sensible of the kindness of the motives which suggested the caution it
recommended. But I believe what I have done is the only thing I could
have done with honor or conscience. Mr. Giles requested me to state a
fact which he knew himself, and of which he knew me to be possessed.
What use he intended to make of it I knew not, nor had I a right to
inquire, or to indicate any suspicion that he would make an unfair one.
That was his concern, not mine, and his character was sufficient to
sustain the responsibility for it. I knew, too, that if an uncandid use
should be made of it, there would be found those who would so prove it.
Independent of the terms of intimate friendship on which Mr. Giles and
myself have ever lived together, the world’s respect entitled him to
the justice of my testimony to any truth he might call for; and how that
testimony should connect me with whatever he may do or write hereafter,
and with his whole career, as you apprehend, is not understood by me.
With his personal controversies I have nothing to do. I never took any
part in them, or in those of any other person. Add to this, that the
statement I have given him on the subject of Mr. Adams, is entirely
honorable to him in every sentiment and fact it contains. There is not
a word in it which I would wish to recall. It is one which Mr. Adams
himself might willingly quote, did he need to quote any thing. It was
simply, that during the continuance of the embargo, Mr. Adams informed
me of a combination (without naming any one concerned in it), which had
for its object a severance of the Union, for a time at least. That Mr.
Adams and myself not being then in the habit of mutual consultation and
confidence, I considered it as the stronger proof of the purity of his
patriotism, which was able to lift him above all party passions when
the safety of his country was endangered. Nor have I kept this honorable
fact to myself. During the late canvass, particularly, I had more
than one occasion to quote it to persons who were expressing opinions
respecting him, of which this was a direct corrective. I have never
entertained for Mr. Adams any but sentiments of esteem and respect; and
if we have not thought alike on political subjects, I yet never doubted
the honesty of his opinions, of which the letter in question, if
published, will be an additional proof. Still, I recognise your
friendship in suggesting a review of it, and am glad of this, as of
every other occasion, of repeating to you the assurance of my constant
attachment and respect.
Th: Jefferson.
LETTER CXCI.--TO JAMES MADISON, February 17,1826
TO JAMES MADISON.
Monticello, February 17,1826.
Dear Sir,
Immediately on seeing the overwhelming vote of the House of
Representatives against giving us another dollar, I rode to the
University and desired Mr. Brockenbrough to engage in nothing new, to
stop every thing on hand which could be done without, and to employ all
his force and funds in finishing the circular room for the books, and
the Anatomical theatre. These cannot be done without; and for these
and all our debts, we have funds enough. But I think it prudent then to
clear the decks thoroughly, to see how we shall stand, and what we
may accomplish further. In the mean time, there have arrived for us in
different ports of the United States, ten boxes of books, from Paris,
seven from London, and from Germany I know not how many; in all,
perhaps, about twenty-five boxes. Not one of these can be opened until
the book-room is completely finished, and all the shelves ready to
receive their charge directly from the boxes, as they shall be opened.
This cannot be till May. I hear nothing definitive of the three thousand
dollars duty of which we are asking the remission from Congress. In the
selection of our Law Professor, we must be rigorously attentive to his
political principles. You will recollect, that, before the Revolution,
Coke Littleton was the universal elementary book of law students, and
a sounder whig never wrote, nor of profounder learning in the orthodox
doctrines of the British constitution, or in what were called English
liberties. You remember also that our lawyers were then all whigs. But
when his black-letter text, and uncouth but cunning learning got out of
fashion, and the honied Mansfieldism of Blackstone became the students’
hornbook, from that moment, that profession (the nursery of our
Congress) began to slide into toryism, and nearly all the young brood
of lawyers now are of that hue. They suppose themselves, indeed, to be
whigs, because they no longer know what whigism or republicanism means.
It is in our seminary that that vestal flame is to be kept alive; it is
thence it is to spread anew over our own and the sister States. If we
are true and vigilant in our trust, within a dozen or twenty years
a majority of our own legislature will be from our school, and many
disciples will have carried its doctrines home with them to their
several States, and will have leavened thus the whole mass. New York has
taken strong ground in vindication of the constitution; South Carolina
had already done the same. Although I was against our leading, I am
equally against omitting to follow in the same line, and backing them
firmly; and i hope that yourself or some other will mark out the track
to be pursued by us.
You will have seen in the newspapers some proceedings in the
legislature, which have cost me much mortification. My own debts had
become considerable, but not beyond the effect of some lopping of
property, which would have been little felt, when our friend ---- gave
me the coup de grace. Ever since that I have been paying twelve hundred
dollars a year interest on his debt, which, with my own, was absorbing
so much of my annual income, as that the maintenance of my family was
making deep and rapid inroads on my capital, and had already done it.
Still, sales at a fair price would leave me competently provided. Had
crops and prices for several years been such as to maintain a steady
competition of substantial bidders at market, all would have been safe.
But the long succession of years of stunted crops, of reduced prices,
the general prostration of the farming business, under levies for the
support of manufacturers, &c, with the calamitous fluctuations of
value in our paper medium, have kept agriculture in a state of abject
depression, which has peopled the western States by silently breaking
up those on the Atlantic, and glutted the land-market, while it drew off
its bidders. In such a state of things, property has lost its character
of being a resource for debts. Highland in Bedford, which, in the days
of our plethory, sold readily for from fifty to one hundred dollars the
acre (and such sales were many then), would not now sell for more than
from ten to twenty dollars, or one quarter or one fifth of its former
price. Reflecting on these things, the practice occurred to me, of
selling, on fair valuation, and by way of lottery, often resorted to
before the Revolution to effect large sales, and still in constant usage
in every State for individual as well as corporation purposes. If it is
permitted in my case, my lands here alone, with the mills, he, will pay
every thing, and leave me Monticello and a farm free. If refused, I must
sell every thing here, perhaps considerably in Bedford, move thither
with my family, where I have not even a log hut to put my head into, and
whether ground for burial, will depend on the depredations which,
under the form of sales, shall have been committed on my property. The
question then with me was, _Utrum horum?_ But why afflict you with
these details? Indeed, I cannot tell, unless pains are lessened by
communication with a friend. The friendship which has subsisted between
us, now half a century, and the harmony of our political principles and
pursuits, have been sources of constant happiness to me through that
long period. And if I remove beyond the reach of attentions to the
University, or beyond the bourne of life itself, as I soon must, it is a
comfort to leave that institution under your care, and an assurance
that it will not be wanting. It has also been a great solace to me, to
believe that you are engaged in vindicating to posterity the course we
have pursued for preserving to them, in all their purity, the blessings
of self-government, which we had assisted too in acquiring for them. If
ever the earth has beheld a system of administration conducted with a
single and steadfast eye to the general interest and happiness of those
committed to it, one which, protected by truth, can never know reproach,
it is that to which our lives have been devoted. To myself you have
been a pillar of support through life. Take care of me when dead, and be
assured that I shall leave with you my last affections.
Th: Jefferson.
[The following paper it is deemed proper to insert, as well
because of the explanation it contains of the reasons which
led the author to ask permission of the legislature to sell
his property by lottery, as of its otherwise interesting
character.]
THOUGHTS ON LOTTERIES.
It is a common idea that games of chance are immoral. But what is
chance? Nothing happens in this world without a cause. If we know the
cause, we do not call it chance; but if we do not know it, we say it was
produced by chance. If we see a loaded die turn its lightest side up,
we know the cause, and that it is not an effect of chance; but whatever
side an unloaded die turns up, not knowing the cause, we say it is
the effect of chance. Yet the morality of a thing cannot depend on our
knowledge or ignorance of its cause. Not knowing why a particular side
of an unloaded die turns up, cannot make the act of throwing it, or of
betting on it, immoral. If we consider games of chance immoral, then
every pursuit of human industry is immoral, for there is not a single
one that is not subject to chance; not one wherein you do not risk a
loss for the chance of some gain. The navigator, for example, risks
his ship in the hope (if she is not lost in the voyage) of gaining an
advantageous freight. The merchant risks his cargo to gain a better
price for it. A landholder builds a house on the risk of indemnifying
himself by a rent. The hunter hazards his time and trouble in the hope
of killing game. In all these pursuits, you stake some one thing against
another which you hope to win. But the greatest of all gamblers is the
farmer. He risks the seed he puts into the ground, the rent he pays for
the ground itself, the year’s labor on it, and the wear and tear of his
cattle and gear, to win a crop, which the chances of too much or too
little rain, and general uncertainties of weather, insects, waste, &c.
often make a total or partial loss. These, then, are games of chance.
Yet so far from being immoral, they are indispensable to the existence
of man, and every one has a natural right to choose for his pursuit such
one of them as he thinks most likely to furnish him subsistence. Almost
all these pursuits of chance produce something useful to society. But
there are some which produce nothing, and endanger the well-being of the
individuals engaged in them, or of others depending on them. Such are
games with cards, dice, billiards, &c. And although the pursuit of them
is a matter of natural right, yet society, perceiving the irresistible
bent of some of its members to pursue them, and the ruin produced by
them to the families depending on these individuals, consider it as a
case of insanity, _quoad hoc_, step in to protect the family and the
party himself, as in other cases of insanity, infancy, imbecility, &c,
and suppress the pursuit altogether, and the natural right of following
it. There are some other games of chance, useful on certain occasions,
and injurious only when carried beyond their useful bounds. Such are
insurances, lotteries, raffles, &tc. These they do not suppress, but
take their regulation under their own discretion. The insurance of
ships on voyages is a vocation of chance, yet useful, and the right to
exercise it therefore is left free. So of houses against fire, doubtful
debts, the continuance of a particular life, and similar cases. Money is
wanting for an useful undertaking, as a school, &c. for which a direct
tax would be disapproved. It is raised therefore by a lottery, wherein
the tax is laid on the willing only, that is to say, on those who can
risk the price of a ticket without sensible injury, for the possibility
of a higher prize. An article of property, insusceptible of division at
all, or not without great diminution of its worth, is sometimes of so
large value as that no purchaser can be found, while the owner owes
debts, has no other means of payment, and his creditors no other chance
of obtaining it, but by its sale at a full and fair price. The lottery
is here a salutary instrument for disposing of it, where many run small
risks for the chance of obtaining a high prize. In this way, the great
estate of the late Colonel Byrd (in 1756) was made competent to pay his
debts, which, had the whole been brought into the market at once, would
have overdone the demand, would have sold at half or quarter the value,
and sacrificed the creditors, half or three fourths of whom would have
lost their debts. This method of selling was formerly very much resorted
to, until it was thought to nourish too much a spirit of hazard. The
legislature Were therefore induced, not to suppress it altogether, but
to take it under their own special regulation. This they did, for the
first time, by their act of 1769, c.17., before which time, every person
exercised the right freely; and since which time, it is made unlawful
but when approved and authorized by a special act of the legislature.
Since then, this right of sale, by way of lottery, has been exercised
only under the discretion of the legislature. Let us examine the
purposes for which they have allowed it in practice, not looking beyond
the date of our independence.
1. It was for a long time an item of the standing revenue of the State.
1813. c. 1. § 3 An act imposing taxes for the support of government, and
c. 2. § 10.
1814. Dec. c. 1. § 3. 1814. Feb. c. 1. § 3. 1818. c. 1. § 1. 1819. c. 1.
1820. c. 1.
This then is a declaration by the nation, that an act was not immoral,
of which they were in the habitual use themselves as a part of the
regular means of supporting the government: the tax on the vender of
tickets was their share of the profits, and if their share was innocent,
his could not be criminal.
2. It has been abundantly permitted, to raise money by lottery for the
purposes of schools; and in this, as in many other cases, the lottery
has been permitted to retain a part of the money (generally from ten to
fifteen per cent.) for the use to which the lottery has been applied.
So that while the adventurers paid one hundred dollars for tickets, they
received back eighty-five or ninety dollars only, in the form of prizes,
the remaining ten or fifteen being the tax levied on them, with their
own consent. Examples are.
1784. c. 34. Authorizing the city of Williamsburg to raise £2000 for a
grammar school.
1789. c. 68. For Randolph Academy, £1000.
1789. c. 73. For Fauquier Academy, £500. c. 74. For the Fredericksburg
Academy, £4000.
1790. c. 46. For the Transylvania Seminary, £500. For the Southampton
Academy, £300.
1796. c. 82. For the New London Academy.
1803. c. 49. For the Fredericksburg Charity School. c» 50. For finishing
the Strasburg Seminary. c. 58. For William and Mary College. c. 62. For
the Bannister Academy.c. 79. For the Belfield Academy. c. 82. For the
Petersburg Academy.
1804. c. 40. For the Hotsprings Seminary. c. 76. For the Stevensburg
Academy. c.100. For William and Mary College.
1805. c. 24. For the Rumford Academy.
1812. c. 10. For the Literary Fund. To sell the privilege for $30,000
annually, for seven years.
1816. c. 80. For Norfolk Academy, $12,000. Norfolk Female Society,
$2000. Lancastrian School, $6000.
3. The next object of lotteries has been rivers.
1790. c. 46. For a bridge between Gosport and Portsmouth, £400.
1796. c. 83. For clearing Roanoke River.
1804. c. 62. For clearing Quantico Creek.
1805. c. 42. For a toll-bridge over Cheat River.
1816. c. 49. For the Dismal Swamp, $50,000.
4. For roads.
1790. c. 46. For a road to Warminster, £200. For cutting a road from
Rockfish gap to Scott’s and Nicholas’s landing, £400. 1796. c. 85. To
repair certain roads.
1803. c. 60. For improving roads to Snigger’s and Ashby’s gaps. c. 61.
For opening a road to Brock’s gap. c. 65. For opening a road from the
town of Monroe to Sweet Springs and Lewisburg.
* The acts not being at hand, the sums allowed are not known.
1803. c. 71. For improving the road to Brock’s gap.
1805. c. 5. For improving the road to Clarksburg. c. 26. For opening a
road from Monongalia Glades to Fishing Creek.
1813. c. 44. For opening a road from Thornton’s gap.
5. Lotteries for the benefit of counties.
1796. c. 78. To authorize a lottery in the county of Shenandoah. c. 84.
To authorize a lottery in the county of Gloucester.
6. Lotteries for the benefit of towns.
1782. c. 31. Richmond, for a bridge over Shockoe, amount not limited.
1789. c. 75. Alexandria, to pave its streets, £1500.
1790. c. 46. do. do. £5000. 1796. c. 79. Norfolk, one or more lotteries
authorized., c. 81. Petersburg, a lottery authorized.
1803. c. 12. Woodstock, a lottery authorized c. 48. Fredericksburg,
for improving its main street. c. 73. Harrisonburg, for improving its
streets.
7. Lotteries for religious congregations.
1785. c.lll. Completing a church in Winchester. For rebuilding a church
in the parish of Elizabeth River.
1791. c. 69. For the benefit of the Episcopal society.
1790. c. 46. For building a church in Warminster, £200. in Halifax,
£200. in Alexandria, £500. in Petersburg, £750. in Shepherdstown, £250.
8. Lotteries for private societies.
1790. c. 46. For the Amicable Society in Richmond, £1000.
1791. c. 70. For building a Freemason’s hall in Charlotte, £750.
9. Lotteries for the benefit of private individuals. [To raise money for
them.]
1796. c. 80. For the sufferers by fire in the town of Lexington.
1781. c. 6. For completing titles under Byrd’s lottery.
1790. c. 46. To erect a paper-mill in Staunton, £300. To raise £2000 for
Nathaniel Twining.
1791. c. 13. To raise £4000 for William Tatham, to enable him to
complete his geographical work. To enable---------to complete a literary
work.*
* I found such an act, but not noting it at the time, I have not been
able to find it again. But there is such an one.
We have seen, then, that every vocation in life is subject to the
influence of chance; that so far from being rendered immoral by the
admixture of that ingredient, were they abandoned on that account, man
could no longer subsist; that, among them, every one has a natural
right to choose that which he thinks most likely to give him comfortable
subsistence; but that while the greater number of these pursuits are
productive of something which adds to the necessaries and comforts of
life, others again, such as cards, dice, &ic, are entirely unproductive,
doing good to none, injury to many, yet so easy, and so seducing in
practice to men of a certain constitution of mind, that they cannot
resist the temptation, be the consequences what they may; that in this
case, as in those of insanity, idiocy, infancy, &c, it is the duty of
society to take them under its protection, even against their own acts,
and to restrain their right of choice of these pursuits, by suppressing
them entirely; that there are others, as lotteries particularly, which,
although liable to chance also, are useful for many purposes, and are
therefore retained and placed under the discretion of the legislature,
to be permitted or refused according to the circumstances of every
special case, of which they are to judge: that between the years 1782
and 1820, a space of thirty-eight years only, we have observed seventy
case’s, where the permission of them has been found useful by the
legislature, some of which are in progress at this time. These cases
relate to the emolument of the whole State, to local benefits of
education, of navigation, of roads, of counties, towns, religious
assemblies, private societies, and of individuals under particular
circumstances which may claim indulgence or favor. The latter is the
case now submitted to the legislature, and the question is, whether the
individual soliciting their attention, or his situation, may merit
that degree of consideration, which will justify the legislature in
permitting him to avail himself of the mode of selling by lottery, for
the purpose of paying his debts.
That a fair price cannot be obtained by sale in the ordinary way, and
in the present depressed state of agricultural industry, is well known.
Lands in this State will not now sell for more than a third or fourth of
what they would have brought a few years ago, perhaps at the very time
of the contraction of the debts for which they are now to be sold.
The low price in foreign markets, for a series of years past, of
agricultural produce, of wheat generally, of tobacco most commonly, and
the accumulation of duties on the articles of consumption not produced
within our State, not only disable the farmer or planter from adding to
his farm by purchase, but reduce him to sell his own, and remove to the
western country, glutting the market he leave’s, while he lessens the
number of bidders. To be protected against this sacrifice is the object
of the present application, and whether the applicant has any particular
claim to this protection, is the present question.
Here the answer must be left to others. It is not for me to give it. I
may, however, more readily than others, suggest the offices in which I
have served. I came of age in 1764, and was soon put into the nomination
of justices of the county in which I live, and at the first election
following I became one of its representatives in the legislature.
I was thence sent to the old Congress.
Then employed two years, with Mr. Pendleton and Mr. Wythe, on the
revisal and reduction to a single code of the whole body of the British
statutes, the acts of our Assembly, and certain parts of the common law.
Then elected Governor.
Next to the legislature, and to Congress again.
Sent to Europe as Minister Plenipotentiary.
Appointed Secretary of State to the new government.
Elected Vice President, and
President.
And lastly, a Visitor and Rector of the University.
In these different offices, with scarcely any interval between them, I
have been in the public service now sixty-one years; and during the far
greater part of the time, in foreign countries or in other States. Every
one knows how inevitably a Virginia estate, goes to ruin, when the owner
is so far distant as to be unable to pay attention to it himself; and
the more especially, when the line of his employment is of a character
to abstract and alienate his mind entirely from the knowledge necessary
to good, and even to saving management.
If it were thought worth while to specify any particular services
rendered, I would refer to the specification of them made by the
legislature itself in their Farewell Address, on my retiring from
the Presidency, February, 1809. [This will be found in 2 Pleasant’s
Collection, page 144.] There is one, however, not therein specified, the
most important in its consequences, of any transaction in any portion
of my life; to wit, the head I personally made against the federal
principles and proceedings, during the administration of Mr. Adams.
Their usurpations and violations of the constitution at that period, and
their majority in both Houses of Congress, were so great, so decided,
and so daring, that after combating their aggressions, inch by inch,
without being able in the least to check their career, the republican
leaders thought it would be best for them to give up their useless
efforts there, go home, get into their respective legislatures, embody
whatever of resistance they could be formed into, and if ineffectual, to
perish there as in the last ditch. All, therefore, retired, leaving
Mr. Gallatin alone in the House of Representatives, and myself in the
Senate, where I then presided as Vice-President. Remaining at our posts,
and bidding defiance to the brow-beatings and insults by which they
endeavored to drive us off also, we kept the mass of republicans in
phalanx together, until the legislatures could be brought up to the
charge; and nothing on earth is more certain, than that if myself
particularly, placed by my office of Vice-President at the head of the
republicans, had given way and withdrawn from my post, the republicans
throughout the Union would have given up in despair, and the cause
would have been lost for ever. By holding on, we obtained time for the
legislatures to come up with their weight; and those of Virginia
and Kentucky particularly, but more especially the former, by their
celebrated resolutions, saved the constitution, at its last gasp. No
person who was not a witness of the scenes of that gloomy period, can
form any idea of the afflicting persecutions and personal indignities we
had to brook. They saved our country however. The spirits of the people
were so much subdued and reduced to despair by the X. Y. Z. imposture,
and other stratagems and machinations, that they would have sunk into
apathy and monarchy, as the only form of government which could maintain
itself.
If legislative services are worth mentioning, and the stamp of
liberality and equality, which was necessary to be impressed on our laws
in the first crisis of our birth as a nation, was of any value, they
will find that the leading and most important laws of that day were
prepared by myself, and carried chiefly by my efforts; supported,
indeed, by able and faithful coadjutors from the ranks of the House,
very effective as seconds, but who would not have taken the field as
leaders.
The prohibition of the further importation of slaves, was the first of
these measures in time.
This was followed by the abolition of entails, which broke up the
hereditary and high-handed aristocracy, which, by accumulating immense
masses of property in single lines of families, had divided our country
into two distinct orders, of nobles and plebeians.
But further to complete the equality among our citizens so essential to
the maintenance of republican government, it was necessary to abolish
the principle of primogeniture. I drew the law of descents, giving equal
inheritance to sons and daughters which made a part of the revised code.