even at that, you will soon be at the bottom of the loan-bag. We are an
agricultural nation. Such an one employs its sparings in the purchase or
improvement of land or stocks. The lendable money among them is chiefly
that of orphans and wards in the hands of executors and guardians, and
that which the farmer lays by till he has enough for the purchase in
view. In such a nation there is one and one only resource for loans,
sufficient to carry them through the expense of a war; and that will
always be sufficient, and in the power of an honest government, punctual
in the preservation of its faith. The fund I mean, is the mass of
circulating coin. Every one knows, that, although not literally, it is
nearly true, that every paper dollar emitted banishes a silver one from
the circulation. A nation, therefore, making its purchases and payments
with bills fitted for circulation, thrusts an equal sum of coin out
of circulation. This is equivalent to borrowing that sum, and yet the
vendor, receiving payment in a medium as effectual as coin for his
purchases or payments, has no claim to interest. And so the nation may
continue to issue its bills as far as its wants require, and the limits
of the circulation will admit. Those limits are understood to extend
with us, at present, to two hundred millions of dollars, a greater sum
than would be necessary for any war. But this, the only resource
which the government could command with certainty, the States have
unfortunately fooled away, nay corruptly alienated to swindlers and
shavers, under the cover of private banks. Say, too, as an additional
evil, that the disposable funds of individuals, to this great amount,
have thus been withdrawn from improvement and useful enterprise, and
employed in the useless, usurious, and demoralizing practices of bank
directors and their accomplices. In the war of 1755, our State availed
itself of this fund by issuing a paper money, bottomed on a specific tax
for its redemption, and, to insure its credit, bearing an interest of
five per cent. Within a very short time, not a bill of this emission was
to be found in circulation. It was locked up in the chests of executors,
guardians, widows, farmers, &tc. We then issued bills, bottomed on a
redeeming tax, but bearing no interest. These were readily received, and
never depreciated a single farthing. In the revolutionary war, the old
Congress and the States issued bills without interest, and without
tax. They occupied the channels of circulation very freely, till
those channels were overflowed by an excess beyond all the calls of
circulation. But although we have so improvidently suffered the field of
circulating medium to be filched from us by private individuals, yet I
think we may recover it in part, and even in the whole, if the States
will co-operate with us. If treasury bills are emitted on a tax
appropriated for their redemption in fifteen years, and (to insure
preference in the first moments of competition) bearing an interest of
six per cent., there is no one who would not take them in preference
to the bank-paper now afloat, on a principle of patriotism as well as
interest: and they would be withdrawn from circulation into private
hoards to a considerable amount. Their credit once established, others
might be emitted, bottomed also on a tax, but not bearing interest: and
if ever their credit faltered, open public loans, on which these bills
alone should be received as specie. These, operating as a sinking fund,
would reduce the quantity in circulation, so as to maintain that in an
equilibrium with specie. It is not easy to estimate the obstacles which,
in the beginning, we should encounter in ousting the banks from their
possession of the circulation: but a steady and judicious alternation of
emissions and loans, would reduce them in time. But while this is going
on, another measure should be pressed, to recover ultimately our right
to the circulation. The States should be applied to, to transfer
the right of issuing circulating paper to Congress exclusively, _in
perpetuum_, if possible, but during the war at least, with a saving of
charter rights. I believe that every State west and south of Connecticut
river, except Delaware, would immediately do it; and the others would
follow in time.
Congress would, of course, begin by obliging unchartered banks to wind
up their affairs within a short time, and the others as their charters
expired, forbidding the subsequent circulation of their paper. This they
would supply with their own, bottomed, every emission, on an adequate
tax, and bearing or not bearing interest, as the state of the public
pulse should indicate. Even in the non-complying States, these bills
would make their way, and supplant the unfunded paper of their banks,
by their solidity, by the universality of their currency, and by their
receivability for customs and taxes. It would be in their power, too, to
curtail those banks to the amount of their actual specie, by gathering
up their paper, and running it constantly on them. The national paper
might thus take place even in the non-complying States. In this way, I
am not without a hope, that this great, this sole resource for loans
in an agricultural country, might yet be recovered for the use of the
nation during war: and, if obtained in perpetuum, it would always be
sufficient to carry us through any war; provided, that, in the interval
between war and war, all the outstanding paper should be called in,
coin be permitted to flow in again, and to hold the field of circulation
until another war should require its yielding place again to the
national medium.
But it will be asked, are we to have no banks? Are merchants and
others to be deprived of the resource of short accommodations, found
so convenient? I answer, let us have banks: but let them be such as are
alone to be found in any country on earth, except Great Britain. There
is not a bank of discount on the continent of Europe (at least there was
not one when I was there), which offers any thing but cash in exchange
for discounted bills. No one has a natural right to the trade of a
money-lender, but he who has the money to lend. Let those then among us,
who have a monied capital, and who prefer employing it in loans rather
than otherwise, set up banks, and give cash or national bills for the
notes they discount. Perhaps, to encourage them, a larger interest than
is legal in the other cases might be allowed them, on the condition of
their lending for short periods only. It is from Great Britain we copy
the idea of giving paper in exchange for discounted bills: and while we
have derived from that country some good principles of government and
legislation, we unfortunately run into the most servile imitation of all
her practices, ruinous as they prove to her, and with the gulph yawning
before us into which those very practices are precipitating her. The
unlimited emission of bank-paper has banished all her specie, and is
now, by a depreciation acknowledged by her own statesmen, carrying her
rapidly to bankruptcy, as it did France, as it did us, and will do us
again, and every country permitting paper to be circulated, other than
that by public authority, rigorously limited to the just measure for
circulation. Private fortunes, in the present state of our circulation,
are at the mercy of those self-created money-lenders, and are prostrated
by the floods of nominal money with which their avarice deluges us.
He who lent his money to the public or to an individual, before the
institution of the United States bank, twenty years ago, when wheat was
well sold at a dollar the bushel, and receives now his nominal sum when
it sells at two dollars, is cheated of half his fortune: and by whom? By
the banks, which, since that, have thrown into circulation ten dollars
of their nominal money where there was one at that time.
Reflect, if you please, on these ideas, and use them or not as they
appear to merit. They comfort me in the belief, that they point out a
resource ample enough, without overwhelming war-taxes, for the expense
of the war, and possibly still recoverable; and that they hold up to
all future time a resource within ourselves, ever at the command of
government, and competent to any wars into which we may be forced. Nor
is it a slight object to equalize taxes through peace and war.
*****
Ever affectionately yours.
Th: Jefferson.
LETTER CXI.--TO JOHN ADAMS, June 21, 1813
TO JOHN ADAMS.
Monticello, June 21, 1813.
[Illustration: page201]
And I too, my dear Sir, like the wood-cutter of Ida, should doubt where
to begin, were I to enter the forest of opinions, discussions,
and contentions which have occurred in our day. I should say with
Theocritus,
[Illustration: page201a]
But I shall not do it. The _summum bonum_ with me is now truly
epicurean, ease of body and tranquillity of mind; and to these I wish
to consign my remaining days. Men have differed in opinion, and been
divided into parties by these opinions, from the first origin of
societies; and in all governments, where they have been permitted freely
to think and to speak. The same political parties which now agitate the
United States, have existed through all time. Whether the power of the
people, or that of the
[Illustration: page202]
should prevail, were questions which kept the States of Greece and Rome
in eternal convulsions; as they now schismatize every people whose minds
and mouths are not shut up by the gag of a despot. And in fact, the
terms of whig and tory belong to natural, as well as to civil
history. They denote the temper and constitution of mind of different
individuals. To come to our own country, and to the times when you and
I became first acquainted: we well remember the violent parties which
agitated the old Congress, and their bitter contests. There you and
I were together, and the Jays, and the Dickinsons, and other
anti-independents were arrayed against us. They cherished the monarchy
of England, and we the rights of our countrymen. When our present
government was in the mew, passing from Confederation to Union, how
bitter was the schism between the Feds and Antis. Here you and I were
together again. For although, for a moment, separated by the Atlantic
from the scene of action, I favored the opinion that nine States should
confirm the constitution, in order to secure it, and the others hold
off, until certain amendments, deemed favorable to freedom, should
be made. I rallied in the first instant to the wiser proposition of
Massachusetts, that all should confirm, and then all instruct their
delegates to urge those amendments. The amendments were made, and
all were reconciled to the government. But as soon as it was put into
motion, the line of division was again drawn. We broke into two parties,
each wishing to give the government a different direction; the one
to strengthen the most popular branch, the other the more permanent
branches, and to extend their permanence. Here you and I separated for
the first time: and as we had been longer than most others on the public
theatre, and our names therefore were more familiar to our countrymen,
the party which considered you as thinking with them, placed your
name at their head; the other, for the same reason, selected mine. But
neither decency nor inclination permitted us to become the advocates
of ourselves, or to take part personally in the violent contests which
followed. We suffered ourselves, as you so well expressed it, to be
passive subjects of public discussion. And these discussions, whether
relating to men, measures, or opinions, were conducted by the parties
with an animosity, a bitterness, and an indecency, which had never been
exceeded. All the resources of reason and of wrath were exhausted
by each party in support of its own, and to prostrate the adversary
opinions; one was upbraided with receiving the anti-federalists, the
other the old tories and refugees, into their bosom. Of this acrimony,
the public papers of the day exhibit ample testimony, in the debates
of Congress, of State legislatures, of stump-orators, in addresses,
answers, and newspaper essays; and to these, without question, may be
added the private correspondences of individuals; and the less guarded
in these, because not meant for the public eye, not restrained by the
respect due to that, but poured forth from the overflowings of the heart
into the bosom of a friend, as a momentary easement of our feelings.
In this way and in answers to addresses, you and I could indulge
ourselves. We have probably done it, sometimes with warmth, often with
prejudice, but always, as we believed, adhering to truth. I have not
examined my letters of that day. I have no stomach to revive the memory
of its feelings. But one of these letters, it seems, has got before the
public, by accident and infidelity, by the death of one friend to whom
it was written, and of his friend to whom it had been communicated,
and by the malice and treachery of a third person, of whom I had never
before heard, merely to make mischief, and in the same Satanic spirit,
in which the same enemy had intercepted and published, in 1776, your
letter animadverting on Dickinson’s character. How it happened that I
quoted you in my letter to Doctor Priestley, and for whom, and not for
yourself, the strictures were meant, has been explained to you in my
letter of the 15th, which had been committed to the post eight days
before I received yours of the 10th, 11th, and 14th. That gave you the
reference which these asked to the particular answer alluded to in the
one to Priestley. The renewal of these old discussions, my friend, would
be equally useless and irksome. To the volumes then written on these
subjects, human ingenuity can add nothing new, and the rather, as lapse
of time has obliterated many of the facts. And shall you and I, my Dear
Sir, at our age, like Priam of old, gird on the
[Illustration: page203]
Shall we, at our age, become the athletes of party, and exhibit
ourselves, as gladiators, in the arena of the newspapers? Nothing in the
universe could induce me to it. My mind has been long fixed to bow to
the judgment of the world, who will judge by my acts, and will never
take counsel from me as to what that judgment shall be. If your objects
and opinions have been misunderstood, if the measures and principles of
others have been wrongfully imputed to you, as I believe they have been,
that you should leave an explanation of them, would be an set of justice
to yourself. I will add, that it has been hoped that you would leave such
explanations as would place every saddle on its right horse, and replace
on the shoulders of others the burdens they shifted to yours.
But all this, my friend, is offered merely for your consideration and
judgment, without presuming to anticipate what you alone are qualified
to decide for yourself. I mean to express my own purpose only, and the
reflections which have led to it. To me, then, it appears, that there
have been differences of opinion and party differences, from the
first establishment of governments to the present day, and on the same
question which now divides our own country: that these will continue
through all future time: that every one takes his side in favor of
the many, or of the few, according to his constitution, and the
circumstances in which he is placed: that opinions, which are equally
honest on both sides, should not affect personal esteem or social
intercourse: that as we judge between the Claudii and the Gracchi, the
Wentworths and the Hampdens of past ages, so, of those among us whose
names may happen to be remembered for a while, the next generations
will judge, favorably or unfavorably, according to the complexion of
individual minds, and the side they shall themselves have taken: that
nothing new can be added by you or me to what has been said by others,
and will be said in every age in support of the conflicting opinions on
government: and that wisdom and duty dictate an humble resignation to
the verdict of our future peers. I doing this myself, I shall certainly
not suffer moot questions to affect the sentiments of sincere friendship
and respect, consecrated to you by so long a course of time, and of
which I now repeat sincere assurances,
Th: Jefferson.
LETTER CXII.--TO JOHN ADAMS, August 22, 1813
TO JOHN ADAMS.
Monticello, August 22, 1813.
Dear Sir,
Since my letter of June the 27th, I am in your debt for many; all of
which I have read with infinite delight. They open a wide field for
reflection, and offer subjects enough to occupy the mind and the pen
indefinitely. I must follow the good example you have set; and when
I have not time to take up every subject, take up a single one. Your
approbation of my outline to Dr. Priestley is a great gratification to
me; and I very much suspect that if thinking men would have the courage
to think for themselves, and to speak what they think, it would be found
they do not differ in religious opinions, as much as is supposed. I
remember to have heard Dr. Priestley say, that if all England would
candidly examine themselves, and confess, they would find that
Unitarianism was really the religion of all: and I observe a bill is now
depending in parliament for the relief of Anti-Trinitarians. It is too
late in the day for men of sincerity to pretend they believe in the
Platonic mysticisms that three are one, and one is three; and yet that
the one is not three, and the three are not one: to divide mankind by a
single letter into
[Illustration: page205]
But this constitutes the craft, the power, and the profit of the
priests. Sweep away their gossamer fabrics of factitious religion, and
they would catch no more flies. We should all then, like the Quakers,
live without an order of priests, moralize for ourselves, follow the
oracle of conscience, and say nothing about what no man can understand,
nor therefore believe; for I suppose belief to be the assent of the mind
to an intelligible proposition.
It is with great pleasure I can inform you, that Priestley finished the
comparative view of the doctrines of the philosophers of antiquity, and
of Jesus, before his death; and that it was printed soon after. And with
still greater pleasure, that I can have a copy of his work forwarded
from Philadelphia, by a correspondent there, and presented for your
acceptance, by the same mail which carries you this, or very soon after.
The branch of the work which the title announces, is executed with
learning and candor, as was every thing Priestley wrote: but perhaps a
little hastily; for he felt himself pressed by the hand of death. The
Abbe Batteux had, in fact, laid the foundation of this part in his
‘Causes Premieres’; with which he has given us the originals of Ocellus
and Timzeus, who first committed the doctrines of Pythagoras to writing:
and Enfield, to whom the Doctor refers, had done it more copiously. But
he has omitted the important branch, which, in your letter of August the
9th, you say you have never seen executed, a comparison of the morality
of the Old Testament with that of the New. And yet, no two things were
ever more unlike. I ought not to have asked him to give it. He dared
not. He would have been eaten alive by his intolerant brethren, the
Cannibal priests. And yet, this was really the most interesting branch
of the work.
Very soon after my letter to Doctor Priestley, the subject being still
in my mind, I had leisure, during an abstraction from business for a day
or two, while on the road, to think a little more on it, and to sketch
more fully than I had done to him, a syllabus of the matter which I
thought should enter into the work. I wrote it to Doctor Rush; and there
ended all my labor on the subject; himself and Doctor Priestley being
the only depositories of my secret. The fate of my letter to Priestley,
after his death, was a warning to me on that of Doctor Rush; and at my
request, his family were so kind as to quiet me by returning my original
letter and syllabus. By this you will be sensible how much interest I
take in keeping myself clear of religious disputes before the public;
and especially of seeing my syllabus disembowelled by the Aruspices of
the modern Paganism. Yet I enclose it to you with entire confidence,
free to be perused by yourself and Mrs. Adams, but by no one else; and
to be returned to me.
You are right in supposing, in one of yours, that I had not read much of
Priestley’s Predestination, his no-soul system, or his controversy with
Horsley. But I have read his Corruptions of Christianity, and Early
Opinions of Jesus, over and over again; and I rest on them, and
on Middleton’s writings, especially his letters from Rome, and to
Waterland, as the basis of my own faith. These writings have never been
answered, nor can be answered by quoting historical proofs, as they have
done. For these facts, therefore, I cling to their learning, so much
superior to my own.
I now fly off in a tangent to another subject. Marshall, in the first
volume of his history, chapter 3, p. 180, ascribes the petition to the
King, of 1774, (1 Journ. Cong. 67) to the pen of Richard Henry Lee. I
think myself certain, it was not written by him, as well from what I
recollect to have heard, as from the internal evidence of style. He
was loose, vague, frothy, rhetorical. He was a poorer writer than his
brother Arthur; and Arthur’s standing may be seen in his Monitor’s
Letters, to insure the sale of which, they took the precaution of
tacking to them a new edition of the Farmer’s Letters; like Mezentius,
who ‘_mortua jungebat corpora vivis_.’ You were of the committee, and
can tell me who wrote this petition; and who wrote the Address to the
Inhabitants of the Colonies, ib. 45. Of the papers of July 1775, I
recollect well that Mr. Dickinson drew the petition to the King, ib.
149; I think Robert R. Livingston drew the Address to the Inhabitants of
Great Britain, ib. 152. Am I right in this? And who drew the Address to
the People of Ireland, ib. 180? On these questions, I ask of your memory
to help mine. Ever and affectionately yours,
Th: Jefferson.
LETTER CXIII.--TO JOHN W. EPPES, November 6, 1813
TO JOHN W. EPPES.
Monticello, November 6, 1813.
Dear Sir,
I had not expected to have troubled you again on the subject of finance;
but since the date of my last, I have received from Mr. Law a letter
covering a memorial on that subject, which, from its tenor, I conjecture
must have been before Congress at their two last sessions. This paper
contains two propositions; the one for issuing treasury notes, bearing
interest, and to be circulated as money; the other for the establishment
of a national bank. The first was considered in my former letter; and
the second shall be the subject of the present.
The scheme is for Congress to establish a national bank, suppose of
thirty millions capital, of which they shall contribute ten millions in
new six per cent, stock, the States ten millions, and individuals ten
millions, one half of the two last contributions to be of similar stock,
for which the parties are to give cash to Congress: the whole, however,
to be under the exclusive management of the individual subscribers, who
are to name all the directors; neither Congress nor the States having
any power of interference in its administration. Discounts are to be
at five per cent., but the profits are expected to be seven per cent.
Congress then will be paying six per cent, on twenty millions, and
receiving seven per cent, on ten millions, being its third of the
institution: so that on the ten millions cash which they receive from
the States and individuals, they will, in fact, have to pay but five
per cent, interest. This is the bait. The charter is proposed to be for
forty or fifty years, and if any future augmentations should take place,
the individual proprietors are to have the privilege of being the sole
subscribers for that. Congress are further allowed to issue to the
amount of three millions of notes, bearing interest, which they are to
receive back in payment for lands at a premium of five or ten per
cent., or as subscriptions for canals, roads, and bridges, in which
undertakings they are, of course, to be engaged. This is a summary
of the scheme, as I understand it: but it is very possible I may
not understand it in all its parts, these schemes being always made
Unintelligible for the gulls who are to enter into them. The advantages
and disadvantages shall be noted promiscuously as they occur; leaving
out the speculation of canals, &c. which, being an episode only in the
scheme, may be omitted, to disentangle it as much as we can.
1. Congress are to receive five millions from the States (if they will
enter into this partnership, which few probably will), and five millions
from the individual subscribers, in exchange for ten millions of six per
cent, stock, one per cent, of which, however, they will make on their
ten millions of stock remaining in bank, and so reduce it, in effect, to
a loan of ten millions at five per cent, interest. This is good: but
2. They authorize this bank to throw into circulation ninety millions
of dollars, (three times the capital), which increases our circulating
medium fifty per cent., depreciates proportionably the present value
of the dollar, and raises the price of all future purchases in the same
proportion.