you the outlines of what the leading members have in contemplation.
The executive power in a hereditary King, with power of dissolving
the legislature and a negative on their laws; his authority in forming
treaties to be greatly restrained. The legislative to be a single House
of Representatives, chosen for two or three years. They propose a body
whom they call a Senate, to be chosen by the Provincial Assemblies, as
our federal Senate is, but with no power of negativing or amending
laws; they may only remonstrate on them to the representatives, who will
decide by a simple majority the ultimate event of the law. This body
will therefore be a mere council of revision. It is proposed that they
shall be of a certain age and property, and be for life. They may
make them also their court of impeachment. They will suppress the
parliaments, and establish a system of judicature somewhat like that of
England, with trial by jury in criminal cases, perhaps also in civil.
Each province will have a subordinate provincial government, and the
great cities, a municipal one on a free basis. These are the ideas
and views of the most distinguished members. But they may suffer great
modifications from the Assembly, and the longer the delay, the greater
will be the modifications. Considerable interval having taken place
since any popular execution, the aristocratic party is raising its head.
They are strengthened by a considerable defection from the patriots,
in consequence of the general suppression of the abuses of the 4th of
August, in which many were interested. Another faction too, of the most
desperate views, has acquired strength in the Assembly, as well as out
of it. These wish to dethrone the reigning branch, and transfer the
crown to the Duke d’Orleans. The members of this faction are mostly
persons of wicked and desperate fortunes, who have nothing at heart
but to pillage from the wreck of their country. The Duke himself is as
unprincipled as his followers; sunk in debaucheries of the lowest kind,
and incapable of quitting them for business; not a fool, yet not head
enough to conduct any thing. In fact, I suppose him used merely as a
tool, because of his immense wealth, and that he acquired a certain
degree of popularity by his first opposition to the government, then
credited to him as upon virtuous motives. He is certainly borrowing
money on a large scale. He is in understanding with the court of London,
where he had been long in habits of intimacy. The ministry here are
apprehensive, that that ministry will support his designs by war. I have
no idea of this, but no doubt, at the same time, that they will furnish
him money liberally to aliment a civil war, and prevent the regeneration
of this country.
It was suggested to me, some days ago, that the court of Versailles
were treating with that of London, for a surrender of their West India
possessions, in consideration of a great sum of money to relieve their
present distress. Every principle of common sense was in opposition
to this fact; yet it was so affirmed as to merit inquiry. I became
satisfied the government had never such an idea; but that the story
was not without foundation altogether; that something like this was in
contemplation between the faction of Orleans and the court of London, as
a means of obtaining money from that court. In a conversation with
the Count de Montmorin, two days ago, he told me their colonies were
speaking a language which gave them uneasiness, and for which there
was no foundation. I asked him if he knew any thing of what I have just
mentioned. He appeared unapprized of it, but to see at once that it
would be a probable speculation between two parties circumstanced and
principled as those two are. I apologized to him for the inquiries I had
made into this business, by observing that it would be much against
our interest, that any one power should monopolize all the West India
islands. ‘_Parde, assurément_,’ was his answer.
The emancipation of their islands is an idea prevailing in the minds
of several members of the National Assembly, particularly those most
enlightened and most liberal in their views. Such a step by this country
would lead to other emancipations or revolutions in the same quarter.
I enclose you some papers received from Mr. Carmichael, relative to the
capture of one of our vessels by a Morocco cruiser, and restitution
by the Emperor. I shall immediately write to M. Chiappe, to express a
proper sense of the Emperor’s friendly dispositions to us. I forward
also the public papers to the present date; and have the honor to be,
with sentiments of the most perfect esteem and respect, Sir, your most
obedient and most humble servant,
Th: Jefferson.
LETTER X.--TO JAMES MADISON, August 28,1789
TO JAMES MADISON.
Paris, August 28,1789.
Dear Sir,
My last to you was of July the 22nd. Since that, I have received yours
of May the 27th, June 13th and 30th. The tranquillity of the city has
not been disturbed since my last. Dissensions between the French and
Swiss guards occasioned some private combats, in which five or six were
killed. These dissensions are made up. The want of bread for some days
past has greatly endangered the peace of the city. Some get a little,
some none at all. The poor are the best served, because they besiege
perpetually the doors of the bakers. Notwithstanding this distress, and
the palpable impotence of the city administration to furnish bread to
the city, it was not till yesterday, that general leave was given to the
bakers to go into the country and buy flour for themselves, as they can.
This will soon relieve us, because the wheat harvest is well advanced.’
Never was there a country where the practice of governing too much, had
taken deeper root and done more mischief. Their declaration of rights
is finished. If printed in time, I will enclose a copy with this. It is
doubtful whether they will now take up the finance or the constitution
first. The distress for money endangers every thing. No taxes are paid,
and no money can be borrowed. Mr. Necker was yesterday to give in a
memoir to the Assembly, on this subject. I think they will give him
leave to put into execution any plan he pleases, so as to debarrass
themselves of this, and take up that of the constitution. No plan is
yet reported; but the leading members (with some small difference of
opinion) have in contemplation the following. The executive power in
a hereditary King, with a negative on laws, and power to dissolve the
legislature; to be considerably restrained in the making of
treaties, and limited in his expenses. The legislative in a House of
Representatives. They propose a Senate also, chosen on the plan of our
federal Senate, by the Provincial Assemblies, but to be for life, of
a certain age, (they talk of forty years), and certain wealth (four or
five hundred guineas a year), but to have no other power as to laws
but to remonstrate against them to the representatives, who will
then determine their fate by a simple majority. This you will readily
perceive is a mere council of revision, like that of New York, which,
in order to be something, must form an alliance with the King, to avail
themselves of his veto. The alliance will be useful to both, and to the
nation. The representatives to be chosen every two or three years.
The judiciary system is less prepared than any other part of the plan;
however, they will abolish the parliaments, and establish an order of
judges and justices, general and provincial, a good deal like ours, with
trial by jury in criminal cases certainly, perhaps also in civil. The
provinces will have Assemblies for their provincial government, and the
cities a municipal body for municipal government, all founded on
the basis of popular election. These subordinate governments, though
completely dependent on the general one, will be intrusted with almost
the whole of the details which our State governments exercise. They will
have their own judiciary, final in all but great cases, the executive
business will principally pass through their hands, and a certain local
legislature will be allowed them. In short, ours has been professedly
their model, in which such changes are made as a difference of
circumstances rendered necessary, and some others neither necessary nor
advantageous, but into which men will ever run, when versed in theory
and new in the practice of government, when acquainted with man only
as they see him in their books and not in the world. This plan will
undoubtedly undergo changes in the Assembly, and the longer it is
delayed, the greater will be the changes; for that Assembly, or rather
the patriotic part of it, hooped together heretofore by a common
enemy, are less compact since their victory. That enemy (the civil and
ecclesiastical aristocracy) begins to raise its head. The lees, too, of
the patriotic party, of wicked principles and desperate fortunes,
hoping to pillage something in the wreck of their country, are attaching
themselves to the faction of the Duke of Orleans: that faction is
caballing with the populace, and intriguing at London, the Hague, and
Berlin, and have evidently in view the transfer of the crown to the
Duke of Orleans. He is a man of moderate understanding, of no principle,
absorbed in low vice, and incapable of abstracting himself from the
filth of that, to direct any thing else. His name and his money,
therefore, are mere tools in the hands of those who are duping him.
*****
They may produce a temporary confusion, and even a temporary civil war,
supported, as they will be, by the money of England; but they cannot
have success ultimately. The King, the mass of the substantial people
of the whole country, the army, and the influential part of the clergy,
form a firm phalanx which must prevail. Should those delays which
necessarily attend the deliberations of a body of one thousand two
hundred men, give time to this plot to ripen and burst, so as to break
up the Assembly before any thing definitive is done, a constitution,
the principles of which are pretty well settled in the minds of the
Assembly, will be proposed by the national militia, (*****) urged by the
individual members of the Assembly, signed by the King and supported by
the nation, to prevail till circumstances shall permit its revision and
more regular sanction. This I suppose the _pis aller_ of their affairs,
while their probable event is a peaceable settlement of them. They fear
a war from England, Holland, and Prussia. I think England will give
money, but not make war. Holland would soon be afire, internally, were
she to be embroiled in external difficulties. Prussia must know this,
and act accordingly.
It is impossible to desire better dispositions towards us, than prevail
in this Assembly. Our proceedings have been viewed as a model for them
on every occasion; and though in the heat of debate men are generally
disposed to contradict every authority urged by their opponents, ours
has been treated like that of the Bible, open to explanation, but not to
question. I am sorry that in the moment of such a disposition, any thing
should come from us to check it. The placing them on a mere footing with
the English, will have this effect. When of two nations, the one has
engaged herself in a ruinous war for us, has spent her blood and money
to save us, has opened her bosom to us in peace, and received us almost
on the footing of her own citizens, while the other has moved heaven,
earth, and hell to exterminate us in war, has insulted us in all
her councils in peace, shut her doors to us in every part where her
interests would admit it, libelled us in foreign nations, endeavored to
poison them against the reception of our most precious commodities; to
place these two nations on a footing, is to give a great deal more
to one than to the other, if the maxim be true, that to make unequal
quantities equal, you must add more to one than the other. To say, in
excuse, that gratitude is never to enter into the motives of national
conduct, is to revive a principle which has been buried for centuries
with its kindred principles of the lawfulness of assassination, poison,
perjury, &c. All of these were legitimate principles in the dark ages
which intervened between ancient and modern civilization, but exploded
and held in just horror in the eighteenth century. I know but one code
of morality for men, whether acting singly or collectively. He who says
I will be a rogue when I act in company with a hundred others, but an
honest man when I act alone, will be believed in the former assertion,
but not in the latter. I would say with the poet, ‘_Hie niger est; hunc
tu, Romane, caveto_.’ If the morality of one man produces a just line of
conduct in him, acting individually, why should not the morality of one
hundred men produce a just line of conduct in them, acting together?
But I indulge myself in these reflections because my own feelings run me
into them; with you they were always acknowledged. Let us hope that our
new government will take some other occasion to show, that they mean to
proscribe no virtue from the canons of their conduct with other nations.
In every other instance, the new government has ushered itself to the
world as honest, masculine, and dignified. It has shown genuine dignity,
in my opinion, in exploding adulatory titles; they are the offerings of
abject baseness, and nourish that degrading vice in the people.
I must now say a word on the declaration of rights, you have been so
good as to send me. I like it, as far as it goes; but I should have been
for going further. For instance, the following alterations and additions
would have pleased me. Article 4. The people shall not be deprived of
their right to speak, to write, or otherwise to publish any thing
but false facts affecting injuriously the life, liberty, property, or
reputation of others, or affecting the peace of the confederacy
with foreign nations. Article 7. All facts put in issue before any
judicature, shall be tried by jury, except, 1. in cases of admiralty
jurisdiction, wherein a foreigner shall be interested; 2. in cases
cognizable before a court martial, concerning only the regular-officers
and soldiers of the United States, or members of the militia in actual
service in time of war or insurrection; and 3. in impeachments allowed
by the constitution. Article 8. No person shall be held in confinement
more than ------ days after he shall have demanded and been refused
a writ of habeas corpus by the judge appointed by law, nor more than
------ days after such a writ shall have been served on the person
holding him in confinement, and no order given on due examination for
his remandment or discharge, nor more than ------ hours in any place at
a greater distance than ------ miles from the usual residence of some
judge authorized to issue the writ of habeas corpus; nor shall that writ
be suspended for any term exceeding one year, nor in any place more
than ------ miles distant from the State or encampment of enemies or of
insurgents. Article 9. Monopolies may be allowed to persons for their
own productions in literature, and their own inventions in the arts, for
a term not exceeding ------ years, but for no longer term, and no other
purpose. Article 10. All troops of the United States shall stand _ipso
facto_ disbanded, at the expiration of the term for which their pay and
subsistence shall have been last voted by Congress, and all officers
and soldiers, not natives of the United States, shall be incapable of
serving in their armies by land, except during a foreign war. These
restrictions I think are so guarded, as to hinder evil only. However, if
we do not have them now, I have so much confidence in my countrymen, as
to be satisfied that we shall have them as soon as the degeneracy of our
government shall render them necessary.
I have no certain news of Paul Jones. I understand only, in a general
way, that some persecution on the part of his officers occasioned his
being called to Petersburg, and that though protected against them
by the Empress, he is not yet restored to his station. Silas Deane
is coming over to finish his days in America, not having one sous to
subsist on, elsewhere. He is a wretched monument of the consequences of
a departure from right. I will, before my departure, write Colonel Lee
fully the measures I pursued to procure success in his business, and
which as yet offer little hope; and I shall leave it in the hands of
Mr. Short to be pursued, if any prospect opens on him. I propose to sail
from Havre as soon after the first of October as I can get a vessel;
and shall consequently leave this place a week earlier than that. As my
daughters will be with me, and their baggage somewhat more than that of
mere voyageures, I shall endeavor, if possible, to obtain a passage for
Virginia directly. Probably I shall be there by the last of November. If
my immediate attendance at New York should be requisite for any purpose,
I will leave them with a relation near Richmond, and proceed immediately
to New York. But as I do not foresee any pressing purpose for that
journey immediately on my arrival, and as it will be a great saving of
time, to finish at once in Virginia, so as to have no occasion to return
there after having once gone on to the northward, I expect to proceed to
my own house directly. Staying there two months (which I believe will be
necessary), and allowing for the time I am on the road, I may expect to
be at New York in February, and to embark from thence or some eastern
port. You ask me if I would accept any appointment on that side of the
water? You know the circumstances which led me from retirement, step by
step, and from one nomination to another, up to the present. My object
is a return to the same retirement. Whenever, therefore, I quit
the present, it will not be to engage in any other office, and most
especially any one which would require a constant residence from home.
The books I have collected for you will go off for Havre in three or
four days, with my baggage. From that port, I shall try to send them by
a direct occasion to New York.
I am, with great and sincere esteem, Dear Sir, your affectionate friend
and servant,
Th: Jefferson.
P. S. I just now learn that Mr. Necker proposed yesterday to the
National Assembly a loan of eighty millions, on terms more tempting to
the lender than the former, and that they approved it, leaving him to
arrange the details, in order that they might occupy themselves at once
about the constitution. T. J.
LETTER XI.--TO JAMES MADISON, September 6, 1789
TO JAMES MADISON.
Paris, September 6, 1789.
Dear Sir,
I sit down to write to you, without knowing by what occasion I shall
send my letter. I do it, because a subject comes into my head, which I
wrould wish to develope[sp.] a little more than is practicable in the
hurry of the moment of making up general despatches.
The question, whether one generation of men has a right to bind another,
seems never to have been started either on this, or our side of the
water. Yet it is a question of such consequences as not only to merit
decision, but place also among the fundamental principles of every
government. The course of reflection in which we are immersed here, on
the elementary principles of society, has presented this question to my
mind; and that no such obligation can be so transmitted, I think very
capable of proof. I set out on this ground, which I suppose to be
self-evident, that _the earth belongs in usufruct to the living_: that
the dead have neither powers nor rights over it. The portion occupied by
any individual ceases to be his when himself ceases to be, and reverts
to the society. If the society has formed no rules for the appropriation
of its lands in severalty, it will be taken by the first occupants, and
these will generally be the wife and children of the decedent. If they
have formed rules of appropriation, those rules may give it to the wife
and children, or to some one of them, or to the legatee of the deceased.
So they may give it to his creditor.
But the child, the legatee, or creditor, takes it not by natural right,
but by a law of the society of which he is a member, and to which he
is subject. Then, no man can, by natural right, oblige the lands he
occupied, or the persons who succeed him in that occupation, to the
payment of debts contracted by him. For if he could, he might, during
his own life, eat up the usufruct of the lands for several generations
to come; and then the lands would belong to the dead, and not to the
living, which is the reverse of our principle.
What is true of every member of the society individually, is true of
them all collectively; since the rights of the whole can be no more than
the sum of the rights of the individuals. To keep our ideas clear when
applying them to a multitude, let us suppose a whole generation of men
to be born on the same day, to attain mature age on the same day, and
to die on the same day, leaving a succeeding generation in the moment of
attaining their mature age, all together. Let the ripe age be supposed
of twenty-one years, and their period of life thirty-four years more,
that being the average term given by the bills of mortality to persons
of twenty-one years of age. Each successive generation would, in this
way, come and go off the stage at a fixed moment, as individuals do now.
Then I say, the earth belongs to each of these generations during its
course, fully and in its own right. The second generation receives
it clear of the debts and incumbrances of the first, the third of the
second, and so on. For if the first could charge it with a debt, then
the earth would belong to the dead and not to the living generation.
Then no generation can contract debts greater than may be paid during
the course of its own existence. At twenty-one years of age, they
may bind themselves and their lands for thirty-four years to come; at
twenty-two, for thirty-three; at twenty-three, for thirty-two; and at
fifty-four, for one year only; because these are the terms of life which
remain to them at the respective epochs. But a material difference must
be noted, between the succession of an individual and that of a whole
generation. Individuals are parts only of a society, subject to the laws
of the whole. These laws may appropriate the portion of land occupied by
a decedent, to his creditor rather than to any other, or to his child,
on condition he satisfies the creditor. But when a whole generation,
that is, the whole society, dies, as in the case we have supposed, and
another generation or society succeeds, this forms a whole, and there
is no superior who can give their territory to a third society, who may
have lent money to their predecessors, beyond their faculties of paying.
What is true of generations succeeding one another at fixed epochs,
as has been supposed for clearer conception, is true for those
renewed daily, as in the actual course of nature. As a majority of the
contracting generation will continue in being thirty-four years, and a
new majority will then come into possession, the former may extend their
engagements to that term, and no longer. The conclusion, then, is, that
neither the representatives of a nation, nor the whole nation itself
assembled, can validly engage debts beyond what they may pay in their
own time, that is to say, within thirty-four years from the date of the
engagement.
To render this conclusion palpable, suppose that Louis the XIV. and XV.
had contracted debts in the name of the French nation, to the amount
of ten thousand milliards, and that the whole had been contracted in
Holland. The interest of this sum would be five hundred milliards, which
is the whole rent-roll or nett[sp.] proceeds of the territory of France.
Must the present generation of men have retired from the territory in
which nature produces them, and ceded it to the Dutch creditors? No;
they have the same rights over the soil on which they were produced, as
the preceding generations had. They derive these rights not from them,
but from nature. They, then, and their soil are, by nature, clear of the
debts of their predecessors. To present this in another point of
view, suppose Louis XV. and his cotemporary generation had said to the
money-lenders of Holland, Give us money, that we may eat, drink, and be
merry in our day; and on condition you will demand no interest till the
end of thirty-four years, you shall then, for ever after, receive
an annual interest of fifteen per cent. The money is lent on these
conditions, is divided among the people, eaten, drunk, and squandered.
Would the present generation be obliged to apply the produce of the
earth and of their labor, to replace their dissipations? Not at all.
I suppose that the received opinion, that the public debts of one
generation devolve on the next, has been suggested by our seeing,
habitually, in private life, that he who succeeds to lands is required
to pay the debts of his predecessor; without considering that this
requisition is municipal only, not moral, flowing from the will of the
society, which has found it convenient to appropriate the lands of a
decedent on the condition of a payment of his debts: but that between
society and society, or generation and generation, there is no municipal
obligation, no umpire, but the law of nature.