THE WRITINGS OF
THOMAS JEFFERSON

Definitive Edition
CONTAINING HIS
AUTOBIOGRAPHY, NOTES ON VIRGINIA, PARLIAMENTARY
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. XVI.

ISSUED UNDER THE AUSPICES OF
THE THOMAS JEFFERSON MEMORIAL ASSOCIATION
OF THE UNITED STATES
WASHINGTON, D. C.
1907

COPYRIGHT, 1905,
BY
THE THOMAS JEFFERSON MEMORIAL
ASSOCIATION

JEFFERSON AND THE LAND QUESTION.

Jefferson is a pole star among political philosophers because he based his politics on the eternal, self-evident, fundamental truths that all men are created free and equal and that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inherent and unalienable rights, among which are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. How are the rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness primarily to be exercised? Not in the political field, but in the underlying social field. How shall a man get an independent living precedes how shall he participate in general government. He cannot exercise, or fully exercise, his political faculties until, without let or hindrance, he can get sustenance.

Hence Jefferson's political axiom involves as a prerequisite a social or economic axiom, without observance of which political institutions can be only as a house built upon the sand. This economic axiom is that men have equal rights to natural opportunities, to land. On land mankind must have its habitation and from it it must draw subsistence. Nowhere else, from no other source, can it live. Therefore, the rights of life, liberty and the {ii} pursuit of happiness carry with them the inherent, unalienable, equal right of all to land.

If this economic principle is not in the general mind associated with Jefferson's doctrine of democracy it is only because he did not give it prominence. When there was seeming need he set it forth explicitly and clearly, but this was rarely. Was there not in his day unappropriated land in superabundance? Why inject into the domain of war issues, into the intricate and difficult business of the founding of a nation and the construction of a radically new form of government, the abstract question of equal rights to land, when as a practical fact plenty could be had by anyone for the mere taking?

In Jefferson's day a small population lay scattered along the Atlantic seaboard. The great virgin, unappropriated, and for the most part unexplored, continent, three thousand miles broad, stretched west, open to the pioneer and the settler. Of land there appeared enough for scores of generations to come. The nation was agricultural, and whoever desired it could have a farm by moving into the trackless wilderness and making a clearing, which more and more were doing, thereby showing their freedom from dependence upon the established centers. They faced the sunset and moved out along the Ohio and the Mississippi.

Although a man of great and varied learning and polished culture, Jefferson was in spirit a frontiersman. He had a strong affinity for the rugged, {iii} independent pioneer and settler. He was a graduate of the oldest, and, at that time, richest institution of learning in America, the College of William and Mary, near Williamsburg, Virginia. By inheritance he was for that day a well-to-do man. By this and marriage and social connections he belonged to the wealthy planter class, which, relieved from toil for subsistence, could yield itself to the ease, graces and refinements of life. Jefferson's alert, powerful, acquisitive, analytical mind found this a most suitable soil for its development.

An. environment so stimulating to intellectual growth might also be expected to take a subtile, invisible hold on the mind and make of its beneficiary its votary and creature. But while fully conscious of the charms of its warm and tranquil atmosphere, Jefferson was early aware that the wealthy planter class was the bulwark in Virginia and the South of the British Crown tyranny and the buttress there of the Established Church, which falsely gave the sanction of religion to such tyranny and preached submission to the rulers God had raised over the people.

The resistance that early germinated in the free, bold mind against the usurpations and abuses of the British Crown thus came at length to include as a whole the planter class and their established priesthood. As Moses, adopted Prince in the house of Pharaoh, next in blood to Royalty-, struck dead the Egyptian taskmaster, and, turning his back {iv} upon pride and circumstance of power, led forth the Hebrew slaves into the desert toward the Promised Land, so Jefferson, moved by anger and scorn against the planter class for its fellowship and partnership in the tyranny of the Crown, threw off its allurements, so congenial to his tastes and habits, and allied himself absolutely, unreservedly, actively, permanently with the wronged masses. In the struggle in that agricultural community between the "planters," or large landowners, and the "settlers," or small landowners, Jefferson's heart was always with the latter.

It was the old fight in a new form-the antagonism between the silk stockings and the wool hats, between the red heels and the sabots. Jefferson, by fortune and culture, of the silk stockings and red heels, consciously, deliberately, with definite and fixed purpose, sided with the wool hats and sabots. It was in some degree as if a French seigneur under the ancient regime had rejected place and power to preach the destruction of privilege on the one side and the upraising of the trampled and despised on the other.

But this comparison of Jefferson with the French noble can be only in degree, and in slight degree. The social desparity, so extreme in the old world, was but faintly marked in the new. The rich men of America were of but moderate means beside the rich of Europe, while the poor were greatly better off here than there. "From Savannah [Georgia] {v} to Portsmouth [Maine]," said Jefferson in his "Notes on Virginia," "you will seldom meet a beggar. In the large towns, indeed, the sometimes present themselves. These are usually foreigners who have never obtained a settlement in any parish. I never yet saw a native American begging in the streets and highways. A subsistence is easily gained here." To Claviere he wrote: "I attended the bar of the Supreme Court of Virginia ten years as a student and practitioner. There never was during that time a trial for robbery on the highroad, nor do I remember ever to have heard of one in that or any other of the States, except in the cities of New York and Philadelphia immediately after the departure of the British army. Some deserters from that army infested those cities for awhile." In the "Notes on Virginia," Jefferson compared social conditions. "So desirous are the poor of Europe to get to America, where they may better their condition," he said, "that, being unable to pay their passage, they will agree to serve two or three years on their arrival there, rather than not go. During that time they are better fed, better clothed, and have lighter labor than while in Europe. Continuing teen work for hire; a few years longer, they buy a farm, marry and enjoy all the sweets of a domestic society of their own."

The fact that Jefferson always kept clearly in mind was that "a subsistence is easily gained here." He explained this by the first principles of political {vi} economy, namely, that men had easy access to natural opportunities. To John Jay he wrote: "We have now lands enough to employ an infinite number of people in their cultivation. Cultivators of the earth are the most valuable citizens. They are the most vigorous, the most independent, the most virtuous, and they are tied to their country and wedded to its liberty by the most lasting bonds." In the "Notes" he said: "In Europe the lands are either cultivated or locked up against the cultivator. Manufacture must, therefore, be resorted to, of necessity, not of choice, to support the surplus of their people. But we have an immensity of land courting the industry of husbandmen. * * * Those who labor the earth are the chosen people of God if ever He had a chosen people, whose breasts He has made his peculiar deposit for substantial and genuine virtue. It is the focus in which he keeps alive that sacred fire, which otherwise might escape from the face of the earth. Corruption of morals in the mass of cultivators is a phenomenon of which no age nor nation has furnished an example."

And because manufacturing called for condensed population and seemingly more or less dependence for employment, and since "dependence begets subservience and venality, suffocates the germ of virtue and prepares fit tools for the designs of ambition," manufacturing was to be avoided. But as he explained later to J. Lithgow, concerning a revised edition of the "Notes," he did not {vii} intend an indiscriminate denunciation of manufacturing but had in mind the possible future repetition in this country of the conditions he beheld in Europe, where "the manufactures of the great cities * * * have begotten a depravity of morals, a dependence and corruption, which renders them an undesirable accession to a country whose morals are sound." "But," continued the philosopher, "as yet our manufactures are as much at their ease, independent and moral, as our agricultural habits, and they will continue so as long as there are vacant lands for them to resort to; because whenever it shall be attempted by the other classes to reduce them to the minimum of subsistence they will quit their trade and go to laboring the earth." And to James Madison, his closest friend, he wrote from Paris in this same line: "I think our governments [Federal and State] will remain virtuous for many centuries-as long as they are chiefly agricultural; and this will be as long as there are vacant [unappropriated] lands in any part of America. When they [our people) get piled upon one another in large cities, as in. Europe, they will become corrupt, as in Europe."

These were not accidental remarks or passing views of the great American. They were the conclusions of observation and thought-thought that was extraordinarily far reaching in its consequences. Writing to Madison from Paris, where, he said, they were immersed in a course of reflection "on elementary {viii} principles of society," he remarked that he was led to a consideration of the question "Whether one generation of men has a right to bind another" a question "that seems never to have been started either on this or on our side of the water." "I set out on this ground which I suppose to be self-evident," observes Jefferson, "that the earth belongs in usufruct to the living, that the dead have neither powers nor rights over it. * * * On similar ground it may be proved that no society can make a perpetual constitution or even a perpetual law. * * * Every constitution, then, and every law, naturally expires at the end of nineteen years. If it be enforced longer, it is an act of force and not of right. * * * This principle that the earth belongs to the living and not to the dead is of very extensive application and consequences in every country, and most especially in France. It enters into the resolution of the questions: Whether the nation may change the descent of land holden in tail? Whether they may change the appropriation of lands given anciently to the church, colleges, orders of chivalry and otherwise in perpetuity? Whether they may abolish the charges and privileges attached on lands, including the whole catalogue ecclesiastical and feudal? It goes to hereditary offices, authorities and jurisdictions; to hereditary orders, distinctions and appellations; to perpetual-monopolies in commerce, the arts and sciences; and a long train of et ceteras; and it renders the question of {ix} reimbursement a question of generosity and not of right."

This argues that one generation has no right to make land laws, or any other kind of laws, for another generation. Far in advance of general thought as this was, Jefferson did not stop here, but pointed out the fundamental right to land of individuals composing any generation. This he wrote, also from Paris, to the father of Madison, the Rev. James Madison: "The property of this country [France] is absolutely concentrated in a very few hands, having revenues of from half a million guineas a year downward. These employ the flower of the country as servants, some of them having as many as two hundred domestics, not laboring. They employ also a great number of manufacturers and tradesmen, and lastly the class of laboring husbandmen. But after all there comes the most numerous of all the classes, that is, the poor who cannot find work. I asked myself what could be the reason that so many should be permitted to beg who are willing to work, in a country where there is a very considerable proportion of uncultivated lands? These lands are undisturbed only for the sake of game. * * * Whenever there is in any country uncultivated lands and unemployed poor it is clear that the laws of property have been so far extended as to violate natural rights. The earth is given as a common stock for man to labor and live on. If for the encouragement of {x} industry we allow it to be appropriated we must take care that other employment be provided to those excluded from the appropriation. If we do not, the fundamental right to labor the earth returns to the unemployed."

Could language be plainer or meaning clearer? "It is too soon yet," continued Jefferson, "in our country to say that every man who cannot find employment, but who can find uncultivated land shall be at liberty to cultivate it, paying a moderate rent. But it is not too soon to provide by every possible means that as few as possible shall be without a little portion of land. The landowners are the most precious part of a state."

Jefferson thought legislators could not "invent too many devices for subdividing" land holdings. Such a device was invented and eloquently advocated by the most learned men of France of that period, headed by Quesney, Turgot, Condorcet, Dupont and Mirabeau, with some of whom Jefferson was on terms of intimate acquaintance. This idea recognized common rights in land by appropriating ground rent through taxation. This rent of land they called the produit net -- the net, or surplus, product of land. Something of the same meaning the English political economist, John Stuart Mill, later gave to the term "the unearned increment of land." The French economists proposed in place of the many taxes falling upon production and upon wealth, one tax large enough to absorb the whole {xi} value of agricultural land. This tax, which they called the impot unique, and which Mirabeau, the elder, accounted a discovery equal in importance to the invention of writing or the displacement of barter by money, the Frenchmen wished to apply to agricultural land, which they regarded as the only productive land. To-day it is called the single tax, and would be applied to all land that has value, regardless of improvements, whether the land be agricultural, mineral, timber, grazing, urban or suburban. In 1774 Turgot had been appointed Minister of Finance by Louis XVI. , and at once commenced to clear the way for application of the impot unique, but the privileged nobility was yet dominant and overthrew him. Had he succeeded in applying it he would have shifted taxation from the backs of the impoverished and embruited masses to the game preserves and other great enclosures, would have forced the nobles to let go and would have opened to users vast quantities of idle land. But the nobles made successful resistance to this policy. Turgot stepped down and the social and political revolution was not long deferred.

In the United States a distant adaptation of this idea occurred under the Articles of Confederation, in the provision to obtain national revenue through a tax on real estate and slaves. Subsequently under the Constitution other sources of taxation were provided, and most of the revenue came to be raised through a tariff, which is a tax upon production.

{xii}

Thus the idea of recognizing equal rights to land and of penalizing the holding of land out of use, by treating rent as common property and taking it through taxation, was abandoned. The appropriator went ahead of the settler. All of the gigantic area westward from the Atlantic seaboard to the Pacific has long since been appropriated, or at least all of the accessible and valuable land, and millions are deprived of their "fundamental right to labor the earth." Can it now be said that "from Savannah to Portsmouth you will seldom meet a beggar?" Is there any part of the country that does not reveal them? Our farming regions contain thousands of tramps, and what were they originally but laborers searching for work? Do not our cities contain multitudes out of employment or in fear of it, and thereby reduced to that "dependence" which "begets subservience and venality, suffocates the germ of virtue and prepares fit tools for the designs of ambition." Indeed, are not our people "piled upon one another, * * * as in Europe," and have they not as a consequence "become corrupt, as in Europe?" Have we not one city with a larger population than the thirteen States contained at the time the "Notes on Virginia" were written (1781)? And so abjectly poor is a large part of that city's population that one in every ten who die each year in its principal and richest borough (Manhattan) is buried in Potter's Field at public expense!

Instead of our government remaining "virtuous {xiii} for many centuries," corruption like a worm has eaten its way to the core. Political bosses control wards, districts and States, and exert their baleful influences over national councils, as completely as English politicians in Jefferson's day ruled rotten boroughs and swayed the British Parliament. The mass of the people themselves were in the beginning virtuous. But they were reduced to dependence for subsistence, which corrupted them. They found difficulty in getting a living and sold or became neglectful of those priceless political rights for which the fathers of the republic fought so hard and gloriously, and established with such great labor.

Jefferson said, "Our governments will remain virtuous as long as there are vacant lands in any part of America." There are vacant lands, thousands upon tens and hundreds of thousands of acres, agricultural lands, grazing lands, timber lands, mineral lands, urban and suburban lands. These lands, if thrown open, would not only engage the multitudes of hands now idle or insufficiently occupied, but would support in comfort and luxury many times the eighty millions of population this nation now embraces. There is no difficulty about finding abundance of valuable vacant land; the difficulty is to find it unappropriated. All the great territory that is available for any use has been appropriated and made private property, although vastly the greater part of it lies idle and is held merely for speculation.

{xiv}

Obviously "the laws of property have been so far extended as to violate natural right." And since by reason of this appropriation and non-use of land large numbers of men are prevented from finding their natural employment, and since "other employment" is not provided them, does not "the fundamental right to labor the earth" return to them as Jefferson said it must under such circumstances?

Yet how effect this fundamental right to-day with our complex civilization?

Not by dividing up the land and giving to each his share. The simple, easy, just way would be to divide the rent, or rather to take it for common uses, remitting all taxes that now fall upon production and various forms of wealth, and concentrating taxation on the value of land, regardless of improvements. This single tax would tax out the land grabber. It would tax idle lands into use. Millions upon millions of locked up acres of every kind would be thrown open to the unemployed, there would be a compliance with the "fundamental natural right to labor the earth," and our people would once again become, as Jefferson thought they would for centuries remain, virtuous and happy.

New York, May 1, 1904.

CONTENTS

PAGE

JEFFERSON AND THE LAND QUESTION. By Henry George . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . i

LETTERS WRITTEN AFTER HIS RETURN TO THE UNITED STATES, 1789-1826 ......... ..... ..... 1-277

To Patrick K. Rodgers, January 29, 1824 . . . . . 1

To Joseph C. Cabell, February 3, 1824 . . . . . . . 4

To Jared Sparks, February 4, 1824..... ..... 8

To Robert J. Garnett, February 14, 1824. . . . . 14

To Isaac Engelbrecht, February 25, 1824. . . . . 16

To Augustus B. Woodward, March 24, 1824. . . . 17

To Edward Everett, March 27, 1824. . . . . . . . . 20

To Edward Livingston, April 4, 1824. . . . . . 22

To John Hambden Pleasants, April 19, 1824.. 26

To David Harding, April 20, 1824. . . . . . . 30

To Richard Rush, April 26, 1824. . . . . . . . . . 31

To Joseph C. Cabell, May 16, 1824. . . . . . . . . 35

To Major John Cartwright, June 5, 1824. . . . . 42

To Martin Van Buren, June 29, 1824 . . . . . . . . 52

To James Madison, July 14, 1824 . . . . . . . . 69

To Lewis E. Beck, July 16, 1824 . . . . . . . . . . . 71

To Henry Lee, August 10, 1824 . . . . . . . . . . . 73

To William Ludlow, September 6, 1824 . . . . . . 74

To the Marquis de Lafayette, October 9, 1824 . . . 76

To Richard Rush, October 13, 1824 . . . . . . . . . 78

To Edward Everett, October 15, 1824 . . . . . . . 80

To --, December 22, 1824 . . . . . . . . 84

To John Adams, January 8, 1825 . . . . . . . . . 89

{xvi}

To William Short, January 8, 1825....... .... 92

To Joseph C. Cabell, January 11, 1825........ 97

To General Alexander Smy,th, January 17, 1825 .... 100

John Adams to Thomas Jefferson, January 23, 1825 ........................... 102

To --, February 3, 1825 ............ 103

To --, February 20, 1825.... . .... 107

To Thomas Jefferson Smith, February 21, 1825 .... 110

To Edward Livingston, March 25, 1825.... . 112

To Augustus B. Woodward, April 3, 1825. . . 116

To Henry Lee, May 8, 1825..... .... .... .. 117

To Miss Frances Wright, August 7, 1825... .. 119

To John Vaughan, September 16, 1825........ 121

To Dr. James Mease, Sept. 26, 1825.... . ... 122

To --, Oct. 25, 1825 ..... .... ..... 124

To J. Evelyn Denison, Nov. 9, 1825 .... ... . 129

To Lewis M. Wiss, Nov. 27, 1825..... ... .. 135

To --, Dec. 18, 1825... . ..... ...139

To James Madison, Dec. 24, 1825.... ... .... 140

To William B. Giles, Dec.25, 1825...... .... 143

To William B. Giles, Dec.26, I825.. ... .... 146

To Claiborne W. Gooch, Jan. 9. 1826.... . 151.

To , Jan. 21, 1826.. .... ... . 153

To James Madison, Feb. 17, 1826..... .. ... 155

To John Adams, March 15, 1826..... ..... .. 159

To John Quincy Adams, March 30, 1826.. . . 160

To Edward Everett, April 8, 1826..... ... .. 162

To Dr. John P. Emmett, April 27, 1826... .. . 163

To Dr. John P. Emmett, May 2, 1826... ... 168

To --, May 15, 1526.. . . . .172

To Roger C. Weightman, June 24, 1826.... ... 181

To the British Minister (George Hammond), May 29, 1792......................... 183

{xvii}

REPLIES TO PUBLIC ADDRESSES. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 281-367

To Messrs. Nehemiah Dodge, Ephraim Robbins, and Stephen S. Nelson, January 1, 1802. . . . . 281

To William Judd, Chairman, November 15, 1802 ..... 282

To the Legislature of the State of Tennessee, December 24, 1803 ........ . ..... . . . 284}

To the Two Branches of the Legislature of Massachusetts, February 14, 1807. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 285.

To the President of the Senate, and Speaker of the House of Representatives of Massachusetts, February 14, 1807.. ............ . ........ 287

To Messrs. Thomas, Ellicot, and Others, November 13, 1807 ............. .. . ...... .. 288

To Captain John Thomas, November 18, 1807. . 290

To Governor Israel Smith, December 1, 1807. . . . 291

To the Legislature of Vermont, December 10, 1807 293

To the Representatives of the People of New Jersey in their Legislature, December 10, 1807 .... 294

To the Tammany Society of the City of Washington, December 14, 1807 ............ ..... 297

To Messrs. Abner Watkins and Bernard Todd, December 21, 1807...... .... ....... . . 298

To the General Assembly of North Carolina, January 10, 1808...... ... ........ . .... 299

To the Society of Tammany, or Columbian Order, No. 1, of the City of New York, February 29, 1808. ........ . .. .... .. ........ .... 301

To the Delegates of the Democratic Republicans of the City of Philadelphia, May 25, 1808. . . . 303

To the Legislature, Council and House of Representatives of the Territory of Orleans, June 18, 1808. ............ . . ... . ....:.... .. 305

To the Legislature of New Hampshire, August 2, 1808. ... .... .. ... ... . . .. . . .. 307

{xviii}

To Governor John Langdon, August 2, 1808 . . . . 308

To Governor John Langdon. (Private.) August 2, 1808 ..... ...... . ....:..... ......... 309

To the Honorable Joseph Alston, Speaker of the House of Representatives of South Carolina, August 4, 1808. ........ .......... . .... 310

To the Inhabitants of the Town of Boston, Newburyport and Providence, August 26, 1808. . . . 312

To a Portion of the Citizens of Boston, August 26, 1808 .. ..... . .. ....... ...... 314

To the Members of the Baltimore Baptist Association , October 17, 1808.......... ....... . 317

To the Members of the Ketocton Baptist Association, October 18, 1808. . . . . . . . . . . 319

To the General Meeting of Correspondence of the Six Baptist Associations represented at Chesterfield, Virginia, November 21, 1808. . . . . . . . 320

To Taber Fitch, Chairman, November 21, 1808. 321

To the Young Republicans of Pittsburg and its Vicinity, December 2, 1808. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 323

To the Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church at Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, December 9, 1808: 325

To the Electors of the County of Ontario, in the State of New York, December 13, 1808. . . . 326

To the Citizens of the City and County of Philadelphia, February 3, 1809........ . ....... 328

To the Legislature of the State of Georgia, February 3, 1809... ............ . . . . ..... 330

To the Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church at New London, Connecticut, February 4., 1809 ..... 331

To the General Assembly of Virginia, February 16, 1809. ..... ...... . 333

To the Citizens of Wilmington and its Vicinity, February 16, 1809...... . ... . .. ... ... 335

{xix}

To John Gassaway, February 17, 1809..... .... 336

To Captain Joseph --, Jr:, February 17, 1809........................... 337

To the Republican Young Men of New London, Benjamin Hempstead, Chairman, February 24,1809 ...........................339

To the Republicans of Loudon County, Convened at Leesburg, February 24, 1809..... ... .. . 340

To Governor Daniel D. Tompkins, February 24, 1809.......... ............... 341

To General James Robertson, February 24, 1809. 342

To the Republicans of the County of Niagara, Convened at Clarence on the 28th of January, 1809. February 24, 1809.. .. .. ... ... . 343

To Captain Quin Morton, February 24, 1809.. . 345

To the Tammany Society or Columbian Order of the City of Washington, March 2, 1809... . 346

To the Citizens of Washington, March 4, 1809... 347

To the Republicans of Georgetown, March 8, 1809 .... 349

To Stephen Cross, Topsham, March 28, 1809.... 350

To the Republican Mechanics of the Town of Leesburg and its Vicinity, March 29, 1809.... 352

To the Friends of the Administration of the United States in Bristol County, Rhode Island, March 29, 1809 ....................... 354

To the Democratic Republican Delegates from the Townships of Washington County, in Pennsylvania, March 3I, 1809................ 355

To the Citizens of Alleghany County, in Maryland,March 31, 1809.... ... .. .. .... . . 357

To the Republican Citizens of Washington County Maryland, March 31, 1809..... ... .. .... 358

To James Hochie, President of the Ancient Plymouth Society of New London, April 2, 1809.. 359

{xx}

To Governor Robert Wright, April 3, 1809...... 360

To the Legislature of the State of New York, April 12, 1809... ..... .. .. . .... .....361

To the Republicans of Queen Anne's County, April 13, 1809......... ..... . ... ... .. 362

To the Members of the Baptist Church of Buck Mountain in Albemarle, April 13, 1809... .... 363

To Jonathan Low, Hartford, Connecticut, April 13, 1809................. ........ 364

To the Tammany Society of the City of Baltimore, May 25, 1809.. .... .... . . ........ . . 366

INDIAN ADDRESSES.. ..... ..... .. ... . ...... 371-472

To Brother John Baptist de Coigne, June, 1781 .... 371

To Brothers and Friends of the Miamis, Powtewatamies, and Weeauks, January 7, 1802. . . . 390

To Brothers of the Delaware and Shawanee nations February 10, 1802....... ....... .... .... 391

To Brother Handsome Lake, November 3, 1802. 393

To Brothers Miamis and Delawares, January 8, 1803 ... .... ..... .. 396

To Brothers of the Choctaw Nation, December 17, 1803 ....... ..... ...... ...... . . ..... 400

To My Children, White-hairs, Chiefs, and Warriors of the Osage Nation, July 16, 1804. . . . . . . 405

To My Children, Chiefs of the Chickasaw Nation, Minghay, Mataha, and Tishohotana, March 7, 1805 .. ..... ... . .... ........ ..... .. 410

To the Wolf and People of the Mandar nation, December 30, 1806...... . .... .... .... 412

To the Chiefs of the Osage Nation, December 31, 1806 .. ... ... 417

To the Chiefs of the Shawanee Nation, February 19, 1807 .. .. ... ..... ....... . ... . .. 421

{xxi}

To Kitchao Geboway, February 27, 2808. . . . . . . . 425

To the Chiefs of the Ottawas, Chippewas, Powtewatamies, Wyandots, and Senecas of Sandusky, April 22, 1808 ................... .. . .... 428

To the Chiefs of the Upper Cherokees, May 4, 1808 .... 432

To Colonel Louis Cook and Jacob Francis of the St. Rigis Indians, May 5, 1808. . . . . . . . . . 436

To the Delaware Chief, Captain Armstrong, December, 1808............................ 437

To the Miamis, Powtewatamies, Delawares and Chippeways, December 21, 1808. . . . . . . . . . 438

To Little Turtle, Chief of the Miamis, December 21, 1808 ................. . .............. 440

To Manchot, the great War Chief of the Powtewatamies,December 21, 1808................ 443

To Beaver, the Head warrior of the Delawares, December 21, 1808 ....... ......... ...... 447

To Captain Hendrick, the Delawares, Mohiccons, and Munries, December 21, 1808. . . . . . . . . 450

To Kitchao Geboway, December 21, 1808. . . . . . 454

To the Deputies of the Cherokee Upper Towns, January 9, 1809...... .... ... ........... 455

To the Deputies of the Cherokees of the Upper and Lower Towns, January 9, 1809. . . . . . . . . . . . . 458

To the Chiefs of the Wyandots, Ottawas, Chippewas, Powtewatamies and Shawanese, January 10, 1809 ... .. . ........ ...... ...... . 461

To the Chiefs of the Ottawas, Chippewas, Powtewatamies, Shawanese and Wyandots, January 18, 1809 ................. ......... ... . 466

To the Chiefs of the Ottawas, Chippewas, Powtewatamies, Wyandots and Shawanese, January 31, 1809 ..... . ..... .......... .... ... 470

MONTICELLO, January 29, 1824.

SIR, -- I have duly received your favor of the 14th, with a copy of your mathematical principles of natural philosophy, which I have looked into with all the attention which the rust of age and long-continued avocations of a very different character permit me to exercise. I think them entirely worthy of approbation, both as to matter and method, and for their brevity as a text-book; and I remark particularly the clearness and precision with which the propositions are enounced, and, in the demonstrations, the easy form in which ideas are presented to the mind, so as to be almost intuitive and self-evident. Of Cavallo's book, which you say you are enjoined to teach, I have no knowledge, {2} having never seen it; but its character is, I think, that of mere mediocrity; and, from my personal acquaintance with the man, I should expect no more. He was heavy, capable enough of understanding what he read, and with memory to retain it, but without the talent of digestion or improvement. But, indeed, the English generally have been very stationary in latter times, and the French on the contrary, so active and successful, particularly in preparing elementary books, in the mathematical and natural sciences, that those who wish for instruction, without caring from what nation they get it, resort universally to the latter language. Besides the earlier and invaluable works of Euler and Bezont, we have latterly that of Lacroix in mathematics, of Legendre in geometry, Lavoisier in chemistry, the elementary works of Hauy in physics, Biot in experimental physics and physical astronomy, Dumeril in natural history, to say nothing of many detached essays of Monge and others and the transcendent labors of Laplace, and I am . informed, by a highly instructed person recently from Cambridge, that the mathematicians of that institution, sensible of being in the rear of those of the continent, and ascribing the cause much to their too long-continued preference of the geometrical over the analytical methods, which the French have so much cultivated and improved, have now adopted the latter; and that they have also given up the fluxionary, for the differential calculus. To {3} confine a school, therefore, to the obsolete work of Cavallo, is to shut out all advances in the physical sciences, which have been so great in latter times. I am glad, however, to learn from your work, and to expect from those it promised in succession, which will doubtless be of equal grade, that so good a course of instruction is pursued in William and Mary. It is very long since I have had any information of the state of education in that seminary, to which, as my alma mater, my attachment has been ever sincere, although not exclusive. When that college was located at the middle plantation in 1693, Charles City was a frontier county, and there were no inhabitants above the falls of the rivers, sixty miles only higher up. It was, therefore, a position, nearly central to the population, as it then was; but when the frontier became extended to the Sandy river, three hundred miles west of Williamsburg, the public convenience called, first for a removal of the seat of government, and latterly, not for a removal of the college, but, for the establishment of a new one, in a more central and healthy situation; not disturbing the old one in its possessions or functions, but leaving them unimpaired for the benefit of those to whom it is convenient. And indeed, I do not foresee that the number of its students is likely to be much affected; because I presume that, at present, its distance and autumnal climate prevent its receiving many students from above the tide-waters, and especially {4} from above the mountains. This is, therefore, one of the cases where the lawyers say there is damnum absque injuria; and they instance, as in point, the settlement of a new schoolmaster in the neighborhood of an old one. At any rate it is one of those cases wherein the public interest rightfully prevails, and the justice of which will be yielded to by none, I am sure, with more dutiful and candid acquiescence than the enlightened friends of our ancient and venerable institution. The only rivalship, I hope, between the old and the new, will be in doing the most good possible in their respective sections of country.

As the diagrams of your book have not been engraved, I return you the MS. of them, which must be of value to yourself. They furnish favorable specimens of the graphical talent of your former pupil. Permit me to add, that I shall always be ready and happy to receive with particular welcome the visit of which you flatter me with the hope, and to avail myself of the occasion of assuring you personally of my great respect and esteem.

TO JOSEPH C. CABELL.

MONTICELLO, February 3, 1824..

DEAR SIR, -- I am favored with your two letters of January the 26th and 29th, and I am glad that yourself and the friends of the University are so well satisfied, that the provisos amendatory of the {5} University Act are mere nullities. I had not been able to put out of my head the Algebraical equation, which was among the first of my college lessons, that a - a=0. Yet I cheerfully arrange myself to your opinions. I did not suppose, nor do I now suppose it possible, that both Houses of the legislature should ever consent, for an additional fifteen thousand dollars of revenue, to set all the professors and students of the University adrift; and if foreigners will have the same confidence which we have in our legislature, no harm will have been done by the provisos. You recollect that we had agreed that the Visitors who are of the legislature should fix on a certain day of meeting, after the rising of the Assembly, to put into immediate motion the measures which this act was expected to call for. You will of course remind the Governor that a re-appointment of Visitors is to be made on the day following Sunday, the 29th of this month; and as he is to appoint the day of their first meeting, it would be well to recommend to him that which our brethren there shall fix on. It may be designated by the Governor as the third. fourth, etc., day after the rising of the legislature, which will give it certainty enough.

You ask what sum would be desirable for the purchase of books and apparatus? Certainly the largest you can obtain. Forty or fifty thousand dollars would enable us to purchase the most essential books of texts and reference for the schools, and {6} such an apparatus for mathematics, astronomy and chemistry, as may enable us to set out with tolerable competence, if we can, through the banks and otherwise, anticipate the whole sum at once.

I remark what you say on the subject of committing ourselves to any one for the law appointment. Your caution is perfectly just. I hope, and am certain, that this will be the standing law of discretion and duty with every member of our board, in this and all cases. You know we have all, from the beginning, considered the high qualifications of our professors, as the only means by which we could give to our institution splendor and pre-eminence over all its sister seminaries. The only question, therefore, we can ever ask ourselves, as to any candidate, will be, is he the most highly qualified? The College of Philadelphia has lost its character of primacy by indulging motives of favoritism and nepotism, and by conferring the appointments as if the professorships were entrusted to them as provisions for their friends. And even that of Edinburgh, you know, is also much lowered from the same cause. We are next to observe, that a man is not qualified for a professor, knowing nothing but merely his own profession. He should be otherwise well educated as to the sciences generally; able to converse understandingly with the scientific men with whom he is associated, and to assist in the councils of the faculty on any subject of science on which they may have {7} occasion to deliberate. Without this, he will incur their contempt, and bring disreputation on the institution. With respect to the professorship you mention, I scarcely know any of our judges personally; but I will name, for example, the late Judge Roane, who, I believe, was generally admitted to be among the ablest of them. His knowledge was confined to the common law chiefly, which does not constitute one-half of the qualification of a really learned lawyer, much less that of a professor of law for an University. And as to any other branches of science, he must have stood mute in the presence of his literary associates, or of any learned strangers or others visiting the University. Would this constitute the splendid stand we propose to take? In the course of the trusts I have exercised through life with powers of appointment, I can say with truth, and with unspeakable comfort, that I never did appoint a relation to office, and that merely because I never saw the case in which some one did not offer, or occur, better qualified; and I have the most unlimited confidence, that in the appointment of Professors to our nursling institution, every individual of my associates will look with a single eye to the sublimation of its character, and adopt, as our sacred motto, "detur digniori." In this way it will honor us, and bless our country.

I perceive that I have permitted my reflections to run into generalities beyond the scope of the {8} particular intimation in your letter. I will let them go, however, as a general confession of faith, not belonging merely to the present case.

Name me affectionately to our brethren with you, and be assured yourself of my constant friendship and respect.

TO JARED SPARKS.

MONTICELLO, February 4, 1824.

DEAR SIR, -- I duly received your favor of the 13th, and with it, the last number of the North American Review. This has anticipated the one I should receive in course, but have not yet received, under my subscription to the new series. The article on the African colonization of the people of color, to which you invite my attention, I have read with great consideration. It is, indeed, a fine one, and will do much good. I learn from it more, too, than I had before known, of the degree of success and promise of that colony.

In the disposition of these unfortunate people, there are two rational objects to be distinctly kept in view. First. The establishment of a colony on the coast of Africa, which may introduce among the aborigines the arts of cultivated life, and the blessings of civilization and science. By doing this, we may make to them some retribution for the long course of injuries we have been committing on their population. And considering that these {9} blessings will descend to the "nati natorum, et qui nascentur ab illis," we shall in the long run have rendered them perhaps more good than evil. To fulfil this object, the colony of Sierra Leone promises well, and that of Mesurado adds to our prospect of success. Under this view, the colonization society is to be considered as a missionary society, having in view, however, objects more humane, more justifiable, and less aggressive on the peace of other nations, than the others of that appellation. The second object, and the most interesting to us, as coming home to our physical and moral characters, to our happiness and safety, is to provide an asylum to which we can, by degrees, send the whole of that population from among us, and establish them under our patronage and protection, as a separate, free and independent people, in some country and climate friendly to human life and happiness. That any place on the coast of Africa should answer the latter purpose, I have ever deemed entirely impossible. And without repeating the other arguments which have been urged by others, I will appeal to figures only, which admit no controversy. I shall speak in round numbers, not absolutely accurate, yet not so wide from truth as to vary the result materially. There are in the United States a million and a half of people of color in slavery. To send off the whole of these at once, nobody conceives to be practicable for us, or expedient for them. Let us take twenty-five years {10} for its accomplishment, within which time they will be doubled. Their estimated value as property, in the first place, (for actual property has been lawfully vested in that form, and who can lawfully take it from the possessors?) at an average of two hundred dollars each; young and old, would amount to six hundred millions of dollars, which must be paid or lost by somebody. To this, add the cost of their transportation by land and sea to Mesurado, a year's provision of food and clothing, implements of husbandry and of their trades, which will amount to three hundred millions more, making thirty-six millions of dollars a year for twenty-five years, with insurance of peace all that time, and it is impossible to look at the question a second time. I am aware that at the end of about sixteen years, a gradual detraction from this sum will commence, from the gradual diminution of breeders, and go on during the remaining nine years. Calculate this deduction, and it is still impossible to look at the enterprise a second time. I do not say this to induce an inference that the getting rid of them is forever impossible. For that is neither my opinion nor my hope. But only that it cannot be done in this way. There is, I think, a way in which it can be done; that is, by emancipating the afterborn, leaving them, on due compensation, with their mothers, until their services are worth their maintenance, and then putting them to industrious occupations, until a proper age for deportation.

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In the plan sketched in the Notes on Virginia, no particular place of asylum was specified; because it was thought possible, that in the revolutionary state of America, then commenced, events might open to us some one within practicable distance. This has now happened. St. Domingo has become independent, and with a population of that color only; and if the public papers are to be credited, their Chief offers to pay their passage, to receive them as free citizens, and to provide them employment. This leaves, then, for the general confederacy, no expense but of nurture with the mother a few years, and would call, of course, for a very moderate appropriation of the vacant lands. Suppose the whole annual increase to be of sixty thousand effective births, fifty vessels, of four hundred tons burden each; constantly employed in that short run, would carry off the increase of every year, and the old stock would die off in the ordinary course of nature, lessening from the commencement until its final disappearance. In this way no violation of private right is proposed. Voluntary surrenders would probably come in as fast as the means to be provided for their care would be competent to it. Looking at my own State only, and I presume not to speak for the others, I verily believe that this surrender of property would not amount to more, annually, than half our present direct {13} taxes, to be continued fully about twenty or twenty-five years, and then gradually diminishing for as many more until their final extinction; and even this half tax would not be paid in cash, but by the delivery of an object which they have never yet known or counted as part of their property; and those not possessing the object will be called on for nothing. I do not go into all the details of the burdens and benefits of this operation. And who could estimate its blessed effects? I leave this to those who will live to see their accomplishment, and to enjoy a beatitude forbidden to my age. But I leave it with this admonition, to rise and be doing. A million and a half are within their control; but six millions, (which a majority of those now living will see them attain,) and one million of these fighting men; will say, "we will not go."

I am aware that this subject involves some constitutional scruples. But a liberal construction, justified by the object, may go far, and an amendment of the Constitution, the whole length necessary. The separation of infants from their mothers, too, would produce some scruples of humanity. But this would be straining at a gnat, and swallowing a camel.

I am much pleased to see that you have taken up the subject of the duty on imported books. I hope a crusade will be kept up against it, until those in power shall become sensible of this stain on our legislation, and shall wipe it from their code, and from the remembrance of man, if possible.

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I salute you with assurances of high respect and esteem.

TO ROBERT J. GARNETT.

MONTICELLO, February 14, 1824.

DEAR SIR, -- I have to thank you for the copy of Colonel Taylor's New Views of the Constitution and shall read them with the satisfaction and edification which I have ever derived from whatever he has written. But I fear it is the voice of one crying in the wilderness. Those who formerly usurped the name of federalists, which, in fact, they never were, have now openly abandoned it, and are as openly marching by the road of construction, in a direct line to that consolidation which was always their real object. They, almost to a man, are in possession of one branch of the government, and appear to be very strong in yours. The three great questions of amendment now before you, will give the measure of their strength. I mean, 1st, the limitation of the term of the Presidential service; 2d, the placing the choice of President effectually in the hands of the people; 3d, the giving to Congress the power of internal improvement, on condition that each State's federal proportion of the moneys so expended, shall be employed within the State. The friends of consolidation would rather take these powers by construction than accept them by direct investiture from the States.

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Yet, as to internal improvement particularly, there is probably not a State in the Union which would not grant the power on the condition proposed, or which would grant it without that. The best general key for the solution of questions of power between our governments, is the fact that "every foreign and federal power is given to the federal government, and to the States every power purely domestic." I recollect but one instance of control vested in the federal, over the State authorities, in a matter purely domestic, which is that of metallic tenders. The federal is, in truth, our foreign government, which department alone is taken from the sovereignty of the separate States.

The real friends of the Constitution in its federal form, if they wish it to be immortal, should be attentive, by amendments, to make it keep pace with the advance of the age in science and experience. Instead of this, the European governments have resisted reformation, until the people, seeing no other resource, undertake it themselves by force, their only weapon, and work it out through blood, desolation and long-continued anarchy. Here it will be by large fragments breaking off, and refusing re-union but on condition of amendment, or perhaps permanently. If I can see these three great amendments prevail, I shall consider it as a renewed extension of the term of our lease, shall live in more confidence, and die in more hope. And I do trust that the republican mass, which Colonel Taylor {16} justly says is the real federal one, is still strong enough to carry these truly federo-republican amendments. With my prayers for the issue, accept my friendly and respectful salutations.

TO ISAAC ENGELBRECHT.

MONTICELLO, February 25, 1824.

SIR, -- The kindness of the motive which led to the request of your letter of the 14th instant, and which would give some value to an article from me, renders compliance a duty of gratitude; knowing nothing more moral, more sublime, more worthy of your preservation than David's description of the good man, in his 15th Psalm, I will here transcribe it from Brady and Tate's version:

Lord, who's the happy man that may to Thy blest courts repair, Not stranger-like to visit them, but to inhabit there?
'Tis he whose every thought and deed by rules of virtue moves,
Whose generous tongue disdains to speak the thing his heart disproves.
Who never did a slander forge, his neighbor's fame to wound,
Nor hearken to a false report, by malice whispered round.
Who vice, in all its pomp and power, can treat with just neglect;
And piety, though clothed in rags, religiously respect.
Who to his plighted vows and trust has ever firmly stood,
And though he promise to his loss, he makes his promise good.
Whose soul in usury disdains his treasure to employ,
Whom no rewards can ever bribe the guiltless to destroy.
The man who, by this steady course, has happiness ensur'd,
When earth's foundations shake, shall stand, by Providence secur'd.

Accept this as a testimony of my respect for your request, an acknowledgment of a due sense of the {17} favor of your opinion, and an assurance of my good will and best wishes.

TO JUDGE AUGUSTUS B. WOODWARD.

MONTICELLO, March 24, 1824.

I have to thank you, dear Sir, for the copy I have received of your System of Universal Science, for which, I presume, I am indebted to yourself. It will be a monument of the learning of the author and of the analyzing powers of his mind. Whether it may be adopted in general use is yet to be seen.. These analytical views indeed must always be ramified according to their object. Yours is on the great scale of a methodical encyclopedia of all human sciences, taking for the basis of their distribution, matter, mind, and the union of both. Lord Bacon founded his first great division on the faculties of the mind which have cognizance of these sciences. It does not seem to have been observed by any one that the origination of this division was not with him. It had been proposed by Charron more than twenty years before, in his book de la Sagesse, B. 1, c. 14, and an imperfect ascription of the sciences to these respective faculties was there attempted. This excellent moral work was published in 1600. Lord Bacon is said not to have entered on his great work until his retirement from public office in 1621. Where sciences are to be arranged in accommodation to the schools of an {18} university, they will be grouped to coincide with the kindred qualifications of Professors in ordinary. For a library, which was my object, their divisions and subdivisions will be made such as to throw convenient masses of books under each separate head. Thus, in the library of a physician, the books of that science,' of which he has many, will be subdivided under many heads; and those of law, of which he has few, will be placed under a single one. The lawyer, again, will distribute his law books under many subdivisions, his medical under a single one. Your idea of making the subject matter of the sciences the basis of their distribution, is certainly more reasonable than that of the faculties to which they are addressed. The materialists will perhaps criticise a basis, one-half of which they will say is a non-existence; adhering to the axiom of Aristotle, "nihil est in intellectu quod prius non fuerit in sensu," and affirming that we can have no evidence of any existence which impresses no sense. Of this opinion were most of the ancient philosophers, and several of the early and orthodox fathers of the Christian Church. Indeed, Jesus Himself, the Founder of our religion, was unquestionably a Materialist as to man. In all His doctrines of the resurrection, He teaches expressly that the body is to rise in substance. In the Apostles' Creed, we all declare that we believe in the "resurrection of the body." Jesus said that God is Spirit ( ) without defining it. Tertullian {19} supplies the definition, "quis negabit Deum esse corpus, etsi Deus Spiritus? spiritus etiam corporis sui generis in sua effigie." And Origen, "( ) accipi, docet, pro eo quod non est simile huic nostro crassiori et visibli corpori, sed quod est naturaliter subtile et velut aura tenue." The modern philosophers mostly consider thought as a function of our material organization; and Locke particularly among them, charges with blasphemy those who deny that Omnipotence could give the faculty of thinking to certain combinations of matter. Were I to re-compose my tabular view of the sciences, I should certainly transpose a particular branch. The naturalists, you know, distribute the history of nature into three kingdoms or departments: zoology, botany, mineralogy. Ideology or mind, however, occupies so much space in the field of science, that we might perhaps erect it into a fourth kingdom or department. But, inasmuch as it makes a part of the animal construction only, it would be more proper to subdivide zoology into physical and moral. The latter including ideology, ethics, and mental science generally, in my catalogue, considering ethics, as well as religion, as supplements to law in the government of man, I had placed them in that sequence. But certainly the faculty of thought belongs to animal history, is an important portion of it, and should there find its place. But these are speculations in which I do not now permit myself to labor. My mind unwillingly {20} engages in severe investigations. Its energies, indeed, are no longer equal to them. Being to thank you for your book, its subject has run away with me into a labyrinth of ideas no longer familiar, and writing also has become a slow and irksome operation with me. I have been obliged to avail myself of the pen of a granddaughter for this communication. I will here, therefore, close my task of thinking, hers of writing, and yours of reading, with assurances of my constant and high respect and esteem.

TO EDWARD EVERETT.

MONTICELLO, March 27, 1824.

DEAR SIR, -- I have to thank you for your Greek Reader, which, for the use of

schools, is evidently preferable to the Collectanea Graeca. These have not arranged their selections so well in gradation from the easier to the more difficult styles.

On the subject of the Greek ablative, I dare say that your historical explanation is the true one. In the early stages of languages, the distinctions of cases may well be supposed so few as to be readily effected by changes of termination. The Greeks, in this way, seem to have formed five, the Latins six, and to have supplied their deficiences as they occurred in the progress of development, by prepositive words. In later times, the Italians, Spaniards, and French, have depended on prepositions

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{22 Jefferson's Works}

languages, whose nouns have such various changes of termination as to express all the relations which other languages express by prepositions, and therefore having no prepositions. On this ground, I suppose, then, we may rest the question of the Greek ablative. It leaves with me a single difficulty only, to wit: the instances where they have given the ablative signification to the dative termination, some of which I quoted in my former letter to you.

I have just received a letter from Coray, at Paris, of the 28th December, in

which he confirms the late naval success of the Greeks, but expresses a melancholy fear for his nation, "qui a montre jusqu'a ce moment des prodiges de valeur, mais qui, delivree d'un joug de Cannibass, ne peut encore posseder ni les lecons d'instruction, ni celles de l'experience." I confess I have the same fears for our South American brethren; the qualifications for self-government in society are not innate. They are the result of habit and long training, and for these they will require time and probably much suffering.

I salute you with assurances of great esteem and respect.

TO EDWARD LIVINGSTON.

MONTICELLO, April 4, 1824.

DEAR SIR, -- It was with great pleasure I learned that the good people of New

Orleans had restored

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independent and supreme, each within its own sphere of action. Whenever a doubt arises to which of these branches a power belongs, I try it by this test. I recollect no case where a question simply between citizens of the same State, has been transferred to the foreign department, except that of inhibiting tenders but of metallic money, and ex post facto legislation. The causes of these singularities are well remembered.

I thank you for the copy of your speech on the question of national

improvement, which I have read with great pleasure, and recognize in it those powers of reasoning and persuasion of which I had formerly seen from you so many proofs. Yet, in candor, I must say it has not removed, in my mind, all the difficulties of the question. And I should really be alarmed at a difference of opinion with you, and suspicious of my own, were it not that I have, as companions in sentiments, the Madisons, the Monroes, the Randolphs, the Macons, all good men and true, of primitive principles. In one sentiment of the speech I particularly concur. "If we have a doubt relative to any power, we ought not to exercise it." When we consider the extensive and deep-seated opposition to this assumption, the conviction entertained by so many, that this deduction of powers by elaborate construction prostrates the rights reserved to the States, the difficulties with which it will rub along in the course of its exercise; that changes of majorities will be

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and it is with great reluctance I permit my mind ever to encounter subjects of difficult investigation. You have many years yet to come of vigorous activity, and I confidently trust they will be employed in cherishing every measure which may foster our brotherly union, and perpetuate a constitution of government destined to be the primitive and precious model of what is to change the condition of man over the globe. With this confidence, equally strong in your powers and purposes, I pray you to accept the assurance of my cordial esteem and respect.

TO JOHN HAMBDEN PLEASANTS.

MONTICELLO, April 19, 1824.

DEAR SIR, -- I received in due time your favor of the 12th., requesting my opinion on the proposition to call a convention for amending the constitution of the State. That this should not be perfect cannot be a subject of wonder, when it is considered that ours was not only the first of the American States, but the first nation in the world, at least within the records of history, which peaceably by its wise men, formed on free deliberation, a constitution of government for itself, and deposited it in writing, among their archives, always ready and open to the appeal of every citizen. The other States, who successively formed constitutions for them

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and have deemed the authority of their people a necessary foundation for a constitution.

Another defect which has been corrected by most of the States is, that the

basis of our constitution is in opposition to the principle of equal. political rights, refusing to all but freeholders any participation in the natural right of self-government. It is believed, for example, that a very great majority of the militia, on whom the burden of military duty was imposed in the late war, were men unrepresented in the legislation which imposed this burden on them. However nature may by mental or physical disqualifications have marked infants and the weaker sex for the protection, rather than the direction of government, yet among the men who either pay or fight for their country, no line of right can be drawn. The exclusion of a majority of our freemen from the right of representation is merely arbitrary, and an usurpation of the minority over the majority; for it is believed that the non-freeholders compose the majority of our free and adult male citizens.

And even among our citizens who participate in the representative privilege,

the equality of political rights is entirely prostrated by our constitution. Upon which principle of right or reason can any one justify the giving to every citizen of Warwick as much weight in the government as to twenty-two equal citizens in Loudoun, and similar inequalities among the other counties? If these funda-

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doubtless are, the reformation of some of which might very much lessen the expenses of government, improve its organization, and add to the wisdom and purity of its administration in all its parts; but these things I leave to others, not permitting myself to take sides in the political questions of the day. I willingly acquiesce in the institutions of my country, perfect or imperfect; and think it a duty to leave their modifications to those who are to live under them, and are to participate of the good or evil they may produce. The present generation, has the same right of self-government which the past one has exercised for itself. And those in the full vigor of body and mind are more able to judge for themselves than those who are sinking under the wane of both. If the sense of our citizens on the question of a convention can be fairly and fully taken, its result will, I am sure, be wise and salutary; and far from arrogating the office of advice, no one will more passively acquiesce in it than myself. Retiring, therefore, to the tranquillity called for by increasing years and debility, I wish not to be understood as intermeddling in this question; and to my prayers for the general good,

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I have only to add assurances to yourself of my great esteem.

TO MR. DAVID HARDING, PRESIDENT OF THE JEFFER-

SON DEBATING SOCIETY OF HINGHAM.

MONTICELLO, Aprll 20, 1824.

SIR, -- I have duly received your favor of the 6th instant, informing me of the

institution of a debating society in Hingham, composed of adherents to the republican principles of the Revolution; and I am justly sensible of the honor done my name by associating it with the title of the society. The object of the society is laudable, and in a republican nation, whose citizens are to be led by reason and persuasion, and not by force, the art of reasoning becomes of first importance. In this line antiquity has left us the finest models for imitation; and he who studies and imitates them most nearly, will nearest approach the perfection of the art. Among these I should consider the speeches of Livy, Sallust, and Tacitus, as pre-eminent specimens of logic, taste, and that sententious brevity which, using not a word to spare,'leaves not a moment for inattention to the hearer. Amplification is the vice of modern oratory. It is an insult to an assembly of reasonable men, disgusting and revolting instead of persuading. Speeches measured by the hour, die with the hour. I will not, however, further indulge the disposition of the age to sermonize, and especially to those surrounded

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MONTICELLO, April 26, 1824.

DEAR SIR, -- I have heretofore informed you that our legislature had undertaken

the establishment of an University in Virginia; that it was placed in my neighborhood, and under the direction of a board of seven Visitors, of whom I am one, Mr. Madison another, and others equally worthy of confidence. We have been four or five years engaged in erecting our buildings, all of which are now ready to receive their tenants, one excepted, which the present season will put into a state for use. The last session of our legislature had by new donations liberated the revenue of fifteen thousand dollars a year, with which they had before endowed the institution, and we propose to open it the beginning of the next year. We require the intervening time for seeking out and engaging Professors. As to these we have determined to receive no one who is not of the first order of science in his line; and as such in every branch cannot be obtained with us, we propose to seek some of them at least in the countries ahead of us in science, and preferably in Great Britain, the land of

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our own language, habits, and manners. But how to find out those who are of the first grade of science, of sober, correct habits and morals, harmonizing tempers, talents for communication, is the difficulty. Our first step is to send a special agent to the Universities of Oxford, Cambridge, and Edinburgh, to make the selection for us; and the person appointed for this office is the gentleman who will hand you this letter, -- Mr. Francis Walker Gilmer, -- the best educated subject we have raised since the Revolution, highly qualified in all the important branches of science, professing particularly that of the law, which he has practised some years at our Supreme Court with good success and flattering prospects. His morals, his amiable temper and discretion, will do justice to any confidence you may be willing to place in him, for I commit him to you as his mentor and guide in the business he goes on. We do not certainly expect to obtain such known characters as were the Cullens, the Robertsons and Porsons of Great Britain, men of the first eminence established. there in reputation and office, and with emoluments not to be bettered anywhere. But we know that there is another race treading on their heels, preparing to take their places, and as well and sometimes better qualified to fill them. These while unsettled, surrounded by a crowd of competitors, of equal claims and perhaps superior credit and interest, may prefer a comfortable certainty here for an uncertain hope there, and a lingering delay even of

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our eye on Mr. Blaetterman for the professorship of modern languages, and Mr. Gilmer is instructed to engage him, if no very material objection to him may have arisen unknown to us. We can place in Mr. Gilmer's hands but a moderate sum at present for merely text-books to begin with, and for indispensable articles of apparatus, Mathematical, Astronomical, Physical, Chemical and Anatomical. We are in the hope of a sum of $50,000, as soon as we can get a settlement passed through the public offices. My experience in dealing with the bookseller Lackington, on your recommendation, has induced me to recommend him to Mr. Gilmer, and if we can engage his fidelity, we may put into his hands the larger supply of books when we are ready to call for it, and particularly what we shall propose to seek in England.

Although I have troubled you with many particulars, I yet leave abundance for

verbal explanation with Mr. Gilmer, who possesses a full knowledge of everything, and our full confidence in everything. He takes with him plans of our establishment, which we think it may be encouraging to show to the persons to whom he will make propositions, as well to let them see the comforts provided for themselves, as to show by the extensiveness and expense of the scale, that it is no ephemeral thing to which they are invited.

With my earnest solicitations that you will give us all your aid in an

undertaking on which we rest

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MONTICELLO, May 16, 1824.

DEAR SIR, -- Your favor of the 5th, from Williamsburg, has been duly received,

and presents to us a case of pregnant character, admitting important issues, and requiring serious consideration and conduct; yet I am more inclined to view it with hope than dismay. It involves two questions: First. Shall the College of William and Mary be removed? Second. To what place? As to the first, I never doubted the lawful authority of the legislature over the college, as being a public institution and endowed from the public property, by public agents for that function, and for public purposes. Some have doubted this authority without a relinquishment of what they call a vested right by the body corporate. But as their voluntary relinquishment is a circumstance of the case, it is relieved from that doubt. I certainly never wished that my venerable alma mater should be disturbed. I considered it as an actual possession of that ancient and earliest settlement of our forefathers, and was disposed to see it yielded as a courtesy, rather than taken as a right. They, however, are free to renounce a benefit, and we to receive it. Had we dissolved it on the prin

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ciple of right, to give a direction to its funds more useful to the public, the professors, although their chartered tenure is during pleasure only, might have reasonably expected a vale of a year or two's salary, as an intermediate support,. until they could find other employment for their talents. And notwithstanding that their abandonment is voluntary, this should still be given them. On this first question I think we should be absolutely silent and passive, taking no part in it until the old institution is loosened from its foundation and fairly placed on its wheels.

2. On the second question, to what place shall it be moved? we may take the

field boldly. Richmond, it seems, claims it, but on what ground of advantage to the public? When the professors their charter and funds shall be translated to Richmond, will they become more enlightened there than at the old place? Will they possess more science? be more capable of communicating it? or more competent to raise it from the dead, in a new sect, than to keep it alive in the ancient one? Or has Richmond any peculiarities more favorable for the communication of the sciences generally than the place which the legislature has preferred and fixed on for that purpose? This will not be pretended. But it seems they possess advantages for a medical school. Let us scan them. Anatomy may be as competently taught at the University as at Richmond, the only subjects of discretion which either place can count on are equally acquirable at both. And as to medi-

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and handled by his students to hear their case learnedly explained to them, its threatening symptoms developed, and its probable termination foreboded? In vindication of Richmond, I may surely answer that there is not in the place a family so heartless, as, relinquishing their own tender cares of a child or parent, to abandon them in sickness to this last resource of poverty; for it is poverty alone which peoples hospitals, and those alone who are on the charities of their parish would go to their hospital. Have they paupers enough to fill a hospital? and sickness enough among these? One reason alleged for the removal of the college to Richmond is that Williamsburg is sickly, is happily little apt for the situation of a hospital. No, Sir; Richmond is no place to furnish subjects for clinical lectures. I have always had Norfolk in view for this purpose. The climate and pontine country around Norfolk render it truly sickly in itself. It is, moreover, the rendezvous not only of the shipping of commerce, but of the vessels of the public navy. The United States have there a hospital already established, and supplied with subjects from these local circumstances. I had thought and have mentioned to yourself and our colleagues, that when our medical school has got well under way, we should propose to the federal government the association with that establishment, and at our own expense, of the clinical branch of our medical school, so that our students, after qualifying themselves with the other branches of the science

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indisposition of Richmond towards our University has not been unfelt. But would it not be wiser in them to rest satisfied with the government and their local academy? Can they afford, on the question of a change of the seat of government, by hostilizing the middle counties, to transfer them from the eastern to the western interest? To make it their interest to withdraw from the former that ground of claim, if used for adversary purposes? With things as they are, let both parties remain content and united.

If, then, William and Mary is to be removed, and not to Richmond, can there

be two opinions how its funds are to be directed to the best advantage for the public? When it was found that that seminary was entirely ineffectual towards the object of public education, and that one on a better plan, and in a better situation, must be provided, what was so obvious as to employ for that purpose the funds of the one abandoned, with what more would be necessary, to raise the new establishment? And what so obvious as to do now what might reasonably have been done then, by consolidating together the institutions and their funds? The plan sanctioned by the legislature required for our University ten professors, but the funds appropriated will maintain but

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eight, and some of these are consequently overburdened with duties; the hundred thousand dollars of principal which you say still remains to William and Mary, by its interest of six thousand dollars, would give us the two deficient professors, with an annual surplus for the purchase of books; and certainly the legislature will see no public interest, after the expense incurred on the new establishment, in setting up a rival in the city of Richmond; they cannot think it better to have two institutions crippling one another, than one of healthy powers, competent to that highest grade of instruction which neither, with a divided support, could expect to attain.

Another argument may eventually arise in favor of consolidation. The

contingent gift at the late session, of fifty thousand dollars, for books and apparatus, shows a sense in the legislature that those objects are still to be provided. If we fail in obtaining that sum, they will feel an incumbency to provide it otherwise. What so ready as the derelict capital of William and Mary, and the large library they uselessly possess? Should that college then be removed, I cannot doubt that the legislature, keeping in view its original object, will consolidate it with the University.

But it will not be removed. Richmond is doubtless in earnest, but that the

Visitors should concur is impossible. The professors are the prime movers, and do not mean exactly what they propose. They hold up this raw-head and bloody-bones in terrorem

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little as we can on this whole subject; give them no alarm; let them petition for the removal; let them get the old structure completely on wheels, and not till then put in our claim to its reception. I shall communicate your letter, as you request, to Mr. Madison, and with it this answer. Why can you not call on us on your way

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to Warminster, and make this a subject of conversation? With my devoted respects to Mrs. Cabell, assure her that she can be nowhere more cordially received than by the family of Monticello. And the deviation from your direct road is too small to merit consideration. Ever and affectionately your friend and servant.

TO MAJOR JOHN CARTWRIGHT.

MONTICELLO, June 5, 1824.

DEAR AND VENERABLE SIR, -- I am much indebted for your kind letter of February the 29th, and for your valuable volume on the English Constitution. I have read this with pleasure and much approbation, and think it has deduced the Constitution of the English nation from its rightful root, the Anglo-Saxon. It is really wonderful, that so many able and learned men should have failed in their attempts to define it with correctness. No wonder then, that Paine, who thought more than he read, should have credited the great authorities who have declared, that the will of Parliament is the Constitution of England. So Marbois, before the French Revolution, observed to me that the Almanac Royal was the Constitution of France. Your derivation of it from the Anglo-Saxons, seems to be made on legitimate principles. Having driven out the former inhabitants of that part of the island called England, they became aborigines as to you, and your lineal {43} ancestors. They doubtless had a constitution; and although they have not left it in a written formula, to the precise text of which you may always appeal, yet they have left fragments of their history and laws, from which it may be inferred with considerable certainty. Whatever their history and laws show to have been practised with approbation, we may presume was permitted by their constitution; whatever was not so practiced, was not permitted. And although this constitution was violated and set at naught by Norman force, yet force cannot change right. A perpetual claim was kept up by the nation, by their perpetual demand of a restoration of their Saxon laws; which shows they were never relinquished by the will of the nation. In the pullings and haulings for these ancient rights, between the nation, and its kings of the races of Plantagenets, Tudors and Stuarts, there was sometimes gain, and sometimes loss, until the final reconquest of their rights from the Stuarts. The destruction and expulsion of this race broke the thread of pretended inheritance, extinguished all regal usurpations, and the nation re-entered into all its rights; and although in their bill of rights they specifically reclaimed some only, yet the omission of the others was no renunciation of the right to assume their exercise also, whenever occasion should occur. The new King received no rights or powers, but those expressly granted to him. It has ever appeared to me, that the difference between the Whig and the {44} Tory of England is, that the Whig deduces his rights from the Anglo-Saxon source, and the Tory from the Norman. And Hume, the great apostle of Toryism, says, in so many words, note AA to chapter 42, that, in the reign of the Stuarts, "it was the people who encroached upon the sovereign, not the sovereign who attempted, as is pretended, to usurp upon the people." This supposes the Norman usurpations to be rights in his successors. And again, C, 159, "the commons established a principle, which is noble in itself, and seems specious, but is belied by all history and experience, that the people are the origin of all just power." And where else will this degenerate son of science, this traitor to his fellow men, find the origin of just powers, if not in the majority of the society? Will it be in the minority? Or in an individual of that minority?

Our Revolution commenced on more favorable ground. It presented us an album on which we were free to write what we pleased. We had no occasion to search into musty records, to hunt up royal parchments, or to investigate the laws and institutions of a semi-barbarous ancestry. We appealed to those of nature, and found them engraved on our hearts. Yet we did not avail ourselves of all the advantages of our position. We had never been permitted to exercise self-government. When forced to assume it, we were novices in its science. Its principles and forms had entered little into our former education. We established, however, some, although {45} not all its important principles. The constitutions of most of our States assert, that all power is inherent in the people; that they may exercise it by themselves, in all cases to which they think themselves competent, (as in electing their functionaries executive and legislative, and deciding by a jury of themselves, in all judiciary cases in which any fact is involved,) or they may act by representatives, freely and equally chosen; that it is their right and duty to be at all times armed; that they are entitled to freedom of person, freedom of religion, freedom of property, and freedom of the press. In the structure of our legislatures, we think experience has proved the benefit of subjecting questions to two separate bodies of deliberants; but in constituting these, natural right has been mistaken, some making one of these bodies, and some both, the representatives of property instead of persons; whereas the double deliberation might be as well obtained without any violation of true principle, either by requiring a greater age in one of the bodies, or by electing a proper number of representatives of persons, dividing them by lots into two chambers, and renewing the division at frequent intervals, in order to break up all cabals. Virginia, of which I am myself a native and resident, was not only the first of the States, but, I believe I may say, the first of the nations of the earth, which assembled its wise men peaceably together to form a fundamental constitution, to commit it to writing, and place it among {46} their archives, where every one should be free to appeal to its text. But this act was very imperfect. The other States, as they proceeded successively to the same work, made successive improvements; and several of them, still further corrected by experience, have, by conventions, still further amended their first forms. My own State has gone on so far with its premiere ebauche; but it is now proposing to call a convention for amendment. Among other improvements, I hope they will adopt the subdivision of our counties into wards. The former may be estimated at an average of twenty-four miles square; the latter should be about six miles square each, and would answer to the hundreds of your Saxon Alfred. In each of these might be, 1st, an elementary school; ad, a company of militia, with its officers; 3d, a justice of the peace and constable; 4th, each ward should take care of their own poor; 5th, their own roads; 6th, their own police; 7th, elect within themselves one or more jurors to attend the courts of justice; and 8th, give in at their folk-house, their votes for all functionaries reserved to their election. Each ward would thus be a small republic within itself, and every man in the State would thus become an acting member of the common government, transacting in person a great portion of its rights and duties, subordinate indeed, yet important, and entirely within his competence. The wit of man cannot devise a more solid basis for a free, durable and well-administered republic.

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With respect to our State and federal governments, I do not think their relations correctly understood by foreigners. They generally suppose the former subordinate to the latter. But this is not the case. They are co-ordinate departments of one simple and integral whole. To the State governments are reserved all legislation and administration, in affairs which concern their own citizens only, and to the federal government is given whatever concerns foreigners, or the citizens of other States; these functions alone being made federal. The one is the domestic, the other the foreign branch of the same government; neither having control over the other, but within its own department. There are one or two exceptions only to this partition of power. But, you may ask, if the two departments should claim each the same subject of power, where is the common umpire to decide ultimately between them? In cases of little importance or urgency, the prudence of both parties will keep them aloof from the questionable ground; but if it can neither be avoided nor compromised, a convention of the States must be called, to ascribe the doubtful power to that department which they may think best. You will perceive by these details, that we have not yet so far perfected our constitutions as to venture to make them unchangeable. But still, in their present state, we consider them not otherwise changeable than by the authority of the people, on a special election of representatives for that purpose expressly: they are until then the lex legum, {48} But can they be made unchangeable? Can one generation bind another, and all others, in succession forever? I think not. The Creator has made the earth for the living, not the dead. Rights and powers can only belong to persons, not to things, not to mere matter, unendowed with will. The dead are not even things. The particles of matter which composed their bodies, make part now of the bodies of other animals, vegetables, or minerals, of a thousand forms. To what then are attached the rights and powers they held while in the form of men? A generation may bind itself as long as its majority continues in life; when that has disappeared, another majority is in place, holds all the rights and powers their predecessors once held, and may change their laws and institutions to suit themselves. Nothing then is unchangeable but the inherent and unalienable rights of man.

I was glad to find in your book a formal contradiction, at length, of the judiciary usurpation of legislative powers; for such the judges have usurped in their repeated decisions, that Christianity is a part of the common law. The proof of the contrary, which you have adduced, is incontrovertible; to wit, that the common law existed while the Anglo-Saxons were yet pagans, at a time when they had never yet heard the name of Christ pronounced, or knew that such a character had ever existed. But it may amuse you, to show when, and by what means, they stole this law in upon us. In a case of quare impedit {49} in the Year-book 34, H. 6, folio 38, (anno 1458,) a question was made, how far the ecclesiastical law was to be respected in a common law court? And Prisot, Chief Justice, gives his opinion in these words: "A tiel leis qu' ils de seint eglise ont en ancien scripture, covient a nous a donner credence; car ceo common ley sur quels touts manners leis sont fondes. Et auxy, Monsieur, nous sumus obleges de conustre lour ley de saint eglise; et semblablement ils sont oblige de consustre nostre ley. Et, Monsieur, si poit apperer or a nous que l'evesque ad fait come un ordinary fera en tiel cas, adong nous devons cee adjuger bon, ou auterment nemy," etc. See S. C. Fitzh. Abr. Qu. imp. 89, Bro. Abr. Qu. imp. 12. Finch in his first book, c. 3, is the first afterwards who quotes this case and mistakes it thus: "To such laws of the church as have warrant in holy scripture, our law giveth credence." And cites Prisot; mistranslating "ancien scripture," into "holy scripture. "Whereas Prisot palpably says, "to such laws as those of holy church have in ancient writing, it is proper for us to give credence," to wit, to their ancient written laws. This was in 1613, a century and a half after the dictum of Prisot. Wingate, in 1658, erects this false translation into a maxim of the common law, copying the words of Finch, but citing Prisot, Wing. Max. 3. And Sheppard, title, "Religion," in 1675, copies the same mistranslation, quoting the Y. B. Finch and Wingate. Hale expresses it in these words: "Christianity is parcel of the laws of England." 1 Ventr. {50} 293, 3 Keb. 607. But he quotes no authority. By these echoings and re-echoings from one to another, it had become so established in 1728, that in the case of the King vs. Woolston, 2 Stra. 834, the court would not suffer it to be debated, whether to write against Christianity was punishable in the temporal court at common law? Wood, therefore, 409, ventures still to vary the phrase, and say, that all blasphemy and profaneness are offences by the common law; and cites 2 Stra. Then Blackstone, in 1763, IV. 59, repeats the words of Hale, that "Christianity is part of the laws of England," citing Ventris and Strange. And finally, Lord Mansfield, with a little qualification, in Evans' case, in 1767, says that "the essential principles of revealed religion are part of the common law." Thus ingulfing Bible, Testament and all into the common law, without citing any authority. And thus we find this chain of authorities hanging link by link, one upon another, and all ultimately on one and the same hook, and that a mistranslation of the words "ancien scripture," used by Prisot. Finch quotes Prisot; Wingate does the same. Sheppard quotes Prisot, Finch and Wingate. Hale cites nobody. The court in Woolston's case cites Hale. Wood cites Woolston's case. Blackstone quotes Woolston's case and Hale. And Lord Mansfield, like Hale, ventures it on his own authority. Here I might defy the best-read lawyer to produce another scrip of authority for this judiciary forgery; and I might go on further to show, how some of the {51} Anglo-Saxon priests interpolated into the text of Alfred's laws, the 20th, 21st, 22d, and 23d chapters of Exodus, and the 15th of the Acts of the Apostles, from the 23d to the 29th verses. But this would lead my pen and your patience too far. What a conspiracy this, between Church and State! Sing Tantarara, rogues all, rogues all, Sing Tantarara, rogues all ! I must still add to this long and rambling letter, my acknowledgments for your good wishes to the University we are now establishing in this State. There are some novelties in it. Of that of a professorship of the principles of government, you express your approbation. They will be founded in the rights of man. That of agriculture, I am sure, you will approve; and that also of Anglo-Saxon. As the histories and laws left us in that type and dialect, must be the text-books of the reading of the learners, they will imbibe with the language their free principles of government. The volumes you have been so kind as to send, shall be placed in the library of the University. Having at this time in England a person sent for the purpose of selecting some professors, a Mr. Gilmer of my neighborhood, I cannot but recommend him to your patronage, counsel and guardianship, against imposition, misinformation, and the deceptions of partial and false recommendations, in the selection of characters. He is a gentleman of great worth and correctness, my particular friend, well educated {52} in various branches of science, and worthy of entire confidence.

Your age of eighty-four and mine of eighty-one years, insure us a speedy meeting. We may then commune at leisure, and more fully, on the good and evil which, in the course of our long lives, we have both witnessed; and in the meantime, I pray you to accept assurances of my high veneration and esteem for your person and character.

TO MARTIN VAN BUREN.

MONTICELLO, June 29, 1824.

DEAR SIR, -- I have to thank you for Mr. Pickering's elaborate philippic against Mr. Adams, Gerry, Smith, and myself; and I have delayed the acknowledgment until I could read it and make some observations on it.

I could not have believed, that for so many years, and to such a period of advanced age, he could have nourished passions so vehement and viperous. It appears, that for thirty years past, he has been industriously collecting materials for vituperating the characters he had marked for his hatred; some of whom, certainly, if enmities towards him had ever existed, had forgotten them all, or buried them in the grave with themselves. As to myself, there never had been anything personal between us, nothing but the general opposition of party sentiment; and our personal intercourse had been that of

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however which he arraigns, have been such as the great majority. of my fellow citizens have approved. The approbation of Mr. Pickering, and of those who thought with him, I had no right to expect. My motives he chooses to ascribe to hypocrisy, to ambition and a passion for popularity. Of these the world must judge between us. It is no office of his or mine. To that tribunal I have ever submitted my actions and motives, without ransacking the Union for certificates, letters, journals, and gossiping tales, to justify my self and weary them. Nor shall I do this on the present occasion, but leave still to them these anti-

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of others like it, to which I have given no other answer than a steady course of similar action, there are two facts or fancies of his which I must set to rights. The one respects Mr. Adams, the other myself. He observes that my letter of October the 12th, 1823, acknowledges the receipt of one from Mr. Adams, of September the 18th, which, having been written a few days after Cunningham's publication, he says was no doubt written to apologize to me for the pointed reproaches he had uttered against me in his confidential letters to Cunningham. And thus having no "doubt" of his conjecture, he considers it as proven, goes on to suppose the contents of the letter, ( 19, 22, ) makes it place Mr. Adams at my feet suing for pardon, and continues to rant upon it, as an undoubted fact. Now, I do most solemnly declare, that so far from being a letter of apology, as Mr. Pickering so undoubtedly assumes, there was not a word or allusion in it respecting Cunningham's publication.

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The other allegation respecting myself, is equally false. In page 34, he quotes Doctor Stuart as having, twenty years ago, informed him that General Washington, "when he became a private citizen," called me to account for expressions in a letter to Mazzei, requiring, in a tone of unusual severity, an explanation of that letter. He adds of himself, "in what manner the latter humbled himself and appeased the just resentment of Washington, will never be made known, as some time after his death the correspondence was not to be found, and a diary for an important period of his Presidency was also missing." The diary being of transactions during his Presidency, the letter to Mazzei not known here until some time after he became a private citizen, and the pretended correspondence of course after that, I know not why this lost diary and supposed correspondence are brought together here, unless for insinuations worthy of the letter itself. The correspondence could not be found, indeed, because it had never existed. I do affirm that there never passed a word, written or verbal, directly or indirectly, between General Washington and myself on the subject of that letter. He would never have degraded himself so far as to take to himself the imputation in that letter on the "Samsons in combat." The whole story is a fabrication, and I defy the framers of it, and all mankind, to produce a scrip of a pen between General Washington and myself on the subject, or any other evidence more worthy

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This letter to Mazzei has been a precious theme of crimination for federal malice. It was a long letter of business, in which was inserted a single paragraph only of political information as to the state of our country. In this information there was not one word which would not then have been, or would not now be approved by every republican in the United States, looking back to those times, as you will see by a faithful copy now enclosed of the whole of what that letter said on the subject of the United States, or of its'government. This paragraph, extracted and translated, got into a Paris paper at a time when the persons in power there were laboring under very general disfavor, and their friends were eager to catch even at straws to buoy them up. To them, therefore, I have always imputed the interpolation of an entire paragraph additional to mine, which makes me charge my own country with ingratitude and injustice to France. There was not a word in my letter respecting France, or any of the proceed

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ings or relations between this country and that. Yet this interpolated paragraph has been the burden of federal calumny, has been constantly quoted by them, made the subject of unceasing and virulent abuse, and is still quoted, as you see, by Mr. Pickering, page 33, as if it were genuine, and really written by me. And even Judge Marshall makes history descend from its dignity, and the ermine from its sanctity, to exaggerate, to record, and to sanction this forgery. In the very last note of his book, he says, "a letter from Mr. Jefferson to Mr. Mazzei, an Italian, was published in Florence, and re-published in the Moniteur, with very severe strictures on the conduct of the United States." And instead of the letter itself, he copies what he says are the remarks of the editor, which are an exaggerated commentary on the fabricated paragraph itself, and silently leaves to his reader to make the ready inference that these were the sentiments of the letter. Proof is the duty of the affirmative side. A negative cannot be positively proved. But, in defect of impossible proof of what was not in the original letter, I have its press-copy still in my possession. It has been shown to several, and is open to any one who wishes to see it. I have presumed only, that the interpolation was done in Paris. But I never saw the letter in either its Italian or French dress, and it may have been done here, with the commentary handed down to posterity by the Judge. The genuine paragraph, re-translated through Italian and French into Eng

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established of royal forms and ceremonies, and more alarmed at the unexpected phenomenon, by the monarchical sentiments I heard expressed and openly maintained in every company, and among others by the high members of the government, executive and judiciary, (General Washington alone excepted,) and by a great part of the legislature, save only some members who had been of the old Congress, and a very few of recent introduction. I took occasion, at various times, of expressing to General Washington my disappointment at these symptoms of a change of principle, and that I thought them encouraged by the forms and ceremonies which I found prevailing, not at all in character with the simplicity of republican government, and looking as if wishfully to those of European courts. His general explanations to me were, that when he arrived at New York to enter on the executive administration of the new government, he observed to those who were to assist him, that placed as he was in an office entirely new to him, unacquainted with the forms and ceremonies of other governments, still less apprized of those which might be properly established here, and himself perfectly indifferent to all forms, he wished them to consider and prescribe what they should be; and the task was assigned particularly to General Knox, a man of parade, and to Colonel Humphreys, who had resided some time at a foreign court. They, he said, were the authors of the present regulations, and that others

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which I had censured in my letter to Mazzei were perfectly understood by General Washington, and were those which he himself but barely tolerated. He had furnished me a proper occasion for proposing their reformation, and my opinion not prevailing, he knew I could not have meant any part of the censure for him.

Mr. Pickering quotes, too, (page 34) the expression in the letter, of "the

men who were Samsons in the field, and Solomons in the council, but who had had their heads shorn by the harlot England;" or, as expressed in their re-translation, "the men who were Solomons in council, and Samsons in combat, but whose hair had been cut off by the whore England." Now this expression also was perfectly understood by General Washington. He knew that I meant it for the Cincinnati generally, and that from what had passed between us at the commencement of that institution, I could not mean to include him. When the first meeting was called for its establishment, I was a member of the Congress then sitting at Annapolis. General Washington wrote to me, asking my opinion on that proposition, and the course, if any, which I thought Congress would observe respecting it. I wrote him frankly my own disapprobation of it; that I found the members of Congress generally in the same sentiment; that I thought they would take no express notice of it, but that in all appointments of trust, honor, or profit, they would silently pass by all candidates

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when he thought the question safe, and the meeting drawing to a close, Major L'Enfant arrived from France, with a bundle of eagles, for which he had been sent there, with letters from the French officers who had served in America, praying for admission into the order, and a solemn act of .their king permitting them to wear its ensign. This, he said, changed the face of matters at once, produced an entire revolution of sentiment, and turned the torrent so strongly in an opposite direction that it could be no longer withstood; all he could then obtain was a suppression of the hereditary quality. He added, that it was the French applications, and respect for the approbation of the king, which saved the establishment in its modified and temporary form. Disapproving thus of the institution as much as I did, and conscious that I knew him to do so, he could never suppose that I meant to include him among the Samsons in the field, whose object was to draw over us the form, as they made the letter say, of the British government, and especially its aristocratic member, an hereditary House of Lords. Add to this, that the letter saying "that two out of the three branches of legislature were against us," was an obvious exception of him; it being well known that the majorities in the two branches of Senate and Representatives, were the very instruments which carried, in opposition to the old and real republicans, the measures which were the subjects of condemnation in this letter. General Washington,

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