The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, Vol. 6 (of 9) / Being His Autobiography, Correspondence, Reports, Messages, Addresses, and Other Writings, Official and Private

TO THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES.

Monticello, September 24, 1814.

Dear Sir,—It is very long since I troubled you with a letter, which has proceeded from discretion and not want of inclination, because I have really had nothing to write which ought to have occupied your time. But in the late events at Washington I have felt so much for you that I cannot withhold the expression of my sympathies. For although every reasonable man must be sensible that all you can do is to order that execution must depend on others, and failures be imputed to them alone, yet I know that when such failures happen, they afflict even those who have done everything they could to prevent them. Had General Washington himself been now at the head of our affairs, the same event would probably have happened. We all remember the disgraces which befell us in his time in a trifling war with one or two petty tribes of Indians, in which two armies were cut off by not half their numbers. Every one knew, and I personally knew, because I was then of his council, that no blame was imputable to him, and that his officers alone were the cause of the disasters. They must now do the same justice. I am happy to turn to a countervailing event, and to congratulate you on the destruction of a second hostile fleet on the lakes by McDonough; of which, however, we have not the details. While our enemies cannot but feel shame for their barbarous achievements at Washington, they will be stung to the soul by these repeated victories over them on that element on which they wish the world to think them invincible. We have dissipated that error. They must now feel a conviction themselves that we can beat them gun to gun, ship to ship and fleet to fleet, and that their early successes on the land have been either purchased from traitors, or obtained from raw men entrusted of necessity with commands for which no experience had qualified them, and that every day is adding that experience to unquestioned bravery.

I am afraid the failure of our banks will occasion embarrassment for awhile, although it restores to us a fund which ought never to have been surrendered by the nation, and which now, prudently used, will carry us through all the fiscal difficulties of the war. At the request of Mr. Eppes, who was chairman of the committee of finance at the preceding session, I had written him some long letters on this subject. Colonel Monroe asked the reading of them some time ago, and I now send him another, written to a member of our legislature, who requested my ideas on the recent bank events. They are too long for your reading, but Colonel Monroe can, in a few sentences, state to you their outline.

Learning by the papers the loss of the library of Congress, I have sent my catalogue to S. H. Smith, to make to their library committee the offer of my collection, now of about nine or ten thousand volumes, which may be delivered to them instantly, on a valuation by persons of their own naming, and be paid for in any way, and at any term they please; in stock, for example, of any loan they have unissued, or of any one they may institute at this session; or in such annual instalments as are at the disposal of the committee. I believe you are acquainted with the condition of the books, should they wish to be ascertained of this. I have long been sensible that my library would be an interesting possession for the public, and the loss Congress has recently sustained, and the difficulty of replacing it, while our intercourse with Europe is so obstructed, renders this the proper moment for placing it at their service. Accept assurances of my constant and affectionate friendship and respect.

TO MR. MILES KING.

Monticello, September 26, 1814.

Sir,—I duly received your letter of August 20th, and I thank you for it, because I believe it was written with kind intentions, and a personal concern for my future happiness. Whether the particular revelation which you suppose to have been made to yourself were real or imaginary, your reason alone is the competent judge. For dispute as long as we will on religious tenets, our reason at last must ultimately decide, as it is the only oracle which God has given us to determine between what really comes from him and the phantasms of a disordered or deluded imagination. When he means to make a personal revelation, he carries conviction of its authenticity to the reason he has bestowed as the umpire of truth. You believe you have been favored with such a special communication. Your reason, not mine, is to judge of this; and if it shall be his pleasure to favor me with a like admonition, I shall obey it with the same fidelity with which I would obey his known will in all cases. Hitherto I have been under the guidance of that portion of reason which he has thought proper to deal out to me. I have followed it faithfully in all important cases, to such a degree at least as leaves me without uneasiness; and if on minor occasions I have erred from its dictates, I have trust in him who made us what we are, and know it was not his plan to make us always unerring. He has formed us moral agents. Not that, in the perfection of his state, he can feel pain or pleasure in anything we may do; he is far above our power; but that we may promote the happiness of those with whom he has placed us in society, by acting honestly towards all, benevolently to those who fall within our way, respecting sacredly their rights, bodily and mental, and cherishing especially their freedom of conscience, as we value our own. I must ever believe that religion substantially good which produces an honest life, and we have been authorized by one whom you and I equally respect, to judge of the tree by its fruit. Our particular principles of religion are a subject of accountability to our God alone. I inquire after no man's, and trouble none with mine; nor is it given to us in this life to know whether yours or mine, our friends or our foes, are exactly the right. Nay, we have heard it said that there is not a Quaker or a Baptist, a Presbyterian or an Episcopalian, a Catholic or a Protestant in heaven; that, on entering that gate, we leave those badges of schism behind, and find ourselves united in those principles only in which God has united us all. Let us not be uneasy then about the different roads we may pursue, as believing them the shortest, to that our last abode; but, following the guidance of a good conscience, let us be happy in the hope that by these different paths we shall all meet in the end. And that you and I may there meet and embrace, is my earnest prayer. And with this assurance I salute you with brotherly esteem and respect.

TO JOSEPH C. CABELL, ESQ.

Monticello, September 30, 1814.

Dear Sir,—In my letter of the 23d, an important fact escaped me which, lest it should not occur to you, I will mention. The monies arising from the sales of the glebe lands in the several counties, have generally, I believe, and under the sanction of the legislature, been deposited in some of the banks. So also the funds of the literary society. These debts, although parcelled among the counties, yet the counties constitute the State, and their representatives the legislature, united into one whole. It is right then that owing $300,000 to the banks, they should stay so much of that sum in their own hands as will secure what the banks owe to their constituents as divided into counties. Perhaps the loss of these funds would be the most lasting of the evils proceeding from the insolvency of the banks. Ever yours with great esteem and respect.

TO THOMAS COOPER, ESQ.

Monticello, October 7, 1814.

Dear Sir,—Your several favors of September 15th, 21st, 22d, came all together by our last mail. I have given to that of the 15th a single reading only, because the hand writing (not your own) is microscopic and difficult, and because I shall have an opportunity of studying it in the Portfolio in print. According to your request I return it for that publication, where it will do a great deal of good. It will give our young men some idea of what constitutes a well-educated man; that Cæsar and Virgil, and a few books of Euclid, do not really contain the sum of all human knowledge, nor give to a man figure in the ranks of science. Your letter will be a valuable source of consultation for us in our Collegiate courses, when, and if ever, we advance to that stage of our establishment.

I agree with yours of the 22d, that a professorship of Theology should have no place in our institution. But we cannot always do what is absolutely best. Those with whom we act, entertaining different views, have the power and the right of carrying them into practice. Truth advances, and error recedes step by step only; and to do to our fellow-men the most good in our power, we must lead where we can, follow where we can not, and still go with them, watching always the favorable moment for helping them to another step. Perhaps I should concur with you also in excluding the theory (not the practice) of medicine. This is the charlatanerie of the body, as the other is of the mind. For classical learning I have ever been a zealous advocate; and in this, as in his theory of bleeding and mercury, I was ever opposed to my friend Rush, whom I greatly loved; but who has done much harm, in the sincerest persuasion that he was preserving life and happiness to all around him. I have not, however, carried so far as you do my ideas of the importance of a hypercritical knowledge of the Latin and Greek languages. I have believed it sufficient to possess a substantial understanding of their authors.

In the exclusion of Anatomy and Botany from the eleventh grade of education, which is that of the man of independent fortune, we separate in opinion. In my view, no knowledge can be more satisfactory to a man than that of his own frame, its parts, their functions and actions. And Botany I rank with the most valuable sciences, whether we consider its subjects as furnishing the principal subsistence of life to man and beast, delicious varieties for our tables, refreshments from our orchards, the adornments of our flower-borders, shade and perfume of our groves, materials for our buildings, or medicaments for our bodies. To the gentlemen it is certainly more interesting than mineralogy (which I by no means, however, undervalue), and is more at hand for his amusement; and to a country family it constitutes a great portion of their social entertainment. No country gentleman should be without what amuses every step he takes into his fields.

I am sorry to learn the fate of your Emporium. It was adding fast to our useful knowledge. Our artists particularly, and our statesmen, will have cause to regret it. But my hope is that its suspension will be temporary only; and that as soon as we get over the crisis of our disordered circulation, your publishers will resume it among their first enterprises. Accept my thanks for the benefit of your ideas to our scheme of education, and the assurance of my constant esteem and respect.

To ——[12].

Monticello, October 15, 1814.

Dear Sir,—I thank you for the information of your letter of the 10th. It gives, at length, a fixed character to our prospects. The war, undertaken, on both sides, to settle the questions of impressment, and the orders of council, now that these are done away by events, is declared by Great Britain to have changed its object, and to have become a war of conquest, to be waged until she conquers from us our fisheries, the province of Maine, the lakes, States and territories north of the Ohio, and the navigation of the Mississippi; in other words, till she reduces us to unconditional submission. On our part, then, we ought to propose, as a counterchange of object, the establishment of the meridian of the mouth of the Sorel northwardly, as the western boundary of all her possessions. Two measures will enable us to effect it, and without these, we cannot even defend ourselves. 1. To organize the militia into classes, assigning to each class the duties for which it is fitted, (which, had it been done when proposed, years ago, would have prevented all our misfortunes,) abolishing by a declaratory law the doubts which abstract scruples in some, and cowardice and treachery in others, have conjured up about passing imaginary lines, and limiting, at the same time, their services to the contiguous provinces of the enemy. The 2d is the ways and means. You have seen my ideas on this subject, and I shall add nothing but a rectification of what either I have ill expressed, or you have misapprehended. If I have used any expression restraining the emissions of treasury notes to a sufficient medium, as your letter seems to imply, I have done it inadvertently, and under the impression then possessing me, that the war would be very short. A sufficient medium would not, on the principles of any writer, exceed thirty millions of dollars, and on those of some not ten millions. Our experience has proved it may be run up to two or three hundred millions, without more than doubling what would be the prices of things under a sufficient medium, or say a metallic one, which would always keep itself at the sufficient point; and, if they rise to this term, and the descent from it be gradual, it would not produce sensible revolutions in private fortunes. I shall be able to explain my views more definitely by the use of numbers. Suppose we require, to carry on the war, an annual loan of twenty millions, then I propose that, in the first year, you shall lay a tax of two millions, and emit twenty millions of treasury notes, of a size proper for circulation, and bearing no interest, to the redemption of which the proceeds of that tax shall be inviolably pledged and applied, by recalling annually their amount of the identical bills funded on them. The second year lay another tax of two millions, and emit twenty millions more. The third year the same, and so on, until you have reached the maximum of taxes which ought to be imposed. Let me suppose this maximum to be one dollar a head, or ten millions of dollars, merely as an exemplification more familiar than would be the algebraical symbols x or y. You would reach this in five years. The sixth year, then, still emit twenty millions of treasury notes, and continue all the taxes two years longer. The seventh year twenty millions more, and continue the whole taxes another two years; and so on. Observe, that although you emit ten millions of dollars a year, you call in ten millions, and, consequently, add but ten millions annually to the circulation. It would be in thirty years, then, primâ facie, that you would reach the present circulation of three hundred millions, or the ultimate term to which we might adventure. But observe, also, that in that time we shall have become thirty millions of people to whom three hundred millions of dollars would be no more than one hundred millions to us now; which sum would probably not have raised prices more than fifty per cent. on what may be deemed the standard, or metallic prices. This increased population and consumption, while it would be increasing the proceeds of the redemption tax, and lessening the balance annually thrown into circulation, would also absorb, without saturation, more of the surplus medium, and enable us to push the same process to a much higher term, to one which we might safely call indefinite, because extending so far beyond the limits, either in time or expense, of any supportable war. All we should have to do would be, when the war should be ended, to leave the gradual extinction of these notes to the operation of the taxes pledged for their redemption; not to suffer a dollar of paper to be emitted either by public or private authority, but let the metallic medium flow back into the channels of circulation, and occupy them until another war should oblige us to recur, for its support, to the same resource, and the same process, on the circulating medium.

The citizens of a country like ours will never have unemployed capital. Too many enterprises are open, offering high profits, to permit them to lend their capitals on a regular and moderate interest. They are too enterprizing and sanguine themselves not to believe they can do better with it. I never did believe you could have gone beyond a first or a second loan, not from a want of confidence in the public faith, which is perfectly sound, but from a want of disposable funds in individuals. The circulating fund is the only one we can ever command with certainty. It is sufficient for all our wants; and the impossibility of even defending the country without its aid as a borrowing fund, renders it indispensable that the nation should take and keep it in their own hands, as their exclusive resource.

I have trespassed on your time so far, for explanation only. I will do it no further than by adding the assurances of my affectionate and respectful attachment.

Suppose the war to terminate here, to wit, at the end of seven years, the reduction will proceed as follows:

This is a tabular statement of the amount of emission, taxes, redemptions, and balances left in circulation every year, on the plan above sketched.

TO JAMES MONROE.

Monticello, October 16, 1814.

Dear Sir,—Your letter of the 10th has been duly received. The objects of our contest being thus entirely changed by England, we must prepare for interminable war. To this end we should put our house in order, by providing men and money to indefinite extent. The former may be done by classing our militia, and assigning each class to the description of duties for which it is fit. It is nonsense to talk of regulars. They are not to be had among a people so easy and happy at home as ours. We might as well rely on calling down an army of angels from heaven. I trust it is now seen that the refusal to class the militia, when proposed years ago, is the real source of all our misfortunes in this war. The other great and indispensable object is to enter on such a system of finance, as can be permanently pursued to any length of time whatever. Let us be allured by no projects of banks, public or private, or ephemeral expedients, which, enabling us to gasp and flounder a little longer, only increase, by protracting the agonies of death.

Perceiving, in a letter from the President, that either I had ill expressed my ideas on a particular part of this subject, in the letters I sent you, or he had misapprehended them, I wrote him yesterday an explanation; and as you have thought the other letters worth a perusal, and a communication to the Secretary of the Treasury, I enclose you a copy of this, lest I should be misunderstood by others also. Only be so good as to return me the whole when done with, as I have no other copies.

Since writing the letter now enclosed, I have seen the Report of the committee of finance, proposing taxes to the amount of twenty millions. This is a dashing proposition. But, if Congress pass it, I shall consider it sufficient evidence that their constituents generally can pay the tax. No man has greater confidence than I have, in the spirit of the people, to a rational extent. Whatever they can, they will. But, without either market or medium, I know not how it is to be done. All markets abroad, and all at home, are shut to us; so that we have been feeding our horses on wheat. Before the day of collection, bank-notes will be but as oak leaves; and of specie, there is not within all the United States, one-half of the proposed amount of the taxes. I had thought myself as bold as was safe in contemplating, as possible, an annual taxation of ten millions, as a fund for emissions of treasury notes; and, when further emissions should be necessary, that it would be better to enlarge the time, than the tax for redemption. Our position, with respect to our enemy, and our markets, distinguishes us from all other nations; inasmuch, as a state of war, with us, annihilates in an instant all our surplus produce, that on which we depended for many comforts of life. This renders peculiarly expedient the throwing a part of the burdens of war on times of peace and commerce. Still, however, my hope is that others see resources, which, in my abstraction from the world, are unseen by me; that there will be both market and medium to meet these taxes, and that there are circumstances which render it wiser to levy twenty millions at once on the people, than to obtain the same sum on a tenth of the tax.

I enclose you a letter from Colonel James Lewis, now of Tennessee, who wishes to be appointed Indian agent, and I do it lest he should have relied solely on this channel of communication. You know him better than I do, as he was long your agent. I have always believed him an honest man, and very good-humored and accommodating. Of his other qualifications for the office, you are the best judge. Believe me to be ever affectionately yours.

TO DOCTOR ROBERT PATTERSON.

Monticello, November 23, 1814.

Dear Sir,—I have heretofore confided to you my wishes to retire from the chair of the Philosophical Society, which, however, under the influence of your recommendations, I have hitherto deferred. I have never, however, ceased from the purpose, and from everything I can observe or learn at this distance, I suppose that a new choice can now be made with as much harmony as may be expected at any future time. I send therefore, by this mail, my resignation, with such entreaties to be omitted at the ensuing election as I must hope will be yielded to, for in truth I cannot be easy in holding, as a sinecure, an honor so justly due to the talents and services of others. I pray your friendly assistance in assuring the society of the sentiments of affectionate respect and gratitude with which I retire from the high and honorable relation in which I have stood with them, and that you will believe me to be ever and affectionately yours.

TO ROBERT M. PATTERSON, SECRETARY OF THE AMERICAN PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY.

Monticello, November 23, 1814.

Sir,—I solicited, on a former occasion, permission from the American Philosophical Society, to retire from the honor of their chair, under a consciousness that distance as well as other circumstances, denied me the power of executing the duties of the station, and that those on whom they devolved were best entitled to the honors they confer. It was the pleasure of the society at that time, that I should remain in their service, and they have continued since to renew the same marks of their partiality. Of these I have been ever duly sensible, and now beg leave to return my thanks for them with humble gratitude. Still, I have never ceased, nor can I cease to feel that I am holding honors without yielding requital, and justly belonging to others. As the period of election is now therefore approaching, I take the occasion of begging to be withdrawn from the attention of the society at their ensuing choice, and to be permitted now to resign the office of president into their hands, which I hereby do. I shall consider myself sufficiently honored in remaining a private member of their body, and shall ever avail myself with zeal of every occasion which may occur, of being useful to them, retaining indelibly a profound sense of their past favors.

I avail myself of the channel through which the last notification of the pleasure of the society was conveyed to me, to make this communication, and with the greater satisfaction, as it gratifies me with the occasion of assuring you personally of my high respect for yourself, and of the interest I shall ever take in learning that your worth and talents secure to you the successes they merit.

TO W. SHORT, ESQ.

Monticello, November 28, 1814.

Dear Sir,—Yours of October 28th came to hand on the 15th instant only. The settlement of your boundary with Colonel Monroe, is protracted by circumstances which seem foreign to it. One would hardly have expected that the hostile expedition to Washington could have had any connection with an operation one hundred miles distant. Yet preventing his attendance, nothing could be done. I am satisfied there is no unwillingness on his part, but on the contrary a desire to have it settled; and therefore, if he should think it indispensable to be present at the investigation, as is possible, the very first time he comes here I will press him to give a day to the decision, without regarding Mr. Carter's absence. Such an occasion must certainly offer soon after the fourth of March, when Congress rises of necessity and be assured I will not lose one possible moment in effecting it.

Although withdrawn from all anxious attention to political concerns, yet I will state my impressions as to the present war, because your letter leads to the subject. The essential grounds of the war were, 1st, the orders of council; and 2d, the impressment of our citizens; (for I put out of sight from the love of peace the multiplied insults on our government and aggressions on our commerce, with which our pouch, like the Indian's, had long been filled to the mouth.) What immediately produced the declaration was, 1st, the proclamation of the Prince Regent that he would never repeal the orders of council as to us, until Bonaparte should have revoked his decrees as to all other nations as well as ours; and 2d, the declaration of his minister to ours that no arrangement whatever could be devised, admissible in lieu of impressment. It was certainly a misfortune that they did not know themselves at the date of this silly and insolent proclamation, that within one month they would repeal the orders, and that we, at the date of our declaration, could not know of the repeal which was then going on one thousand leagues distant. Their determinations, as declared by themselves, could alone guide us, and they shut the door on all further negotiation, throwing down to us the gauntlet of war or submission as the only alternatives. We cannot blame the government for choosing that of war, because certainly the great majority of the nation thought it ought to be chosen, not that they were to gain by it in dollars and cents; all men know that war is a losing game to both parties. But they know also that if they do not resist encroachment at some point, all will be taken from them, and that more would then be lost even in dollars and cents by submission than resistance. It is the case of giving a part to save the whole, a limb to save life. It is the melancholy law of human societies to be compelled sometimes to choose a great evil in order to ward off a greater; to deter their neighbors from rapine by making it cost them more than honest gains. The enemy are accordingly now disgorging what they had so ravenously swallowed. The orders of council had taken from us near one thousand vessels. Our list of captures from them is now one thousand three hundred, and, just become sensible that it is small and not large ships which gall them most, we shall probably add one thousand prizes a year to their past losses. Again, supposing that, according to the confession of their own minister in parliament, the Americans they had impressed were something short of two thousand, the war against us alone cannot cost them less than twenty millions of dollars a year, so that each American impressed has already cost them ten thousand dollars, and every year will add five thousand dollars more to his price. We, I suppose, expend more; but had we adopted the other alternative of submission, no mortal can tell what the cost would have been. I consider the war then as entirely justifiable on our part, although I am still sensible it is a deplorable misfortune to us. It has arrested the course of the most remarkable tide of prosperity any nation ever experienced, and has closed such prospects of future improvement as were never before in the view of any people. Farewell all hopes of extinguishing public debt! farewell all visions of applying surpluses of revenue to the improvements of peace rather than the ravages of war. Our enemy has indeed the consolation of Satan on removing our first parents from Paradise: from a peaceable and agricultural nation, he makes us a military and manufacturing one. We shall indeed survive the conflict. Breeders enough will remain to carry on population. We shall retain our country, and rapid advances in the art of war will soon enable us to beat our enemy, and probably drive him from the continent. We have men enough, and I am in hopes the present session of Congress will provide the means of commanding their services. But I wish I could see them get into a better train of finance. Their banking projects are like dosing dropsy with more water. If anything could revolt our citizens against the war, it would be the extravagance with which they are about to be taxed. It is strange indeed that at this day, and in a country where English proceedings are so familiar, the principles and advantages of funding should be neglected, and expedients resorted to. Their new bank, if not abortive at its birth, will not last through one campaign; and the taxes proposed cannot be paid. How can a people who cannot get fifty cents a bushel for their wheat, while they pay twelve dollars a bushel for their salt, pay five times the amount of taxes they ever paid before? Yet that will be the case in all the States south of the Potomac. Our resources are competent to the maintenance of the war if duly economized and skillfuly employed in the way of anticipation. However, we must suffer, I suppose, from our ignorance in funding, as we did from that of fighting, until necessity teaches us both; and, fortunately, our stamina are so vigorous as to rise superior to great mismanagement. This year I think we shall have learnt how to call forth our force, and by the next I hope our funds, and even if the state of Europe should not by that time give the enemy employment enough nearer home, we shall leave him nothing to fight for here. These are my views of the war. They embrace a great deal of sufferance, trying privations, and no benefit but that of teaching our enemy that he is never to gain by wanton injuries on us. To me this state of things brings a sacrifice of all tranquillity and comfort through the residue of life. For although the debility of age disables me from the services and sufferings of the field, yet, by the total annihilation in value of the produce which was to give me subsistence and independence, I shall be like Tantalus, up to the shoulders in water, yet dying with thirst. We can make indeed enough to eat, drink and clothe ourselves; but nothing for our salt, iron, groceries and taxes, which must be paid in money. For what can we raise for the market? Wheat? we can only give it to our horses, as we have been doing ever since harvest. Tobacco? it is not worth the pipe it is smoked in. Some say Whiskey; but all mankind must become drunkards to consume it. But although we feel, we shall not flinch. We must consider now, as in the revolutionary war, that although the evils of resistance are great, those of submission would be greater. We must meet, therefore, the former as the casualties of tempests and earthquakes, and like them necessarily resulting from the constitution of the world. Your situation, my dear friend, is much better. For, although I do not know with certainty the nature of your investments, yet I presume they are not in banks, insurance companies or any other of those gossamer castles. If in ground-rents, they are solid; if in stock of the United States, they are equally so. I once thought that in the event of a war we should be obliged to suspend paying the interest of the public debt. But a dozen years more of experience and observation on our people and government, have satisfied me it will never be done. The sense of the necessity of public credit is so universal and so deeply rooted, that no other necessity will prevail against it; and I am glad to see that while the former eight millions are steadfastly applied to the sinking of the old debt, the Senate have lately insisted on a sinking fund for the new. This is the dawn of that improvement in the management of our finances which I look to for salvation; and I trust that the light will continue to advance, and point out their way to our legislators. They will soon see that instead of taxes for the whole year's expenses, which the people cannot pay, a tax to the amount of the interest and a reasonable portion of the principal will command the whole sum, and throw a part of the burthens of war on times of peace and prosperity. A sacred payment of interest is the only way to make the most of their resources, and a sense of that renders your income from our funds more certain than mine from lands. Some apprehend danger from the defection of Massachusetts. It is a disagreeable circumstance, but not a dangerous one. If they become neutral, we are sufficient for one enemy without them, and in fact we get no aid from them now. If their administration determines to join the enemy, their force will be annihilated by equality of division among themselves. Their federalists will then call in the English army, the republicans ours, and it will only be a transfer of the scene of war from Canada to Massachusetts; and we can get ten men to go to Massachusetts for one who will go to Canada. Every one, too, must know that we can at any moment make peace with England at the expense of the navigation and fisheries of Massachusetts. But it will not come to this. Their own people will put down these factionists as soon as they see the real object of their opposition; and of this Vermont, New Hampshire, and even Connecticut itself, furnish proofs.

You intimate a possibility of your return to France, now that Bonaparte is put down. I do not wonder at it, France, freed from that monster, must again become the most agreeable country on earth. It would be the second choice of all whose ties of family and fortune gives a preference to some other one, and the first of all not under those ties. Yet I doubt if the tranquillity of France is entirely settled. If her Pretorian bands are not furnished with employment on her external enemies, I fear they will recall the old, or set up some new cause.

God bless you and preserve you in bodily health. Tranquillity of mind depends much on ourselves, and greatly on due reflection "how much pain have cost us the evils which have never happened." Affectionately adieu.

TO MR. MELLISH.

Monticello, December 10, 1814.

Dear Sir,—I thank you for your favor of the map of the sine quâ non, enclosed in your letter of November 12th. It was an excellent idea; and if, with the Documents distributed by Congress, copies of these had been sent to be posted up in every street, on every townhouse and court-house, it would have painted to the eyes of those who cannot read without reflecting, that reconquest is the ultimate object of Britain. The first step towards this is to set a limit to their expansion by taking from them that noble country which the foresight of their fathers provided for their multiplying and needy offspring; to be followed up by the compression, land-board and sea-board, of that Omnipotence which the English fancy themselves now to possess. A vain and foolish imagination! Instead of fearing and endeavoring to crush our prosperity, had they cultivated it in friendship, it might have become a bulwark instead of a breaker to them. There has never been an administration in this country which would not gladly have met them more than half way on the road to an equal, a just and solid connection of friendship and intercourse. And as to repressing our growth, they might as well attempt to repress the waves of the ocean.

Your American Atlas is a useful undertaking for those who will live to see and to use it. To me every mail, in the departure of some cotemporary, brings warning to be in readiness myself also, and to cease from new engagements. It is a warning of no alarm. When faculty after faculty is retiring from us, and all the avenues to cheerful sensation closing, sight failing now, hearing next, then memory, debility of body, trepitude of mind, nothing remaining but a sickly vegetation, with scarcely the relief of a little locomotion, the last cannot be but a coup de grace.

You propose to me the preparation of a new edition of the Notes on Virginia. I formerly entertained the idea, and from time to time noted some new matter, which I thought I would arrange at leisure for a posthumous edition. But I now begin to see that it is impracticable for me. Nearly forty years of additional experience in the affairs of mankind would lead me into dilatations ending I know not where. That experience indeed has not altered a single principle. But it has furnished matter of abundant development. Every moment, too, which I have to spare from my daily exercise and affairs is engrossed by a correspondence, the result of the extensive relations which my course of life has necessarily occasioned. And now the act of writing itself is becoming slow, laborious and irksome. I consider, therefore, the idea of preparing a new copy of that work as no more to be entertained. The work itself indeed is nothing more than the measure of a shadow, never stationary, but lengthening as the sun advances, and to be taken anew from hour to hour. It must remain, therefore, for some other hand to sketch its appearance at another epoch, to furnish another element for calculating the course and motion of this member of our federal system. For this, every day is adding new matter and strange matter. That of reducing, by impulse instead of attraction, a sister planet into its orbit, will be as new in our political as in the planetary system. The operation, however, will be painful rather than difficult. The sound part of our wandering star will probably, by its own internal energies, keep the unsound within its course; or if a foreign power is called in, we shall have to meet it but so much the nearer, and with a more overwhelming force. It will probably shorten the war. For I think it probable that the sine quâ non was designedly put into an impossible form to give time for the development of their plots and concerts with the factionists of Boston, and that they are holding off to see the issue, not of the Congress of Vienna, but that of Hartford. This will begin a new chapter in our history, and with a wish that you may live in health to see its easy close, I tender you the assurance of my great esteem and respect.

TO M. CORREA DE SERRA.

Monticello, December 27, 1814.

Dear Sir,—Yours of the 9th has been duly received, and I thank you for the recipe for imitating purrolani, which I shall certainly try on my cisterns the ensuing summer. The making them impermeable to water is of great consequence to me. That one chemical subject may follow another, I enclose you two morsels of ore found in this neighborhood, and supposed to be of antimony. I am not certain, but I believe both are from the same piece, and although the very spot where that was found is not known, yet it is known to be within a certain space not too large to be minutely examined, if the material be worth it. This you can have ascertained in Philadelphia, where it is best known to the artists how great a desideratum antimony is with them.

You will have seen that I resigned the chair of the American Philosophical Society, not awaiting your further information as to the settlement of the general opinion on a successor without schism. I did it because the term of election was too near to admit further delay.

On the subject which entered incidentally into our conversation while you were here, when I came to reflect maturely, I concluded to be silent. To do wrong is a melancholy resource, even where retaliation renders it indispensably necessary. It is better to suffer much from the scalpings, the conflagrations, the rapes and rapine of savages, than to countenance and strengthen such barbarisms by retortion. I have ever deemed it more honorable and more profitable too, to set a good example than to follow a bad one. The good opinion of mankind, like the lever of Archimedes, with the given fulcrum, moves the world. I therefore have never proposed or mentioned the subject to any one.

I have received a letter from Mr. Say, in which he expresses a thought of removing to this country, having discontinued the manufactory in which he was engaged; and he asks information from me of the prices of land, labor, produce, &c., in the neighborhood of Charlottesville, on which he has cast his eye. Its neighborhood has certainly the advantages of good soil, fine climate, navigation to market, and rational and republican society. It would be a good enough position too for the re-establishment of his cotton works, on a moderate scale, and combined with the small plan of agriculture to which he seems solely to look. But when called on to name prices, what is to be said? We have no fixed prices now. Our dropsical medium is long since divested of the quality of a medium of value; nor can I find any other. In most countries a fixed quantity of wheat is perhaps the best permanent standard. But here the blockade of our whole coast, preventing all access to a market, has depressed the price of that, and exalted that of other things, in opposite directions, and, combined with the effects of the paper deluge, leaves really no common measure of values to be resorted to. This paper, too, received now without confidence, and for momentary purposes only, may, in a moment, be worth nothing. I shall think further on the subject, and give to Mr. Say the best information in my power. To myself such an addition to our rural society would be inestimable; and I can readily conceive that it may be for the benefit of his children and their descendants to remove to a country where, for enterprise and talents, so many avenues are open to fortune and fame. But whether, at his time of life, and with habits formed for the state of society in France, a change for one so entirely different will be for his personal happiness, you can better judge than myself.

Mr. Say will be surprised to find, that forty years after the development of sound financial principles by Adam Smith and the Economists, and a dozen years after he has given them to us in a corrected, dense, and lucid form, there should be so much ignorance of them in our country; that instead of funding issues of paper on the hypothecation of specific redeeming taxes, (the only method of anticipating, in a time of war, the resources of times of peace, tested by the experience of nations,) we are trusting to tricks of jugglers on the cards, to the illusions of banking schemes for the resources of the war, and for the cure of colic to inflations of more wind. The wise proposition of the Secretary at War, too, for filling our ranks with regulars, and putting our militia into an effective form, seems to be laid aside. I fear, therefore, that, if the war continues, it will require another year of sufferance for men and money to lead our legislators into such a military and financial regimen as may carry us through a war of any length. But my hope is in peace. The negotiators at Ghent are agreed now on every point save one, the demand and cession of a portion of Maine. This, it is well known, cannot be yielded by us, nor deemed by them an object for continuing a war so expensive, so injurious to their commerce and manufactures, and so odious in the eyes of the world. But it is a thread to hold by until they can hear the result, not of the Congress of Vienna, but of Hartford. When they shall know, as they will know, that nothing will be done there, they will let go their hold, and complete the peace of the world, by agreeing to the status ante bellum. Indemnity for the past, and security for the future, which was our motto at the beginning of this war, must be adjourned to another, when, disarmed and bankrupt, our enemy shall be less able to insult and plunder the world with impunity. This will be after my time. One war, such as that of our Revolution, is enough for one life. Mine has been too much prolonged to make me the witness of a second, and I hope for a coup de grace before a third shall come upon us. If, indeed, Europe has matters to settle which may reduce this hostis humani generis to a state of peace and moral order, I shall see that with pleasure, and then sing, with old Simeon, nunc dimittas Domine. For yourself, cura ut valeas, et me, ut amaris, ama.

TO COLONEL MONROE.

Monticello, January 1, 1815.

Dear Sir,—Your letters of November the 30th and December the 21st have been received with great pleasure. A truth now and then projecting into the ocean of newspaper lies, serves like head-lands to correct our course. Indeed, my scepticism as to everything I see in a newspaper, makes me indifferent whether I ever see one. The embarrassments at Washington, in August last, I expected would be great in any state of things; but they proved greater than expected. I never doubted that the plans of the President were wise and sufficient. Their failure we all impute, 1, to the insubordinate temper of Armstrong; and 2, to the indecision of Winder. However, it ends well. It mortifies ourselves, and so may check, perhaps, the silly boasting spirit of our newspapers, and it enlists the feelings of the world on our side; and the advantage of public opinion is like that of the weather-gauge in a naval action. In Europe, the transient possession of our Capital can be no disgrace. Nearly every Capital there was in possession of its enemy; some often and long. But diabolical as they paint that enemy, he burnt neither public edifices nor private dwellings. It was reserved for England to show that Bonaparte, in atrocity, was an infant to their ministers and their generals. They are taking his place in the eyes of Europe, and have turned into our channel all its good will. This will be worth the million of dollars the repairs of their conflagration will cost us. I hope that to preserve this weather-gauge of public opinion, and to counteract the slanders and falsehoods disseminated by the English papers, the government will make it a standing instruction to their ministers at foreign courts, to keep Europe truly informed of occurrences here, by publishing in their papers the naked truth always, whether favorable or unfavorable. For they will believe the good, if we candidly tell them the bad also.

But you have two more serious causes of uneasiness; the want of men and money. For the former, nothing more wise or efficient could have been imagined than what you proposed. It would have filled our ranks with regulars, and that, too, by throwing a just share of the burthen on the purses of those whose persons are exempt either by age or office; and it would have rendered our militia, like those of the Greeks and Romans, a nation of warriors. But the go-by seems to have been given to your proposition, and longer sufferance is necessary to force us to what is best. We seem equally incorrigible to our financial course. Although a century of British experience has proved to what a wonderful extent the funding on specific redeeming taxes enables a nation to anticipate in war the resources of peace, and although the other nations of Europe have tried and trodden every path of force or folly in fruitless quest of the same object, yet we still expect to find in juggling tricks and banking dreams, that money can be made out of nothing, and in sufficient quantity to meet the expenses of a heavy war by sea and land. It is said, indeed, that money cannot be borrowed from our merchants as from those of England. But it can be borrowed from our people. They will give you all the necessaries of war they produce, if, instead of the bankrupt trash they now are obliged to receive for want of any other, you will give them a paper promise funded on a specific pledge, and of a size for common circulation. But you say the merchants will not take this paper. What the people take the merchants must take, or sell nothing. All these doubts and fears prove only the extent of the dominion which the banking institutions have obtained over the minds of our citizens, and especially of those inhabiting cities or other banking places; and this dominion must be broken, or it will break us. But here, as in the other case, we must make up our minds to suffer yet longer before we can get right. The misfortune is, that in the meantime we shall plunge ourselves in unextinguishable debt, and entail on our posterity an inheritance of eternal taxes, which will bring our government and people into the condition of those of England, a nation of pikes and gudgeons, the latter bred merely as food for the former. But, however these difficulties of men and money may be disposed of, it is fortunate that neither of them will affect our war by sea. Privateers will find their own men and money. Let nothing be spared to encourage them. They are the dagger which strikes at the heart of the enemy, their commerce. Frigates and seventy-fours are a sacrifice we must make, heavy as it is, to the prejudices of a part of our citizens. They have, indeed, rendered a great moral service, which has delighted me as much as any one in the United States. But they have had no physical effect sensible to the enemy; and now, while we must fortify them in our harbors, and keep armies to defend them, our privateers are bearding and blockading the enemy in their own seaports. Encourage them to burn all their prizes, and let the public pay for them. They will cheat us enormously. No matter; they will make the merchants of England feel, and squeal, and cry out for peace.

I much regretted your acceptance of the war department. Not that I know a person who I think would better conduct it. But, conduct it ever so wisely, it will be a sacrifice of yourself. Were an angel from Heaven to undertake that office, all our miscarriages would be ascribed to him. Raw troops, no troops, insubordinate militia, want of arms, want of money, want of provisions, all will be charged to want of management in you. I speak from experience, when I was Governor of Virginia. Without a regular in the State, and scarcely a musket to put into the hands of the militia, invaded by two armies, Arnold's from the sea-board and Cornwallis' from the southward, when we were driven from Richmond and Charlottesville, and every member of my council fled from their homes, it was not the total destitution of means, but the mismanagement of them, which, in the querulous voice of the public, caused all our misfortunes. It ended, indeed, in the capture of the whole hostile force, but not till means were brought us by General Washington's army, and the French fleet and army. And although the legislature, who were personally intimate with both the means and measures, acquitted me with justice and thanks, yet General Lee has put all those imputations among the romances of his historical novel, for the amusement of credulous and uninquisitive readers. Not that I have seen the least disposition to censure you. On the contrary, your conduct on the attack of Washington has met the praises of every one, and your plan for regulars and militia, their approbation. But no campaign is as yet opened. No Generals have yet an interest in shifting their own incompetence on you, no army agents their rogueries. I sincerely pray you may never meet censure where you will deserve most praise, and that your own happiness and prosperity may be the result of your patriotic services.

Ever and affectionately yours.

TO MR. GIRARDIN.

Monticello, January 15, 1815.

I have no document respecting Clarke's expedition, except the letters of which you are in possession, one of which, I believe, gives some account of it; nor do I possess Imlay's history of Kentucky.

Of Mr. Wythe's early history I scarcely know anything, except that he was self-taught; and perhaps this might not have been as to the Latin language, Dr. Small was his bosom friend, and to me as a father. To his enlightened and affectionate guidance of my studies while at College, I am indebted for everything.

He was Professor of Mathematics at William and Mary, and, for some time, was in the philosophical chair. He first introduced into both schools rational and elevated courses of study, and, from an extraordinary conjunction of eloquence and logic, was enabled to communicate them to the students with great effect. He procured for me the patronage of Mr. Wythe, and both of them, the attentions of Governor Fauquier, the ablest man who ever filled the chair of government here. They were inseparable friends, and at their frequent dinners with the Governor, (after his family had returned to England,) he admitted me always, to make it a partie quarrée. At these dinners I have heard more good sense, more rational and philosophical conversations, than in all my life besides. They were truly Attic societies. The Governor was musical also, and a good performer, and associated me with two or three other amateurs in his weekly concerts. He merits honorable mention in your history, if any proper occasion offers. So also does Dabney Carr, father of Peter Carr, mover of the proposition of March, 1773, for committees of correspondence, the first fruit of which was the call of an American Congress. I return your two pamphlets with my thanks, and salute you with esteem and respect.

TO CHARLES CLAS, ESQ.

Monticello, January 29, 1815.

Dear Sir,—Your letter of December 20th was four weeks on its way to me. I thank you for it; for although founded on a misconception, it is evidence of that friendly concern for my peace and welfare, which I have ever believed you to feel. Of publishing a book on religion, my dear Sir, I never had an idea. I should as soon think of writing for the reformation of Bedlam, as of the world of religious sects. Of these there must be, at least, ten thousand, every individual of every one of which believes all wrong but his own. To undertake to bring them all right, would be like undertaking, single-handed, to fell the forests of America. Probably you have heard me say I had taken the four Evangelists, had cut out from them every text they had recorded of the moral precepts of Jesus, and arranged them in a certain order, and although they appeared but as fragments, yet fragments of the most sublime edifice of morality which had ever been exhibited to man. This I have probably mentioned to you, because it is true; and the idea of its publication may have suggested itself as an inference of your own mind. I not only write nothing on religion, but rarely permit myself to speak on it, and never but in a reasonable society. I have probably said more to you than to any other person, because we have had more hours of conversation in duetto in our meetings at the Forest. I abuse the priests, indeed, who have so much abused the pure and holy doctrines of their master, and who have laid me under no obligations of reticence as to the tricks of their trade. The genuine system of Jesus, and the artificial structures they have erected, to make them the instruments of wealth, power, and preëminence to themselves, are as distinct things in my view as light and darkness; and while I have classed them with soothsayers and necromancers, I place him among the greatest reformers of morals, and scourges of priest-craft that have ever existed. They felt him as such, and never rested until they had silenced him by death. But his heresies against Judaism prevailing in the long run, the priests have tacked about, and rebuilt upon them the temple which he destroyed, as splendid, as profitable, and as imposing as that.

Government, as well as religion, has furnished its schisms, its persecutions, and its devices for flattering idleness on the earnings of the people. It has its hierarchy of emperors, kings, princes, and nobles, as that has of popes, cardinals, archbishops, bishops, and priests. In short, cannibals are not to be found in the wilds of America only, but are revelling on the blood of every living people. Turning, then, from this loathsome combination of Church and State, and weeping over the follies of our fellow men, who yield themselves the willing dupes and drudges of these mountebanks, I consider reformation and redress as desperate, and abandon them to the Quixotism of more enthusiastic minds.

I have received from Philadelphia, by mail, the spectacles you had desired, and now forward them by the same conveyance, as equally safe and more in time, than were they to await my own going. In a separate case is a complete set of glasses, from early use to old age. I think the pair now in the frames will suit your eyes, but should they not, you will easily change them by the screws. I believe the largest numbers are the smallest magnifiers, but am not certain. Trial will readily ascertain it. You must do me the favor to accept them as a token of my friendship, and with them the assurance of my great esteem and respect.

TO GOVERNOR PLUMER.

Monticello, January 31, 1815.

Dear Sir,—Your favor of December 30th has been received. In answer to your question whether in the course of my reading I have ever found that any country or even considerable island was without inhabitants when first discovered? I must answer, with Mr. Adams, in the negative. Although the fact is curious, it had never before struck my attention. Some small islands have been found, and are at this day, without inhabitants, but this is easily accounted for. Man being a gregarious animal, will not remain but where there can be a sufficient herd of his own kind to satisfy his social propensities. Add to this that insulated settlements, if small, would be liable to extirpations by occasional epidemics.

I thank you for the pamphlet you have been so kind as to send me, and have read it with much satisfaction. But with those to whom it is addressed Moses and the prophets have no authority but when administering to their worldly gain. The paradox with me is how any friend to the union of our country can, in conscience, contribute a cent to the maintenance of any one who perverts the sanctity of his desk to the open inculcation of rebellion, civil war, dissolution of government, and the miseries of anarchy. When England took alarm lest France, become republican, should recover energies dangerous to her, she employed emissaries with means to engage incendiaries and anarchists in the disorganization of all government there. These, assuming exaggerated zeal for republican government and the rights of the people, crowded their inscriptions into the Jacobin societies, and overwhelming by their majorities the honest and enlightened patriots of the original institution, distorted its objects, pursued its genuine founders under the name of Brissotines and Girondists unto death, intrigued themselves into the municipality of Paris, controlled by terrorism the proceedings of the legislature, in which they were faithfully aided by their costipendaries there, the Dantons and Marats of the Mountain, murdered their king, septembrized the nation, and thus accomplished their stipulated task of demolishing liberty and government with it. England now fears the rising force of this republican nation, and by the same means is endeavoring to effect the same course of miseries and destruction here; it is impossible where one sees like courses of events commence, not to ascribe them to like causes. We know that the government of England, maintaining itself by corruption at home, uses the same means in other countries of which she has any jealousy, by subsidizing agitators and traitors among themselves to distract and paralyze them. She sufficiently manifests that she has no disposition to spare ours. We see in the proceedings of Massachusetts, symptoms which plainly indicate such a course, and we know as far as such practices can ever be dragged into light, that she has practiced, and with success, on leading individuals of that State. Nay further, we see those individuals acting on the very plan which our information had warned us was settled between the parties. These elements of explanation history cannot fail of putting together in recording the crime of combining with the oppressors of the earth to extinguish the last spark of human hope, that here, at length, will be preserved a model of government, securing to man his rights and the fruits of his labor, by an organization constantly subject to his own will. The crime indeed, if accomplished, would immortalize its perpetrators, and their names would descend in history with those of Robespierre and his associates, as the guardian genii of despotism, and demons of human liberty. I do not mean to say that all who are acting with these men are under the same motives. I know some of them personally to be incapable of it. Nor was that the case with the disorganizers and assassins of Paris. Delusions there, and party perversions here, furnish unconscious assistants to the hired actors in these atrocious scenes. But I have never entertained one moment's fear on this subject. The people of this country enjoy too much happiness to risk it for nothing; and I have never doubted that whenever the incendiaries of Massachusetts should venture openly to raise the standard of separation, its citizens would rise in mass and do justice themselves to their own parricides.

I am glad to learn that you persevere in your historical work. I am sure it will be executed on sound principles of Americanism, and I hope your opportunities will enable you to make the abortive crimes of the present, useful as a lesson for future times.

In aid of your general work I possess no materials whatever, or they should be entirely at your service; and I am sorry that I have not a single copy of the pamphlet you ask, entitled "A Summary View of the Rights of British America." It was the draught of an instruction which I had meant to propose for our delegates to the first Congress. Being prevented by sickness from attending our convention, I sent it to them, and they printed without adopting it, in the hope that conciliation was not yet desperate. Its only merit was in being the first publication which carried the claim of our rights their whole length, and asserted that there was no rightful link of connection between us and England but that of being under the same king. Haring's collection of our statutes is published, I know, as far as the third volume, bringing them down to 1710; and I rather believe a fourth has appeared. One more will probably complete the work of the revolution, and will be to us an inestimable treasure, as being the only collection of all the acts of our legislatures now extant in print or manuscript.

Accept the assurance of my great esteem and respect.

TO JOHN VAUGHAN, ESQ.

Monticello, February 5, 1815.

Dear Sir,—Your very friendly letter of January 4th is but just received, and I am much gratified by the interest taken by yourself, and others of my colleagues of the Philosophical Society, in what concerned myself on withdrawing from the presidency of the Society. My desire to do so had been so long known to every member, and the continuance of it to some, that I did not suppose it can be misunderstood by the public. Setting aside the consideration of distance, which must be obvious to all, nothing is more incumbent on the old, than to know when they should get out of the way, and relinquish to younger successors the honors they can no longer earn, and the duties they can no longer perform. I rejoice in the election of Dr. Wistar, and trust that his senior standing in the society will have been considered as a fair motive of preference of those whose merits, standing alone, would have justly entitled them to the honor, and who, as juniors, according to the course of nature, may still expect their turn.

I have received, with very great pleasure, the visit of Mr. Ticknor, and find him highly distinguished by science and good sense. He was accompanied by Mr. Gray, son of the late Lieutenant Governor of Massachusetts, of great information and promise also. It gives me ineffable comfort to see such subjects coming forward to take charge of the political and civil rights, the establishment of which has cost us such sacrifices. Mr. Ticknor will be fortunate if he can get under the wing of Mr. Correa; and, if the happiness of Mr. Correa requires (as I suppose it does) his return to Europe, we must sacrifice it to that which his residence here would have given us, and acquiesce under the regrets which our transient acquaintance with his worth cannot fail to embody with our future recollections of him. Of Michaux's work I possess three volumes, or rather catriers, one on Oaks, another on Beeches and Birches, and a third on Pines.

I salute you with great friendship and respect.