THE WRITINGS OF







THOMAS JEFFERSON















Definitive Edition







CONTAINING HIS







AUTOBIOGRAPHY, NOTES ON VIRGINIA, PARLIA-







MENTARY  MANUAL, OFFICIAL PAPERS,







MESSAGES AND ADDRESSES, AND OTHER







WRITINGS, OFFICIAL AND PRIVATE,







NOW COLLECTED AND







PUBLISHED IN THEIR ENTIRETY FOR THE FIRST TIME







INCLUDING







ALL OF THE ORIGINAL MANUSCRIPTS, DEPOSITED IN THE DEPARTMENT







OF STATE AND PUBLISHED IN 1853 BY ORDER OF THE







JOINT COMMITTEE OF CONGRESS







WITH NUMEROUS ILLUSTRATIONS







AND







A COMPREHENSIVE ANALYTICAL INDEX















ALBERT ELLERY BERGH







EDITOR















VOL. XIV.























ISSUED UNDER THE AUSPICES OF







THE THOMAS JEFFERSON MEMORIAL ASSOCIATION







OF THE UNITED STATES







WASHINGTON, D. C.















THE MEMORY OF THOMAS JEFFERSON.1















As one glances around this room, one is prompted to say in the last words of

John Adams, " Thomas Jefferson still survives." The spirit of the Great

Commoner is abroad in the land, and a grateful nation pays its tribute

to-night. That we may have a clear and lucid understanding of the immense

influence exercised by Jefferson, not only in his own day, but upon all

subsequent times, it is necessary to define his environment.







  Neither Washington, Jefferson nor Madison was of Virginia's elect, nor did

they come from the landed aristocracy. Jefferson came upon the stage of active

affairs at a time when Virginia was under the domination of a roystering,

gambling, hoidenish aristocracy. The law of entail, the right of the first-born

to inherit, and the established church confronted him. Charmed with the burning

oratory of Henry, whose contention, that taxation without representation was

tyranny, appealed to younger generation of Virginians, Jefferson cast aside his







  1 Address delivered by Hon. John B. Stanchfield, at the banquet given by the

Democratic Club in celebration of the 156th Birthday of Thomas Jefferson, on

April 13th, 1899, at the Metropolitan Opera House, New York City.







   VOL. XIV-A 













ii    The Memory of Thomas Jefferson







profession of the law, and with the announced determination that he would never

accept emolument or compensation other than the salary given him, entered upon

a political career.







  In his public life of upwards of forty years, covering the entire range of

preferment from the humblest to the highest, two things stand out with great

prominence ; he never made a speech, he never waged a war. He left the

Presidency at the end of his second term with the admiration and affectionate

regard of seven millions of people. The free school, the free church and our

free government, to his untiring zeal and industry are largely owing. If we

were to speak to Jefferson's own conception of what had been the accomplished

results of his life's work, the inscription found among his belongings as to

what he wished placed upon his tomb concisely tells the tale : " Here was

buried Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of American Independence,of

the Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom and Father of the University of

Virginia." His residence in France about the time of the oncoming of the French

Revolution, sowed the seed of liberty deep in his heart, and from that human

cataclysm he imbibed principles that remained with him to the hour of his

death. It required civic courage and personal valor of no mean degree to

introduce and force upon the classes of Virginia the abolition of the law of

entail and the right of primogeniture. For. this purpose he declined a 













    The Memory of Thomas Jefferson iii







re-election to the House of Congress, and devoted to it, in accomplishing its

passage, an ability and an industry that earned for him during the remainder of

his career the hatred of the aristocratic classes of Virginia, and the rancor

of these proud patricians followed him in all his future career.







  His clear and perspicuous eye saw that the transmission of vast estates from

one generation to another, with an established church curbing and curtailing

the religious opinions of the people, was at war with the Declaration of

Independence and the theory upon which our government was built.







  "All men shall be free to profess and by argument to maintain their opinions

in matters of religion, " is the key-note of his draft of the act in behalf of

religious liberty. Before the spark of Revolution had been kindled, in a

memorial address to George the Third, it was Jefferson who wrote the lines :







" Let those flatter who fear, it is not an American art, * * * The God who gave

us life gave us liberty at the same time; the hand of force may destroy, but

cannot disjoin them."







So far did Jefferson's belief in self-government carry him, that although a

slave owner in harmony with the spirit of the age in which he lived, we find

him writing in 1821 of the negro, " nothing is more certainly written in the

book of Fate than that these people are to be free."







  While the battle was waging in the House of Burgesses against the right of

the first-born male to 













iv The Memory of Thomas Jefferson







inherit, his opponents, under the leadership' of one Pendleton, pleaded that

the eldest son might at least take a double share : " Not, " was Jefferson's

retort, " until he can eat a double allowance of food and do a double allowance

of work. " " My purpose," said Jefferson afterwards, "was instead of an

aristocracy of wealth to make an opening for an aristocracy of virtue and

talent. "







With Jefferson's induction into national politics commences the battle between

those who favored a strong centralized government, called in. those days the

Federalists, and those who believed in the ultimate rule of the people and the

greatest amount of liberty to the citizen possible, termed Republicans. Of the

latter Jefferson was soon the acknowledged head. Despite the many contradictory

and apparently inconsistent phrases and sentences that his detractors may cull

out from his voluminous correspondence, covering one-half a century, the

enduring fact remains that the never changing ambition of his life was devoted

to securing in largest degree the right of personal liberty. In Hamilton's

determined effort to make a federal power supreme by the maintenance of an

excessively large standing army, the annulment of State rights, the creation of

a United States bank, and the establishment of a federal judiciary with

unlimited powers, Jefferson saw the end of the republic and the aggressive

approach of a monarchy. This controversy so defined and begun, terminated

neither 













    The Memory of Thomas Jefferson v







with the death of Hamilton, nor Jefferson at Monticello. Dressed in different

attire, it is the vital issue of the present day.







  Jefferson favored a separation from England for the ultimate reason of

permitting the people self-government: He favored, passed, fought for and

enforced the right of the free school and the free church, the abolition of a

United States bank, and the creation of an army and navy no larger than was

necessary for purposes of defence, because he believed the people so willed,

and that these principles harmonized with the largest share of personal freedom

in the individual.







  With the election of Jefferson in his controversy with Burr, by the House of

Representatives, the Republicans, or Anti-Federalists, won their first victory.

Then, as now, New York was the central battle-ground, and party spirit ran high

and strong. A poet of the day in amusing doggerel voiced the victory of the

anti-federalists in characteristic speech:







      "The Federalists are down at last,







  The monarchists completely cast;







  The autocrats are stripped of power,







  Storms o'er British factions lower.







       Soon we Republicans shall see







  Columbia's sons from bondage free.







       Lord, how the Federalists will stare







  At Jefferson in Adams' chair."







  Hence came the Democrats, and we who believe in the principles that earned

that victory have







vi The Memory of Thomas Jefferson







never known another name. In striking analogy to the situation with which we

are confronted to-day was Jefferson circumstanced at the time of the Louisiana

Purchase. The Federalists of his time contended with bitter animosity that

sufficient unto the then population of the United States was the Union as it

then existed. Undeterred by the clamor of the minority, Jefferson eonsummated

the purchase of so much landed territory as more than doubled our territorial

extent. When the question of the ratification of the purchase came before

Congress and was up for debate, the Federalists made use of the contention that

the acquirement of additional territory was a violation of the Constitution,

both in its letter and in its spirit. To this we find Jefferson writing to his

Attorney General, in 1803 : " I quote this for your consideration, observing

that the least there is said about any constitutional difficulty, the better;

and that it will be desirable for Congress to do what is necessary in silence.

I find but one opinion as to the necessity of shutting up the Constitution for

some time."







Jefferson was inclined by the arbitrary use of his majority in Congress to

smother any objections that might be raised in theory or in letter, to the

ratification of his purchase. He relied upon the strong underlying sentiment of

the people to uphold his act as being for their good and the ultimate

advancement of the nation. While Congress was in session, we find him writing :

" Whatever Congress shall 













    The Memory of Thomas Jefferson    vii







think it necessary to do should be done with as little debate as possible, and

particularly as respects the constitutional question. "







Jefferson's earlier notions that the States constituted a small league, had

changed, and with increasing wealth, population and power, he favored increased

territorial aggrandizement. As John Quincy Adams wrote our minister at Madrid,

in 1823, in reference to Cuba and Porto Rico: "Those islands, from their local

position, are naturally appendages to the North American continent ; and one of

them, Cuba, which is almost in sight of our shores, from a multitude of

considerations, has become an object of transcendent importance to the

commercial and political interests to our Union. * * * It is scarcely possible

to resist the conviction that the annexation of Cuba to our republic will be

indispensable to the continuance and integrity of the Union itself. "







So, Jefferson, fourteen years earlier, in a letter to Madison, speaking of

Bonaparte, said : " But although with difficulty he will consent to our

receiving Cuba into our Union * * * that would be a price, and I would

immediately erect a column on the southernmost limit of Cuba, and inscribe on

it `ne plus ultra,' as to us in that direction. We should then have only to

include the north in our confederacy, which would be, of course, in the first

war, and we should have such an empire for liberty as she has never surveyed

since the creation; and







  VOL. XIV-B 













viii     The Memory of Thomas Jefferson







I am persuaded no Constitution was ever before' so well calculated as ours for

extensive empire and self-government. "







Jefferson not only believed in the destiny of the republic, but he was an

advocate of force, where diplomacy would not accomplish the desired results.

While, as chief magistrate, he conducted no wars for aggrandizement, yet his

correspondence teems with references to the results that would accrue to us in

territorial accessions by means of war. He was never deceived by the diplomatic

assurances of the powers of Europe, nor lulled into false security by the

peaceful attitude of the country at the time of his Presidential incumbency. He

believed in the proposition that the way to secure peace is to be prepared for

war. The autocrat of the Russias since the promulgation of his memorable

proclamation in favor of a general disarmament of the nations; has quietly

purchased in the shipyards of the world strong and many additional battleships.







  The great laureate of the English-speaking peoples, nursed back to health in

the salubrious air of New York, correctly read the signs of the times when he

sang-







      "When he shows as seeking quarter, with paw-like







    hands in prayer-







 That is the time of peril-the time of the truce of the







    bear."







   It has come to be a fad with those who oppose enlarging our boundaries, to

assert that territorial























    The Memory of Thomas Jefferson     ix







acquirement is hostile to the spirit of Washington's Farewell Address and the

,teachings of Jefferson. To this contention a moment will suffice. It may

safely be urged as sound doctrine, that no man, be he ever so eminent, advising

the affairs of a nation of seven millions, can speak with certainty as to what

would be an advantageous line of policy seventy-five years later for a people

of seventy millions. A standing army larger than is proportionate to the

ordinary requirements of the government is always a menace. It is also, for

police purposes and the unexpected emergencies of government, a necessity.

Against this contingent evil and the inexpediency of foreign political

alliances, Washington chiefly inveighs. But if I read aright the political and

governmental teachings of Jefferson, no thought can be traced home to his

maturer years that did not reflect his hope and expectation that the United'

States would become one of the great powers of the world.







We are an aggressive, combative people. We assert the proposition that the

Anglo-Saxon stock are by their industry and indomitable perseverance the chosen

ones to sway the affairs of men. The immortal one hundred that braved the

terrors of the storm-tossed Atlantic in the name of liberty have left their

indelible imprint upon us. While the Pilgrim Fathers adjured high Heaven with

one hand that they came here that they might worship God according to the

dictates of their own conscience,















x      The Memory of Thomas Jefferson







with the other they waged relentless and ruthless war upon the red man.







  When old Massasoit, with his painted and feathered warriors squatted in the

Governor's log house and smoked the pipe of peace, sturdy Standish with his

musketeers stood ready to slay and kill. Having won their: own independence and

established a religious belief conformable to the nations, they purpose to

tolerate no other. The harmless Quaker paid for his temerity with his life.

Sprung from their loins has come a people who know no limitation to the march

of trade. The fittest shall survive. And until the ports of the world shall

recognize our flag as the embodiment and incarnation of liberty and power, the

spirit of dominion will never down. Where there are people to buy, there we

insist shall the American wage-earner have a market to sell. We point with

pride to the fact that not only our shoes compete with those of English make in

Piccadilly, our locomotives propel the peoples of the Soudan, but our navy

yards are building the battleships of the nations of the Old World. To maintain

wages at a rate that will enable our men of toil to outstrip the nations of the

world, is not only Democratic policy, but Jeffersonian doctrine.







  The war of 1812 was fought to protect our vessels upon the high seas against

the right of impressment and of search. In it our little wooden navy won the

proud prestige it has ever since sustained. Decatur and Lawrence and Perry were

as famous in the















The Memory of Thomas Jefferson    xi







days of 1812 as Dewey, Sampson and Schley in the days of I898. Monroe gave us

Florida by purchase in days of peace, and the Mexican war, waged in the

forties, acquired for us our far western territories, including more land than

composed the United States at the close of the Revolution.







  Such to the close of the administration of Polk had been in the policy of

Democratic administrations, with reference to territorial extension. True to

the spirit transmitted to us from the Pilgrim Fathers, we fought the battle of

the slave, and drenched the land in fraternal blood. What American has

forgotten how his pulse thrilled with pride as Bryant, the poet of peace and

flowers, wrote these inspiring words-







           Lay down the axe; fling by the spade;



      Leave in its track the toiling plow ;







     The rifle and the bayonet blade







       For arms like yours were fitter now;







          And let the hands that ply the pen







       Quit the light task and learn to wield







          The horseman's crooked brand, and rein







       The charger on the battlefield."







  Jefferson's prophecy had to be fulfilled and the bondman was made free! The

war with Spain begun in the name of humanity, waged to redress the wrongs of

centuries, inflicted upon a people at the doorway of our southern gulf, has

resulted in the glorious triumph of civilization. To the legitimate fruits of

that victory we are entitled by law both human and divine. There must be

neither 













   The Memory of Thomas Jefferson xiii







 With the never ending roll of years among posterities yet unborn; shining with

constantly increased radiance and brilliancy, the reputation of Jefferson will

enhance as the great exponent of popular government and the honest and sincere

champion of the rights of the common people, until among the nation's honored

dead his name and memory, far above his fellows, will forever be cherished and

revered by lovers of liberty and friends of humanity.























CONTENTS.















                                                                               

                                          page 



THE MEMORY OF THOMAS JEFFERSON. By Hon. John



B. Stanchfield. . . , . . . . . . . . . . . . . . I







LETTERS WRITTEN AFTER HIS RETURN TO THE



UNITED STATES, 1789-1826... .. .. . .. . . . . . 1-493







John Adams to Thomas Jefferson, November 15,1813. . 1



John Adams to Thomas Jefferson, December 3,1813. . 14



To Baron Alexander Von Humboldt, December 6,1813 . 20



To Madame de Tesse, December 8, 1813. . . . . . .  25



To Don Valentin de Foronda Coruna, December14,1813 30



John Adams to Thomas Jefferson, December 25,1813 . 33



To Thomas Leiper, January 1, 1814. . . . . . . . . 41



To Dr. Walter Jones, January 2, 1814 . . . . . . . 46



To John Pintard, January 9, 1514 . . . . . . . . . 53



To Samuel M. Burnside, Secretary of the Ameri-



can Antiquarian. Society, January 9, 1814 . . . . .53



To Dr. Thomas Cooper, January 16, 1814. . . . . . .54



To Oliver Evans, January 16, 1814. . . . . . . . . 63



To Joseph C. Cabell, January 17, 1814 . . . . . . .67



To R. M. Patterson, January 20, 1814.. . . . . . . 70



To John Adams, January 24, 1814 . . . . . . . . . .71



To John Clarke, January 27, 1814. . . . . . . . . .79



To Samuel Greenhow, January 31, 1814. . . . . . . .81



To Joseph C. Cabell, January 31, 1814. . . . . . . 82



To Dr. Thomas Cooper, February 10, 1814. . . . . . 85 







xvi,            Contents







LETTERS WRITTEN AFTER HIS RETURN TO THE UNITED STATES, 1789-1826-Continued.    

                                                                               

                         page 



To Dr. John Manners, February 22, 1814. . . . . . 97



 John Adams to Thomas Jefferson, February, 1814  104 



To Gideon Granger, March 9, 1814. . . . . . . .  111 



To Horatio G. Spafford, March 17, 1814. . . . .  118 



To L. H. Girardin, March 18, 1814. . . . . . . . 121 



To Monsieur N. G. Dufief, April 19, 1814. . . . .126 



To Chevalier Luis De Onis, April 28, 1814. . . . 129 



To Joseph Delaplaine, May 3, 1814. . . . . . . . 131



To John F. Watson, May 17, 1814. . . . . . . . . 134



To Abraham Small, May 20, 1814. . . . . . . . . .136



To Thomas Law, June 13, 1814. . . . . . . . . . .138



To John Adams, July 5, 1814. . . . . . . . . .   144



 John Adams to Thomas Jefferson, July 16, 1814. .152 



To Baron de Moll, July 31, 1814 . . . . . . . . .161 



To William Wirt, August 14, 1814. . . . . . . . .162 



To Dr. Thomas Cooper, August 25, 1814. . . . . . 173



 To Joseph Delaplaine, August 28, 1814. . . . . .175 



To Dr. Thomas Cooper, September 10, 1814. . . .  179 



To Samuel H. Smith, September 21, 1814. . . . . .190 



To the President of the United States (James



Madison), September 24, 1814. . . . . . . . . .  194 



To Miles King, September 26, 1814. . . . . . . . 196 



To Joseph C Cabell, September 30, 1814. . . . . .199 



To Thomas Cooper, October 7, 1814. . . . . . . . 199 



To James Madison, October 15, 1814. . . . . . . .202 



To James Monroe, October 16, 1814. . . . . . . . 207 



To Doctor Robert Patterson, November 23, 1814.   209



 To Robert M. Patterson, November 23, 1814. . . .210 



To William Short, November 28, 1814. . . . . . . 211 



To John Melish, December 10, 1814. . . . . . . . 219 



To Monsieur Correa de Serra, December 27, 1814.  221 



To James Monroe, January 1, 1815. . . . . . . . .226



 To L. H. Girardin, January 15, 1815. . . . . . .231 







                Contents           xvii







LETTERS WRITTEN AFTER HIS RETURN TO THE UNITED STATES, 1789-1826-Continued.    

                                                                               

                           page 



To Charles Clay, January 29, 1815. . . . . . . . 232 



To Governor William Plumer, January 31, 1815. . .235 



To John Vaughan, February 5, 1815. . . . . . . . 239 



To William H. Crawford, February 11, 1815. . . . 240 



To the Marquis de Lafayette, February 14, 1815. .245 



To Monsieur Dupont de Nemours, February 28,1815. 255 



To Jean Batiste Say, March 2, 1815. . . . . . . .258 



To Francis C. Gray, March 4, 1815. . . . . . . . 267 



To L. H. Girardin, March 12, 1815. . . . . . . . 271 



To P. H. Wendover, March 13, 1815. . . . . . . . 279



 To Caesar A. Rodney, March 16, 1815. . . . . . .284 



To General Henry Dearborn, March 17, 1815. . . . 287 



To the President of the United States (James



Madison), March 23, 1815. . . . . . . . . . . .  290 



To L. H. Girardin, March 27, 1815. . . . . . . . 294 



To David Barrow, May 1, 1815. . . . . . . . . . .296 



To Monsieur Dupont de Nemours, May 15, 1815. . . 297 



To John Adams, June 10, 1815. . . . . . . . . . .299 



To W. H. Torrance, June 11, 1815. . . . . . . . .302 



To Thomas Leiper, June 12, 1815. . . . . . . . . 306 



To James Maury, June 15, 1815. . . . . . . . . . 311 



To James Maury, June 16, 1815. . . . . . . . . . 315 



John Adams to Thomas Jefferson, June 20, 1815. . 320 



John Adams to Thomas Jefferson, June 22, 1815. . 322 



To Monsieur Correa de Serra, June 28, 1815. . . .330 



To Madame La Baronne De Stael-Holstein, 



July 3, 1815. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .331 



To Andrew C. Mitchell, July 16, 1815. . . . . . .334



To William Wirt, August 5, 1815. . . . . . . . . 335 



To John Adams, August 10, 1815. . . . . . . . . .342 



John Adams to Thomas Jefferson, August 24, 1815. 346 



To Judge Spencer Roane,October 12, 1815. . . . . 349 











xviii            Contents







LETTERS WRITTEN AFTER HIS RETURN TO THE



UNITED STATES, 1789-1826-Continued .           PAGE







To Capt. A. Partridge, October 12,1815 ..........352



To Dr. George Logan, October 15, 1815............354



To Albert Gallatin, October 16, 1815.............355



John Adams to Thomas Jefferson, November 13,1815 359



To William Bentley, December  28, 1815...........363



To George Fleming, December 29,1815..............365



To Monsieur Dupont de Nemours, December 31,1815 .369



To Captain A. Partridge, January 2,1816..........374



To Colonel Charles Yancey, January 6, 1816.......379



To Charles Thompson, January 9,1816............. 385



To Benjamin Austin, January 9,1816.............. 387



To John Adams, January 11,1816...................393



To Dabney Carr, January 19,1816..................398



To Dr. Peter Wilson, January 20,1816.............401



Amos J. Cook, January 21,1816................... 403



To Thomas Ritchie, January 21,1816.............. 406



To Nathaniel Macon, January 22,1816............. 408



To Joseph C. Cabell, January 24,1816.............412



To Rev. Noah Worcester, January 29,1816..........414



To Joseph C. Cabell, February 2,1816.............417



John Adams to Thomas Jefferson, February 2,1816..423



To Thomas W. Maury, February 3, 1816.............428



To James Monroe, February 4,1816................ 430



To Benjamin Austin, February 9,1816............. 435



John Adams to Thomas Jefferson, March 2,1816.....437



To -------- March 13,1816........................442



To Governor Wilson C. Nicholas, April 2,1816.....446



To Joseph Milligan, April 6, 1816............... 456



To John Adams, April 8, 1816.....................466



To Governor Wilson C. Nicholas, April 19,1816....471



To Monsieur Dupont de Nemours, April 24,1816.....487















 JEFFERSON'S WORKS







 LETTERS WRITTEN AFTER HIS RETURN







  TO THE UNITED STATES.















JOHN ADAMS TO THOMAS JEFFERSON.







               QUINCY, November 15, 1813.







DEAR SIR,-I cannot appease my melancholy commiseration for our armies in this

furious snow storm, in any way so well as by studying your letter of October a

8.







We are now explicitly agreed upon one important point, viz., that there is a

natural aristocracy among men, the grounds of which are virtue and talents. You

very justly indulge a little merriment upon this solemn subject of aristocracy.

I often laugh at it too, for there is nothing in this laughable world more

ridiculous than the management of it by all the nations of the earth ; but

while we smile, mankind have reason to say to us, as the frogs said to the

boys, what is sport to you, are wounds and death to us. When I consider the

weakness, the folly, the pride,







vol. xiv-1 













            Jefferson's Works







the vanity, the selfishness, the artifice, the low craft and mean cunning, the

want of principle, the avarice, the unbounded ambition, the unfeeling cruelty

of a majority of those (in all nations) who are allowed an aristocratical

influence, and, on the other hand, the stupidity with which the more numerous

multitude not only become their dupes, but even love to be taken in by their

tricks, I feel a stronger disposition to weep at their destiny, than to laugh

at their folly. But though we have agreed in one point, in words, it is not yet

certain that we are perfectly agreed in sense. Fashion has introduced an

indeterminate use of the word talents. Education, wealth, strength, beauty,

stature, birth, marriage, graceful attitudes and motions, gait, air,

complexion, physiognomy, are talents, as well as genius, science, and learning.

Any one of these talents that in fact commands or influences two votes in

society, gives to the man who possesses it the character of an aristocrat, in

my sense of the word. Pick up the first hundred men you meet, and make a

republic.  Every man will have an equal vote ; but when deliberations and

discussions are opened, it will be found that twenty-five, by their talents,

virtues being equal, will be able to carry fifty votes. Every one of these

twenty-five is an aristocrat in my sense of the word ; whether he obtains his

one vote in addition to his own, by his birth, fortune, figure, eloquence,

science, learning, craft, cunning, or even his character for good fellowship,

and a bon vivant. 













             Correspondence          3







  What gave Sir William Wallace his amazing aristocratical superiority? His

strength. What gave Mrs. Clark her aristocratical influence-to create generals,

admirals, and bishops? Her beauty. What gave Pompadour and Du Barry the power

of making cardinals and popes? And I have lived for years in the Hotel de

Valentinois, with Franklin, who had as many virtues as any of them. In the

investigation of the meaning of the word " talents, " I could write 630 pages

as pertinent as John Taylor's, of Hazlewood ; but I will select a single

example ; for female aristocrats are nearly as formidable as males. A daughter

of a greengrocer walks the streets in London daily, with a basket of cabbage

sprouts, dandelions, and spinach, on her head. She is observed by the painters

to have a beautiful face, an elegant figure, a graceful step, and a debonair.

They hire her to sit. She complies; and is painted by forty artists in a circle

around her. The scientific Dr. William Hamilton outbids the painters, sends her

to school for a genteel education, and marries her. This lady not only causes

the triumphs of the Nile, Copenhagen, and Trafalgar, but separates Naples from

France, and finally banishes the king and queen from Sicily. Such is the

aristocracy of the natural talent of beauty. Millions of examples might be

quoted from history, sacred and profane, from Eve, Hannah, Deborah, Susanna,

Abigail, Judith, Ruth, down to Helen, Mrs. de Mainbenon, and Mrs. Fitzherbert.

For mercy's sake do not compel me to look to our 













            Jefferson's Works







chaste States and territories to find women, one of whom let go would in the

words of Holopherne's guards, deceive the whole earth.







  The proverbs of Thegns, like those of Solomon, are observations on human

nature, ordinary life, and civil society, with moral reflections on the facts.

I quoted him as a witness of the fact, that there was as much difference in the

races of men as in the breeds of sheep, and as' a sharp reprover and censurer

of the sordid, mercenary practice of disgracing birth by preferring gold to it.

Surely no authority can be more expressly in point to prove the existence of

inequalities, not of rights, but of moral, intellectual, and physical

inequalities in families, descents and generations. If a descent from pious,

virtuous, wealthy, literary, or scientific ancestors, is a letter of

recommendation, or introduction in a man's favor, and enables him to influence

only one vote in addition to his own, he is an aristocrat; for a democrat can

have but one vote. Aaron Burr has 100,000 votes from the single circumstance of

his descent from President Burr and President Edwards.







  Your commentary on the proverbs of Thegns, reminded me of two solemn

characters ; the one resembling John Bunyan, the other Scarron. The one John

Torrey, the other Ben Franklin. Torrey, a poet, an enthusiast, a superstitious

bigot, once very gravely asked my brother, whether it would not be better for

mankind if children were always begotten by religious motives only? Would not

religion in 













            Correspondence







this sad case have as little efficacy in encouraging procreation, as it has now

in discouraging it? I should apprehend a decrease of population, even in our

country where it increases so rapidly.







  In 1775, Franklin made a morning visit at Mrs. Yard's, to Sam Adams and John.

He was unusually loquacious. " Man, a rational creature!" said Franklin. "

Come, let us suppose a rational man. Strip him of all his appetites, especially

his hunger and thirst. He is in his chamber, engaged in making experiments, or

in pursuing some problem. He is highly entertained. At this moment a servant

knocks. `Sir, dinner is on the table.' `Dinner! pox! pough! but what have you

for dinner?' `Ham and chickens.' `Ham! and must I break the chain of my

thoughts to go down and .gnaw a morsel of damned hog's arse ? Put aside your

ham ; I will dine to-morrow.' " Take away appetite, and the present generation

would not live a month, and no future generation would ever exist; and thus the

exalted dignity of human nature would be annihilated and lost, and in my

opinion the whole loss would be of no more importance than putting out a

candle, quenching a torch, or crushing a firefly, If in this world we only have

hope. Your distinction between natural and artificial aristocracy, does not

appear to me founded. Birth and wealth are conferred upon some men as

imperiously by nature as genius, strength, or beauty. The heir to honors, and

riches, and power, has often no more merit in pro













            Jefferson's Works







curing these advantages, than he has in obtaining a handsome face, or an

elegant figure. When aristocracies are established by human laws, and honor,

wealth and power are made hereditary by municipal laws and political

institutions, then I acknowledge artificial aristocracy to commence ; but this

never commences till corruption in elections become dominant and

uncontrollable. But this artificial aristocracy can never last. The everlasting

envies, jealousies, rivalries, and quarrels among them; their cruel rapacity

upon the poor ignorant people, their followers, compel them to set up Caesar, a

demagogue, to be a monarch, a master; pour mettre chacun a sa place. Here you

have the origin of all artificial aristocracy, which is the origin of all

monarchies. And both artificial aristocracy and monarchy, and civil, military,

political, and hierarchical despotism, have all grown out of the natural

aristocracy of virtues and talents. We, to be sure, are far remote from this.

Many hundred years must roll away before we shall be corrupted. Our pure,

virtuous, public-spirited, federative republic will last forever, govern the

globe, and introduce the perfection of man ; his perfectibility being already

proved by Price, Priestley, Condorcet, Rousseau, Diderot, and Godwin. Mischief

has been done by the Senate of the United States. I have known and felt more of

this mischief, than Washington, Jefferson, and Madison; all together. But this

has been all caused by the constitutional power of the Senate, in executive

business, which 













            Correspondence







ought to be immediately, totally, and essentially abolished. Your distinction

between the A-(Greek inserted here)-and-(Greek inserted here)---, will not help

the matter. I would trust one as well as the other with unlimited power. The

law wisely refuses an oath as a witness in his own case, to the saint as well

as the sinner. No romance would be more amusing than the history of your

Virginian and our New England aristocratical families. Yet even in Rhode Island

there has been no clergy, no church, and I had almost said no State, and some

people say no religion. There has been a constant respect for certain old

families. Fifty-seven or fifty-eight years ago, in company with Colonel,

Counsellor, Judge, John Chandler, whom I have quoted before, a newspaper was

brought in. The old sage asked me to look for the news from Rhode Island, and

see how the elections had gone there. I read the list of Wanbous, Watrous,

Greens, Whipples, Malboues, etc. " I expected as much " said the aged

gentleman, "for I have always been of opinion that in the most popular

governments, the elections will generally go in favor of the most ancient

families." To this day, when any of these tribes-and we may add Ellerys,

Channings, Champlins, etc.,-are pleased to fall in with the popular current,

they are sure to carry all before them.







  You suppose a difference of opinion between you and me on the subject of

aristocracy. I can find none. I dislike and detest hereditary honors, offices,

emoluments, established by law. So do you. I am 













            Jefferson's Works







for excluding legal, hereditary distinctions from the United States as long as

possible. So are you. I only say that mankind have not yet discovered any

remedy against irresistible corruption in elections to offices of great power

and profit, but making them hereditary.







  But will you say our elections are pure? Be it so, upon the whole ; but do

you recollect in history a more corrupt election than that of Aaron Burr to be

President, or that of De Witt Clinton last year? By corruption here, I mean a

sacrifice of every national interest and honor to private and party objects. I

see the same spirit in Virginia that you and I see in Rhode Island and the rest

of New England. In New York it is a struggle of family feuds-a feudal

aristocracy. Pennsylvania is a contest between German, Irish and Old England

families. When Germans and Irish unite they give 30,000 majorities. There is

virtually a white rose and a red rose, a Caesar and a Pompey, in every State in

this Union, and contests and dissensions will be as lasting. The rivalry of

Bourbons and Noailleses produced the French Revolution, and a similar

competition for consideration and influence exists and prevails in every

village in the world. Where will terminate the rabies agri? The continent will

be scattered over with manors much larger than Livingston's, Van Rensselaer's

or Philips's ; even our Deacon Strong will have a principality among you

southern folk. What inequality of talents will be produced by these land 













            Correspondence







jobbers. Where tends the mania of banks? At my table in Philadelphia, I once

proposed to you to unite in endeavors to obtain an amendment of the

Constitution prohibiting to the separate States the power of creating banks ;

but giving Congress authority to establish one bank with a branch in each

State, the whole limited to ten millions of dollars. Whether this project was

wise or unwise, I know not, for I had deliberated little on it then, and have

never thought it worth thinking of since. But you spurned the proposition from

you with disdain. This system of banks, begotten, brooded and hatched by Duer,

Robert and Gouverneur Morris, Hamilton and Washington, I have always considered

as a system of national injustice. A sacrifice of public and private interest

to a few aristocratical friends and favorites. My scheme could have had no such

effect. Verres plundered temples, and robbed a few rich men, but he never made

such ravages among private property in general, nor swindled so much out of the

pockets of the poor, and middle class of people, as these banks have done. No

people but this would have borne the imposition so long. The people of Ireland

would not bear Wood's halfpence. What inequalities of talent have been

introduced into this country by these aristocratical banks! Our Winthrops,

Winslows, Bradfords, Saltonstalls, Quinceys, Chandlers, Leonards, Hutchinsons,

Olivers, Sewalls, etc., are precisely in the situation of your Randolphs,

Carters, and Burwells, and Harrisons. Some of them un













             Jefferson's Works







popular for the part they took in the late Revolution, but all respected for

their names and connections; and whenever they fell in with the popular

sentiments are preferred, ceteris paribus, to all others. When I was young the

summum bonum in Massachusetts was to be worth 10,000 pounds sterling, ride in a

chariot, be colonel of a regiment of militia, and hold a seat in his Majesty's

council. No man's imagination aspired to anything higher beneath the skies. But

these plumbs, chariots, colonelships, and counsellorships, are recorded and

will never be forgotten. No great accumulations of land were made by our early

settlers. Mr. Baudoin, a French refugee, made the first great purchases, and

your General Dearborn, born under a fortunate star, is now enjoying a large

portion of the aristocratical sweets of them. As I have no amanuenses but

females, and there is so much about generation in this letter that I dare not

ask any of them to copy it, and I cannot copy it myself, I must beg of you to

return it to me. Your old friend.















       TO A. C. U. C. DESTUTT DE TRACY.







                    November 28, 1813.







  I will not fatigue you, my dear Sir, with long and labored excuses for having

been so tardy in writing to you; but I will briefly mention that the thousand

hostile ships which cover the ocean render attempts to pass it now very

unfrequent, and these concealing 













             Correspondence







their intentions from all, that they may not be known to the enemy, are gone

before heard of in such inland situations as mine. To this, truth must add the

torpidity of age as one of the obstacles to punctual correspondence.







Your letters of October 21 and November 15,1811 ; and August 29, 1813, were

duly received, and with that of November 15 came the MS. copy of your work on

Economy. The extraordinary merit of the former volume had led me to anticipate

great satisfaction and edification from the perusal of this, and I can say with

truth and sincerity that these expectations were completely fulfilled, new

principles developed, former ones corrected, or rendered more perspicuous,

present us an interesting science, heretofore voluminous and embarrassed, now

happily simplified and brought within a very moderate compass. After an

attentive perusal, which enabled me to bear testimony to its worth, I took

measures for getting it translated and printed in Philadelphia; the distance

from which place prepared me to expect great and unavoidable delays. But

notwithstanding my continual urgencies these have gone far beyond my

calculations. In a letter of September 26th from the editor, in answer to one

of mine, after urging in excuse the causes- of the delay, he expresses his

confidence that it would be ready by the last of October, and that period being

now past, I am in daily expectation of hearing from him. As I write the present

letter without knowing by what conveyance it may go, I am not without a 













12        Jefferson's Works







hope of receiving a copy of the work in time to accompany this. I shall then be

anxious to learn that better health and more encouraging circumstances enable

you to pursue your plan through the two remaining branches of morals and

legislation, which executed in the same lucid, logical and condensed style,

will present such a whole as the age we live in will not before have received.

Should the same motives operate for their first publication here, I am now

offered such means, nearer to me, as promise a more encouraging promptitude in

the execution. And certainly no effort should be spared on my part to ensure to

the world such an acquisition. The MS. of the first work has been carefully

recalled and deposited with me. That of the second, when done with, shall be

equally taken care of.







  If unmerited praise could give pleasure to a candid mind, I should have been

highly exalted, in my own opinion, on the occasion of the first work. One of

the best judges and best men of the age has ascribed it to myself ; and has for

some time been employed in translating it into French. It would be a

gratification to which you are highly entitled, could I transcribe the sheets

he has written me in praise, nay in rapture with the work ; and were I to name

the man, you would be sensible there is not another whose suffrage would be

more encouraging. But the casualties which lie between us would render criminal

the naming any one. In a letter which I am now writing him, I shall set him

right as to myself, and acknowl-













             Correspondence           13







edge my humble station far below the qualifications necessary for that work;

and shall discourage his perseverance in retranslating into French a work the

original of which is so correct in its diction that not a word can be altered

but for the worse; and from a translation, too, where the author's meaning has

sometimes been illy understood, sometimes mistaken, and often expressed in

words not the best chosen. Indeed, when the work, through its translation,

becomes more generally known here, the high estimation in which it is held by

all who become acquainted with it, encourages me to hope I may get it printed

in the original. I sent a copy of it to the late President of William and Mary

College of this State, who adopted it at once as the elementary book of that

institution. From these beginnings it will spread and become a political gospel

for a nation open to reason, and in a situation to adopt and profit by its

results, without a fear of their leading to wrong.







  I sincerely wish you all the health, comfort and leisure necessary to dispose

and enable you to persevere in employing yourself so useful for present and

future times, and I pray you to be assured you have not a more grateful votary

for your benefactions to mankind, nor one of higher sentiments of esteem and

affectionate respect. 













14         Jefferson's Works















JOHN ADAMS TO THOMAS JEFFERSON.







                QUINCY, December 3, 1813.







DEAR SIR,-The proverbs of the old Greek poets are as short and pithy as any of

Solomon or Franklin. Hesiod has several. His --(Greek inserted here

)------------------------------------ .   Honor the gods established by law. I

know not how we can escape martyrdom without a discreet attention to this

precept: You have suffered, and I have suffered more than you, for want of a

strict observance of this rule.







There is another oracle of this Hesiod, which requires a kind of dance upon a

tight rope and a slack rope too, in philosophy and theology :----(Greek

inserted here )-------------------------------------------. If believing too

little or too much is so fatal to mankind, what will become of us. all ?







In studying the perfectibility of human nature and its progress towards

perfection in this world, on this earth, remember that I have met many curious

and interesting characters. .







About three hundred years ago, there appeared a number of men of letters, who

appeared to endeavor to believe neither too little nor too much. They labored

to imitate the Hebrew archers, who could shoot to an hair's breadth. The Pope

and his church believed too much. Luther and his church believed too little.

This little band was headed by three great scholars : Erasmus, Vives and

Budaeus. 













             Correspondence           15







This triumvirate is said to have been at the head of the republic of letters in

that age. Had Condorcet been master of his subject, I fancy he would have taken

more notice, in his History of the Progress of Mind, of these characters. Have

you their writings ? I wish I had. I shall confine myself at present to Vives.

He wrote commentaries on the City of God of St. Augustine, some parts of which

were censured by the Doctors of the Louvain, as too bold and too free. I know

not whether the following passage of the learned Spaniard was among the

sentiments condemned or not :







" I have been much afflicted," says Vives, " when I have seriously considered

how diligently, and with what exact care, the actions of Alexander, Hannibal,

Scipio, Pompey, Caesar and other commanders, and the lives of Socrates, Plato,

Aristotle and other philosophers, have been written and fixed in an everlasting

remembrance, so that there is not the least danger they can ever be lost ; but

then the acts of the Apostles, and martyrs and saints of our religion, and of

the affairs of the rising and established church, being involved in much

darkness, are almost totally unknown, though they are of so much greater

advantage than the lives of the philosophers or great generals, both as to the

improvement of our knowledge and practice. For what is written of these holy

men, except a very few things, is very much corrupted and defaced 













16           Jefferson's Works







with the mixture of many fables, while the writer, indulging his own humor,

doth not tell us what the saint did, but what the historian would have had him

do. And the fancy of the writer dictates the life and not the truth of things."

And again Vives says : " There have been men who have thought it a great piece

of piety, to invent lies for the sake of religion. "







The great Cardinal Barronius, too, confesses: " There is nothing which seems so

much neglected to this day, as a true and certain account of the affairs of the

church, collected with an exact diligence. And that I may speak of the more

ancient, it is very difficult to find any of them who have published

commentaries on this subject, which have hit the truth in all points."







Canus, too, another Spanish prelate of great name, says : " I speak it with

grief and not by way of reproach, Laertius has written the lives of the

philosophers with more ease and industry than the Christians have those of the

saints. Suetonius has represented the lives of the Caesars with much more truth

and sincerity than the Catholics have the affairs (I will not say of the

emperors) but even those of the martyrs, holy virgins and confessors. For they

have not concealed the vice nor the very suspicions of vice, in good and

commendable philosophers or princes, and in the worst of them they discover the

very colors or appearances of virtue. But the greatest part of our writers

either follow 













             Correspondence







the conduct of their affections, or industriously feign many things; so that I,

for my part, am very often both weary and ashamed of them, because I know that

they have thereby brought nothing of advantage to the church of Christ, but

very much inconvenience. " Vives and Canus are moderns , but Arnobius, the

converter of Laetantius, was ancient. He says : " But neither could all that

was done be written, or arrive at the knowledge of all men-many of our great

actions being done by obscure men and those who had no knowledge of letters.

And if some of them are committed to letters and writings, yet even here, by

the malice of the devils and men like them, whose great design and study is tn

intercept and ruin this truth, by interpolating or adding some things to them,

or by changing or taking out words, syllables or letters, they have put a stop

to the faith of wise men, and corrupted the truth of things. "







Indeed, Mr. Jefferson, what could be invented to debase the ancient

Christianism, which Greeks, Romans, Hebrews and Christian factions, above all

the Catholics, have not fraudulently imposed upon the public ? Miracles after

miracles have rolled down in torrents, wave succeeding wave in the Catholic

church, from the Council of Nice, and long before, to this day.







Aristotle, no doubt, thought his -----(Greek inserted

here)----------------------------------------, very wise and very profound ;

but what is its worth ? What man, woman







   VOL. XIV-2 







18        Jefferson's Works







or child ever believed everything or nothing? Oh! that Priestley could live

again, and have leisure and means! An inquirer after truth, who had neither

time nor means, might request him to search and re-search for answers to a few

questions :







1. Have we more than two witnesses of the life of Jesus-Matthew and John?







  2. Have we one witness to the existence of Matthew's gospel in the first

century ?















3. Have we one witness of the existence of John's gospel in the first century?







  4. Have we one witness of the existence of Mark's gospel in the first

century?







  5. Have we one witness of the existence of Luke's gospel in the first

century?







  6. Have we any witness of the existence of St. Thomas' gospel, that is the

gospel of the infancy, in the first century ?



  7. Have we any evidence of the existence of the Acts of the Apostles in the

first century?







  8. Have we any evidence of the existence of the supplement to the Acts of the

Apostles, Peter and Paul, or Paul and Tecle, in the first century?







  Here I was interrupted by a new book, Chateaubriand's Travels in Greece,

Palestine and Egypt, and by a lung fever with which the amiable companion of my

life has been violently and dangerously attacked.







December 13th: I have fifty more questions to 







            Correspondence           19







put to Priestley, but must adjourn them to a future opportunity.







  I have read Chateaubriand with as much delight as I ever read Bunyan's

Pilgrim's Progress, Robinson Crusoe's Travels or Gulliver's, or Whitefield's or

Wesley's Life, or the Life of St. Francis, St. Anthony, or St. Ignatius Loyola.

A work of infinite learning, perfectly well written, a magazine of information,

but enthusiastic, bigoted, superstitious, Roman Catholic throughout. If I were

to indulge in jealous criticism and conjecture, I should suspect that there had

been an Ecumenical council of Popes, Cardinals and Bishops, and that this

traveller has been employed at their expense to make this tour, to lay a

foundation f or the resurrection of the Catholic Hierarchy in Europe.







  Have you read La Harpe's Cours de Literature, in fifteen volumes? Have you

read St. Pierre s Studies of Nature?







  I am now reading the controversy between Voltaire and Monotte.







  Our friend Rush has given us for his last legacy, an analysis of some of the

diseases of the mind.







  Johnson said, " We are all more or less mad "' and who is or has been more

mad than Johnson?







  I know of no philosopher, or theologian, or moralist, ancient or modern, more

profound, more infallible than Whitefield, if the anecdote I heard be true.







  He began: " Father Abraham," with his hands and eyes gracefully directed to

the heavens, as I 













20         Jefferson's Works







have more than once seen him ; " Father Abraham whom have you there with you?

Have you Catholics?" " No." " Have you Protestants?" " No." " Have you

Churchmen ?"" No. " " Have you Dissenters ?" " No. " " Have you Presbyterians

?" " No. " " Quakers ?" " No. " " Anabaptists ?" " No. " " Whom have you there

? Are you alone ?" " No. "







" My brethren, you have the answer to all these questions in the words of my

text : `He who feareth God and worketh righteousness, shall be accepted of

Him.' "







Allegiance to the Creator and Governor of the Milky-Way, and the Nebulae, and

benevolence to all His creatures, is my Religion.







       Si quid novisti rectius istis, candidus imperti.







  I am as ever.























TO BARON ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT.







            MONTPELIER, December 6, 1813.







MY DEAR FRIEND AND BARON,-I have to acknowledge your two letters of December 20

and 26, 1811, by Mr. Correa, and am first to thank you for making me acquainted

with that most excellent character. He was so kind as to visit me at

Monticello, and I found him one of the most learned and amiable of men. It was

a subject of deep regret to separate from so much worth in the moment of its

becoming known to us. 







             Correspondence







 The livraison of your astronomical observations, and the 6th and 7th on the

subject of New Spain, with the corresponding atlases, are duly received, as had

been the preceding cahiers. For these treasures of a learning so interesting to

us, accept my sincere thanks. I think it most fortunate that your travels in

those countries were so timed as to make them known to the world in the moment

they were about to become actors on its stage. That they will throw off their

European dependence I have no doubt ; but in what kind of government their

revolution will end I am not so certain. History, I believe, furnishes no

example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government. This

marks the lowest grade of ignorance, of which their civil as. well as religious

leaders will always avail themselves for their own purposes. The vicinity of

New Spain to the United States, and their consequent intercourse, may furnish

schools for the higher, and example for the lower classes of their citizens.

And Mexico, where we learn from you that men of science are not wanting, may

revolutionize itself under better auspices than the Southern provinces. These

last, I fear, must end in military despotisms. The different castes of their

inhabitants, their mutual hatreds and jealousies, their profound ignorance and

bigotry, will be played off by cunning leaders, and each be made the instrument

of enslaving the others. But of all this you can best judge, for in truth we

have little knowledge of them to be 













22          Jefferson's Works







depended on, but through you. But in whatever governments they end they will be

American governments, no longer to be involved in the never-ceasing broils of

Europe. The European nations constitute a separate division of the globe; their

localities make them part of a distinct system ; they have a set of interests

of their own in which it is our business never to engage ourselves. America has

a hemisphere to itself. It must have its separate system of interests, which

must not be subordinated to those of Europe. The insulated state in which

nature has placed the American continent, should so far avail it that no spark

of war kindled in the other quarters of the globe should be wafted across the

wide oceans which separate us from them. And it will be so. In fifty years more

the United States alone will contain fifty millions of inhabitants, and fifty

years are soon gone over. The peace of 1763 is within that period. I was then

twenty years old, and of course remember well all the transactions o the war

preceding it. And you will live to see the epoch now equally ahead of us ; and

the numbers which will then be spread over the other parts of the American

hemisphere, catching long before that the principles of our portion of it, and

concurring with us in the maintenance of the same system. You see how readily

we run into ages beyond the grave; and even those of us to whom that grave is

already opening its quiet bosom. I am anticipating events of which you 













             Correspondence           23







will be the bearer to me in the Elysian fields fifty years hence.







  You know, my friend, the benevolent plan we were pursuing here for the

happiness of the aboriginal inhabitants in our vicinities. We spared nothing to

keep them at peace with one another. To teach them agriculture and the

rudiments of the most necessary arts, and to encourage industry by establishing

among them separate property. In this way they would have been enabled to

subsist and multiply on a moderate scale of landed possession. They would have

mixed their blood with ours, and been amalgamated and identified with us within

no distant period of time. On the commencement of our present war, we pressed

on them the observance of peace and neutrality, but the interested and

unprincipled policy of England has defeated all our labors for the salvation of

these unfortunate people. They have seduced the greater part of ' the tribes

within our neighborhood, to take up the hatchet against us, and the cruel

massacres they have committed on the women and children of our frontiers taken

by surprise, will oblige us now to pursue them to extermination, or drive them

to new seats beyond our reach. Already we have driven their patrons and

seducers into Montreal, and the opening season will force them to their last

refuge, the walls of Quebec. We have cut off all possibility of intercourse and

of mutual aid, and may pursue at our leisure whatever plan we find 













            Jefferson's Works







necessary to secure ourselves against the future effects of their savage and

ruthless warfare. The confirmed brutalization, if not the extermination of this

race in our America, is therefore to form an additional chapter in the English

history of the same colored man in Asia, and of the brethren of their own color

in Ireland, and wherever else Anglo-mercantile cupidity can find a two-penny

interest in deluging the earth with human blood. But let us turn from the

loathsome contemplation of the degrading effects of commercial avarice.







That their Arrowsmith should have stolen your Map of Mexico, was in the

piratical spirit of his country. But I should be sincerely sorry if our Pike

has made an ungenerous use of your candid communications here ; and the more so

as he died in the arms of victory gained over the enemies of his country.

Whatever he did was on a principle of enlarging knowledge, and not for filthy

shillings and pence of which he made none from that work. If what he has

borrowed has any effect it will be to excite an appeal in his readers from his

defective information to the copious volumes of it with which you have enriched

the world. I am sorry he omitted even to acknowledge the source of his

information. It has been an oversight, and not at all in the spirit of his

generous nature. Let me solicit your forgiveness then of a deceased hero, of an

honest and zealous patriot, who lived and died for his country.







You will find it inconceivable that Lewis's journey 













            Correspondence







to the Pacific should not yet have appeared; nor is it in my power to tell you

the reason. The measures taken by his surviving companion, Clarke, for the

publication, have not answered our wishes in poin of despatch. I think,

however, from what I have heard, that the mere journal will be out within a few

weeks in two volumes 8vo. These I will take care to send you with the tobacco

seed you desired, if it be possible for them to escape the thousand ships of

our enemies spread over the ocean. The botanical and zoological discoveries of

Lewis will probably experience greater delay, and become known to the world

through other channels before that volume will. be ready: The Atlas, I believe,

waits on the leisure of the .engraver.







  Although I do not know whether you are now at Paris or ranging the regions of

Asia to acquire more knowledge for the use of men, I cannot deny myself the

gratification of an endeavor to recall myself to your recollection, and of

assuring you of my constant attachment, and of renewing to you the just tribute

of my affectionate esteem and high respect and consideration.















           ?O MADAME DE TESSE.







             MONTICELLO, December 8,1813.







  While at war, my dear Madame and friend, with the leviathan of the ocean,

there is little hope of a letter escaping his thousand ships ; yet I cannot 













            Jefferson's Works







permit myself longer to withhold the acknowledgment of your letter of June a 8

of the last year, with which came the memoirs of the Margrave of Bareuth. I am

much indebted to you for this singular morsel of history which has given us a

certain view of kings, queens and princes, disrobed of their formalities. It is

a peep into the state of the Egyptian god Apis. It would not be easy to find

grosser manners, coarser vices, or more meanness in the poorest huts of our

peasantry: The princess shows herself the legitimate sister of Frederic,

cynical, selfish, and without a heart. Notwithstanding your wars with England,

I presume you get the publications of that country. The memoirs of Mrs. Clarke

and of her darling prince, and the book, emphatically so called, because it is

the Biblia Sacra Deorum et Dearum sub-coelestium, the Prince Regent, his

Princess and the minor deities of his sphere, form a worthy sequel to the

memoirs of Bareuth; instead of the vulgarity and penury of the court of Berlin,

giving us the vulgarity and profusion of that of London, and the gross

stupidity and profligacy of the latter, in lieu of the genius and misanthropism

of the former. The whole might be published as a supplement to M. de Buffon,

under the title of the " Natural History of Kings and Princes, " or as a

separate work and called `` Medicine for Monarchists. " The " Intercepted

Letters, " a later English publication of great wit and humor, has put them to

their proper use by holding them up as butts for 













            Correspondence







the ridicule and contempt of mankind. Yet by such worthless beings is a great

nation to be governed and even made to deify their old king because he is only

a fool and a maniac, and to forgive and forget his having lost to them a great

and flourishing empire, added nine hundred millions sterling to their debt, for

which the fee simple of the whole island would not sell, if offered farm by

farm at public auction, and increased their annual taxes from eight to seventy

millions sterling, more than the whole rent-roll of the island. What must be

the dreary prospect from the son when such a father is deplored as a national

loss. But let us drop these odious beings and pass to those of an higher order,

the plants of the field. I am afraid I have given you a great deal more trouble

than I intended by my inquiries for the Maronnier or Castanea Saliva, of which

I wished to possess my own country, without knowing how rare its culture was

even in yours. The two plants which your researches have placed in your own

garden, it will be all but impossible to remove hither. The war renders their

safe passage across the Atlantic extremely precarious, and, if landed anywhere

but in the Chesapeake, the risk of the additional voyage along the coast to

Virginia, is still greater. Under these circumstances it is better they should

retain their present station, and compensate to you the trouble they have cost

you.







  I learn with great pleasure the success of your 













28          Jefferson's Works







new gardens at Auenay. No occupation can be more delightful or useful. They

will have the merit of inducing you to forget those of Chaville. With the

botanical riches which you mention to have been derived to England from New

Holland, we are as yet unacquainted. Lewis's journey across our continent to

the Pacific has added a number of new plants to our former stock. Some of them

are curious, some ornamental, some useful, and some may by culture be made

acceptable on our tables. I have growing, which I destine for you, a very

handsome little shrub of the size of a currant bush. Its beauty consists in a

great produce of berries of the size of currants, and literally as white as

snow, which remain on the bush through the winter, after its leaves have

fallen, and make it an object as singular as it is beautiful. We call it the

snow-berry bush, no botanical name being yet given to it, but I do not know why

we might not call it Chionicoccos, or Kallicoccos. All Lewis's plants are

growing in the garden of Mr. McMahon, a gardener of Philadelphia, to whom I

consigned them, and from whom I shall have great pleasure, when peace is

restored, in ordering for you any of these or of our other indigenous plants. 

The port of Philadelphia has great intercourse with Bordeaux and Nantes, and

some little perhaps with Havre. I was mortified not long since by receiving a

letter from a merchant in Bordeaux, apologizing for having suffered a box of

plants addressed by me to you,























                                         I 













             Correspondence,







to get accidentally covered in his warehouse by other objects, and to remain

three years undiscovered, when every thing in it was found to be rotten. I have

learned occasionally that others rotted in the warehouses of the English

pirates. We are now settling that account with them. We have taken their Upper

Canada and shall add the Lower to it when the season will admit; and hope to

remove them fully and finally from our continent. And what they will feel more,

for they value their colonies only for the bales of cloth they take from them,

we have established manufactures, not only sufficient to supersede our demand

from them, but to rivalize them in foreign markets. But for the course of our

war I will refer you to M. de Lafayette, to whom I state it more particularly.







  Our friend Mr. Short is well. He makes Philadelphia his winter quarters, and

New York, or the country, those of the summer. In his fortune he is perfectly

independent and at ease, and does not trouble himself with the party politics

of our country. Will you permit me to place here for M. de Tesse the testimony

of my high esteem and respect, and accept for yourself an assurance of the warm

recollections I retain of your many civilities and courtesies to me, and the

homage of my constant and affectionate attachment and respect. 













            Jefferson's Works















TO DON VALENTIN DE TORONDA CORUNA.







            MONTICELLO, December 14, 181 3.







  DEAR SIR,-I have had the pleasure of receiving







several letters from you, covering printed propo-







sitions and pamphlets on the state of your affairs,







and all breathing the genuine sentiments of order,







liberty and philanthropy, with which I know you







to be sincerely inspired. We learn little to be







depended on here as to your civil proceedings, or







of the division of sentiments among you; but. in







this absence of information I have made whatever







you propose the polar star of my wishes. What







is to be the issue of your present struggles we here







cannot judge. But we sincerely wish it may be







what is best for the happiness and re-invigoration







of your country. That its divorce from its American







colonies, which is now unavoidable, will be a great







blessing, it is impossible not 'to pronounce on a







review of what Spain was when she acquired them,







and of her gradual descent from that proud eminence







to the condition in which her present war found







her. Nature has formed that peninsula to be the







second, and why not the first nation in Europe ?







Give equal habits of energy to the bodies, and of







science to the minds of her citizens, and where could







her superior be found? The most advantageous







relation in which she can stand with her American



colonies is that of independent friendship, secured







by the ties of consanguinity, sameness of language, 













              Correspondence           31







religion, manners, and habits, and certain from the influence of these, of a

preference in her commerce, if, instead of the eternal irritations, thwartings,

machinations against their new governments, the insults and aggressions which

Great Britain has so unwisely practised towards us, to force us to hate her

against our. natural inclinations, Spain yields, like a genuine parent, to the

forisfamiliation of her colonies, now at maturity, if she extends to them her

affections, her aid, her patronage in every court and country, it will weave a

bond of union indissoluble by time. We are in a state of semi-warfare with your

adjoining colonies, the Floridas. We do not consider this as affecting our

peace with Spain or. any other of her former possessions. We wish her and them

well ; and under her present difficulties at home, and her doubtful future

relations with her colonies, both wisdom and interest will, I presume, induce

her to leave them to settle themselves the quarrels they draw on themselves

from their neighbors. The commanding officers in the Floridas have excited and

armed the neighboring savages to war against us, and to murder and scalp many

of our women and children as well as men, taken by surprise-poor creatures !

They have paid for it with the loss of the flower of their strength, and have

given us the right, as we possess the power, to exterminate or to expatriate,

them beyond the Mississippi. This conduct of the. Spanish officers will

probably oblige us to take possession 













           Jefferson's Works







of the Floridas, and the rather as we believe the English will otherwise seize

them, and use them as stations to distract and annoy us. But should we possess

ourselves of them, and Spain retain her other colonies in this hemisphere, I

presume we shall consider them in our hands as subjects of negotiation.







We are now at the close of our second campaign with England. During the first

we suffered several checks, from the want of capable and tried officers; all

the higher ones of the Revolution having died off during an interval of thirty

years of peace. But this second campaign has been more successful, having given

us all the lakes and country of Upper Canada, except the single post of

Kingston, at its lower extremity. The two immediate causes of the war were the

orders of council, and impressment of our seamen. The first having been removed

after we had declared war, the war is continued for the second; and a third has

been generated by their conduct during the war, in exciting the Indian hordes

to murder and scalp the women and children on our frontier. This renders peace

forever impossible but on the establishment of such a meridian boundary to

their possessions, as that they never more can have such influence with the

savages as to excite again the same barbarities. The thousand ships, too, they

took from us in peace, and the six thousand seamen impressed, call for this

indemnification. On the water we have proved to the 













              Correspondence           33







  world the error of their invincibility, and shown







that with equal force and well-trained officers, they







can be beaten by other nations as brave as them-







selves. Their lying officers and printers will give







to Europe very different views of the state of their







war with us. But you will see now, as in the







Revolutionary war, that they: will lie, and conquer







themselves out of all their possessions on this con-







tinent.







  I pray for the happiness of your nation, and that







it may be blessed with sound views and successful







measures, under the difficulties in which it is in-







volved; and especially that they may know the







value of your counsels, and to yourself I tender







the assurances of my high respect and esteem.























  JOHN ADAMS TO THOMAS JEFFERSON.







                QUINCY, December 25, 1813,







DEAR SIR,-Answer my letters at your leisure. Give yourself no concern. I write

as for a refuge and protection against ennui.







  The fundamental principle of all philosophy and all Christianity, is "

Rejoice always in all things!" " Be thankful at all times for all good, and all

that we call evil." Will it not follow that I ought to rejoice and be thankful

that Priestley has lived? That Gibbon has lived ? That Hume has lived though a

conceited Scotchman ? That Bolingbroke







vol.XIV-3 













            Jefferson's Works







has lived, though a haughty, arrogant, supercilious dogmatist? That Burke and

Johnson have lived, though superstitious slaves, or self-deceiving hypocrites,

both ? Is it not laughable to hear Burke call Bolingbroke a superficial writer?

To hear him ask: "Who ever read him through?" Had I been







                             " present, I would have answered him, I, I myself,

I have read him through more than fifty years ago, and more than five times in

my life, and once within five years past. And in my opinion, the epithet

`superficial,' belongs to you and your friend Johnson more than to him: "







I might say much more. But I believe Burke and Johnson to have been as

political Christians as Leo Tenth.







  I return to Priestley, though I have great complaints against him for

personal injuries and persecution, at the same time that I forgive it all, and

hope and pray that he may be pardoned for it all above.







  Dr. Brocklesby, an intimate friend and convivial companion of Johnson, told

me that Johnson died in agonies of horror of annihilation ; and all the

accounts we have of his death, corroborate this account of Brocklesby. Dread of

annihilation! Dread of nothing! A dread of nothing, I should think, would be no

dread at all. Can there be any real, substantial, rational fear of nothing?

Were you on your death-bed, and in your last moments informed by demonstration

of revelation, that you 













             Correspondence           35







would cease to think and to feel, at your dissolution, should you be terrified

? You might be ashamed of yourself for having lived so long to bear the proud

man's contumely. You might be ashamed of your Maker, and compare Him to a

little girl, amusing herself, her brothers and sisters, by blowing bubbles in

soap-suds. You might compare Him to boys sporting with crackers and rockets, or

to men employed in making mere artificial fire-works, or to men and women. at

fairs and operas, or Sadlers Wells' exploits, or to politicians in their

intrigues, or to heroes in their butcheries, or to Popes in. their devilisms.

But what should you fear? Nothing. Emori nolo, sed me mortuum esse nihil

estimo.







To return to Priestley. You could make a more luminous book than his, upon the

doctrines of heathen philosophers compared with those of revelation. Why has he

not given us a more satisfactory account of the Pythagorean Philosophy and

Theology ? He barely names Eileus, who lived long before Plato. His treatise of

kings and monarchy has been destroyed, I conjecture, by Platonic Philosophers,

Platonic Jews or Christians, or ' by fraudulent republicans or despots. His

treatise of the universe has been preserved. He labors to prove the eternity of

the world. The Marquis D'Argens translated it, in all its noble simplicity. The

Abbe Batteaux has since given another translation. D'Argens not only explains

the text, but sheds more light upon the ancient systems. His 













36          Jefferson's Works







remarks are so many treatises, which develop the concatenation of ancient

opinions. The most essential ideas of the theology, of the physics, and of the

morality of the ancients are clearly explained, and their different doctrines

compared with one another and with the modern discoveries. I wish I owned this

book and one hundred thousand more that I want every day, now when I am almost

incapable of making any use of them. No doubt he informs us that Pythagoras was

a great traveller. Priestley barely mentions Timoeus, but it does not appear

that he had read him. Why has he not given us an account of him and his book?

He was before Plato, and gave him the idea of his Timoeus, and much more of his

philosophy.







  After his master, ' he maintained the existence of matter ; that matter was

capable of receiving all sorts of forms; that a moving power agitated all the

parts of it, and that an intelligence produced a regular and harmonious world.

This intelligence had seen a plan, an idea (Logos) in conformity to which it

wrought, and without which it would not have known what it was about, nor what

it wanted to do. This plan was the idea, image or model which had represented

to the Supreme Intelligence the world before it existed, which had directed it

in its action upon the moving power, and which it contemplated in forming the

elements, the bodies and the world. This model was distinguished from the

intelligence which produced the world, as







               Correspondence







  the architect is from his plans. He divided the







productive cause of the world into a spirit which







directed the moving force, and into an image which







determined it in the choice of the directions which







it gave to the moving force, and the forms which it







gave to matter. I wonder that Priestley has over-







looked this, because it is the same philosophy with







Plato's, and would have shown that the Pythagorean as well as the Platonic

philosophers probably concurred in the fabrication of the Christian Trinity.

Priestley mentions the name of Achylas, but does not appear to have read him,

though he was a successor of Pythagoras, and a great mathematician, a great

statesman and a great general. John Gram, a learned and honorable Dane, has

given a handsome edition of his works, with a Latin translation and an ample

account of his life and writings. Zaleucus, the Legislator of Locris, and

Charondas of Sybaris, were disciples of Pythagoras, and both celebrated to

immortality for the wisdom of their laws, five hundred years before Christ. Why

are those laws lost ? I say the spirit of party has destroyed them; civil,

political and ecclesiastical bigotry.







  Despotical, monarchical, aristocratical and democratical fury have all been

employed in this work of destruction of everything that could give us true

light, and a clear insight of antiquity. For every one of these parties, when

possessed of power, or when they have been undermost, and struggling 







38         Jefferson's Works







to get uppermost, has been equally prone to. every species of fraud and

violence and usurpation.







Why has not Priestley mentioned these Legislators ? The preamble to the laws of

Zaleucus, which is all that remains, is as orthodox Christian theology as

Priestley's, and Christian benevolence and forgiveness of injuries almost as

clearly expressed.







Priestley ought to have done impartial justice to philosophy and philosophers.

Philosophy, which is the result of reason, is the first, the original

revelation of the Creator to his creature, man. When this revelation is clear

and certain by intuition or necessary induction, no subsequent revelation

supported by prophecies or miracles can supersede it. Philosophy is not only

the love of wisdom, but the science of the universe and its cause.







There is, there was, and there will be but one master of philosophy in the

universe. Portions of it, in different degrees, are revealed to creatures.







Philosophy looks with an impartial eye on all terrestrial religions. I have

examined all, as well as my narrow sphere, my straitened means and my busy life

would allow me, and the result is, that the Bible is the best book in the

world: It contains more of my little philosophy than all the libraries I have

seen ; and such parts of it as I cannot reconcile to my little philosophy, I

postpone for future investigation.







Priestley ought to have given us a sketch of the religion and morals of

Zoroaster, of Sanchoniathon, 







              Correspondence           39







  of Confucius, and all the founders of religions before







Christ, whose superiority would, from such a com-







parison, have appeared the more transcendent.







  Priestley ought to have told us that Pythagoras '







passed twenty years in his travels in India, in







Egypt, in Chaldea, perhaps in Sodom and Gomorrah,







Tyre and Sidon. He ought to have told us that







in India he conversed with the Brahmins, and read the Shasta, five thousand

years old, written in the language of the sacred Sansosistes, with the elegance

and sentiments of Plato. Where is to be found theology more orthodox, or

philosophy more profound, than in the introduction to the Shasta ? " God is one

creator of all universal sphere, without beginning, without end. God governs

all the creation by a general providence, resulting from his eternal designs.

Search not the essence and the nature of the eternal, who is one ; your

research will be vain and presumptuous. It is enough that, day by day, and

night by night, you adore his power, his wisdom and his goodness, in his works.

The eternal willed in the fullness of time, to communicate of his essence and

of his splendor, to beings capable of perceiving it. They as yet existed not.

The eternal willed and they were. He created Birma, Vitsnou and Siv." These

doctrines, sublime, if ever there were any sublime, Pythagoras learned in

India, and taught them to Zaleucus and his other disciples. He there learned

also his metempsychosis, but this never was popular, never 













        40         Jefferson's Works







        made much progress in Greece or Italy, or any







   other country besides India and Tartary, the region







   of the grand immortal Lama. And how does this







   differ from the possessions of demons in Greece and







   Rome? from the demon of Socrates? from the







   worship of cows and crocodiles in Egypt and else-







   where ?







          After migrating through various animals, from







   elephants to serpents, according to their behavior,







   souls that at last behaved well, became men and







   women, and then if they were good, they went to







   heaven.







          All ended in heaven, if they became virtuous.







        Who can wonder at the widow of Malabar ? Where







   is the lady, who, if her faith were without doubt







   that she should go to heaven with her husband on '       the one, or migrate

into a toad or a wasp on the







   other, would not lie down on the pile, and set fire







   to the fuel?







          Modifications and disguises of the Metempsycho-







   sis, have crept into Egypt, and Greece, and Rome,







   and other countries. Have you read Farmer on







   the Daemons and possessions of the New Testament?







        According to the Shasta, Moisasor, with his com-







   panions, rebelled against the Eternal, and were







   precipitated down to Ondoro, the region of dark-







   ness.







          Do you know anything of the Prophecy of Enoch ?







        Can you give me a comment on the 6th, the 9th,







   the 14th verses .of the epistle of Jude? 













             Correspondence           41







  If I am not weary of writing, I am sure you must be of reading such

incoherent rattle. I will not persecute you so severely in future, if I can

help it.







  So farewell.























            TO THOMAS LEIPER.







              MONTICELLO, January , 1814.







  DEAR SIR,-I had hoped, when I retired from the business of the world, that I

should have been permitted to pass the evening of life in tranquillity,

undisturbed by the peltings and passions of which the public papers are the

vehicles. I see, however, that I have been dragged into' the newspapers by the

infidelity of one with whom I was formerly intimate, but who has abandoned the

American principles out of which that intimacy grew, and become the bigoted

partisan of England, and malcontent of his own government. In a letter which he

wrote to me, he earnestly besought me to avail our country of the good

understanding which existed between the executive and myself, by recommending

an offer of such terms to our enemy as might produce a peace, towards which he

was confident that enemy was disposed. In my answer, I stated the aggressions,

the insults and injuries, which England had been heaping on us for years, our

long forbearance in the hope she might be led by time and reflection to a.

sounder view of her own interests, and of their 













42          Jefferson's Works







connection with justice to us, the repeated propositions for accommodation made

by us and rejected by her; and at length her Prince Regent's solemn

proclamation to the world that he would never repeal the orders in council as

to us, until France should have revoked her illegal decrees as to all the

world, and her minister's declaration to ours, that no admissible precaution

against the impressment of our seamen, could be proposed : that the unavoidable

declaration of war which followed these was accompanied by advances for peace,

on terms which no American could dispense with, made through various channels,

and unnoticed and unanswered through any; but that if he could suggest any

other conditions which we ought to accept, and which had not been repeatedly

offered and rejected, I was. ready to be the channel of their conveyance to the

government; and, to show him that neither that attachment to Bonaparte nor

French influence, which they allege eternally without believing it themselves,

affected my mind, I threw in the two little sentences of the printed extract

enclosed in your friendly favor of the 9th ultimo, and exactly these two little

sentences, from a letter of two or three pages, he has thought proper to

publish, naked, alone, and with my name, although other parts of the letter

would have shown that I wished such limits only to the successes of Bonaparte,

as should not prevent his completely closing Europe against British

manufactures and commerce; and thereby reducing her to just terms of peace with

us. 













             Correspondence







  Thus am I situated. I receive letters from all quarters, some from known

friends, some from those who write like friends, on various subjects. What am I

to do ? Am I to button myself up in Jesuitical reserve, rudely declining any

answer, or answering in terms so unmeaning as only to prove my distrust ? Must

I withdraw myself from all interchange of sentiment with the world ? I cannot

do this. It is at war with my habits and temper. I cannot act as if all men

were unfaithful because some are so; nor believe that all will betray me,

because some do. I had rather be the victim of occasional infidelities, than

relinquish my general confidence in the honesty of man.







So far as to the breach of confidence which has brought me into the newspapers,

with a view to embroil me with my friends, by a supposed separation in opinion

and principle from them. But it is impossible that there can be any difference

of opinion among us on the two propositions contained in these two little

sentences, when explained, as they were explained in the context from which

they were insulated. That Bonaparte is an unprincipled tyrant, who is deluging

the continent of Europe with blood, there is not a human being, not even the

wife of his bosom, who does not see ; nor can there, I think, be a doubt as to

the line we ought to wish drawn between his successes and those of Alexander.

Surely none of us wish to see Bonaparte conquer Russia, and lay thus at his

feet the whole continent 













            Jefferson's Works







of Europe. This done, England would be but a breakfast; and, although I am free

from the visionary fears which the votaries of England have affected to

entertain, because I believe he cannot effect the conquest of Europe ; yet put

all Europe into his hands, and he might spare such a force, to be sent in

British ships, as I would as leave not have to encounter, when I see how much

trouble a handful of British soldiers in Canada has given us. No. It cannot be

to our interest that all Europe should be reduced to a single monarchy. The

true line of interest for us, is, that Bonaparte should be able to effect the

complete exclusion of England from the whole continent of Europe, in order, as

the same letter said, " by this peaceable engine of constraint







                                  , to make her renounce her views of dominion

over the ocean, of permitting no other nation to navigate it but with her

license, and on tribute to her, and her aggressions on the persons of our

citizens who may choose to exercise their right of passing over that element."

And this would be effected by Bonaparte's succeeding so far as to close the

Baltic against her. This success I wished him the last year, this I wish him

this year; but were he again advanced to Moscow, I should again wish him such

disasters as would prevent his reaching Petersburg. And were the consequences

even to be the longer continuance of our war, I would rather meet them than see

the whole force of Europe wielded by a single hand. 













             Correspondence.          45







  I have gone into this explanation, my friend, because I know you will not

carry my letter to the newspapers, and because I am willing to trust to your

discretion the explaining me to our honest fellow laborers, and the bringing

them to pause and reflect, if any of them have not sufficiently reflected on

the extent of the success we ought to wish to Bonaparte, with a view to our own

interests only; and even were we not men, to whom nothing human should be

indifferent. But is our particular interest to make us insensible to all

sentiments of morality? Is it then become criminal, the moral wish that the

torrents of blood this man is shedding in Europe, the sufferings of so many

human beings, good as ourselves, on whose necks he is trampling, the burnings

of ancient cities, devastations of great countries, the destruction of law and

order, and demoralization of the world, should be arrested, even if it should

place our peace a little further distant? No. You and I cannot differ in

wishing that Russia, and Sweden, and Denmark, . and Germany, and Spain, and

Portugal, and Italy, and even England, may retain their independence. And if we

differ in our opinions about Towers and his four beasts and ten  kingdoms, we

differ as friends, indulging mutual errors, and doing justice to mutual

sincerity and honesty. In this spirit of sincere confidence and affection, I

pray God to bless you here and hereafter. 













46         Jefferson's Works















     TO DR. WALTER JONES.







              MONTICELLO, January 2, 1814.







  DEAR SIR,-Your favor of November the 25th reached this place December the

21st, having been near a month on the way. How this could happen I know not, as

we have two mails a week both from Fredericksburg and Richmond. It found me

just returned from a long journey and absence, during which so much business

had accumulated, commanding the first attentions, that another week has been

added to the delay.







  I deplore, with you, the putrid state into which our newspapers have passed,

and the malignity, the vulgarity, and mendacious spirit of those who write  for

them; and I enclose you a recent sample, the production of a New England judge,

as a proof of the abyss of degradation into which we are fallen. These ordures

are rapidly depraving the public taste, and lessening its relish for sound

food. As vehicles of information, and a curb on our functionaries, they have

rendered themselves useless, by forfeiting all title to belief. That this has,

in a great degree, been produced by the violence and malignity of party spirit,

I agree with you; and I have read with great pleasure the paper you enclosed me

on that subject, which I now return. It is at the same time a perfect model of

the style of discussion which candor and decency should observe, of the tone

which renders difference of opinion even amiable, and a succinct, 













             Correspondence







correct, and dispassionate history of the origin and progress of party among

us. It might be incorporated as it stands, and without changing a word, into

the history of the present epoch, and would give to posterity a fairer view of

the times than they will probably derive from other sources. In reading it with

great satisfaction, there was but a single passage where I wished a little more

development of a very sound and catholic idea; a single intercalation to rest

it solidly on true bottom. It is near the end of the first page, where you make

a statement of genuine republican maxims ; saying, " that the people ought to

possess as much political power as can possibly exist with the order and

security of society. " Instead of this, I would say, " that the people, being

the only .safe depository of power, should exercise in person every function

which their qualifications enable them to exercise, consistently with the order

and security of society ; that we now find them equal to the election of those

who shall be invested with their executive and legislative powers, and to act

themselves in the judiciary, as judges in questions of fact; that the range of

their powers ought to be enlarged, " etc. This gives both the reason and

exemplification of the maxim you express, " that they ought to possess as much

political power, " etc. I see nothing to correct either in your facts or

principles.







  You say that in taking General Washington on your shoulders, to bear him

harmless through the 













 s         Jefferson's Works







federal coalition, you encounter a perilous topic. I do not think so. You have

given the genuine history of the course of his mind through the trying scenes

in which it was engaged, and of the seductions by which it was deceived, but

not depraved. I think I knew General Washington intimately and thoroughly; and

were I called on to delineate his character, it should be in terms like these.







  His mind was great and powerful, without being of the very first order ; his

penetration strong, though not so acute as that of a Newton, Bacon, or Locke;

and as far as he saw, no judgment was ever sounder. It was slow in operation,

being little aided by invention or imagination, but sure in conclusion. Hence

the common remark of his officers, of the advantage he derived from councils of

war, where hearing all suggestions, he selected whatever was best; and

certainly no general ever planned his battles more judiciously. But if deranged

during the course of the action, if any member of his plan was dislocated by

sudden circumstances, he was slow in re-adjustment. The consequence was, that

he often failed in the field, and rarely against an enemy in station, as at

Boston and York. He was incapable of fear, meeting personal dangers with the

calmest unconcern. Perhaps the strongest feature in his character was prudence,

never acting until every circumstance, every consideration, was maturely

weighed; refraining if he saw a doubt, but, when once decided, going through

with his purpose, what













              Correspondence







ever obstacles opposed. His integrity was most pure, his justice the most

inflexible I have ever known, no motives of interest or consanguinity, of

friendship or hatred, being able to bias his decision. He was, indeed, in every

sense of the words, a wise, a good, and a great man. His temper was naturally

irritable and high toned; but reflection and resolution had obtained a firm and

habitual ascendency over it. If ever, however, it broke its bonds, he was most

tremendous in his wrath. In his expenses he was honorable, but exact ; liberal

in contributions to whatever promised utility; but frowning and unyielding on

all visionary projects, and all unworthy calls on his charity. His heart was

not warm in its affections ; but he exactly calculated every man's value, and

gave him a solid esteem proportioned to it. His person, you know, was fine, his

stature exactly what one would wish, his deportment easy, erect and noble ; the

best horseman of his age, and the most graceful figure that could be seen on

horseback. Although in the circle of his friends, where he might be unreserved

with safety, he took a free share in conversation, his colloquial talents were

not above mediocrity, possessing neither copiousness of ideas, nor fluency of

words. In public, when called on for a sudden opinion, he was unready, short

and embarrassed. Yet he wrote readily, rather diffusely, in an easy and correct

style. This he had acquired by conversation with the world, for his education

was merely reading, writing and common arithmetic,







vol. XIV-4 













            Jefferson's Works







to which he added surveying at a later day. His time was employed in action

chiefly, reading little; and that only in agriculture and English history. His

correspondence became necessarily extensive, and, with journalizing his

agricultural proceedings, occupied most of his leisure hours within doors. On

the whole, his character was, in its mass; perfect, in nothing bad, in few

points indifferent; and it may truly 'be said, that never did nature and

fortune combine more perfectly to make a man great, and to place him in the

same constellation with whatever worthies have merited from man an everlasting

remembrance. For his was the singular destiny and merit, of leading the armies

of his country successfully through an arduous war, for the establishment of

its independence ; of conducting its councils through the birth of a

government, new in its forms and principles, until it had settled down into a

quiet and orderly train ; and of scrupulously obeying the laws through the

whole of his career, civil and military, of which the history of the world

furnishes no other example.







  How, then, can it be perilous for you to take such a man on your shoulders ?

I am satisfied the great body of republicans think of him as I do. We were,

indeed, dissatisfied with him on his ratification of the British treaty. But

this was short lived. We knew his honesty, the wiles with which he was

encompassed, and that age had already begun to relax the firmness of his

purposes ; and I am con













              Correspondence           51







  vinced he is more deeply seated in the love and gratitude of the republicans,

than in the Pharisaical homage of the federal monarchists. For he was no

monarchist from preference of his judgment. The soundness of that gave him

correct views of the rights of man, and his severe justice devoted him to them.

He has often declared to me that he considered our new Constitution as an

experiment on the practicability of republican government, and with what dose

of liberty man could be trusted for his own good ; that he was determined the

experiment should have a fair trial, and would lose the last drop of his blood

in support of it. And these declarations he repeated to me the oftener and more

pointedly, because he knew my suspicions of Colonel Hamilton's views, and

probably had heard from him the same declarations which I had, to wit, " that

the British constitution, with its unequal representation, corruption and other

existing abuses, was the most perfect government which had ever been

established on earth, and that a reformation of those abuses would make it an

impracticable government. " I do believe that General Washington had not a firm

confidence in the durability of our government. He was naturally distrustful of

men, and inclined to gloomy apprehensions ; and I was ever persuaded that a

belief that we must at length end in something like a British constitution, had

some weight in his adoption of the ceremonies of levees, birthdays, pompous

meetings with Congress, and other forms 













52         Jefferson's Works







of the same character, calculated to prepare us gradually for a change which he

believed possible, and to let it come on with as little shock as might be to

the public mind.







  These are my opinions of General Washington, which I would vouch at the

judgment seat of God, having been formed on an acquaintance of thirty years. I

served with him in the Virginia legislature from 1769 to the Revolutionary war,

and again, a short time in Congress, until he left us to take command of the

army. During the war and after it we corresponded occasionally, and in the four

years of my continuance in the office of Secretary of State, our intercourse

was daily, confidential and cordial. After I retired from that office, great

and malignant pains were taken by our federal monarchists, and not entirely

without effect, to make him view me as a theorist, holding French principles of

government, which would lead infallibly to licentiousness and anarchy. And to

this he listened the more easily, from my known disapprobation of the British

treaty. I never saw him afterwards, or these malignant insinuations should have

been dissipated before his just judgment, as mists before the sun. I felt on

his death, with my countrymen, that " verily a great man hath fallen this day

in Israel. "







More time and recollection would enable me to add many other traits of his

character; but why add them to you who knew him well? And I cannot justify to

myself a longer detention of your paper.







Vale, proprieque tuum, me esse tibi persuadeas. 













             Correspondence







 TO JOHN PINTARD, RECORDING SECRETARY OF THE







    NEW YORK HISTORICAL SOCIETY.







               MONTICELLO, January 9, 1814.







  SIR,-I have duly received your favor of December 22d, informing me that the

New York Historical Society had been pleased to elect me an honorary member of

that institution. I am entirely sensible of the honor done me by this election,

and I pray you to become the channel of my grateful acknowledgments to the

society. At this distance, and at my time of life, I cannot but be conscious

how little it will be in my power to further their establishment, and that I

should be but an unprofitable member, carrying into the institution indeed, my

best wishes for its success, and a readiness to serve it on any occasion which

should occur. With these acknowledgments, be so good as to accept for the

society, as well as for yourself, the assurances of my high respect and

consideration.















TO SAMUEL M. BURNSIDE, SECRETARY OF THE AMERI-







     CAN ANTIQUARIAN SOCIETY.







              MONTICELLO, January 9, 1814.







SIR,-I have duly received your favor of the 13th of December, informing me of

the .institution of the American Antiquarian Society, and expressing its

disposition to honor me with an admission into it, and the request of my

co-operation in the advance













             Jefferson's Works







ment of its objects. No one can be more sensible of the honor and the favor of

these dispositions, and I pray you to have the goodness to testify to them all

the gratitude I feel on receiving assurances of them. There has been a time of

life when I should have entered into their views with zeal, and with a hope of

not being altogether unuseful. But, now more than septuagenary, retired from

the active scenes and business of life, I am sensible how little I can

contribute to the advancement of the objects of their views ; but I shall

certainly, and with great pleasure, embrace any occasion which shall occur, of

rendering them any services in my power. With these assurances, be so good as

to accept for them and for yourself, those of my high respect and

consideration.























           TO DR. THOMAS COOPER.







             MONTICELLO, January 16, 1814.







  DEAR SIR,-Your favor of November 8th, if it was rightly dated, did not come

to hand till December 13th, and being absent on a long journey, it has remained

unanswered till now. The copy of your introductory lecture was received and

acknowledged in my letter of July 12,1812, with which I sent you Tracy's first

volume on Logic. Your Justinian came safely also, and I have been constantly

meaning to acknowledge it, but I wished, at the same time, to 













              Correspondence           55







  say something more. I possessed Theopilus', Vinnius'







and Harris' editions, but read over your notes and the addenda et corrigenda,

and especially the parallels with the English law, with great satisfaction and

edification. Your edition will be very useful to our lawyers, some of whom will

need the translation as well as the notes. But what I had wanted to say to you

on the subject, was that I much regret that instead of this work, useful as it

may be, you had not bestowed the same time and research rather on a translation

and notes on Bracton, a work which has never been performed for us, and which I

have always considered as one of the greatest desiderata in the law. The laws

of England, in their progress from the earliest to the present times, may be

likened to the road of a traveller, divided into distinct stages or resting

places, at each of which. a review is taken of the road passed over so far. The

first of these was Bracton's De legibus Angliae; the second, Coke's Institutes

; the third, the Abridgment of the law by Matthew Bacon; and the fourth,

Blackstone's Commentaries. Doubtless there were others before Bracton which

have not reached us. Alfred, in the preface to his laws, says they were

compiled from those of Ina, Offa, and Aethelbert, into which, or rather

preceding them, the clergy have interpolated the 20th, 21st,22d, 23d and 24th

chapters of Exodus, so as to place A1úred's preface to what was really his,

awkwardly enough in the body of the work. An interpolation the more glaring, as

containing







56         Jefferson's Works







laws expressly contradicted by those of Alfred. This pious fraud seems to have

been first noted by Howard, in his Contumes Anglo Normandes (188), and the

pious judges of England have had no inclination to question it; [of this

disposition in these judges, I could give you a curious sample from a note in

my common-place book, made while I was a student, but it is too long to be now

copied. Perhaps I may give it to you with some future letter;. This digest of

Alfred of the laws of the Heptarchy into a single code, common to the whole

kingdom, by him first reduced into one, was probably the birth of what is

called the common law. He has been styled, " Magnus Juris       " Anlicani

Conditor, and his code, the Dom-Dec, or doom-book. That which was made

afterwards under Edward the Confessor, was but a restoration of Alfred's, with

some intervening alterations. And this was the code which the English so often,

under the Norman princes, petitioned to have restored to them. But, all records

previous to the Magna Charta having been early lost, Bracton's is the first

digest of the whole body of law which has come down to us entire. What

materials for it existed in his time we know not, except the unauthoritative

collections of Lambard and Wilkins, and the treatise of Glanville, tempore H.

a. Bracton's is the more valuable, because being written a very few years after

the Magna Charta, which commences what is called the statute law, it gives us

the state of the common law in its ultimate form, and exactly at the point of

divi-















              Correspondence          57







sion between the common and statute law. It is a most able work, complete in

its matter and luminous in its method.







  2. The statutes which introduced changes began now to be preserved ;

applications of the law to new cases by the courts, began soon after to be

reported in the year-books, these to be methodized and abridged by Fitzherbert,

Broke, Rolle, and others; individuals continued the business of reporting;

particular treatises were written by able men, and all these, by the time of

Lord Coke, had formed so large a mass of matter as to call for a new digest, to

bring it within reasonable compass. This he undertook in his Institutes,

harmonizing all the decisions and opinions which were reconcilable, and

rejecting those not so. This work is executed with so much learning and

judgment, that I do not recollect that a single position in it has ever been

judicially denied. And although the work loses much of its value by its chaotic

form, it may still be considered as the fundamental code of the English law.







  3. The same processes re-commencing of statutory changes, new divisions,

multiplied reports, and special treatises, a new accumulation had formed,

calling for new reduction, by the time of Matthew Bacon. His work, therefore,

although not pretending to the textual merit of Bracton's, or Coke's, was very

acceptable. His alphabetical arrangement, indeed, although better than Coke's

jumble, was far 'inferior to Bracton's. But it was a sound digest of the 













            Jefferson's Works







materials existing on the several alphabetical heads under which he arranged

them. His work was not admitted as authority in Westminster Hall ; yet it was

the manual of every judge and lawyer, and, what better proves its worth, has

been its daily growth in the general estimation.







  4. A succeeding interval of changes and additions of matter produced

Blackstone's Commentaries, the most lucid in arrangement which had yet been

written, correct in its matter, classical in style, and rightfully taking its

place by the side of the Justinian Institutes. But, like them it was only an

elementary book. It did not present all the subjects of the law in all their

details. It still left it necessary to recur to the original works of which it

was the summary. The great mass of law books from which it was extracted, was

still to be consulted on minute investigations. It wanted, therefore, a species

of merit which entered deeply into the value of those of Bracton, Coke and

Bacon. They had in effect swept the shelves of all the materials preceding

them. To give Blackstone, therefore, a full measure of value, another work is

still wanting, to wit : to incorporate with his principles a compend of the

particular cases subsequent to Bacon, of which they are the essence. This might

be done by printing under his text a digest like Bacon's continued to

Blackstone's time. It would enlarge his work, and increase its value peculiarly

to us, because just there we break off from the parent stem of the English 













             Correspondence







law, unconcerned in any of its subsequent changes or decisions.







  Of the four digests noted, the three last are possessed and understood by

every one. But the first, the fountain of them all, remains in its technical

Latin, abounding in terms antiquated, obsolete, and unintelligible but to the

most learned of the body of lawyers. To give it to us then in English, with a

glossary of its old terms, is a work for which I know nobody but yourself

possessing the necessary learning and industry. The latter part of it would be

furnished to your hand from the glossaries of Wilkins, Lambard, Spelman, Somner

in the X. Scriptores, the index of Coke and the law dictionaries. Could not

such an undertaking be conveniently associated with your new vocation of giving

law lectures? I pray you to think of it.1   A further operation indeed, would

still be desirable. To take up the doctrines of Bracton, separatim et seriatim,

to give their history through the periods of Lord Coke and Bacon, down to

Blackstone, to show when and how some of them have become extinct, the

successive alterations made in others, and their progress to the state in which

Blackstone found them. But this might be a separate work, left for your greater

leisure or for some future pen.2







I have long had under contemplation, and been collecting materials for the plan

of an university in







 1.Bracton has at length been translated in English.







2.This has been done by Reeves, in his History of the Law. 













60         Jefferson's Work







Virginia which should comprehend all the sciences useful to us, and none

others. The general idea is suggested in the Notes on Virginia, Qu. 14. This

would probably absorb the functions of William and Mary College, and transfer.

them to a healthier and more central position : perhaps to the neighborhood of

this place. The long and lingering decline of William and Mary, the death of

its last president, its location and climate, force on us the wish for a new

institution more convenient to our country generally, and better adapted to the

present state of science. I have been told there will be an effort in the

present session of our legislature, to effect such an establishment. I confess,

however, that I have not great confidence that this will be done. Should it

happen, it would offer places worthy of you, and of which you are worthy. It

might produce, too, a bidder for the apparatus and library of Dr. Priestley, to

which they might add mine on their own terms. This consists of about seven or

eight thousand volumes, the best chosen collection of its size probably in

America, and containing a great mass of what is most rare and valuable, and

especially of what relates to America.







You have given us, in your Emporium, Bollman's medley on Political Economy. It

is the work of one who sees a little of everything, and the whole of nothing ;

and were it not f or your own notes on it, a sentence of which throws more just

light on the subject than all his pages, we should regret the place it occupies

of more useful matter. The bringing our coun-













             Correspondence           61







trymen to a sound comparative estimate of the vast value of internal commerce,

and the disproportionate importance of what is foreign, is the most salutary

effort which can be made for the prosperity of these States, which are entirely

misled from their true interests by the infection of English prejudices, and

illicit attachments to English interests and connections. I look to you for

this effort. It would furnish a valuable chapter for every Emporium; but I

would rather see it also in the newspapers, which alone find access to every

one.







  Everything predicted by the enemies of banks, in the beginning, is now coming

to pass. We are to be ruined now by the deluge of bank paper, as we were

formerly by the old Continental paper. lt is cruel that such revolutions in

private fortunes should be at the mercy of avaricious adventurers, who, instead

of employing their capital, if any they have, in manufactures, commerce, and

other useful pursuits, make it an instrument to burden all the interchanges of

property with their swindling profits, profits which are the price of no useful

industry of theirs. Prudent men must be on their guard in this game of Robin's

alive, and take care that the spark does not extinguish in their hands. I am an

enemy to all banks discounting bills or notes for anything but coin. But our

whole country is so fascinated by this Jack-lantern wealth, that they will not

stop short of its total and fatal explosion.l







l This accordingly took place four year's after. 













            Jefferson's Works







  Have you seen the memorial to Congress on the subject of Oliver Evans' patent

rights? The memorialists have published in it a letter of mine containing some

views on this difficult subject. But I have opened it no further than to raise

the questions belonging to it. I wish we could have the benefit of your lights

on these questions. The abuse of the frivolous patents is likely to cause more

inconvenience than is countervailed by those really useful. We know not to what

uses we may apply implements which have been in our hands before the birth of

our government, and even the discovery of America. The memorial is a thin

pamphlet, printed by Robinson of Baltimore, a copy of which has been laid on

the desk of every member of Congress.







  You ask if it is a secret who wrote the commentary on Montesquieu? It must be

a secret during the author's life. I may only say at present that it was

written by a Frenchman, that the original MS. in French is now in my

possession, that it was translated and edited by General Duane, and that I

should rejoice to see it printed in its original tongue, if any one would

undertake it. No book can suffer more by translation, because of the severe

correctness of the original in the choice of its terms. I have taken measures

for securing to the author his justly-earned fame, whenever his death or other

circumstances may render it safe for him. Like you, I do not agree with him in

everything, and have had some correspondence with him on particular points. But

on 













            Correspondence           63







the whole, it is a most valuable work, one which I think will form an epoch in

the science of government, and which I wish to see in the hands of every

American student, as the elementary and fundamental institute of that important

branch of human science.l .







  I have never seen the answer of Governor Strong to the judges of

Massachusetts, to which you allude, nor the Massachusetts reports in which it

is contained. But I am sure you join me in lamenting the general defection of

lawyers and judges, from the free principles of government. I am sure they do

not derive this degenerate spirit from the father of our science, Lord Coke.

But it may be the reason why they cease to read him, and the source of what are

now called " Blackstone lawyers."







Go on in all your good works, without regard to the eye " of suspicion and

distrust with which you may be viewed by some, " and without being weary in

well doing, and be assured that you are justly estimated by the impartial mass

of our fellow citizens, and by none more than myself.















          TO OLIVER EVANS, ESQ.







             MONTICELLO, January 16, 1814:







  SIR,-In August last I received a letter from Mr. Isaac McPherson of

Baltimore, on the controversies







 1 The original has since been published in France, with the name of its

author, M. Destutt de Tracy. 













             Jefferson"s Work's







  subsisting between yourself and some persons in that







quarter interested in mills. These related to your patent rights for the

elevators, conveyers, and hopper- boys; and he requested any information I

could give him on that subject. Having been formerly a member of the patent

board, as long as it existed, and bestowed in the execution of that trust much

consideration on the questions belonging to it, I thought it an act of justice,

and indeed of duty, to communicate such facts and principles as had occurred to

me on the subject. I therefore wrote the letter of August 13, which is the

occasion of your favor to me of the 7th instant, just now received, but without

the report of the case tried in the circuit court of Maryland, or your memorial

to Congress, mentioned in the letter as accompanying it. You request an answer

to your letter, which  my respect and esteem for you would of themselves have

dictated; but I am not certain that I distinguish the particular points to

which you wish a specific answer. You agree in the letter, that the chain of

buckets and Archimedes' screw are old inventions ; that every one had, and

still has, a right to use them and the hopper-boy, if that also existed

previously, in the forms and constructions known before your patent; and that,

therefore, you have neither a grant nor claim, to the exclusive right of using

elevators, conveyers, hopper- boys, or drills, but only of the improved

elevator, the improved hopper-boy, etc. In this, then, we are entirely agreed,

and your right to your own im- . 













              Correspondence           65







  provements in the construction of these machines







is explicitly recognized in my letter. I think,







however, that your letter claims something more,







although it is not so explicitly defined as to convey







to my mind the precise idea which you perhaps







meant to express. Your letter says that your patent







is for your improvement in the manufacture of flour







by the application of certain principles, and of such







machinery as will carry those principles into opera-







tion, whether of the improved elevator, improved hopper-boy, or (without being

confined to them) of any machinery known and free to the public. I can conceive

how a machine may improve the manufacture of flour; but not how a principle

abstracted from any machine can do it. It must then be the machine, and the

principle of that machine, which is secured to you by your patent. Recurring

now to the words of your definition, do they mean that, while all are free to

use the old string of buckets, and Archimedes' screw for the purposes to which

they had been formerly applied, you alone have the exclusive right to apply

them to the manufacture of flour? that no one has a right to apply his old

machines to all the purposes of which they are susceptible ? that every one,

for instance, who can apply the hoe, the spade, or the axe to any purpose to

which they have not been before applied, may have a patent for the exclusive

right to that application ? and may exclude all others under penalties, from so

using their hoe, spade, or axe ? If this be the meaning, my opinion that the







VOL. xiv-5 













66          Jefferson's Works







legislature never meant by the patent law to sweep away so extensively the

rights of their constituents, to environ everything they touch with snares, is

expressed in the letter of August 13, from which I have nothing to retract, nor

aught to add but the observation that if a new application of our old machines

be a ground of monopoly, the patent law will take from us much more good than

it will give. Perhaps it may mean another thing, that while every one has a

right to the distinct and separate use of the buckets, the screw, the

hopper-boy, in their old forms, the patent gives you the exclusive right to

combine their uses on the same object. But if we have a right to use three

things separately, I see nothing in reason, or in the patent law, which forbids

our using them all together. A man has a right to use a saw, an axe, a plane,

separately ; may he not combine their uses on the same piece of wood? He has a

right to use his knife to cut his meat, a fork to hold it; may a patentee take

from him the right to combine their use on the same subject ? Such a law,

instead of enlarging our conveniences, as was intended, woul