power to give little satisfaction as to its inquiries. Dr. Franklin had
many political enemies, as every character must, which, with decision
enough to have opinions, has energy and talent to give them effect on
the feelings of the adversary opinion. These enmities were chiefly in
Pennsylvania and Massachusetts. In the former, they were merely of
the proprietary party. In the latter, they did not commence till the
Revolution, and then sprung chiefly from personal animosities, which,
spreading by little and little, became at length of some extent. Dr.
Lee was his principal calumniator, a man of much malignity, who, besides
enlisting his whole family in the same hostility, was enabled, as the
agent of Massachusetts with the British government, to infuse it into
that State with considerable effect. Mr. Izard, the Doctor’s enemy
also, but from a pecuniary transaction, never countenanced these charges
against him. Mr. Jay, Silas Deane, Mr. Laurens, his colleagues also,
ever maintained towards him unlimited confidence and respect. That he
would have waived the formal recognition of our independence, I never
heard on any authority worthy notice. As to the fisheries, England was
urgent to retain them exclusively, France neutral, and I believe, that
had they been ultimately made a _sine qua non_, our commissioners (Mr.
Adams excepted) would have relinquished them, rather than have broken
off the treaty. To Mr. Adams’s perseverance alone, on that point, I
have always understood we were indebted for their reservation. As to the
charge of subservience to France, besides the evidence of his friendly
colleagues before named, two years of my own service with him at Paris,
daily visits, and the most friendly and confidential conversations,
convince me it had not a shadow of foundation. He possessed the
confidence of that government in the highest degree, insomuch, that
it may truly be said, that they were more under his influence, than
he under theirs. The fact is, that his temper was so amiable and
conciliatory, his conduct so rational, never urging impossibilities, or
even things unreasonably inconvenient to them, in short, so moderate
and attentive to their difficulties, as well as our own, that what his
enemies called subserviency, I saw was only that reasonable disposition,
which, sensible that advantages are not all to be on one side, yielding
what is just and liberal, is the more certain of obtaining liberality
and justice. Mutual confidence produces, of course, mutual influence,
and this was all which subsisted between Dr. Franklin and the government
of France.
I state a few anecdotes of Dr. Franklin, within my own knowledge, too
much in detail for the scale of Delaplaine’s work, but which may find a
cadre in some of the more particular views you contemplate. My health is
in a great measure restored, and our family join with me in affectionate
recollections and assurances of respect.
Th: Jefferson.
LETTER CXLVI.--TO M. DE NEUVILLE, December 13, 1818
TO M. DE NEUVILLE.
Monticello, December 13, 1818.
I thank your Excellency for the notice with which your letters favor me,
of the liberation of France from the occupation of the allied powers. To
no one, not a native, will it give more pleasure. In the desolation of
Europe, to gratify the atrocious caprices of Bonaparte, France sinned
much: but she has suffered more than retaliation. Once relieved from
the incubus of her late oppression, she will rise like a giant from
her slumbers. Her soil and climate, her arts and eminent science, her
central position and free constitution, will soon make her greater than
she ever was. And I am a false prophet if she does not, at some future
day, remind of her sufferings those who have inflicted them the most
eagerly. I hope, however, she will be quiet for the present, and risk
no new troubles. Her constitution, as now amended, gives as much of
self-government as perhaps she can yet bear, and will give more, when
the habits of order shall have prepared her to receive more. Besides the
gratitude which every American owes her, as our sole ally during the
war of independence, I am additionally affectioned by the friendships
I contracted there, by the good dispositions I witnessed, and by the
courtesies I received.
I rejoice, as a moralist, at the prospect of a reduction of the duties
on wine, by our national legislature. It is an error to view a tax on
that liquor as merely a tax on the rich. It is a prohibition of its use
to the middling class of our citizens, and a condemnation of them to
the poison of whiskey, which is desolating their houses. No nation is
drunken where wine is cheap; and none sober, where the dearness of wine
substitutes ardent spirits as the common beverage. It is, in truth, the
only antidote to the bane of whiskey. Fix but the duty at the rate of
other merchandise, and we can drink wine here as cheap as we do grog:
and who will not prefer it? Its extended use will carry health and
comfort to a much enlarged circle. Every one in easy circumstances (as
the bulk of our citizens are) will prefer it to the poison to which they
are now driven by their government. And the treasury itself will find
that a penny a piece from a dozen, is more than a groat from a single
one. This reformation, however, will require time. Our merchants know
nothing of the infinite variety of cheap and good wines to be had in
Europe; and particularly in France, in Italy, and the Grecian islands:
as they know little, also, of the variety of excellent manufactures and
comforts to be had any where out of England. Nor will these things be
known, nor of course called for here, until the native merchants of
those countries, to whom they are known, shall bring them forward,
exhibit, and vend them at the moderate profits they can afford. This
alone will procure them familiarity with us, and the preference they
merit in competition with corresponding articles now in use.
Our family renew with pleasure their recollections of your kind visit
to Monticello, and join me in tendering sincere assurances of the
gratification it afforded us, and of our great esteem and respectful
consideration.
Th: Jefferson.
LETTER CXLVII.--TO DOCTOR VINE UTLEY, March 21, 1819
TO DOCTOR VINE UTLEY.
Monticello, March 21, 1819.
Sir,
Your letter of February the 18th came to hand on the 1st instant; and
the request of the history of my physical habits would have puzzled me
not a little, had it not been for the model with which you accompanied
it, of Doctor Rush’s answer to a similar inquiry. I live so much like
other people, that I might refer to ordinary life as the history of my
own. Like my friend the Doctor, I have lived temperately, eating little
animal food, and that not as an aliment, so much as a condiment for the
vegetables, which constitute my principal diet. I double, however, the
Doctor’s glass and a half of wine, and even treble it with a friend;
but halve its effect by drinking the weak wines only. The ardent wines I
cannot drink, nor do I use ardent spirits in any form. Malt liquors
and cider are my table drinks, and my breakfast, like that also of
my friend, is of tea and coffee. I have been blest with organs of
digestion, which accept and concoct, without ever murmuring, whatever
the palate chooses to consign to them, and I have not yet lost a tooth
by age. I was a hard student until I entered on the business of life,
the duties of which leave no idle time to those disposed to fulfil
them; and now, retired, and at the age of seventy-six, I am again a hard
student. Indeed my fondness for reading and study revolts me from the
drudgery of letter-writing. And a stiff wrist, the consequence of an
early dislocation, makes writing both slow and painful. I am not so
regular in my sleep as the Doctor says he was, devoting to it from
five to eight hours, according as my company or the book I am reading
interests me; and I never go to bed without an hour, or half hour’s
previous reading of something moral, whereon to ruminate in the
intervals of sleep. But whether I retire to bed early or late, I rise
with the sun. I use spectacles at night, but not necessarily in the
day, unless in reading small print. My hearing is distinct in particular
conversation, but confused when several voices cross each other, which
unfits me for the society of the table. I have been more fortunate than
my friend in the article of health. So free from catarrhs that I have
not had one (in the breast, I mean) on an average of eight or ten years
through life. I ascribe this exemption partly to the habit of bathing my
feet in cold water every morning for sixty years past. A fever of more
than twenty-four hours I have not had above two or three times in my
life. A periodical headache has afflicted me occasionally, once, perhaps,
in six or eight years, for two or three weeks at a time, which seems
now to have left me; and, except on a late occasion of indisposition, I
enjoy good health; too feeble, indeed, to walk much, but riding without
fatigue six or eight miles a day, and sometimes thirty or forty. I may
end these egotisms, therefore, as I began, by saying that my life has
been so much like that of other people, that I might say with Horace,
to every one, ‘_Nomine mutato, narratur fabula de te_.’ I must not end,
however, without due thanks for the kind sentiments of regard you are
so good as to express towards myself; and with my acknowledgments for
these, be pleased to accept the assurances of my respect and esteem.
Th: Jefferson.
LETTER CXLVIII.--TO JOHN ADAMS, July 9, 1819
TO JOHN ADAMS.
Monticello, July 9, 1819.
Dear Sir,
I am in debt to you for your letters of May the 21st, 27th, and June
the 22nd. The first, delivered me by Mr. Greenwood, gave me the
gratification of his acquaintance; and a gratification it always is, to
be made acquainted with gentlemen of candor, worth, and information, as
I found Mr. Greenwood to be. That, on the subject of Mr. Samuel Adams
Wells, shall not be forgotten in time and place, when it can be used to
his advantage.
But what has attracted my peculiar notice, is the paper from Mecklenburg
county, of North Carolina, published in the Essex Register, which you
were so kind as to enclose in your last, of June the 22nd. And you
seem to think it genuine. I believe it spurious. I deem it to be a very
unjustifiable quiz, like that of the volcano, so minutely related to us
as having broken out in North Carolina, some half dozen years ago,
in that part of the country, and perhaps in that very county of
Mecklenburg, for I do not remember its precise locality. If this paper
be really taken from the Raleigh Register, as quoted, I wonder it should
have escaped Ritchie, who culls what is good from every paper, as the
bee from every flower; and the National Intelligencer, too, which is
edited by a North-Carolinian: and that the fire should blaze out all at
once in Essex, one thousand miles from where the spark is said to
have fallen. But if really taken from the Raleigh Register, who is the
narrator, and is the name subscribed real, or is it as fictitious as the
paper itself? It appeals, too, to an original book, which is burnt, to
Mr. Alexander, who is dead, to a joint letter from Caswell, Hughes, and
Hooper, all dead, to a copy sent to the dead Caswell, and another sent
to Doctor Williamson, now probably dead, whose memory did not recollect,
in the history he has written of North Carolina, this gigantic step
of its county of Mecklenburg. Horry, too, is silent in his history of
Marion, whose scene of action was the country bordering On Mecklenburg.
Ramsay, Marshall, Jones, Girardin, Wirt, historians of the adjacent
States, all silent. When Mr. Henry’s resolutions, far short of
independence, flew like lightning through every paper, and kindled both
sides of the Atlantic, this flaming declaration of the same date, of the
independence of Mecklenburg county, of North Carolina, absolving it from
the British allegiance, and abjuring all political connection with that
nation, although sent to Congress, too, is never heard of. It is not
known even a twelvemonth after, when a similar proposition is first made
in that body. Armed with this bold example, would not you have addressed
our timid brethren in peals of thunder, on their tardy fears? Would
not every advocate of independence have rung the glories of Mecklenburg
county, in North Carolina, in the ears of the doubting Dickinson and
others, who hung so heavily on us? Yet the example of independent
Mecklenburg county, in North Carolina, was never once quoted. The paper
speaks, too, of the continued exertions of their delegation (Caswell,
Hooper, Hughes,) ‘in the cause of liberty and independence.’ Now, you
remember as well as I do, that we had not a greater tory in Congress
than Hooper; that Hughes was very wavering, sometimes firm, sometimes
feeble, according as the day was clear or cloudy; that Caswell, indeed,
was a good whig, and kept these gentlemen to the notch, while he was
present; but that he left us soon, and their line of conduct became then
uncertain until Penn came, who fixed Hughes, and the vote of the State.
I must not be understood as suggesting any doubtfulness in the State
of North Carolina. No State was more fixed or forward. Nor do I affirm,
positively, that this paper is a fabrication: because the proof of a
negative can only be presumptive. But I shall believe it such until
positive and solemn proof of its authenticity shall be produced. And if
the name of McKnitt be real, and not a part of the fabrication, it needs
a vindication by the production of such proof. For the present, I must
be an unbeliever in the apocryphal gospel.
I am glad to learn that Mr. Ticknor has safely returned to his friends;
but should have been much more pleased had he accepted the Professorship
in our University, which we should have offered him in form. Mr.
Bowditch, too, refuses us; so fascinating is the _vinculum_ of the
_dulce natale solum_. Our wish is to procure natives, where they can be
found, like these gentlemen, of the first order of acquirement in
their respective lines; but preferring foreigners of the first order to
natives of the second, we shall certainly have to go, for several of our
Professors, to countries more advanced in science than we are.
I set out within three or four days for my other home, the distance
of which, and its cross mails, are great impediments to epistolary
communications. I shall remain there about two months; and there,
here, and every where, I am and shall always be, affectionately and
respectfully yours.
Th: Jefferson.
LETTER CXLIX.--TO JUDGE ROANE, September 6,1819
TO JUDGE ROANE.
Poplar Forest, September 6,1819.
Dear Sir,
I had read in the Enquirer, and with great approbation, the pieces
signed Hampden, and have read them again with redoubled approbation in
the copies you have been so kind as to send me. I subscribe to every
tittle of them. They contain the true principles of the revolution
of 1800, for that was as real a revolution in the principles of our
government as that of 1776 was in its form; not effected indeed by the
sword, as that, but by the rational and peaceable instrument of reform,
the suffrage of the people. The nation declared its will by dismissing
functionaries of one principle, and electing those of another, in the
two branches, executive and legislative, submitted to their election.
Over the judiciary department, the constitution had deprived them of
their control. That, therefore, has continued the reprobated system: and
although new matter has been occasionally incorporated into the old, yet
the leaven of the old mass seems to assimilate to itself the new; and
after twenty years’ confirmation of the federated system by the voice
of the nation, declared through the medium of elections, we find the
judiciary, on every occasion, still driving us into consolidation.
In denying the right they usurp of exclusively explaining the
constitution, I go further than you do, if I understand rightly your
quotation from the Federalist, of an opinion that ‘the judiciary is the
last resort in relation _to the other departments of the government_,
but not in relation to the rights of the parties to the compact under
which the judiciary is derived.’ If this opinion be sound, then indeed
is our constitution a complete _felo de se_. For intending to establish
three departments, co-ordinate and independent, that they might check
and balance one another, it has given, according to this opinion, to one
of them alone, the right to prescribe rules for the government of the
others, and to that one too, which is unelected by, and independent of
the nation. For experience has already shown that the impeachment it
has provided is not even a scare-crow; that such opinions as the one
you combat, sent cautiously out, as you observe also, by detachment, not
belonging to the case often, but sought for out of it, as if to rally
the public opinion beforehand to their views, and to indicate the line
they are to walk in, have been so quietly passed over as never to have
excited animadversion, even in a speech of any one of the body entrusted
with impeachment. The constitution, on this hypothesis, is a mere thing
of wax in the hands of the judiciary, which they may twist and shape
into any form they please. It should be remembered, as an axiom of
eternal truth in politics, that whatever power in any government is
independent, is absolute also; in theory only, at first, while the
spirit of the people is up, but in practice, as fast as that relaxes.
Independence can be trusted no where but with the people in mass. They
are inherently independent of all but moral law. My construction of
the constitution is very different from that you quote. It is that each
department is truly independent of the others, and has an equal right to
decide for itself what is the meaning of the constitution in the cases
submitted to its action; and especially, where it is to act ultimately
and without appeal. I will explain myself by examples, which, having
occurred while I was in office, are better known to me, and the
principles which governed them.
A legislature had passed the sedition-law. The federal courts
had subjected certain individuals to its penalties, of fine and
imprisonment. On coming into office, I released these individuals by the
power of pardon committed to executive discretion, which could never be
more properly exercised than where citizens were suffering without the
authority of law, or, which was equivalent, under a law unauthorized
by the constitution, and therefore null. In the case of Marbury and
Madison, the federal judges declared that commissions, signed and sealed
by the President, were valid, although not delivered. I deemed delivery
essential to complete a deed, which, as long as it remains in the hands
of the party, is as yet no deed, it is in posse only, but not in
esse, and I withheld delivery of the commissions. They cannot issue a
mandamus* to the President or legislature, or to any of their officers.
When the British treaty of 180- arrived, without any provision against
the impressment of our seamen, I determined not to ratify it. The Senate
thought I should ask their advice. I thought that would be a mockery of
them, when I was predetermined against following it, should they advise
its ratification. The constitution had made their advice necessary to
confirm a treaty, but not to reject it. This has been blamed by some;
but I have never doubted its soundness. In the cases of two persons,
antenati, under exactly similar circumstances, the federal court had
determined that one of them (Duane) was not a citizen; the House of
Representatives nevertheless determined that the other (Smith of South
Carolina) was a citizen, and admitted him to his seat in their body.
Duane was a republican, and Smith a federalist, and these decisions were
during the federal ascendancy.
* The constitution controlling the common law in this
particular.
These are examples of my position, that each of the three departments
has equally the right to decide for itself what is its duty under the
constitution, without any regard to what the others may have decided
for themselves under a similar question. But you intimate a wish that my
opinion should be known on this subject. No, dear Sir, I withdraw
from all contests of opinion, and resign every thing cheerfully to
the generation now in place. They are wiser than we were, and their
successors will be wiser than they, from the progressive advance of
science. Tranquillity is the _summum bonum_ of age. I wish, therefore,
to offend no man’s opinions, nor to draw disquieting animadversions
on my own. While duty required it, I met opposition with a firm and
fearless step. But, loving mankind in my individual relations with
them, I pray to be permitted to depart in their peace; and like the
superannuated soldier, ‘_quadragenis stipendiis emeritis_’ to hang my
arms on the post. I have unwisely, I fear, embarked in an enterprise of
great public concern, but not to be accomplished within my term, without
their liberal and prompt support. A severe illness the last year and
another from which I am just emerged, admonish me that repetitions may
be expected, against which a declining frame cannot long bear up. I am
anxious therefore to get our University so far advanced as may encourage
the public to persevere to its final accomplishment. That secured, I
shall sing my _Nunc demittas_. I hope your labors will be long continued
in the spirit in which they have always been exercised, in maintenance
of those principles on which I verily believe the future happiness of
our country essentially depends. I salute you with affectionate and
great respect.
Th: Jefferson.
LETTER CL.--TO JOHN ADAMS, December 10, 1819
TO JOHN ADAMS.
Monticello, December 10, 1819.
Dear Sir,
I have to acknowledge the receipt of your favor of November the 23rd.
The banks, bankrupt-law, manufacturers, Spanish treaty, are nothing.
These are occurrences which, like waves in a storm, will pass under
the ship. But the Missouri question is a breaker on which we lose the
Missouri country by revolt, and what more, God only knows. From the
battle of Bunker’s Hill to the treaty of Paris, we never had so ominous
a question. It even damps the joy with which I hear of your high health,
and welcomes to me the consequences of my want of it. I thank God that I
shall not live to witness its issue. _Sed hæc hactenus_.
I have been amusing myself latterly with reading the voluminous letters
of Cicero. They certainly breathe the purest effusions of an exalted
patriot, while the parricide Caesar is lost in odious contrast. When the
enthusiasm, however, kindled by Cicero’s pen and principles, subsides
into cool reflection, I ask myself, What was that government which the
virtues of Cicero were so zealous to restore, and the ambition of Caesar
to subvert? And if Caesar had been as virtuous as he was daring and
sagacious, what could he, even in the plenitude of his usurped power,
have done to lead his fellow-citizens into good government? I do not say
to restore it, because they never had it, from the rape of the Sabines
to the ravages of the Caesars. If their people indeed had been, like
ourselves, enlightened, peaceable, and really free, the answer would be
obvious. ‘Restore independence to all your foreign conquests, relieve
Italy from the government of the rabble of Rome, consult it as a
nation entitled to self-government, and do its will.’ But steeped in
corruption, vice, and venality, as the whole nation was, (and nobody
had done more than Caesar to corrupt it,) what could even Cicero, Cato,
Brutus, have done, had it been referred to them to establish a
good government for their country? They had no ideas of government
themselves, but of their degenerate Senate, nor the people of liberty,
but of the factious opposition of their tribunes. They had afterwards
their Tituses, their Trajans, and Antoninuses, who had the will to make
them happy, and the power to mould their government into a good and
permanent form. But it would seem as if they could not see their way
clearly to do it. No government can continue good, but under the control
of the people; and their people were so demoralized and depraved, as to
be incapable of exercising a wholesome control. Their reformation then
was to be taken up _ab incunabulis_. Their minds were to be informed by
education what is right and what wrong; to be encouraged in habits of
virtue, and deterred from those of vice, by the dread of punishments,
proportioned indeed, but irremissible; in all cases, to follow truth
as the only safe guide, and to eschew error, which bewilders us in one
false consequence after another, in endless succession. These are
the inculcations necessary to render the people a sure basis for the
structure of order and good government. But this would have been an
operation of a generation or two, at least, within which period would
have succeeded many Neros and Commoduses, who would have quashed the
whole process. I confess then, I can neither see what Cicero, Cato, and
Brutus, united and uncontrolled, could have devised to lead their people
into good government, nor how this enigma can be solved, nor how further
shown why it has been the fate of that delightful country never to have
known, to this day, and through a course of five and twenty hundred
years, the history of which we possess, one single day of free and
rational government. Your intimacy with their history, ancient, middle,
and modern, your familiarity with the improvements in the science of
government at this time, will enable you, if any body, to go back with
our principles and opinions to the limes of Cicero, Cato, and Brutus,
and tell us by what process these great and virtuous men could have led
so unenlightened and vitiated a people into freedom and good government,
_et eris mihi magnus Apollo. Cura ut valeas, et tibi persuadeas
carissimum te mihi esse_.
Th: Jefferson.
LETTER CLI.--TO WILLIAM SHORT, April 13, 1820