* * * * *

Come, and gratify, by seeing you once more, a friend who assures you

with sincerity of his constant and affectionate attachment and respect.

TO GENERAL DEARBORNE.

MONTICELLO, March 17, 1815.

MY DEAR GENERAL, FRIEND, AND ANCIENT COLLEAGUE,--I have received your

favor of February the 27th, with very great pleasure, and sincerely

reciprocate congratulations on late events. Peace was indeed desirable;

yet it would not have been as welcome without the successes of New

Orleans. These last have established truths too important not to be

valued; that the people of Louisiana are sincerely attached to the

Union; that their city can be defended; that the western States make its

defence their peculiar concern; that the militia are brave; that their

deadly aim countervails the manœuvering skill of their enemy; that we

have officers of natural genius now starting forward from the mass; and

that, putting together all our conflicts, we can beat the British by

sea and by land, with equal numbers. All this being now proved, I am

glad of the pacification of Ghent, and shall still be more so, if, by

a reasonable arrangement against impressment, they will make it truly

a treaty of peace, and not a mere truce, as we must all consider it,

until the principle of the war is settled. Nor, among the incidents of

the war, will we forget your services. After the disasters produced by

the treason or the cowardice, or both, of Hull, and the follies of some

others, your capture of York and Fort George, first turned the tide of

success in our favor; and the subsequent campaigns sufficiently wiped

away the disgrace of the first. If it were justifiable to look to your

own happiness only, your resolution to retire from all public business

could not but be approved. But you are too young to ask a discharge as

yet, and the public counsels too much needing the wisdom of our ablest

citizens, to relinquish their claim on you. And surely none needs your

aid more than your own State. Oh, Massachusetts! how have I lamented

the degradation of your apostasy! Massachusetts, with whom I went

with pride in 1776, whose vote was my vote on every public question,

and whose principles were then the standard of whatever was free or

fearless. But she was then under the counsels of the two Adamses; while

Strong, her present leader, was promoting petitions for submission to

British power and British usurpation. While under her present counsels,

she must be contented to be nothing; as having a vote, indeed, to be

counted, but not respected. But should the State once more buckle on

her republican harness, we shall receive her again as a sister, and

recollect her wanderings among the crimes only of the parricide party,

which would have basely sold what their fathers so bravely won from the

same enemy. Let us look forward, then, to the act of repentance, which,

by dismissing her venal traitors, shall be the signal of return to the

bosom and to the principles of her brethren; and if her late humiliation

can just give her modesty enough to suppose that her southern brethren

are somewhat on a par with her in wisdom, in information, in patriotism,

in bravery, and even in honesty, although not in psalm singing, she

will more justly estimate her own relative momentum in the Union. With

her ancient principles, she would really be great, if she did not think

herself the whole. I should be pleased to hear that you go into her

counsels, and assist in bringing her back to those principles, and to

a sober satisfaction with her proportionable share in the direction of

our affairs.

* * * * *

Be so good as to lay my homage at the feet of Mrs. Dearborne and be

assured that I am ever and affectionately yours.

TO THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES.

MONTICELLO, March 23, 1815.

DEAR SIR,--I duly received your favor of the 12th, and with it the

pamphlet on the causes and conduct of the war, which I now return. I

have read it with great pleasure, but with irresistible desire that

it should be published. The reasons in favor of this are strong, and

those against it are so easily gotten over, that there appears to me

no balance between them. 1. We need it in Europe. They have totally

mistaken our character. Accustomed to rise at a feather themselves,

and to be always fighting, they will see in our conduct, fairly stated,

that acquiescence under wrong, to a certain degree, is wisdom, and not

pusillanimity; and that peace and happiness are preferable to that false

honor which, by eternal wars, keeps their people in eternal labor, want,

and wretchedness. 2. It is necessary for the people of England, who

have been deceived as to the causes and conduct of the war, and do not

entertain a doubt, that it was entirely wanton and wicked on our part,

and under the order of Bonaparte. By rectifying their ideas, it will

tend to that conciliation which is absolutely necessary to the peace and

prosperity of both nations. 3. It is necessary for our own people, who,

although they have known the details as they went along, yet have been

so plied with false facts and false views by the federalists, that some

impression has been left that all has not been right. It may be said

that it will be thought unfriendly. But truths necessary for our own

character, must not be suppressed out of tenderness to its calumniators.

Although written, generally, with great moderation, there may be some

things in the pamphlet which may perhaps irritate. The characterizing

every act, for example, by its appropriate epithet, is not necessary to

show its deformity to an intelligent reader. The naked narrative will

present it truly to his mind, and the more strongly, from its moderation,

as he will perceive that no exaggeration is aimed at. Rubbing down these

roughnesses, and they are neither many nor prominent, and preserving

the original date, might, I think, remove all the offensiveness, and

give more effect to the publication. Indeed, I think that a soothing

postscript, addressed to the interests, the prospects, and the sober

reason of both nations, would make it acceptable to both. The trifling

expense of reprinting it ought not to be considered a moment. Mr. Gallatin

could have it translated into French, and suffer it to get abroad in

Europe without either avowal or disavowal. But it would be useful to

print some copies of an appendix, containing all the documents referred

to, to be preserved in libraries, and to facilitate to the present and

future writers of history, the acquisition of the materials which test

the truth it contains.

I sincerely congratulate you on the peace, and, more especially on the

eclat with which the war was closed. The affair of New Orleans was fraught

with useful lessons to ourselves, our enemies, and our friends, and will

powerfully influence our future relations with the nations of Europe. It

will show them we mean to take no part in their wars, and count no odds

when engaged in our own. I presume that, having spared to the pride of

England her formal acknowledgment of the atrocity of impressment in an

article of the treaty, she will concur in a convention for relinquishing

it. Without this, she must understand that the present is but a truce,

determinable on the first act of impressment of an American citizen,

committed by any officer of hers. Would it not be better that this

convention should be a separate act, unconnected with any treaty of

commerce, and made an indispensable preliminary to all other treaty? If

blended with a treaty of commerce, she will make it the price of injurious

concessions. Indeed, we are infinitely better without such treaties with

any nation. We cannot too distinctly detach ourselves from the European

system, which is essentially belligerent, nor too sedulously cultivate

an American system, essentially pacific. But if we go into commercial

treaties at all, they should be with all, at the same time, with whom we

have important commercial relations. France, Spain, Portugal, Holland,

Denmark, Sweden, Russia, all should proceed _pari passu_. Our ministers

marching in phalanx on the same line, and intercommunicating freely,

each will be supported by the weight of the whole mass, and the facility

with which the other nations will agree to equal terms of intercourse,

will discountenance the selfish higglings of England, or justify our

rejection of them. Perhaps, with all of them, it would be best to have

but the single article _gentis amicissimæ_, leaving everything else to

the usages and courtesies of civilized nations. But all these things

will occur to yourself, with their counter-consideration.

Mr. Smith wrote to me on the transportation of the library, and,

particularly, that it is submitted to your direction. He mentioned, also,

that Dougherty would be engaged to superintend it. No one will more

carefully and faithfully execute all those duties which would belong

to a wagon master. But it requires a character acquainted with books,

to receive the library. I am now employing as many hours of every day

as my strength will permit, in arranging the books, and putting every

one in its place on the shelves, corresponding with its order on the

catalogue, and shall have them numbered correspondently. This operation

will employ me a considerable time yet. Then I should wish a competent

agent to attend, and, with the catalogue in his hand, see that every

book is on the shelves, and have their lids nailed on, one by one, as

he proceeds. This would take such a person about two days; after which,

Dougherty's business would be the mere mechanical removal, at convenience.

I enclose you a letter from Mr. Milligan, offering his service, which

would not cost more than eight or ten days' reasonable compensation.

This is necessary for my safety and your satisfaction, as a just caution

for the public. You know that there are persons, both in and out of the

public councils, who will seize every occasion of imputation on either of

us, the more difficult to be repelled in this case, in which a negative

could not be proved. If you approve of it, therefore, as soon as I am

through the review, I will give notice to Mr. Milligan, or any other

person you will name, to come on immediately. Indeed it would be well

worth while to add to his duty, that of covering the books with a little

paper, (the good bindings, at least,) and filling the vacancies of the

presses with paper parings, to be brought from Washington. This would

add little more to the time, as he could carry on both operations at once.

Accept the assurance of my constant and affectionate friendship and

respect.

TO MR. GIRARDIN.

MONTICELLO, March 27, 1815.

I return your 14th chapter with only two or three unimportant alterations

as usual, and with a note suggested, of doubtful admissibility. I believe

it would be acceptable to the reader of every nation except England, and

I do not suppose that, even without it, your book will be a popular one

there, however you will decide for yourself.

As to what is to be said of myself, I of course am not the judge. But

my sincere wish is that the faithful historian, like the able surgeon,

would consider me in his hands, while living, as a dead subject, that

the same judgment may now be expressed which will be rendered hereafter,

so far as my small agency in human affairs may attract future notice;

and I would of choice now stand as at the bar of posterity, "_Cum semel

occidaris, et de te ultima Minos Fecerit arbitria_." The only exact

testimony of a man is his actions, leaving the reader to pronounce on

them his own judgment. In anticipating this, too little is safer than

too much; and I sincerely assure you that you will please me most by a

rigorous suppression of all friendly partialities. This candid expression

of sentiments once delivered, passive silence becomes the future duty.

It is with real regret I inform you that the day of delivering the library

is close at hand. A letter by last mail informs me that Mr. Millegan is

ordered to come on the instant I am ready to deliver. I shall complete

the arrangement of the books on Saturday. There will then remain only to

paste on them their numbers, which will be begun on Sunday. Of this Mr.

Millegan has notice, and may be expected every hour after Monday next.

He will examine the books by the catalogue, and nail up the presses,

one by one, as he gets through them. But it is indispensable for me to

have all the books in their places when we begin to number them, and it

would be a great convenience to have all you can do without now, to put

them into the places they should occupy. Ancient history is numbered.

Modern history comes next. The bearer carries a basket to receive what

he can bring of those you are done with. I salute you with friendship

and respect.

TO MR. BARROW.

MONTICELLO, May 1, 1815.

SIR,--I have duly received your favor of March 20th, and am truly

thankful for the favorable sentiments expressed in it towards myself.

If, in the course of my life, it has been in any degree useful to the

cause of humanity, the fact itself bears its full reward. The particular

subject of the pamphlet you enclosed me was one of early and tender

consideration with me, and had I continued in the councils of my own

State, it should never have been out of sight. The only practicable

plan I could ever devise is stated under the 14th quære of the Notes on

Virginia, and it is still the one most sound in my judgment. Unhappily it

is a case for which both parties require long and difficult preparation.

The mind of the master is to be apprized by reflection, and strengthened

by the energies of conscience, against the obstacles of self interest

to an acquiescence in the rights of others; that of the slave is to

be prepared by instruction and habit for self government, and for the

honest pursuits of industry and social duty. Both of these courses of

preparation require time, and the former must precede the latter. Some

progress is sensibly made in it; yet not so much as I had hoped and

expected. But it will yield in time to temperate and steady pursuit, to

the enlargement of the human mind, and its advancement in science. We

are not in a world ungoverned by the laws and the power of a superior

agent. Our efforts are in his hand, and directed by it; and he will

give them their effect in his own time. Where the disease is most deeply

seated, there it will be slowest in eradication. In the northern States

it was merely superficial, and easily corrected. In the southern it is

incorporated with the whole system, and requires time, patience, and

perseverance in the curative process. That it may finally be effected,

and its progress hastened, will be the last and fondest prayer of him

who now salutes you with respect and consideration.

TO M. DUPONT DE NEMOURS.

MONTICELLO, May 15, 1815.

MY DEAR FRIEND,--The newspapers tell us you are arrived in the United

States. I congratulate my country on this as a manifestation that you

consider its civil advantages as more than equivalent to the physical

comforts and social delights of a country which possesses both in the

highest degree of any one on earth. You despair of your country, and so

do I. A military despotism is now fixed upon it permanently, especially if

the son of the tyrant should have virtues and talents. What a treat would

it be to me, to be with you, and to learn from you all the intrigues,

apostasies and treacheries which have produced this last death's blow

to the hopes of France. For, although not in the will, there was in the

imbecility of the Bourbons a foundation of hope that the patriots of

France might obtain a moderate representative government. Here you will

find rejoicings on this event, and by a strange _qui pro quo_, not by

the party hostile to liberty, but by its zealous friends. In this they

see nothing but the scourge reproduced for the back of England, they do

not permit themselves to see in it the blast of all the hopes of mankind,

and that however it may jeopardize England, it gives to her self-defence

the lying countenance again of being the sole champion of the rights of

man, to which in all other nations she is most adverse. I wrote to you

on the 28th of February, by a Mr. Ticknor, then proposing to sail for

France, but the conclusion of peace induced him to go first to England.

I hope he will keep my letter out of the post offices of France; for it

was written for the inspection of those now in power. You will now be

a witness of our deplorable ignorance in finance and political economy

generally. I mentioned in my letter of February that I was endeavoring

to get your memoir on that subject printed. I have not yet succeeded. I

am just setting out to a distant possession of mine, and shall be absent

three weeks. God bless you.

TO JOHN ADAMS.

MONTICELLO, June 10, 1815.

DEAR SIR,--It is long since we have exchanged a letter, and yet what

volumes might have been written on the occurrences even of the last three

months. In the first place, peace, God bless it! has returned to put us

all again into a course of lawful and laudable pursuits; a new trial of

the Bourbons has proved to the world their incompetence to the functions

of the station they have occupied; and the recall of the usurper has

clothed him with the semblance of a legitimate autocrat. If adversity

should have taught him wisdom, of which I have little expectation, he may

yet render some service to mankind, by teaching the ancient dynasties

that they can be changed for misrule, and by wearing down the maritime

power of England to limitable and safe dimensions. But it is not possible

he should love us; and of that our commerce had sufficient proof during

his power. Our military achievements, indeed, which he is capable of

estimating, may, in some degree, moderate the effect of his aversions;

and he may perhaps fancy that we are to become the natural enemies of

England, as England herself has so steadily endeavored to make us, and

as some of our own over-zealous patriots would be willing to proclaim;

and, in this view, he may admit a cold toleration of some intercourse

and commerce between the two nations. He has certainly had time to see

the folly of turning the industry of France from the cultures for which

nature has so highly endowed her, to those of sugar, cotton, tobacco,

and others, which the same creative power has given to other climates;

and, on the whole, if he can conquer the passions of his tyrannical soul,

if he has understanding enough to pursue from motives of interest, what

no moral motives lead him to, the tranquil happiness and prosperity of

his country, rather than a ravenous thirst for human blood, his return

may become of more advantage than injury to us. And if, again, some

great man could arise in England, who could see and correct the follies

of his nation in their conduct as to us, and by exercising justice and

comity towards ours, bring both into a state of temperate and useful

friendship, it is possible we might thus attain the place we ought to

occupy between these two nations, without being degraded to the condition

of mere partisans of either.

A little time will now inform us, whether France, within its proper

limits, is big enough for its ruler, on the one hand, and whether, on the

other, the allied powers are either wicked or foolish enough to attempt

the forcing on the French a ruler and government which they refuse?

Whether they will risk their own thrones to re-establish that of the

Bourbons? If this is attempted, and the European world again committed

to war, will the jealousy of England at the commerce which neutrality

will give us, induce her again to add us to the number of her enemies,

rather than see us prosper in the pursuit of peace and industry? And

have our commercial citizens merited from their country its encountering

another war to protect their gambling enterprises? That the persons

of our citizens shall be safe in freely traversing the ocean, that the

transportation of our own produce, in our own vessels, to the markets

of our choice, and the return to us of the articles we want for our own

use, shall be unmolested, I hold to be fundamental, and the gauntlet

that must be for ever hurled at him who questions it. But whether we

shall engage in every war of Europe, to protect the mere agency of our

merchants and ship-owners in carrying on the commerce of other nations,

even were these merchants and ship-owners to take the side of their

country in the contest, instead of that of the enemy, is a question of

deep and serious consideration, with which, however, you and I shall

have nothing to do; so we will leave it to those whom it will concern.

I thank you for making known to me Mr. Ticknor and Mr. Gray. They are fine

young men, indeed, and if Massachusetts can raise a few more such, it is

probable she would be better counselled as to social rights and social

duties. Mr. Ticknor is, particularly, the best bibliograph I have met

with, and very kindly and opportunely offered me the means of re-procuring

some part of the literary treasures which I have ceded to Congress, to

replace the devastations of British Vandalism at Washington. I cannot

live without books. But fewer will suffice, where amusement, and not

use, is the only future object. I am about sending him a catalogue, to

which less than his critical knowledge of books would hardly be adequate.

Present my high respects to Mrs. Adams, and accept yourself the assurance

of my affectionate attachment.

TO MR. W. H. TORRANCE.

MONTICELLO, June 11, 1815.

SIR,--I received a few days ago your favor of May 5th, stating a question

on a law of the State of Georgia which suspends judgments for a limited

time, and asking my opinion whether it may be valid under the inhibition

of our constitution to pass laws impairing the obligations of contracts.

It is more than forty years since I have quitted the practice of the

law, and been engaged in vocations which furnished little occasion of

preserving a familiarity with that science. I am far, therefore, from

being qualified to decide on the problems it presents, and certainly

not disposed to obtrude in a case where gentlemen have been consulted

of the first qualifications, and of actual and daily familiarity with

the subject, especially too in a question on the law of another State.

We have in this State a law resembling in some degree that you quote,

suspending executions until a year after the treaty of peace; but no

question under it has been raised before the courts. It is also, I

believe, expected that when this shall expire, in consideration of the

absolute impossibility of procuring coin to satisfy judgments, a law

will be passed, similar to that passed in England, on suspending the

cash payments of their bank, that provided that on refusal by a party to

receive notes of the Bank of England in any case either of past or future

contracts, the judgment should be suspended during the continuance of

that act, bearing, however, legal interest. They seemed to consider that

it was not this law which changed the conditions of the contract, but the

circumstances which had arisen, and had rendered its literal execution

impossible; by the disappearance of the metallic medium stipulated by

the contract, that the parties not concurring in a reasonable and just

accommodation, it became the duty of the legislature to arbitrate between

them; and that less restrained than the Duke of Venice by the letter of

decree, they were free to adjudge to Shylock a reasonable equivalent.

And I believe that in our States this umpirage of the legislatures has

been generally interposed in cases where a literal execution of contract

has, by a change of circumstances, become impossible, or, if enforced,

would produce a disproportion between the subject of the contract and its

price, which the parties did not contemplate at the time of the contract.

The second question, whether the judges are invested with exclusive

authority to decide on the constitutionality of a law, has been heretofore

a subject of consideration with me in the exercise of official duties.

Certainly there is not a word in the constitution which has given

that power to them more than to the executive or legislative branches.

Questions of property, of character and of crime being ascribed to the

judges, through a definite course of legal proceeding, laws involving

such questions belong, of course, to them; and as they decide on them

ultimately and without appeal, they of course decide _for themselves_. The

constitutional validity of the law or laws again prescribing executive

action, and to be administered by that branch ultimately and without

appeal, the executive must decide for _themselves_ also, whether, under

the constitution, they are valid or not. So also as to laws governing

the proceedings of the legislature, that body must judge _for itself_

the constitutionality of the law, and equally without appeal or control

from its co-ordinate branches. And, in general, that branch which is to

act ultimately, and without appeal, on any law, is the rightful expositor

of the validity of the law, uncontrolled by the opinions of the other

co-ordinate authorities. It may be said that contradictory decisions may

arise in such case, and produce inconvenience. This is possible, and is

a necessary failing in all human proceedings. Yet the prudence of the

public functionaries, and authority of public opinion, will generally

produce accommodation. Such an instance of difference occurred between

the judges of England (in the time of Lord Holt) and the House of

Commons, but the prudence of those bodies prevented inconvenience from

it. So in the cases of Duane and of William Smith of South Carolina,

whose characters of citizenship stood precisely on the same ground, the

judges in a question of meum and tuum which came before them, decided

that Duane was not a citizen; and in a question of membership, the

House of Representatives, under the same words of the same provision,

adjudged William Smith to be a citizen. Yet no inconvenience has ensued

from these contradictory decisions. This is what I believe myself to

be sound. But there is another opinion entertained by some men of such

judgment and information as to lessen my confidence in my own. That is,

that the legislature alone is the exclusive expounder of the sense of

the constitution, in every part of it whatever. And they allege in its

support, that this branch has authority to impeach and punish a member

of either of the others acting contrary to its declaration of the sense

of the constitution. It may indeed be answered, that an act may still be

valid although the party is punished for it, right or wrong. However,

this opinion which ascribes exclusive exposition to the legislature,

merits respect for its safety, there being in the body of the nation a

control over them, which, if expressed by rejection on the subsequent

exercise of their elective franchise, enlists public opinion against their

exposition, and encourages a judge or executive on a future occasion to

adhere to their former opinion. Between these two doctrines, every one

has a right to choose, and I know of no third meriting any respect.

I have thus, Sir, frankly, without the honor of your acquaintance,

confided to you my opinion; trusting assuredly that no use will be made

of it which shall commit me to the contentions of the newspapers. From

that field of disquietude my age asks exemption, and permission to enjoy

the privileged tranquillity of a private and unmeddling citizen. In this

confidence accept the assurances of my respect and consideration.

TO MR. LEIPER.

MONTICELLO, June 12, 1815.

DEAR SIR,--A journey soon after the receipt of your favor of April the

17th, and an absence from home of some continuance, have prevented my

earlier acknowledgment of it. In that came safely my letter of January

the 2d, 1814. In our principles of government we differ not at all;

nor in the general object and tenor of political measures. We concur

in considering the government of England as totally without morality,

insolent beyond bearing, inflated with vanity and ambition, aiming at

the exclusive dominion of the sea, lost in corruption, of deep-rooted

hatred towards us, hostile to liberty wherever it endeavors to show

its head, and the eternal disturber of the peace of the world. In our

estimate of Bonaparte, I suspect we differ. I view him as a political

engine only, and a very wicked one; you, I believe, as both political

and religious, and obeying, as an instrument, an unseen hand. I still

deprecate his becoming sole lord of the continent of Europe, which he

would have been, had he reached in triumph the gates of St. Petersburg.

The establishment in our day of another Roman empire, spreading vassalage

and depravity over the face of the globe, is not, I hope, within the

purposes of Heaven. Nor does the return of Bonaparte give me pleasure

unmixed; I see in his expulsion of the Bourbons, a valuable lesson to

the world, as showing that its ancient dynasties may be changed for

their misrule. Should the allied powers presume to dictate a ruler and

government to France, and follow the example he had set of parcelling

and usurping to themselves their neighbor nations, I hope he will give

them another lesson in vindication of the rights of independence and

self-government, which himself had heretofore so much abused; and that

in this contest he will wear down the maritime power of England to

limitable and safe dimensions. So far, good. It cannot be denied, on

the other hand, that his successful perversion of the force (committed

to him for vindicating the rights and liberties of his country) to

usurp its government, and to enchain it under an hereditary despotism,

is of baneful effect in encouraging future usurpations, and deterring

those under oppression from rising to redress themselves. His restless

spirit leaves no hope of peace to the world; and his hatred of us is

only a little less than that he bears to England, and England to us.

Our form of government is odious to him, as a standing contrast between

republican and despotic rule; and as much from that hatred, as from

ignorance in political economy, he had excluded intercourse between us

and his people, by prohibiting the only articles they wanted from us,

that is, cotton and tobacco. Whether the war we have had with England,

and the achievements of that war, and the hope that we may become his

instruments and partisans against that enemy, may induce him, in future,

to tolerate our commercial intercourse with his people, is still to be

seen. For my part, I wish that all nations may recover and retain their

independence; that those which are overgrown may not advance beyond safe

measures of power, that a salutary balance may be ever maintained among

nations, and that our peace, commerce, and friendship, may be sought

and cultivated by all. It is our business to manufacture for ourselves

whatever we can, to keep our markets open for what we can spare or want;

and the less we have to do with the amities or enmities of Europe, the

better. Not in our day, but at no distant one, we may shake a rod over

the heads of all, which may make the stoutest of them tremble. But I

hope our wisdom will grow with our power, and teach us, that the less

we use our power, the greater it will be.

The federal misrepresentation of my sentiments, which occasioned my

former letter to you, was gross enough; but that and all others are

exceeded by the impudence and falsehood of the printed extract you

sent me from Ralph's paper. That a continuance of the embargo for two

months longer would have prevented our war; that the non-importation law

which succeeded it was a wise and powerful measure, I have constantly

maintained. My friendship for Mr. Madison, my confidence in his wisdom

and virtue, and my approbation of all his measures, and especially of his

taking up at length the gauntlet against England, is known to all with

whom I have ever conversed or corresponded on these measures. The word

_federal_, or its synonyma _lie_, may therefore be written under every

word of Mr. Ralph's paragraph. I have ransacked my memory to recollect

any incident which might have given countenance to any particle of it,

but I find none. For if you will except the bringing into power and

importance those who were enemies to himself as well as to the principles

of republican government, I do not recollect a single measure of the

President which I have not approved. Of those under him, and of some very

near him, there have been many acts of which we have all disapproved,

and he more than we. We have at times dissented from the measures,

and lamented the dilatoriness of Congress. I recollect an instance the

first winter of the war, when, from sloth of proceedings, an embargo was

permitted to run through the winter, while the enemy could not cruise,

nor consequently restrain the exportation of our whole produce, and was

taken off in the spring, as soon as they could resume their stations.

But this procrastination is unavoidable. How can expedition be expected

from a body which we have saddled with an hundred lawyers, whose trade

is talking? But lies, to sow division among us, is so stale an artifice

of the federal prints, and are so well understood, that they need neither

contradiction nor explanation. As to myself, my confidence in the wisdom

and integrity of the administration is so entire, that I scarcely notice

what is passing, and have almost ceased to read newspapers. Mine remain

in our post office a week or ten days, sometimes, unasked for. I find

more amusement in studies to which I was always more attached, and from

which I was dragged by the events of the times in which I have happened

to live.

I rejoice exceedingly that our war with England was single-handed. In

that of the Revolution, we had France, Spain, and Holland on our side,

and the credit of its success was given to them. On the late occasion,

unprepared and unexpecting war, we were compelled to declare it, and to

receive the attack of England, just issuing from a general war, fully

armed, and freed from all other enemies, and have not only made her

sick of it, but glad to prevent, by peace, the capture of her adjacent

possessions, which one or two campaigns more would infallibly have made

ours. She has found that we can do her more injury than any other enemy

on earth, and henceforward will better estimate the value of our peace.

But whether her government has power, in opposition to the aristocracy

of her navy, to restrain their piracies within the limits of national

rights, may well be doubted. I pray, therefore, for peace, as best for

all the world, best for us, and best for me, who have already lived to

see three wars, and now pant for nothing more than to be permitted to

depart in peace. That you also, who have longer to live, may continue to

enjoy this blessing with health and prosperity, through as long a life

as you desire, is the prayer of yours affectionately.

P. S. June the 14th.--Before I had sent my letter to the post office, I

received the new treaty of the allied powers, declaring that the French

nation shall not have Bonaparte, and shall have Louis XVIII. for their

ruler. They are all then as great rascals as Bonaparte himself. While he

was in the wrong, I wished him exactly as much success as would answer

our purposes, and no more. Now that they are wrong and he in the right,

he shall have all my prayers for success, and that he may dethrone every

man of them.

TO MR. MAURY.

MONTICELLO, June 15, 1815.

I congratulate you, my dear and ancient friend, on the return of peace,

and the restoration of intercourse between our two countries. What has

passed may be a lesson to both of the injury which either can do the

other, and the peace now opened may show what would be the value of a

cordial friendship; and I hope the first moments of it will be employed

to remove the stumbling block which must otherwise keep us eternal

enemies. I mean the impressment of our citizens. This was the sole object

of the continuance of the late war, which the repeal of the orders of

council would otherwise have ended at its beginning. If according to our

estimates, England impressed into her navy 6,000 of our citizens, let

her count the cost of the war, and a greater number of men lost in it,

and she will find this resource for manning her navy the most expensive

she can adopt, each of these men having cost her £30,000 sterling, and a

man of her own besides. On that point we have thrown away the scabbard,

and the moment an European war brings her back to this practice, adds us

again to her enemies. But I hope an arrangement is already made on this

subject. Have you no statesmen who can look forward two or three score

years? It is but forty years since the battle of Lexington. One-third of

those now living saw that day, when we were about two millions of people,

and have lived to see this, when we are ten millions. One-third of those

now living, who see us at ten millions, will live another forty years, and

see us forty millions; and looking forward only through such a portion

of time as has passed since you and I were scanning Virgil together,

(which I believe is near three score years,) we shall be seen to have a

population of eighty millions, and of not more than double the average

density of the present. What may not such a people be worth to England

as customers and friends? and what might she not apprehend from such

a nation as enemies? Now, what is the price we ask for our friendship?

Justice, and the comity usually observed between nation and nation. Would

there not be more of dignity in this, more character and satisfaction,

than in her teasings and harassings, her briberies and intrigues, to

sow party discord among us, which can never have more effect here than

the opposition within herself has there; which can never obstruct the

begetting children, the efficient source of growth; and by nourishing a

deadly hatred, will only produce and hasten events which both of us, in

moments of sober reflection, should deplore and deprecate. One half of the

attention employed in decent observances towards our government, would

be worth more to her than all the Yankee duperies played off upon her,

at a great expense on her part of money and meanness, and of nourishment

to the vices and treacheries of the Henrys and Hulls of both nations. As

we never can be at war with any other nation, (for no other nation can

get at us but Spain, and her own people will manage her,) the idea may

be generated that we are natural enemies, and a calamitous one it will

be to both. I hope in God her government will come to a sense of this,

and will see that honesty and interest are as intimately connected in the

public as in the private code of morality. Her ministers have been weak

enough to believe from the newspapers that Mr. Madison and myself are

personally her enemies. Such an idea is unworthy a man of sense; as we

should have been unworthy our trusts could we have felt such a motive of

public action. No two men in the United States have more sincerely wished

for cordial friendship with her; not as her vassals or dirty partisans,

but as members of co-equal States, respecting each other, and sensible

of the good as well as the harm each is capable of doing the other. On

this ground there was never a moment we did not wish to embrace her.

But repelled by their aversions, feeling their hatred at every point

of contact, and justly indignant at its supercilious manifestations,

that happened which has happened, that will follow which must follow,

in progressive ratio, while such dispositions continue to be indulged.

I hope they will see this, and do their part towards healing the minds

and cooling the temper of both nations. The irritation here is great

and general, because the mode of warfare both on the maritime and inland

frontiers has been most exasperating. We perceive the English passions

to be high also, nourished by the newspapers, that first of all human

contrivances for generating war. But it is the office of the rulers on

both sides to rise above these vulgar vehicles of passion; to assuage

angry feelings, and by examples and expressions of mutual regard in

their public intercourse, to lead their citizens into good temper with

each other. No one feels more indignation than myself when reflecting on

the insults and injuries of that country to this. But the interests of

both require that these should be left to history, and in the meantime

be smothered in the living mind. I have indeed little personal concern

in it. Time is drawing her curtain on me. But I should make my bow with

more satisfaction, if I had more hope of seeing our countries shake hands

together cordially. In this sentiment I am sure you are with me, and

this assurance must apologize for my indulging myself in expressing it

to you, with that of my constant and affectionate friendship and respect.

TO MR. MAURY.

MONTICELLO, June 16, 1815.

MY DEAR SIR,--Just as I was about to close my preceding letter, yours of

April 29th is put into my hands, and with it the papers your kindness

forwards to me. I am glad to see in them expressions of regard for our

friendship and intercourse from one side of the houses of parliament. But

I would rather have seen them from the other, if not from both. What comes

from the opposition is understood to be the converse of the sentiments

of the government, and we would not there, as they do here, give up the

government for the opposition. The views of the Prince and his ministers

are unfortunately to be taken from the speech of Earl Bathurst, in one

of the papers you sent me. But what is incomprehensible to me is that

the Marquis of Wellesley, advocating us, on the ground of opposition,

says that "the aggression which led to the war, was from the United

States, not from England." Is there a person in the world who, knowing

the circumstances, thinks this? The acts which produced the war were,

1st, the impressment of our citizens by their ships of war, and, 2d, the

orders of council forbidding our vessels to trade with any country but

England, without going to England to obtain a special license. On the

first subject the British minister declared to our Chargé, Mr. Russel,

that this practice of their ships of war would not be discontinued, and

that no admissible arrangement could be proposed; and as to the second,

the Prince Regent, by his proclamation of April 21st, 1812, declared in

effect solemnly that he would not revoke the orders of council _as to us_,

on the ground that Bonaparte had revoked his decrees _as to us_; that,

on the contrary, we should continue under them until Bonaparte should

revoke _as to all the world_. These categorical and definite answers

put an end to negotiation, and were a declaration of a continuance of

the war in which they had already taken from us one thousand ships and

six thousand seamen. We determined then to defend ourselves, and to

oppose further hostilities by war on our side also. Now, had we taken

one thousand British ships and six thousand of her seamen without any

declaration of war, would the Marquis of Wellesley have considered a

declaration of war by Great Britain as an aggression on her part? They

say we denied their maritime rights. We never denied a single one. It

was their taking our citizens, native as well as naturalized, for which

we went into war, and because they forbade us to trade with any nation

without entering and paying duties in their ports on both the outward

and inward cargo. Thus to carry a cargo of cotton from Savanna to St.

Mary's, and take returns in fruits, for example, our vessel was to go to

England, enter and pay a duty on her cottons there, return to St. Mary's,

then go back to England to enter and pay a duty on her fruits, and then

return to Savanna, after crossing the Atlantic four times, and paying

tributes on both cargoes to England, instead of the direct passage of a

few hours. And the taking ships for not doing this, the Marquis says, is

no aggression. However, it is now all over, and I hope forever over. Yet

I should have had more confidence in this, had the friendly expressions

of the Marquis come from the ministers of the Prince. On the contrary,

we see them scarcely admitting that the war ought to have been ended.

Earl Bathurst shuffles together chaotic ideas merely to darken and cover

the views of the ministers in protracting the war; the truth being, that

they expected to give us an exemplary scourging, to separate from us

the States east of the Hudson, take for their Indian allies those west

of the Ohio, placing three hundred thousand American citizens under the

government of the savages, and to leave the residuum a powerless enemy,

if not submissive subjects. I cannot conceive what is the use of your

Bedlam when such men are out of it. And yet that such were their views

we have evidence, under the hand of their Secretary of State in Henry's

case, and of their Commissioners at Ghent. Even now they insinuate

the peace in Europe has not suspended the practices which produced the

war. I trust, however, they are speaking a different language to our

ministers, and join in the hope you express that the provocations which

occasioned the late rupture will not be repeated. The interruption of

our intercourse with England has rendered us one essential service in

planting radically and firmly coarse manufactures among us. I make in

my family two thousand yards of cloth a year, which I formerly bought

from England, and it only employs a few women, children and invalids,

who could do little on the farm. The State generally does the same,

and allowing ten yards to a person, this amounts to ten millions of

yards; and if we are about the medium degree of manufacturers in the

whole Union, as I believe we are, the whole will amount to one hundred

millions of yards a year, which will soon reimburse us the expenses of

the war. Carding machines in every neighborhood, spinning machines in

large families and wheels in the small, are too radically established

ever to be relinquished. The finer fabrics perhaps, and even probably,

will be sought again in Europe, except broad-cloth, which the vast

multiplication of merinos among us will enable us to make much cheaper

than can be done in Europe.

Your practice of the cold bath thrice a week during the winter, and at

the age of seventy, is a bold one, which I should not, _à priori_, have

pronounced salutary. But all theory must yield to experience, and every

constitution has its own laws. I have for fifty years bathed my feet in

cold water every morning (as you mention), and having been remarkably

exempted from colds (not having had one in every seven years of my life

on an average), I have supposed it might be ascribed to that practice.

When we see two facts accompanying one another for a long time, we are

apt to suppose them related as cause and effect.

Our tobacco trade is strangely changed. We no longer know how to fit

the plant to the market. Differences of from four to twelve dollars the

hundred are now made on qualities appearing to us entirely whimsical.

The British orders of council had obliged us to abandon the culture

generally; we are now, however, returning to it, and experience will

soon decide what description of lands may continue it to advantage.

Those which produce the qualities under seven or eight dollars, must,

I think, relinquish it finally. Your friends here are well as far as I

have heard. So I hope you are; and that you may continue so as long as

you shall think the continuance of life itself desirable, is the prayer

of yours sincerely and affectionately.

JOHN ADAMS TO THOMAS JEFFERSON.

QUINCY, June 20, 1815.

DEAR SIR,--The fit of recollection came upon both of us so nearly at

the same time, that I may, some time or other, begin to think there

is something in Priestley's and Hartley's vibrations. The day before

yesterday I sent to the post-office a letter to you, and last night I

received your kind favor of the 10th.

The question before the human race is, whether the God of Nature shall

govern the world by his own laws, or whether priests and kings shall

rule it by fictitious miracles? Or, in other words, whether authority is

originally in the people? or whether it has descended for 1800 years in

a succession of popes and bishops, or brought down from heaven by the

Holy Ghost in the form of a dove, in a phial of holy oil?

Who shall take the side of God and Nature? Brachmans? Mandarins? Druids?

or Tecumseh and his brother the prophet? Or shall we become disciples

of the Philosophers? And who are the Philosophers? Frederic? Voltaire?

Rousseau? Buffon? Diderot? or Condorsett? These philosophers have shown

themselves as incapable of governing mankind, as the Bourbons or the

Guelphs. Condorsett has let the cat out of the bag. He has made precious

confessions. I regret that I have only an English translation of his

"Outlines of an Historical View of the Progress of the Human mind." But

in pages 247, 248, and 249, you will find it frankly acknowledged, that

the philosophers of the eighteenth century, adopted all the maxims,

and practiced all the arts of the Pharisees, the ancient priests of all

countries, the Jesuits, the Machiavillians, &c., &c., to overthrow the

institutions that such arts had established. This new philosophy was, by

his own account, as insidious, fraudulent, hypocritical, and cruel, as

the old policy of the priests, nobles, and kings. When and where were

ever found, or will be found, sincerity, honesty, or veracity, in any

sect or party in religion, government, or philosophy? Johnson and Burke

were more of Catholics than Protestants at heart, and Gibbon became an

advocate for the inquisition.

There is no act of uniformity in the Church, or State, philosophic.

As many sects and systems among them, as among Quakers and Baptists.

Bonaparte will not revive inquisitions, Jesuits, or slave trade, for

which habitudes the Bourbons have been driven again into exile.

We shall get along with, or without war. I have at last procured the

Marquis D'Argens' Occellus, Timæus, and Julian. Three such volumes I

never read. They are a most perfect exemplification of Condorsett's

precious confessions. It is astonishing they have not made more noise

in the world. Our Athanasians have printed in a pamphlet in Boston, your

letters and Priestley's from Belsham's Lindsey. It will do you no harm.

Our correspondence shall not again be so long interrupted. Affectionately.

Mrs. Adams thanks Mr. Jefferson for his friendly remembrance of her,

and reciprocates to him a thousand good wishes.

P. S. Ticknor and Gray were highly delighted with their visit; charmed

with the whole family. Have you read Carnot? Is it not afflicting to see

a man of such large views, so many noble sentiments, and such exalted

integrity, groping in the dark for a remedy, a balance, or a mediator

between independence and despotism? How shall his "love of country,"

"his honor," and his "national spirit," be produced?

I cannot write a hundredth part of what I wish to say to you.

JOHN ADAMS TO THOMAS JEFFERSON.

QUINCY, June 22, 1815.

DEAR SIR,--Can you give me any information concerning A. G. Camus?

Is he a Chateaubriand? or a Marquis D'Argens? Does he mean to abolish

Christianity? or to restore the Inquisition, the Jesuits, the Pope and

the Devil?

Within a few days I have received a thing as unexpected to me as an

apparition from the dead: Rapport à l'Institut National. Par A. G. Camus,

imprimè par ordre de l'Institut, Pluviose An XI.

In page 55 of this report, he says, "Certain pieces which I found in the

chamber of accounts in Brussels, gave me useful indications concerning

the grand collection of the Bollandists; and conducted me to make

researches into the state of that work, unfortunately interrupted at

this day. It would add to the Institute to propose to government the

means of completing it; as it has done with success for the collection

of the historians of France, of diplomas and ordinances.[14]"

Permit me to dwell a few minutes on this important work.

"Almost all the history of Europe, and a part of that of the east, from

the seventh century to the thirteenth, is in the lives of personages to

whom have been given the title of Saints. Every one may have remarked,

that in reading history, there is no event of any importance, in civil

order, in which some Bishop, some Abbé, some Monk, or some Saint, did not

take a part. It is, therefore, a great service, rendered by the Jesuits

(known under the name of the Bollandists) to those who would write

history, to have formed the immense collection, extended to fifty-two

volumes in folio, known under the title of the Acts of the Saints. The

service they have rendered to literature, is considerably augmented, by

the insertion, in their acts of the Saints, a great number of diplomas

and dissertations, the greatest part of which are models of criticism.

There is no man, among the learned, who does not interest himself in this

great collection. My intention is not to recall to your recollection

the original authors, or their first labors. We may easily know them

by turning over the leaves of the collection, or if we would find the

result already written, it is in the Historical Library of Mensel, T.

1, part 1, p. 306, or in the Manual of Literary History, by Bougine, T.

2, p. 641.

"I shall date what I have to say to you only from the epoch of the

suppression of the society, of which the Bollandists were members.

"At that time, three Jesuits were employed in the collection of the

Acts of the Saints; to wit, the Fathers De Bie, De Bue, and Hubens.

The Father Gesquière, who had also labored at the Acts of the Saints,

reduced a particular collection, entitled Select Fragments from Belgical

Writers, and extracts or references to matters contained in a collection

entitled Museum of Bellarmine. These four monks inhabited the house of

the Jesuits at Antwerp. Independently of the use of the library of the

convent, the Bollandists had their particular library, the most important

portion of which was a state of the Lives of the Saints for every day

of the month, with indications of the books in which were found those

which were already printed, and the original manuscripts, or the copies

of manuscripts, which were not yet printed. They frequently quote this

particular collection in their general collection. The greatest part

of the copies they had assembled, were the fruit of a journey of the

Fathers Papebrock and Henshen, made to Rome in 1660. They remained there

till 1662. Papebrock and his associate brought from Rome copies of seven

hundred Lives of Saints, in Greek or in Latin. The citizen La Serna,

has in his library a copy, taken by himself, from the originals, of the

relation of the journey of Papebrock to Rome, and of the correspondence

of Henshen with his colleagues. The relation and the correspondence are

in Latin. See Catalogue de la Serna, T. 3, N. 3903.

"After the suppression of the Jesuits, the commissioners apposed their

seals upon the library of the Bollandists, as well as on that of the

Jesuits of Antwerp. But Mr. Girard, then Secretary of the Academy at

Brussels, who is still living, and who furnished me a part of the

documents I use, charged with the inventory and sale of the books,

withdrew those of the Bollandists, and transported them to Brussels.

"The Academy of Brussels proposed to continue the Acts of the Saints

under its own name, and for this purpose to admit the four Jesuits

into the number of its members. The Father Gesquière alone consented to

this arrangement. The other Jesuits obtained of government, through the

intervention of the Bishop of Newstadt, the assurance, that they might

continue their collection. In effect, the Empress Maria Theresa approved,

by a decree of the 19th of June, 1778, a plan which was presented to

her, for the continuation of the works, both by the Bollandists and of

Gesquière. This plan is in ample detail. It contains twenty articles,

and would be useful to consult, if any persons should resume the Acts

of the Saints. The establishment of the Jesuits was fixed in the Abby of

Candenberg, at Brussels; the library of the Bollandists was transported

to that place; one of the monks of the Abby was associated with them;

and the Father Hubens being dead, was replaced by the Father Berthod,

a Benedictine, who died in 1789. The Abby of Candenberg having been

suppressed, the government assigned to the Bollandists a place in the

ancient College of the Jesuits, at Brussels. They there placed their

library, and went there to live. There they published the fifty-first

volume of their collection in 1786, the fifth tome of the month of

October, printed at Brussels, at the printing press Imperial and Royal,

(in _typis Cæsario regiis_.) They had then two associates, and they

flattered themselves that the Emperor would continue to furnish the

expense of their labors. Nevertheless, in 1788, the establishment of

the Bollandists was suppressed, and they even proposed to sell the

stock of the printed volumes; but, by an instruction (Avis) of the 6th

of December, 1788, the ecclesiastical commission superseded the sale,

till the result could be known of a negociation which the Father De Bie

had commenced with the Abbé of St. Blaise, to establish the authors,

and transport the stock of the work, as well as the materials for its

continuation at St. Blaise.

"In the meantime, the Abby of Tongerloo offered the government to

purchase the library and stock of the Bollandists, and to cause the

work to be continued by the ancient Bollandists, with the monks of

Tongerloo associated with them. These propositions were accepted. The

Fathers De Bie, De Bue, and Gesquière, removed to Tongerloo; the monks

of Candenberg refused to follow them, though they had been associated

with them. On the entry of the French troops into Belgium, the monks of

Tongerloo quitted their Abby; the Fathers De Bie, and Gesquière, retired

to Germany, where they died; the Father De Bue retired to the City Hall,

heretofore Province of Hainault, his native country. He lives, but is

very aged. One of the monks of Tongerloo, who had been associated with

them, is the Father Heylen; they were not able to inform me of the place

of his residence. Another monk associated with the Bollandists of 1780,

is the Father Fonson, who resides at Brussels.

"In the midst of these troubles, the Bollandists have caused to be printed

the fifty-second volume of the Acts of the Saints, the sixth volume of

the month of October. The fifty-first volume is not common in commerce,

because the sale of it has been interrupted by the continual changes of

the residence of the Bollandists. The fifty-second volume, or the sixth

of the same month of October, is much more rare. Few persons know its

existence.

"The citizen La Serna has given me the two hundred and ninety-six first

pages of the volume, which he believes were printed at Tongerloo. He is

persuaded that the rest of the volume exists, and he thinks it was at

Rome that it was finished (_terminé_).

"The citizen De Herbonville, Prefect of the two Niths at Antwerp, has

made, for about eighteen months, attempts with the ancient Bollandists,

to engage them to resume their labors. They have not had success. Perhaps

the present moment would be the most critical, (opportune,) especially

if the government should consent to give to the Bollandists assurance

of their safety.

"The essential point would be to make sure of the existence of the

manuscripts which I have indicated; and which, by the relation of the

citizen La Serna, filled a body of a library of about three toises in

length, and two in breadth. If these manuscripts still exist, it is

easy to terminate the Acts of the Saints; because we shall have all the

necessary materials. If these manuscripts are lost, we must despair to

see this collection completed.

"I have enlarged a little on this digression on the Acts of the Saints,

because it is a work of great importance; and because these documents,

which cannot be obtained with any exactitude but upon the spots, seem

to me to be among the principal objects which your travellers have to

collect, and of which they ought to give you an account."

Now, my friend Jefferson! I await your observations on this morsel. You

may think I waste my time and yours. I do not think so. If you will look

into the "Nouveau Dictionaire Historique," under the words "Bollandus,

Heinshernius, and Papebrock," you will find more particulars of the rise

and progress of this great work, "The Acts of the Saints."

I shall make only an observation or two.

1. The Pope never suppressed the work, and Maria Theresa established

it. It therefore must be Catholic.

2. Notwithstanding the professions of the Bollandists, to discriminate

the true from the false miracles, and the dubious from both, I suspect

that the false will be found the fewest, the dubious the next, and the

true the most numerous of all.

3. From all that I have read, of the legends, of the lives, and writings

of the saints, and even of the Fathers, and of ecclesiastical history in

general, I have no doubt that the _Acta Sanctorum_ is the most enormous

mass of lies, frauds, hypocrisy, and imposture, that ever was heaped

together on this globe. If it were impartially consulted, it would do

more to open the eyes of mankind, than all the philosophers of the 18th

century, who were as great hypocrites as any of the philosophers or

theologians of antiquity.

FOOTNOTE:

[14] "The Committee of the Institute, for proposing and

superintending the literary labors, in the month of Frimaire,

An XI., wrote to the Minister of the Interior, requesting him to

give orders to the Prefect of the Dyle, and to the Prefect of the

Two Nithes, to summon the citizens De Bue, Fonson, Heyten, and

all others who had taken any part in the sequel of the work of

the Bollandists, to confer with these persons, as well concerning

the continuation of this work, as concerning the cession of the

materials destined for the continuation of it; to promise to

the continuators of the Bollandists the support of the French

Government, and to render an account of their conferences."

TO MR. CORREA.

MONTICELLO, June 28, 1815.

DEAR SIR,--When I learned that you proposed to give a course of Botanical

lectures in Philadelphia, I feared it would retard the promised visit

to Monticello. On my return from Bedford, however, on the 4th instant,

I received a letter from M. Dupont flattering me with the prospect that

he and yourself would be with us as soon as my return should be known. I

therefore in the instant wrote him of my return, and my hope of seeing

you both shortly. I am still without that pleasure, but not without

the hope. Europe has been a second time turned topsy-turvy since we

were together; and so many things have happened there that I have lost

my compass. As far as we can judge from appearances, Bonaparte, from

being a mere military usurper, seems to have become the choice of his

nation; and the allies in their turn, the usurpers and spoliators of the

European world. The right of nations to self-government being my polar

star, my partialities are steered by it, without asking whether it is a

Bonaparte or an Alexander towards whom the helm is directed. Believing

that England has enough on her hands without us, and therefore has by

this time settled the question of impressment with Mr. Adams, I look on

this new conflict of the European gladiators, as from the higher forms

of the amphitheatre, wondering that man, like the wild beasts of the

forest, should permit himself to be led by his keeper into the arena,

the spectacle and sport of the lookers on. Nor do I see the issue of

this tragedy with the sanguine hopes of our friend M. Dupont. I fear,

from the experience of the last twenty-five years, that morals do not

of necessity advance hand in hand with the sciences. These, however, are

speculations which may be adjourned to our meeting at Monticello, where

I will continue to hope that I may receive you with our friend Dupont,

and in the meantime repeat the assurances of my affectionate friendship

and respect.

TO MADAME LA BARONNE DE STAEL-HOLSTEIN.

MONTICELLO, July 3, 1815.

DEAR MADAM,--I considered your letter of November 10th, 12th, as an

evidence of the interest you were so kind as to take in the welfare of

the United States, and I was even flattered by your exhortations to

avoid taking any part in the war then raging in Europe, because they

were a confirmation of the policy I had myself pursued, and which I

thought and still think should be the governing canon of our republic.

Distance, and difference of pursuits, of interests, of connections

and other circumstances, prescribe to us a different system, having

no object in common with Europe, but a peaceful interchange of mutual

comforts for mutual wants. But this may not always depend on ourselves;

and injuries may be so accumulated by an European power, as to pass all

bounds of wise forbearance. This was our situation at the date of your

letter. A long course of injuries, systematically pursued by England,

and finally, formal declarations that she would neither redress nor

discontinue their infliction, had fixed the epoch which rendered an appeal

to arms unavoidable. In the letter of May 28th, 1813, which I had the

honor of writing you, I entered into such details of these injuries, and

of our unremitting endeavors to bring them to a peaceable end, as the

narrow limits of a letter permitted. Resistance on our part at length

brought our enemy to reflect, to calculate, and to meet us in peaceable

conferences at Ghent; but the extravagance of the pretensions brought

forward by her negotiators there, when first made known in the United

States, dissipated at once every hope of a just peace, and prepared us

for a war of utter extremity. Our government, in that state of things,

respecting the opinion of the world, thought it a duty to present to it

a justification of the course which was likely to be forced upon us;

and with this view the pamphlet was prepared which I now enclose. It

was already printed, when (instead of their ministers whom they hourly

expected from a fruitless negotiation) they received the treaty of

pacification signed at Ghent and ratified at London. They endeavored to

suppress the pamphlet as now unreasonable--but the proof sheets having

been surreptitiously withdrawn, soon made their appearance in the public

papers, and in the form now sent. This vindication is so exact in its

facts, so cogent in its reasonings, so authenticated by the documents

to which it appeals, that it cannot fail to bring the world to a single

opinion on our case. The concern you manifested on our entrance into this

contest, assures me you will take the trouble of reading it; which I wish

the more earnestly, because it will fully explain the very imperfect views

which my letter had presented; and because we cannot be indifferent as

to the opinion which yourself personally shall ultimately form of the

course we have pursued.

I learned with great pleasure your return to your native country. It is

the only one which offers elements of society analogous to the powers

of your mind, and sensible of the flattering distinction of possessing

them. It is true that the great events which made an opening for your

return, have been reversed. But not so, I hope, the circumstances which

may admit its continuance. On these events I shall say nothing. At

our distance, we hear too little truth and too much falsehood to form

correct judgments concerning them; and they are moreover foreign to

our umpirage. We wish the happiness and prosperity of every nation; we

did not believe either of these promoted by the former pursuits of the

present ruler of France, and hope that his return, if the nation wills

it to be permanent, may be marked by those changes which the solid good

of his own country, and the peace and well-being of the world, may call

for. But these things I leave to whom they belong; the object of this

letter being only to convey to you a vindication of my own country, and

to have the honor on a new occasion of tendering you the homage of my

great consideration, and respectful attachment.

TO ANDREW C. MITCHELL, ESQ.

MONTICELLO, July 16, 1815.

I thank you, Sir, for the pamphlet which you have been so kind as to

send me. I have read it with attention and satisfaction. It is replete

with sound views, some of which will doubtless be adopted. Some may be

checked by difficulties. None more likely to be so than the proposition

to amend the Constitution, so as to authorize Congress to tax exports.

The provision against this in the framing of that instrument, was a _sine

quâ non_ with the States of peculiar productions, as rice, indigo, cotton

and tobacco, to which may now be added sugar. A jealousy prevailing that

to the few States producing these articles, the justice of the others

might not be a sufficient protection in opposition to their interest,

they moored themselves to this anchor. Since the hostile dispositions

lately manifested by the Eastern States, they would be less willing than

before to place themselves at their mercy; and the rather, as the Eastern

States have no exports which can be taxed equivalently. It is possible,

however, that this difficulty might be got over; but the subject looking

forward beyond my time, I leave it to those to whom its burthens and

benefits will belong, adding only my prayers for whatever may be best

for our country, and assurances to yourself of my great respect.

TO WM. WIRT, ESQ.

MONTICELLO, August 5, 1815.

DEAR SIR,--Your favor of July 24th came to hand on the 31st, and I will

proceed to answer your inquiries in the order they are presented as far

as I am able.

I have no doubt that the fifth of the Rhode Island resolutions of which

you have sent me a copy, is exactly the one erased from our journals. The

Mr. Lees, and especially Richard Henry, who was industrious, had a close

correspondence, I know, with the two Adams', and probably with others in

that and the other Eastern States; and I think it was said at the time

that copies were sent off by them to the northward the very evening of

the day on which they were passed. I can readily enough believe these

resolutions were written by Mr. Henry himself. They bear the stamp of

his mind, strong without precision. That they were written by Johnson

who seconded them, was only the rumor of the day, and very possibly

unfounded. But how Edmund Randolph should have said they were written

by William Fleming, and Mr. Henry should have written that he showed

them to William Fleming, is to me incomprehensible. There was no William

Fleming then but the judge now living, whom nobody will ever suspect of

taking the lead in rebellion. I am certain he was not then a member, and

I think was never a member until the revolution had made some progress.

Of this, however, he will inform us with candor and truth. His eldest

brother, John Fleming, was a member, and a great speaker in debate.

To him they may have been shown. Yet I should not have expected this,

because he was extremely attached to Robinson, Peyton Randolph, &c., and

at their beck, and had no independence or boldness of mind. However,

he was attentive to his own popularity, might have been overruled by

views to that, and without correction of the christian name, Mr. Henry's

note is sufficient authority to suppose he took the popular side on

that occasion. I remember nothing to the contrary. The opposers of the

resolutions were Robinson, Peyton Randolph, Pendleton, Wythe, Bland, and

all the cyphers of the aristocracy. No longer possessing the journals, I

cannot recollect nominally the others. They opposed them on the ground

that the same principles had been expressed in the petition, &c., of

the preceding year, to which an answer, not yet received, was daily

expected, that they were therein expressed in more conciliatory terms,

and therefore more likely to have good effect. The resolutions were

carried chiefly by the vote of the middle and upper country. To state the

differences between the classes of society and the lines of demarkation

which separated them, would be difficult. The law, you know, admitted

none except as to the twelve counsellors. Yet in a country insulated

from the European world, insulated from its sister colonies, with whom

there was scarcely any intercourse, little visited by foreigners, and

having little matter to act upon within itself, certain families had

risen to splendor by wealth and the preservation of it from generation

to generation under the law entails; some had produced a series of men

of talents; families in general had remained stationary on the grounds

of their forefathers, for there was no emigration to the westward in

those days. The wild Irish, who had gotten possession of the valley

between the Blue Ridge and North Mountain, forming a barrier over which

none ventured to leap, and would still less venture to settle among.

In such a state of things, scarcely admitting any change of station,

society would settle itself down into several strata, separated by no

marked lines, but shading off imperceptibly from top to bottom, nothing

disturbing the order of their repose. There were then aristocrats,

half-breeds, pretenders, a solid independent yeomanry, looking askance

at those above, yet not venturing to jostle them, and last and lowest,

a seculum of beings called overseers, the most abject, degraded and

unprincipled race, always cap in hand to the Dons who employed them,

and furnishing materials for the exercise of their pride, insolence and

spirit of domination. Your characters are inimitably and justly drawn.

I am not certain if more might not be said of Colonel Richard Bland. He

was the most learned and logical man of those who took prominent lead

in public affairs, profound in constitutional lore, a most ungraceful

speaker, (as were Peyton Randolph and Robinson, in a remarkable degree.)

He wrote the first pamphlet on the nature of the connection with Great

Britain which had any pretension to accuracy of view on that subject, but

it was a singular one. He would set out on sound principles, pursue them

logically till he found them leading to the precipice which he had to

leap, start back alarmed, then resume his ground, go over it in another

direction, be led again by the correctness of his reasoning to the same

place, and again back about, and try other processes to reconcile right

and wrong, but finally left his reader and himself bewildered between

the steady index of the compass in their hand, and the phantasm to which

it seemed to point. Still there was more sound matter in his pamphlet

than in the celebrated Farmer's letters, which were really but an _ignus

fatuus_, misleading us from true principles.

Landon Carter's measure you may take from the first volume of the American

Philosophical transactions, where he has one or more long papers on the

weavil, and perhaps other subjects. His speeches, like his writings,

were dull, vapid, verbose, egotistical, smooth as the lullaby of the

nurse, and commanding, like that, the repose only of the hearer.

You ask if you may quote me, first, for the loan office; second, Phillips'

case; and third, the addresses prepared for Congress by Henry and Lee.

For the two first certainly, because within my own knowledge, especially

citing the record in Phillips' case, which of itself refutes the diatribes

published on that subject; but not for the addresses, because I was not

present, nor know anything relative to them but by hearsay from others.

My first and principal information on that subject I know I had from

Ben Harrison, on his return from the first session of the old Congress.

Mr. Pendleton, also, I am tolerably certain, mentioned it to me; but the

transaction is too distant, and my memory too indistinct, to hazard as

with precision, even what I think I heard from them. In this decay of

memory Mr. Edmund Randolph must have suffered at a much earlier period

of life than myself. I cannot otherwise account for his saying to you

that Robert Carter Nicholas came into the Legislature only on the death

of Peyton Randolph, which was in 1776. Seven years before that period, I

went first into the Legislature myself, to-wit: in 1769, and Mr. Nicholas

was then a member, and I think not a new one. I remember it from an

impressive circumstance. It was the first assembly of Lord Botetourt,

being called on his arrival. On receiving the Governor's speech, it

was usual to move resolutions as heads for an address. Mr. Pendleton

asked me to draw the resolutions, which I did. They were accepted by the

house, and Pendleton, Nicholas, myself and some others, were appointed

a committee to prepare the address. The committee desired me to do it,

but when presented it was thought to pursue too strictly the diction of

the resolutions, and that their subjects were not sufficiently amplified.

Mr. Nicholas chiefly objected to it, and was desired by the committee to

draw one more at large, which he did with amplification enough, and it

was accepted. Being a young man as well as a young member, it made on me

an impression proportioned to the sensibility of that time of life. On a

similar occasion some years after, I had reason to retain a remembrance

of his presence while Peyton Randolph was living. On the receipt of

Lord North's propositions, in May or June, 1775, Lord Dunmore called

the assembly. Peyton Randolph, then President of Congress and Speaker of

the House of Burgesses, left the former body and came home to hold the

assembly, leaving in Congress the other delegates who were the ancient

leaders of our house. He therefore asked me to prepare the answer to

Lord North's propositions, which I did. Mr. Nicholas, whose mind had as

yet acquired no tone for that contest, combated the answer from _alpha_

to _omega_, and succeeded in diluting it in one or two small instances.

It was firmly supported however, in committee of the whole, by Peyton

Randolph, who had brought with him the spirit of the body over which he

had presided, and it was carried, with very little alteration, by strong

majorities. I was the bearer of it myself to Congress, by whom, as it

was the first answer given to those propositions by any legislature,

it was received with peculiar satisfaction. I am sure that from 1769,

if not earlier, to 1775, you will find Mr. Nicholas' name constantly

in the journals, for he was an active member. I think he represented

James City county. Whether on the death of Peyton Randolph he succeeded

him for Williamsburg, I do not know. If he did, it may account for Mr.

Randolph's error.

You ask some account of Mr. Henry's mind, information and manners in

1759-'60, when I first became acquainted with him. We met at Nathan

Dandridge's, in Hanover, about the Christmas of that winter, and passed

perhaps a fortnight together at the revelries of the neighborhood and

season. His manners had something of the coarseness of the society he

had frequented; his passion was fiddling, dancing and pleasantry. He

excelled in the last, and it attached every one to him. The occasion

perhaps, as much as his idle disposition, prevented his engaging in

any conversation which might give the measure either of his mind or

information. Opportunity was not wanting, because Mr. John Campbell was

there, who had married Mrs. Spotswood, the sister of Colonel Dandridge.

He was a man of science, and often introduced conversations on scientific

subjects. Mr. Henry had a little before broke up his store, or rather it

had broken him up, and within three months after he came to Williamsburg

for his license, and told me, I think, he had read law not more than six

weeks. I have by this time, probably, tired you with these old histories,

and shall, therefore, only add the assurance of my great friendship and

respect.

TO JOHN ADAMS.

MONTICELLO, August 10, 1815.

DEAR SIR,--The simultaneous movements in our correspondence have been

remarkable on several occasions. It would seem as if the state of the

air, or state of the times, or some other unknown cause, produced a

sympathetic effect on our mutual recollections. I had sat down to answer

your letters of June the 19th, 20th and 22d, with pen, ink and paper

before me, when I received from our mail that of July the 30th. You ask

information on the subject of Camus. All I recollect of him is, that he

was one of the deputies sent to arrest Dumourier at the head of his army,

who were, however, themselves arrested by Dumourier, and long detained

as prisoners. I presume, therefore, he was a Jacobin. You will find his

character in the most excellent revolutionary history of Toulongeon. I

believe, also, he may be the same person who has given us a translation

of Aristotle's Natural History, from the Greek into French. Of his report

to the National Institute on the subject of the Bollandists, your letter

gives me the first information. I had supposed them defunct with the

society of Jesuits, of which they were; and that their works, although

above ground, were, from their bulk and insignificance, as effectually

entombed on their shelves, as if in the graves of their authors. Fifty-two

volumes in folio, of the acta sanctorum, in dog-Latin, would be a

formidable enterprise to the most laborious German. I expect, with you,

they are the most enormous mass of lies, frauds, hypocrisy and imposture,

that was ever heaped together on this globe. By what chemical process

M. Camus supposed that an extract of truth could be obtained from such

a farrago of falsehood, I must leave to the chemists and moralists of

the age to divine.

On the subject of the history of the American Revolution, you ask who

shall write it? Who can write it? And who will ever be able to write it?

Nobody; except merely its external facts; all its councils, designs and

discussions having been conducted by Congress with closed doors, and

no members, as far as I know, having even made notes of them. These,

which are the life and soul of history, must forever be unknown. Botta,

as you observe, has put his own speculations and reasonings into the

mouths of persons whom he names, but who, you and I know, never made such

speeches. In this he has followed the example of the ancients, who made

their great men deliver long speeches, all of them in the same style,

and in that of the author himself. The work is nevertheless a good one,

more judicious, more chaste, more classical, and more true than the

party diatribe of Marshall. Its greatest fault is in having taken too

much from him. I possessed the work, and often recurred to considerable

portions of it, although I never read it through. But a very judicious and

well-informed neighbor of mine went through it with great attention, and

spoke very highly of it. I have said that no member of the old Congress,

as far as I knew, made notes of the discussion. I did not know of the

speeches you mention of Dickinson and Witherspoon. But on the questions

of Independence, and on the two articles of Confederation respecting

taxes and votings, I took minutes of the heads of the arguments. On

the first, I threw all into one mass, without ascribing to the speakers

their respective arguments; pretty much in the manner of Hume's summary

digests of the reasonings in parliament for and against a measure. On the

last, I stated the heads of the arguments used by each speaker. But the

whole of my notes on the question of Independence does not occupy more

than five pages, such as of this letter; and on the other questions, two

such sheets. They have never been communicated to any one. Do you know

that there exists in manuscript the ablest work of this kind ever yet

executed, of the debates of the constitutional convention of Philadelphia

in 1788? The whole of everything said and done there was taken down by

Mr. Madison, with a labor and exactness beyond comprehension.

I presume that our correspondence has been observed at the post offices,

and thus has attracted notice. Would you believe, that a printer has

had the effrontery to propose to me the letting him publish it? These

people think they have a right to everything, however secret or sacred.

I had not before heard of the Boston pamphlet with Priestley's letters

and mine.

At length Bonaparte has got on the right side of a question. From the

time of his entering the legislative hall to his retreat to Elba, no man

has execrated him more than myself. I will not except even the members

of the Essex Junto; although for very different reasons; I, because he

was warring against the liberty of his own country, and independence

of others; they, because he was the enemy of England, the Pope, and the

Inquisition. But at length, and as far as we can judge, he seems to have

become the choice of his nation. At least, he is defending the cause

of his nation, and that of all mankind, the rights of every people to

independence and self-government. He and the allies have now changed

sides. They are parcelling out among themselves Poland, Belgium, Saxony,

Italy, dictating a ruler and government to France, and looking askance

at our republic, the splendid libel on their governments, and he is

fighting for the principles of national independence, of which his whole

life hitherto has been a continued violation. He has promised a free

government to his own country, and to respect the rights of others; and

although his former conduct inspires little confidence in his promises,

yet we had better take the chance of his word for doing right, than the

certainty of the wrong which his adversaries are doing and avowing. If

they succeed, ours is only the boon of the Cyclops to Ulysses, of being

the last devoured.

Present me affectionately and respectfully to Mrs. Adams, and Heaven

give you both as much more of life as you wish, and bless it with health

and happiness.

P. S. August the 11th.--I had finished my letter yesterday, and this

morning receive the news of Bonaparte's second abdication. Very well. For

him personally, I have no feeling but reprobation. The representatives of

the nation have deposed him. They have taken the allies at their word,

that they had no object in the war but his removal. The nation is now

free to give itself a good government, either with or without a Bourbon;

and France unsubdued, will still be a bridle on the enterprises of the

combined powers, and a bulwark to others.

JOHN ADAMS TO THOMAS JEFFERSON.

QUINCY, August 24, 1815.

DEAR SIR,--If I am neither deceived by the little information I have,

or by my wishes for its truth, I should say that France is the most

_Protestant_ country of Europe at this time, though I cannot think it

the most _reformed_. In consequence of these reveries, I have imagined

that Camus and the Institute, meant, by the revival and continuance

of the _Acta Sanctorum_, to destroy the Pope, and the Catholic church

and Hierarchies, _de fonde en comble_, or in the language of Frederick

Pollair, D'Alembert, &c., "_ecraser le miserable_"--"Crush the wretch."

This great work must contain the most complete history of the corruptions

of Christianity that has ever appeared, Priestley's not excepted and

his history of ancient opinions not excepted.

As to the History of the Revolution, my ideas may be peculiar, perhaps

singular. What do we mean by the Revolution? The war? That was no part

of the Revolution. It was only an effect, and consequence of it. The

revolution was in the minds of the people, and this was effected, from

1760 to 1775, in the course of fifteen years, before a drop of blood was

drawn at Lexington. The records of thirteen Legislatures, the pamphlets,

newspapers, in all the colonies ought to be consulted, during that period,

to ascertain the steps by which the public opinion was enlightened and

informed, concerning the authority of Parliament over the colonies. The

Congress of 1774 resembled in some respects, though I hope not in many,

the council of Nice in ecclesiastical history. It assembled the Priests

from the east and the west, the north and the south, who compared notes,

engaged in discussions and debates, and formed results by one vote, and

by two votes, which went out to the world as unanimous.

Mr. Madison's Notes of the Convention of 1787 or 1788 are consistent

with his indefatigable character. I shall never see them, but I hope

posterity will.

That our correspondence has been observed is no wonder; for your hand

is more universally known than your face. No printer has asked me for

copies; but it is no surprise that you have been requested. These gentry

will print whatever will sell; and our correspondence is thought such an

oddity by both parties, that the printers imagine an edition would soon

go off, and yield them a profit. There has, however, been no tampering

with your letters to me. They have all arrived in good order.

Poor Bonaparte! Poor Devil! What has, and what will become of him? Going

the way of King Theodore, Alexander, Cæsar, Charles XIIth, Cromwell,

Wat Tyler, and Jack Cade, _i.e._, to a bad end. And what will become of

Wellington? Envied, hated, despised, by all the barons, earls, viscounts,

marquises, as an upstart, a parvenue elevated over their heads. For these

people have no idea of any merit, but birth. Wellington must pass the

rest of his days buffeted, ridiculed, scorned and insulted by factions,

as Marlborough and his Duchess did. Military glory dazzles the eyes of

mankind, and for a time eclipses all wisdom and virtue, all laws, human

and divine; and after this it would be bathos to descend to services

merely civil or political.

Napoleon has imposed kings upon Spain, Holland, Sweden, Westphalia,

Saxony, Naples, &c. The combined emperors and kings are about to

retaliate upon France, by imposing a king upon her. These are all

abominable examples, detestable precedents. When will the rights of

mankind, the liberties and independence of nations, be respected? When

the perfectibility of the human mind shall arrive at perfection. When

the progress of Manillius' _Ratio_ shall have not only _eripuit cœlo

fulmen, Jouvisque fulgores_, but made mankind rational creatures.

It remains to be seen whether the allies were honest in their declaration

that they were at war only with Napoleon.

Can the French ever be cordially reconciled to the Bourbons again? If

not, who can they find for a head? the infant, or one of the generals?

Innumerable difficulties will embarrass either project. I am, as ever

TO JUDGE ROANE.

MONTICELLO, October 12, 1815.

DEAR SIR,--I received in a letter from Colonel Monroe the enclosed paper

communicated, as he said, with your permission, and even with a wish to

know my sentiments on the important question it discusses. It is now

more than forty years since I have ceased to be habitually conversant

with legal questions; and my pursuits through that period have seldom

required or permitted a renewal of my former familiarity with them. My

ideas at present, therefore, on such questions, have no claim to respect

but such as might be yielded to the common auditors of a law argument.

I well knew that in certain federal cases the laws of the United States

had given to a foreign party, whether plaintiff or defendant, a right to

carry his cause into the federal court; but I did not know that where he

had himself elected the State judicature, he could, after an unfavorable

decision there, remove his case to the federal court, and thus take the

benefit of two chances where others have but one; nor that the right of

entertaining the question in this case had been exercised, or claimed

by the federal judiciary after it had been postponed on the party's

first election. His failure, too, to place on the record the particular

ground which might give jurisdiction to the federal court, appears to me

an additional objection of great weight. The question is of the first

importance. The removal of it seems to be out of the analogies which

guide the two governments on their separate tracts, and claims the solemn

attention of both judicatures, and of the nation itself. I should fear to

make up a final opinion on it, until I could see as able a development of

the grounds of the federal claim as that which I have now read against

it. I confess myself unable to foresee what those grounds would be. The

paper enclosed must call them forth, and silence them too, unless they

are beyond my ken. I am glad, therefore, that the claim is arrested, and

made the subject of special and mature deliberation. I hope our courts

will never countenance the sweeping pretensions which have been set up

under the words "general defence and public welfare." These words only

express the motives which induced the Convention to give to the ordinary

legislature certain specified powers which they enumerate, and which

they thought might be trusted to the ordinary legislature, and not to

give them the unspecified also; or why any specification? They could

not be so awkward in language as to mean, as we say, "all and some." And

should this construction prevail, all limits to the federal government

are done away. This opinion, formed on the first rise of the question,

I have never seen reason to change, whether in or out of power; but,

on the contrary, find it strengthened and confirmed by five and twenty

years of additional reflection and experience: and any countenance given

to it by any regular organ of the government, I should consider more

ominous than anything which has yet occurred.

I am sensible how much these slight observations, on a question which

you have so profoundly considered, need apology. They must find this

in my zeal for the administration of our government according to its

true spirit, federal as well as republican, and in my respect for any

wish which you might be supposed to entertain for opinions of so little

value. I salute you with sincere and high respect and esteem.

TO CAPT. A. PARTRIDGE OF THE CORPS OF ENGINEERS, WEST POINT, NEW YORK.

MONTICELLO, October 12, 1815.

SIR,--I thank you for the statement of altitudes, which you have been

so kind as to send me of our northern mountains. It came opportunely,

as I was about making inquiries for the height of the White Mountains

of New Hampshire, which have the reputation of being the highest in

our maritime States, and purpose shortly to measure geometrically the

height of the Peaks of Otter, which I suppose the highest _from their

base_, of any on the east side of the Mississippi, except the White

Mountains, and not far short of their height, if they are but of 4,885

feet. The method of estimating heights by the barometer, is convenient

and useful, as being ready, and furnishing an approximation to truth. Of

what degree of accuracy it is susceptible we know not as yet; no certain

theory being established for ascertaining the density and weight of that

portion of the column of atmosphere contiguous to the mountain; from

the weight of which, nevertheless, we are to infer the height of the

mountain. The most plausible seems to be that which supposes the mercury

of barometer divided into horizontal lamina of equal _thickness_; and

a similar column of the atmosphere into lamina of equal _weights_. The

former divisions give a set of arithmetical, the latter of geometrical

progressionals, which being the character of Logarithms and their numbers,

the tables of these furnish ready computations, needing, however, the

corrections which the state of the thermometer calls for. It is probable

that in taking heights in the vicinity of each other in this way, there

may be no considerable error, because the passage between them may be

quick and repeated. The height of a mountain from its base, thus taken,

merits, therefore, a very different degree of credit from that of its

height above the level of the sea, where that is distant. According,

for example, to the theory above mentioned, the height of Monticello

from its base is 580 feet, and its base 610 feet 8 inches, above the

level of the ocean; the former, from other facts, I judge to be near the

truth; but a knowledge of the different falls of water from hence to the

tide-water at Richmond, a distance of seventy-five miles, enables us to

say that the whole descent to that place is but 170 or 180 feet. From

thence to the ocean may be a distance of one hundred miles; it is all

tide-water, and through a level country. I know not what to conjecture as

the amount of descent, but certainly not 435 feet, as that theory would

suppose, nor the quarter part of it. I do not know by what rule General

Williams made his computations; he reckons the foot of the Blue Ridge,

twenty miles from here, but 100 feet above the tide-water at Richmond.

We know the descent, as before observed, to be at least 170 feet from

hence, to which is to be added that from the Blue Ridge to this place,

a very hilly country, with constant and great waterfalls. His estimate,

therefore, must be much below truth. Results so different prove that

for distant comparisons of height, the barometer is not to be relied

on according to any theory yet known. While, therefore, we give a good

degree of credit to the results of operations between the summit of a

mountain and its base, we must give less to those between its summit

and the level of the ocean.

I will do myself the pleasure of sending you my estimate of the Peaks

of Otter, which I count on undertaking in the course of the next month.

In the meantime accept the assurance of my great respect.

TO DOCTOR LOGAN.

MONTICELLO, October 15,1815.

DEAR SIR,--I thank you for the extract in yours of August 16th respecting

the Emperor Alexander. It arrived here a day or two after I had left this

place, from which I have been absent seven or eight weeks. I had from

other information formed the most favorable opinion of the virtues of

Alexander, and considered his partiality to this country as a prominent

proof of them. The magnanimity of his conduct on the first capture of

Paris still magnified everything we had believed of him; but how he will

come out of his present trial remains to be seen. That the sufferings

which France had inflicted on other countries justified severe reprisals,

cannot be questioned; but I have not yet learned what crimes of Poland,

Saxony, Belgium, Venice, Lombardy and Genoa, had merited for them, not

merely a temporary punishment, but that of permanent subjugation and a

destitution of independence and self-government. The fable of Æsop of

the lion dividing the spoils, is, I fear, becoming true history, and

the moral code of Napoleon and the English government a substitute for

that of Grotius, of Puffendorf, and even of the pure doctrine of the

great author of our own religion. We were safe ourselves from Bonaparte,

because he had not the British fleets at his command. We were safe from

the British fleets, because they had Bonaparte at their back; but the

British fleets and the conquerors of Bonaparte being now combined, and

the Hartford nation drawn off to them, we have uncommon reason to look

to our own affairs. This, however, I leave to others, offering prayers to

heaven, the only contribution of old age, for the safety of our country.

Be so good as to present me affectionately to Mrs. Logan, and to accept

yourself the assurance of my esteem and respect.

TO MR. GALLATIN.

MONTICELLO, October 16, 1815.

DEAR SIR,--A long absence from home must apologize for my so late

acknowledgment of your welcome favor of September 6th. Our storm of the

4th of that month gave me great uneasiness for you; for I was certain

you must be on the coast, and your actual arrival was unknown to me.

It was such a wind as I have not witnessed since the year 1769. It did,

however, little damage with us, only prostrating our corn, and tearing

tobacco, without essential injury to either. It could have been nothing

compared with that of the 23d, off the coast of New England, of which we

had not a breath, but on the contrary, fine, fair weather. Is this the

judgment of God between us? I congratulate you sincerely on your safe

return to your own country, and without knowing your own wishes, mine

are that you would never leave it again. I know you would be useful to

us at Paris, and so you would anywhere; but nowhere so useful as here.

We are undone, my dear Sir, if this banking mania be not suppressed.

_Aut Carthago, aut Roma delenda est._ The war, had it proceeded, would

have upset our government; and a new one, whenever tried, will do

it. And so it must be while our money, the nerve of war, is much or

little, real or imaginary, as our bitterest enemies choose to make it.

Put down the banks, and if this country could not be carried through

the longest war against her most powerful enemy, without ever knowing

the want of a dollar, without dependence on the traitorous classes of

her citizens, without bearing hard on the resources of the people, or

loading the public with an indefinite burthen of debt, I know nothing

of my countrymen. Not by any novel project, not by any charlatanerie,

but by ordinary and well-experienced means; by the total prohibition of

all private paper at all times, by reasonable taxes in war aided by the

necessary emissions of public paper of circulating size, this bottomed

on special taxes, redeemable annually as this special tax comes in, and

finally within a moderate period,--even with the flood of private paper

by which we were deluged, would the treasury have ventured its credit in

bills of circulating size, as of five or ten dollars, &c., they would

have been greedily received by the people in preference to bank paper.

But unhappily the towns of America were considered as the nation of

America, the dispositions of the inhabitants of the former as those of

the latter, and the treasury, for want of confidence in the country,

delivered itself bound hand and foot to bold and bankrupt adventurers

and pretenders to be money-holders, whom it could have crushed at any

moment. Even the last half-bold half-timid threat of the treasury, showed

at once that these jugglers were at the feet of government. For it never

was, and is not, any confidence in their frothy bubbles, but the want of

all other medium, which induced, or now induces, the _country_ people to

take their paper; and at this moment, when nothing else is to be had,

no man will receive it but to pass it away instantly, none for distant

purposes. We are now without any common measure of the value of property,

and private fortunes are up or down at the will of the worst of our

citizens. Yet there is no hope of relief from the legislatures who have

immediate control over this subject. As little seems to be known of the

principles of political economy as if nothing had ever been written or

practised on the subject, or as was known in old times, when the Jews

had their rulers under the hammer. It is an evil, therefore, which we

must make up our minds to meet and to endure as those of hurricanes,

earthquakes and other casualties: let us turn over therefore another leaf.

I grieve for France; although it cannot be denied that by the afflictions

with which she wantonly and wickedly overwhelmed other nations, she has

merited severe reprisals. For it is no excuse to lay the enormities to

the wretch who led to them, and who has been the author of more misery

and suffering to the world, than any being who ever lived before him.

After destroying the liberties of his country, he has exhausted all its

resources, physical and moral, to indulge his own maniac ambition, his

own tyrannical and overbearing spirit. His sufferings cannot be too great.

But theirs I sincerely deplore, and what is to be their term? The will of

the allies? There is no more moderation, forbearance, or even honesty in

theirs, than in that of Bonaparte. They have proved that their object,

like his, is plunder. They, like him, are shuffling nations together,

or into their own hands, as if all were right which they feel a power

to do. In the exhausted state in which Bonaparte has left France, I

see no period to her sufferings, until this combination of robbers fall

together by the ears. The French may then rise up and choose their side.

And I trust they will finally establish for themselves a government of

rational and well-tempered liberty. So much science cannot be lost; so

much light shed over them can never fail to produce to them some good,

in the end. Till then we may ourselves fervently pray, with the liturgy

a little parodied, "Give peace till that time, oh Lord, because there

is none other that will fight for us but only thee, oh God." It is rare

that I indulge in these poetical effusions; but your former and latter

relations with both subjects have associated you with them in my mind,

and led me beyond the limits of attention I ordinarily give to them.

Whether you go or stay with us, you have always the prayers of yours

affectionately.

P. S. The two letters you enclosed me were from Warden and De Lormerie,

and neither from La Fayette, as you supposed.

JOHN ADAMS TO THOMAS JEFFERSON.

QUINCY, November 13, 1815.

DEAR SIR,--The fundamental article of my political creed is, that

despotism, or unlimited sovereignty, or absolute power, is the same in a

majority of a popular assembly, an aristocratical council, an oligarchical

junto, and a single emperor; equally arbitrary, cruel, bloody, and in

every respect diabolical.

Accordingly, arbitrary power, wherever it has resided, ha never failed

to destroy all the records, memorials, and histories of former times

which it did not like, and to corrupt and interpolate such as it was

cunning enough to preserve or tolerate. We cannot therefore say with

much confidence, what knowledge or what virtues may have prevailed in

some former ages in some quarters of the world.

Nevertheless, according to the few lights that remain to us, we may say

that the eighteenth century, notwithstanding all its errors and vices,

has been, of all that are past, the most honorable to human nature.

Knowledge and virtues were increased and diffused. Arts, sciences useful

to men, ameliorating their condition, were improved more than in any

former equal period.

But what are we to say now? Is the nineteenth century to be a contrast to

the eighteenth? Is it to extinguish all the lights of its predecessors?

Are the Sorbonne, the Inquisition, the Index Expurgatorius, and the

knights-errant of St. Ignatius Loyola to be revived and restored to all

their salutary powers of supporting and propagating the mild spirit of

Christianity? The proceedings of the allies and their Congress at Vienna,

the accounts from Spain, France, &c., the Chateaubriands and the Genti's,

indicate which way the wind blows. The priests are at their old work

again. The Protestants are denounced, and another St. Bartholomew's day

threatened.

This, however, will probably, twenty-five years hence, be honored with

the character of "_The effusions of a splenetic mind, rather than as the

sober reflections of an unbiased understanding_." I have received Memoirs

of the Life of Dr. Price, by William Morgan, F.R.S. In pages 151 and 155

Mr. Morgan says: "So well assured was Dr. Price of the establishment

of a free constitution in France, and of the subsequent overthrow of

despotism throughout Europe, as the consequence of it, that he never

failed to express his gratitude to heaven for having extended his life

to the present happy period, in which after sharing the benefits of one

revolution, he has been spared to be a witness to two other revolutions,

both glorious." But some of his correspondents were not quite so sanguine

in their expectations from the last of the revolutions; and among these,

the late American Ambassador, Mr. John Adams. In a long letter which he

wrote to Dr. Price at this time, so far from congratulating him on the

occasion, he expresses himself in terms of contempt, in regard to the

French revolution; and after asking rather too severely what good was

to be expected from a nation of Atheists, he concluded with foretelling

the destruction of a million of human beings as the probable consequence

of it. These harsh censures and gloomy predictions were particularly

ungrateful to Dr. Price, nor can it be denied that they must have then

appeared as the _effusions of a splenetic mind, rather than as the sober

reflections_ of an unbiased understanding.

I know not what a candid public will think of this practice of Mr.

Morgan, after the example of Mr. Belsham, who, finding private letters

in the Cabinet of a great and good man, after his decease, written in

the utmost freedom and confidence of intimate friendship, by persons

still living, though after the lapse of a quarter of a century, produces

them before the world.

Dr. Disney had different feelings and a different judgment. Finding some

cursory letters among the papers of Mr. Hollis, he would not publish

them without my consent. In answer to his request, I submitted them to

his discretion, and might have done the same to Mr. Morgan; indeed, had

Mr. Morgan published my letter entire, I should not have given him nor

myself any concern about it. But as in his summary he has not done the

latter justice, I shall give it with all its faults.

Mr. Morgan has been more discreet and complaisant to you than to me. He

has mentioned respectfully your letters from Paris to Dr. Price, but has

given us none of them. As I would give more for these letters than for

all the rest of the book, I am more angry with him for disappointing

me, than for all he says of me and my letter, which, scambling as it

is, contains nothing but the sure words of prophecy. I am, as usual, yours

TO MR. WM. BENTLEY.

MONTICELLO, December 28, 1815.

DEAR SIR,--At the date of your letter of October 30th, I had just left

home on a journey from which I am recently returned. I had many years

ago understood that Professor Ebeling was engaged in a geographical

work which would comprehend the United States, and indeed I expected

it was finished and published. I am glad to learn that his candor and

discrimination have been sufficient to guard him against trusting the

libel of Dr. Morse on this State. I wish it were in my power to give him

the aid you ask, but it is not. The whole forenoon with me is engrossed

by correspondence too extensive and laborious for my age. Health, habit,

and necessary attention to my farms, require me then to be on horseback

until a late dinner, and the society of my family and friends, with some

reading, furnish the necessary relaxations of the rest of the day. Add

to this that the cession of my library to Congress has left me without

materials for such an undertaking. I wish the part of his work which

gives the geography of this country may be translated and published, that

ourselves and the world may at length have something like a dispassionate

account of these States. Poor human nature! when we are obliged to appeal

for the truth of mere facts from an eye-witness to one whose faculties

for discovering it are only an honest candor and caution in sifting the

grain from its chaff!

The Professor's history of Hamburg is doubtless interesting and

instructive, and valuable as a corrective of the false information

we derive from newspapers. I should read it with pleasure, but I

fear its transportation and return would expose it to too much risk.

Notwithstanding all the French and British atrocities, which will forever

disgrace the present era of history, their shameless prostration of all

the laws of morality which constitute the security, the peace and comfort

of man--notwithstanding the waste of human life, and measure of human

suffering which they have inflicted on the world--nations hitherto in

slavery have descried through all this bloody mist a glimmering of their

own rights, have dared to open their eyes, and to see that their own

power and their own will suffice for their emancipation. Their tyrants

must now give them more moderate forms of government, and they seem now

to be sensible of this themselves. Instead of the parricide treason

of Bonaparte in employing the means confided to him as a republican

magistrate to the overthrow of that republic, and establishment of a

military despotism in himself and his descendants, to the subversion of

the neighboring governments, and erection of thrones for his brothers,

his sisters and sycophants, had he honestly employed that power in

the establishment and support of the freedom of his own country, there

is not a nation in Europe which would not at this day have had a more

rational government, one in which the will of the people should have had

a moderating and salutary influence. The work will now be longer, will

swell more rivers with blood, produce more sufferings and more crimes.

But it will be consummated; and that it may be will be the theme of

my constant prayers while I shall remain on the earth beneath, or in

the heavens above. To these I add sincere wishes for your health and

happiness.

TO MR. GEORGE FLEMING.

MONTICELLO, December 29, 1815.

SIR,--At the date of your favor of October 30th, I had just left home on

a journey to a distant possession of mine, from which I am but recently

returned, and I wish that the matter of my answer could compensate for

its delay. But, Sir, it happens that of all the machines which have been

employed to aid human labor, I have made myself the least acquainted with

(that which is certainly the most powerful of all) the steam engine. In

its original and simple form indeed, as first constructed by Newcomen and

Savary, it had been a subject of my early studies; but once possessed of

the principle, I ceased to follow up the numerous modifications of the

machinery for employing it, of which I do not know whether England or

our own country has produced the greatest number. Hence, I am entirely

incompetent to form a judgment of the comparative merit of yours with

those preceding it; and the cession of my library to Congress has left me

without any examples to turn to. I see, indeed, in yours, the valuable

properties of simplicity, cheapness and accommodation to the small and

more numerous calls of life, and the calculations of its power appear

sound and correct. Yet experience and frequent disappointment have taught

me not to be over-confident in theories or calculations, until actual

trial of the whole combination has stamped it with approbation. Should

this sanction be added, the importance of your construction will be

enhanced by the consideration that a smaller agent, applicable to our

daily concerns, is infinitely more valuable than the greatest which can

be used only for great objects. For these interest the few alone, the

former the many. I once had an idea that it might perhaps be possible

to economize the steam of a common pot, kept boiling on the kitchen

fire until its accumulation should be sufficient to give a stroke, and

although the strokes might not be rapid, there would be enough of them

in the day to raise from an adjacent well the water necessary for daily

use; to wash the linen, knead the bread, beat the homony, churn the

butter, turn the spit, and do all other household offices which require

only a regular mechanical motion. The unproductive hands now necessarily

employed in these, might then increase the produce of our fields. I

proposed it to Mr. Rumsey, one of our greatest mechanics, who believed

in its possibility, and promised to turn his mind to it. But his death

soon after disappointed this hope. Of how much more value would this be

to ordinary life than Watts & Bolton's thirty pair of mill-stones to be

turned by one engine, of which I saw seven pair in actual operation. It

is an interesting part of your question, how much fuel would be requisite

for your machine?