TO JUDGE STEWART.

Monticello, August 8, 1811.

Dear Sir,—I ask the favor of you to purchase for me as much fresh timothy seed as the enclosed bill will pay for, pack and forward, and that you will have the goodness to direct it to be lodged at Mr. Leitch's store in Charlottesville by the waggoner who brings it. You see how bold your indulgencies make me in intruding on your kindness.

I do not know that the government means to make known what has passed between them and Foster before the meeting of Congress; but in the meantime individuals, who are in the way, think they have a right to fish it out, and in this way the sum of it has become known. Great Britain has certainly come forward and declared to our government by an official paper, that the conduct of France towards her during this war has obliged her to take possession of the ocean, and to determine that no commerce shall be carried on with the nations connected with France; that, however, she is disposed to relax in this determination so far as to permit the commerce which may be carried on through the British ports. I have, for three or four years, been confident that, knowing that her own resources were not adequate to the maintenance of her present navy, she meant with it to claim the conquest of the ocean, and to permit no nation to navigate it, but on payment of a tribute for the maintenance of the fleet necessary to secure that dominion. A thousand circumstances brought together left me without a doubt that that policy directed all her conduct, although not avowed. This is the first time she has thrown off the mask. The answer and conduct of the government have been what they ought to have been, and Congress is called a little earlier, to be ready to act on the receipt of the reply, for which time has been given.

God bless you. From yours affectionately.

TO GENERAL DEARBORNE.

Poplar Forest, August 14, 1811.

Dear General and Friend,— * * * * *

I am happy to learn that your own health is good, and I hope it will long continue so. The friends we left behind us have fallen out by the way. I sincerely lament it, because I sincerely esteem them all, and because it multiplies schisms where harmony is safety. As far as I have been able to judge, however, it has made no sensible impression against the government. Those who were murmuring before are a little louder now; but the mass of our citizens is firm and unshaken. It furnishes, as an incident, another proof that they are perfectly equal to the purposes of self-government, and that we have nothing to fear for its stability. The spirit, indeed, which manifests itself among the tories of your quarter, although I believe there is a majority there sufficient to keep it down in peaceable times, leaves me not without some disquietude. Should the determination of England, now formally expressed, to take possession of the ocean, and to suffer no commerce on it but through her ports, force a war upon us, I foresee a possibility of a separate treaty between her and your Essex men, on the principles of neutrality and commerce. Pickering here, and his nephew Williams there, can easily negotiate this. Such a lure to the quietists in our ranks with you, might recruit theirs to a majority. Yet, excluded as they would be from intercourse with the rest of the Union and of Europe, I scarcely see the gain they would propose to themselves, even for the moment. The defection would certainly disconcert the other States, but it could not ultimately endanger their safety. They are adequate, in all points, to a defensive war. However, I hope your majority, with the aid it is entitled to, will save us from this trial, to which I think it possible we are advancing. The death of George may come to our relief; but I fear the dominion of the sea is the insanity of the nation itself also. Perhaps, if some stroke of fortune were to rid us at the same time from the Mammoth of the land as well as the Leviathan of the ocean, the people of England might lose their fears, and recover their sober senses again. Tell my old friend, Governor Gerry, that I gave him glory for the rasping with which he rubbed down his herd of traitors. Let them have justice and protection against personal violence, but no favor. Powers and preëminences conferred on them are daggers put into the hands of assassins, to be plunged into our own bosoms in the moment the thrust can go home to the heart. Moderation can never reclaim them. They deem it timidity, and despise without fearing the tameness from which it flows. Backed by England, they never lose the hope that their day is to come, when the terrorism of their earlier power is to be merged in the more gratifying system of deportation and the guillotine. Being now hors de combat myself, I resign to others these cares. A long attack of rheumatism has greatly enfeebled me, and warns me that they will not very long be within my ken. But you may have to meet the trial, and in the focus of its fury. God send you a safe deliverance, a happy issue out of all afflictions, personal and public, with long life, long health, and friends as sincerely attached as yours affectionately.

INDEX TO VOL. V.