Chapter XXI: Part III: Continued (20)

I am sorry to learn that your rural occupations impede so much the progress of your much to be desired work. You owe to republicanism, and indeed to the future hopes of man, a faithful record of the _march_ of this government, which may encourage the oppressed to go and do so likewise. Your talents, your principles, and your means of access to public and private sources of information, with the leisure which is at your command, point you out as the person who is to do this act of justice to those who believe in the improvability of the condition of man, and who have acted on that behalf, in opposition to those who consider man as a beast of burthen made to be rode by him who has genius enough to get a bridle into his mouth. The dissensions between two members of the Cabinet are to be lamented. But why should these force Mr. Gallatin to withdraw? They cannot be greater than between Hamilton and myself, and yet we served together four years in that way. We had indeed no personal dissensions. Each of us, perhaps, thought well of the other as a man, but as politicians it was impossible for two men to be of more opposite principles. The method of separate consultation, practised sometimes in the Cabinet, prevents disagreeable collisions.

You ask my opinion of Maine. I think him a most excellent man. Sober, industrious, intelligent and conscientious. But, in the difficulty of changing a nursery establishment, I suspect you will find an insurmountable obstacle to his removal. Present me respectfully to Mrs. Barlow, and be assured of my constant and affectionate esteem.

P. S. The day before yesterday the mercury was at 5½° with us, a very uncommon degree of cold here. It gave us the first ice for the ice house.

TO GIDEON GRANGER, ESQ.

MONTICELLO, January 24, 1810.

DEAR SIR,--I was sorry, by a letter from Mr. Barlow the other day, to learn the ill state of your health, and I sincerely wish that this may find you better. Young, temperate and prudent as you are, great confidence may be reposed in the provision nature has made for the restoration of order in your system when it has become deranged; she effects her object by strengthening the whole system, towards which medicine is generally mischevous. Nor are the sedentary habits of office friendly to it. But of all this your own good understanding, instructed by your experience, is the best judge. * * * * * I cannot pass over this occasion of writing to you, the first presented me since retiring from office, without expressing to you my sense of the important aid I received from you in the able and faithful direction of the office committed to your charge. With such auxiliaries, the business and burthen of government becomes all but insensible, and its painful anxieties are relieved by the certainty that all is going right. In no department did I feel this sensation more strongly than in yours, and though at this time of little significance to yourself, it is a relief to my mind to discharge the duty of bearing this testimony to your valuable services. I must add my acknowledgments for your friendly interference in setting the public judgment to rights with respect to the Connecticut prosecutions, so falsely and maliciously charged on me. I refer to a statement of the facts in the National Intelligencer of many months past, which I was sensible came from your hand. I pray you to be assured of my great and constant attachment, esteem and respect.

TO MR. J. GARLAND JEFFERSON.

MONTICELLO, January 25, 1810.

DEAR SIR,--Your favor of December 12th was long coming to hand. I am much concerned to learn that any disagreeable impression was made on your mind, by the circumstances which are the subject of your letter. Permit me first to explain the principles which I had laid down for my own observance. In a government like ours, it is the duty of the Chief Magistrate, in order to enable himself to do all the good which his station requires, to endeavor, by all honorable means, to unite in himself the confidence of the whole people. This alone, in any case where the energy of the nation is required, can produce a union of the powers of the whole, and point them in a single direction, as if all constituted but one body and one mind, and this alone can render a weaker nation unconquerable by a stronger one. Towards acquiring the confidence of the people, the very first measure is to satisfy them of his disinterestedness, and that he is directing their affairs with a single eye to their good, and not to build up fortunes for himself and family, and especially, that the officers appointed to transact their business, are appointed because they are the fittest men, not because they are his relations. So prone are they to suspicion, that where a President appoints a relation of his own, however worthy, they will believe that favor and not merit, was the motive. I therefore laid it down as a law of conduct for myself, never to give an appointment to a relation. Had I felt any hesitation in adopting this rule, examples were not wanting to admonish me what to do and what to avoid. Still, the expression of your willingness to act in any office for which you were qualified, could not be imputed to you as blame. It would not readily occur that a person qualified for office ought to be rejected merely because he was related to the President, and the then more recent examples favored the other opinion. In this light I considered the case as presenting itself to your mind, and that the application might be perfectly justifiable on your part, while, for reasons occurring to none perhaps, but the person in my situation, the public interest might render it unadvisable. Of this, however, be assured that I considered the proposition as innocent on your part, and that it never lessened my esteem for you, or the interest I felt in your welfare.

My stay in Amelia was too short, (only twenty-four hours,) to expect the pleasure of seeing you there. It would be a happiness to me any where, but especially here, from whence I am rarely absent. I am leading a life of considerable activity as a farmer, reading little and writing less. Something pursued with ardor is necessary to guard us from the _tedium-vitæ_, and the active pursuits lessen most our sense of the infirmities of age. That to the health of youth you may add an old age of vigor, is the sincere prayer of

Yours, affectionately.

TO JUDGE DAVID CAMPBELL.

MONTICELLO, January 28, 1810.

DEAR SIR,--Your letter of November 5th, was two months on its passage to me. I am very thankful for all the kind expressions of friendship in it, and I consider it a great felicity, through a long and trying course of life, to have retained the esteem of my early friends unaltered. I find in old age that the impressions of youth are the deepest and most indelible. Some friends, indeed, have left me by the way, seeking, by a different political path, the same object, their country's good, which I pursued with the crowd along the common highway. It is a satisfaction to me that I was not the first to leave them. I have never thought that a difference in political, any more than in religious opinions, should disturb the friendly intercourse of society. There are so many other topics on which friends may converse and be happy, that it is wonderful they would select, of preference, the only one on which they cannot agree. I am sensible of the mark of esteem manifested by the name you have given to your son. Tell him from me, that he must consider as essentially belonging to it, to love his friends and wish no ill to his enemies. I shall be happy to see him here whenever any circumstance shall lead his footsteps this way. You doubt, between law and physic, which profession he shall adopt. His peculiar turn of mind, and your own knowledge of things will best decide this question. Law is quite overdone. It is fallen to the ground, and a man must have great powers to raise himself in it to either honor or profit. The mob of the profession get as little money and less respect, than they would by digging the earth. The followers of Esculapius are also numerous. Yet I have remarked that wherever one sets himself down in a good neighborhood, not pre-occupied, he secures to himself its practice, and if prudent, is not long in acquiring whereon to retire and live in comfort. The physician is happy in the attachment of the families in which he practices. All think he has saved some one of them, and he finds himself everywhere a welcome guest, a home in every house. If, to the consciousness of having saved some lives, he can add that of having at no time, from want of caution, destroyed the boon he was called on to save, he will enjoy, in age, the happy reflection of not having lived in vain; while the lawyer has only to recollect how many, by his dexterity, have been cheated of their right and reduced to beggary. After all, I end where I began, with the observation that your son's disposition and your prudence, are the best arbiters of this question, and with the assurances of my great esteem and respect.

TO CÆSAR A. RODNEY.

MONTICELLO, February 10, 1810.

MY DEAR SIR,--I have to thank you for your favor of the 31st ultimo, which is just now received. It has been peculiarly unfortunate for us, personally, that the portion in the history of mankind, at which we were called to take a share in the direction of their affairs, was such an one as history has never before presented. At any other period, the even-handed justice we have observed towards all nations, the efforts we have made to merit their esteem by every act which candor or liberality could exercise, would have preserved our peace, and secured the unqualified confidence of all other nations in our faith and probity. But the hurricane which is now blasting the world, physical and moral, has prostrated all the mounds of reason as well as right. All those calculations which, at any other period, would have been deemed honorable, of the existence of a moral sense in man, individually or associated, of the connection which the laws of nature have established between his duties and his interests, of a regard for honest fame and the esteem of our fellow men, have been a matter of reproach on us, as evidences of imbecility. As if it could be a folly for an honest man to suppose that others could be honest also, when it is their interest to be so. And when is this state of things to end? The death of Bonaparte would, to be sure, remove the first and chiefest apostle of the desolation of men and morals, and might withdraw the scourge of the land. But what is to restore order and safety on the ocean? The death of George III? Not at all. He is only stupid; and his ministers, however weak and profligate in morals, are ephemeral. But his nation is permanent, and it is that which is the tyrant of the ocean. The principle that force is right, is become the principle of the nation itself. They would not permit an honest minister, were accident to bring such an one into power, to relax their system of lawless piracy. These were the difficulties when I was with you. I know they are not lessened, and I pity you.

It is a blessing, however, that our people are reasonable; that they are kept so well informed of the state of things as to judge for themselves, to see the true sources of their difficulties, and to maintain their confidence undiminished in the wisdom and integrity of their functionaries. _Macte virtute_ therefore. Continue to go straight forward, pursuing always that which is right, as the only clue which can lead us out of the labyrinth. Let nothing be spared of either reason or passion, to preserve the public confidence entire, as the only rock of our safety. In times of peace the people look most to their representatives; but in war, to the executive solely. It is visible that their confidence is even now veering in that direction; that they are looking to the executive to give the proper direction to their affairs, with a confidence as auspicious as it is well founded.

I avail myself of this, the first occasion of writing to you, to express all the depth of my affection for you; the sense I entertain of your faithful co-operation in my late labors, and the debt I owe for the valuable aid I received from you. Though separated from my fellow laborers in place and pursuit, my affections are with you all, and I offer daily prayers that ye love one another, as I love you. God bless you.

TO REV. MR. KNOX.

MONTICELLO, February 12, 1810.

SIR,--Your favor of January 22d loitered on the way somewhere, so as not to come to my hand until the 5th inst. The title of the tract of Buchanan which you propose to translate, was familiar to me, and I possessed the tract; but no circumstance had ever led me to look into it. Yet I think nothing more likely than that, in the free spirit of that age and state of society, principles should be avowed, which were felt and followed, although unwritten in the Scottish constitution. Undefined powers had been entrusted to the crown, undefined rights retained by the people, and these depended for their maintenance on the spirit of the people, which, in that day was dependence sufficient. I shall certainly, after what you say of it, give it a serious reading. His latinity is so pure as to claim a place in school reading, and the sentiments which have recommended the work to your notice, are such as ought to be instilled into the minds of our youth on their first opening. The boys of the rising generation are to be the men of the next, and the sole guardians of the principles we deliver over to them. That I have acted through life on those of sincere republicanism I feel in every fibre of my constitution. And when men who feel like myself, bear witness in my favor, my satisfaction is complete. The testimony of approbation implied in the desire you express of coupling my name with Buchanan's work, and your translation of it, cannot but be acceptable and flattering; and the more so as coming from one of whom a small acquaintance had inspired me with a great esteem. This I am now happy in finding an occasion to express. The times which brought us within mutual observation were awfully trying. But truth and reason are eternal. They have prevailed. And they will eternally prevail, however, in times and places they may be overborne for a while by violence, military, civil, or ecclesiastical. The preservation of the holy fire is confided to us by the world, and the sparks which will emanate from it will ever serve to rekindle it in other quarters of the globe, _numinibus secundis_.

Amidst the immense mass of detraction which was published against me, when my fellow citizens proposed to entrust me with their concerns, and the efforts of more candid minds to expose their falsehood, I retain a remembrance of the pamphlet you mention. But I never before learned who was its author; nor was it known to me that Mr. Pechin had ever published a copy of the Notes on Virginia. But had all this been known, I should have seen myself with pride by your side. Wherever you lead, we may all safely follow, assured that it is in the path of truth and liberty. Mr. Pechin knew well that your introduction would plead for his author, and only erred in not asking your leave. Wishing every good effect which may follow your undertaking, I tender you the assurances of my high esteem and respect.

TO W. D. G. WORTHINGTON, ESQ.

MONTICELLO, February 24, 1810.

SIR,--I have to thank you for the pamphlet you have been so kind as to send me, and especially for its contents so far as they respect myself personally. I had before read your speech in the newspapers, with great satisfaction, and the more, as, besides the able defence of the government, I saw that an absent and retired servant would still find, in the justice of the public counsellors, friendly advocates who would not suffer his name to be maligned without answer or reproof. If, brooding over past calamities, the attentions of federalism can, by abusing me, be diverted from disturbing the course of government, they will make me useful longer than I had expected to be so. Having served them faithfully for a term of twelve or fourteen years, in the terrific station of Rawhead and Bloodybones, it was supposed that, retired from power, I should have been _functus officio_, of course, for them also. If, nevertheless, they wish my continuance in that awful office, I yield, and the rather as it may be exercised at home, without interfering with the tranquil enjoyment of my farm, my family, my friends and books. In truth, having never felt a pain from their abuse, I bear them no malice. Contented with our government, elective as it is in three of its principal branches, I wish not, on Hamilton's plan, to see two of them for life; and still less, hereditary, as others desire. I believe that the yeomanry of the Federalists think on this subject with me. They are substantially republican. But some of their leaders, who get into the public councils, would prefer Hamilton's government, and still more the hereditary one. _Hinc illæ lachrymæ_, I wish them no harm, but that they may never get into power, not _for their harm_, but for the good of our country. I hope the friends of republican government will keep strict watch over them, and not let them want, when they need it, the wholesome discipline of which you have sent me a specimen. I commit them with entire confidence to your care, and salute you with esteem and respect.

TO MR. BURWELL.

MONTICELLO, February 25, 1810.

DEAR SIR,--Yours of the 16th, has given me real uneasiness. I was certainly very unfortunate in the choice of my expression, when I hit upon one which could excite any doubt of my unceasing affections for you. In observing that you might use the information as you should find proper, I meant merely that you might communicate it to the President, the Secretaries of State or War, or to young Mr. Lee, as should be judged by yourself most proper. I meant particularly, to permit its communication to Mr. Lee, to enlighten his enquiries, for I do not know that his father received the medal. I could only conduct the information to the completion of the dye and striking off a proof. With such assurances as I have of your affection, be assured that nothing but the most direct and unequivocal proofs can ever make me suspect its abatement, and conscious of as warm feelings towards yourself, I hope you will ever be as unready to doubt them. Let us put this, then, under our feet.

I like your convoy bill, because although it does not assume the maintenance of all our maritime rights, it assumes as much as it is our interest to maintain. Our coasting trade is the first and most important branch, never to be yielded but with our existence. Next to that is the carriage of our own productions in our own vessels, and bringing back the returns for our own consumption; so far I would protect it, and force every part of the Union to join in the protection at the point of the bayonet. But though we have a right to the remaining branch of carrying for other nations, its advantages do not compensate its risks. Your bill first rallies us to the ground the constitution ought to have taken, and to which we ought to return without delay; the moment is the most favorable possible, because the Eastern States, by declaring they will not protect that cabotage by war, and forcing us to abandon it, have released us from every future claim for its protection on that part. Your bill is excellent in another view: it presents still one other ground to which we can retire before we resort to war; it says to the belligerents, rather than go to war, we will retire from the brokerage of other nations, and confine ourselves to the carriage and exchange of our own productions; but we will vindicate that in all its rights--if you touch it, it is war.

The present delightful weather has drawn us all into our farms and gardens; we have had the most devastating rain which has ever fallen within my knowledge. Three inches of water fell in the space of about an hour. Every hollow of every hill presented a torrent which swept everything before it. I have never seen the fields so much injured. Mr. Randolph's farm is the only one which has not suffered; his horizontal furrows arrested the water at every step till it was absorbed, or at least had deposited the soil it had taken up. Everybody in this neighborhood is adopting his method of ploughing, except tenants who have no interest in the preservation of the soil.

Present me respectfully to Mrs. Burwell, and be assured of my constant affection.

TO GENERAL KOSCIUSKO.

MONTICELLO, February 26, 1810.

MY DEAR GENERAL AND FRIEND,--I have rarely written to you; never but by safe conveyances; and avoiding everything political, lest coming from one in the station I then held, it might be imputed injuriously to our country, or perhaps even excite jealousy of you. Hence my letters were necessarily dry. Retired now from public concerns, totally unconnected with them, and avoiding all curiosity about what is done or intended, what I say is from myself only, the workings of my own mind, imputable to nobody else.

The anxieties which I know you have felt, on seeing exposed to the justlings of a warring world, a country to which, in early life, you devoted your sword and services when oppressed by foreign dominion, were worthy of your philanthropy and disinterested attachment to the freedom and happiness of man. Although we have not made all the provisions which might be necessary for a war in the field of Europe, yet we have not been inattentive to such as would be necessary here. From the moment that the affair of the Chesapeake rendered the prospect of war imminent, every faculty was exerted to be prepared for it, and I think I may venture to solace you with the assurance, that we are, in a good degree, prepared. Military stores for many campaigns are on hand, all the necessary articles (sulphur excepted), and the art of preparing them among ourselves, abundantly; arms in our magazines for more men than will ever be required in the field, and forty thousand new stand yearly added, of our own fabrication, superior to any we have ever seen from Europe; heavy artillery much beyond our need; an increasing stock of field pieces, several foundries casting one every other day each; a military school of about fifty students, which has been in operation a dozen years; and the manufacture of men constantly going on, and adding forty thousand young soldiers to our force every year that the war is deferred; at all our seaport towns of the least consequence we have erected works of defence, and assigned them gunboats, carrying one or two heavy pieces, either eighteen, twenty-four, or thirty-two pounders, sufficient in the smaller harbors to repel the predatory attacks of privateers or single armed ships, and proportioned in the larger harbors to such more serious attacks as they may probably be exposed to. All these were nearly completed, and their gunboats in readiness, when I retired from the government. The works of New York and New Orleans alone, being on a much larger scale, are not yet completed. The former will be finished this summer, mounting four hundred and thirty-eight guns, and, with the aid of from fifty to one hundred gunboats, will be adequate to the resistance of any fleet which will ever be trusted across the Atlantic. The works for New Orleans are less advanced. These are our preparations. They are very different from what you will be told by newspapers, and travellers, even Americans. But it is not to them the government communicates the public condition. Ask one of them if he knows the exact state of any particular harbor, and you will find probably that he does not know even that of the one he comes from. You will ask, perhaps, where are the proof of these preparations for one who cannot go and see them. I answer, in the acts of Congress, authorizing such preparations, and in your knowledge of me, that, if authorized, they would be executed.

Two measures have not been adopted, which I pressed on Congress repeatedly at their meetings. The one, to settle the whole ungranted territory of Orleans, by donations of land to able-bodied young men, to be engaged and carried there at the public expense, who would constitute a force always ready on the spot to defend New Orleans. The other was, to class the militia according to the years of their birth, and make all those from twenty to twenty-five liable to be trained and called into service at a moment's warning. This would have given us a force of three hundred thousand young men, prepared by proper training, for service in any part of the United States; while those who had passed through that period would remain at home, liable to be used in their own or adjacent States. These two measures would have completed what I deemed necessary for the entire security of our country. They would have given me, on my retirement from the government of the nation, the consolatory reflection, that having found, when I was called to it, not a single seaport town in a condition to repel a levy of contribution by a single privateer or pirate, I had left every harbor so prepared by works and gunboats, as to be in a reasonable state of security against any probable attack; the territory of Orleans acquired, and planted with an internal force sufficient for its protection; and the whole territory of the United States organized by such a classification of its male force, as would give it the benefit of all its young population for active service, and that of a middle and advanced age for stationary defence. But these measures will, I hope, be completed by my successor, who, to the purest principles of republican patriotism, adds a wisdom and foresight second to no man on earth.

So much as to my country. Now a word as to myself. I am retired to Monticello, where, in the bosom of my family, and surrounded by my books, I enjoy a repose to which I have been long a stranger. My mornings are devoted to correspondence. From breakfast to dinner, I am in my shops, my garden, or on horseback among my farms; from dinner to dark, I give to society and recreation with my neighbors and friends; and from candle light to early bed-time, I read. My health is perfect; and my strength considerably reinforced by the activity of the course I pursue; perhaps it is as great as usually falls to the lot of near sixty-seven years of age. I talk of ploughs and harrows, of seeding and harvesting, with my neighbors, and of politics too, if they choose, with as little reserve as the rest of my fellow citizens, and feel, at length, the blessing of being free to say and do what I please, without being responsible for it to any mortal. A part of my occupation, and by no means the least pleasing, is the direction of the studies of such young men as ask it. They place themselves in the neighboring village, and have the use of my library and counsel, and make a part of my society. In advising the course of their reading, I endeavor to keep their attention fixed on the main objects of all science, the freedom and happiness of man. So that coming to bear a share in the councils and government of their country, they will keep ever in view the sole objects of all legitimate government.

* * * * *

Instead of the unalloyed happiness of retiring unembarrassed and independent, to the enjoyment of my estate, which is ample for my limited views, I have to pass such a length of time in a thraldom of mind never before known to me. Except for this, my happiness would have been perfect. That yours may never know disturbance, and that you may enjoy as many years of life, as health and ease to yourself shall wish, is the sincere prayer of your constant and affectionate friend.

TO DOCTOR JONES.

MONTICELLO, March 5, 1810.

DEAR SIR,--I received duly you favor of the 19th ultimo, and I salute you with all ancient and recent recollections of friendship. I have learned, with real sorrow, that circumstances have arisen among our executive counsellors, which have rendered foes those who once were friends. To themselves it will be a source of infinite pain and vexation, and therefore chiefly I lament it, for I have a sincere esteem for both parties. To the President it will be really inconvenient; but to the nation I do not know that it can do serious injury, unless we were to believe the newspapers, which pretend that Mr. Gallatin will go out. That indeed would be a day of mourning for the United States; but I hope that the position of both gentlemen may be made so easy as to give no cause for either to withdraw. The ordinary business of every day is done by consultation between the President and the Head of the department alone to which it belongs. For measures of importance or difficulty, a consultation is held with the Heads of departments, either assembled, or by taking their opinions separately in conversation or in writing. The latter is most strictly in the spirit of the constitution. Because the President, on weighing the advice of all, is left free to make up an opinion for himself. In this way they are not brought together, and it is not necessarily known to any what opinion the others have given. This was General Washington's practice for the first two or three years of his administration, till the affairs of France and England threatened to embroil us, and rendered consideration and discussion desirable. In these discussions, Hamilton and myself were daily pitted in the cabinet like two cocks. We were then but four in number, and, according to the majority, which of course was three to one, the President decided. The pain was for Hamilton and myself, but the public experienced no inconvenience. I practised this last method, because the harmony was so cordial among us all, that we never failed, by a contribution of mutual views on the subject, to form an opinion acceptable to the whole. I think there never was one instance to the contrary, in any case of consequence. Yet this does, in fact, transform the executive into a directory, and I hold the other method to be more constitutional. It is better calculated too to prevent collision and irritation, and to cure it, or at least suppress its effects when it has already taken place. It is the obvious and sufficient remedy in the present ease, and will doubtless be resorted to.

Our difficulties are indeed great, if we consider ourselves alone. But when viewed in comparison to those of Europe, they are the joys of Paradise. In the eternal revolution of ages, the destinies have placed our portion of existence amidst such scenes of tumult and outrage, as no other period, within our knowledge, had presented. Every government but one on the continent of Europe, demolished, a conqueror roaming over the earth with havoc and destruction, a pirate spreading misery and ruin over the face of the ocean. Indeed, my friend, ours is a bed of roses. And the system of government which shall keep us afloat amidst the wreck of the world, will be immortalized in history. We have, to be sure, our petty squabbles and heart burnings, and we have something of the blue devils at times, as to these raw heads and bloody bones who are eating up other nations. But happily for us, the Mammoth cannot swim, nor the Leviathan move on dry land; and if we will keep out of their way, they cannot get at us. If, indeed, we choose to place ourselves within the scope of their tether, a gripe of the paw, or flounce of the tail, may be our fortune. Our business certainly was to be still. But a part of our nation chose to declare against this, in such a way as to control the wisdom of the government. I yielded with others, to avoid a greater evil. But from that moment, I have seen no system which could keep us entirely aloof from these agents of destruction. If there be any, I am certain that you, my friends, now charged with the care of us all, will see and pursue it. I give myself, therefore, no trouble with thinking or puzzling about it. Being confident in my watchmen I sleep soundly. God bless you all, and send you a safe deliverance.

TO GOVERNOR LANGDON.

MONTICELLO, March 5, 1810.

Your letter, my dear friend, of the 18th ultimo, comes like the refreshing dews of the evening on a thirsty soil. It recalls ancient as well as recent recollections, very dear to my heart. For five and thirty years we have walked together through a land of tribulations. Yet these have passed away, and so, I trust, will those of the present day. The toryism with which we struggled in '77, differed but in name from the federalism of '99, with which we struggled also; and the Anglicism of 1808, against which we are now struggling, is but the same thing still in another form. It is a longing for a King, and an English King rather than any other. This is the true source of their sorrows and wailings.

The fear that Bonaparte will come over to us and conquer us also, is too chimerical to be genuine. Supposing him to have finished Spain and Portugal, he has yet England and Russia to subdue. The maxim of war was never sounder than in this case, not to leave an enemy in the rear; and especially where an insurrectionary flame is known to be under the embers, merely smothered, and ready to burst at every point. These two subdued, (and surely the Anglomen will not think the conquest of England alone a short work,) ancient Greece and Macedonia, the cradle of Alexander, his prototype, and Constantinople, the seat of empire for the world, would glitter more in his eye than our bleak mountains and rugged forests. Egypt, too, and the golden apples of Mauritania, have for more than half a century fixed the longing eyes of France; and with Syria, you know, he has an old affront to wipe out. Then come "Pontus and Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia and Bithynia," the fine countries, on the Euphrates and Tigris, the Oxus and Indus, and all beyond the Hyphasis, which bounded the glories of his Macedonian rival; with the invitations of his new British subjects on the banks of the Ganges, whom, after receiving under his protection the mother country, he cannot refuse to visit. When all this done and settled, and nothing of the old world remains unsubdued, he may turn to the new one. But will he attack us first, from whom he will get but hard knocks and no money? Or will he first lay hold of the gold and silver of Mexico and Peru, and the diamonds of Brazil? A _republican_ Emperor, from his affection to republics, independent of motives of expediency, must grant to ours the Cyclop's boon of being the last devoured. While all this is doing, we are to suppose the chapter of accidents read out, and that nothing can happen to cut short or to disturb his enterprises.

But the Anglomen, it seems, have found out a much safer dependence than all these chances of death or disappointment. That is, that we should first let England plunder us, as she has been doing for years, for fear Bonaparte should do it; and then ally ourselves with her, and enter into the war. A conqueror, whose career England could not arrest when aided by Russia, Austria, Prussia, Sweden, Spain and Portugal, she is now to destroy, with all these on his side, by the aid of the United States alone. This, indeed, is making us a mighty people. And what is to be our security, that when embarked for her in the war, she will not make a separate peace, and leave us in the lurch? Her good faith! The faith of a nation of merchants! The _Punica fides_ of modern Carthage! Of the friend and protectress of Copenhagen! Of the nation who never admitted a chapter of morality into her political code! And is now boldly avowing that whatever power can make hers, is hers of right. Money, and not morality, is the principle of commerce and commercial nations. But, in addition to this, the nature of the English Government forbids, of itself, reliance on her engagements; and it is well known she has been the least faithful to her alliances of any nation of Europe, since the period of her history wherein she has been distinguished for her commerce and corruption, that is to say, under the houses of Stuart and Brunswick. To Portugal alone she has steadily adhered, because, by her Methuen treaty, she had made it a colony, and one of the most valuable to her. It may be asked, what, in the nature of her government, unfits England for the observation of moral duties? In the first place, her King is a cypher; his only function being to name the oligarchy which is to govern her. The parliament is, by corruption, the mere instrument of the will of the administration. The real power and property in the government is in the great aristocratical families of the nation. The nest of office being too small for all of them to cuddle into at once, the contest is eternal, which shall crowd the other out. For this purpose, they are divided into two parties, the Ins and the Outs, so equal in weight that a small matter turns the balance. To keep themselves in, when they are in, every stratagem must be practised, every artifice used which may flatter the pride, the passions or power of the nation. Justice, honor, faith must yield to the necessity of keeping themselves in place. The question whether a measure is moral, is never asked; but whether it will nourish the avarice of their merchants, or the piratical spirit of their navy, or produce any other effect which may strengthen them in their places. As to engagements, however positive, entered into by the predecessors of the Ins, why, they were their enemies; they did everything which was wrong; and to reverse everything which they did, must, therefore, be right. This is the true character of the English government in practice, however different its theory; and it presents the singular phenomenon of a nation, the individuals of which are as faithful to their private engagements and duties, as honorable, as worthy, as those of any nation on earth, and whose government is yet the most unprincipled at this day known. In an absolute government there can be no such equiponderant parties. The despot is the government. His power suppressing all opposition, maintains his ministers firm in their places. What he has contracted, therefore, through them, he has the power to observe with good faith; and he identifies his own honor and faith with that of his nation.

When I observed, however, that the King of England was a cypher, I did not mean to confine the observation to the mere individual now on that throne. The practice of Kings marrying only in the families of Kings, has been that of Europe for some centuries. Now, take any race of animals, confine them in idleness and inaction, whether in a stye, a stable or a state-room, pamper them with high diet, gratify all their sexual appetites, immerse them in sensualities, nourish their passions, let everything bend before them, and banish whatever might lead them to think, and in a few generations they become all body and no mind; and this, too, by a law of nature, by that very law by which we are in the constant practice of changing the characters and propensities of the animals we raise for our own purposes. Such is the regimen in raising Kings, and in this way they have gone on for centuries. While in Europe, I often amused myself with contemplating the characters of the then reigning sovereigns of Europe. Louis the XVI. was a fool, of my own knowledge, and in despite of the answers made for him at his trial. The King of Spain was a fool, and of Naples the same. They passed their lives in hunting, and despatched two couriers a week, one thousand miles, to let each other know what game they had killed the preceding days. The King of Sardinia was a fool. All these were Bourbons. The Queen of Portugal, a Braganza, was an idiot by nature. And so was the King of Denmark. Their sons, as regents, exercised the powers of government. The King of Prussia, successor to the great Frederick, was a mere hog in body as well as in mind. Gustavus of Sweden, and Joseph of Austria, were really crazy, and George of England, you know, was in a straight waistcoat. There remained, then, none but old Catharine, who had been too lately picked up to have lost her common sense. In this state Bonaparte found Europe; and it was this state of its rulers which lost it with scarce a struggle. These animals had become without mind and powerless; and so will every hereditary monarch be after a few generations. Alexander, the grandson of Catharine, is as yet an exception. He is able to hold his own. But he is only of the third generation. His race is not yet worn out. And so endeth the book of Kings, from all of whom the Lord deliver us, and have you, my friend, and all such good men and true, in his holy keeping.

TO ABBE SALIMANKIS.

MONTICELLO, March 14, 1810.

SIR,--I have duly received your favor of February 27th and am very thankful for the friendly sentiments therein expressed towards myself, as well as for the pamphlet enclosed. That it contains many serious truths and sound admonitions every reader will be sensible. At the same time it is a comfort that the medal has two sides. I do not myself contemplate human nature in quite so sombre a view. That there is much vice and misery in the world, I know; but more virtue and happiness I believe, at least in our part of it; the latter being the lot of those employed in agriculture in a greater degree than of other callings. That we are overdone with banking institutions, which have banished the precious metals, and substituted a more fluctuating and unsafe medium, that these have withdrawn capital from useful improvements and employments to nourish idleness, that the wars of the world have swollen our commerce beyond the wholesome limits of exchanging our own productions for our own wants, and that, for the emolument of a small proportion of our society, who prefer these demoralizing pursuits to labors useful to the whole, the peace of the whole is endangered, and all our present difficulties produced, are evils more easily to be deplored than remedied. They should lead us to direct our prayers, if our philanthropy fails to do it, for the re-establishment of peace in Europe, when our commerce must of course return to its proper objects, and the idle to habits of industry. To these prayers, in which you will not fail to join, let me add my best wishes and respects for yourself.

TO MR. FULTON.

MONTICELLO, March 17, 1810.

DEAR SIR,--I have duly received your favor of February 24th covering one of your pamphlets on the Torpedo. I have read it with pleasure. This was not necessary to give them favor in my eye. I am not afraid of new inventions or improvements, nor bigoted to the practices of our forefathers. It is that bigotry which keeps the Indians in a state of barbarism in the midst of the arts, would have kept us in the same state even now, and still keeps Connecticut where their ancestors were when they landed on these shores. I am much pleased that Congress is taking up the business. Where a new invention is supported by well-known principles, and promises to be useful, it ought to be tried. Your torpedoes will be to cities what vaccination has been to mankind. It extinguishes their greatest danger. But there will still be navies. Not for the destruction of cities, but for the plunder of commerce on the high seas. That the tories should be against you is in character, because it will curtail the power of their idol, England.

I am thankful to you for the trouble you have taken in thinking of the felier hydraulique. To be put into motion by the same power which was to continue the motion was certainly wanting to that machine, as a better name still is. I would not give you the trouble of having a model made, as I have workmen who can execute from the drawing. I pray you to accept the assurances of my great esteem and respect.

TO G. VOOLIF, PERPETUAL SECRETARY OF THE FIRST CLASS OF THE ROYAL INSTITUTE OF SCIENCES, OF LITERATURE AND OF FINE ARTS, AT AMSTERDAM.

MONTICELLO, May 2d, 1810.

SIR,--Your letter of the 10th of May of the last year came but lately to my hands. I am duly sensible of the honor done me by the first class of the Royal Institute of sciences, of literature, and of fine arts, in associating me to their class, and by the approbation which his majesty the king of Holland has condescended to give to their choice. His patronage of institutions for extending among mankind the boundaries of information, proves his just sense of the cares devolved on him by his high station, and commands the approving voice of all the sons of men. If mine can be heard from this distance among them, it will be through the benefit of the special communication which your position may procure it, and which I am to request. I pray you to present also my thanks to the first class for this mark of their distinction, which I receive with due sensibility and gratitude. Sincerely a friend to science, and feeling the fraternal relation it establishes among the whole family of its votaries, wheresoever dispersed through nations friendly or hostile, I shall be happy at all times in fulfilling any particular views which the society may extend to this region of the globe, and in being made useful to them in any special services they will be pleased to give me an opportunity of rendering. To yourself, Sir, I tender the assurances of my particular respect and high consideration.

TO HIS EXCELLENCY GOVERNOR CLAIBORNE.

MONTICELLO, May 3d, 1810.

SIR, Your favor of February 1st lately came to my hands. It brings me new proofs, in the resolutions it enclosed, of the indulgence with which the legislature of Orleans has been pleased to view my conduct in the various duties assigned to me by our common country. The times in which we have lived have called for all the services which any of its citizens could render, and if mine have met approbation they are fully rewarded.

The interposition noticed by the Legislature of Orleans was an act of duty of the office I then occupied. Charged with the care of the general interest of the nation, and among these with the preservation of their lands from intrusion, I exercised, on their behalf, a right given by nature to all men, individual or associated, that of rescuing their own property wrongfully taken. In cases of forcible entry on individual possessions, special provisions, both of the common and civil law, have restrained the right of rescue by private force, and substituted the aid of the civil power. But no law has restrained the right of the nation itself from removing by its own arm, intruders on its possessions. On the contrary, a statute recently passed, had required that such removals should be diligently made. The Batture of New Orleans, being a part of the bed contained between the two banks of the river, a naked shoal indeed at low water, but covered through the whole season of its regular full tides, and then forming the ground of the port and harbor for the upper navigation, over which vessels ride of necessity when moored to the bank, I deemed it public property, in which all had a common use. The removal, too, of the force which had possessed itself of it, was the more urgent from the interruption it might give to the commerce, and other lawful uses, of the inhabitants of the city and of the Western waters generally.

If this aid from the public authority was particularly interesting to the territory of Orleans, it certainly adds new satisfaction to my consciousness of having done what was right.

I ask the favor of you to convey to the Legislature of Orleans, my gratitude for the interest they are so kind as to express in my future happiness; and I pray to the Governor of the Universe, that He may always have them and our country in his holy keeping.

TO HIS EXCELLENCY GOVERNOR CLAIBORNE.

MONTICELLO, May 3, 1810.

DEAR SIR,--Your letters of January 12th and February 1st, came to hand only a fortnight ago. The enclosed contains my answer to the latter, for communication to the Legislature. So many false views on the subject of the batture have been presented in and out of Congress, that duty to myself, as well as justice to the citizens of New Orleans and of the western country generally, required that I should avail myself of the occasion these resolutions presented, of stating, in the fewest words possible, the true ground of my conduct, and, as I think, of the rights of the western country. But the occasion also restricted me to the limits of a short text only, every word of which would be matter for copious commentary, in a dilated discussion of the subject. Has Moreau de l'Isle's opinion ever been printed? I wish it were possible to get a copy of it. Perhaps I might be able to make good use of it.

Before the receipt of your letter of Jan. 12th, I had heard of your great loss, and been impressed with the depth of it. Long tried in the same school of affliction, no loss which can rend the human heart is unknown to mine; and a like one particularly, at about the same period of life, had taught me to feel the sympathies of yours. The same experience has proved that time, silence and occupation are its only medicines. Of occupation, you have enough and of the highest order; that of continuing to make a worthy people happy by a just and parental government, and of protecting them from the wolves prowling around to devour them. Your own example will be the best lesson for the son which has been left to comfort you, to whose course in life I hope it will give a shape which shall make him truly a comfort and support to your latter days, protracted to your own wishes.

I really wish effect to the hints in my letter to you for so laying off the additions to the city of New Orleans, as to shield it from yellow fever. My confidence in the idea is founded in the acknowledged experience that we have never seen the _genuine_ yellow fever extend itself into the country, nor even to the outskirts or open parts of a close-built city. In the plan I propose, every square would be surrounded, on every side, by open and pure air, and would, in fact, be a separate town with fields or open suburbs around it.

TO MESSRS. HUGH L. WHITE, THOMAS M'CORRY, JAMES CAMPBELL, ROBERT CRAIGHEAD, JOHN N. GAMBLE, TRUSTEES FOR THE LOTTERY OF EAST TENNESSEE COLLEGE.

MONTICELLO, May 6, 1810.