will prove it by giving to her citizens, vessels, and goods all the
privileges of the most favored nation; and while we do this voluntarily,
we cannot doubt they will voluntarily do the same for us. Our interests
against the Barbaresques being also the same, we have little doubt she
will give us every facility to insure them, which our situation may ask
and hers admit. It is not, then, from a want of friendship that we do
not propose a treaty with Naples, but because it is against our system
to embarrass ourselves with treaties, or to entangle ourselves at
all with the affairs of Europe. The kind offices we receive from that
government are more sensibly felt, as such, than they would be, if
rendered only as due to us by treaty.
Five fine frigates left the Chesapeake the 1st instant for Tripoli,
which, in addition to the force now there, will, I trust, recover the
credit which Commodore Morris’s two years’ sleep lost us, and for which
he has been broke. I think they will make Tripoli sensible, that they
mistake their interest in choosing war with us; and Tunis also, should
she have declared war, as we expect, and almost wish.
Notwithstanding this little diversion, we pay seven or eight millions of
dollars annually of our public debt, and shall completely discharge
it in twelve years more. That done, our annual revenue, now thirteen
millions of dollars, which by that time will be twenty-five, will pay
the expenses of any war we may be forced into, without new taxes or
loans. The spirit of republicanism is now in almost all its ancient
vigor, five sixths of the people being with us. Fourteen of the
seventeen States are completely with us, and two of the other three will
be in one year. We have now got back to the ground on which you left us.
I should have retired at the end of the first four years, but that the
immense load of tory calumnies which have been manufactured respecting
me, and have filled the European market, have obliged me to appeal once
more to my country for a justification. I have no fear but that I shall
receive honorable testimony by their verdict on those calumnies. At the
end of the next four years I shall certainly retire. Age, inclination,
and principle all dictate this. My health, which at one time threatened
an unfavorable turn, is now firm. The acquisition of Louisiana, besides
doubling our extent, and trebling our quantity of fertile country, is
of incalculable value, as relieving us from the danger of war. It has
enabled us to do a handsome thing for Fayette. He had received a grant
of between eleven and twelve thousand acres north of the Ohio, worth,
perhaps, a dollar an acre. We have obtained permission of Congress to
locate it in Louisiana. Locations can be found adjacent to the city of
New Orleans, in the island of New Orleans and in its vicinity, the value
of which cannot be calculated. I hope it will induce him to come over
and settle there with his family. Mr. Livingston having asked leave to
return, General Armstrong, his brother-in-law, goes in his place: he is
of the first order of talents.
Remarkable deaths lately, are, Samuel Adams, Edmund Pendleton, Alexander
Hamilton, Stephens Thompson Mason, Mann Page, Bellini, and Parson
Andrews. To these I have the inexpressible grief of adding the name of
my youngest daughter, who had married a son of Mr. Eppes, and has
left two children. My eldest daughter alone remains to me, and has six
children. This loss has increased my anxiety to retire, while it has
dreadfully lessened the comfort of doing it. Wythe, Dickinson, and
Charles Thomson are all living, and are firm republicans. You informed
me formerly of your marriage, and your having a daughter, but have said
nothing in you late letters on that subject. Yet whatever concerns your
happiness is sincerely interesting to me, and is a subject of anxiety,
retaining, as I do, cordial sentiments of esteem and affection for you.
Accept, I pray you, my sincere assurances of this, with my most friendly
salutations.
Th: Jefferson.
LETTER XV.--TO MRS. ADAMS, July 22, 1804
TO MRS. ADAMS.
Washington, July 22, 1804.
Dear Madam,
Your favor of the 1st instant was duly received, and I would not again
have intruded on you, but to rectify certain facts which seem not to
have been presented to you under their true aspect. My charities to
Callendar are considered as rewards for his calumnies. As early, I
think, as 1796, I was told in Philadelphia, that Callendar, the author
of the ‘Political Progress of Britain,’ was in that city, a fugitive
from persecution for having written that book, and in distress. I
had read and approved the book; I considered him as a man of genius,
unjustly persecuted. I knew nothing of his private character, and
immediately expressed my readiness to contribute to his relief, and to
serve him. It was a considerable time after, that, on application from
a person who thought of him as I did, I contributed to his relief, and
afterwards repeated the contribution. Himself I did not see till long
after, nor ever more than two or three times. When he first began to
write, he told some useful truths in his coarse way; but nobody sooner
disapproved of his writing than I did, or wished more that he would be
silent. My charities to him were no more meant as encouragements to his
scurrilities, than those I give to the beggar at my door are meant
as rewards for the vices of his life, and to make them chargeable to
myself. In truth, they would have been greater to him, had he never
written a word after the work for which he fled from Britain. With
respect to the calumnies and falsehoods which writers and printers at
large published against Mr. Adams, I was as far from stooping to any
concern or approbation of them, as Mr. Adams was respecting those of
Porcupine, Fenno, or Russell, who published volumes against me for
every sentence vended by their opponents against Mr. Adams. But I never
supposed Mr. Adams had any participation in the atrocities of these
editors, or their writers. I knew myself incapable of that base warfare,
and believed him to be so. On the contrary, whatever I may have thought
of the acts of the administration of that day, I have ever borne
testimony to Mr. Adams’s personal worth; nor was it ever impeached in my
presence, without a just vindication of it on my part. I never supposed
that any person who knew either of us, could believe that either of us
meddled in that dirty work. But another fact is, that I ‘liberated a
wretch who was suffering for a libel against Mr. Adams.’ I do not know
who was the particular wretch alluded to; but I discharged every person
under punishment or prosecution under the sedition law, because I
considered, and now consider, that law to be a nullity, as absolute and
as palpable as if Congress had ordered us to fall down and worship a
golden image; and that it was as much my duty to arrest its execution
in every stage, as it would have been to have rescued from the fiery
furnace those who should have been cast into it for refusing to worship
the image. It was accordingly done in every instance, without asking
what the offenders had done, or against whom they had offended, but
whether the pains they were suffering were inflicted under the pretended
sedition law. It was certainly possible that my motives for contributing
to the relief of Callendar, and liberating sufferers under the sedition
law might have been to protect, encourage, and reward slander; but they
may also have been those which inspire ordinary charities to objects of
distress, meritorious or not, or the obligation of an oath to protect
the constitution, violated by an unauthorized act of Congress. Which of
these were my motives, must be decided by a regard to the general tenor
of my life. On this I am not afraid to appeal to the nation at large,
to posterity, and still less to that Being who sees himself our motives,
who will judge us from his own knowledge of them, and not on the
testimony of Porcupine or Fenno.
You observe, there has been one other act of my administration
personally unkind, and suppose it will readily suggest itself to me. I
declare on my honor, Madam, I have not the least conception what act is
alluded to. I never did a single one with an unkind intention. My sole
object in this letter being to place before your attention, that the
acts imputed to me are either such as are falsely imputed, or as might
flow from good as well as bad motives, I shall make no other addition,
than the assurances of my continued wishes for the health and happiness
of yourself and Mr. Adams.
Th: Jefferson.
LETTER XVI.--TO JAMES MADISON, August 15, 1804
TO JAMES MADISON.
Monticello, August 15, 1804.
Dear Sir,
Your letter dated the 7th should probably have been of the 14th, as I
received it only by that day’s post. I return you Monroe’s letter, which
is of an awful complexion; and I do not wonder the communications it
contains made some impression on him. To a person placed in Europe,
surrounded by the immense resources of the nations there, and the
greater wickedness of their courts, even the limits which nature imposes
on their enterprises are scarcely sensible. It is impossible that France
and England should combine for any purpose; their mutual distrust and
deadly hatred of each other admit no co-operation. It is impossible that
England should be willing to see France re-possess Louisiana, or get
footing on our continent, and that France should willingly see the
United States re-annexed to the British dominions. That the Bourbons
should be replaced on their throne and agree to any terms of
restitution, is possible: but that they and England joined, could
recover us to British dominion, is impossible. If these things are
not so, then human reason is of no aid in conjecturing the conduct of
nations. Still, however, it is our unquestionable interest and duty to
conduct ourselves with such sincere friendship and impartiality towards
both nations, as that each may see unequivocally, what is unquestionably
true, that we may be very possibly driven into her scale by unjust
conduct in the other. I am so much impressed with the expediency of
putting a termination to the right of France to patronize the rights of
Louisiana, which will cease with their complete adoption as citizens of
the United States, that I hope to see that take place on the meeting
of Congress. I enclose you a paragraph from a newspaper respecting St.
Domingo, which gives me uneasiness. Still I conceive the British insults
in our harbor as more threatening. We cannot be respected by France as a
neutral nation, nor by the world or ourselves as an independent one,
if we do not take effectual measures to support, at every risk, our
authority in our own harbors. I shall write to Mr. Wagner directly
(that a post may not be lost by passing through you) to send us blank
commissions for Orleans and Louisiana, ready sealed, to be filled up,
signed, and forwarded by us. Affectionate salutations and constant
esteem.
Th: Jefferson.
LETTER XVII.--TO GOVERNOR CLAIBORNE, August 30, 1804
TO GOVERNOR CLAIBORNE.
Monticello, August 30, 1804.
Dear Sir,
Various circumstances of delay have prevented my forwarding till now
the general arrangements of the government of the territory of Orleans.
Enclosed herewith you will receive the commissions. Among these is one
for yourself as Governor. With respect to this I will enter into frank
explanations. This office was originally destined for a person * whose
great services and established fame would have rendered him peculiarly
acceptable to the nation at large. Circumstances, however, exist,
which do not now permit his nomination, and perhaps may not at any time
hereafter. That, therefore, being suspended, and entirely contingent,
your services have been so much approved, as to leave no desire to
look elsewhere to fill the office. Should the doubts you have sometimes
expressed, whether it would be eligible for you to continue, still exist
in your mind, the acceptance of the commission gives you time to satisfy
yourself by further experience, and to make the time and manner of
withdrawing, should you ultimately determine on that, agreeable to
yourself. Be assured, that whether you continue or retire, it will be
with every disposition on my part to be just and friendly to you.
*****
I salute you with friendship and respect.
Th: Jefferson.
[* In the margin is written by the author, ‘La Fayette.’]
LETTER XVIII.--TO MRS. ADAMS, September 11, 1804
TO MRS. ADAMS.
Monticello, September 11, 1804,
Your letter, Madam, of the 18th of August has been some days received,
but a press of business has prevented the acknowledgment of it: perhaps,
indeed, I may have already trespassed too far on your attention. With
those who wish to think amiss of me, I have learned to be perfectly
indifferent; but where I know a mind to be ingenuous, and to need only
truth to set it to rights, I cannot be as passive. The act of personal
unkindness alluded to in your former letter, is said in your last to
have been the removal of your eldest son from some office to which
the judges had appointed him. I conclude, then, he must have been a
commissioner of bankruptcy. But I declare to you, on my honor, that
this is the first knowledge I have ever had that he was so. It may be
thought, perhaps, that I ought to have inquired who were such, before
I appointed others. But it is to be observed, that the former law
permitted the judges to name commissioners occasionally only, for every
case as it arose, and not to make them permanent officers. Nobody,
therefore, being in office, there could be no removal. The judges, you
well know, have been considered as highly federal; and it was noted
that they confined their nominations exclusively to federalists. The
legislature, dissatisfied with this, transferred the nomination to the
President, and made the offices permanent. The very object in passing
the law was, that he should correct, not confirm, what was deemed the
partiality of the judges. I thought it therefore proper to inquire,
not whom they had employed, but whom I ought to appoint to fulfil
the intentions of the law. In making these appointments, I put in a
proportion of federalists, equal, I believe, to the proportion they bear
in numbers through the Union generally. Had I known that your son had
acted, it would have been a real pleasure to me to have preferred him
to some who were named in Boston, in what was deemed the same line
of politics. To this I should have been led by my knowledge of his
integrity, as well as my sincere dispositions towards yourself and Mr.
Adams.
You seem to think it devolved on the judges to decide on the validity of
the sedition law. But nothing in the constitution has given them a right
to decide for the executive, more than to the executive to decide for
them. Both magistracies are equally independent in the sphere of action
assigned to them. The judges, believing the law constitutional, had a
right to pass a sentence of fine and imprisonment, because the power was
placed in their hands by the constitution. But the executive, believing
the law to be unconstitutional, were bound to remit the execution of it;
because that power has been confided to them by the constitution. That
instrument meant that its co-ordinate branches should be checks on each
other. But the opinion which gives to the judges the right to decide
what laws are constitutional, and what not, not only for themselves in
their own sphere of action, but for the legislature and executive also
in their spheres, would make the judiciary a despotic branch. Nor does
the opinion of the unconstitutionality, and consequent nullity of that
law, remove all restraint from the overwhelming torrent of slander,
which is confounding all vice and virtue, all truth and falsehood,
in the United States. The power to do that is fully possessed by the
several State legislatures. It was reserved to them, and was denied
to the General Government, by the constitution, according to our
construction of it. While we deny that Congress have a right to control
the freedom of the press, we have ever asserted the right of the States,
and their exclusive right, to do so. They have, accordingly, all of them
made provisions for punishing slander, which those who have time and
inclination resort to for the vindication of their characters. In
general, the State laws appear to have made the presses responsible for
slander as far as is consistent with its useful freedom. In those States
where they do not admit even the truth of allegations to protect the
printer, they have gone too far.
The candor manifested in your letter, and which I ever believed you to
possess, has alone inspired the desire of calling your attention once
more to those circumstances of fact and motive by which I claim to be
judged. I hope you will see these intrusions on your time to be, what
they really are, proofs of my great, respect for you. I tolerate with
the utmost latitude the right of others to differ from me in opinion,
without imputing to them criminality. I know too well the weakness and
uncertainty of human reason, to wonder at its different results. Both
of our political parties, at least the honest part of them, agree
conscientiously in the same object, the public good: but they differ
essentially in what they deem the means of promoting that good. One side
believes it best done by one composition of the governing powers; the
other, by a different one. One fears most the ignorance of the people;
the other, the selfishness of rulers independent of them. Which is
right, time and experience will prove. We think that one side of this
experiment has been long enough tried, and proved not to promote
the good of the many: and that the other has not been fairly and
sufficiently tried. Our opponents think the reverse. With whichever
opinion the body of the nation concurs, that must prevail. My anxieties
on this subject will never carry me beyond the use of fair and honorable
means of truth and reason; nor have they ever lessened my esteem for
moral worth, nor alienated my affections from a single friend, who did
not first withdraw himself. Wherever this has happened, I confess I have
not been insensible to it: yet have ever kept myself open to a return
of their justice. I conclude with sincere prayers for your health and
happiness, that yourself and Mr. Adams may long enjoy the tranquillity
you desire and merit, and see in the prosperity of your family what is
the consummation of the last and warmest of human wishes,
Th: Jefferson.
LETTER XIX.--TO MR. NICHOLSON, January 29, 1805
TO MR. NICHOLSON.
Washington, January 29, 1805.
Dear Sir,
Mr. Eppes has this moment put into my hands your letter of yesterday,
asking information on the subject of the gun-boats proposed to be built.
I lose no time in communicating to you fully my whole views respecting
them, premising a few words on the system of fortifications. Considering
the harbors which, from their situation and importance, are entitled to
defence, and the estimates we have seen of the fortifications planned
for some of them, this system cannot be completed on a moderate scale
for less than fifty millions of dollars, nor manned in time of war with
less than fifty thousand men, and in peace, two thousand. And when
done, they avail little; because all military men agree, that wherever a
vessel may pass a fort without tacking under her guns, which is the case
at all our sea-port towns, she may be annoyed more or less, according
to the advantages of the position, but can never be prevented. Our
own experience during the war proved this on different occasions. Our
predecessors have, nevertheless, proposed to go into this system, and
had commenced it. But, no law requiring us to proceed, we have suspended
it.
If we cannot hinder vessels from entering our harbors, we should turn
our attention to the putting it out of their power to lie, or come to,
before a town, to injure it. Two means of doing this may be adopted in
aid of each other. 1. Heavy cannon on travelling carriages, which may be
moved to any point on the bank or beach most convenient for dislodging
the vessel. A sufficient number of these should be lent to each sea-port
town, and their militia trained to them. The executive is authorized to
do this; it has been done in a smaller degree, and will now be done more
competently.
2. Having cannon on floating batteries or boats, which may be so
stationed as to prevent a vessel entering the harbor, or force her
after entering to depart. There are about fifteen harbors in the United
States, which ought to be in a state of substantial defence. The whole
of these would require, according to the best opinions, two hundred
and forty gun-boats. Their cost was estimated by Captain Rogers at two
thousand dollars each; but we had better say four thousand dollars. The
whole would cost one million of dollars. But we should allow ourselves
ten years to complete it, unless circumstances should force it sooner.
There are three situations in which the gun-boat may be. 1. Hauled up
under a shed, in readiness to be launched and manned by the seamen and
militia of the town on short notice. In this situation she costs nothing
but an enclosure, or a centinel to see that no mischief is done to her.
2. Afloat, and with men enough to navigate her in harbor and take care
of her, but depending on receiving her crew from the town on short
warning. In this situation, her annual expense is about two thousand
dollars, as by an official estimate at the end of this letter. 3. Fully
manned for action. Her annual expense in this situation is about eight
thousand dollars, as per estimate subjoined. ‘When there is general
peace, we should probably keep about six or seven afloat in the second
situation; their annual expense twelve to fourteen thousand dollars; the
rest all hauled up. When France and England are at war, we should keep,
at the utmost, twenty-five in the second situation, their annual expense
fifty thousand dollars. When we should be at war ourselves, some of them
would probably be kept in the third situation, at an annual expense of
eight thousand dollars; but how many, must depend on the circumstances
of the war. We now possess ten, built and building. It is the opinion of
those consulted, that fifteen more would enable us to put every harbor
under our view into a respectable condition; and that this should limit
the views of the present year. This would require an appropriation of
sixty thousand dollars, and I suppose that the best way of limiting it,
without declaring the number, as perhaps that sum would build more. I
should think it best not to give a detailed report, which exposes our
policy too much. A bill, with verbal explanations, will suffice for the
information of the House. I do not know whether General Wilkinson would
approve the printing his paper. If he would, it would be useful. Accept
affectionate and respectful salutations.
Th: Jefferson.
LETTER XX.--TO MR. VOLNEY, February 8, 1805
TO MR. VOLNEY.
Washington, February 8, 1805.
Dear Sir,