I do not believe you have read much of Priestley's "corruptions of

Christianity," his history of early opinions of Jesus Christ, his

predestination, his no-soul system, or his controversy with Horsley.

I have been a diligent student for many years in books whose titles

you have never seen. In Priestley's and Linsay's writings; in Farmer,

in Cappe, in Tucker's or Edwards searches; Light of Nature pursued;

in Edwards and Hopkins, and lately in Ezra Styles Ely; his reverend

and learned panegyrists, and his elegant and spirited opponents. I am

not wholly uninformed of the controversies in Germany, and the learned

researches of universities and professors, in which the sanctity of

the Bible and the inspiration of its authors are taken for granted, or

waived, or admitted, or not denied. I have also read Condorcet's Progress

of the Human Mind.

Now, what is all this to you? No more, than if I should tell you that

I read Dr. Clark, and Dr. Waterland, and Emlyn, and Leland's view or

review of the Deistical writers more than fifty years ago; which is a

literal truth. I blame you not for reading Euclid and Newton, Thucydides

and Theocrites; for I believe you will find as much entertainment and

instruction in them, as I have found in my theological and ecclesiastical

instructors; or even as I have found in a profound investigation of the

life, writings, and doctrines of Erastus, whose disciples were Milton,

Harrington, Selden, St. John, the Chief Justice, father of Bolingbroke,

and others, the choicest spirits of their age; or in Le Harpe's history

of the philosophy of the eighteenth century, or in Vander Kemp's vast

map of the causes of the revolutionary spirit in the same and preceding

centuries. These things are to me, at present, the marbles and nine-pins

of old age; I will not say the beads and prayer-books.

I agree with you, as far as you go, most cordially, and I think solidly.

How much farther I go, how much more I believe than you, I may explain

in a future letter. Thus much I will say at present, I have found so

many difficulties, that I am not astonished at your stopping where you

are; and so far from sentencing you to perdition, I hope soon to meet

you in another country.

JOHN ADAMS TO THOMAS JEFFERSON.

QUINCY, July 22, 1813.

DEAR SIR,--Dr. Priestley, in a letter to Mr. Linsey, Northumberland,

November 4, 1803, says:

"As you were pleased with my comparison of Socrates and Jesus, I have

begun to carry the same comparison to all the heathen moralists, and

I have all the books that I want for the purpose except Simplicius

and Arrian on Epictetus, and them I hope to get from a library in

Philadelphia; lest, however, I should fail there, I wish you or Mr.

Belsham would procure and send them from London. While I am capable

of anything I cannot be idle, and I do not know that I can do anything

better. This, too, is an undertaking that Mr. Jefferson recommends to me."

In another letter, dated Northumberland, January 16th, 1804, Dr. Priestley

says to Mr. Linsey:

"I have now finished and transcribed for the press, my comparison of the

Grecian philosophers with those of Revelation, and with more ease and

more to my own satisfaction than I expected They who liked my pamphlet

entitled, 'Socrates and Jesus compared,' will not, I flatter myself,

dislike this work. It has the same object and completes the scheme. It

has increased my own sense of the unspeakable value of revelation, and

must, I think, that of every person who will give due attention to the

subject."

I have now given you all that relates to yourself in Priestley's letters.

This was possibly and not improbably, the last letter this great, this

learned, indefatigable, most excellent and extraordinary man ever wrote,

for on the 4th of February, 1804, he was released from his labors and

sufferings. Peace, rest, joy and glory to his soul! For I believe he

had one, and one of the greatest.

I regret, oh how I lament that he did not live to publish this work!

It must exist in manuscript. Cooper must know something of it. Can you

learn from him where it is, and get it printed?

I hope you will still perform your promise to Doctor Rush.

If Priestley had lived, I should certainly have corresponded with him. His

friend Cooper, who, unfortunately for him and me and you, had as fatal

an influence over him as Hamilton had over Washington, and whose rash

hot head led Priestley into all his misfortunes and most of his errors

in conduct, could not have prevented explanations between Priestley and

me.

I should propose to him a thousand, a million questions. And no man

was more capable or better disposed to answer them candidly than Dr.

Priestley.

Scarcely anything that has happened to me in my curious life, has

made a deeper impression upon me than that such a learned, ingenious,

scientific and talented madcap as Cooper, could have influence enough

to make Priestley my enemy.

I will not yet communicate to you more than a specimen of the questions

I would have asked Priestley.

One is; Learned and scientific, Sir!--You have written largely about

matter and spirit, and have concluded there is no human soul. Will you

please to inform me what matter is? and what spirit is? Unless we know

the meaning of words, we cannot reason in or about words.

I shall never send you all my questions that I would put to Priestley,

because they are innumerable; but I may hereafter send you two or three.

I am, in perfect charity, your old friend.

JOHN ADAMS TO THOMAS JEFFERSON.

QUINCY, August 9, 1813.

I believe I told you in my last that I had given you all in Linsey's

memorial that interested you, but I was mistaken. In Priestley's letter

to Linsey, December 19th, 1803, I find this paragraph:

"With the work I am now composing, I go on much faster and better than

I expected, so that in two or three months, if my health continues as

it now is, I hope to have it ready for the press, though I shall hardly

proceed to print it till we have dispatched the notes.

"It is upon the same plan with that of Socrates and Jesus compared,

considering all the more distinguished of the Grecian sects of philosophy,

till the establishment of Christianity in the Roman empire. If you liked

that pamphlet, I flatter myself you will like this.

"I hope it is calculated to show, in a peculiarly striking light, the

great advantage of revelation, and that it will make an impression on

candid unbelievers if they will read.

"But I find few that will trouble themselves to read anything on the

subject, which, considering the great magnitude and interesting nature

of the subject, is a proof of a very improper state of mind, unworthy

of a rational being."

I send you this extract for several reasons. First, because you set him

upon this work. Secondly, because I wish you to endeavor to bring it to

light and get it printed. Thirdly, because I wish it may stimulate you

to pursue your own plan which you promised to Dr. Rush.

I have not seen any work which expressly compares the morality of the Old

Testament with that of the New, in all their branches, nor either with

that of the ancient philosophers. Comparisons with the Chinese, the East

Indians, the Africans, the West Indians, &c., would be more difficult;

with more ancient nations impossible. The documents are destroyed.

TO MR. ISAAC M'PHERSON.

MONTICELLO, August 13, 1813.

SIR,--Your letter of August 3d asking information on the subject of Mr.

Oliver Evans' exclusive right to the use of what he calls his Elevators,

Conveyers, and Hopper-boys, has been duly received. My wish to see new

inventions encouraged, and old ones brought again into useful notice,

has made me regret the circumstances which have followed the expiration

of his first patent. I did not expect the retrospection which has been

given to the reviving law. For although the second proviso seemed not

so clear as it ought to have been, yet it appeared susceptible of a

just construction; and the retrospective one being contrary to natural

right, it was understood to be a rule of law that where the words of a

statute admit of two constructions, the one just and the other unjust,

the former is to be given them. The first proviso takes care of those

who had lawfully used Evans' improvements under the first patent; the

second was meant for those who had lawfully erected and used them after

that patent expired, declaring they "should not be liable to damages

therefor." These words may indeed be restrained to uses already past, but

as there is parity of reason for those to come, there should be parity

of law. Every man should be protected in his lawful acts, and be certain

that no _ex post facto_ law shall punish or endamage him for them. But

he is endamaged, if forbidden to use a machine lawfully erected, at

considerable expense, unless he will pay a new and unexpected price for

it. The proviso says that he who erected and used lawfully should not

be liable to pay damages. But if the proviso had been omitted, would not

the law, construed by natural equity, have said the same thing. In truth

both provisos are useless. And shall useless provisos, inserted _pro

majori cautela_ only, authorize inferences against justice? The sentiment

that _ex post facto_ laws are against natural right, is so strong in the

United States, that few, if any, of the State constitutions have failed

to proscribe them. The federal constitution indeed interdicts them in

criminal cases only; but they are equally unjust in civil as in criminal

cases, and the omission of a caution which would have been right, does

not justify the doing what is wrong. Nor ought it to be presumed that

the legislature meant to use a phrase in an unjustifiable sense, if by

rules of construction it can be ever strained to what is just. The law

books abound with similar instances of the care the judges take of the

public integrity. Laws, moreover, abridging the natural right of the

citizen, should be restrained by rigorous constructions within their

narrowest limits.

Your letter, however, points to a much broader question, whether what

have received from Mr. Evans the new and proper name of Elevators, are of

his invention. Because, if they are not, his patent gives him no right to

obstruct others in the use of what they possessed before. I assume it is

a Lemma, that it is the invention of the machine itself, which is to give

a patent right, and not the application of it to any particular purpose,

of which it is susceptible. If one person invents a knife convenient

for pointing our pens, another cannot have a patent right for the same

knife to point our pencils. A compass was invented for navigating the

sea; another could not have a patent right for using it to survey land.

A machine for threshing _wheat_ has been invented in Scotland; a second

person cannot get a patent right for the same machine to thresh _oats_, a

third _rye_, a fourth _peas_, a fifth _clover_, &c. A string of buckets

is invented and used for raising water, ore, &c., can a second have

a patent right to the same machine for raising wheat, a third oats, a

fourth rye, a fifth peas, &c? The question then whether such a string of

buckets was invented first by Oliver Evans, is a mere question of fact

in mathematical history. Now, turning to such books only as I happen to

possess, I find abundant proof that this simple machinery has been in

use from time immemorial. Doctor Shaw, who visited Egypt and the Barbary

coast in the years 1727-8-9, in the margin of his map of Egypt, gives us

the figure of what he calls a Persian wheel, which is a string of round

cups or buckets hanging on a pulley, over which they revolved, bringing

up water from a well and delivering it into a trough above. He found this

used at Cairo, in a well 264 feet deep, which the inhabitants believe to

have been the work of the patriarch Joseph. Shaw's travels, 341, Oxford

edition of 1738 in folio, and the Universal History, I. 416, speaking

of the manner of watering the higher lands in Egypt, says, "formerly

they made use of Archimedes's screw, thence named the Egyptian pump, but

they now generally use wheels (wallowers) which carry a rope or chain

of earthen pots holding about seven or eight quarts apiece, and draw the

water from the canals. There are besides a vast number of wells in Egypt,

from which the water is drawn in the same manner to water the gardens

and fruit trees; so that it is no exaggeration to say, that there are

in Egypt above 200,000 oxen daily employed in this labor." Shaw's name

of Persian wheel has been since given more particularly to a wheel with

buckets, either fixed or suspended on pins, at its periphery. Mortimer's

husbandry, I. 18, Duhamel III. II., Ferguson's Mechanic's plate, XIII;

but his figure, and the verbal description of the Universal History,

prove that the string of buckets is meant under that name. His figure

differs from Evans' construction in the circumstances of the buckets

being round, and strung through their bottom on a chain. But it is the

principle, to wit, a string of buckets, which constitutes the invention,

not the form of the buckets, round, square, or hexagon; nor the manner of

attaching them, nor the material of the connecting band, whether chain,

rope, or leather. Vitruvius, L. x. c. 9, describes this machinery as a

windlass, on which is a chain descending to the water, with vessels of

copper attached to it; the windlass being turned, the chain moving on

it will raise the vessel, which in passing over the windlass will empty

the water they have brought up into a reservoir. And Perrault, in his

edition of Vitruvius, Paris, 1684, fol. plates 61, 62, gives us three

forms of these water elevators, in one of which the buckets are square,

as Mr. Evans' are. Bossut, Histoire des Mathematiques, i. 86, says, "the

drum wheel, the wheel with buckets and the _Chapelets_, are hydraulic

machines which come to us from the ancients. But we are ignorant of

the time when they began to be put into use." The _Chapelets_ are the

revolving bands of the buckets which Shaw calls the Persian wheel, the

moderns a chain-pump, and Mr. Evans elevators. The next of my books in

which I find these elevators is Wolf's Cours de Mathematiques, i. 370,

and plate 1, Paris 1747, 8vo; here are two forms. In one of them the

buckets are square, attached to two chains, passing over a cylinder or

wallower at top, and under another at bottom, by which they are made to

revolve. It is a nearly exact representation of Evans' Elevators. But

a more exact one is to be seen in Desagulier's Experimental Philosophy,

ii. plate 34; in the Encyclopedie de Diderot et D'Alembert, 8vo edition

of Lausanne, 1st volume of plates in the four subscribed Hydraulique.

Norie, is one where round eastern pots are tied by their collars between

two endless ropes suspended on a revolving lantern or wallower. This is

said to have been used for raising ore out of a mine. In a book which

I do not possess, L'Architecture Hydraulique de Belidor, the 2d volume

of which is said [De la Lande's continuation of Montucla's Historie de

Mathematiques, iii. 711] to contain a detail of all the pumps, ancient

and modern, hydraulic machines, fountains, wells, &c., I have no doubt

this Persian wheel, chain pump, chapelets, elevators, by whichever name

you choose to call it, will be found in various forms. The last book I

have to quote for it is Prony's Architecture Hydraulique i., Avertissement

vii., and § 648, 649, 650. In the latter of which passages he observes

that the first idea which occurs for raising water is to lift it in a

bucket by hand. When the water lies too deep to be reached by hand, the

bucket is suspended by a chain and let down over a pulley or windlass.

If it be desired to raise a continued stream of water, the simplest

means which offers itself to the mind is to attach to an endless chain

or cord a number of pots or buckets, so disposed that, the chain being

suspended on a lanthorn or wallower above, and plunged in water below,

the buckets may descend and ascend alternately, filling themselves at

bottom and emptying at a certain height above, so as to give a constant

stream. Some years before the date of Mr. Evans' patent, a Mr. Martin of

Caroline county in this State, constructed a drill-plough, in which he

used the band of buckets for elevating the grain from the box into the

funnel, which let them down into the furrow. He had bands with different

sets of buckets adapted to the size of peas, of turnip seed, &c. I have

used this machine for sowing Benni seed also, and propose to have a

band of buckets for drilling Indian Corn, and another for wheat. Is it

possible that in doing this I shall infringe Mr. Evans' patent? That I

can be debarred of any use to which I might have applied my drill, when

I bought it, by a patent issued after I bought it?

These verbal descriptions, applying so exactly to Mr. Evans' elevators,

and the drawings exhibited to the eye, flash conviction both on reason

and the senses that there is nothing new in these elevators but their

being strung together on a strap of leather. If this strap of leather

be an invention, entitling the inventor to a patent right, it can only

extend to the strap, and the use of the string of buckets must remain

free to be connected by chains, ropes, a strap of hempen girthing, or

any other substance except leather. But, indeed, Mr. Martin had before

used the strap of leather.

The screw of Archimedes is as ancient, at least, as the age of that

mathematician, who died more than 2,000 years ago. Diodorus Siculus

speaks of it, L. i., p. 21, and L. v., p. 217, of Stevens' edition of

1559, folio; and Vitruvius, xii. The cutting of its spiral worm into

sections for conveying flour or grain, seems to have been an invention

of Mr. Evans, and to be a fair subject of a patent right. But it cannot

take away from others the use of Archimedes' screw with its perpetual

spiral, for any purposes of which it is susceptible.

The hopper-boy is an useful machine, and so far as I know, original.

It has been pretended by some, (and in England especially,) that inventors

have a natural and exclusive right to their inventions, and not merely

for their own lives, but inheritable to their heirs. But while it is

a moot question whether the origin of any kind of property is derived

from nature at all, it would be singular to admit a natural and even an

hereditary right to inventors. It is agreed by those who have seriously

considered the subject, that no individual has, of natural right, a

separate property in an acre of land, for instance. By an universal law,

indeed, whatever, whether fixed or movable, belongs to all men equally

and in common, is the property for the moment of him who occupies it;

but when he relinquishes the occupation, the property goes with it.

Stable ownership is the gift of social law, and is given late in the

progress of society. It would be curious then, if an idea, the fugitive

fermentation of an individual brain, could, of natural right, be claimed

in exclusive and stable property. If nature has made any one thing less

susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of

the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively

possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged,

it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver

cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no

one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it.

He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without

lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without

darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over

the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement

of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed

by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space,

without lessening their density in any point, and like the air in which

we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement

or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a

subject of property. Society may give an exclusive right to the profits

arising from them, as an encouragement to men to pursue ideas which may

produce utility, but this may or may not be done, according to the will

and convenience of the society, without claim or complaint from any body.

Accordingly, it is a fact, as far as I am informed, that England was,

until we copied her, the only country on earth which ever, by a general

law, gave a legal right to the exclusive use of an idea. In some other

countries it is sometimes done, in a great case, and by a special and

personal act, but, generally speaking, other nations have thought that

these monopolies produce more embarrassment than advantage to society;

and it may be observed that the nations which refuse monopolies of

invention, are as fruitful as England in new and useful devices.

Considering the exclusive right to invention as given not of natural

right, but for the benefit of society, I know well the difficulty of

drawing a line between the things which are worth to the public the

embarrassment of an exclusive patent, and those which are not. As a

member of the patent board for several years, while the law authorized a

board to grant or refuse patents, I saw with what slow progress a system

of general rules could be matured. Some, however, were established by

that board. One of these was, that a machine of which we were possessed,

might be applied by every man to any use of which it is susceptible,

and that this right ought not to be taken from him and given to a

monopolist, because the first perhaps had occasion so to apply it. Thus

a screw for crushing plaster might be employed for crushing corn-cobs.

And a chain-pump for raising water might be used for raising wheat: this

being merely a change of application. Another rule was that a change of

material should not give title to a patent. As the making a plough-share

of cast rather than of wrought iron; a comb of iron instead of horn or

of ivory, or the connecting buckets by a band of leather rather than of

hemp or iron. A third was that a mere change of form should give no right

to a patent, as a high-quartered shoe instead of a low one; a round hat

instead of a three-square; or a square bucket instead of a round one.

But for this rule, all the changes of fashion in dress would have been

under the tax of patentees. These were among the rules which the uniform

decisions of the board had already established, and under each of them

Mr. Evans' patent would have been refused. First, because it was a mere

change of application of the chain-pump from raising water to raise wheat.

Secondly, because the using a leathern instead of a hempen band, was a

mere change of material; and thirdly, square buckets instead of round, are

only a change of form, and the ancient forms, too, appear to have been

indifferently square or round. But there were still abundance of cases

which could not be brought under rule, until they should have presented

themselves under all their aspects; and these investigations occupying

more time of the members of the board than they could spare from higher

duties, the whole was turned over to the judiciary, to be matured into

a system, under which every one might know when his actions were safe

and lawful. Instead of refusing a patent in the first instance, as the

board was authorized to do, the patent now issues of course, subject

to be declared void on such principles as should be established by the

courts of law. This business, however, is but little analogous to their

course of reading, since we might in vain turn over all the lubberly

volumes of the law to find a single ray which would lighten the path of

the mechanic or the mathematician. It is more within the information of

a board of academical professors, and a previous refusal of patent would

better guard our citizens against harassment by law-suits. But England

had given it to her judges, and the usual predominancy of her examples

carried it to ours.

It happened that I had myself a mill built in the interval between Mr.

Evans' first and second patents. I was living in Washington, and left

the construction to the mill-wright. I did not even know he had erected

elevators, conveyers and hopper-boys, until I learnt it by an application

from Mr. Evans' agent for the patent price. Although I had no idea he

had a right to it by law, (for no judicial decision had then been given,)

yet I did not hesitate to remit to Mr. Evans the old and moderate patent

price, which was what he then asked, from a wish to encourage even the

useful revival of ancient inventions. But I then expressed my opinion

of the law in a letter, either to Mr. Evans or to his agent.

I have thus, Sir, at your request, given you the facts and ideas which

occur to me on this subject. I have done it without reserve, although

I have not the pleasure of knowing you personally. In thus frankly

committing myself to you, I trust you will feel it as a point of honor

and candor, to make no use of my letter which might bring disquietude

on myself. And particularly, I should be unwilling to be brought into

any difference with Mr. Evans, whom, however, I believe too reasonable

to take offence at an honest difference of opinion. I esteem him much,

and sincerely wish him wealth and honor. I deem him a valuable citizen,

of uncommon ingenuity and usefulness. And had I not esteemed still more

the establishment of sound principles, I should now have been silent.

If any of the matter I have offered can promote that object, I have no

objection to its being so used; if it offers nothing new, it will of

course not be used at all. I have gone with some minuteness into the

mathematical history of the elevator, because it belongs to a branch

of science in which, as I have before observed, it is not incumbent on

lawyers to be learned; and it is possible, therefore, that some of the

proofs I have quoted may have escaped on their former arguments. On the

law of the subject I should not have touched, because more familiar to

those who have already discussed it; but I wished to state my own view

of it merely in justification of myself, my name and approbation being

subscribed to the act. With these explanations, accept the assurance of

my respect.

TO JOHN WALDO.

MONTICELLO, August 16, 1813.

SIR,--Your favor of March 27th came during my absence on a journey of

some length. It covered your "Rudiments of English Grammar," for which

I pray you to accept my thanks. This acknowledgment of it has been

delayed, until I could have time to give the work such a perusal as the

avocations to which I am subject would permit. In the rare and short

intervals which these have allotted me, I have gone over with pleasure

a considerable part, although not yet the whole of it. But I am entirely

unqualified to give that critical opinion of it which you do me the favor

to ask. Mine has been a life of business, of that kind which appeals to a

man's conscience, as well as his industry, not to let it suffer, and the

few moments allowed me from labor have been devoted to more attractive

studies, that of grammar having never been a favorite with me. The scanty

foundation, laid in at school, has carried me though a life of much hasty

writing, more indebted for style to reading and memory, than to rules

of grammar. I have been pleased to see that in all cases you appeal to

usage, as the arbiter of language; and justly consider that as giving

law to grammar, and not grammar to usage. I concur entirely with you

in opposition to Purists, who would destroy all strength and beauty of

style, by subjecting it to a rigorous compliance with their rules. Fill

up all the ellipses and syllepses of Tacitus, Sallust, Livy, &c., and

the elegance and force of their sententious brevity are extinguished.

"Auferre, trucidare, rapere, falsis nominibus, imperium appellant."

"Deorum injurias, diis curæ." "Allieni appetens, sui profusus; ardens in

cupiditatibus; satis loquentiæ, sapientiæ parum." "Annibal peto pacem."

"Per diem Sol non _uret_ te, neque Luna per noctem." Wire-draw these

expressions by filling up the whole syntax and sense, and they become dull

paraphrases on rich sentiments. We may say then truly with Quinctilian,

"Aliud est Grammaticé, aliud Latiné loqui." I am no friend, therefore,

to what is called _Purism_, but a zealous one to the _Neology_ which has

introduced these two words without the authority of any dictionary. I

consider the one as destroying the nerve and beauty of language, while

the other improves both, and adds to its copiousness. I have been not a

little disappointed, and made suspicious of my own judgment, on seeing

the Edinburgh Reviews, the ablest critics of the age, set their faces

against the introduction of new words into the English language; they

are particularly apprehensive that the writers of the United States will

adulterate it. Certainly so great growing a population, spread over such

an extent of country, with such a variety of climates, of productions,

of arts, must enlarge their language, to make it answer its purpose of

expressing all ideas, the new as well as the old. The new circumstances

under which we are placed, call for new words, new phrases, and for the

transfer of old words to new objects. An American dialect will therefore

be formed; so will a West-Indian and Asiatic, as a Scotch and an Irish

are already formed. But whether will these adulterate, or enrich the

English language? Has the beautiful poetry of Burns, or his Scottish

dialect, disfigured it? Did the Athenians consider the Doric, the Ionian,

the Æolic, and other dialects, as disfiguring or as beautifying their

language? Did they fastidiously disavow Herodotus, Pindar, Theocritus,

Sappho, Alcæus, or Grecian writers? On the contrary, they were sensible

that the variety of dialects, still infinitely varied by poetical license,

constituted the riches of their language, and made the Grecian Homer

the first of poets, as he must ever remain, until a language equally

ductile and copious shall again be spoken.

Every language has a set of terminations, which make a part of its

peculiar idiom. Every root among the Greeks was permitted to vary its

termination, so as to express its radical idea in the form of any one of

the parts of speech; to wit, as a noun, an adjective, a verb, participle,

or adverb; and each of these parts of speech again, by still varying

the termination, could vary the shade of idea existing in the mind.

* * * * *

It was not, then, the number of Grecian roots (for some other languages

may have as many) which made it the most copious of the ancient languages;

but the infinite diversification which each of these admitted. Let

the same license be allowed in English, the roots of which, native and

adopted, are perhaps more numerous, and its idiomatic terminations more

various than of the Greek, and see what the language would become. Its

idiomatic terminations are:--

_Subst._ Gener-ation--ator; degener-acy;

gener-osity--ousness--alship--alissimo; king-dom--ling; joy-ance;

enjoy-er--ment; herb-age--alist; sanct-uary--imony--itude; royal-ism;

lamb-kin; child-hood; bishop-ric; proceed-ure; horseman-ship; worthi-ness.

_Adj._ Gener-ant--ative--ic--ical--able--ous--al; joy-ful--less--some;

herb-y; accous-escent--ulent; child-ish; wheat-en.

_Verb._ Gener-ate--alize.

_Part._ Gener-ating--ated.

_Adv._ Gener-al--ly.

I do not pretend that this is a complete list of all the terminations of

the two languages. It is as much so as a hasty recollection suggests,

and the omissions are as likely to be to the disadvantage of the one

as the other. If it be a full, or equally fair enumeration, the English

are the double of the Greek terminations.

But there is still another source of copiousness more abundant than

that of termination. It is the composition of the root, and of every

member of its family, 1, with prepositions, and 2, with other words.

The prepositions used in the composition of Greek words are:--

* * * * *

Now multiply each termination of a family into every preposition, and

how prolific does it make each root! But the English language, besides

its own prepositions, about twenty in number, which it compounds with

English roots, uses those of the Greek for adopted Greek roots, and

of the Latin for Latin roots. The English prepositions, with examples

of their use, are a, as in a-long, a-board, a-thirst, a-clock; be, as

in be-lie; mis, as in mis-hap; these being inseparable. The separable,

with examples, are above-cited, after-thought, gain-say, before-hand,

fore-thought, behind-hand, by-law, for-give, fro-ward, in-born, on-set,

over-go, out-go, thorough-go, under-take, up-lift, with-stand. Now let

us see what copiousness this would produce, were it allowed to compound

every root and its family with every preposition, where both sense and

sound would be in its favor. Try it on an English root, the verb "to

place," Anglo Saxon _plæce_,[4] for instance, and the Greek and Latin

roots, of kindred meaning, adopted in English, to wit, θεσις and locatio,

with their prepositions.

mis-place

after-place

gain-place

fore-place

hind-place

by-place

for-place

fro-place

in-place

on-place

over-place

out-place

thorough-place

under-place

up-place

with-place

amphi-thesis

ana-thesis

anti-thesis

apo-thesis

dia-thesis

ek-thesis

en-thesis

epi-thesis

cata-thesis

para-thesis

peri-thesis

pro-thesis

pros-thesis

syn-thesis

hyper-thesis

hypo-thesis

a-location

ab-location

abs-location

al-location

anti-location

circum-location

cis-location

col-location

contra-location

de-location

di-location

dis-location

e-location

ex-location

extra-location

il-location

inter-location

intro-location

juxta-location

ob-location

per-location

post-location

pre-location

preter-location

pro-location

retro-location

re-location

se-location

sub-location

super-location

trans-location

ultra-location

Some of these compounds would be new; but all present distinct meanings,

and the synonisms of the three languages offer a choice of sounds to

express the same meaning; add to this, that in some instances, usage has

authorized the compounding an English root with a Latin preposition,

as in de-place, dis-place, re-place. This example may suffice to show

what the language would become, in strength, beauty, variety, and every

circumstance which gives perfection to language, were it permitted freely

to draw from all its legitimate sources.

The second source of composition is of one family of roots with another.

The Greek avails itself of this most abundantly, and beautifully. The

English once did it freely, while in its Anglo-Saxon form, _e. g._

+boc-cræft+, book-craft, learning, +riht-geleaf-full+, right-belief-ful,

orthodox. But it has lost by desuetude much of this branch of composition,

which it is desirable however to resume.

If we wish to be assured from experiment of the effect of a judicious

spirit of Neology, look at the French language. Even before the

revolution, it was deemed much more copious than the English; at a time,

too, when they had an academy which endeavored to arrest the progress of

their language, by fixing it to a Dictionary, out of which no word was

ever to be sought, used, or tolerated. The institution of parliamentary

assemblies in 1789, for which their language had no opposite terms or

phrases, as having never before needed them, first obliged them to adopt

the Parliamentary vocabulary of England; and other new circumstances

called for corresponding new words; until by the number of these adopted,

and by the analogies for adoption which they have legitimated, I think

we may say with truth that a Dictionaire Neologique of these would be

half as large as the dictionary of the academy; and that at this time

it is the language in which every shade of idea, distinctly perceived

by the mind, may be more exactly expressed, than in any language at

this day spoken by man. Yet I have no hesitation in saying that the

English language is founded on a broader base, native and adopted, and

capable, with the like freedom of employing its materials, of becoming

superior to that in copiousness and euphony. Not indeed by holding fast

to Johnson's Dictionary; not by raising a hue and cry against every word

he has not licensed; but by encouraging and welcoming new compositions

of its elements. Learn from Lye and Benson what the language would now

have been if restrained to their vocabularies. Its enlargement must be

the consequence, to a certain degree, of its transplantation from the

latitude of London into every climate of the globe; and the greater the

degree the more precious will it become as the organ of the development

of the human mind.

These are my visions on the improvement of the English language by a

free use of its faculties. To realize them would require a course of

time. The example of good writers, the approbation of men of letters,

the judgment of sound critics, and of none more than of the Edinburgh

Reviewers, would give it a beginning, and once begun, its progress might

be as rapid as it has been in France, where we see what a period of only

twenty years has effected. Under the auspices of British science and

example it might commence with hope. But the dread of innovation there,

and especially of any example set by France, has, I fear, palsied the

spirit of improvement. Here, where all is new, no innovation is feared

which offers good. But we have no distinct class of literati in our

country. Every man is engaged in some industrious pursuit, and science

is but a secondary occupation, always subordinate to the main business

of his life. Few therefore of those who are qualified, have leisure to

write. In time it will be otherwise. In the meanwhile, necessity obliges

us to neologize. And should the language of England continue stationary,

we shall probably enlarge our employment of it, until its new character

may separate it in name as well as in power, from the mother-tongue.

Although the copiousness of a language may not in strictness make a part

of its grammar, yet it cannot be deemed foreign to a general course of

lectures on its structure and character; and the subject having been

presented to my mind by the occasion of your letter, I have indulged

myself in its speculation, and hazarded to you what has occurred, with

the assurance of my great respect.

FOOTNOTE:

[4] Johnson derives "place" from the French "place," an open

square in a town. But its northern parentage is visible in its

syno-nime _platz_, Teutonic, and _plattse_, Belgic, both of which

signify locus, and the Anglo-Saxon _plæce_, _platea_, _vicus_.

TO MR. JOHN WILSON.

MONTICELLO, August 17, 1813.

SIR,--Your letter of the 3d has been duly received. That of Mr. Eppes

had before come to hand, covering your MS. on the reformation of the

orthography of the plural of nouns ending in _y_, and _ey_, and on

orthoepy. A change has been long desired in English orthography, such as

might render it an easy and true index of the pronunciation of words.

The want of conformity between the combinations of letters, and the

sounds they should represent, increases to foreigners the difficulty

of acquiring the language, occasions great loss of time to children in

learning to read, and renders correct spelling rare but in those who

read much. In England a variety of plans and propositions have been

made for the reformation of their orthography. Passing over these, two

of our countrymen, Dr. Franklin and Dr. Thornton, have also engaged in

the enterprise; the former proposing an addition of two or three new

characters only, the latter a reformation of the whole alphabet nearly.

But these attempts in England, as well as here, have been without effect.

About the middle of the last century an attempt was made to banish the

letter _d_ from the words bridge, judge, hedge, knowledge, &c., others

of that termination, and to write them as we write age, cage, sacrilege,

privilege; but with little success. The attempt was also made, which you

mention in your second part, to drop the letter _u_ in words of Latin

derivation ending in _ou_r, and to write honor, candor, rigor, &c.,

instead of honour, candour, rigour. But the _u_ having been picked up in

the passage of these words from the Latin, through the French, to us, is

still preserved by those who consider it as a memorial of our title to

the words. Other partial attempts have been made by individual writers,

but with as little success. Pluralizing nouns in _y_, and _ey_, by adding

_s_ only, as you propose, would certainly simplify the spelling, and

be analogous to the general idiom of the language. It would be a step

gained in the progress of general reformation, if it could prevail.

But my opinion being requested I must give it candidly, that judging

of the future by the past, I expect no better fortune to this than

similar preceding propositions have experienced. It is very difficult

to persuade the great body of mankind to give up what they have once

learned, and are now masters of, for something to be learnt anew. Time

alone insensibly wears down old habits, and produces small changes at

long intervals, and to this process we must all accommodate ourselves,

and be content to follow those who will not follow us. Our Anglo-Saxon

ancestors had twenty ways of spelling the word "many." Ten centuries have

dropped all of them and substituted that which we now use. I now return

your MS. without being able, with the gentlemen whose letters are cited,

to encourage hope as to its effect. I am bound, however, to acknowledge

that this is a subject to which I have not paid much attention; and that

my doubts therefore should weigh nothing against their more favorable

expectations. That these may be fulfilled, and mine prove unfounded, I

sincerely wish, because I am a friend to the reformation generally of

whatever can be made better, and because it could not fail of gratifying

you to be instrumental in this work. Accept the assurance of my respect.

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

ομοουσιανς and ὁμοιουσιανς. 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 everything Priestley wrote, but perhaps

a little hastily; for he felt himself pressed by the hand of death.

The Abbé 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 Timæus, 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 two 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. His 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.

TO MR. EPPES.

POPLAR FOREST, September 11, 1813.

DEAR SIR,--I turn with great reluctance from the functions of a private

citizen to matters of State. The swaggering on deck, as a passenger,

is so much more pleasant than clambering the ropes as a seaman, and my

confidence in the skill and activity of those employed to work the vessel

is so entire, that I notice nothing _en passant_, but how smoothly she

moves. Yet I avail myself of the leisure which a visit to this place

procures me, to revolve again in my mind the subject of my former letter,

and in compliance with the request of yours of ----, to add some further

thoughts on it. Though intended as only supplementary to that, I may

fall into repetitions, not having that with me, nor paper or book of

any sort to supply the default of a memory on the wane.

The objects of finance in the United States have hitherto been very

simple; merely to provide for the support of the government on its peace

establishment, and to pay the debt contracted in the revolutionary war,

a war which will be sanctioned by the approbation of posterity through

all future ages. The means provided for these objects were ample, and

resting on a consumption which little affected the poor, may be said

to have been sensibly felt by none. The fondest wish of my heart ever

was that the surplus portion of these taxes, destined for the payment

of that debt, should, when that object was accomplished, be continued

by annual or biennial re-enactments, and applied, in time of peace, to

the improvement of our country by canals, roads and useful institutions,

literary or others; and in time of war to the maintenance of the war. And

I believe that keeping the civil list within proper bounds, the surplus

would have been sufficient for any war, administered with integrity and

judgment. For authority to apply the surplus to objects of improvement,

an amendment of the constitution would have been necessary. I have said

that the taxes should be continued by annual or biennial re-enactments,

because a constant hold, by the nation, of the strings of the public

purse, is a salutary restraint from which an honest government ought

not to wish, nor a corrupt one to be permitted to be free. No tax should

ever be yielded for a longer term than that of the congress wanting it,

except when pledged for the reimbursement of a loan. On this system,

the standing income being once liberated from the revolutionary debt,

no future loan nor future tax would ever become necessary, and wars

would no otherwise affect our pecuniary interests than by suspending the

improvements belonging to a state of peace. This happy consummation would

have been achieved by another eight years' administration, conducted by

Mr. Madison, and executed in its financial department by Mr. Gallatin,

could peace have been so long preserved. So enviable a state in prospect

for our country, induced me to temporize, and to bear with national

wrongs which under no other prospect ought ever to have been unresented

or unresisted. My hope was, that by giving time for reflection, and

retraction of injury, a sound calculation of their own interests would

induce the aggressing nations to redeem their own character by a return

to the practice of right. But our lot happens to have been cast in

an age when two nations to whom circumstances have given a temporary

superiority over others, the one by land, the other by sea, throwing off

all restraints of morality, all pride of national character, forgetting

the mutability of fortune and the inevitable doom which the laws of

nature pronounce against departure from justice, individual or national,

have dared to treat her reclamations with derision, and to set up force

instead of reason as the umpire of nations. Degrading themselves thus

from the character of lawful societies into lawless bands of robbers

and pirates, they are abusing their brief ascendency by desolating the

world with blood and rapine. Against such a banditti, war had become

less ruinous than peace, for then peace was a war on one side only. On

the final and formal declarations of England, therefore, that she never

would repeal her orders of council as to us, until those of France should

be repealed as to other nations as well as us, and that no practicable

arrangement against her impressment of our seamen could be proposed or

devised, war was justly declared, and ought to have been declared. This

change of condition has clouded our prospects of liberation from debt,

and of being able to carry on a war without new loans or taxes. But

although deferred, these prospects are not desperate. We should keep

forever in view the state of 1817, towards which we were advancing, and

consider it as that which we must attain. Let the old funds continue

appropriated to the civil list and revolutionary debt, and the reversion

of the surplus to improvement during peace, and let us take up this war

as a separate business, for which, substantive and distinct provision

is to be made.

That we are bound to defray its expenses within our own time, and

unauthorized to burthen posterity with them, I suppose to have been

proved in my former letter. I will place the question nevertheless in

one additional point of view. The former regarded their independent

right over the earth; this over their own persons. There have existed

nations, and civilized and learned nations, who have thought that a

father had a right to sell his child as a slave, in perpetuity; that he

could alienate his body and industry conjointly, and _à fortiori_ his

industry separately; and consume its fruits himself. A nation asserting

this fratricide right might well suppose they could burthen with public

as well as private debt their "_nati natorum, et qui nascentur at

illis_." But we, this age, and in this country especially, are advanced

beyond those notions of natural law. We acknowledge that our children

are born free; that that freedom is the gift of nature, and not of him

who begot them; that though under our care during infancy, and therefore

of necessity under a duly tempered authority, that care is confided to

us to be exercised for the preservation and good of the child only; and

his labors during youth are given as a retribution for the charges of

infancy. As he was never the property of his father, so when adult he is

_sui juris_, entitled himself to the use of his own limbs and the fruits

of his own exertions: so far we are advanced, without mind enough, it

seems, to take the whole step. We believe, or we act as if we believed,

that although an individual father cannot alienate the labor of his son,

the aggregate body of fathers may alienate the labor of all their sons,

of their posterity, in the aggregate, and oblige them to pay for all

the enterprises, just or unjust, profitable or ruinous, into which our

vices, our passions, or our personal interests may lead us. But I trust

that this proposition needs only to be looked at by an American to be

seen in its true point of view, and that we shall all consider ourselves

unauthorized to saddle posterity with our debts, and morally bound to pay

them ourselves; and consequently within what may be deemed the period of

a generation, or the life of the majority. In my former letter I supposed

this to be a little[5] over twenty years. We must raise then ourselves

the money for this war, either by taxes within the year, or by loans;

and if by loans, we must repay them ourselves, proscribing forever the

English practice of perpetual funding; the ruinous consequences of which,

putting right out of the question, should be a sufficient warning to a

considerate nation to avoid the example.

The raising money by Tontine, more practised on the continent of Europe

than in England, is liable to the same objection, of encroachment on

the independent rights of posterity; because the annuities not expiring

gradually, with the lives on which they rest, but all on the death of

the last survivor only, they will of course over-pass the term of a

generation, and the more probably as the subjects on whose lives the

annuities depend, are generally chosen of the ages, constitutions and

occupations most favorable to long life.

Annuities for single lives are also beyond our powers, because the

single life may pass the term of a generation. This last practice is

objectionable too, as encouraging celibacy, and the disinherison of heirs.

Of the modes which are within the limits of right, that of raising within

the year its whole expenses by taxation, might be beyond the abilities

of our citizens to bear. It, is moreover, generally desirable that the

public contributions should be as uniform as practicable from year to

year, that our habits of industry and of expense may become adapted to

them; and that they may be duly digested and incorporated with our annual

economy.

There remains then for us but the method of limited anticipation, the

laying taxes for a term of years within that of our right, which may

be sold for a present sum equal to the expenses of the year; in other

words, to obtain a loan equal to the expenses of the year, laying a tax

adequate to its interest, and to such a surplus as will reimburse, by

growing instalments, the whole principal within the term. This is, in

fact, what has been called raising money on the sale of annuities for

years. In this way a new loan, and of course a new tax, is requisite

every year during the continuance of the war; and should that be so

long as to produce an accumulation of tax beyond our ability, in time

of war the resource would be an enactment of the taxes requisite to

ensure good terms, by securing the lender, with a suspension of the

payment of instalments of principal and perhaps of interest also, until

the restoration of peace. This method of anticipating our taxes, or of

borrowing on annuities for years, insures repayment to the lender, guards

the rights of posterity, prevents a perpetual alienation of the public

contributions, and consequent destitution of every resource even for the

ordinary support of government. The public expenses of England during

the present reign, have amounted to the fee simple value of the whole

island. If its whole soil could be sold, farm by farm, for its present

market price, it would not defray the cost of governing it during the

reign of the present king, as managed by him. Ought not then the right

of each successive generation to be guarantied against the dissipations

and corruptions of those preceding, by a fundamental provision in our

constitution? And, if that has not been made, does it exist the less;

there being between generation and generation, as between nation and

nation, no other law than that of nature? And is it the less dishonest to

do what is wrong, because not expressly prohibited by written law? Let us

hope our moral principles are not yet in that stage of degeneracy, and

that in instituting the system of finance to be hereafter pursued, we

shall adopt the only safe, the only lawful and honest one, of borrowing

on such short terms of reimbursement of interest and principal as will

fall within the accomplishment of our own lives.

The question will be asked and ought to be looked at, what is to be

the resource if loans cannot be obtained? There is but one, "_Carthago

delenda est_." Bank paper must be suppressed, and the circulating medium

must be restored to the nation to whom it belongs. It is the only fund

on which they can rely for loans; it is the only resource which can

never fail them, and it is an abundant one for every necessary purpose.

Treasury bills, bottomed on taxes, bearing or not bearing interest, as

may be found necessary, thrown into circulation will take the place of

so much gold and silver, which last, when crowded, will find an efflux

into other countries, and thus keep the quantum of medium at its salutary

level. Let banks continue if they please, but let them discount for cash

alone or for treasury notes. They discount for cash alone in every other

country on earth except Great Britain, and her too often unfortunate

copyist, the United States. If taken in time they may be rectified by

degrees, and without injustice, but if let alone till the alternative

forces itself on us, of submitting to the enemy for want of funds, or

the suppression of bank paper, either by law or by convulsion, we cannot

foresee how it will end. The remaining questions are mathematical only.

How are the taxes and the time of their continuance to be proportioned

to the sum borrowed, and the stipulated interest?

The rate of interest will depend on the state of the money market, and

the duration of the tax on the will of the legislature. Let us suppose

that (to keep the taxes as low as possible) they adopt the term of

twenty years for reimbursement, which we call their maximum; and let

the interest they last gave of 7½ per cent. be that which they must

expect to give. The problem then will stand in this form. Given the sum

borrowed (which call _s_,) a million of dollars for example; the rate

of interest .075 or 75/1000; (call it _r-i_) and the duration of the

annuity or tax, twenty years, (=_t_,) what will be (_a_) the annuity or

tax, which will reimburse principal and interest within the given term?

This problem, laborious and barely practicable to common arithmetic,

is readily enough solved, Algebraically and with the aid of Logarithms.

The theorem applied to the case is _a_=(tr-1x1)/(1-1/n) the solution of

which gives _a_=$98,684.2, nearly $100,000, or 1/10 of the sum borrowed.

It maybe satisfactory to see stated in figures the yearly progression

of reimbursement of the million of dollars, and their interest at 7½

per cent. effected by the regular payment of ---- dollars annually. It

will be as follows:

Borrowed, $1,000,000.

Balance after 1st payment, $975,000 Balance after 11th paym't, $594,800

" 2d " 948,125 " 12th " 539,410

" 3d " 919,234 " 13th " 479,866

" 4th " 888,177 " 14th " 415,850

" 5th " 854,790 " 15th " 347,039

" 6th " 818,900 " 16th " 273,068

" 7th " 780,318 " 17th " 193,548

" 8th " 738,841 " 18th " 108,064

" 9th " 694,254 " 19th " 16,169

" 10th " 646,324

If we are curious to know the effect of the same annual sum on loans at

lower rates of interest, the following process will give it:

From the Logarithm of _a_, subtract the Logarithm _r-i_, and from

the number of the remaining Logarithm subtract _s_, then subtract

the Logarithm of this last remainder from the difference between the

Logarithm _a_ and Logarithm _r-i_ as found before, divide the remainder

by Logarithm _r_, the quotient will be _t_. It will be found that ----

dollars will reimburse a million,

Years. Dollars.

At 7½ per cent. interest in 19.17, costing in the whole 1,917,000

7 " " 17.82, " " 1,782,000

6½ " " 16.67, " " 1,667,000

6 " " 15.72, " " 1,572,000

5½ " " 14.91, " " 1,491,000

5 " " 14. 2, " " 1,420,000

0 " " 10. " " 1,000,000

By comparing the 1st and the last of these articles, we see that if the

United States were in possession of the circulating medium, as they ought

to be, they could redeem what they could borrow from that, dollar for

dollar, and in ten annual instalments; whereas, the usurpation of that

fund by bank paper, obliging them to borrow elsewhere at 7½ per cent.,

two dollars are required to reimburse one. So that it is literally true

that the toleration of banks of paper-discount, costs the United States

one-half their war taxes; or, in other words, doubles the expenses of

every war. Now think, but for a moment, what a change of condition that

would be, which should save half our war expenses, require but half the

taxes, and enthral us in debt but half the time.

Two loans having been authorized, of sixteen and seven and a half

millions, they will require for their due reimbursement two millions

three hundred and fifty thousand dollars of the three millions expected

from the taxes lately imposed. When the produce shall be known of the

several items of these taxes, such of them as will make up this sum

should be selected, appropriated, and pledged for the reimbursement of

these loans. The balance of six hundred and fifty thousand dollars, will

be a provision for 6½ millions of the loan of the next year; and in all

future loans, I would consider it as a rule never to be departed from,

to lay a tax of 1/10, and pledge it for the reimbursement.

In the preceding calculations no account is taken of the increasing

population of the United States, which we know to be in a compound

ratio of more than 3 per cent. per annum; nor of the increase of wealth,

proved to be in a higher ratio by the increasing productiveness of the

imports on consumption. We shall be safe therefore in considering every

tax as growing at the rate of 3 per cent. compound ratio annually. I

say _every tax_, for as to those on consumption the fact is known; and

the same growth will be found in the value of real estate, if valued

annually; or, which would be better, 3 per cent. might be assumed by the

law as the average increase, and an addition of 1/33 of the tax paid the

preceding year, be annually called for. Supposing then a tax laid which

would bring in $100,000 at the time it is laid, and that it increases

annually at the rate of 3 per cent. compound, its important effect may

be seen in the following statement:

The 1st year 103,090, and reduces the million to $972,000

2d " 106,090, " " " 938,810

3d " 109,273, " " " 899,947

4th " 112,556, " " " 854,896

5th " 115,920, " " " 803,053

6th " 119,410, " " " 743,915

7th " 122,990, " " " 676,719

8th " 126,680, " " " 600,793

---------

915,913

It yields the 9th year $130,470, and reduces it to $515,382

10th " 134,390, " " 419,646

11th " 138,420, " " 312,699

12th " 142,580, " " 193,517

13th " 146,850, " " 61,181

14th " 151,260 over pays, 85,491

----------

1,759,883

This estimate supposes a million borrowed at 7½ per cent; but, if obtained

from the circulation without interest, it would be reimbursed within

eight years and eight months, instead of fourteen years, or of twenty

years, on our first estimate.

But this view being in prospect only, should not affect the quantum of

tax which the former circulation pronounces necessary. Our creditors

have a right to certainty, and to consider these political speculations

as make-weights only to that, and at our risk, not theirs. To us belongs

only the comfort of hoping an earlier liberation than that calculation

holds out, and the right of providing expressly that the tax hypothecated

shall cease so soon as the debt it secures shall be actually reimbursed;

and I will add that to us belongs also the regret that improvident

legislators should have exposed us to a twenty years' thraldom of debts

and taxes, for the necessary defence of our country, where the same

contributions would have liberated us in eight or nine years; or have

reduced us perhaps to an abandonment of our rights, by their abandonment

of the only resource which could have ensured their maintenance.

I omit many considerations of detail because they will occur to yourself,

and my letter is too long already. I can refer you to no book as treating

of this subject fully and suitably to our circumstances. Smith gives the

history of the public debt of England, and some views adapted to that;

and Dr. Price, in his book on annuities, has given a valuable chapter

on the effects of a sinking fund. But our business being to make every

loan tax a sinking fund for itself, no general one will be wanting; and

if my confidence is well founded that our original import, when freed

from the revolutionary debt, will suffice to embellish and improve our

country in peace, and defend her in war, the present may be the only

occasion of perplexing ourselves with sinking funds.

Should the injunctions under which I laid you, as to my former letter,

restrain any useful purpose to which you could apply it, I remove them;

preferring public benefit to all personal considerations. My original

disapprobation of banks circulating paper is not unknown, nor have

I since observed any effects either on the morals or fortunes of our

citizens, which are any counterbalance for the public evils produced;

and a thorough conviction that, if this war continues, that circulation

must be suppressed, or the government shaken to its foundation by the

weight of taxes, and impracticability to raise funds on them, renders

duty to that paramount to the love of ease and quiet.

When I was here in May last, I left it without knowing that Francis was

at school in this neighborhood. As soon as I returned, on the present

occasion, I sent for him, but his tutor informed me that he was gone on

a visit to you. I shall hope permission for him always to see me on my

visits to this place, which are three or four times a year.

FOOTNOTE:

[5] [A lapse of memory, not having the letter to recur to.]

JOHN ADAMS TO THOMAS JEFFERSON.

QUINCY, September 14, 1813.

DEAR SIR,--I owe you a thousand thanks for your favor of August 22d and

its enclosures, and for Dr. Priestley's doctrines of Heathen Philosophy

compared with those of Revelation. Your letter to Dr. Rush and the

syllabus, I return enclosed with this according to your injunctions,

though with great reluctance. May I beg a copy of both?

They will do you no harm; me and others much good.

I hope you will pursue your plan, for I am confident you will produce

a work much more valuable than Priestley's, though that is curious, and

considering the expiring powers with which it was written, admirable.

The bill in Parliament for the relief of Anti-Trinitarians, is a great

event, and will form an epoch in ecclesiastical history. The motion was

made by my friend Smith, of Clapham, a friend of the Belshams.

I should be very happy to hear that the bill is passed.

The human understanding is a revelation from its Maker which can never

be disputed or doubted. There can be no scepticism, Pyrrhonism, or

incredulity, or infidelity, here. No prophecies, no miracles are necessary

to prove the celestial communication.

This revelation has made it certain that two and one make three, and

that one is not three nor can three be one. We can never be so certain

of any prophecy, or the fulfilment of any prophecy, or of any miracle,

or the design of any miracle, as we are from the revelation of nature,

_i. e._, Nature's God, that two and two are equal to four. Miracles or

prophecies might frighten us out of our wits; might scare us to death;

might induce us to lie, to say that we believe that two and two make

five. But we should not believe it. We should know the contrary.

Had you and I been forty days with Moses on Mount Sinai, and been admitted

to behold the divine Shekinah, and there told that one was three and

three one, we might not have had courage to deny it, but we could not

have believed it.

The thunders, and lightnings, and earthquakes, and the transcendent

splendors and glories might have overwhelmed us with terror and amazement,

but we could not have believed the doctrine. We should be more likely to

say in our hearts whatever we might say with our lips,--This is chance.

There is no God, no truth. This is all delusion, fiction, and a lie, or

it is all chance. But what is chance? It is motion, it is action, it is

event, it is phenomenon without cause.

Chance is no cause at all, it is nothing. And nothing has produced all

this pomp and splendor. And nothing may produce our eternal damnation

in the flames of hell-fire and brimstone, for what we know, as well as

this tremendous exhibition of terror and falsehood.

God has infinite wisdom, goodness and power. He created the universe.

His duration is eternal, a parte ante and a parte post.

His presence is as extensive as space. What is space? An infinite

spherical vacuum. He created this speck of dirt and the human species

for his glory, and with the deliberate design of making nine-tenths of

our species miserable forever, for his glory.

This is the doctrine of Christian Theologians in general, ten to one.

Now, my friend, can prophecies or miracles convince you or me, that

infinite benevolence, wisdom and power, created and preserves for a time,

innumerable millions, to make them miserable forever for his own glory?

Wretch! what is his glory? Is he ambitious? Does he want promotion? Is

he vain-tickled with adulation? Exulting and triumphing in his power

and the sweetness of his vengeance?

Pardon me, my Maker, for these awful questions. My answer to them is

always ready. I believe no such things. My adoration of the Author of

the Universe is too profound and too sincere.

The love of God and his creation, delight, joy, triumph, exultation in my

own existence, though but an atom, a molecule organique in the universe,

are my religion. Howl, snarl, bite, ye Calvinistic, ye Athanasian divines,

if you will. Ye will say I am no Christian. I say ye are no Christians,

and there the account is balanced.

Yet I believe all the honest men among you are Christians, in my sense

of the word.

When I was at college, I was a metaphysician, at least I thought myself

such. And such men as Lock, Hemenway and West, thought me so too; for

we were forever disputing though in great good humor.

When I was sworn as an Attorney, in 1758, in Boston, though I lived in

Braintree, I was in a low state of health--thought in great danger of a

consumption; living on milk, vegetable pudding and water. Not an atom of

meat, or a drop of spirit. My next neighbor, my cousin, my friend Dr.

Savil, was my physician. He was anxious about me, and did not like to

take the sole responsibility of my recovery. He invited me to a ride.

I mounted my horse and rode with him to Hingham, on a visit to Dr.

Ezekiel Hersey, a physician of great fame, who felt my pulse, looked in

my eyes, heard Savil describe my regimen and course of medicine, and

then pronounced his oracle: "Persevere, and as sure as there is a God

in Heaven you will recover."

He was an everlasting talker, and ran out into history, philosophy,

metaphysics, &c., and frequently put questions to me as if he wanted to

sound me, and see if there was anything in me besides hectic fever. I

was young, and then very bashful, however saucy I may have sometimes been

since. I gave him very modest and very diffident answers. But when I got

upon metaphysics, I seemed to feel a little bolder, and ventured into

something like argument with him. I drove him up, as I thought, into a

corner, from which he could not escape. "Sir, it will follow from what

you have now advanced, that the universe, as distinct from God, is both

infinite and eternal." "Very true," said Dr. Hersey, "your inference is

just, the consequence is inevitable, and I believe the universe to be

both eternal and infinite."

Here I was brought up! I was defeated. I was not prepared for this

answer. This was fifty-five years ago.

When I was in England, from 1785 to 1788, I may say I was intimate with

Dr. Price. I had much conversation with him at his own house, at my

house, and at the houses and tables of my friends. In some of our most

unreserved conversations, when we have been alone, he has repeatedly

said to me: "I am inclined to believe that the universe is eternal

and infinite. It seems to me that an eternal and infinite effect must

necessarily flow from an eternal and infinite cause; and an infinite

wisdom, goodness and power, that could have been induced to produce a

universe in time, must have produced it from eternity. It seems to me

the effect must flow from the cause."

Now, my friend Jefferson, suppose an eternal, self-existent being,

existing from eternity, possessed of infinite wisdom, goodness and

power, in absolute, total solitude, six thousand years ago, conceiving

the benevolent project of creating a universe! I have no more to say at

present.

It has been long, very long, a settled opinion in my mind, that there

is now, never will be, and never was but one being who can understand

the universe.

And that it is not only vain, but wicked, for insects to pretend to

comprehend it.

JOHN ADAMS TO THOMAS JEFFERSON.

QUINCY, September 15, 1813.

DEAR SIR,--My last sheet would not admit an observation that was material

to my design.

Dr. Price was inclined to think that infinite wisdom and goodness could

not permit infinite power to be inactive from eternity, but that an

infinite and eternal universe must have necessarily flowed from these

attributes.

Plato's system was "αγαθος" was eternal, self-existent, &c. His ideas,

his word, his reason, his wisdom, his goodness, or in one word his "Logos"

was omnipotent, and produced the universe from all eternity. Now! as far

as you and I can understand Hersey, Price and Plato, are they not of one

theory? Of one mind? What is the difference? I own an eternal solitude

of a self-existent being, infinitely wise, powerful and good, is to me

altogether incomprehensible and incredible. I could as soon believe the

Athanasian creed.

You will ask me what conclusion I draw from all this? I answer, I drop

into myself, and acknowledge myself to be a fool. No mind but one can see

through the immeasurable system. It would be presumption and impiety in

me to dogmatize on such subjects. My duties in my little infinitessimal

circle I can understand and feel. The duties of a son, a brother, a

father, a neighbor, a citizen, I can see and feel, but I trust the Ruler

with his skies.

Si quid novisti rectius, istis

Candidus imperti, si non, his utere, mecum.

This world is a mixture of the sublime and the beautiful, the base and

the contemptible, the whimsical and ridiculous, (according to our narrow

sense and trifling feelings.) It is an enigma and a riddle. You need

not be surprised, then, if I should descend from these heights to the

most egregious trifle. But first let me say, I asked you in a former

letter how far advanced we were in the science of aristocracy since

Theognis' Stallions, Jacks and Rams? Have not Chancellor Livingston and

Major General Humphreys introduced an hereditary aristocracy of Merino

Sheep? How shall we get rid of this aristocracy? It is entailed upon us

forever. And an aristocracy of land jobbers and stock jobbers is equally

and irremediably entailed upon us, to endless generations.

Now for the odd, the whimsical, the frivolous. I had scarcely sealed my

last letter to you upon Theognis' doctrine of well-born Stallions, Jacks

and Rams, when they brought me from the Post Office a packet, without

post mark, without letter, without name, date or place. Nicely sealed

was a printed copy of eighty or ninety pages, and in large full octavo,

entitled: Section first--Aristocracy. I gravely composed my risible

muscles and read it through. It is from beginning to end an attack upon me

by name for the doctrines of aristocracy in my three volumes of Defence,

&c. The conclusion of the whole is that an aristocracy of bank paper

is as bad as the nobility of France or England. I most assuredly will

not controvert this point with this man. Who he is I cannot conjecture.

The honorable John Taylor of Virginia, of all men living or dead, first

occurred to me.

Is it Oberon? Is it Queen Mab, that reigns and sports with us little

beings? I thought my books as well as myself were forgotten. But behold!

I am to become a great man in my expiring moments. Theognis and Plato,

and Hersey and Price, and Jefferson and I, must go down to posterity

together; and I know not, upon the whole, where to wish for better

company. I wish to add Vanderkemp, who has been here to see me, after an

interruption of twenty-four years. I could and ought to add many others,

but the catalogue would be too long. I am, as ever.

P. S. Why is Plato associated with Theognis, &c.? Because no man ever

expressed so much terror of the power of birth. His genius could invent

no remedy or precaution against it, but a community of wives; a confusion

of families; a total extinction of all relations of father, son and

brother. Did the French Revolutionists contrive much better against the

influence of birth?

TO MR. WM. CANBY.

MONTICELLO, September 18, 1813.

SIR,--I have duly received your favor of August 27th, am sensible of the

kind intentions from which it flows, and truly thankful for them. The

more so as they could only be the result of a favorable estimate of my

public course. During a long life, as much devoted to study as a faithful

transaction of the trusts committed to me would permit, no subject has

occupied more of my consideration than our relations with all the beings

around us, our duties to them, and our future prospects. After reading

and hearing everything which probably can be suggested respecting them,

I have formed the best judgment I could as to the course they prescribe,

and in the due observance of that course, I have no recollections which

give me uneasiness. An eloquent preacher of your religious society,

Richard Motte, in a discourse of much emotion and pathos, is said to

have exclaimed aloud to his congregation, that he did not believe there

was a Quaker, Presbyterian, Methodist or Baptist in heaven, having

paused to give his hearers time to stare and to wonder. He added, that

in heaven, God knew no distinctions, but considered all good men as his

children, and as brethren of the same family. I believe, with the Quaker

preacher, that he who steadily observes those moral precepts in which

all religions concur, will never be questioned at the gates of heaven,

as to the dogmas in which they all differ. That on entering there, all

these are left behind us, and the Aristides and Catos, the Penns and

Tillotsons, Presbyterians and Baptists, will find themselves united

in all principles which are in concert with the reason of the supreme

mind. Of all the systems of morality, ancient or modern, which have

come under my observation, none appear to me so pure as that of Jesus.

He who follows this steadily need not, I think, be uneasy, although he

cannot comprehend the subtleties and mysteries erected on his doctrines

by those who, calling themselves his special followers and favorites,

would make him come into the world to lay snares for all understandings

but theirs. These metaphysical heads, usurping the judgment seat of God,

denounce as his enemies all who cannot perceive the Geometrical logic

of Euclid in the demonstrations of St. Athanasius, that three are one,

and one is three; and yet that the one is not three nor the three one.

In all essential points you and I are of the same religion; and I am too

old to go into inquiries and changes as to the unessential. Repeating,

therefore, my thankfulness for the kind concern you have been so good

as to express, I salute you with friendship and brotherly esteem.

TO GENERAL DUANE.

MONTICELLO, September 18, 1813.

DEAR SIR,--Repeated inquiries on the part of Senator Tracy what has

become of his book, (the MS. I last sent you,) oblige me to ask of you

what I shall say to him. I congratulate you on the brilliant affair of

the Enterprise and Boxer. No heart is more rejoiced than mine at these

mortifications of English pride, and lessons to Europe that the English

are not invincible at sea. And if these successes do not lead us too far

into the navy mania, all will be well. But when are to cease the severe

lessons we receive by land, demonstrating our want of competent officers?

The numbers of our countrymen betrayed into the hands of the enemy by the

treachery, cowardice or incompetence of our high officers, reduce us to

the humiliating necessity of acquiescing in the brutal conduct observed

towards them. When, during the last war, I put Governor Hamilton and

Major Hay into a dungeon and in irons for having themselves personally

done the same to the American prisoners who had fallen into their hands,

and was threatened with retaliation by Philips, then returned to New

York, I declared to him I would load ten of their Saratoga prisoners

(then under my care and within half a dozen miles of my house) with

double irons for every American they should misuse under pretence of

retaliation, and it put an end to the practice. But the ten for one are

now with them. Our present hopes of being able to do something by land

seem to rest on Chauncey. Strange reverse of expectations that our land

force should be under the wing of our little navy. Accept the assurance

of my esteem and respect.

TO MR. ISAAC M'PHERSON.

MONTICELLO, September 18, 1813.

SIR,--I thank you for the communication of Mr. Jonathan Ellicot's letter

in yours of August 28th, and the information it conveys. With respect

to mine of August 13th, I do not know that it contains anything but

what any man of mathematical reading may learn from the same sources;

however, if it can be used for the promotion of right, I consent to

such an use of it. Your inquiry as to the date of Martin's invention

of the drill plough, with a leathern band and metal buckets, I cannot

precisely answer; but I received one from him in 1794, and have used it

ever since for sowing various seeds, chiefly peas, turnips, and benni. I

have always had in mind to use it for wheat; but sowing only a row at a

time, I had proposed to him some years ago to change the construction so

that it should sow four rows at a time, twelve inches apart; and I have

been waiting for this to be done either by him or myself; and have not,

therefore, commenced that use of it. I procured mine at first through

Col. John Taylor of Caroline, who had been long in the use of it, and

my impression was that it was not then a novel thing. Mr. Martin is

still living, I believe. If not, Colonel Taylor, his neighbor, probably

knows its date. If the bringing together under the same roof various

useful things before known, which you mention as one of the grounds of

Mr. Evans' claim, entitles him to an exclusive use of all these, either

separately or combined, every utensil of life might be taken from us by

a patent. I might build a stable, bring into it a cutting-knife to chop

straw, a hand-mill to grind the grain, a curry comb and brush to clean

the horses, and by a patent exclude every one from ever more using these

things without paying me. The elevator, the conveyer, the hopper-boy,

are distinct things, unconnected but by juxtaposition. If no patent

can be claimed for any one of these separately, it cannot be for all

of them,--several nothings put together cannot make a something;--this

would be going very wide of the object of the patent laws. I salute you

with esteem and respect.

TO MR. JAMES MARTIN.

MONTICELLO, September 20, 1813.

SIR,--Your letter of August 20th, enabled me to turn to mine of February

23d, 1798, and your former one of February 22d, 1801, and to recall

to my memory the oration at Jamaica, which was the subject of them.

I see with pleasure a continuance of the same sound principles in the

address to Mr. Quincy. Your quotation from the former paper alludes, as

I presume, to the term of office to our Senate; a term, like that of the

judges, too long for my approbation. I am for responsibilities at short

periods, seeing neither reason nor safety in making public functionaries

independent of the nation for life, or even for long terms of years.

On this principle I prefer the Presidential term of four years, to that

of seven years, which I myself had at first suggested, annexing to it,

however, ineligibility forever after; and I wish it were now annexed to

the 2d quadrennial election of President.

The conduct of Massachusetts, which is the subject of your address to

Mr. Quincy, is serious, as embarrassing the operations of the war, and

jeopardizing its issue; and still more so, as an example of contumacy

against the Constitution. One method of proving their purpose, would

be to call a convention of their State, and to require them to declare

themselves members of the Union, and obedient to its determinations, or

not members, and let them go. Put this question solemnly to their people,

and their answer cannot be doubtful. One half of them are republicans,

and would cling to the Union from principle. Of the other half, the

dispassionate part would consider, 1st. That they do not raise bread

sufficient for their own subsistence, and must look to Europe for the

deficiency, if excluded from our ports, which vital interests would force

us to do. 2d. That they are navigating people without a stick of timber

for the hull of a ship, nor a pound of anything to export in it, which

would be admitted at any market. 3d. That they are also a manufacturing

people, and left by the exclusive system of Europe without a market but

ours. 4th. That as the rivals of England in manufactures, in commerce,

in navigation, and fisheries, they would meet her competition in every

point. 5th. That England would feel no scruples in making the abandonment

and ruin of such a rival the price of a treaty with the producing

States; whose interest too it would be to nourish a navigation beyond

the Atlantic, rather than a hostile one at our own door. And 6th. That in

case of war with the Union, which occurrences between coterminous nations

frequently produce, it would be a contest of one against fifteen. The

remaining portion of the Federal moiety of the State would, I believe,

brave all these obstacles, because they are monarchists in principle,

bearing deadly hatred to their republican fellow-citizens, impatient under

the ascendency of republican principles, devoted in their attachment to

England, and preferring to be placed under her despotism, if they cannot

hold the helm of government here. I see, in their separation, no evil but

the example, and I believe that the effect of that would be corrected

by an early and humiliating return to the Union, after losing much of

the population of their country, insufficient in its own resources to

feed her numerous inhabitants, and inferior in all its allurements to

the more inviting soils, climates, and governments of the other States.

Whether a dispassionate discussion before the public, of the advantages

and disadvantages of separation to both parties, would be the best

medicine for this dialytic fever, or to consider it as sacrilege ever

to touch the question, may be doubted. I am, myself, generally disposed

to indulge, and to follow reason; and believe that in no case would it

be safer than in the present. Their refractory course, however, will

not be unpunished by the indignation of their co-States, their loss

of influence with them, the censures of history, and the stain on the

character of their State. With my thanks for the paper enclosed, accept

the assurance of my esteem and respect.

TO DOCTOR LOGAN.

MONTICELLO, October 3, 1813.

DEAR SIR,--I have duly received your favor of September 18th, and I

perceive in it the same spirit of peace which I know you have ever

breathed, and to preserve which you have made many personal sacrifices.

That your efforts did much towards preventing declared war with France,

I am satisfied. Of those with England, I am not equally informed. I have

ever cherished the same spirit with all nations, from a consciousness

that peace, prosperity, liberty, and morals, have an intimate connection.

During the eight years of my administration, there was not a year that

England did not give us such cause as would have provoked a war from

any European government. But I always hoped that time and friendly

remonstrances would bring her to a sounder view of her own interests,

and convince her that these would be promoted by a return to justice

and friendship towards us. Continued impressments of our seamen by her

naval commanders, whose interest it was to mistake them for theirs, her

innovations on the law of nations to cover real piracies, could illy be

borne; and perhaps would not have been borne, had not contraventions of

the same law by France, fewer in number but equally illegal, rendered

it difficult to single the object of war. England, at length, singled

herself, and took up the gauntlet, when the unlawful decrees of France

being revoked as to us, she, by the proclamation of her Prince Regent,

protested to the world that she would never revoke hers until those of

France should be removed as to all nations. Her minister too, about

the same time, in an official conversation with our Chargé, rejected

our substitute for her practice of impressment; proposed no other;

and declared explicitly that no admissible one for this abuse could be

proposed. Negotiation being thus cut short, no alternative remained but

war, or the abandonment of the persons and property of our citizens on

the ocean. The last one, I presume, no American would have preferred.

War was therefore declared, and justly declared; but accompanied with

immediate offers of peace on simply doing us justice. These offers were

made through Russel, through Admiral Warren, through the government of

Canada, and the mediation proposed by her best friend Alexander, and the

greatest enemy of Bonaparte, was accepted without hesitation. An entire

confidence in the abilities and integrity of those now administering the

government, has kept me from the inclination, as well as the occasion,

of intermeddling in the public affairs, even as a private citizen may

justifiably do. Yet if you can suggest any conditions which we ought

to accept, and which have not been repeatedly offered and rejected,

I would not hesitate to become the channel of their communication

to the administration. The revocation of the orders of council, and

discontinuance of impressment, appear to me indispensable. And I think

a thousand ships taken unjustifiably in time of peace, and thousands

of our citizens impressed, warrant expectations of indemnification;

such a Western frontier, perhaps, given to Canada, as may put it out

of their power hereafter to employ the tomahawk and scalping-knife

of the Indians on our women and children; or, what would be nearly

equivalent, the exclusive right to the lakes. The modification, however,

of this indemnification must be effected by the events of the war. No

man on earth has stronger detestation than myself of the unprincipled

tyrant who is deluging the continent of Europe with blood. No one was

more gratified by his disasters of the last campaign; nor wished, more

sincerely, success to the efforts of the virtuous Alexander. But the

desire of seeing England forced to just terms of peace with us, makes

me equally solicitous for her entire exclusion from intercourse with the

rest of the world, until by this peaceable engine of constraint, she can

be made to renounce her views of dominion over the ocean, of permitting

no other nation to navigate it but with her license, and on tribute to

her; and her aggressions on the persons of our citizens who may choose to

exercise their right of passing over that element. Should the continental

armistice issue in closing Europe against her, she may become willing

to accede to just terms with us; which I should certainly be disposed to

meet, whatever consequences it might produce on our intercourse with the

continental nations. My principle is to do whatever is right, and leave

consequences to Him who has the disposal of them. I repeat, therefore,

that if you can suggest what may lead to a just peace, I will willingly

communicate it to the proper functionaries. In the meantime, its object

will be best promoted by a vigorous and unanimous prosecution of the war.

I am happy in this occasion of renewing the interchange of sentiments

between us, which has formerly been a source of much satisfaction to me;

and with the homage of my affectionate attachment and respect to Mrs.

Logan, I pray you to accept the assurance of my continued friendship

and esteem for yourself.

TO JOHN ADAMS.

MONTICELLO, October 13, 1813.

DEAR SIR,--Since mine of August the 22d, I have received your favors of

August the 16th, September the 2d, 14th, 15th, and--, and Mrs. Adams' of

September the 20th. I now send you, according to your request, a copy of

the syllabus. To fill up this skeleton with arteries, with veins, with

nerves, muscles and flesh, is really beyond my time and information.

Whoever could undertake it would find great aid in Enfield's judicious

abridgment of Brucker's History of Philosophy, in which he has reduced

five or six quarto volumes, of one thousand pages each of Latin closely

printed, to two moderate octavos of English open type.

To compare the morals of the Old, with those of the New Testament, would

require an attentive study of the former, a search through all its books

for its precepts, and through all its history for its practices, and the

principles they prove. As commentaries, too, on these, the philosophy

of the Hebrews must be inquired into, their Mishna, their Gemara,

Cabbala, Jezirah, Sohar, Cosri, and their Talmud, must be examined and

understood, in order to do them full justice. Brucker, it would seem,

has gone deeply into these repositories of their ethics, and Enfield his

epitomizer, concludes in these words: "Ethics were so little understood

among the Jews, that in their whole compilation called the Talmud, there

is only one treatise on moral subjects. Their books of morals chiefly

consisted in a minute enumeration of duties. From the law of Moses were

deduced six hundred and thirteen precepts, which were divided into two

classes, affirmative and negative, two hundred and forty-eight in the

former, and three hundred and sixty-five in the latter. It may serve to

give the reader some idea of the low state of moral philosophy among the

Jews in the middle age, to add that of the two hundred and forty-eight

affirmative precepts, only three were considered as obligatory upon

women, and that in order to obtain salvation, it was judged sufficient

to fulfil any one single law in the hour of death; the observance of

the rest being deemed necessary, only to increase the felicity of the

future life. What a wretched depravity of sentiment and manners must

have prevailed, before such corrupt maxims could have obtained credit!

It is impossible to collect from these writings a consistent series of

moral doctrine." Enfield, B. 4, chap. 3. It was the reformation of this

"wretched depravity" of morals which Jesus undertook. In extracting

the pure principles which he taught, we should have to strip off the

artificial vestments in which they have been muffled by priests, who

have travestied them into various forms, as instruments of riches and

power to themselves. We must dismiss the Platonists and Plotinists, the

Stagyrites and Gamalielites, the Eclectics, the Gnostics and Scholastics,

their essences and emanations, their Logos and Demiurgos, Æons and

Dæmons, male and female, with a long train of &c. &c. &c., or, shall

I say at once, of nonsense. We must reduce our volume to the simple

evangelists, select, even from them, the very words only of Jesus, paring

off the amphiboligisms into which they have been led, by forgetting

often, or not understanding, what had fallen from him, by giving their

own misconceptions as his dicta, and expressing unintelligibly for

others what they had not understood themselves. There will be found

remaining the most sublime and benevolent code of morals which has ever

been offered to man. I have performed this operation for my own use,

by cutting verse by verse out of the printed book, and arranging the

matter which is evidently his, and which is as easily distinguishable

as diamonds in a dunghill. The result is an octavo of forty-six pages,

of pure and unsophisticated doctrines, such as were professed and

acted on by the _unlettered_ Apostles, the Apostolic Fathers, and the

Christians of the first century. Their Platonising successors, indeed,

in after times, in order to legitimate the corruptions which they had

incorporated into the doctrines of Jesus, found it necessary to disavow

the primitive Christians, who had taken their principles from the mouth

of Jesus himself, of his Apostles, and the Fathers cotemporary with them.

They excommunicated their followers as heretics, branding them with the

opprobrious name of Ebionites or Beggars.

For a comparison of the Grecian philosophy with that of Jesus, materials

might be largely drawn from the same source. Enfield gives a history and

detailed account of the opinions and principles of the different sects.

These relate to the Gods, their natures, grades, places and powers;

the demi-Gods and Dæmons, and their agency with man; the universe, its

structure, extent and duration; the origin of things from the elements of

fire, water, air and earth; the human soul, its essence and derivation;

the _summum bonum_ and _finis bonorum_; with a thousand idle dreams and

fancies on these and other subjects, the knowledge of which is withheld

from man; leaving but a short chapter for his moral duties, and the

principal section of that given to what he owes himself, to precepts

for rendering him impassible, and unassailable by the evils of life,

and for preserving his mind in a state of constant serenity.

Such a canvas is too broad for the age of seventy, and especially of one

whose chief occupations have been in the practical business of life.

We must leave, therefore, to others, younger and more learned than

we are, to prepare this euthanasia for Platonic Christianity, and its

restoration to the primitive simplicity of its founder. I think you give

a just outline of the theism of the three religions, when you say that

the principle of the Hebrew was the fear, of the Gentile the honor, and

of the Christian the love of God.

An expression in your letter of September the 14th, that "the human

understanding is a revelation from its maker," gives the best solution

that I believe can be given of the question, "what did Socrates mean by

his Dæmon?" He was too wise to believe, and too honest to pretend, that

he had real and familiar converse with a superior and invisible being.

He probably considered the suggestions of his conscience, or reason, as

revelations or inspirations from the Supreme mind, bestowed, on important

occasions, by a special superintending Providence.

I acknowledge all the merit of the hymn of Cleanthes to Jupiter, which

you ascribe to it. It is as highly sublime as a chaste and correct

imagination can permit itself to go. Yet in the contemplation of a being

so superlative, the hyperbolic flights of the Psalmist may often be

followed with approbation, even with rapture; and I have no hesitation

in giving him the palm over all the hymnists of every language and of

every time. Turn to the 148th psalm, in Brady and Tate's version. Have

such conceptions been ever before expressed? Their version of the 15th

psalm is more to be esteemed for its pithiness than its poetry. Even

Sternhold, the leaden Sternhold, kindles, in a single instance, with the

sublimity of his original, and expresses the majesty of God descending

on the earth, in terms not unworthy of the subject:

"The Lord descended from above,

And underneath his feet he cast

On Cherubim and Seraphim

And on the wings of mighty winds

And bowed the heav'ns most high;

The darkness of the sky.

Full royally he rode;

Came flying all abroad."--Psalm xviii. 9, 10.

The Latin versions of this passage by Buchanan and by Johnston, are but

mediocres. But the Greek of Duport is worthy of quotation,

Ουρανον αγκλινας κατεβη· υπο πὸσσι δ' εοισιν

Αχλύς αμφι μελαινα χυθη και νυξ ερεβεννη.

Ῥιμφα ποτατο χερουβω οχευμενος, ωσπερ εφ' ιππω·

Ἱπτατο δε πτερυγεσσι πολυπλαγκτου ανεμοιο.

The best collection of these psalms is that of the Octagonian dissenters

of Liverpool, in their printed form of prayer; but they are not always

the best versions. Indeed, bad is the best of the English versions; not

a ray of poetical genius having ever been employed on them. And how

much depends on this, may be seen by comparing Brady and Tate's 15th

psalm with Blacklock's _Justum et tenacem propositi virum_ of Horace,

quoted in Hume's history, Car. 2, ch. 65. A translation of David in

this style, or in that of Pompei's Cleanthes, might give us some idea

of the merit of the original. The character, too, of the poetry of

these hymns is singular to us; written in monostichs, each divided into

strophe and anti-strophe, the sentiment of the first member responded

with amplification or antithesis in the second.

On the subject of the postscript of yours of August the 16th and of Mrs.

Adams' letter, I am silent. I know the depth of the affliction it has

caused, and can sympathise with it the more sensibly, inasmuch as there

is no degree of affliction, produced by the loss of those dear to us,

which experience has not taught me to estimate. I have ever found time

and silence the only medicine, and these but assuage, they never can

suppress, the deep drawn sigh which recollection forever brings up, until

recollection and life are extinguished together. Ever affectionately

yours.

TO JOHN ADAMS.

MONTICELLO, October 28, 1813.

DEAR SIR,--According to the reservation between us, of taking up one of

the subjects of our correspondence at a time, I turn to your letters of

August the 16th and September the 2d.

The passage you quote from Theognis, I think has an ethical rather

than a political object. The whole piece is a moral _exhortation_,

παραινεσις, and this passage particularly seems to be a reproof to man,

who, while with his domestic animals he is curious to improve the race,

by employing always the finest male, pays no attention to the improvement

of his own race, but intermarries with the vicious, the ugly, or the

old, for considerations of wealth or ambition. It is in conformity with

the principle adopted afterwards by the Pythagoreans, and expressed by

Ocellus in another form; περι δε τῆς ἐκ τῶν αλληλων ανθρωπων γενεσεως

&c.--ουχ ηδονης ενεκα η μιξις: which, as literally as intelligibility

will admit, may be thus translated: "concerning the interprocreation of

men, how, and of whom it shall be, in a perfect manner, and according to

the laws of modesty and sanctity, conjointly, this is what I think right.

First to lay it down that we do not commix for the sake of pleasure, but

of the procreation of children. For the powers, the organs and desires

for coition have not been given by God to man for the sake of pleasure,

but for the procreation of the race. For as it were incongruous, for

a mortal born to partake of divine life, the immortality of the race

being taken away, God fulfilled the purpose by making the generations

uninterrupted and continuous. This, therefore, we are especially to lay

down as a principle, that coition is not for the sake of pleasure." But

nature, not trusting to this moral and abstract motive, seems to have

provided more securely for the perpetuation of the species, by making it

the effect of the _oestrum_ implanted in the constitution of both sexes.

And not only has the commerce of love been indulged on this unhallowed

impulse, but made subservient also to wealth and ambition by marriage,

without regard to the beauty, the healthiness, the understanding, or

virtue of the subject from which we are to breed. The selecting the

best male for a Harem of well chosen females also, which Theognis seems

to recommend from the example of our sheep and asses, would doubtless

improve the human, as it does the brute animal, and produce a race of

veritable ἄριστοι. For experience proves, that the moral and physical

qualities of man, whether good or evil, are transmissible in a certain

degree from father to son. But I suspect that the equal rights of men

will rise up against this privileged Solomon and his Haram, and oblige

us to continue acquiescence under the "Αμαυρωσις γενεος αστων" which

Theognis complains of, and to content ourselves with the accidental

aristoi produced by the fortuitous concourse of breeders. For I agree

with you that there is a natural aristocracy among men. The grounds of

this are virtue and talents. Formerly, bodily powers gave place among

the aristoi. But since the invention of gunpowder has armed the weak as

well as the strong with missile death, bodily strength, like beauty, good

humor, politeness and other accomplishments, has become but an auxiliary

ground of distinction. There is also an artificial aristocracy, founded

on wealth and birth, without either virtue or talents; for with these

it would belong to the first class. The natural aristocracy I consider

as the most precious gift of nature, for the instruction, the trusts,

and government of society. And indeed, it would have been inconsistent

in creation to have formed man for the social state, and not to have

provided virtue and wisdom enough to manage the concerns of the society.

May we not even say, that that form of government is the best, which

provides the most effectually for a pure selection of these natural

aristoi into the offices of government? The artificial aristocracy is

a mischievous ingredient in government, and provision should be made to

prevent its ascendency. On the question, what is the best provision, you

and I differ; but we differ as rational friends, using the free exercise

of our own reason, and mutually indulging its errors. You think it best

to put the pseudo-aristoi into a separate chamber of legislation, where

they may be hindered from doing mischief by their co-ordinate branches,

and where, also, they may be a protection to wealth against the Agrarian

and plundering enterprises of the majority of the people. I think that

to give them power in order to prevent them from doing mischief, is

arming them for it, and increasing instead of remedying the evil. For

if the co-ordinate branches can arrest their action, so may they that of

the co-ordinates. Mischief may be done negatively as well as positively.

Of this, a cabal in the Senate of the United States has furnished many

proofs. Nor do I believe them necessary to protect the wealthy; because

enough of these will find their way into every branch of the legislation,

to protect themselves. From fifteen to twenty legislatures of our own, in

action for thirty years past, have proved that no fears of an equalization

of property are to be apprehended from them. I think the best remedy is

exactly that provided by all our constitutions, to leave to the citizens

the free election and separation of the aristoi from the pseudo-aristoi,

of the wheat from the chaff. In general they will elect the really good

and wise. In some instances, wealth may corrupt, and birth blind them;

but not in sufficient degree to endanger the society.