but be gratified by the assurance it expresses, that my aid in the
councils of our government would increase the public confidence in them;
because it admits an inference that they have approved of the course
pursued, when I heretofore bore a part in those councils. I profess,
too, so much of the Roman principle, as to deem it honorable for the
general of yesterday to act as a corporal to-day, if his services can be
useful to his country; holding that to be false pride, which postpones
the public good to any private or personal considerations. But I am
past service. The hand of age is upon me. The decay of bodily faculties
apprizes me that those of the mind cannot be unimpaired, had I not still
better proofs. Every year counts by increased debility, and departing
faculties keep the score. The last year it was the sight, this it is the
hearing, the next something else will be going, until all is gone.
Of all this I was sensible before I left Washington, and probably my
fellow-laborers saw it before I did. The decay of memory was obvious:
it is now become distressing. But the mind, too, is weakened. When I
was young, mathematics was the passion of my life. The same passion has
returned upon me, but with unequal powers. Processes which I then read
off with the facility of common discourse, now cost me labor, and time,
and slow investigation. When I offered this, therefore, as one of the
reasons deciding my retirement from office, it was offered in sincerity
and a consciousness of its truth. And I think it a great blessing that
I retain understanding enough to be sensible how much of it I have lost,
and to avoid exposing myself as a spectacle for the pity of my friends;
that I have surmounted the difficult point of knowing when to retire. As
a compensation for faculties departed, nature gives me good health, and
a perfect resignation to the laws of decay which she has prescribed to
all the forms and combinations of matter.
The detestable treason of Hull has, indeed, excited a deep anxiety
in all breasts. The depression was in the first moment gloomy and
portentous. But it has been succeeded by a revived animation, and a
determination to meet the occurrence with increased efforts; and I have
so much confidence in the vigorous minds and bodies of our countrymen,
as to be fearless as to the final issue. The treachery of Hull, like
that of Arnold, cannot be matter of blame on our government. His
character, as an officer of skill and bravery, was established on the
trials of the last war, and no previous act of his life had led to doubt
his fidelity. Whether the Head of the war department is equal to his
charge, I am not qualified to decide. I knew him only as a pleasant,
gentlemanly man in society; and the indecision of his character rather
added to the amenity of his conversation. But when translated from
the colloquial circle to the great stage of national concerns, and the
direction of the extensive operations of war, whether he has been able
to seize at one glance the long line of defenceless border presented by
our enemy, the masses of strength which we hold on different points of
it, the facility this gave us of attacking him, on the same day, on
all his points, from the extremity of the lakes to the neighborhood
of Quebec, and the perfect indifference with which this last place,
impregnable as it is, might be left in the hands of the enemy to fall
of itself; whether, I say, he could see and prepare vigorously for
all this, or merely wrapped himself in the cloak of cold defence, I
am uninformed. I clearly think with you on the competence of Monroe
to embrace great views of action. The decision of his character, his
enterprise, firmness, industry, and unceasing vigilance, would, I
believe, secure, as I am sure they would merit, the public confidence,
and give us all the success which our means can accomplish. If our
operations have suffered or languished from any want of energy in the
present head which directs them, I have so much confidence in the wisdom
and conscientious integrity of Mr. Madison, as to be satisfied, that,
however torturing to his feelings, he will fulfil his duty to the public
and to his own reputation, by making the necessary change. Perhaps he
may be preparing it while we are talking about it: for of all these
things I am uninformed. I fear that Hull’s surrender has been more than
the mere loss of a year to us. Besides bringing on us the whole mass of
savage nations, whom fear and not affection had kept in quiet, there is
danger that in giving time to an enemy who can send reinforcements of
regulars faster than we can raise them, they may strengthen Canada and
Halifax beyond the assailment of our lax and divided powers. Perhaps,
however, the patriotic efforts from Kentucky and Ohio, by recalling
the British force to its upper posts, may yet give time to Dearborn to
strike a blow below. Effectual possession of the river from Montreal to
the Chaudiere, which is practicable, would give us the upper country
at our leisure, and close for ever the scenes of the tomahawk and
scalping-knife.
But these things are for others to plan and achieve. The only succor
from the old, must lie in their prayers. These I offer up with sincere
devotion; and in my concern for the great public, I do not overlook my
friends, but supplicate for them, as I do for yourself, a long course of
freedom, happiness, and prosperity.
Th: Jefferson.
LETTER CVI.--TO MR. MELISH, January 13, 1813
TO MR. MELISH.
Monticello, January 13, 1813.
Dear Sir,
I received duly your favor of December the 15th, and with it the copies
of your map and travels, for which be pleased to accept my thanks. The
book I have read with extreme satisfaction and information. As to the
western States, particularly, it has greatly edified me; for of the
actual condition of that interesting portion of our country, I had not
an adequate idea. I feel myself now as familiar with it as with the
condition of the maritime States. I had no conception that manufactures
had made such progress there, and particularly of the number of carding
and spinning machines dispersed through the whole country. We are
but beginning here to have them in our private families. Small
spinning-jennies of from half a dozen to twenty spindles, will soon,
however, make their way into the humblest cottages, as well as the
richest houses; and nothing is more certain, than that the coarse and
middling clothing for our families, will for ever hereafter continue to
be made within ourselves. I have hitherto myself depended entirely on
foreign manufactures: but I have now thirty-five spindles a going, a
hand carding-machine, and looms with the flying shuttle, for the supply
of my own farms, which will never be relinquished in my time. The
continuance of the war will fix the habit generally, and out of the
evils of impressment and of the orders of council, a great blessing
for us will grow. I have not formerly been an advocate for great
manufactories. I doubted whether our labor, employed in agriculture,
and aided by the spontaneous energies of the earth, would not procure
us more than we could make ourselves of other necessaries. But other
considerations entering into the question, have settled my doubts.
The candor with which you have viewed the manners and condition of our
citizens, is so unlike the narrow prejudices of the French and English
travellers preceding you, who, considering each the manners and habits
of their own people as the only orthodox, have viewed every thing
differing from that test as boorish and barbarous, that your work will
be read here extensively, and operate great good.
Amidst this mass of approbation which is given to every other part of
the work, there is a single sentiment which I cannot help wishing to
bring to what I think the correct one; and, on a point so interesting,
I value your opinion too highly not to ambition its concurrence with
my own. Stating in volume first, page sixty-third, the principle of
difference between the two great political parties here, you conclude
it to be, ‘whether the controlling power shall be vested in this or that
set of men.’ That each party endeavors to get into the administration of
the government, and to exclude the other from power, is true, and may
be stated as a motive of action: but this is only secondary; the primary
motive being a real and radical difference of political principle. I
sincerely wish our differences were but personally who should govern
and that the principles of our constitution were those of both parties.
Unfortunately, it is otherwise; and the question of preference between
monarchy and republicanism, which has so long divided mankind elsewhere,
threatens a permanent division here.
Among that section of our citizens called federalists, there are three
shades of opinion. Distinguishing between the leaders and people who
compose it, the leaders consider the English constitution as a model of
perfection, some, with a correction of its vices, others, with all its
corruptions and abuses. This last was Alexander Hamilton’s opinion,
which others, as well as myself, have often heard him declare, and that
a correction of what are called its vices, would render the English
an impracticable government.. This government they wished to have
established here, and only accepted and held fast, at first, to the
present constitution, as a stepping-stone to the final establishment of
their favorite model. This party has therefore always clung to England,
as their prototype, and great auxiliary in promoting and effecting this
change. A weighty minority, however, of these leaders, considering the
voluntary conversion of our government into a monarchy as too distant,
if not desperate, wish to break off from our Union its eastern fragment,
as being, in truth, the hot-bed of American monarchism, with a view to a
commencement of their favorite government, from whence the other States
may gangrene by degrees, and the whole be thus brought finally to the
desired point. For Massachusetts, the prime mover in this enterprise, is
the last State in the Union to mean a final separation, as being of all
the most dependant on the others. Not raising bread for the sustenance
her own inhabitants, not having a stick of timber for the construction
of vessels, her principal occupation, nor an article to export in them,
where would she be, excluded from the ports of the other States, and
thrown into dependance on England, her direct and natural, but now
insidious, rival? At the head of this minority is what is called the
Essex Junto of Massachusetts. But the majority of these leaders do not
aim at separation. In this they adhere to the known principle of
General Hamilton, never, under any views, to break the Union. Anglomany,
monarchy, and separation, then, are the principles of the Essex
federalists; Anglomany and monarchy, those of the Hamiltonians,
and Anglomany alone, that of the portion among the people who call
themselves federalists. These last are as good republicans as the
brethren whom they oppose, and differ from them only in the devotion
to England and hatred of France, which they have imbibed from their
leaders. The moment that these leaders should avowedly propose a
separation of the Union, or the establishment of regal government, their
popular adherents would quit them to a man, and join the republican
standard; and the partisans of this change, even in Massachusetts, would
thus find themselves an army of officers without a soldier.
The party called republican is steadily for the support of the present
constitution. They obtained, at its commencement, all the amendments to
it they desired. These reconciled them to it perfectly, and if they have
any ulterior view, it is only, perhaps, to popularize it further,
by shortening the Senatorial term, and devising a process for the
responsibility of judges, more practicable than that of impeachment.
They esteem the people of England and France equally, and equally detest
the governing powers of both.
This I verily believe, after an intimacy of forty years with the public
councils and characters, is a true statement of the grounds on which
they are at present divided, and that it is not merely an ambition for
power. An honest man can feel no pleasure in the exercise of power over
his fellow-citizens. And considering as the only offices of power those
conferred by the people directly, that is to say, the executive and
legislative functions of the General and State governments, the common
refusal of these, and multiplied resignations, are proofs sufficient
that power is not alluring to pure minds, and is not, with them, the
primary principle of contest. This is my belief of it; it is that
on which I have acted; and had it been a mere contest who should
be permitted to administer the government according to its genuine
republican principles, there has never been a moment of my life, in
which I should not have relinquished for it the enjoyments of my family,
my farm, my friends, and books.
You expected to discover the difference of our party principles in
General Washington’s Valedictory, and my Inaugural Address. Not at all.
General Washington did not harbor one principle of federalism. He was
neither an Angloman, a monarchist, nor a separatist. He sincerely wished
the people to have as much self-government as they were competent to
exercise themselves. The only point in which he and I ever differed
in opinion, was, that I had more confidence than he had in the natural
integrity and discretion of the people, and in the safety and extent to
which they might trust themselves with a control over their government.
He has asseverated to me a thousand times his determination that the
existing government should have a fair trial, and that in support of
it he would spend the last drop of his blood. He did this the more
repeatedly, because he knew General Hamilton’s political bias, and
my apprehensions from it. It is a mere calumny, therefore, in the
monarchists, to associate General Washington with their principles.
But that may have happened in this case which has been often seen in
ordinary cases, that, by often repeating an untruth, men come to
believe it themselves. It is a mere artifice in this party, to bolster
themselves up on the revered name of that first of our worthies. If
I have dwelt longer on this subject than was necessary, it proves the
estimation in which I hold your ultimate opinions, and my desire of
placing the subject truly before them. In so doing, I am certain I risk
no use of the communication which may draw me into contention before the
public. Tranquillity is the _summum bonum_ of a _Septagénaire_.
To return to the merits of your work; I consider it as so lively a
picture of the real state of our country, that if I can possibly obtain
opportunities of conveyance, I propose to send a copy to a friend in
France, and another to one in Italy, who, I know, will translate
and circulate it as an antidote to the misrepresentations of former
travellers. But whatever effect my profession of political faith may
have on your general opinion, a part of my object will be obtained, if
it satisfies you as to the principles of my own action, and of the high
respect and consideration with which I tender you my salutations.
Th: Jefferson.
LETTER CVII.--TO MADAME LA BARONNE DE STAEL-HOLSTEIN, May 24, 1818
TO MADAME LA BARONNE DE STAEL-HOLSTEIN.
United States of America,
May 24, 1818.
I received with great pleasure, my dear Madam and friend, your letter
of November the 10th, from Stockholm, and am sincerely gratified by the
occasion it gives me of expressing to you the sentiments of high respect
and esteem which I entertain for you. It recalls to my remembrance a
happy portion of my life, passed in your native city; then the seat
of the most amiable and polished society of the world, and of which
yourself and your venerable father were such distinguished members. But
of what scenes has it since been the theatre, and with what havoc has
it overspread the earth! Robespierre met the fate, and his memory
the execration, he so justly merited. The rich were his victims, and
perished by thousands. It is by millions that Bonaparte destroys
the poor, and he is eulogized and deified by the sycophants--even of
science. These merit more than the mere oblivion to which they will
be consigned; and the day will come when a just posterity will give to
their hero the only pre-eminence he has earned, that of having been the
greatest of the destroyers of the human race. What year of his military
life has not consigned a million of human beings to death, to poverty,
and wretchedness? What field in Europe may not raise a monument of the
murders, the burnings, the desolations, the famines, and miseries, it
has witnessed from him! And all this to acquire a reputation, which
Cartouche attained with less injury to mankind, of being fearless of God
or man.
To complete and universalize the desolation of the globe, it has been
the will of Providence to raise up, at the same time, a tyrant as
unprincipled and as overwhelming, for the ocean. Not in the poor maniac
George, but in his government and nation. Bonaparte will die, and his
tyrannies with him. But a nation never dies. The English government and
its piratical principles and practices, have no fixed term of duration.
Europe feels, and is writhing under the scorpion whips of Bonaparte. We
are assailed by those of England. The one continent thus placed under
the gripe of England, and the other of Bonaparte, each has to grapple
with the enemy immediately pressing on itself. We must extinguish the
fire kindled in our own house, and leave to our friends beyond the water
that which is consuming theirs. It was not till England had taken one
thousand of our ships, and impressed into her service more than six
thousand of our citizens; till she had declared, by the proclamation of
her Prince Regent, that she would not repeal her aggressive orders as to
us, until Bonaparte should have repealed his as to all nations; till her
minister, in formal conference with ours, declared, that no proposition
for protecting our seamen from being impressed, under color of taking
their own, was practicable or admissible; that, the door to justice and
to all amicable arrangement being closed, and negotiation become both
desperate and dishonorable, we concluded that the war she had been for
years waging against us, might as well become a war on both sides. She
takes fewer vessels from us since the declaration of war than before,
because they venture more cautiously; and we now make full reprisals
where before we made none. England is, in principle, the enemy of all
maritime nations, as Bonaparte is of the continental; and I place in
the same line of insult to the human understanding, the pretension
of conquering the ocean, to establish continental rights, as that of
conquering the continent, to restore maritime rights. No, my dear Madam;
the object of England is the permanent dominion of the ocean, and the
monopoly of the trade of the world. To secure this, she must keep a
larger fleet than her own resources will maintain. The resources of
other nations, then, must be impressed to supply the deficiency of her
own. This is sufficiently developed and evidenced by her successive
strides towards the usurpation of the sea. Mark them, from her first war
after William Pitt, the little, came into her administration. She first
forbade to neutrals all trade with her enemies in time of war, which
they had not in time of peace. This deprived them of their trade from
port to port of the same nation. Then she forbade them to trade from
the port of one nation to that of any other at war with her, although a
right fully exercised in time of peace. Next, instead of taking vessels
only entering a blockaded port, she took them over the whole ocean, if
destined to that port, although ignorant of the blockade, and without
intention to violate it. Then she took them returning from that port,
as if infected by previous infraction of blockade. Then came her paper
blockades, by which she might shut up the whole world without sending
a ship to sea, except to take all those sailing on it, as they must, of
course, be bound to some port. And these were followed by her orders of
council, forbidding every nation to go to the port of any other, without
coming first to some port of Great Britain, there paying a tribute to
her, regulated by the cargo, and taking from her a license to proceed to
the port of destination; which operation the vessel was to repeat with
the return cargo on its way home. According to these orders, we could
not send a vessel from St. Mary’s to St. Augustine, distant six hour’s
sail, on our own coast, without crossing the Atlantic four times, twice
with the outward cargo, and twice with the inward. She found this
too daring and outrageous for a single step, retracted as to certain
articles of commerce, but left it in force as to others which constitute
important branches of our exports. And finally, that her views may no
longer rest on inference, in a recent debate, her minister declared in
open parliament, that the object of the present war is a monopoly of
commerce.
In some of these atrocities, France kept pace with her fully in
speculative wrong, which her impotence only shortened in practical
execution. This was called retaliation by both; each charging the other
with the initiation of the outrage. As if two combatants might retaliate
on an innocent bystander, the blows they received from each other. To
make war on both would have been ridiculous. In order, therefore, to
single out an enemy, we offered to both, that if either would revoke
its hostile decrees, and the other should refuse, we would interdict all
intercourse whatever with that other; which would be war of course, as
being an avowed departure from neutrality. France accepted the offer,
and revoked her decrees as to us. England not only refused, but declared
by a solemn proclamation of her Prince Regent, that she would not revoke
her orders even as to us, until those of France should be annulled as to
the whole world. We thereon declared war, and with abundant additional
cause.
In the mean time, an examination before parliament of the ruinous
effects of these orders on her own manufacturers, exposing them to the
nation and to the world, their Prince issued a palinodial proclamation,
suspending the orders on certain conditions, but claiming to renew them
at pleasure, as a matter of right. Even this might have prevented the
war, if done and known here before its declaration. But the sword being
once drawn, the expense of arming incurred, and hostilities in full
course, it would have been unwise to discontinue them, until effectual
provision should be agreed to by England, for protecting our citizens on
the high seas from impressment by her naval commanders, through, error,
voluntary or involuntary; the fact being notorious, that these officers,
entering our ships at sea under pretext of searching for their seamen,
(which they have no right to do by the law or usage of nations, which
they neither do, nor ever did, as to any other nation but ours, and
which no nation ever before pretended to do in any case), entering
our ships, I say, under pretext of searching for and taking out their
seamen, they took ours, native as well as naturalized, knowing them to
be ours, merely because they wanted them; insomuch, that no American
could safely cross the ocean, or venture to pass by sea from one to
another of our own ports. It is not long since they impressed at sea two
nephews of General Washington, returning from Europe, and put them,
as common seamen, under the ordinary discipline of their ships of war.
There are certainly other wrongs to be settled between England and us;
but of a minor character, and such as a proper spirit of conciliation on
both sides would not permit to continue them at war. The sword, however,
can never again be sheathed, until the personal safety of an American
on the ocean, among the most important and most vital of the rights we
possess, is completely provided for.