Too many enterprises are open, offering high profits, to permit them
to lend their capitals on a regular and moderate interest. They are too
enterprizing and sanguine themselves not to believe they can do better
with it. I never did believe you could have gone beyond a first or a
second loan, not from a want of confidence in the public faith, which is
perfectly sound, but from a want of disposable funds in individuals. The
circulating fund is the only one we can ever command with certainty. It
is sufficient for all our wants; and the impossibility of even defending
the country without its aid as a borrowing fund, renders it indispensable
that the nation should take and keep it in their own hands, as their
exclusive resource.
I have trespassed on your time so far, for explanation only. I will
do it no further than by adding the assurances of my affectionate and
respectful attachment.
Years. Emissions. Taxes & Redemptions. Bal. in circulation
at end of year.
1815 20 millions 2 millions 18 millions
1816 20 " 4 " 34 "
1817 20 " 6 " 48 "
1818 20 " 8 " 60 "
1819 20 " 10 " 70 "
1820 20 " 10 " 80 "
1821 20 " 10 " 90 "
----
140
Suppose the war to terminate here, to wit, at the end of seven years,
the reduction will proceed as follows:
Years. Taxes & Redemptions. Bal. in cir. at end of year.
1822 10 millions 80 millions
1823 10 " 70 "
1824 10 " 60 "
1825 10 " 50 "
1826 10 " 40 "
1827 10 " 30 "
1828 10 " 20 "
1829 10 " 10 "
1830 10 " 0 "
----
140
This is a tabular statement of the amount of emission, taxes, redemptions,
and balances left in circulation every year, on the plan above sketched.
FOOTNOTES:
[12] Address lost. Probably to the President.
TO JAMES MONROE.
MONTICELLO, October 16, 1814.
DEAR SIR,--Your letter of the 10th has been duly received. The objects
of our contest being thus entirely changed by England, we must prepare
for interminable war. To this end we should put our house in order, by
providing men and money to indefinite extent. The former may be done
by classing our militia, and assigning each class to the description of
duties for which it is fit. It is nonsense to talk of regulars. They are
not to be had among a people so easy and happy at home as ours. We might
as well rely on calling down an army of angels from heaven. I trust it
is now seen that the refusal to class the militia, when proposed years
ago, is the real source of all our misfortunes in this war. The other
great and indispensable object is to enter on such a system of finance,
as can be permanently pursued to any length of time whatever. Let us
be allured by no projects of banks, public or private, or ephemeral
expedients, which, enabling us to gasp and flounder a little longer,
only increase, by protracting the agonies of death.
Perceiving, in a letter from the President, that either I had ill
expressed my ideas on a particular part of this subject, in the letters
I sent you, or he had misapprehended them, I wrote him yesterday an
explanation; and as you have thought the other letters worth a perusal,
and a communication to the Secretary of the Treasury, I enclose you a
copy of this, lest I should be misunderstood by others also. Only be so
good as to return me the whole when done with, as I have no other copies.
Since writing the letter now enclosed, I have seen the Report of the
committee of finance, proposing taxes to the amount of twenty millions.
This is a dashing proposition. But, if Congress pass it, I shall consider
it sufficient evidence that their constituents generally can pay the tax.
No man has greater confidence than I have, in the spirit of the people,
to a rational extent. Whatever they can, they will. But, without either
market or medium, I know not how it is to be done. All markets abroad,
and all at home, are shut to us; so that we have been feeding our horses
on wheat. Before the day of collection, bank-notes will be but as oak
leaves; and of specie, there is not within all the United States, one-half
of the proposed amount of the taxes. I had thought myself as bold as was
safe in contemplating, as possible, an annual taxation of ten millions,
as a fund for emissions of treasury notes; and, when further emissions
should be necessary, that it would be better to enlarge the time, than
the tax for redemption. Our position, with respect to our enemy, and our
markets, distinguishes us from all other nations; inasmuch, as a state
of war, with us, annihilates in an instant all our surplus produce, that
on which we depended for many comforts of life. This renders peculiarly
expedient the throwing a part of the burdens of war on times of peace
and commerce. Still, however, my hope is that others see resources,
which, in my abstraction from the world, are unseen by me; that there
will be both market and medium to meet these taxes, and that there are
circumstances which render it wiser to levy twenty millions at once on
the people, than to obtain the same sum on a tenth of the tax.
I enclose you a letter from Colonel James Lewis, now of Tennessee, who
wishes to be appointed Indian agent, and I do it lest he should have
relied solely on this channel of communication. You know him better than I
do, as he was long your agent. I have always believed him an honest man,
and very good-humored and accommodating. Of his other qualifications for
the office, you are the best judge. Believe me to be ever affectionately
yours.
TO DOCTOR ROBERT PATTERSON.
MONTICELLO, November 23, 1814.
DEAR SIR,--I have heretofore confided to you my wishes to retire from the
chair of the Philosophical Society, which, however, under the influence
of your recommendations, I have hitherto deferred. I have never, however,
ceased from the purpose, and from everything I can observe or learn at
this distance, I suppose that a new choice can now be made with as much
harmony as may be expected at any future time. I send therefore, by this
mail, my resignation, with such entreaties to be omitted at the ensuing
election as I must hope will be yielded to, for in truth I cannot be
easy in holding, as a sinecure, an honor so justly due to the talents
and services of others. I pray your friendly assistance in assuring the
society of the sentiments of affectionate respect and gratitude with
which I retire from the high and honorable relation in which I have stood
with them, and that you will believe me to be ever and affectionately
yours.
TO ROBERT M. PATTERSON, SECRETARY OF THE AMERICAN PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY.
MONTICELLO, November 23, 1814.
SIR,--I solicited, on a former occasion, permission from the American
Philosophical Society, to retire from the honor of their chair, under
a consciousness that distance as well as other circumstances, denied
me the power of executing the duties of the station, and that those on
whom they devolved were best entitled to the honors they confer. It was
the pleasure of the society at that time, that I should remain in their
service, and they have continued since to renew the same marks of their
partiality. Of these I have been ever duly sensible, and now beg leave
to return my thanks for them with humble gratitude. Still, I have never
ceased, nor can I cease to feel that I am holding honors without yielding
requital, and justly belonging to others. As the period of election is
now therefore approaching, I take the occasion of begging to be withdrawn
from the attention of the society at their ensuing choice, and to be
permitted now to resign the office of president into their hands, which
I hereby do. I shall consider myself sufficiently honored in remaining
a private member of their body, and shall ever avail myself with zeal
of every occasion which may occur, of being useful to them, retaining
indelibly a profound sense of their past favors.
I avail myself of the channel through which the last notification of the
pleasure of the society was conveyed to me, to make this communication,
and with the greater satisfaction, as it gratifies me with the occasion
of assuring you personally of my high respect for yourself, and of the
interest I shall ever take in learning that your worth and talents secure
to you the successes they merit.
TO W. SHORT, ESQ.
MONTICELLO, November 28, 1814.
DEAR SIR,--Yours of October 28th came to hand on the 15th instant only.
The settlement of your boundary with Colonel Monroe, is protracted
by circumstances which seem foreign to it. One would hardly have
expected that the hostile expedition to Washington could have had any
connection with an operation one hundred miles distant. Yet preventing
his attendance, nothing could be done. I am satisfied there is no
unwillingness on his part, but on the contrary a desire to have it
settled; and therefore, if he should think it indispensable to be present
at the investigation, as is possible, the very first time he comes here
I will press him to give a day to the decision, without regarding Mr.
Carter's absence. Such an occasion must certainly offer soon after the
fourth of March, when Congress rises of necessity and be assured I will
not lose one possible moment in effecting it.
Although withdrawn from all anxious attention to political concerns,
yet I will state my impressions as to the present war, because your
letter leads to the subject. The essential grounds of the war were, 1st,
the orders of council; and 2d, the impressment of our citizens; (for I
put out of sight from the love of peace the multiplied insults on our
government and aggressions on our commerce, with which our pouch, like the
Indian's, had long been filled to the mouth.) What immediately produced
the declaration was, 1st, the proclamation of the Prince Regent that he
would never repeal the orders of council as to us, until Bonaparte should
have revoked his decrees as to all other nations as well as ours; and
2d, the declaration of his minister to ours that no arrangement whatever
could be devised, admissible in lieu of impressment. It was certainly a
misfortune that _they_ did not know themselves at the date of this silly
and insolent proclamation, that within one month they would repeal the
orders, and that _we_, at the date of our declaration, could not know
of the repeal which was then going on one thousand leagues distant.
Their determinations, as declared by themselves, could alone guide us,
and they shut the door on all further negotiation, throwing down to us
the gauntlet of war or submission as the only alternatives. We cannot
blame the government for choosing that of war, because certainly the
great majority of the nation thought it ought to be chosen, not that
they were to gain by it in dollars and cents; all men know that war is
a losing game to both parties. But they know also that if they do not
resist encroachment at some point, all will be taken from them, and
that more would then be lost even in dollars and cents by submission
than resistance. It is the case of giving a part to save the whole, a
limb to save life. It is the melancholy law of human societies to be
compelled sometimes to choose a great evil in order to ward off a greater;
to deter their neighbors from rapine by making it cost them more than
honest gains. The enemy are accordingly now disgorging what they had so
ravenously swallowed. The orders of council had taken from us near one
thousand vessels. Our list of captures from them is now one thousand
three hundred, and, just become sensible that it is small and not large
ships which gall them most, we shall probably add one thousand prizes
a year to their past losses. Again, supposing that, according to the
confession of their own minister in parliament, the Americans they had
impressed were something short of two thousand, the war against us alone
cannot cost them less than twenty millions of dollars a year, so that each
American impressed has already cost them ten thousand dollars, and every
year will add five thousand dollars more to his price. We, I suppose,
expend more; but had we adopted the other alternative of submission, no
mortal can tell what the cost would have been. I consider the war then
as entirely justifiable on our part, although I am still sensible it is
a deplorable misfortune to us. It has arrested the course of the most
remarkable tide of prosperity any nation ever experienced, and has closed
such prospects of future improvement as were never before in the view
of any people. Farewell all hopes of extinguishing public debt! farewell
all visions of applying surpluses of revenue to the improvements of peace
rather than the ravages of war. Our enemy has indeed the consolation of
Satan on removing our first parents from Paradise: from a peaceable and
agricultural nation, he makes us a military and manufacturing one. We
shall indeed survive the conflict. Breeders enough will remain to carry
on population. We shall retain our country, and rapid advances in the art
of war will soon enable us to beat our enemy, and probably drive him from
the continent. We have men enough, and I am in hopes the present session
of Congress will provide the means of commanding their services. But I
wish I could see them get into a better train of finance. Their banking
projects are like dosing dropsy with more water. If anything could revolt
our citizens against the war, it would be the extravagance with which
they are about to be taxed. It is strange indeed that at this day, and
in a country where English proceedings are so familiar, the principles
and advantages of funding should be neglected, and expedients resorted
to. Their new bank, if not abortive at its birth, will not last through
one campaign; and the taxes proposed cannot be paid. How can a people who
cannot get fifty cents a bushel for their wheat, while they pay twelve
dollars a bushel for their salt, pay five times the amount of taxes they
ever paid before? Yet that will be the case in all the States south of
the Potomac. Our resources are competent to the maintenance of the war
if duly economized and skillfuly employed in the way of anticipation.
However, we must suffer, I suppose, from our ignorance in funding, as
we did from that of fighting, until necessity teaches us both; and,
fortunately, our stamina are so vigorous as to rise superior to great
mismanagement. This year I think we shall have learnt how to call forth
our force, and by the next I hope our funds, and even if the state of
Europe should not by that time give the enemy employment enough nearer
home, we shall leave him nothing to fight for here. These are my views
of the war. They embrace a great deal of sufferance, trying privations,
and no benefit but that of teaching our enemy that he is never to gain by
wanton injuries on us. To me this state of things brings a sacrifice of
all tranquillity and comfort through the residue of life. For although
the debility of age disables me from the services and sufferings of the
field, yet, by the total annihilation in value of the produce which was
to give me subsistence and independence, I shall be like Tantalus, up
to the shoulders in water, yet dying with thirst. We can make indeed
enough to eat, drink and clothe ourselves; but nothing for our salt,
iron, groceries and taxes, which must be paid in money. For what can
we raise for the market? Wheat? we can only give it to our horses, as
we have been doing ever since harvest. Tobacco? it is not worth the
pipe it is smoked in. Some say Whiskey; but all mankind must become
drunkards to consume it. But although we feel, we shall not flinch. We
must consider now, as in the revolutionary war, that although the evils
of resistance are great, those of submission would be greater. We must
meet, therefore, the former as the casualties of tempests and earthquakes,
and like them necessarily resulting from the constitution of the world.
Your situation, my dear friend, is much better. For, although I do not
know with certainty the nature of your investments, yet I presume they
are not in banks, insurance companies or any other of those gossamer
castles. If in ground-rents, they are solid; if in stock of the United
States, they are equally so. I once thought that in the event of a war
we should be obliged to suspend paying the interest of the public debt.
But a dozen years more of experience and observation on our people and
government, have satisfied me it will never be done. The sense of the
necessity of public credit is so universal and so deeply rooted, that
no other necessity will prevail against it; and I am glad to see that
while the former eight millions are steadfastly applied to the sinking
of the old debt, the Senate have lately insisted on a sinking fund for
the new. This is the dawn of that improvement in the management of our
finances which I look to for salvation; and I trust that the light will
continue to advance, and point out their way to our legislators. They
will soon see that instead of taxes for the whole year's expenses,
which the people cannot pay, a tax to the amount of the interest and
a reasonable portion of the principal will command the whole sum, and
throw a part of the burthens of war on times of peace and prosperity.
A sacred payment of interest is the only way to make the most of their
resources, and a sense of that renders your income from our funds more
certain than mine from lands. Some apprehend danger from the defection
of Massachusetts. It is a disagreeable circumstance, but not a dangerous
one. If they become neutral, we are sufficient for one enemy without
them, and in fact we get no aid from them now. If their administration
determines to join the enemy, their force will be annihilated by equality
of division among themselves. Their federalists will then call in the
English army, the republicans ours, and it will only be a transfer of
the scene of war from Canada to Massachusetts; and we can get ten men to
go to Massachusetts for one who will go to Canada. Every one, too, must
know that we can at any moment make peace with England at the expense
of the navigation and fisheries of Massachusetts. But it will not come
to this. Their own people will put down these factionists as soon as
they see the real object of their opposition; and of this Vermont, New
Hampshire, and even Connecticut itself, furnish proofs.
You intimate a possibility of your return to France, now that Bonaparte
is put down. I do not wonder at it, France, freed from that monster,
must again become the most agreeable country on earth. It would be the
second choice of all whose ties of family and fortune gives a preference
to some other one, and the first of all not under those ties. Yet I doubt
if the tranquillity of France is entirely settled. If her Pretorian bands
are not furnished with employment on her external enemies, I fear they
will recall the old, or set up some new cause.
God bless you and preserve you in bodily health. Tranquillity of mind
depends much on ourselves, and greatly on due reflection "how much pain
have cost us the evils which have never happened." Affectionately adieu.
TO MR. MELLISH.
MONTICELLO, December 10, 1814.
DEAR SIR,--I thank you for your favor of the map of the _sine quâ non_,
enclosed in your letter of November 12th. It was an excellent idea;
and if, with the Documents distributed by Congress, copies of these
had been sent to be posted up in every street, on every townhouse and
court-house, it would have painted to the eyes of those who cannot read
without reflecting, that reconquest is the ultimate object of Britain.
The first step towards this is to set a limit to their expansion by
taking from them that noble country which the foresight of their fathers
provided for their multiplying and needy offspring; to be followed up by
the compression, land-board and sea-board, of that Omnipotence which the
English fancy themselves now to possess. A vain and foolish imagination!
Instead of fearing and endeavoring to crush our prosperity, had they
cultivated it in friendship, it might have become a bulwark instead of a
breaker to them. There has never been an administration in this country
which would not gladly have met them more than half way on the road to
an equal, a just and solid connection of friendship and intercourse.
And as to repressing our growth, they might as well attempt to repress
the waves of the ocean.
Your American Atlas is a useful undertaking for those who will live to see
and to use it. To me every mail, in the departure of some cotemporary,
brings warning to be in readiness myself also, and to cease from new
engagements. It is a warning of no alarm. When faculty after faculty
is retiring from us, and all the avenues to cheerful sensation closing,
sight failing now, hearing next, then memory, debility of body, trepitude
of mind, nothing remaining but a sickly vegetation, with scarcely the
relief of a little locomotion, the last cannot be but a _coup de grace_.
You propose to me the preparation of a new edition of the Notes on
Virginia. I formerly entertained the idea, and from time to time noted
some new matter, which I thought I would arrange at leisure for a
posthumous edition. But I now begin to see that it is impracticable for
me. Nearly forty years of additional experience in the affairs of mankind
would lead me into dilatations ending I know not where. That experience
indeed has not altered a single principle. But it has furnished matter
of abundant development. Every moment, too, which I have to spare from
my daily exercise and affairs is engrossed by a correspondence, the
result of the extensive relations which my course of life has necessarily
occasioned. And now the act of writing itself is becoming slow, laborious
and irksome. I consider, therefore, the idea of preparing a new copy of
that work as no more to be entertained. The work itself indeed is nothing
more than the measure of a shadow, never stationary, but lengthening as
the sun advances, and to be taken anew from hour to hour. It must remain,
therefore, for some other hand to sketch its appearance at another epoch,
to furnish another element for calculating the course and motion of this
member of our federal system. For this, every day is adding new matter
and strange matter. That of reducing, by impulse instead of attraction,
a sister planet into its orbit, will be as new in our political as in
the planetary system. The operation, however, will be painful rather
than difficult. The sound part of our wandering star will probably, by
its own internal energies, keep the unsound within its course; or if a
foreign power is called in, we shall have to meet it but so much the
nearer, and with a more overwhelming force. It will probably shorten
the war. For I think it probable that the _sine quâ non_ was designedly
put into an impossible form to give time for the development of their
plots and concerts with the factionists of Boston, and that they are
holding off to see the issue, not of the Congress of Vienna, but that
of Hartford. This will begin a new chapter in our history, and with a
wish that you may live in health to see its easy close, I tender you
the assurance of my great esteem and respect.
TO M. CORREA DE SERRA.
MONTICELLO, December 27, 1814.
DEAR SIR,--Yours of the 9th has been duly received, and I thank you
for the recipe for imitating purrolani, which I shall certainly try on
my cisterns the ensuing summer. The making them impermeable to water
is of great consequence to me. That one chemical subject may follow
another, I enclose you two morsels of ore found in this neighborhood,
and supposed to be of antimony. I am not certain, but I believe both are
from the same piece, and although the very spot where that was found is
not known, yet it is known to be within a certain space not too large
to be minutely examined, if the material be worth it. This you can have
ascertained in Philadelphia, where it is best known to the artists how
great a desideratum antimony is with them.
You will have seen that I resigned the chair of the American Philosophical
Society, not awaiting your further information as to the settlement of
the general opinion on a successor without schism. I did it because the
term of election was too near to admit further delay.
On the subject which entered incidentally into our conversation while
you were here, when I came to reflect maturely, I concluded to be silent.
To do wrong is a melancholy resource, even where retaliation renders it
indispensably necessary. It is better to suffer much from the scalpings,
the conflagrations, the rapes and rapine of savages, than to countenance
and strengthen such barbarisms by retortion. I have ever deemed it more
honorable and more profitable too, to set a good example than to follow
a bad one. The good opinion of mankind, like the lever of Archimedes,
with the given fulcrum, moves the world. I therefore have never proposed
or mentioned the subject to any one.
I have received a letter from Mr. Say, in which he expresses a thought of
removing to this country, having discontinued the manufactory in which
he was engaged; and he asks information from me of the prices of land,
labor, produce, &c., in the neighborhood of Charlottesville, on which he
has cast his eye. Its neighborhood has certainly the advantages of good
soil, fine climate, navigation to market, and rational and republican
society. It would be a good enough position too for the re-establishment
of his cotton works, on a moderate scale, and combined with the small
plan of agriculture to which he seems solely to look. But when called
on to name prices, what is to be said? We have no fixed prices now. Our
dropsical medium is long since divested of the quality of a medium of
value; nor can I find any other. In most countries a fixed quantity of
wheat is perhaps the best permanent standard. But here the blockade of
our whole coast, preventing all access to a market, has depressed the
price of that, and exalted that of other things, in opposite directions,
and, combined with the effects of the paper deluge, leaves really no
common measure of values to be resorted to. This paper, too, received now
without confidence, and for momentary purposes only, may, in a moment,
be worth nothing. I shall think further on the subject, and give to Mr.
Say the best information in my power. To myself such an addition to our
rural society would be inestimable; and I can readily conceive that it
may be for the benefit of his children and their descendants to remove
to a country where, for enterprise and talents, so many avenues are open
to fortune and fame. But whether, at his time of life, and with habits
formed for the state of society in France, a change for one so entirely
different will be for his personal happiness, you can better judge than
myself.
Mr. Say will be surprised to find, that forty years after the development
of sound financial principles by Adam Smith and the Economists, and a
dozen years after he has given them to us in a corrected, dense, and
lucid form, there should be so much ignorance of them in our country;
that instead of funding issues of paper on the hypothecation of specific
redeeming taxes, (the only method of anticipating, in a time of war,
the resources of times of peace, tested by the experience of nations,)
we are trusting to tricks of jugglers on the cards, to the illusions of
banking schemes for the resources of the war, and for the cure of colic
to inflations of more wind. The wise proposition of the Secretary at War,
too, for filling our ranks with regulars, and putting our militia into
an effective form, seems to be laid aside. I fear, therefore, that, if
the war continues, it will require another year of sufferance for men
and money to lead our legislators into such a military and financial
regimen as may carry us through a war of any length. But my hope is in
peace. The negotiators at Ghent are agreed now on every point save one,
the demand and cession of a portion of Maine. This, it is well known,
cannot be yielded by us, nor deemed by them an object for continuing
a war so expensive, so injurious to their commerce and manufactures,
and so odious in the eyes of the world. But it is a thread to hold by
until they can hear the result, not of the Congress of Vienna, but of
Hartford. When they shall know, as they will know, that nothing will be
done there, they will let go their hold, and complete the peace of the
world, by agreeing to the _status ante bellum_. Indemnity for the past,
and security for the future, which was our motto at the beginning of
this war, must be adjourned to another, when, disarmed and bankrupt, our
enemy shall be less able to insult and plunder the world with impunity.
This will be after my time. One war, such as that of our Revolution, is
enough for one life. Mine has been too much prolonged to make me the
witness of a second, and I hope for a _coup de grace_ before a third
shall come upon us. If, indeed, Europe has matters to settle which may
reduce this _hostis humani generis_ to a state of peace and moral order,
I shall see that with pleasure, and then sing, with old Simeon, _nunc
dimittas Domine_. For yourself, _cura ut valeas, et me, ut amaris, ama_.
TO COLONEL MONROE.
MONTICELLO, January 1, 1815.
DEAR SIR,--Your letters of November the 30th and December the 21st have
been received with great pleasure. A truth now and then projecting into
the ocean of newspaper lies, serves like head-lands to correct our course.
Indeed, my scepticism as to everything I see in a newspaper, makes me
indifferent whether I ever see one. The embarrassments at Washington,
in August last, I expected would be great in any state of things; but
they proved greater than expected. I never doubted that the plans of
the President were wise and sufficient. Their failure we all impute, 1,
to the insubordinate temper of Armstrong; and 2, to the indecision of
Winder. However, it ends well. It mortifies ourselves, and so may check,
perhaps, the silly boasting spirit of our newspapers, and it enlists the
feelings of the world on our side; and the advantage of public opinion
is like that of the weather-gauge in a naval action. In Europe, the
transient possession of our Capital can be no disgrace. Nearly every
Capital there was in possession of its enemy; some often and long. But
diabolical as they paint that enemy, he burnt neither public edifices nor
private dwellings. It was reserved for England to show that Bonaparte,
in atrocity, was an infant to their ministers and their generals. They
are taking his place in the eyes of Europe, and have turned into our
channel all its good will. This will be worth the million of dollars the
repairs of their conflagration will cost us. I hope that to preserve
this weather-gauge of public opinion, and to counteract the slanders
and falsehoods disseminated by the English papers, the government will
make it a standing instruction to their ministers at foreign courts, to
keep Europe truly informed of occurrences here, by publishing in their
papers the naked truth always, whether favorable or unfavorable. For
they will believe the good, if we candidly tell them the bad also.
But you have two more serious causes of uneasiness; the want of men and
money. For the former, nothing more wise or efficient could have been
imagined than what you proposed. It would have filled our ranks with
regulars, and that, too, by throwing a just share of the burthen on the
purses of those whose persons are exempt either by age or office; and it
would have rendered our militia, like those of the Greeks and Romans,
a nation of warriors. But the go-by seems to have been given to your
proposition, and longer sufferance is necessary to force us to what is
best. We seem equally incorrigible to our financial course. Although
a century of British experience has proved to what a wonderful extent
the funding on specific redeeming taxes enables a nation to anticipate
in war the resources of peace, and although the other nations of Europe
have tried and trodden every path of force or folly in fruitless quest
of the same object, yet we still expect to find in juggling tricks and
banking dreams, that money can be made out of nothing, and in sufficient
quantity to meet the expenses of a heavy war by sea and land. It is said,
indeed, that money cannot be borrowed from our merchants as from those
of England. But it can be borrowed from our people. They will give you
all the necessaries of war they produce, if, instead of the bankrupt
trash they now are obliged to receive for want of any other, you will
give them a paper promise funded on a specific pledge, and of a size
for common circulation. But you say the merchants will not take this
paper. What the people take the merchants must take, or sell nothing.
All these doubts and fears prove only the extent of the dominion which
the banking institutions have obtained over the minds of our citizens,
and especially of those inhabiting cities or other banking places;
and this dominion must be broken, or it will break us. But here, as in
the other case, we must make up our minds to suffer yet longer before
we can get right. The misfortune is, that in the meantime we shall
plunge ourselves in unextinguishable debt, and entail on our posterity
an inheritance of eternal taxes, which will bring our government and
people into the condition of those of England, a nation of pikes and
gudgeons, the latter bred merely as food for the former. But, however
these difficulties of men and money may be disposed of, it is fortunate
that neither of them will affect our war by sea. Privateers will find
their own men and money. Let nothing be spared to encourage them. They
are the dagger which strikes at the heart of the enemy, their commerce.
Frigates and seventy-fours are a sacrifice we must make, heavy as it is,
to the prejudices of a part of our citizens. They have, indeed, rendered
a great moral service, which has delighted me as much as any one in the
United States. But they have had no physical effect sensible to the enemy;
and now, while we must fortify them in our harbors, and keep armies to
defend them, our _privateers_ are bearding and blockading the enemy in
their own seaports. Encourage them to burn all their prizes, and let the
public pay for them. They will cheat us enormously. No matter; they will
make the merchants of England feel, and squeal, and cry out for peace.
I much regretted your acceptance of the war department. Not that I know
a person who I think would better conduct it. But, conduct it ever so
wisely, it will be a sacrifice of yourself. Were an angel from Heaven
to undertake that office, all our miscarriages would be ascribed to
him. Raw troops, no troops, insubordinate militia, want of arms, want of
money, want of provisions, all will be charged to want of management in
you. I speak from experience, when I was Governor of Virginia. Without
a regular in the State, and scarcely a musket to put into the hands
of the militia, invaded by two armies, Arnold's from the sea-board and
Cornwallis' from the southward, when we were driven from Richmond and
Charlottesville, and every member of my council fled from their homes,
it was not the total destitution of means, but the mismanagement of them,
which, in the querulous voice of the public, caused all our misfortunes.
It ended, indeed, in the capture of the whole hostile force, but not till
means were brought us by General Washington's army, and the French fleet
and army. And although the legislature, who were personally intimate
with both the means and measures, acquitted me with justice and thanks,
yet General Lee has put all those imputations among the romances of
his historical novel, for the amusement of credulous and uninquisitive
readers. Not that I have seen the least disposition to censure you.
On the contrary, your conduct on the attack of Washington has met the
praises of every one, and your plan for regulars and militia, their
approbation. But no campaign is as yet opened. No Generals have yet an
interest in shifting their own incompetence on you, no army agents their
rogueries. I sincerely pray you may never meet censure where you will
deserve most praise, and that your own happiness and prosperity may be
the result of your patriotic services.
Ever and affectionately yours.
TO MR. GIRARDIN.
MONTICELLO, January 15, 1815.
I have no document respecting Clarke's expedition, except the letters of
which you are in possession, one of which, I believe, gives some account
of it; nor do I possess Imlay's history of Kentucky.
Of Mr. Wythe's early history I scarcely know anything, except that he
was self-taught; and perhaps this might not have been as to the Latin
language, Dr. Small was his bosom friend, and to me as a father. To his
enlightened and affectionate guidance of my studies while at College,
I am indebted for everything.
He was Professor of Mathematics at William and Mary, and, for some time,
was in the philosophical chair. He first introduced into both schools
rational and elevated courses of study, and, from an extraordinary
conjunction of eloquence and logic, was enabled to communicate them to
the students with great effect. He procured for me the patronage of Mr.
Wythe, and both of them, the attentions of Governor Fauquier, the ablest
man who ever filled the chair of government here. They were inseparable
friends, and at their frequent dinners with the Governor, (after his
family had returned to England,) he admitted me always, to make it a
_partie quarrée_. At these dinners I have heard more good sense, more
rational and philosophical conversations, than in all my life besides.
They were truly Attic societies. The Governor was musical also, and a
good performer, and associated me with two or three other amateurs in
his weekly concerts. He merits honorable mention in your history, if any
proper occasion offers. So also does Dabney Carr, father of Peter Carr,
mover of the proposition of March, 1773, for committees of correspondence,
the first fruit of which was the call of an American Congress. I return
your two pamphlets with my thanks, and salute you with esteem and respect.
TO CHARLES CLAS, ESQ.
MONTICELLO, January 29, 1815.
DEAR SIR,--Your letter of December 20th was four weeks on its way to
me. I thank you for it; for although founded on a misconception, it
is evidence of that friendly concern for my peace and welfare, which
I have ever believed you to feel. Of publishing a book on religion,
my dear Sir, I never had an idea. I should as soon think of writing
for the reformation of Bedlam, as of the world of religious sects. Of
these there must be, at least, ten thousand, every individual of every
one of which believes all wrong but his own. To undertake to bring
them all right, would be like undertaking, single-handed, to fell the
forests of America. Probably you have heard me say I had taken the
four Evangelists, had cut out from them every text they had recorded
of the moral precepts of Jesus, and arranged them in a certain order,
and although they appeared but as fragments, yet fragments of the most
sublime edifice of morality which had ever been exhibited to man. This
I have probably mentioned to you, because it is true; and the idea of
its publication may have suggested itself as an inference of your own
mind. I not only write nothing on religion, but rarely permit myself to
speak on it, and never but in a reasonable society. I have probably said
more to you than to any other person, because we have had more hours
of conversation in _duetto_ in our meetings at the Forest. I abuse the
priests, indeed, who have so much abused the pure and holy doctrines of
their master, and who have laid me under no obligations of reticence
as to the tricks of their trade. The genuine system of Jesus, and the
artificial structures they have erected, to make them the instruments
of wealth, power, and preëminence to themselves, are as distinct things
in my view as light and darkness; and while I have classed them with
soothsayers and necromancers, I place him among the greatest reformers
of morals, and scourges of priest-craft that have ever existed. They
felt him as such, and never rested until they had silenced him by death.
But his heresies against Judaism prevailing in the long run, the priests
have tacked about, and rebuilt upon them the temple which he destroyed,
as splendid, as profitable, and as imposing as that.
Government, as well as religion, has furnished its schisms, its
persecutions, and its devices for flattering idleness on the earnings of
the people. It has its hierarchy of emperors, kings, princes, and nobles,
as that has of popes, cardinals, archbishops, bishops, and priests.
In short, cannibals are not to be found in the wilds of America only,
but are revelling on the blood of every living people. Turning, then,
from this loathsome combination of Church and State, and weeping over
the follies of our fellow men, who yield themselves the willing dupes
and drudges of these mountebanks, I consider reformation and redress as
desperate, and abandon them to the Quixotism of more enthusiastic minds.
I have received from Philadelphia, by mail, the spectacles you had
desired, and now forward them by the same conveyance, as equally safe
and more in time, than were they to await my own going. In a separate
case is a complete set of glasses, from early use to old age. I think
the pair now in the frames will suit your eyes, but should they not, you
will easily change them by the screws. I believe the largest numbers
are the smallest magnifiers, but am not certain. Trial will readily
ascertain it. You must do me the favor to accept them as a token of my
friendship, and with them the assurance of my great esteem and respect.
TO GOVERNOR PLUMER.
MONTICELLO, January 31, 1815.
DEAR SIR,--Your favor of December 30th has been received. In answer to
your question whether in the course of my reading I have ever found that
any country or even considerable island was without inhabitants when first
discovered? I must answer, with Mr. Adams, in the negative. Although the
fact is curious, it had never before struck my attention. Some small
islands have been found, and are at this day, without inhabitants,
but this is easily accounted for. Man being a gregarious animal, will
not remain but where there can be a sufficient herd of his own kind to
satisfy his social propensities. Add to this that insulated settlements,
if small, would be liable to extirpations by occasional epidemics.
I thank you for the pamphlet you have been so kind as to send me, and have
read it with much satisfaction. But with those to whom it is addressed
Moses and the prophets have no authority but when administering to their
worldly gain. The paradox with me is how any friend to the union of
our country can, in conscience, contribute a cent to the maintenance of
any one who perverts the sanctity of his desk to the open inculcation
of rebellion, civil war, dissolution of government, and the miseries
of anarchy. When England took alarm lest France, become republican,
should recover energies dangerous to her, she employed emissaries with
means to engage incendiaries and anarchists in the disorganization of
all government there. These, assuming exaggerated zeal for republican
government and the rights of the people, crowded their inscriptions
into the Jacobin societies, and overwhelming by their majorities the
honest and enlightened patriots of the original institution, distorted
its objects, pursued its genuine founders under the name of Brissotines
and Girondists unto death, intrigued themselves into the municipality
of Paris, controlled by terrorism the proceedings of the legislature,
in which they were faithfully aided by their costipendaries there, the
Dantons and Marats of the Mountain, murdered their king, septembrized
the nation, and thus accomplished their stipulated task of demolishing
liberty and government with it. England now fears the rising force of
this republican nation, and by the same means is endeavoring to effect
the same course of miseries and destruction here; it is impossible
where one sees like courses of events commence, not to ascribe them
to like causes. We know that the government of England, maintaining
itself by corruption at home, uses the same means in other countries of
which she has any jealousy, by subsidizing agitators and traitors among
themselves to distract and paralyze them. She sufficiently manifests
that she has no disposition to spare ours. We see in the proceedings
of Massachusetts, symptoms which plainly indicate such a course, and we
know as far as such practices can ever be dragged into light, that she
has practiced, and with success, on leading individuals of that State.
Nay further, we see those individuals acting on the very plan which our
information had warned us was settled between the parties. These elements
of explanation history cannot fail of putting together in recording the
crime of combining with the oppressors of the earth to extinguish the
last spark of human hope, that here, at length, will be preserved a model
of government, securing to man his rights and the fruits of his labor,
by an organization constantly subject to his own will. The crime indeed,
if accomplished, would immortalize its perpetrators, and their names
would descend in history with those of Robespierre and his associates, as
the guardian genii of despotism, and demons of human liberty. I do not
mean to say that all who are acting with these men are under the same
motives. I know some of them personally to be incapable of it. Nor was
that the case with the disorganizers and assassins of Paris. Delusions
there, and party perversions here, furnish unconscious assistants to the
hired actors in these atrocious scenes. But I have never entertained one
moment's fear on this subject. The people of this country enjoy too much
happiness to risk it for nothing; and I have never doubted that whenever
the incendiaries of Massachusetts should venture openly to raise the
standard of separation, its citizens would rise in mass and do justice
themselves to their own parricides.
I am glad to learn that you persevere in your historical work. I am
sure it will be executed on sound principles of Americanism, and I hope
your opportunities will enable you to make the abortive crimes of the
present, useful as a lesson for future times.
In aid of your general work I possess no materials whatever, or they
should be entirely at your service; and I am sorry that I have not a
single copy of the pamphlet you ask, entitled "A Summary View of the
Rights of British America." It was the draught of an instruction which
I had meant to propose for our delegates to the first Congress. Being
prevented by sickness from attending our convention, I sent it to them,
and they printed without adopting it, in the hope that conciliation was
not yet desperate. Its only merit was in being the first publication
which carried the claim of our rights their whole length, and asserted
that there was no rightful link of connection between us and England but
that of being under the same king. Haring's collection of our statutes
is published, I know, as far as the third volume, bringing them down to
1710; and I rather believe a fourth has appeared. One more will probably
complete the work of the revolution, and will be to us an inestimable
treasure, as being the only collection of all the acts of our legislatures
now extant in print or manuscript.
Accept the assurance of my great esteem and respect.
TO JOHN VAUGHAN, ESQ.
MONTICELLO, February 5, 1815.
DEAR SIR,--Your very friendly letter of January 4th is but just received,
and I am much gratified by the interest taken by yourself, and others
of my colleagues of the Philosophical Society, in what concerned myself
on withdrawing from the presidency of the Society. My desire to do so
had been so long known to every member, and the continuance of it to
some, that I did not suppose it can be misunderstood by the public.
Setting aside the consideration of distance, which must be obvious to
all, nothing is more incumbent on the old, than to know when they should
get out of the way, and relinquish to younger successors the honors they
can no longer earn, and the duties they can no longer perform. I rejoice
in the election of Dr. Wistar, and trust that his senior standing in
the society will have been considered as a fair motive of preference of
those whose merits, standing alone, would have justly entitled them to
the honor, and who, as juniors, according to the course of nature, may
still expect their turn.
I have received, with very great pleasure, the visit of Mr. Ticknor,
and find him highly distinguished by science and good sense. He
was accompanied by Mr. Gray, son of the late Lieutenant Governor of
Massachusetts, of great information and promise also. It gives me
ineffable comfort to see such subjects coming forward to take charge of
the political and civil rights, the establishment of which has cost us
such sacrifices. Mr. Ticknor will be fortunate if he can get under the
wing of Mr. Correa; and, if the happiness of Mr. Correa requires (as
I suppose it does) his return to Europe, we must sacrifice it to that
which his residence here would have given us, and acquiesce under the
regrets which our transient acquaintance with his worth cannot fail to
embody with our future recollections of him. Of Michaux's work I possess
three volumes, or rather _catriers_, one on Oaks, another on Beeches
and Birches, and a third on Pines.
I salute you with great friendship and respect.
TO HIS EXCELLENCY MR. CRAWFORD.
MONTICELLO, February 11, 1815.
DEAR SIR,--I have to thank you for your letter of June 16th. It presents
those special views of the state of things in Europe, for which we look
in vain into newspapers. They tell us only of the downfall of Bonaparte,
but nothing of the temper, the views, the secret workings of the high
agents in these transactions. Although we neither expected, nor wished
any act of friendship from Bonaparte, and always detested him as a
tyrant, yet he gave employment to much of the force of the nation who
was our common enemy. So far, his downfall was illy timed for us; it
gave to England an opportunity to turn full-handed on us, when we were
unprepared. No matter, we can beat her on our own soil, leaving the laws
of the ocean to be settled by the maritime powers of Europe, who are
equally oppressed and insulted by the usurpations of England on that
element. Our particular and separate grievance is only the impressment
of our citizens. We must sacrifice the last dollar and drop of blood to
rid us of that badge of slavery; and it must rest with England alone to
say whether it is worth eternal war, for eternal it must be if she holds
to the wrong. She will probably find that the six thousand citizens she
took from us by impressment have already cost her ten thousand guineas a
man, and will cost her, in addition, the half of that annually, during
the continuance of the war, besides the captures on the ocean, and the
loss of our commerce. She might certainly find cheaper means of manning
her fleet, or, if to be manned at this expense, her fleet will break
her down. The first year of our warfare by land was disastrous. Detroit,
Queenstown, Frenchtown, and Beaver Dam, witness that. But the second was
generally successful, and the third entirely so, both by sea and land.
For I set down the _coup de main_ at Washington as more disgraceful to
England than to us. The victories of the last year at Chippewa, Niagara,
Fort Erie, Plattsburg, and New Orleans, the capture of their two fleets
on Lakes Erie and Champlain, and repeated triumphs of our frigates over
hers, whenever engaging with equal force, show that we have officers now
becoming prominent, and capable of making them feel the superiority of
our means, in a war on our own soil. Our means are abundant both as to
men and money, wanting only skilful arrangement; and experience alone
brings skill. As to men, nothing wiser can be devised than what the
Secretary at War (Monroe) proposed in his Report at the commencement of
Congress. It would have kept our regular army always of necessity full,
and by classing our militia according to ages, would have put them into
a form ready for whatever service, distant or at home, should require
them. Congress have not adopted it, but their next experiment will lead
to it. Our financial system is, at least, arranged. The fatal possession
of the whole circulating medium by our banks, the excess of those
institutions, and their present discredit, cause all our difficulties.
Treasury notes of small as well as high denomination, bottomed on a tax
which would redeem them in ten years, would place at our disposal the
whole circulating medium of the United States; a fund of credit sufficient
to carry us through any probable length of war. A small issue of such
paper is now commencing. It will immediately supersede the bank paper;
nobody receiving that now but for the purposes of the day, and never in
payments which are to lie by for any time. In fact, all the banks having
declared they will not give cash in exchange for their own notes, these
circulate merely because there is no other medium of exchange. As soon
as the treasury notes get into circulation, the others will cease to
hold any competition with them. I trust that another year will confirm
this experiment, and restore this fund to the public, who ought never
more to permit its being filched from them by private speculators and
disorganizers of the circulation.
Do they send you from Washington the Historical Register of the United
States? It is published there annually, and gives a succinct and judicious
history of the events of the war, not too long to be inserted in the
European newspapers, and would keep the European public truly informed,
by correcting the lying statements of the British papers. It gives, too,
all the public documents of any value. Niles' Weekly Register is also
an excellent repository of facts and documents, and has the advantage
of coming out weekly, whereas the other is yearly.
This will be handed you by Mr. Ticknor, a young gentleman of Boston, of
high education and great promise. After going through his studies here,
he goes to Europe to finish them, and to see what is to be seen there.
He brought me high recommendations from Mr. Adams and others, and from a
stay of some days with me, I was persuaded he merited them, as he will
whatever attentions you will be so good as to show him. I pray you to
accept the assurance of my great esteem and respect.
P. S. _February 26th._ On the day of the date of this letter the news
of peace reached Washington, and this place two days after. I am glad
of it, although no provision being made against the impressment of our
seamen, it is in fact but an armistice, to be terminated by the first
act of impressment committed on an American citizen. It may be thought
that useless blood was spilt at New Orleans, after the treaty of peace
had been actually signed and ratified. I think it had many valuable
uses. It proved the fidelity of the Orleanese to the United States. It
proved that New Orleans can be defended both by land and water; that the
western country will fly to its relief (of which ourselves had doubted
before); that our militia are heroes when they have heroes to lead them
on; and that, when unembarrassed by field evolutions, which they do not
understand, their skill in the fire-arm, and deadly aim, give them great
advantages over regulars. What nonsense for the manakin Prince Regent
to talk of their conquest of the country east of the Penobscot river!
Then, as in the revolutionary war, their conquests were never more than
of the spot on which their army stood, never extended beyond the range
of their cannon shot. If England is now wise or just enough to settle
peaceably the question of impressment, the late treaty may become one
of peace, and of long peace. We owe to their past follies and wrongs
the incalculable advantage of being made independent of them for every
material manufacture. These have taken such root, in our private families
especially, that nothing now can ever extirpate them.
TO THE MARQUIS DE LAFAYETTE.
MONTICELLO, February 14, 1815.
MY DEAR FRIEND,--Your letter of August the 14th has been received and
read again, and again, with extraordinary pleasure. It is the first
glimpse which has been furnished me of the interior workings of the late
unexpected but fortunate revolution of your country. The newspapers
told us only that the great beast was fallen; but what part in this
the patriots acted, and what the egotists, whether the former slept
while the latter were awake to their own interests only, the hireling
scribblers of the English press said little and knew less. I see now
the mortifying alternative under which the patriot there is placed,
of being either silent, or disgraced by an association in opposition
with the remains of Bonapartism. A full measure of liberty is not now
perhaps to be expected by your nation, nor am I confident they are
prepared to preserve it. More than a generation will be requisite,
under the administration of reasonable laws favoring the progress of
knowledge in the general mass of the people, and their habituation to
an independent security of person and property, before they will be
capable of estimating the value of freedom, and the necessity of a sacred
adherence to the principles on which it rests for preservation. Instead
of that liberty which takes root and growth in the progress of reason,
if recovered by mere force or accident, it becomes, with an unprepared
people, a tyranny still, of the many, the few, or the one. Possibly
you may remember, at the date of the _jeu de paume_, how earnestly I
urged yourself and the patriots of my acquaintance, to enter then into
a compact with the king, securing freedom of religion, freedom of the
press, trial by jury, _habeas corpus_, and a national legislature, all of
which it was known he would then yield, to go home, and let these work
on the amelioration of the condition of the people, until they should
have rendered them capable of more, when occasions would not fail to
arise for communicating to them more. This was as much as I then thought
them able to bear, soberly and usefully for themselves. You thought
otherwise, and that the dose might still be larger. And I found you were
right; for subsequent events proved they were equal to the constitution
of 1791. Unfortunately, some of the most honest and enlightened of our
patriotic friends, (but closet politicians merely, unpractised in the
knowledge of man,) thought more could still be obtained and borne. They
did not weigh the hazards of a transition from one form of government to
another, the value of what they had already rescued from those hazards,
and might hold in security if they pleased, nor the imprudence of giving
up the certainty of such a degree of liberty, under a limited monarch,
for the uncertainty of a little more under the form of a republic. You
differed from them. You were for stopping there, and for securing the
constitution which the National Assembly had obtained. Here, too, you
were right; and from this fatal error of the republicans, from their
separation from yourself and the constitutionalists, in their councils,
flowed all the subsequent sufferings and crimes of the French nation.
The hazards of a second change fell upon them by the way. The foreigner
gained time to anarchise by gold the government he could not overthrow
by arms, to crush in their own councils the genuine republicans, by
the fraternal embraces of exaggerated and hired pretenders, and to turn
the machine of Jacobinism from the change to the destruction of order;
and, in the end, the limited monarchy they had secured was exchanged
for the unprincipled and bloody tyranny of Robespierre, and the equally
unprincipled and maniac tyranny of Bonaparte. You are now rid of him,
and I sincerely wish you may continue so. But this may depend on the
wisdom and moderation of the restored dynasty. It is for them now to
read a lesson in the fatal errors of the republicans; to be contented
with a certain portion of power, secured by formal compact with the
nation, rather than, grasping at more, hazard all upon uncertainty, and
risk meeting the fate of their predecessor, or a renewal of their own
exile. We are just informed, too, of an example which merits, if true,
their most profound contemplation. The gazettes say that Ferdinand of
Spain is dethroned, and his father re-established on the basis of their
new constitution. This order of magistrates must, therefore, see, that
although the attempts at reformation have not succeeded in their whole
length, and some secession from the ultimate point has taken place, yet
that men have by no means fallen back to their former passiveness, but
on the contrary, that a sense of their rights, and a restlessness to
obtain them, remain deeply impressed on every mind, and, if not quieted
by reasonable relaxations of power, will break out like a volcano on
the first occasion, and overwhelm everything again in its way. I always
thought the present king an honest and moderate man; and having no issue,
he is under a motive the less for yielding to personal considerations.
I cannot, therefore, but hope, that the patriots in and out of your
legislature, acting in phalanx, but temperately and wisely, pressing
unremittingly the principles omitted in the late capitulation of the king,
and watching the occasions which the course of events will create, may
get those principles engrafted into it, and sanctioned by the solemnity
of a national act.
With us the affairs of war have taken the most favorable turn which was to
be expected. Our thirty years of peace had taken off, or superannuated,
all our revolutionary officers of experience and grade; and our first
draught in the lottery of untried characters had been most unfortunate.
The delivery of the fort and army of Detroit by the traitor Hull; the
disgrace at Queenstown, under Van Rensselaer; the massacre at Frenchtown
under Winchester; and surrender of Boerstler in an open field to one-third
of his own numbers, were the inauspicious beginnings of the first year of
our warfare. The second witnessed but the single miscarriage occasioned
by the disagreement of Wilkinson and Hampton, mentioned in my letter to
you of November the 30th, 1813, while it gave us the capture of York by
Dearborne and Pike; the capture of Fort George by Dearborne also; the
capture of Proctor's army on the Thames by Harrison, Shelby and Johnson,
and that of the whole British fleet on Lake Erie by Perry. The third
year has been a continued series of victories, to-wit: of Brown and
Scott at Chippewa; of the same at Niagara; of Gaines over Drummond at
Fort Erie; that of Brown over Drummond at the same place; the capture
of another fleet on Lake Champlain by M'Donough; the entire defeat of
their army under Prevost, on the same day, by M'Comb, and recently their
defeats at New Orleans by Jackson, Coffee and Carroll, with the loss
of four thousand men out of nine thousand and six hundred, with their
two Generals, Packingham and Gibbs killed, and a third, Keane, wounded,
mortally, as is said.
This series of successes has been tarnished only by the conflagrations
at Washington, a _coup de main_ differing from that at Richmond, which
you remember, in the revolutionary war, in the circumstance only, that
we had, in that case, but forty-eight hours' notice that an enemy had
arrived within our capes; whereas, at Washington, there was abundant
previous notice. The force designated by the President was double of
what was necessary; but failed, as is the general opinion, through the
insubordination of Armstrong, who would never believe the attack intended
until it was actually made, and the sluggishness of Winder before the
occasion, and his indecision during it. Still, in the end, the transaction
has helped rather than hurt us, by arousing the general indignation of our
country, and by marking to the world of Europe the Vandalism and brutal
character of the English government. It has merely served to immortalize
their infamy. And add further, that through the whole period of the war,
we have beaten them single-handed at sea, and so thoroughly established
our superiority over them with equal force, that they retire from that
kind of contest, and never suffer their frigates to cruize singly. The
Endymion would never have engaged the frigate President, but knowing
herself backed by three frigates and a razee, who, though somewhat
slower sailers, would get up before she could be taken. The disclosure
to the world of the fatal secret that they can be beaten at sea with an
equal force, the evidence furnished by the military operations of the
last year that experience is rearing us officers who, when our means
shall be fully under way, will plant our standard on the walls of Quebec
and Halifax, their recent and signal disaster at New Orleans, and the
evaporation of their hopes from the Hartford convention, will probably
raise a clamor in the British nation, which will force their ministry
into peace. I say _force_ them, because, willingly, they would never
be at peace. The British ministers find in a state of war rather than
of peace, by riding the various contractors, and receiving _douceurs_
on the vast expenditures of the war supplies, that they recruit their
broken fortunes, or make new ones, and therefore will not make peace as
long as by any delusions they can keep the temper of the nation up to
the war point. They found some hopes on the state of our finances. It
is true that the excess of our banking institutions, and their present
discredit, have shut us out from the best source of credit we could ever
command with certainty. But the foundations of credit still remain to
us, and need but skill which experience will soon produce, to marshal
them into an order which may carry us through any length of war. But they
have hoped more in their Hartford convention. Their fears of republican
France being now done away, they are directed to republican America,
and they are playing the same game for disorganization here, which they
played in your country. The Marats, the Dantons and Robespierres of
Massachusetts are in the same pay, under the same orders, and making the
same efforts to anarchise us, that their prototypes in France did there.
I do not say that all who met at Hartford were under the same motives
of money, nor were those of France. Some of them are Outs, and wish to
be Inns; some the mere dupes of the agitators, or of their own party
passions, while the Maratists alone are in the real secret; but they have
very different materials to work on. The yeomanry of the United States
are not the _canaille_ of Paris. We might safely give them leave to go
through the United States recruiting their ranks, and I am satisfied they
could not raise one single regiment (gambling merchants and silk-stocking
clerks excepted) who would support them in any effort to separate from
the Union. The cement of this Union is in the heart-blood of every
American. I do not believe there is on earth a government established
on so immovable a basis. Let them, in any State, even in Massachusetts
itself, raise the standard of separation, and its citizens will rise
in mass, and do justice themselves on their own incendiaries. If they
could have induced the government to some effort of suppression, or
even to enter into discussion with them, it would have given them some
importance, have brought them into some notice. But they have not been
able to make themselves even a subject of conversation, either of public
or private societies. A silent contempt has been the sole notice they
excite; consoled, indeed, some of them, by the _palpable_ favors of
Philip. Have then no fears for us, my friend. The grounds of these exist
only in English newspapers, edited or endowed by the Castlereaghs or
the Cannings, or some other such models of pure and uncorrupted virtue.
Their military heroes, by land and sea, may sink our oyster boats, rob
our hen roosts, burn our negro huts, and run off. But a campaign or
two more will relieve them from further trouble or expense in defending
their American possessions.
You once gave me a copy of the journal of your campaign in Virginia, in
1781, which I must have lent to some one of the undertakers to write the
history of the revolutionary war, and forgot to reclaim. I conclude this,
because it is no longer among my papers, which I have very diligently
searched for it, but in vain. An author of real ability is now writing
that part of the history of Virginia. He does it in my neighborhood, and
I lay open to him all my papers. But I possess none, nor has he any,
which can enable him to do justice to your faithful and able services
in that campaign. If you could be so good as to send me another copy,
by the very first vessel bound to any port in the United States, it
might be here in time; for although he expects to begin to print within
a month or two, yet you know the delays of these undertakings. At any
rate it might be got in as a supplement. The old Count Rochambeau gave
me also his _memoire_ of the operations at York, which is gone in the
same way, and I have no means of applying to his family for it. Perhaps
you could render them as well as us, the service of procuring another
copy.
I learn, with real sorrow, the deaths of Monsieur and Madame de Tessé.
They made an interesting part in the idle reveries in which I have
sometimes indulged myself, of seeing all my friends of Paris once more,
for a month or two; a thing impossible, which, however, I never permitted
myself to despair of. The regrets, however, of seventy-three at the loss
of friends, may be the less, as the time is shorter within which we are
to meet again, according to the creed of our education.
This letter will be handed you by Mr. Ticknor, a young gentleman of
Boston, of great erudition, indefatigable industry, and preparation for
a life of distinction in his own country. He passed a few days with
me here, brought high recommendations from Mr. Adams and others, and
appeared in every respect to merit them. He is well worthy of those
attentions which you so kindly bestow on our countrymen, and for those
he may receive I shall join him in acknowledging personal obligations.
I salute you with assurances of my constant and affectionate friendship
and respect.
P. S. February 26th. My letter had not yet been sealed, when I received
news of our peace. I am glad of it, and especially that we closed our
war with the eclat of the action at New Orleans. But I consider it as an
armistice only, because no security is provided against the impressment
of our seamen. While this is unsettled we are in hostility of mind with
England, although actual deeds of arms may be suspended by a truce. If
she thinks the exercise of this outrage is worth eternal war, eternal
war it must be, or extermination of the one or the other party. The
first act of impressment she commits on an American, will be answered
by reprisal, or by a declaration of war here; and the interval must be
merely a state of preparation for it. In this we have much to do, in
further fortifying our seaport towns, providing military stores, classing
and disciplining our militia, arranging our financial system, and above
all, pushing our domestic manufactures, which have taken such root as
never again can be shaken. Once more, God bless you.
TO M. DUPONT DE NEMOURS.
MONTICELLO, February 28, 1815.
MY DEAR AND RESPECTED FRIEND,--My last to you was of November 29th and
December 13th, 14th, since which I have received yours of July 14th.
I have to congratulate you, which I do sincerely on having got back
from Robespierre and Bonaparte, to your anti-revolutionary condition.
You are now nearly where you were at the _jeu de paume_ on the 20th of
June, 1789. The king would then have yielded, by convention, freedom
of religion, freedom of the press, trial by jury, _habeas corpus_,
and a representative legislature. These I consider as the essentials
constituting free government, and that the organization of the Executive
is interesting, as it may ensure wisdom and integrity in the first
place, but next as it may favor or endanger the preservation of these
fundamentals. Although I do not think the late capitulation of the king
quite equal to all this, yet believing his dispositions to be moderate
and friendly to the happiness of the people, and seeing that he is
without the bias of issue, I am in hopes your patriots may, by constant
and prudent pressure, obtain from him what is still wanting to give you
a temperate degree of freedom and security. Should this not be done, I
should really apprehend a relapse into discontents, which might again
let in Bonaparte.
Here, at length, we have peace. But I view it as an armistice only,
because no provision is made against the practice of impressment. As
this, then, will revive in the first moment of a war in Europe, its
revival will be a declaration of war here. Our whole business, in the
meantime, ought to be a sedulous preparation for it, fortifying our
seaports, filling our magazines, classing and disciplining our militia,
forming officers, and above all, establishing a sound system of finance.
You will see by the want of system in this last department, and even the
want of principles, how much we are in arrears in that science. With
sufficient means in the hands of our citizens, and sufficient will to
bestow them on the government, we are floundering in expedients equally
unproductive and ruinous; and proving how little are understood here those
sound principles of political economy first developed by the economists,
since commented and dilated by Smith, Say, yourself, and the luminous
reviewer of Montesquieu. I have been endeavoring to get the able paper
on this subject, which you addressed to me in July, 1810, and enlarged
in a copy received the last year, translated and printed here, in order
to draw the attention of our citizens to this subject; but have not as
yet succeeded. Our printers are enterprising only in novels and light
reading. The readers of works of science, although in considerable
number, are so sparse in their situations, that such works are of slow
circulation. But I shall persevere.
This letter will be delivered to you by Mr. Ticknor, a young gentleman
from Massachusetts, of much erudition and great merit. He has completed
his course of law and reading, and, before entering on the practice,
proposes to pass two or three years in seeing Europe, and adding to his
stores of knowledge which he can acquire there. Should he enter the career
of politics in his own country, he will go far in obtaining its honors
and powers. He is worthy of any friendly offices you may be so good
as to render him, and to his acknowledgments of them will be added my
own. By him I send you a copy of the Review of Montesquieu, from my own
shelf, the impression being, I believe, exhausted by the late President
of the College of Williamsburg having adopted it as the elementary book
there. I am persuading the author to permit me to give his name to the
public, and to permit the original to be printed in Paris. Although your
presses, I observe, are put under the leading strings of your government,
yet this is such a work as would have been licensed at any period, early
or late, of the reign of Louis XVI. Surely the present government will
not expect to repress the progress of the public mind further back than
that. I salute you with all veneration and affection.
TO JEAN BATISTE SAY.
MONTICELLO, March 2, 1815.
DEAR SIR,--Your letter of June 15th came to hand in December, and it is
not till the ratification of our peace, that a safe conveyance for an
answer could be obtained. I thank you for the copy of the new edition
of your work which accompanied your letter. I had considered it in its
first form as superseding all other works on that subject; and shall
set proportional value on any improvement of it. I should have been
happy to have received your son here, as expected from your letter, on
his passage through this State; and to have given proofs through him
of my respect for you. But I live far from the great stage road which
forms the communication of our States from north to south, and such
a deviation was probably not admitted by his business. The question
proposed in my letter of February 1st, 1804, has since become quite a
"question viseuse." I had then persuaded myself that a nation, distant
as we are from the contentions of Europe, avoiding all offences to other
powers, and not over-hasty in resenting offence from them, doing justice
to all, faithfully fulfilling the duties of neutrality, performing all
offices of amity, and administering to their interests by the benefits
of our commerce, that such a nation, I say, might expect to live in
peace, and consider itself merely as a member of the great family of
mankind; that in such case it might devote itself to whatever it could
best produce, secure of a peaceable exchange of surplus for what could
be more advantageously furnished by others, as takes place between one
county and another of France. But experience has shown that continued
peace depends not merely on our own justice and prudence, but on that of
others also; that when forced into war, the interception of exchanges
which must be made across a wide ocean, becomes a powerful weapon in
the hands of an enemy domineering over that element, and to the other
distresses of war adds the want of all those necessaries for which
we have permitted ourselves to be dependent on others, even arms and
clothing. This fact, therefore, solves the question by reducing it to its
ultimate form, whether profit or preservation is the first interest of a
State? We are consequently become manufacturers to a degree incredible
to those who do not see it, and who only consider the short period of
time during which we have been driven to them by the suicidal policy
of England. The prohibiting duties we lay on all articles of foreign
manufacture which prudence requires us to establish at home, with the
patriotic determination of every good citizen to use no foreign article
which can be made within ourselves, without regard to difference of
price, secures us against a relapse into foreign dependency. And this
circumstance may be worthy of your consideration, should you continue in
the disposition to emigrate to this country. Your manufactory of cotton,
on a moderate scale combined with a farm, might be preferable to either
singly, and the one or the other might become principal, as experience
should recommend. Cotton ready spun is in ready demand, and if woven,
still more so.
I will proceed now to answer the inquiries which respect your views
of removal; and I am glad that, in looking over our map, your eye has
been attracted by the village of Charlottesville, because I am better
acquainted with that than any other portion of the United States, being
within three or four miles of the place of my birth and residence. It
is a portion of country which certainly possesses great advantages. Its
soil is equal in natural fertility to any high lands I have ever seen;
it is red and hilly, very like much of the country of Champagne and
Burgundy, on the route of Sens, Vermanton, Vitteaux, Dijon, and along
the Cote to Chagny, excellently adapted to wheat, maize, and clover;
like all mountainous countries it is perfectly healthy, liable to no
agues and fevers, or to any particular epidemic, as is evidenced by the
robust constitution of its inhabitants, and their numerous families. As
many instances of nonagenaires exist habitually in this neighborhood
as in the same degree of population anywhere. Its temperature may be
considered as a medium of that of the United States. The extreme of cold
in ordinary winters being about 7° of Reaumur below zero (French. =16°),
and in the severest, 12° (French. =5°), while the ordinary mornings are
above zero. The maximum of heat in summer is about 28° (French. =96°),
of which we have one or two instances in a summer for a few hours. About
ten or twelve days in July and August, the thermometer rises for two
or three hours to about 23° (French. =84°), while the ordinary mid-day
heat of those months is about 21° (French. =80°), the mercury continuing
at that two or three hours, and falling in the evening to about 17°
(French. =70°). White frosts commence about the middle of October, tender
vegetables are in danger from them till nearly the middle of April. The
mercury begins, about the middle of November, to be occasionally at the
freezing point, and ceases to be so about the middle of March. We have
of freezing nights about fifty in the course of the winter, but not
more than ten days in which the mercury does not rise above the freezing
point. Fire is desirable even in close apartments whenever the outward
air is below 10, (=55° Fahrenheit,) and that is the case with us through
the day, one hundred and thirty two days in the year, and on mornings
and evenings sixty-eight days more. So that we have constant fires five
months, and a little over two months more on mornings and evenings.
Observations made at Yorktown in the lower country, show that they need
seven days less of constant fires, and thirty-eight less of mornings and
evenings. On an average of seven years I have found our snows amount
in the whole to fifteen inches depth, and to cover the ground fifteen
days; these, with the rains, give us four feet of water in the year. The
garden pea, which we are now sowing, comes to table about the 12th of
May; strawberries and cherries about the same time; asparagus the 1st
of April. The artichoke stands the winter without cover; lettuce and
endive with a slight one of bushes, and often without any; and the fig,
protected by a little straw, begins to ripen in July; if unprotected,
not till the 1st of September. There is navigation for boats of six tons
from Charlottesville to Richmond, the nearest tide-water, and principal
market for our produce. The country is what we call well inhabited, there
being in our county, Albemarle, of about seven hundred and fifty square
miles, about twenty thousand inhabitants, or twenty-seven to a square
mile, of whom, however, one half are people of color, either slaves or
free. The society is much better than is common in country situations;
perhaps there is not a better _country_ society in the United States.
But do not imagine this a Parisian or an academical society. It consists
of plain, honest, and rational neighbors, some of them well informed and
men of reading, all superintending their farms, hospitable and friendly,
and speaking nothing but English. The manners of every nation are the
standard of orthodoxy within itself. But these standards being arbitrary,
reasonable people in all allow free toleration for the manners, as
for the religion of others. Our culture is of wheat for market, and of
maize, oats, peas, and clover, for the support of the farm. We reckon
it a good distribution to divide a farm into three fields, putting one
into wheat, half a one into maize, the other half into oats or peas,
and the third into clover, and to tend the fields successively in this
rotation. Some woodland in addition, is always necessary to furnish
fuel, fences, and timber for constructions. Our best farmers (such as
Mr. Randolph, my son-in-law) get from ten to twenty bushels of wheat to
the acre; our worst (such as myself) from six to eighteen, with little
or more manuring. The bushel of wheat is worth in common times about
one dollar. The common produce of maize is from ten to twenty bushels,
worth half a dollar the bushel, which is of a cubic foot and a quarter,
or, more exactly, of two thousand one hundred and seventy-eight cubic
inches. From these data you may judge best for yourself of the size of
the farm which would suit your family; bearing in mind, that while you
can be furnished by the farm itself for consumption, with every article
it is adapted to produce, the sale of your wheat at market is to furnish
the fund for all other necessary articles. I will add that both soil and
climate are admirably adapted to the vine, which is the abundant natural
production of our forests, and that you cannot bring a more valuable
laborer than one acquainted with both its culture and manipulation into
wine.
Your only inquiry now unanswered is, the price of these lands. To answer
this with precision, would require details too long for a letter; the
fact being, that we have no metallic measure of values at present, while
we are overwhelmed with bank paper. The depreciation of this swells
nominal prices, without furnishing any stable index of real value. I
will endeavor briefly to give you an idea of this state of things by an
outline of its history.
In 1781 we had 1 bank, its capital $1,000,000
" 1791 " 6 " 13,135,000
" 1794 " 17 " 18,642,000
" 1796 " 24 " 20,472,000
" 1803 " 34 " 29,112,000
" 1804 " 66 their amount of capital not known.
And at this time we have probably one hundred banks, with capitals
amounting to one hundred millions of dollars, on which they are authorized
by law to issue notes to three times that amount, so that our circulating
medium may now be estimated at from two to three hundred millions of
dollars, on a population of eight and a half millions. The banks were
able, for awhile, to keep this trash at par with metallic money, or
rather to depreciate the metals to a par with their paper, by keeping
deposits of cash sufficient to exchange for such of their notes as they
were called on to pay in cash. But the circumstances of the war draining
away all our specie, all these banks have stopped payment, but with a
promise to resume specie exchanges whenever circumstances shall produce a
return of the metals. Some of the most prudent and honest will possibly
do this; but the mass of them never will nor can. Yet, having no other
medium, we take their paper, of necessity, for purposes of the instant,
but never to lay by us. The government is now issuing treasury notes for
circulation, bottomed on solid funds, and bearing interest. The banking
confederacy (and the merchants bound to them by their debts) will endeavor
to crush the credit of these notes; but the country is eager for them,
as something they can trust to, and so soon as a convenient quantity
of them can get into circulation, the bank notes die. You may judge
that, in this state of things, the holders of bank notes will give free
prices for lands, and that were I to tell you simply the present prices
of lands in this medium, it would give you no idea on which you could
calculate. But I will state to you the progressive prices which have
been paid for particular parcels of land for some years back, which may
enable you to distinguish between the real increase of value regularly
produced by our advancement in population, wealth, and skill, and the
bloated value arising from the present disordered and dropsical state
of our medium. There are two tracts of land adjoining me, and another
not far off, all of excellent quality, which happen to have been sold
at different epochs as follows:
One was sold in 1793 for $4 an acre, in 1812, at $10,
and is now rated $16.
The 2d " 1786 " 5⅓ " 1803 " 10
and is now rated $20.
The 3d " 1797 " 7 " 1811 " 16
and is now rated $20.
On the whole, however, I suppose we may estimate that the steady annual
rise of our lands is in a geometrical ratio of 5 per cent.; that were
our medium now in a wholesome state, they might be estimated at from
twelve to fifteen dollars the acre; and I may add, I believe with
correctness, that there is not any part of the Atlantic States where
lands of equal quality and advantages can be had as cheap. When sold
with a dwelling-house on them, little additional is generally asked for
the house. These buildings are generally of wooden materials, and of
indifferent structure and accommodation. Most of the hired labor here is
of people of color, either slaves or free. An able-bodied man has sixty
dollars a year, and is clothed and fed by the employer; a woman half that.
White laborers may be had, but they are less subordinate, their wages
higher, and their nourishment much more expensive. A good horse for the
plough costs fifty or sixty dollars. A draught ox twenty to twenty-five
dollars. A milch cow fifteen to eighteen dollars. A sheep two dollars.
Beef is about five cents, mutton and pork seven cents the pound. A turkey
or goose fifty cents apiece, a chicken eight and one-third cents; a
dozen eggs the same. Fresh butter twenty to twenty-five cents the pound.
And, to render as full as I can the information which may enable you
to calculate for yourself, I enclose you a Philadelphia price-current,
giving the prices in regular times of most of the articles of produce
or manufacture, foreign and domestic.
That it may be for the benefit of your children and their descendants to
remove to a country where, for enterprise and talents, so many avenues
are open to fortune and fame, I have little doubt. But I should be afraid
to affirm that, at your time of life, and with habits formed on the state
of society in France, a change for one so entirely different would be
for your personal happiness. Fearful therefore to persuade, I shall add
with sincere truth, that I shall very highly estimate the addition of
such a neighbor to our society, and that there is no service within my
power which I shall not render with pleasure and promptitude. With this
assurance be pleased to accept that of my great esteem and respect.
P. S. This letter will be handed you by Mr. Ticknor, a young gentleman
of Massachusetts, of great erudition and worth, and who will be gratified
by the occasion of being presented to the author of the Traité d'Economie
Politique.
TO FRANCIS C. GRAY, ESQ.
MONTICELLO, March 4, 1815.
DEAR SIR,--Despatching to Mr. Ticknor my packet of letters for Paris,
it occurs to me that I committed an error in a matter of information
which you asked of me while here. It is indeed of little importance,
yet as well corrected as otherwise, and the rather as it gives me an
occasion of renewing my respects to you. You asked me in conversation,
what constituted a mulatto by our law? And I believe I told you four
crossings with the whites. I looked afterwards into our law, and found
it to be in these words: "Every person, other than a negro, of whose
grandfathers or grandmothers any one shall have been a negro, shall be
deemed a mulatto, and so every such person who shall have one-fourth
part or more of negro blood, shall in like manner be deemed a mulatto";
L. Virgà 1792, December 17: the case put in the first member of this
paragraph of the law is _exempli gratiâ_. The latter contains the true
canon, which is that one-fourth of negro blood, mixed with any portion
of white, constitutes the mulatto. As the issue has one-half of the
blood of each parent, and the blood of each of these may be made up
of a variety of fractional mixtures, the estimate of their compound in
some cases may be intricate, it becomes a mathematical problem of the
same class with those on the mixtures of different liquors or different
metals; as in these, therefore, the algebraical notation is the most
convenient and intelligible. Let us express the pure blood of the white
in the capital letters of the printed alphabet, the pure blood of the
negro in the small letters of the printed alphabet, and any given mixture
of either, by way of abridgement in MS. letters.
Let the first crossing be of _a_, pure negro, with A, pure white. The
unit of blood of the issue being composed of the half of that of each
parent, will be _a_/2 + A/2. Call it, for abbreviation, _h_ (half blood.)
Let the second crossing be of _h_ and B, the blood of the issue will be
_h_/2 + B/2, or substituting for _h_/2 its equivalent, it will be _a_/4
+ A/4 + B/2 call it _q_ (quarteroon) being 1/4 negro blood.
Let the third crossing be of _q_ and C, their offspring will be _q_/2 +
C/2 = _a_/8 + A/8 + B/4 + C/2, call this _e_ (eighth), who having less
than 1/4 of _a_, or of pure negro blood, to wit 1/8 only, is no longer a
mulatto, so that a third cross clears the blood.
From these elements let us examine their compounds. For example, let
_h_ and _q_ cohabit, their issue will be _h_/2 + _q_/2 = _a_/4 + A/4 +
_a_/8 + A/8 + B/4 = 3_a_/8 + 3A/8 + B/4 wherein we find 3/8 of _a_, or
negro blood.
Let _h_ and _e_ cohabit, their issue will be _h_/2 + _e_/2 = _a_/4 +
A/4 + _a_/16 + A/16 + B/8 + _c_/4 = 5_a_/16 + 5A/16 + B/8 + _c_/4,
wherein 5/16 _a_ makes still a mulatto.
Let _q_ and _e_ cohabit, the half of the blood of each will be _q_/2 +
_e_/2 = _a_/8 + A/8 + B/4 + _a_/16 + A/16 + B/8 + C/4 = 3_a_/16 + 3A/16
+ 3B/8 + C/4, wherein 3/16 of _a_ is no longer a mulatto, and thus may
every compound be noted and summed, the sum of the fractions composing
the blood of the issue being always equal to unit. It is understood in
natural history that a fourth cross of one race of animals with another
gives an issue equivalent for all sensible purposes to the original
blood. Thus a Merino ram being crossed, first with a country ewe, second
with his daughter, third with his granddaughter, and fourth with the
great-granddaughter, the last issue is deemed pure Merino, having in
fact but 1/16 of the country blood. Our canon considers two crosses with
the pure white, and a third with any degree of mixture, however small,
as clearing the issue of the negro blood. But observe, that this does
not re-establish freedom, which depends on the condition of the mother,
the principle of the civil law, _partus sequitur ventrem_, being adopted
here. But if _e_ be emancipated, he becomes a free _white_ man, and a
citizen of the United States to all intents and purposes. So much for
this trifle by way of correction.
I sincerely congratulate you on the peace, and more especially on the
close of our war with so much eclat. Our second and third campaigns
here, I trust, more than redeemed the disgraces of the first, and proved
that although a republican government is slow to move, yet, when once
in motion, its momentum becomes irresistible; and I am persuaded it
would have been found so in the last war, had it continued. Experience
had just begun to elicit those among our officers who had talents for
war, and under the guidance of these one campaign would have planted
our standard on the walls of Quebec, and another on those of Halifax.
But peace is better for us all; and if it could be followed by a cordial
conciliation between us and England, it would ensure the happiness and
prosperity of both. The bag of wind, however, on which they are now
riding, must be suffered to blow out before they will be able soberly to
settle on their true bottom. If they adopt a course of friendship with
us, the commerce of one hundred millions of people, which some now born
will live to see here, will maintain them forever as a great unit of
the European family. But if they go on checking, irritating, injuring
and hostilizing us, they will force on us the motto "_Carthago delenda
est_." And some Scipio Americanus will leave to posterity the problem of
conjecturing where stood once the ancient and splendid city of London!
Nothing more simple or certain than the elements of this circulation. I
hope the good sense of both parties will concur in travelling rather the
paths of peace, of affection, and reciprocations of interest. I salute
you with sincere and friendly esteem, and if the homage offered to the
virtues of your father can be acceptable to him, place mine at his feet.
TO MR. GIRARDIN.
MONTICELLO, March 12, 1815.
I return the three Cativers, which I have perused with the usual
satisfaction. You will find a few pencilled notes merely verbal.
But in one place I have taken a greater liberty than I ever took before,
or ever indeed had occasion to take. It is in the case of Josiah Philips,
which I find strangely represented by Judge Tucker and Mr. Edmund
Randolph, and very negligently vindicated by Mr. Henry. That case is
personally known to me, because I was of the legislature at the time,
was one of those consulted by Mr. Henry, and had my share in the passage
of the bill. I never before saw the observations of those gentlemen,
which you quote on this case, and will now therefore briefly make some
strictures on them.
Judge Tucker, instead of a definition of the functions of bills of
attainder, has given a diatribe against their abuse. The occasion and
proper office of a bill of attainder is this: When a person charged with
a crime withdraws from justice, or resists it by force, either in his
own or a foreign country, no other means of bringing him to trial or
punishment being practicable, a special act is passed by the legislature
adapted to the particular case. This prescribes to him a sufficient time
to appear and submit to a trial by his peers; declares that his refusal
to appear shall be taken as a confession of guilt, as in the ordinary
case of an offender at the bar refusing to plead, and pronounces the
sentence which would have been rendered on his confession or conviction
in a court of law. No doubt that these acts of attainder have been abused
in England as instruments of vengeance by a successful over a defeated
party. But what institution is insusceptible of abuse in wicked hands?
Again, the judge says "the court refused to pass sentence of execution
pursuant to the directions of the act." The court could not refuse
this, because it was never proposed to them; and my authority for this
assertion shall be presently given.
For the perversion of a fact so intimately known to himself, Mr.
Randolph can be excused only by our indulgence for orators who, pressed
by a powerful adversary, lose sight, in the ardor of conflict of the
rigorous accuracies of fact, and permit their imagination to distort
and color them to the views of the moment. He was Attorney General at
the time, and told me himself, the first time I saw him after the trial
of Philips, that when taken and delivered up to justice, he had thought
it best to make no use of the act of attainder, and to take no measure
under it; that he had indicted him at the common law either for murder
or robbery (I forgot which and whether for both); that he was tried on
this indictment in the ordinary way, found guilty by the jury, sentenced
and executed under the common law; a course which every one approves,
because the first object of the act of attainder was to bring him to
fair trial. Whether Mr. Randolph was right in this information to me, or
when in the debate with Mr. Henry, he represents this atrocious offender
as sentenced and executed under the act of attainder, let the record of
the case decide.
"Without being confronted with his accusers and witnesses, without the
privilege of calling for evidence in his behalf, he was sentenced to
death, and afterwards actually executed." I appeal to the universe to
produce one single instance from the first establishment of government
in this State to the present day, where, in a trial at bar, a criminal
has been refused confrontation with his accusers and witnesses, or denied
the privilege of calling for evidence in his behalf; had it been done in
this case, I would have asked of the Attorney General why he proposed or
permitted it. But without having seen the record, I will venture on the
character of our courts, to deny that it was done. But if Mr. Randolph
meant only that Philips had not these advantages on the passage of the
bill of attainder, how idle to charge the legislature with omitting to
confront the culprit with his witnesses, when he was standing out in arms
and in defiance of their authority, and their sentence was to take effect
only on his own refusal to come in and be confronted. We must either
therefore consider this as a mere hyperbolism of imagination in the heat
of debate, or what I should rather, believe a defective statement by
the reporter of Mr. Randolph's argument. I suspect this last the rather
because this point in the charge of Mr. Randolph is equally omitted in
the defence of Mr. Henry. This gentleman must have known that Philips
was tried and executed under the common law, and yet, according to his
report, he rests his defence on a justification of the attainder only.
But all who knew Mr. Henry, know that when at ease in argument, he was
sometimes careless, not giving himself the trouble of ransacking either
his memory or imagination for all the topics of his subject, or his
audience that of hearing them. No man on earth knew better when he had
said enough for his hearers.
Mr. Randolph charges us with having read the bill three times in the
same day. I do not remember the fact, nor whether this was enforced on
us by the urgency of the ravages of Philips, or of the time at which
the bill was introduced. I have some idea it was at or near the close
of the session; the journals, which I have not, will ascertain the fact.
After the particular strictures I will proceed to propose, 1st, that the
word "substantially," page 92, l. 8., be changed for "which has been
charged with," [subjoining a note of reference. 1 Tucker's Blackst.
Append., 292. Debates of Virginia Convention.]
2. That the whole of the quotations from Tucker, Randolph and Henry, be
struck out, and instead of the text beginning page 92 l. 12, with the
words "bills of attainder, &.," to the words "so often merited," page
95 l. 4, be inserted the following, to-wit:
"This was passed on the following occasion. A certain Josiah Philips,
laborer of the parish of Lynhaven, in the county of Princess Anne, a man
of daring and ferocious disposition, associating with other individuals
of a similar cast, spread terror and desolation through the lower country,
committing murders, burning houses, wasting farms, and perpetrating other
enormities, at the bare mention of which humanity shudders. Every effort
to apprehend him proved abortive. Strong in the number of his ruffian
associates, or where force would have failed resorting to stratagem
and ambush, striking the deadly blow or applying the fatal torch at
the midnight hour, and in those places which their insulated situation
left almost unprotected, he retired with impunity to his secret haunts,
reeking with blood, and loaded with plunder. [So far the text of Mr.
Girardin is preserved.] The inhabitants of the counties which were the
theatre of his crimes, never secure a moment by day or by night, in
their fields or their beds, sent representations of their distresses
to the governor, claiming the public protection. He consulted with some
members of the legislature then sitting, on the best method of proceeding
against the atrocious offender. Too powerful to be arrested by the sheriff
and his _posse comitatus_, it was not doubted but an armed force might
be sent to hunt and destroy him and his accomplices in their morasses
and fastnesses wherever found. But the proceeding concluded to be most
consonant with the forms and principles of our government, was that the
legislature should pass an act giving him a reasonable but limited day
to surrender himself to justice, and to submit to a trial by his peers.
According to the laws of the land, to consider a refusal as a confession
of guilt, and divesting him as an outlaw of the character of citizen, to
pass on him the sentence prescribed by the law; and the public officer
being defied, to make every one his deputy, and especially those whose
safety hourly depended on his destruction. The case was laid before the
legislature, the proofs were ample, his outrages as notorious as those
of the public enemy, and well known to the members of both houses from
those counties. No one pretended then that the perpetrator of crimes who
could successfully resist the officers of justice, should be protected
in the continuance of them by the privileges of his citizenship, and
that baffling ordinary process, nothing extraordinary could be rightfully
adopted to protect the citizens against him. No one doubted that society
had a right to erase from the roll of its members any one who rendered
his own existence inconsistent with theirs; to withdraw from him the
protection of their laws, and to remove him from among them by exile,
or even by death if necessary. An enemy in lawful war, putting to death
in cold blood the prisoner he has taken, authorizes retaliation, which
would be inflicted with peculiar justice on the individual guilty of the
deed, were it to happen that he should be taken. And could the murders
and robberies of a pirate or outlaw entitle him to more tenderness? They
passed the law, therefore, and without opposition. He did not come in
before the day prescribed; continued his lawless outrages; was afterwards
taken in arms, but delivered over to the ordinary justice of the county.
The Attorney General for the commonwealth, the immediate agent of the
government, waiving all appeal to the act of attainder, indicted him
at the common law as a murderer and robber. He was arraigned on that
indictment in the usual forms, before a jury of his vicinage, and no use
whatever made of the act of attainder in any part of the proceedings.
He pleaded that he was a British subject, authorized to bear arms by a
commission from Lord Dunmore; that he was therefore a mere prisoner of
war, and under the protection of the law of nations. The court being of
opinion that a commission from an enemy could not protect a citizen in
deeds of murder and robbery, overruled his plea; he was found guilty by
his jury, sentenced by the court, and executed by the ordinary officer
of justice, and all according to the forms and rules of the common law."
I recommend an examination of the records for ascertaining the facts of
this case, for although my memory assures me of the leading ones, I am
not so certain in my recollection of the details. I am not sure of the
character of the particular crimes committed by Philips, or charged in
his indictment, whether his plea of alien enemy was formally put in and
overruled, what were the specific provisions of the act of attainder,
the urgency which caused it to be read three times in one day, if the
fact were, &c., &c.
TO MR. WENDOVER.[13]
MONTICELLO, March 13, 1815.
SIR,--Your favor of January the 30th was received after long delay on
the road, and I have to thank you for the volume of discourses which
you have been so kind as to send me. I have gone over them with great
satisfaction, and concur with the able preacher in his estimate of the
character of the belligerents in our late war, and lawfulness of defensive
war. I consider the war, with him, as "made on good advice," that is,
for just causes, and its dispensation as providential, inasmuch as it
has exercised our patriotism and submission to order, has planted and
invigorated among us arts of urgent necessity, has manifested the strong
and the weak parts of our republican institutions, and the excellence of a
representative democracy compared with the misrule of kings, has rallied
the opinions of mankind to the natural rights of expatriation, and of a
common property in the ocean, and raised us to that grade in the scale
of nations which the bravery and liberality of our citizen soldiers, by
land and by sea, the wisdom of our institutions and their observance of
justice, entitled us to in the eyes of the world. All this Mr. McLeod
has well proved, and from those sources of argument particularly which
belong to his profession. On one question only I differ from him, and it
is that which constitutes the subject of his first discourse, the right
of discussing public affairs _in the pulpit_. I add the last words,
because I admit the right in _general conversation_ and in _writing_;
in which last form it has been exercised in the valuable book you have
now favored me with.
The mass of human concerns, moral and physical, is so vast, the field of
knowledge requisite for man to conduct them to the best advantage is so
extensive, that no human being can acquire the whole himself, and much
less in that degree necessary for the instruction of others. It has of
necessity, then, been distributed into different departments, each of
which, singly, may give occupation enough to the whole time and attention
of a single individual. Thus we have teachers of Languages, teachers of
Mathematics, of Natural Philosophy, of Chemistry, of Medicine, of Law,
of History, of Government, &c. Religion, too, is a separate department,
and happens to be the only one deemed requisite for all men, however
high or low. Collections of men associate together, under the name of
congregations, and employ a religious teacher of the particular sect of
opinions of which they happen to be, and contribute to make up a stipend
as a compensation for the trouble of delivering them, at such periods
as they agree on, lessons in the religion they profess. If they want
instruction in other sciences or arts, they apply to other instructors;
and this is generally the business of early life. But I suppose there
is not an instance of a single congregation which has employed their
preacher for the mixed purposes of lecturing them _from the pulpit_
in Chemistry, in Medicine, in Law, in the science and principles of
Government, or in anything but Religion exclusively. Whenever, therefore,
preachers, instead of a lesson in religion, put them off with a discourse
on the Copernican system, on chemical affinities, on the construction
of government, or the characters or conduct of those administering it,
it is a breach of contract, depriving their audience of the kind of
service for which they are salaried, and giving them, instead of it, what
they did not want, or, if wanted, would rather seek from better sources
in that particular art or science. In choosing our pastor we look to
his religious qualifications, without inquiring into his physical or
political dogmas, with which we mean to have nothing to do. I am aware
that arguments may be found, which may twist a thread of politics into
the cord of religious duties. So may they for every other branch of human
art or science. Thus, for example, it is a religious duty to obey the
laws of our country; the teacher of religion, therefore, must instruct
us in those laws, that we may know how to obey them. It is a religious
duty to assist our sick neighbors; the preacher must, therefore, teach
us medicine, that we may do it understandingly. It is a religious duty
to preserve our own health; our religious teacher, then, must tell us
what dishes are wholesome, and give us recipes in cookery, that we may
learn how to prepare them. And so, ingenuity, by generalizing more and
more, may amalgamate all the branches of science into any one of them,
and the physician who is paid to visit the sick, may give a sermon
instead of medicine, and the merchant to whom money is sent for a hat,
may send a handkerchief instead of it. But notwithstanding this possible
confusion of all sciences into one, common sense draws lines between
them sufficiently distinct for the general purposes of life, and no one
is at a loss to understand that a recipe in medicine or cookery, or a
demonstration in geometry, is not a lesson in religion. I do not deny
that a congregation may, if they please, agree with their preacher that
he shall instruct them in Medicine also, or Law, or Politics. Then,
lectures in these, from the pulpit, become not only a matter of right,
but of duty also. But this must be with the consent of every individual;
because the association being voluntary, the mere majority has no right
to apply the contributions of the minority to purposes unspecified in the
agreement of the congregation. I agree, too, that on all other occasions,
the preacher has the right, equally with every other citizen, to express
his sentiments, in speaking or writing; on the subjects of Medicine,
Law, Politics, &c., his leisure time being his own, and his congregation
not obliged to listen to his conversation or to read his writings; and
no one would have regretted more than myself, had any scruple as to
this right withheld from us the valuable discourses which have led to
the expression of an opinion as to the true limits of the right. I feel
my portion of indebtment to the reverend author for the distinguished
learning, the logic and the eloquence with which he has proved that
religion, as well as reason, confirms the soundness of those principles
on which our government has been founded and its rights asserted.
These are my views on this question. They are in opposition to those
of the highly respected and able preacher, and are, therefore, the more
doubtingly offered. Difference of opinion leads to inquiry, and inquiry
to truth; and that, I am sure, is the ultimate and sincere object of us
both. We both value too much the freedom of opinion sanctioned by our
constitution, not to cherish its exercise even where in opposition to
ourselves.
Unaccustomed to reserve or mystery in the expression of my opinions, I
have opened myself frankly on a question suggested by your letter and
present. And although I have not the honor of your acquaintance, this
mark of attention, and still more the sentiments of esteem so kindly
expressed in your letter, are entitled to a confidence that observations
not intended for the public will not be ushered to their notice, as has
happened to me sometimes. Tranquillity, at my age, is the balm of life.
While I know I am safe in the honor and charity of a McLeod, I do not
wish to be cast forth to the Marats, the Dantons, and the Robespierres
of the priesthood; I mean the Parishes, the Ogdens, and the Gardiners
of Massachusetts.
I pray you to accept the assurances of my esteem and respect.
FOOTNOTE:
[13] [This is endorsed "not sent."]
TO CÆSAR A. RODNEY.
MONTICELLO, March 16, 1815.
MY DEAR FRIEND AND ANCIENT COLLEAGUE,--Your letter of February the 19th
has been received with very sincere pleasure. It recalls to memory the
sociability, the friendship, and the harmony of action which united
personal happiness with public duties, during the portion of our lives in
which we acted together. Indeed, the affectionate harmony of our cabinet
is among the sweetest of my recollections. I have just received a letter
of friendship from General Dearborne. He writes me that he is now retiring
from every species of public occupation, to pass the remainder of life
as a private citizen; and he promises me a visit in the course of the
summer. As you hold out a hope of the same gratification, if chance or
purpose could time your visits together, it would make a real jubilee.
But come as you will or as you can, it will always be joy enough to
me. Only you must give me a month's notice; because I go three or four
times a year to a possession ninety miles southwestward, and am absent
a month at a time, and the mortification would be indelible of losing
such a visit by a mistimed absence. You will find me in habitual good
health, great contentedness, enfeebled in body, impaired in memory, but
without decay in my friendships.
Great, indeed, have been the revolutions in the world, since you and I
have had anything to do with it. To me they have been like the howlings
of the winter storm over the battlements, while warm in my bed. The
unprincipled tyrant of the land is fallen, his power reduced to its
original nothingness, his person only not yet in the mad-house, where
it ought always to have been. His equally unprincipled competitor, the
tyrant of the ocean, in the mad-house indeed, in person, but his power
still stalking over the deep. "_Quem deus vult perdere, prius dementat._"
The madness is acknowledged; the perdition of course impending. Are we
to be the instruments? A friendly, a just, and a reasonable conduct
on their part, might make us the main pillar of their prosperity and
existence. But their deep-rooted hatred to us seems to be the means
which Providence permits to lead them to their final catastrophe.
"_Nullam enim in terris gentem esse, nullum infestiorem populum, nomini
Romano_," said the General who erased Capua from the list of powers.
What nourishment and support would not England receive from an hundred
millions of industrious descendants, whom some of her people now born
will live to see here? What their energies are, she has lately tried.
And what has she not to fear from an hundred millions of such men, if
she continues her maniac course of hatred and hostility to them. I hope
in God she will change. There is not a nation on the globe with whom I
have more earnestly wished a friendly intercourse on equal conditions.
On no other would I hold out the hand of friendship to any. I know that
their creatures represent me as personally an enemy to England. But fools
only can believe this, or those who think me a fool. I am an enemy to
her insults and injuries. I am an enemy to the flagitious principles of
her administration, and to those which govern her conduct towards other
nations. But would she give to morality some place in her political
code, and especially would she exercise decency, and at least neutral
passions towards us, there is not, I repeat it, a people on earth with
whom I would sacrifice so much to be in friendship. They can do us, as
enemies, more harm than any other nation; and in peace and in war, they
have more means of disturbing us internally. Their merchants established
among us, the bonds by which our own are chained to their feet, and the
banking combinations interwoven with the whole, have shown the extent
of their control, even during a war with her. They are the workers of
all the embarrassments our finances have experienced during the war.
Declaring themselves bankrupt, they have been able still to chain the
government to a dependence on them, and had the war continued, they would
have reduced us to the inability to command a single dollar. They dared
to proclaim that they would not pay their own paper obligations, yet our
government could not venture to avail themselves of this opportunity
of sweeping their paper from the circulation, and substituting their
own notes bottomed on specific taxes for redemption, which every one
would have eagerly taken and trusted, rather than the baseless trash of
bankrupt companies; our government, I say, have still been overawed from
a contest with them, and has even countenanced and strengthened their
influence, by proposing new establishments, with authority to swindle
yet greater sums from our citizens. This is the British influence to
which I am an enemy, and which we must subject to our government, or it
will subject us to that of Britain.