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, 1. 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.
2. 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 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 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 news-writers. 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.
Th: Jefferson.
LETTER XCIII.--TO MR. LAW, January 15, 1811
TO MR. 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 the 22nd
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
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 has 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 embarrassing 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 believe
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
opposition, 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 dependance on that government very
unsafe. The feelings of their King, too, fundamentally averse 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 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.
Th: Jefferson.
LETTER XCIV.--TO DOCTOR BENJAMIN RUSH, January 16, 1811
TO DOCTOR BENJAMIN RUSH.
Monticello, January 16, 1811.
Dear Sir,
I had been considering for some days, whether it was not time by a
letter, to bring myself to your recollection, when I received
your welcome favor of the 2nd instant. I had before heard of the
heart-rending calamity you mention, and had sincerely sympathized with
your afflictions. But I had not made it the subject of a letter, because
I knew that condolences were but renewals of grief. Yet I thought, and
still think, this is one of the cases wherein we should ‘not sorrow,
even as others who have no hope.’
*****
You ask if I have read Hartley? I have not. ‘My present course of life
admits less reading than I wish. From breakfast, or noon at latest,
to dinner, I am mostly on horseback, attending to my farms or other
concerns, which I find healthful to my body, mind, and affairs; and the
few hours I can pass in my cabinet, are devoured by correspondences;
not those with my intimate friends, with whom I delight to interchange
sentiments, but with others, who, writing to me on concerns of their
own in which I have had an agency, or from motives of mere respect and
approbation, are entitled to be answered with respect and a return of
good will. My hope is that this obstacle to the delights of retirement
will wear away with the oblivion which follows that, and that I may at
length be indulged in those studious pursuits, from which nothing but
revolutionary duties would ever have called me.
I shall receive your proposed publication, and read it with the pleasure
which every thing gives me from your pen. Although much of a sceptic in
the practice of medicine, I read with pleasure its ingenious theories.
I receive with sensibility your observations on the discontinuance of
friendly correspondence between Mr. Adams and myself, and the concern
you take in its restoration. This discontinuance has not proceeded from
me, nor from the want of sincere desire, and of effort on my part, to
renew our intercourse. You know the perfect coincidence of principle and
of action, in the early part of the Revolution, which produced a high
degree of mutual respect and esteem between Mr. Adams and myself.
Certainly no man was ever truer than he was, in that day, to those
principles of rational republicanism, which, after the necessity of
throwing off our monarchy, dictated all our efforts in the establishment
of a new government. And although he swerved, afterwards, towards the
principles of the English constitution, our friendship did not abate on
that account. While he was Vice-President, and I Secretary of State,
I received a letter from President Washington, then at Mount Vernon,
desiring me to call together the Heads of departments, and to invite Mr.
Adams to join us (which, by the bye, was the only instance of that being
done) in order to determine on some measure which required despatch; and
he desired me to act on it, as decided, without again recurring to him.
I invited them to dine with me, and after dinner, sitting at our wine,
having settled our question, other conversation came on, in which a
collision of opinion arose between Mr. Adams and Colonel Hamilton,
on the merits of the British Constitution, Mr. Adams giving it as his
opinion, that, if some of its defects and abuses were corrected, it
would be the most perfect constitution of government ever devised by
man. Hamilton, on the contrary, asserted, that with its existing vices,
it was the most perfect model of government that could be formed;
and that the correction of its vices would render it an impracticable
government. And this you may be assured was the real line of difference
between the political principles of these two gentlemen. Another
incident took place on the same occasion, which will further delineate
Hamilton’s political principles. The room being hung around with a
collection of the portraits of remarkable men, among them were those of
Bacon, Newton, and Locke. Hamilton asked me who they were. I told
him they were my trinity of the three greatest men the world had ever
produced, naming them. He paused for some time: ‘The greatest man,’
said he, ‘that ever lived, was Julius Caesar.’ Mr. Adams was honest as
a politician, as well as a man; Hamilton honest as a man, but, as a
politician, believing in the necessity of either force or corruption to
govern men.
You remember the machinery which the federalists played off, about
that time, to beat down the friends to the real principles of our
constitution, to silence by terror every expression in their favor, to
bring us into war with France and alliance with England, and finally to
homologize our constitution with that of England. Mr. Adams, you know,
was overwhelmed with feverish addresses, dictated by the fear, and often
by the pen of the _bloody buoy_, and was seduced by them into some open
indications of his new principles of government, and in fact, was so
elated as to mix with his kindness a little superciliousness towards
me. Even Mrs. Adams, with all her good sense and prudence, was sensibly
flushed. And you recollect the short suspension of our intercourse, and
the circumstance which gave rise to it, which you were so good as to
bring to an early explanation, and have set to rights, to the cordial
satisfaction of us all. The nation at length passed condemnation on the
political principles of the federalists, by refusing to continue Mr.
Adams in the Presidency. On the day on which we learned in Philadelphia
the vote of the city of New York, which it was well known would decide
the vote of the State, and that, again, the vote of the Union, I called
on Mr. Adams on some official business. He was very sensibly affected,
and accosted me with these words. ‘Well, I understand that you are to
beat me in this contest, and I will only say that I will be as faithful
a subject as any you will have.’ ‘Mr. Adams,’ said I, ‘this is no
personal contest between you and me. Two systems of principles on the
subject of government divide our fellow-citizens into two parties. With
one of these you concur, and I with the other. As we have been longer on
the public stage than most of those now living, our names happen to be
more generally known. One of these parties, therefore, has put your name
at its head, the other mine. Were we both to die to-day, to-morrow two
other names would be in the place of ours, without any change in the
motion of the machine. Its motion is from its principle, not from you
or myself.’ ‘I believe you are right,’ said he, ‘that we are but passive
instruments, and should not suffer this matter to affect our personal
dispositions.’ But he did not long retain this just view of the
subject. I have always believed that the thousand calumnies which
the federalists, in bitterness of heart, and mortification at their
ejection, daily invented against me, were carried to him by their busy
intriguers, and made some impression. When the election between Burr and
myself was kept in suspense by the federalists, and they were meditating
to place the President of the Senate at the head of the government, I
called on Mr. Adams with a view to have this desperate measure prevented
by his negative. He grew warm in an instant, and said with a vehemence
he had not used towards me before, ‘Sir, the event of the election is
within your own power. You have only to say you will do justice to
the public creditors, maintain the navy, and not disturb those holding
offices, and the government will instantly be put into your hands. We
know it is the wish of the people it should be so.’ ‘Mr. Adams,’ said I,
‘I know not what part of my conduct, in either public or private life,
can have authorized a doubt of my fidelity to the public engagements.
I say, however, I will not come into the government by capitulation. I
will not enter on it, but in perfect freedom to follow the dictates
of my own judgment.’ I had before given the same answer to the same
intimation from Gouverneur Morris. ‘Then,’ said he, ‘things must take
their course.’ I turned the conversation to something else, and soon
took my leave. It was the first time in our lives we had ever parted
with any thing like dissatisfaction. And then followed those scenes of
midnight appointment, which have been condemned by all men. The last day
of his political power, the last hours, and even beyond the midnight,
were employed in filling all offices and especially permanent ones, with
the bitterest federalists, and providing for me the alternative, either
to execute the government by my enemies, whose study it would be
to thwart and defeat all my measures, or to incur the odium of such
numerous removals from office, as might bear me down. A little time and
reflection effaced in my mind this temporary dissatisfaction with
Mr. Adams, and restored me to that just estimate of his virtues and
passions, which a long acquaintance had enabled me to fix. And my first
wish became that of making his retirement easy by any means in my power;
for it was understood he was not rich. I suggested to some republican
members of the delegation from his State, the giving him, either
directly or indirectly, an office, the most lucrative in that State,
and then offered to be resigned, if they thought he would not deem it
affrontive. They were of opinion he would take great offence at the
offer; and, moreover, that the body of republicans would consider such
a step in the outset, as auguring very ill of the course I meant to
pursue. I dropped the idea, therefore, but did not cease to wish for
some opportunity of renewing our friendly understanding.
Two or three years after, having had the misfortune to lose a daughter,
between whom and Mrs. Adams there had been a considerable attachment,
she made it the occasion of writing me a letter, in which, with the
tenderest expressions of concern at this event, she carefully avoided a
single one of friendship towards myself, and even concluded it with
the wishes ‘of her who once took pleasure in subscribing herself your
friend, Abigail Adams.’ Unpromising as was the complexion of this
letter, I determined to make an effort towards removing the clouds from
between us. This brought on a correspondence which I now enclose for
your perusal, after which be so good as to return it to me, as I have
never communicated it to any mortal breathing, before. I send it to you,
to convince you I have not been wanting either in the desire, or the
endeavor to remove this misunderstanding. Indeed, I thought it highly
disgraceful to us both, as indicating minds not sufficiently elevated to
prevent a public competition from affecting our personal friendship. I
soon found from the correspondence that conciliation was desperate,
and yielding to an intimation in her last letter, I ceased from further
explanation. I have the same good opinion of Mr. Adams which I ever had.
I know him to be an honest man, an able one with his pen, and he was a
powerful advocate on the floor of Congress. He has been alienated from
me, by belief in the lying suggestions contrived for electioneering
purposes, that I perhaps mixed in the activity and intrigues of the
occasion. My most intimate friends can testify that I was perfectly
passive. They would sometimes, indeed, tell me what was going on; but
no man ever heard me take part in such conversations; and none ever
misrepresented Mr. Adams in my presence without my asserting his just
character. With very confidential persons I have doubtless disapproved
of the principles and practices of his administration. This was
unavoidable. But never with those with whom it could do him any injury.
Decency would have required this conduct from me, if disposition had
not: and I am satisfied Mr. Adams’s conduct was equally honorable
towards me. But I think it part of his character to suspect foul play
in those of whom he is jealous, and not easily to relinquish his
suspicions.
I have gone, my dear friend, into these details, that you might know
every thing which had passed between us, might be fully possessed of
the state of facts and dispositions, and judge for yourself whether they
admit a revival of that friendly intercourse for which you are so kindly
solicitous. I shall certainly not be wanting in any thing on my part
which may second your efforts; which will be the easier with me,
inasmuch as I do not entertain a sentiment of Mr. Adams, the expression
of which could give him reasonable offence. And I submit the whole to
yourself, with the assurance, that whatever be the issue, my friendship
and respect for yourself will remain unaltered and unalterable.
Th: Jefferson.
LETTER XCV.--TO M. DESTUTT TRACY, January 26, 1811
TO M. DESTUTT TRACY.
Monticello, January 26, 1811.
Sir,
The length of time your favor of June the 12th, 1809, was on its way
to me, and my absence from home the greater part of the autumn, delayed
very much the pleasure which awaited me of reading the packet which
accompanied it. I cannot express to you the satisfaction which I
received from its perusal. I had, with the world, deemed Montesquieu’s
a work of much merit; but saw in it, with every thinking man, so much of
paradox, of false principle, and misapplied fact, as to render its value
equivocal on the whole. Williams and others had nibbled only at
its errors. A radical correction of them, therefore, was a great
desideratum. This want is now supplied, and with a depth of thought,
precision; of idea, of language, and of logic, which will force
conviction into every mind. I declare to you, Sir, in the spirit of
truth and sincerity, that I consider it the most precious gift the
present age has received. But what would it have been, had the author,
or would the author, take up the whole scheme of Montesquieu’s work, and
following the correct analysis he has here developed, fill up all its
parts according to his sound views of them. Montesquieu’s celebrity
would be but a small portion of that which would immortalize the author.
And with whom? With the rational and high-minded spirits of the present
and all future ages. With those whose approbation is both incitement
and reward to virtue and ambition. Is then the hope desperate? To what
object can the occupation of his future life be devoted so usefully to
the world, so splendidly to himself? But I must leave to others who have
higher claims on his attention, to press these considerations.
My situation, far in the interior of the country, was not favorable to
the object of getting this work translated and printed. Philadelphia is
the least distant of the great towns of our States, where there exists
any enterprise in this way; and it was not till the spring following
the receipt of your letter, that I obtained an arrangement for its
execution. The translation is just now completed. The sheets came to me
by post, from time to time, for revisal; but not being accompanied by
the original, I could not judge of verbal accuracies. I think, however,
it is substantially correct, without being an adequate representation
of the excellences of the original; as indeed no translation can be. I
found it impossible to give it the appearance of an original composition
in our language. I therefore think it best to divert inquiries after the
author towards a quarter where he will not be found; and with this view,
propose to prefix the prefatory epistle now enclosed. As soon as a copy
of the work can be had, I will send it to you by duplicate. The secret
of the author will be faithfully preserved during his and my joint
lives; and those into whose hands my papers will fall at my death will
be equally worthy of confidence. When the death of the author, or his
living consent shall permit the world to know their benefactor, both
his and my papers will furnish the evidence. In the mean time, the many
important truths the works so solidly establishes, will, I hope, make it
the political rudiment of the young, and manual of our older citizens.