sound in any other.  Lord Mansfield was a

splendid proof of this.  Therefore, I say, there never was nor can be, a

profound common lawyer from those States, Sullivan had the reputation of

preeminence there as a common lawyer.  But we have his history of land titles,

which gives us his measure.  Mr. Lincoln is, I believe, considered as learned

in their laws as any one they have.  Federalists say that Parsons is better. 

But the criticalness of the present nomination puts him out of the question. 

As the great mass of the functions of the new judge are to be performed in his

own district, Lincoln will be most unexceptionable and acceptable there; and on

the supreme bench equal to any one who can be brought from thence; add to this

his integrity, political firmness and unimpeachable character, and I believe no

one can be found to whom there will not be more serious objections.-



You seem to think it would be best to ascertain the probable result before

making a proposition to Congress to defend Livingston's suit.  On mature

consideration I think it better that no such propo-







        Correspondence                   431







sition should be made.  The debates there would fix the case as a party one,

and we are the minority in the judiciary department, and especially in the

federal branch of it here.  Till Congress can be thoroughly put in possession

of all the points in the case, it is best they should let it lie.  Livingston,

by removing it into the judiciary, has fairly relinquished all claims on their

interference.  I am confident that Congress will act soundly, whenever we can

give them a knowledge of the whole case.  But I tire you with this business,

and end therefore with repeating assurances of my constant attachment and

respect.







        TO CAPTAIN ISAAC HILLARD.



        MONTICELLO, October 9, 1810.



SIR,-I duly received your letter of September 10th, and return you thanks for

that and the pamphlet you were so kind as to enclose me.  The health you enjoy

at so good an old age, and the strength of mind evidenced in your pamphlet, are

subjects of congratulation to yourself and of thankfulness to Him who gives

them.  I am sorry that a professor of religion should have given occasion for

such a censure.  It proves he has much to conquer in his own uncharitableness,

and that it is not from him his flock are to learn not to bear false witness

against their neighbor.  But as to so much of his pulpit philippic as concerns

myself I freely







 



432               Jefferson's Works







forgive him; for I feel no falsehood and fear no truth.  That you may long

continue to enjoy health, happiness and a sound mind, is my sincere prayer.











        TO COLONEL WILLIAM DUANE.







        MONTICELLO, November 13, 1810.







DEAR SIR,-Your third packet is received before the second had been returned. 

It is now enclosed, and the other shall go by the next post.  I find, as

before, nothing to correct but those errors of the copyist which you would have

corrected yourself before committed to the press.  If it were practicable to

send me the original sheets with the translated, perhaps my equal familiarity

with both languages might enable me sometimes to be of some advantage; but I

presume that might be- difficult, and of little use, scarcely perhaps of any. 

I thank you for the copy of Williams.  I have barely dipped into it a little. 

Enough, however, to see he is far short of the luminous work you are printing. 

Indeed I think that the most valuable work of the present age.  I received from

Williams, some years ago, his book on the claims of authors.  I found him to be

a man of sound and true principles, but not knowing how to go at them, and not

able to trace or develop them for others.  I believe with you that the crisis

of England is come.  What will be its issue it is vain to prophesy; so many

thousand contingencies may turn up to affect its direction.







        Correspondence                     433







Were I to hazard a guess, it would be that I they will I







become a military despotism.  Their recollections of the portion of liberty

they have enjoyed will render force necessary to retain them under pure

monarchy.  Their pressure upon us has been so severe and so unprincipled, that

we cannot deprecate their fate, though we might wish to see their naval power

kept up to the level of that of the other principal powers separately taken. 

But may it not take a very different turn?  Her paper credit annihilated, the

precious metals must become her circulating medium.  The taxes which can be

levied on her people in these will be trifling in comparison with what they

could pay in paper money; her navy then will- be unpaid, unclothed, unfed. 

Will such a body of men suffer themselves to be dismissed and to starve?  Will

they not mutiny, revolt, embody themselves under a popular admiral, take

possession of Western and Bermuda islands, and act on the Algerine system?  If

they should not be able to act on this broad scale, they will become individual

pirates; and the modern Carthage will end as the old one has done.  I am sorry

for her people, who are individually as respectable as 'those of other

nations-it is her government which is so corrupt, and which has destroyed the

nation-it was certainly the most corrupt and unprincipled government on earth. 

I should be glad to see their farmers and mechanics come here, but I hope their

nobles, priests, and merchants will be kept at home to be moralized







 



434             Jefferson's Works







by the discipline of the new government.  The young stripling whom you describe

is, probably, as George Nicholas used to say, "in the plenitude of puppyism."

Such coxcombs do not serve even as straws to show which way the wind blows. 

Alexander is unquestionably a man of an excellent heart, and of very

respectable strength of mind; and he is the only sovereign who cordially loves

us.  Bonaparte hates our government because it is a living libel on his.  The

English hate us because they think our prosperity filched from theirs.  Of

Alexander's sense of the merits of our form of government, of its wholesome

operation on the condition of the people, and of the interest he takes in the

success of our experiment, we possess the most unquestionable proofs; and to

him we shall be indebted if the rights of neutrals, to be settled whenever

peace is made, shall be extended beyond the present belligerents; that is to

say, European neutrals, as George and Napoleon, of mutual consent and common

hatred against us, would concur in excluding us.  I thought it a salutary

measure to engage the powerful patronage of Alexander at conferences for peace,

at a time when Bonaparte was courting him; and although circumstances have

lessened its weight, yet it is prudent for us to cherish his good dispositions,

as those alone which will be exerted in our favor when that occasion shall

occur.  He, like ourselves,. sees and feels the atrociousness of both the

belligerents.  I salute you with great esteem and respect.







        Correspondence                    435







        TO JAMES RONALDSON.







        MONTICELLO, December 3, 1810.







SIR,-I now return you the paper you were so kind as to enclose to me.  The hint

to the two belligerents of disarming each other of their auxiliaries, by

opening asylums to them and giving them passages to this country, is certainly

a good one.  Bonaparte has mind enough to, adopt it, but not the means. 

England, again, has the means but not mind enough; she would prefer losing an

advantage over her enemy to giving one to us.  It is an unhappy state of mind

for her, but I am afraid it is the true one.  She presents a singular

phenomenon of an honest people whose constitution, from its nature, must render

their government forever dishonest; and accordingly, from the time that Sir

Robert Walpole gave the constitution that direction which its defects

permitted, morality has been expunged from their political code.  I think the

paper might do good if published, and could do no harm.  It cannot lessen our

means of availing ourselves of the same resource in case of our being at war

with either belligerent.  The only difficulty in these cases (and in the

revolutionary war we found it a great one) is the conveying the invitation to

the adverse troops.  Accept my salutations and assurances of respect.







         436        Jefferson's Works







                TO DAVID HOWELL, ESQ. MONTICELLO, December 15, 1810.



        DEAR SIR,-Our last post brought me your friendly letter of November

27th.  I learn with pleasure that republican principles are predominant in your

State, because I conscientiously believe that governments founded in these are

more friendly to the happiness of the people at large, and especially of a

people so capable of self-government as ours.  I have been ever opposed to the

party so falsely called federalists, because I believe them desirous of

introducing into our government authorities hereditary or otherwise independent

of the national will, These always consume the public contributions, and

oppress the people with labor and poverty.  No one was more sensible than

myself, while Governor Fenner was in the Senate, of the soundness of his

political principles, and rectitude of his conduct.  Among those of my fellow

laborers of whom I had a distinguished opinion, he was one, and I have no doubt

those among whom he lives, and who have already given him so many proofs of

their unequivocal confidence in him, will continue so to do. It would be

impertinent in me, a stranger to them, to tell them what they all see daily. 

My object too, at present, is peace and tranquillity, neither doing nor saying

anything to be quoted, or to make me the subject of newspaper disquisitions.  I

read one or two newspapers a week, but







        Correspondence                    437







        with reluctance give even that time from Tacitus and Horace, and so

much other more agreeable reading; indeed, I give more time to exercise of the

body than of the mind, believing it wholesome to both.  I enjoy, in

recollection, my ancient friendships, and suffer no new circumstances to mix

alloy with them.  I do no t take the trouble of forming opinions on what is

passing among them, because I have such entire confidence in their integrity

and wisdom as to be satisfied all is going right, and that every one is doing

his best in the station confided to him.  Under these impressions, accept

sincere assurances of my continued esteem and respect for yourself personally,

and my best wishes for your health and happiness.











        TO THOMAS LAW.







        MONTICELLO, January 15, 1811.







        DEAR SIR,-An absence from home of some length has prevented my sooner

acknowledging -the receipt of your letter, covering the printed pamphlet, which

the same absence has as yet prevented me from taking up, but which I know I

shall read with great pleasure.  Your favor of December 22d, is also received.



        Mr. Wagner's malignity, like that of the rest of his tribe of brother

printers, who deal out calumnies for federal readers, gives me no pain.  When a

printer cooks up a falsehood, it is as easy to put it into the







 



438             Jefferson's Works







mouth of a Mr. Fox, as of a smaller man, and safer. into that of a dead than a

living one.  Your sincere attachment to this country, as well as to your native

one, was never doubted by me; and in that persuasion, I felt myself free to

express to you my genuine sentiments with respect to England.  No man was more

sensible than myself of the just value of the friendship of that country. 

There are between us so many of those circumstances which naturally produce and

cement kind dispositions, that if they could have forgiven our resistance to

their usurpations, our connections might have been durable, and have insured

duration to both our governments.  I wished, therefore, a cordial friendship

with them, and I spared no occasion of manifesting this in our correspondence

and intercourse with them; not disguising, however, my desire of friendship

with their enemy also.  During the administration of Mr. Addington, I thought I

discovered some friendly symptoms on the part of that government; at least, we

received some marks of respect from the administration, and some of regret at

the wrongs we were suffering from their country.  So, also, during the short

interval of Mr. Fox's power.  But every other administration since our

Revolution has been equally wanton in their injuries and insults, and have

manifested equal hatred and aversion.  Instead, too, of cultivating the

government itself, whose principles are those of the great mass of the nation,

they have Adopted the miserable policy of teazing and embar-







        Correspondence                     439







rassing it, by allying themselves with a faction here, not a tenth of the

people, noisy and unprincipled, and which never can come into power while

republicanism is the spirit of the nation, and that must continue to be so,

until such a condensation of population shall have taken place as will require

centuries.  Whereas, the good will of the government itself would give them,

and immediately, every benefit which reason or justice would permit it to give.

 With respect to myself, I saw great reason to be I ve their ministers were

weak enough to credit the newspaper trash about a supposed personal enmity in

myself towards England.  This wretched party imputation was beneath the notice

of wise men.  England never did me a personal injury, other than in open war;

and for numerous individuals there, I have great esteem and friendship.  And I

must have had a mind far below the duties of my station, to have felt either

national partialities or antipathies in conducting the affairs confided to me. 

My affections-were first for my own country, and then, generally, for all

mankind; and nothing but minds placing themselves above the passions, in the

functionaries of this country, could have preserved us from the war to which

their provocations have been constantly urging us.  The war interests in

England include a numerous and wealthy part of their population; and their

influence is deemed worth courting by ministers wishing to keep their Places. 

Continually endangered by a powerful oppo-







 



        440             Jefferson's Works







        sition, they find it convenient to humor the popular passions at the

expense of the public good.  The shipping interest, commercial interest, and

their janizaries of the navy, all fattening on war, will not be neglected by

ministers of ordinary minds.  Their tenure of office is so infirm that they

dare not follow the dictates of wisdom, justice, and the well-calculated

interests of their country.  This vice in the English constitution, renders a

dependence on, that government very unsafe.  The feelings of their King, too,

fundamentally adverse to us, have added another motive for unfriendliness in

his ministers.  This obstacle to friendship, however, seems likely to be soon

removed; and I verily believe the successor will come in with fairer and wiser

dispositions towards us; perhaps on that event their conduct may be changed. 

But what England is to become on the crush of her internal structure, now

seeming to be begun, I cannot foresee.  Her monied interest, created by her

paper system, and now constituting a baseless mass of wealth equal to that of

the owners of the soil, must disappear with that system, and the medium for

paying great taxes thus failing, her navy must be without support.  That it

shall be supported by permitting her to claim dominion of the ocean, and to

levy tribute on every flag traversing that, as lately attempted and not yet

relinquished, every nation must contest, even ad internecionem.   And yet, that

retiring from this enormity, she should continue able to take a fair share in

the







        Correspondence                     441







necessary equilibrium of power on that element, would be the desire of every

nation.



I feel happy in withdrawing my mind from these anxieties, and resigning myself,

for the remnant of life, to the care and guardianship of others.  Good wishes

are all an old man has to offer to his country or friends.  Mine attend

yourself, with sincere assurances of esteem and respect, which, however, I

should be better pleased to tender you in person, should your rambles ever lead

you into the vicinage of Monticello.