See Rebellion.
Let them [Cincinnati society] melt up their eagles and add the mass to the distributable fund, that
TITLE: To M. de Meunier.
EDITION: Washington ed.ix ,271.
EDITION: Ford ed.,iv., 176.
PLACE: Paris
DATE: 1786
See Birthday.
After the loss of the Philadelphia, Captain Bainbridge had a character to redeem. He has done it most honorably, and no one is more gratified by it than myself. —
TITLE: To Matthew Carr.
EDITION: Washington ed.vi ,132.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1813
There seems a possibility that the great desideratum in the use of the balloon may be obtained. There are two persons at Javel ( opposite to Auteuil), who are pushing this matter. They are able to rise and fall at will, without expending their gas, and they can deflect forty-five degrees from the course of the wind. —
TITLE: To R. Izard.
EDITION: Washington ed.i ,443.
PLACE: Paris
DATE: 1785
An accident has happened here [France] which will probably damp the ardor with which aërial navigation has been pursued. Monsieur Pilatre de Roziere had been waiting for many months at Boulogne a fair wind to cross the channel in a balloon which was compounded of one of inflammable air, and another called a Montgolfier with rarefied air only. He at length thought the wind fair and with a companion, Romain, ascended. After proceeding in a proper direction about two leagues, the wind changed and brought them again over the French coast. Being at the height of about six thousand feet, some accident, unknown, burst the balloon of inflammable air, and the Montgolfier, being unequal alone to sustain their weight, they precipitated from that height to the earth and were crushed to atoms. —
TITLE: To Joseph Jones.
EDITION: Washington ed.i ,353.
PLACE: Paris
DATE: June. 1785
The arts, instead of advancing, have lately received a check which will probably render stationary for awhile, that branch of them which had promised to elevate us to the skies. Pilatre de Roziere, who had first ventured into that region, has fallen a sacrifice to it. In an attempt to pass from Boulogne over to England, a change in the wind having brought him on the coast of France, some accident happened to his balloon of inflammable air, which occasioned it to burst, and that of rarefied air combined with it being then unequal to the weight, they fell to the earth from a height, which the first reports made six thousand feet, but later ones have reduced to sixteen hundred. Pilatre de Roziere was dead when a peasant distant one hundred yards away, ran to him; but Romain, his companion, lived about ten minutes, though speechless, and without his senses. —
TITLE: To Charles Thomson.
EDITION: Washington ed.i ,355.
PLACE: Paris
DATE: 1785
Though navigation by water is attended with frequent accidents, and in its infancy must have been attended with more, yet these are now so familiar that we think little of them, while that which has signalized the two first martyrs to the aëronautical art will probably deter very many from the experiments they would have been disposed to make. —
TITLE: To Charles Thomson.
EDITION: Washington ed.i ,354.
PLACE: Paris
DATE: 1785
See Suffrage.
See Exile.
The scheme is for Congress to establish [Col 2] a national bank, suppose of thirty millions capital, of which they shall contribute ten millions in six per cent. stock, the States ten millions, and individuals ten millions, one half of the two last contributions to be of a similar stock, for which the parties are to give cash to Congress; the whole, however, to be under the exclusive management of the individual subscribers, who are to name all the directors; neither Congress nor the States having any power of interference in its administration. Discounts are to be at five per cent., but the profits are expected to be at seven per cent. Congress then will be paying six per cent. on twenty millions, and receiving seven per cent. on ten millions, being its third of the institution; so that on the ten millions cash which they receive from the States and individuals, they will, in fact, have to pay but five per cent. interest. This is the bait. The charter is proposed to be for forty or fifty years, and if any future augmentations should take place, the individual proprietors are to have the privilege of being the sole subscribers for that. Congress are further allowed to issue to the amount of three millions of notes, bearing interest, which they are to receive back in payment for lands at a premium of five or ten per cent., or as subscriptions for canals, roads, and bridges, in which undertakings they are, of course, to be engaged. This is a summary of the case as I understand it; but it is very possible I may not understand it in all its parts, these schemes being always made unintelligible for the gulls who are to enter into them. —
TITLE: To J. W. Eppes.
EDITION: Washington ed.vi ,228.
EDITION: Ford ed.,ix, 403.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: Nov. 1813
The advantages and disadvantages shall be noted promiscuously as they occur; leaving out the speculation of canals &c., which, being an episode only in the scheme, may be omitted, to disentangle it as much as we can. 1. Congress are to receive five millions from the States (if they will enter into this partnership, which few probably will), and five millions from the individual subscribers, in exchange for ten millions of six per cent. stock, one per cent. of which, however, they will make on their ten millions of stock remaining in bank, and so reduce it, in effect, to a loan of ten millions at five per cent. interest. This is good; but, 2. They authorize this bank to throw into circulation ninety millions of dollars (three times the capital), which increases our circulating medium fifty per cent.; depreciates proportionably the present value of a dollar, and raises the price of all future purchases in the same proportion. 3. This loan of ten millions at five per cent., is to be once for all, only. Neither the terms of the scheme, nor their own prudence could ever permit them to add to the circulation in the same, or any other way, for the supplies of the succeeding years of the war. These succeeding years then are to be left unprovided for, and the means of doing it in a great measure precluded. 4. The individual subscribers, on
TITLE: To J. W. Eppes.
EDITION: Washington ed.vi ,229.
EDITION: Ford ed.,ix, 403.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: Nov. 1813
Let us examine these causes and proofs of the want of our increase of medium, one by one. 1. The additional industry created to supply a variety of articles for troops, ammunition, &c. Now, I had always supposed that war produced a diminution of industry, by the number of hands it withdraws from industrious pursuits for employment in arms, &c., which are totally unproductive. And if it calls for new industry in the articles of ammunition and other military supplies, the hands are borrowed from other branches on which the demand is slackened by the war; so that it is but a shifting of these hands from one pursuit to another. 2. The cash sent to the frontiers occasions a vacuum in the trading towns, which requires a new supply. Let us examine what are the calls for money to the frontiers. Not for clothing, tents, ammunition, arms, which are all bought in the trading towns. Not for provisions; for although these are bought [Col 2] partly in the immediate country, bank bills are more acceptable there than even in the trading towns. The pay of the army calls for some cash, but not a great deal, as bank notes are as acceptable with the military men, perhaps more so; and what cash is sent must find its way back again in exchange for the wants of the upper from the lower country. For we are not to suppose that cash stays accumulating there forever. 3. This scarcity has been occasioned by the late loans. But does the government borrow money to keep it in their coffers? Is it not instantly restored to circulation by payment for its necessary supplies? And are we to restore a vacuum of twenty millions of dollars by an emission of ninety millions? 4. The want of medium is proved by the recurrence of individuals with good paper to brokers at exorbitant interest; and 5. By the numerous applications to the State governments for additional banks; New York wanting eighteen millions, Pennsylvania ten millions, &c. But say more correctly, the speculators and spendthrifts of New York and Pennsylvania, but never consider them as being the States of New York and Pennsylvania. These two items shall be considered together. —
TITLE: To J. W. Eppes.
EDITION: Washington ed.vi ,231.
EDITION: Ford ed.,ix, 405.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: Nov. 1813
It is a litigated question, whether the circulation of paper, rather than of specie, is a good or an evil. In the opinion of England and of English writers it is a good; in that of all other nations it is an evil; and excepting England and her copyist, the United States, there is not a nation existing, I believe, which tolerates a paper circulation. The experiment is going on, however, desperately in England, pretty boldly with us, and at the end of the chapter, we shall see which opinion experience approves: for I believe it to be one of those cases where mercantile clamor will bear down reason, until it is corrected by ruin. —
TITLE: To J. W. Eppes.
EDITION: Washington ed.vi ,232.
EDITION: Ford ed.,ix, 405.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: Nov. 1813
After the solemn decision of Congress against the renewal of the charter of the Bank of the United States, and the grounds of that decision (the want of constitutional power), I had imagined that question at rest, and that no more applications would be made to them for the incorporation of banks. The opposition on that ground to its first establishment, the small majority by which it was overborne, and the means practiced for obtaining it, cannot be already forgotten. The law having passed, however, by a majority, its opponents, true to the sacred principle of submission to a majority, suffered the law to flow through its term without obstruction. During this, the nation had time to consider the constitutional question, and when the renewal was proposed, they condemned it, not by their representatives in Congress only, but by express instructions from different organs of their will. Here
TITLE: To J. W. Eppes.
EDITION: Washington ed.vi ,232.
EDITION: Ford ed.,ix, 406.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: Nov. 1813
The idea of creating a national bank, I do not concur in, because it seems now decided that Congress has not that power (although I sincerely wish they had it exclusively), and because I think there is already a vast redundancy, rather than a scarcity of paper medium. The rapid rise in the nominal price of land and labor (while war and blockade should produce a fall) proves the progressive state of the depreciation of our medium. —
TITLE: To Thomas Law.
EDITION: Ford ed.,ix, 433.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1813
The Philadelphia Bank was incorporated by Congress. This is, perhaps, the only instance of their having done that which they had no power to do. Necessity obliged them to give this institution the appearance of their countenance, because in that moment they were without any other resource for money. —
TITLE: Count Van Hogendorp.
EDITION: Washington ed.ii ,24.
EDITION: Ford ed.,iv, 286.
PLACE: Paris
DATE: 1786
The Legislature of Pennsylvania passed an act of incorporation for the bank, and declared that the holders of stock should be responsible only to the amount of their stock. Lately that Legislature has repealed their act. The consequence is, that the bank is now altogether a private institution, and every holder is liable for its engagements in his whole property. This has had a curious effect. It has given those who deposit money in the bank a greater faith in it, while it has rendered the holders very discontented, as being more exposed to risk, and it has induced many to sell it, so that I have heard (I know not how truly) the bank stock sells somewhat below par. —
TITLE: To Count Van Hogendorp.
EDITION: Washington ed.ii ,24.
EDITION: Ford ed.,iv, 286.
PLACE: Paris
DATE: 1786
A division, not very unequal, had [* * *] taken place in the honest part of [* * *] [Congress in 1791] between the parties styled republican and federal. The latter, being monarchists in principle, adhered to [Alexander] Hamilton of course, as their leader in that principle, and this mercenary phalanx, 39 added to them, ensured him always a majority in both Houses; so that the whole action of the Legislature was now under the direction of the Treasury. Still the machine was not complete. The effect of the Funding system, and of the Assumption [of the State debts] , would be temporary. It would be lost with the loss of the individual members whom it had enriched, and some engine of influence more permanent must be [Col 2] contrived while these myrmidons were yet in place to carry it through all opposition. This engine was the Bank of the United States. —
TITLE: The Anas.
EDITION: Washington ed.ix ,95.
EDITION: Ford ed.,i, 164.
PLACE: [none given]
DATE: 1818
The bill for establishing a National Bank undertakes among other things: — 1. To form the subscribers into a corporation. 2. To enable them in their corporate capacities to receive grants of land; and so far is against the laws of Mortmain. 40 3. To make alien subscribers capable of holding lands; and so far is against the laws of Alienage. 4. To transmit these lands, on the death of a proprietor, to a certain line of successors; and so far changes the course of Descents. 5. To put the lands out of the reach of forfeiture or escheat; and so far is against the laws of Forfeiture and Escheat. 6. To transmit personal chattels to successors in a certain line; and so far is against the laws of Distribution. 7. To give them the sole and exclusive right of banking under the national authority; and so far is against the laws of Monopoly. 8. To communicate to them a power to make laws paramount to the laws of the States; for so they must be construed, to protect the institution from the control of the State Legislatures; and so, probably, they will be construed.
I consider the foundation of the Constitution as laid on this ground: 41 That “all powers not delegated to the United States, by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States or to the people.” (XIIth amendment.) To take a single step beyond the boundaries thus specially drawn around the powers of Congress, is to take possession of a boundless field of power, no longer susceptible of any definition. The incorporators of a bank, and the powers assumed by this bill, have not, in my opinion, been delegated to the United States, by the Constitution. I. They are not among the powers specially enumerated: for these are: 1st. A power to lay taxes for the purpose of paying the debts of the United States; but no debt is paid by this bill, nor any tax laid. Were it a bill to raise money, its origination in the Senate would condemn it by the Constitution. 2nd “To borrow money.” But this bill neither borrows money nor ensures the borrowing it. The proprietors of the bank will be just as free as any other money holders, to lend or not to lend their money to the public. The operation proposed in the bill, first, to lend them two millions, and then to borrow them back again, cannot
II. Nor are they within either of the general phrases, which are the two following: — 1. To lay taxes to provide for the general welfare of the United States, that is to say, “to lay taxes for the purpose of providing for the general welfare.” For the laying of taxes is the power, and the general welfare the purpose for which the power is to be exercised. They are not to lay taxes ad libitum for any purpose they please; but only to pay the debts or provide for the welfare of the Union. In like manner, they are not to do anything they please to provide for the general welfare, but only to lay taxes for that purpose. To consider the latter phrase, not as describing the purpose of the first, but as giving a distinct and independent power to do any act they please, which might be for the good of the Union, would render all the preceding and subsequent enumerations of power completely useless. It would reduce the whole instrument to a single phrase, that of instituting a Congress with power to do whatever would be for the good of the United States; and, as they would be the sole judges of the good or evil, it would be also a power to do whatever evil they please. It is an established rule of construction where a phrase will bear either of two meanings, to give to it that which will allow some meaning to the other parts of the instrument and not that which would render all the others useless. Certainly no such universal power was meant to be given them. It was intended to lace them up straitly within the enumerated powers, and those without which, as means, these powers could not be carried into effect. It is known that the very power now proposed as a means was rejected as an end by the Convention [Col 2] which formed the Constitution. A proposition was made to them to authorize Congress to open canals, and an amendatory one to empower them to incorporate. But the whole was rejected, and one of the reasons for rejection urged in debate was, that then they would have power to erect a bank, which would render the great cities, where there were prejudices and jealousies on the subject, adverse to the reception of the Constitution. 2. The second general phrase is, “to make all laws necessary and proper for carrying into execution the enumerated powers.” But they can all be carried into execution without a bank. A bank-therefore is not necessary, and consequently not authorized by this phrase.
It has been urged that a bank will give great facility or convenience in the collection of taxes. Suppose this were true: yet the Constitution allows only the means which are “necessary,” not those which are merely “convenient” for effecting the enumerated powers. If such a latitude of construction be allowed to this phrase as to give any non-enumerated power, it will go to every one, for there is not one which ingenuity may not torture into a convenience in some instance or other, to some one of so long a list of enumerated powers. It would swallow up all the delegated powers, and reduce the whole to one power, as before observed. Therefore it was that the Constitution restrained them to the necessary means, that is to say, to those means without which the grant of power would be nugatory. But let us examine this convenience and see what it is. The report on this subject, page 3, states the only general convenience to be, the preventing the transportation and retransportation of money between the States and the treasury (for I pass over the increase of circulating medium, ascribed to it as a want, and which, according to my ideas of paper money, is clearly a demerit). Every State will have to pay a sum of tax money into the treasury; and the treasury will have to pay, in every State, a part of the interest on the public debt, and salaries to the officers of government resident in that State. In most of the States there will still be a surplus of tax money to come up to the seat of government for the officers residing there. The payments of interest and salary in each State may be made by treasury orders on the State collector. This will take up the great export of the money he has collected in his State, and consequently prevent the great mass of it from being drawn out of the State. If there be a balance of commerce in favor of that State against the one in which the government resides, the surplus of taxes will be remitted by the bills of exchange drawn for that commercial balance. And so it must be if there was a bank. But if there be no balance of commerce, either direct or circuitous, all the banks in the world could not bring up the surplus of taxes, but in the form of money. Treasury orders then, and bills of exchange may prevent the displacement of the
Besides; the existing banks will, without a doubt, enter into arrangements for lending their agency, and the more favorable, as there will be a competition among them for it; whereas the bill delivers us up bound to the national bank, who are free to refuse all arrangement, but on their own terms, and the public not free, on such refusal, to employ any other bank. That of Philadelphia, I believe, now does this business, by their postnotes, which, by an arrangement with the treasury, are paid by any State collector to whom they are presented. This expedient alone suffices to prevent the existence of that necessity which may justify the assumption of a non-enumerated power as a means for carrying into effect an enumerated one. The thing may be done, and has been done, and well done, without this assumption; therefore, it does not stand on that degree of necessity which can honestly justify it. It may be said that a bank whose bills would have a currency all over the States, would be more convenient than one whose currency is limited to a single State. So it would be still more convenient that there should be a bank, whose bills should have a currency all over the world. But it does not follow from this superior conveniency, that there exists anywhere a power to establish such a bank; or that the world may not go on very well without it. Can it be thought that the Constitution intended that for a shade or two of convenience, more or less, Congress should be authorized to break down the most ancient and fundamental laws of the several States; such as those against Mortmain, the laws of Alienage, the rules of Descent, the acts of Distribution, the laws of Escheat and Forfeiture, the laws of Monopoly? Nothing but a necessity invincible by any other means, can justify such a prostitution of laws, which constitute the pillars of our whole system of jurisprudence. Will Congress be too straight-laced to carry the Constitution into honest effect, unless they may pass over the foundation laws of the State government for the slightest convenience of theirs?
The negative of the President is the shield provided by the Constitution to protect against the invasions of the Legislature: 1. The right of the Executive. 2. Of the Judiciary. 3. Of the States and State Legislatures. The present is the case of a right remaining exclusively with the States, and consequently one of those intended by the Constitution to be placed under its protection. It must be added, however, that unless the President's mind on a view of everything which is urged for and against this bill, is tolerably clear that it is unauthorized by the Constitution; if the pro and the con hang so [Col 2] even as to balance his judgment, a just respect for the wisdom of the Legislature would naturally decide the balance in favor of their opinion. It is chiefly for cases where they are clearly misled by error, ambition, or interest, that the Constitution has placed a check in the negative of the President. —
TITLE: National Bank Opinion.
EDITION: Washington ed.vii ,555.
EDITION: Ford ed.,v, 284.
DATE: Feb. 1791
While the Government remained at Philadelphia, a selection of members of both Houses were constantly kept as directors, who, on every question interesting to that institution, or to the views of the federal head, voted at the will of that head; and, together with the stockholding members, could always make the federal vote that of the majority. By this combination, legislative expositions were given to the Constitution, and all the administrative laws were shaped on the model of England, and so passed. And from this influence we were not relieved, until the removal from the precincts of the Bank, to Washington. —
TITLE: The Anas.
EDITION: Washington ed.ix ,95.
EDITION: Ford ed.,i, 164.
PLACE: [none given]
DATE: 1818
The bank has just notified its proprietors that they may call for a dividend of ten per cent. on their capital for the last six months. This makes a profit of twenty-six per cent. per annum. Agriculture, commerce, and everything useful must be neglected, when the useless employment of money is so much more lucrative. —
TITLE: To Plumard de Rieux.
EDITION: Ford ed.,v, 420.
PLACE: Philadelphia ,
DATE: 1792
The failure of some stock gamblers and some other circumstances, have brought the public paper low. The 6 per cents have fallen from 26 to 211-4, and bank paper stock from 115 or 120 to 73 or 74, within two or three weeks. This nefarious business is becoming more and more the public detestation, and cannot fail, when the knowledge of it shall be sufficiently extended, to tumble its authors headlong from their heights. —
TITLE: To William Short.
EDITION: Washington ed.iii ,342.
EDITION: Ford ed.,v, 459.
PLACE: Philadelphia ,
DATE: March. 1792
This institution is one of the most deadly hostility existing, against the principles and form of our Constitution. The nation is, at this time, so strong and united in its sentiments, that it cannot be shaken at this moment. But suppose a series of untoward events should occur, sufficient to bring into doubt the competency of a republican government to meet a crisis of great danger, or to unhinge the confidence of the people in the public functionaries: an institution like this, penetrating by its branches every part of the Union, acting by command and in phalanx, may, in a critical moment, upset the government. I deem no government safe which is under the vassalage of any self-constituted authorities, or any other authority than that of the nation, or its regular functionaries.
TITLE: To Albert Gallatin.
EDITION: Washington ed.iv ,519.
EDITION: Ford ed.,viii, 284.
PLACE: Washington
DATE: Dec. 1803
The Bank is so firmly mounted on us that we must go where they will guide. They openly publish a resolution, that the national property being increased in value, they must by an increase of circulating medium furnish an adequate representation of it, and by further additions of active capital promote the enterprises of our merchants. It is supposed that the paper in circulation in and around Philadelphia, amounts to twenty millions of dollars, and that in the whole Union, to one hundred millions. —
TITLE: To James Monroe.
EDITION: Washington ed.iv ,140.
EDITION: Ford ed.,vii, 80.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: June. 1796
The Attorney General having considered and decided that the prescription in the law for establishing a bank, that the officers in the subordinate offices of discount and deposit, shall be appointed “on the same terms and in the same manner practiced in the principal bank,” does not extend to them the principle of rotation, established by the Legislature in the body of directors in the principal bank, it follows that the extension of that principle has been merely a voluntary and prudential act of the principal bank, from which they are free to depart. I think the extension was wise and proper on their part, because the Legislature having deemed rotation useful in the principal bank constituted by them, there would be the same reason for it in the subordinate banks to be established by the principal. It breaks in upon the esprit de corps [Col 2] so apt to prevail in permanent bodies: it gives a chance for the public eye penetrating into the sanctuary of those proceedings and practices, which the avarice of the directors may introduce for their personal emolument, and which the resentments of excluded directors, or the honesty of those duly admitted, might betray to the public; and it gives an opportunity at the end of the year, or at other periods, of correcting a choice, which, on trial, proves to have been unfortunate: an evil of which themselves complain in their distant institutions. Whether, however, they have a power to alter this, or not, the Executive has no right to decide: and their consultation with you has been merely an act of complaisance, or a desire to shield so important an innovation under the cover of executive sanction. But ought we to volunteer our sanction in such a case? Ought we to disarm ourselves of any fair right of animadversion, whenever that institution shall be a legitimate subject of consideration? I own, I think the most proper answer would be, that we do not think ourselves authorized to give an opinion on the question. —
TITLE: To Albert Gallatin.
EDITION: Washington ed.iv ,518.
EDITION: Ford ed.,viii, 284.
PLACE: Washington
DATE: 1803
It seems nearly settled with the Treasurobankites that a branch shall be established at Richmond. Could not a counter-bank be set up to befriend the agricultural man by letting him have money on a deposit of tobacco notes, or even wheat, for a short time, and would not such a bank enlist the legislature in its favor, and against the Treasury bank? —
TITLE: To James Madison.
EDITION: Ford ed.,vi, 98.
PLACE: Philadelphia ,
DATE: 1792 1792 gt;
It was impossible the Bank and paper mania should not produce great and extensive ruin. The President is fortunate to get off just as the bubble is bursting, leaving others to hold the bag. Yet, as his departure will mark the moment when the difficulties begin to work, you will see, that they will be ascribed to the new administration, and that he will have his usual good fortune of reaping credit from the good acts of others, and leaving to them that of his errors. —
TITLE: To James Madison.
EDITION: Ford ed.,vii, 104.
DATE: Jan. 1797
We are completely saddled and bridled, and the bank is so firmly mounted on us that we must go where they will guide. —
TITLE: To James Monroe.
EDITION: Washington ed.iv ,140.
EDITION: Ford ed.,vii, 80.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: June. 1796
You will have seen the rapidity with which the subscriptions to the bank were filled. As yet the delirium of speculation is too strong to admit sober reflection. It remains to be seen whether in a country whose capital is too small to carry on its own commerce, to establish manufactures, erect buildings, &c., such sums should have been withdrawn from these useful pursuits to be employed in gambling? Whether it was well judged to force
TITLE: To Edmund Pendleton.
EDITION: Ford ed.,v, 357.
PLACE: Philadelphia ,
DATE: 1791
The subscriptions to the Bank from Virginia were almost none. [* * *] This gives so much uneasiness to Colonel Hamilton that he thinks to propose to the President to sell some of the public shares to subscribers from Virginia and North Carolina, if any more should offer. This partiality would offend the other States without pleasing those two: for I presume they would rather the capitals of their citizens should be employed in commerce than be locked up in a strong box here [Philadelphia] : nor can sober thinkers prefer a paper medium at 13 per cent. interest to gold and silver for nothing. —
TITLE: To James Madison.
EDITION: Ford ed.,v, 350.
PLACE: Philadelphia ,
DATE: 1791
The bank filled and overflowed in the moment it was opened. Instead of twenty thousand shares, twenty-four thousand were offered, and a great many were presented, who had not suspected that so much haste was necessary. Thus it is that we shall be paying 13 per cent, per ann. for eight millions of paper money, instead of having that circulation of gold and silver for nothing. Experience has proved to us that a dollar of silver disappears for every dollar of paper emitted; and, for the paper emitted from the bank, seven per cent. profits will be received by the subscribers for it as bank paper (according to the last division of profits by the Philadelphia bank), and six per cent. on the public paper of which it is the representative. Nor is there any reason to believe, that either the six millions of public paper, or the two millions of specie deposited, will not be suffered to be withdrawn, and the paper thrown into circulation. The cash deposited by strangers for safe keeping will probably suffice for cash demands. —
TITLE: To James Monroe.
EDITION: Washington ed.iii ,268.
EDITION: Ford ed.,v, 352.
PLACE: Philadelphia ,
DATE: 1791
I find you are to be harassed again with a bankrupt law. Could you not compromise between agriculture and commerce by passing such a law which like the by-laws of incorporate towns, should be binding on the inhabitants of such towns only, being the residence of commerce, leaving the agriculturists, inhabitants of the country, in undisturbed possession of the rights and modes of proceedings to which their habits, their interests and their partialities attach them? This would be as uniform as other laws of local obligation. —
TITLE: To James Pleasants.
EDITION: Ford ed.,x, 198.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1821
A bankrupt bill is brought in in such a form as to render almost all the landholders south of Pennsylvania liable to be declared [Col 2] bankrupts. Hitherto we had imagined that the General Government could not meddle with the title to lands. —
TITLE: To T. M. Randolph.
EDITION: Ford ed.,vi, 149.
PLACE: Philadelphia ,
DATE: 1792
The bankrupt bill is brought on with some very threatening features to landed and farming men, who are in danger of being drawn into its vortex. It assumes the right of seizing and selling lands, and so cuts the knotty question of the Constitution, whether the General Government May direct the transmission of land by descent or otherwise. —
TITLE: To John Francis Mercer.
EDITION: Washington ed.iii ,495.
EDITION: Ford ed.,vi, 148.
PLACE: Philadelphia ,
DATE: 1792
The British statute excepts expressly farmers, graziers, drovers, as such though they buy to sell again. This bill has no such exception. The British adjudications exempt the buyers and sellers of bank stock, government paper, &c. What feelings guided the draughtsman [of this bill] in adhering to his original in this case and then departing from it in the other? The British courts adjudge that any artists may be bankrupts if the materials of their art are bought, such as shoemakers, blacksmiths, carpenters, &c. Will the body of our artists desire to be brought within the vortex of this law? It will follow as a consequence that the master who has an artist of this kind in his family, whether hired, indentured, or a slave, to serve the purposes of his farm or family, but who may at leisure time do something for his neighbors also, May be a bankrupt. The British law makes a departure from the realm, i.e. out of the mediation of British law, an act of bankruptcy. This bill makes a departure from the State wherein he resides (though into a neighboring one where the laws of the United States run equally), an act of bankruptcy. The commissioners may enter houses, break open doors, chests &c. Are we really ripe for this? Is that spirit of independence and sovereignty, which a man feels in his own house, and which Englishmen felt when they denominated their houses their castles, to be absolutely subdued, and is it expedient that it should be subdued? The lands of the bankrupt are to be taken, sold. Is not this a predominant question between the General and State legislatures? Is commerce so much the basis of the existence of the United States as to call for a bankrupt law? On the contrary, are we not almost agricultural? Should not all laws be made with a view essentially to the poor husbandman? When laws are wanting for particular descriptions of other callings, should not the husbandman be carefully excused from their operation, and preserved under that of the general system only, which general system is fitted to the condition of the husbandman? 42 —
TITLE: Notes on the Bankrupt Bill.
EDITION: Washington ed.ix ,431.
EDITION: Ford ed.,vi, 145.
DATE: Dec. 1792
The crisis of the abuses of banking is arrived. The banks have pronounced their own sentence of death. Between two and three hundred millions of dollars of their promissory notes are in the hands of the people, for solid produce and property sold, and they formally declare they will not pay them. This is an act of bankruptcy, of course, and will be so pronounced by any court before which it shall be brought. But cui bono? The laws can only uncover their insolvency, by opening to its suitors their empty vaults. Thus by the dupery of our citizens, and tame acquiescence of our legislators, the nation is plundered of two or three hundred millions of dollars, treble the amount of debt contracted in the Revolutionary war, and which, instead of redeeming our liberty, has been expended on sumptuous houses, carriages, and dinners. A fearful tax! if equalized on all; but overwhelming and convulsive by its partial fall. —
TITLE: To Thomas Cooper.
EDITION: Washington ed.vi ,381.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: Sep. 1814
Everything predicted by the enemies of banks, in the beginning, is now coming to pass. We are to be ruined now by the deluge of bank paper, as we were formerly by the old Continental paper. It is cruel that such revolutions in private fortunes should be at the mercy of avaricious adventurers, who, instead of employing their capital, if any they have, in manufactures, commerce, and other useful pursuits, make it an instrument to burthen all the interchanges of property with their swindling profits, profits which are the price of no useful industry of theirs. Prudent men must be on their guard in this game of Robin's alive, and take care that the spark does not extinguish in their hands. I am an enemy to all banks discounting bills or notes for anything but coin. But our whole country is so fascinated by this Jack-lantern wealth, that they will not stop short of its total and fatal explosion. 43 —
TITLE: To Dr. Thomas Cooper.
EDITION: Washington ed.vi ,295.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: Jan. 1814
The enormous abuses of the banking system are not only prostrating our commerce, but producing revolution of property, which without more wisdom than we possess, will be much greater than were produced by the Revolutionary paper. That, too, had the merit of purchasing our liberties, while the present trash has only furnished aliment to usurers and swindlers. —
TITLE: To Richard Rush.
EDITION: Ford ed.,x, 133.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: June. 1819
I hope we shall [* * *] crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country. —
TITLE: To George Logan.
EDITION: Ford ed.,x, 69.
PLACE: Poplar Forest, Va. ,,
DATE: Nov. 1816
The bank mania [* * *] is raising up a moneyed aristocracy in our country which has already set the government at defiance, and although forced at [Col 2] length to yield a little on this first essay of their strength, their principles are unyielded and unyielding. These have taken deep root in the hearts of that class from which our legislators are drawn, and the sop to Cerberus from fable has become history. Their principles lay hold of the good, their pelf of the bad, and thus those whom the Constitution had placed as guards to its portals, are sophisticated or suborned from their duties. —
TITLE: To Dr. J. B. Stuart.
EDITION: Washington ed.vii ,64.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1817
At the time we were funding our national debt, we heard much about “a public debt being a public blessing”; that the stock representing it was a creation of active capital for the aliment of commerce, manufactures and agriculture. This paradox was well adapted to the minds of believers in dreams, and the gulls of that size entered bonâ fide into it. But the art and mystery of banks is a wonderful improvement on that. It is established on the principle that “private debts are a public blessing.” That the evidences of those private debts, called bank notes, become active capital, and aliment the whole commerce, manufactures, and agriculture of the United States. Here are a set of people, for instance, who have bestowed on us the great blessing of running in our debt about two hundred millions of dollars, without our knowing who they are, where they are, or what property they have to pay this debt when called on; nay, who have made us so sensible of the blessings of letting them run in our debt, that we have exempted them by law from the repayment of these debts beyond a given proportion (generally estimated at one-third). And to fill up the measure of blessing, instead of paying, they receive an interest on what they owe from those to whom they owe; for all the notes, or evidences of what they owe, which we see in circulation, have been lent to somebody on an interest which is levied again on us through the medium of commerce. And they are so ready still to deal out their liberalities to us, that they are now willing to let themselves run in our debt ninety millions more, on our paying them the same premium of six or eight per cent. interest, and on the same legal exemption from the repayment of more than thirty millions of the debt, when it shall be called for. But let us look at this principle in its original form, and its copy will then be equally understood. “A public debt is a public blessing.” That our debt was juggled from forty-three up to eighty millions, and funded at that amount, according to this opinion was a great public blessing, because the evidences of it could be vested in commerce, and thus converted into active capital, and then the more the debt was made to be, the more active capital was created. That is to say, the creditors could now employ in commerce the money due them from the public, and make from it an annual profit of five per cent., or four millions of dollars. But observe, that the public were at the same time paying on it an interest of exactly the same
TITLE: To J. W. Eppes.
EDITION: Washington ed.vi ,239.
EDITION: Ford ed.,ix, 411.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: Nov. 1813
Capital may be produced by industry, and accumulated by economy; but jugglers only will propose to create it by legerdemain tricks with paper. —
TITLE: To J. W. Eppes.
EDITION: Washington ed.vi ,241.
EDITION: Ford ed.,ix, 413.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: Nov. 1813
I am too desirous of tranquillity to bring such a nest of hornets on me as the fraternity of banking companies. —
TITLE: To Joseph C. Cabell.
EDITION: Washington ed.vi ,300.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1814
Banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies. —
TITLE: To John Taylor.
EDITION: Washington ed.vi ,608.
EDITION: Ford ed.,x, 31.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1816
Banks of deposit, where cash should be lodged, and a paper acknowledgment taken out as its representative, entitled to a return of the cash on demand, would be convenient for remittances, traveling persons, &c. But, liable as its cash would be to be plifered and robbed, and its paper to be fraudulently reissued, or issued without deposit, it would require skilful and strict regulation. This would differ from the bank of Amsterdam, in the circumstance that the cash could be redeemed on returning the note. —
TITLE: To J. W. Eppes.
EDITION: Washington ed.vi ,247.
EDITION: Ford ed.,ix, 417.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: Nov. 1813
Everything predicted by the enemies of banks, in the beginning, is now coming to pass. We are to be ruined now by the deluge of bank paper, as we were formerly by the old Continental paper. It is cruel that such revolutions in private fortunes should be at the mercy of avaricious adventures, who, instead of employing their capital, if they have any, in manufactures, commerce, and other useful pursuits, make it an instrument to burden all the interchanges of property with their swindling profits, profits which are the price of no useful industry of theirs. Prudent men must be on their guard in this game of Robin's alive, and take care that the spark does not extinguish in their hands. I am an enemy to all banks discounting bills or notes for anything but coin. But our whole country is so fascinated by this Jack-lantern wealth, that they will not stop short of its total and fatal explosion. —
TITLE: To Thomas Cooper.
EDITION: Washington ed.vi ,295.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: Jan. 1814
Already there is so much of their trash afloat that the great holders of it show vast anxiety to get rid of it. They perceive that now, as in the Revolutionary war, we are engaged in the old game of Robin's alive. They are ravenous after lands and stick at no price. In the neighborhood of Richmond, the seat of that sort of sensibility, they offer twice as much now as they would give a year ago. —
TITLE: To President Madison.
EDITION: Ford ed.,ix, 453.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: Feb. 1814
The depreciation of bank paper swells nominal prices, without furnishing any stable index of value. I will endeavor briefly to give you an idea of this state of things by an outline of its history.
In 1781 we had 1 bank, its capital $1,000,000.
In 1791 we had 6 banks, their capital $13,135,000.
In 1794 we had 17 banks, their capital $18,642,000.
In 1796 we had 24 banks, their capital $20,472,000.
In 1803 we had 34 banks, their capital $29,112,000.
In 1804 we had 66 banks, their amount of capital not known.
And at this time we have probably one hundred banks, with capital amounting to one hundred millions of dollars, on which they are authorized by law to issue notes to three times that amount, so that our circulating medium may now be estimated at from two to three hundred millions of dollars, on a population of eight and a half millions. The banks were able for awhile, to keep this trash at par with metallic money, or rather to depreciate the metals to a par with their paper, by keeping deposits of cash sufficient to exchange for such of their notes as they were called on to pay in cash. But the circumstances of the war draining away all our specie, all these banks have stopped payment, but with a promise to resume specie exchanges whenever circumstances shall produce a return of the metals. Some of the most prudent and honest will possibly do this; but the mass of them never will nor can. Yet, having no other medium, we take their paper, of necessity, for purposes of the instant, but never to lay by us. The government is now issuing treasury notes for circulation, bottomed on solid funds, and bearing interest. The banking confederacy (and the merchants bound to them by their debts) will endeavor to crush the credit of these notes; but the country is eager for them, as something they can trust to, and so soon as a convenient quantity of them can get into circulation, the bank notes die. —
TITLE: To Jean Baptiste Say.
EDITION: Washington ed.vi ,434.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: March. 1815
For the emolument of a small proportion of our society, who prefer those demoralizing pursuits [banking and commerce] to labors useful to the whole, the peace of the whole is endangered, and all our present difficulties produced. —
TITLE: To Abbe Salimankis.
EDITION: Washington ed.v ,516.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1810
The fatal possession of the whole circulating medium by our banks, the excess of those institutions, and their present discredit, cause all our difficulties. —
TITLE: To W. H. Crawford.
EDITION: Washington ed.vi ,419.
EDITION: Ford ed.,ix, 503.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: Feb. 1815
The dominion of the banks must be broken, or it will break us. —
TITLE: To James Monroe.
EDITION: Washington ed.vi ,409.
EDITION: Ford ed.,ix, 498.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: Jan. 1815
I wish I could see Congress get into a better train of finance. Their banking projects are like dosing dropsy with more water. [* * *] Their new bank, if not abortive at its birth, will not last through one campaign; and the taxes proposed cannot be paid. —
TITLE: To William Short.
EDITION: Washington ed.vi ,400.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: Nov. 1814
The evils they [the banks] have engendered are now upon us, and the question is how we are to get out of them? Shall we build an altar to the old paper money of the Revolution, which ruined individuals but saved the republic, and burn on that all the bank charters, present and future, and their notes with them? For these [Col 2] are to ruin both republic and individuals. This cannot be done. The mania is too strong. It has seized by its delusions and corruptions, all the members of our governments, general, special and individual. —
TITLE: To John Adams.
EDITION: Washington ed.vi ,305.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: Jan. 1814
I think it impossible but that the whole system must blow up before the year is out; and thus a tax of three or four hundred millions will be levied on our citizens who had found it a work of so much time and labor to pay off a debt of eighty millions which had redeemed them from bondage. —
TITLE: To President Madison.
EDITION: Ford ed.,ix, 453.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: Feb. 1814
I see that this infatuation of banks must take its course, until actual ruin shall awaken us from its delusions. Until the gigantic banking propositions of this winter had made their appearance in the different Legislatures. I had hoped that the evil might still be checked; but I see now that it is desperate, and that we must fold our arms and go to the bottom with the ship. —
TITLE: To Joseph C. Cabell.
EDITION: Washington ed.vi ,300.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: Jan. 1814
The evils of this deluge of paper money are not to be removed until our citizens are generally and radically instructed in their cause and consequences, and silence by their authority the interested clamors and sophistry of speculating, shaving, and banking institutions. Till then we must be content to return, quoad hoc, to the savage state, to recur to barter in the exchange of our property, for want of a stable, common measure of value, that now in use being less fixed than the beads and wampum of the Indian, and to deliver up our citizens, their property and their labor, passive victims to the swindling tricks of bankers and mountebankers. —
TITLE: To John Adams.
EDITION: Washington ed.vii ,115.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1819
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 [* * *] are evils more easily to be deplored than remedied. —
TITLE: To Abbe Salimankis.
EDITION: Washington ed.v ,516.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1810
A parcel of mushroom banks have set up in every State, have filled the country with their notes, and have thereby banished all our specie. A twelvemonth ago they all declared they could not pay cash for their own notes, and notwithstanding this act of bankruptcy, this trash has of necessity been passing among us, because we have no other medium of exchange, and is still taken and passed from hand to hand, as you remember the old Continental money to have been in the Revolutionary war; every one getting rid of it as quickly as he can, by laying it out in property of any sort at double, treble and manifold higher prices. [* * *] A general crush is daily expected when this trash will be lost in the hands of the holders. This will take place the moment some specie returns
TITLE: To Phillip Mazzei.
EDITION: Ford ed.,ix, 524.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: Aug. 1815
The failure of our banks will occasion embarrassment for awhile, although it restores to us a fund which ought never to have been surrendered by the nation, and which now, prudently used, will carry us through all the fiscal difficulties of the war. —
TITLE: To President Madison.
EDITION: Washington ed.vi ,386.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: Sep. 1814
The banks have discontinued themselves. We are now without any medium; and necessity, as well as patriotism, and confidence, will make us all eager to receive treasury notes, if founded on specific taxes. Congress may now borrow of the public, and without interest, all the money they may want, to the amount of a competent circulation, by merely issuing their own promissory notes, of proper denominations for the larger purposes of circulation, but not for the small. Leave that door open for the entrance of metallic money. —
TITLE: To Thomas Cooper.
EDITION: Washington ed.vi ,382.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: Sep. 1814
Providence seems, indeed, by a special dispensation, to have put down for us, without a struggle, that very paper enemy which the interest of our citizens long since required ourselves to put down, at whatever risk. The work is done. The moment is pregnant with futurity, and if not seized at once by Congress, I know not on what shoal our bark is next to be stranded. —
TITLE: To Thomas Cooper.
EDITION: Washington ed.vi ,382.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: Sep. 1814
The crush will be tremendous; very different from that brought on by our paper money. That rose and fell so gradually that it kept all on their guard, and affected severely only early or longwinded contracts. Here the contract of yesterday crushes in an instant the one or the other party. The banks stopping payment suddenly, all their mercantile and city debtors do the same; and all, in short, except those in the country, who, possessing property, will be good in the end. But this resource will not enable them to pay a cent on the dollar. —
TITLE: To Thomas Cooper.
EDITION: Washington ed.vi ,381.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: Sep. 1814
The paper interest is now defunct. Their gossamer castles are dissolved, and they can no longer impede and overawe the salutary measures of the government. Their paper was received on a belief that it was cash on demand. Themselves have declared it was nothing, and such scenes are now to take place as will open the eyes of credulity and of insanity itself to the dangers of a paper medium, abandoned to the discretion of avarice and of swindlers. It is impossible not to deplore our past follies, and their present consequences, but let them at least be warnings against like follies in future. —
TITLE: To Thomas Cooper.
EDITION: Washington ed.vi ,382.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: Sep. 1814
The banks themselves were doing business on capitals, three-fourths of which were fictitious; and to extend their profit they furnished fictitious capital to every man, who having nothing and disliking the labors of the plow, chose rather to call himself a merchant, to set up a house of $5,000 a year expense, to dash into every species of mercantile gambling, and if that ended as gambling generally does, a fraudulent bankruptcy was an ultimate resource of retirement and competence. This fictitious capital, probably of one hundred millions of dollars, is now to be lost, and to fall on somebody; it must take on those who have property to meet it, and probably on the less cautious part, who, not aware of the impending catastrophe have suffered themselves to contract, or to be in debt, and must now sacrifice their property of a value many times the amount of their debt. We have been truly sowing the wind, and are now reaping the whirlwind. If the present crisis should end in the annihilation of these pennyless and ephemeral interlopers only, and reduce our commerce to the measure of our own wants and surplus productions, it will be a benefit in the end. But how to effect this, and give time to real capital, and the holders of real property, to back out of their enfanglements by degrees requires more knowledge of political economy than we possess. I believe it might be done, but I despair of its being done. The eyes of our citizens are not sufficiently open to the true cause of our distress. They ascribe them to everything but their true cause, the banking system; a system, which, if it could do good in any form, is yet so certain of leading to abuse, as to be utterly incompatible with the public safety and prosperity. At present, all is confusion, uncertainty and panic. —
TITLE: To Richard Rush.
EDITION: Ford ed.,x, 133.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: June. 1819
The application of the Bank of Baltimore is of great importance. The consideration is very weighty that it is held by citizens, while the stock of the United States bank is held in so great a proportion by foreigners. Were the Bank of the United States to swallow up the others and monopolize the whole banking business of the United States, which the demands we furnish them with tend shortly to favor, we might, on a misunderstanding with a foreign power, be immensely embarrassed by any disaffection in that bank. It is certainly for the public good to keep all the banks competitors for our favors by a judicious distribution of them, and thus to engage the individuals who belong to them in the support of the reformed order of things, or at least in an acquiescence under it. I suppose that, on the condition of participating in the deposits, the banks would be willing to make such communications of their operations and the state of their affairs as might satisfy the Secretary of the Treasury of their stability. It is recommended to Mr. Gallatin to leave such an opening in his answer to this letter, as to leave us free to do hereafter what
TITLE: To Albert Gallatin.
EDITION: Ford ed.,viii, 172.
DATE: Oct. 1802
As to the patronage of the Republican Bank at Providence, I am decidedly in favor of making all the banks republican, by sharing deposits with them in proportion to the dispositions they show. If the law now forbids it, we should not permit another session of Congress to pass without amending it. It is material to the safety of republicanism to detach the mercantile interest from its enemies and incorporate them into the body of its friends. —
TITLE: To Albert Gallatin.
EDITION: Ford ed.,viii, 252.
DATE: July. 1803
My original disapprobation of banks circulating paper is not unknown, nor have I since observed any effects either on the morals or fortunes of our citizens, which are any counter balance for the public evils produced. —
TITLE: To J. W. Eppes.
EDITION: Washington ed.vi ,203.
EDITION: Ford ed.,ix, 402.
PLACE: Poplar Forest, Va. ,,
DATE: Sep. 1813
The toleration of banks of paper-discount costs the United States one half their war taxes; or, in other words, doubles the expense of every war. —
TITLE: To J. W. Eppes.
EDITION: Washington ed.vi ,201.
EDITION: Ford ed.,ix, 400.
PLACE: Poplar Forest, Va. ,,
DATE: Sep. 1813
From the establishment of the United States Bank to this day, I have preached against this system, and have been sensible no cure could be hoped, but in the catastrophe now happening. —
TITLE: To Thomas Cooper.
EDITION: Washington ed.vi ,381.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1814
I have ever been the enemy of banks, not of those discounting for cash, but of those foisting their own paper into circulation, and thus banishing our cash. My zeal against those institutions was so warm and open at the establishment of the Bank of the United States, that I was derided as a maniac by the tribe of bank-mongers, who were seeking to filch from the public their swindling and barren gains. —
TITLE: To John Adams.
EDITION: Washington ed.vi ,305.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: Jan. 1814
I am an enemy to all banks discounting bills or notes for anything but coin. —
TITLE: To Dr. Thomas Cooper.
EDITION: Washington ed.vi ,295.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: Jan. 1814
The system of banking we have both equally and ever reprobated. I contemplate it as a blot left in all our constitutions, which, if not covered, will end in their destruction, which is already hit by the gamblers in corruption, and is sweeping away in its progress the fortunes and morals of our citizens. —
TITLE: To John Taylor.
EDITION: Washington ed.vi ,605.
EDITION: Ford ed.,x, 28.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: May. 1816
I do not know whether you may recollect how loudly my voice was raised against the establishment of banks in the beginning; but like that of Cassandra it was not listened to. I was set down as a madman by those who have since been victims to them. I little thought then how much [Col 2] I was to suffer by them myself; for I, too, am taken in by endorsements for a friend to the amount of $20,000, for the payment of which I shall have to make sale of that much of my property. And yet the general revolution of fortunes, which these instruments have produced, seems not at all to have cured our country of this mania. —
TITLE: To Thomas Leiper.
EDITION: Ford ed.,x, 254.
DATE: May. 1823
We are undone if this banking mania be not suppressed. Aut Carthago, aut Roma delenda est. —
TITLE: To Albert Gallatin.
EDITION: Washington ed.vi ,498.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: Oct. 1815
The mania [* * *] has seized, by its delusions and corruptions, all the members of our governments, general, special, and individual. —
TITLE: To John Adams.
EDITION: Washington ed.vi ,306.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: Jan. 1814
Knowing well that the Bank mania still possessed the great body of our countrymen, it was not expected that any radical cure of that could be at once effected. We must go further wrong, probably to a ne plus ultra before we shall be forced into what is right. Something will be obtained however, if we can excite, in those who think, doubt first, reflection next, and conviction at last. —
TITLE: To Joseph C. Cabell.
EDITION: Ford ed.,ix, 499.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1815
Like a dropsical man calling out for water, water, our deluded citizens are clamoring for more banks, more banks. The American mind is now in that state of fever which the world has so often seen in the history of other nations. We are under the bank bubble, as England was under the South Sea bubble, France under the Mississippi bubble, and as every nation is liable to be, under whatever bubble, design or delusion may puff up in moments when off their guard. —
TITLE: To Charles Yancey.
EDITION: Washington ed.vi ,515.
EDITION: Ford ed.,x, 2.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: Jan. 1816
This infatuation of banks is a torrent which it would be a folly for me to get in the way of. I see that it must take its course, until actual ruin shall awaken us from its delusions. —
TITLE: To Joseph C. Cabell.
EDITION: Washington ed.vi ,300.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: Jan. 1814
The monopoly of a single bank is certainly an evil. The multiplication of them was intended to cure it; but it multiplied an influence of the same character with the first, and completed the supplanting of the precious metals by a paper circulation. Between such parties the less we meddle the better. —
TITLE: To Albert Gallatin.
EDITION: Washington ed.iv ,446.
EDITION: Ford ed.,viii, 158.
PLACE: Washington
DATE: 1802
Interdict forever, to both the State and National governments the power of establishing any paper bank; for without this interdiction we shall have the same ebbs and flows of medium, and the same revolutions of property to go through every twenty or thirty years. —
TITLE: To W. C. Rives.
EDITION: Washington ed.vii ,147.
EDITION: Ford ed.,x, 151.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1819
The States should be applied to, to transfer the
TITLE: To J. W. Eppes.
EDITION: Washington ed.vi ,140.
EDITION: Ford ed.,ix, 393.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: June. 1813
The States should be urged to concede to the General Government, with a saving of chartered rights, the exclusive power of establishing banks of discount for paper. —
TITLE: To J. W. Eppes.
EDITION: Washington ed.vi ,427.
EDITION: Ford ed.,ix, 417.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: Nov. 1813
I still believe that on proper representations of the subject, a great proportion of the Legislatures would cede to Congress their power of establishing banks, saving the charter rights already granted. And this should be asked, not by way of amendment to the Constitution, because until three-fourths should consent, nothing could be done; but accepted from them one by one, singly, as their consent might be obtained. Any single State, even if no other should come into the measure, would find its interest in arresting foreign bank paper immediately, and its own by degrees. Specie would flow in on them as paper disappeared. Their own banks would call in and pay off their notes gradually, and their constituents would thus be saved from the general wreck. Should the greater part of the States concede, as is expected, their power over banks to Congress, besides insuring their own safety, the paper of the non-conceding States might be so checked and circumscribed, by prohibiting its receipt in any of the conceding States, and even in the non-conceding as to duties, taxes, judgments, or other demands of the United States, or of the citizens of other States, that it would soon die of itself, and the medium of gold and silver be universally restored. This is what ought to be done. But it will not be done. Carthago non delibitur. The overbearing clamor of merchants, speculators, and projectors, will drive us before them with our eyes open, until, as in France, under the Mississippi bubble, our citizens will be overtaken by the crash of this baseless fabric, without other satisfaction than that of execrations on the heads of those functionaries, who, from ignorance, pusillanimity or corruption, have betrayed the fruits of their industry into the hands of projectors and swindlers. —
TITLE: To J. W. Eppes.
EDITION: Washington ed.vi ,245.
EDITION: Ford ed.,ix, 415.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: Nov. 1813
The State Legislature should be immediately urged to relinquish the right of establishing banks of discount. Most of them will comply, on patriotic principles, under the convictions of the moment and the non-complying may be crowded into concurrence by legitimate devices. —
TITLE: To Thomas Cooper.
EDITION: Washington ed.vi ,382.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: Sep. 1814
I do not remember the conversation between us which you mention [* * *] on your proposition to vest in Congress the exclusive power of establishing banks. My opposition to it must have been grounded, not on taking the power from the States, but on leaving any vestige of it in ex [Col 2] istence, even in the hands of Congress, because it would only have been a change of the organ of abuse. —
TITLE: To John Adams.
EDITION: Washington ed.vi ,305.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: Jan. 1814
In order to be able to meet a general combination of the banks against us, in a critical emergency, could we not make a beginning towards an independent use of our own money, towards holding our own bank in all the deposits where it is received, and letting the treasurer give his draft or note, for payment at any particular place, which, in a well-conducted government, ought to have as much credit as any private draft, or bank note, or bill, and would give us the same facilities which we derive from the banks. —
TITLE: To Albert Gallatin.
EDITION: Washington ed.v ,520.
EDITION: Ford ed.,viii, 285.
PLACE: Washington
DATE: Dec. 1803
Private fortunes, in the present state of our circulation, are at the mercy of those selfcreated money-lenders, and are prostrated by the floods of nominal money with which their avarice deluges us. He who lent his money to the public or to an individual, before the institution of the United States Bank, twenty years ago, when wheat was well sold at a dollar the bushel, and receives now his nominal sum when it sells at two dollars, is cheated of half his fortune; and by whom? By the banks, which, since that, have thrown into circulation ten dollars of their nominal money where there was one at that time. —
TITLE: To John W. Eppes.
EDITION: Washington ed.vi ,142.
EDITION: Ford ed.,ix, 394.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: June. 1813
It is cruel that such revolutions in private fortunes should be at the mercy of avaricious adventurers, who instead of employing their capital, if any they have, in manufactures, commerce, and other useful pursuits, make it an instrument to burden all the interchanges of property with their swindling profits, profits which are the price of no useful industry of theirs. —
TITLE: To Dr. Thomas Cooper.
EDITION: Washington ed.vi ,295.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1814
The flood of paper money had produced an exaggeration of nominal prices, and at the same time a facility of obtaining money, which not only encouraged speculations on fictitious capital, but seduced those of real capital, even in private life, to contract debts too freely. Had things continued in the same course, these might have been manageable; but the operations of the United States bank for the demolition of the State banks obliged these suddenly to call in more than half their paper, crushed all fictitious and doubtful capital, and reduced the prices of property and produce suddenly to one-third of what they had been. —
TITLE: To Albert Gallatin.
EDITION: Ford ed.,x, 176.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: Dec. 1820
Instead of yielding to the cries of scarcity of medium set up by speculators, projectors and commercial gamblers, no endeavors should be spared to begin the work of reducing it by such gradual means as may give
TITLE: To J. W. Eppes.
EDITION: Washington ed.vi ,246.
EDITION: Ford ed.,ix, 417.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: Nov. 1813
We are called on to add ninety millions more to the circulation. Proceeding in this career, it is infallible, that we must end where the Revolutionary paper ended. Two hundred millions was the whole amount of all the emissions of the old Congress, at which point their bills ceased to circulate. We are now at that sum, but with treble the population, and of course a longer tether. Our depreciation is, as yet, but about two for one. Owing to the support its credit receives from the small reservoirs of specie in the vaults of the banks, it is impossible to say at what point their notes will stop. Nothing is necessary to effect it but a general alarm; and that may take place whenever the public shall begin to reflect on, and perceive the impossibility that the banks should repay this sum. At present, caution is inspired no farther than to keep prudent men from selling property on long payments. Let us suppose the panic to arise at three hundred millions, a point to which every session of the Legislature hastens us by long strides. Nobody dreams that they would have three hundred millions of specie to satisfy the holders of their notes. Were they even to stop now, no one supposes they have two hundred millions in cash, or even the sixty-six and two-third millions, to which amount alone the law compels them to repay. One hundred and thirtythree and one-third millions of loss, then, is thrown on the public by law; and as to the sixty-six and two-thirds, which they are legally bound to pay, and ought to have in their vaults, every one knows there is no such amount of cash in the United States, and what would be the course with what they really have there? Their notes are refused. Cash is called for. The inhabitants of the banking towns will get what is in the vaults, until a few banks declare their insolvency; when, the general crush becoming evident, the others will withdraw even the cash they have, declare their bankruptcy at once, and have an empty house and empty coffers for the holders of their notes. In this scramble of creditors, the country gets nothing, the towns but little. What are they to do? Bring suits? A million of creditors bring a million of suits against John Nokes and Robert Styles, wheresoever to be found? All nonsense. The loss is total. And a sum is thus swindled from our citizens, of seven times the amount of the real debt, and four times that of the fictitious one of the United States, at the close of the war. All this they will justly charge on their Legislatures; but this will be poor satisfaction for the two or three hundred millions they will have lost. It is time, then, for the public functionaries to look to this. Perhaps it may not be too late. Perhaps, by giving time to the banks, they May call in and pay off their paper by degrees. But no remedy is ever to be expected while it rests with the State Legislatures. Personal [Col 2] motive can be excited through so many avenues to their will, that, in their hands, it will continue to go on from bad to worse, until the catastrophe overwhelms us. —
TITLE: To J. W. Eppes.
EDITION: Washington ed.vi ,243.
EDITION: Ford ed.,ix, . 414.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: Nov. 1813
Our circulating paper of the last year was estimated at two hundred millions of dollars. The new banks now petitioned for, to the several Legislatures, are for about sixty millions additional capital, and of course one hundred and eighty millions of additional circulation, nearly doubling that of the last year, and raising the whole mass to near four hundred millions, or forty for one, of the wholesome amount of circulation for a population of eight millions circumstanced as we are, and you remember how rapidly our money went down after our forty for one establishment in the Revolution. I doubt if the present trash can hold as long. I think the three hundred and eighty millions must blow all up in the course of the present year, or certainly it will be consummated by the reduplication to take place of course at the legislative meetings of the next winter. Should not prudent men, who possess stock in any moneyed institution, either draw and hoard the cash now while they can, or exchange it for canal stock, or such other as being bottomed on immovable property will remain unhurt by the crush? —
TITLE: To John Adams.
EDITION: Washington ed.vi ,306.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: Jan. 1814
Two hundred millions in actual circulation and two hundred millions more likely to be legitimated by the legislative sessions of this winter, will give us about forty times the wholesome circulation for eight millions of people. When the new emissions get out, our legislatures will see, what they otherwise cannot believe, that it is possible to have too much money. —
TITLE: To President Madison.
EDITION: Ford ed.,ix, 453.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: Feb. 1814
The evils of this deluge of paper money are not to be removed, until our citizens are generally and radically instructed in their course and consequences, and silence by their authority the interested clamors and sophistry of speculating, shaving, and banking institutions. Till then we must be content to return, quoad hoc, to the savage state, to recur to barter in the exchange of our property, for the want of a stable, common measure of value, that now in use being less fixed than the beads and wampum of the Indian, and to deliver up our citizens, their property and their labor, passive victims to the swindling tricks of bankers and mountebankers. —
TITLE: To John Adams.
EDITION: Washington ed.vii ,115.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1819
But, it will be asked, are we to have no banks? Are merchants and others to be deprived of the resource of short accommodations, found so convenient? I answer, let us have banks; but let them be such as are alone to be found in any country on earth, except Great Britain. There is not a bank of discount on the continent
TITLE: To John W. Eppes.
EDITION: Washington ed.vi ,141.
EDITION: Ford ed.,ix, 394.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: June. 1813
Let banks continue if they please, but let them discount for cash alone or for treasury notes. They discount for cash alone in every other country on earth except Great Britain, and her too often unfortunate copyist, the United States. If taken in time they may be rectified by degrees, but if let alone till the alternative forces itself on us, of submitting to the enemy for want of funds, or the suppression of bank paper, either by law or by convulsion, we cannot foresee how it will end. —
TITLE: To J. W. Eppes.
EDITION: Washington ed.vi ,199.
EDITION: Ford ed.,ix, 399.
PLACE: Poplar Forest, Va. ,,
DATE: Sep. 1813
To the existence of banks of discount for cash, as on the continent of Europe, there can be no objection, because there can be no danger of abuse, and they are a convenience both to merchants and individuals. I think they should even be encouraged, by allowing them a larger than legal interest on short discounts, and tapering thence in proportion as the term of discount is lengthened, down to legal interest on those of a year or more. —
TITLE: To J. W. Eppes.
EDITION: Washington ed.vi ,247.
EDITION: Ford ed.,ix, 417.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: Nov. 1813
The paper bubble is burst. This is what you and I, and every reasoning man, seduced by no obliquity of mind or interest, have long foreseen. We were laboring under a dropsical fulness of circulating medium. Nearly all of it is now called in by the banks, who have the regulation of the safety-valves of our fortunes, and who condense and explode them at their will. Lands in this State [Virginia] cannot now be sold for a year's rent; and unless our Legislature have wisdom enough to effect a remedy by a gradual diminution only of the medium, there will be a general revolution of property in this State. Over our own paper and that of other States coming among us, they have competent powers; over that of the Bank of the United States there is doubt, not here, but elsewhere. [Col 2] That bank will probably conform voluntarily to such regulations as the Legislature May prescribe for the others. If they do not, we must shut their doors, and join the other States which deny the right of Congress to establish banks, and solicit them to agree to some mode of settling this constitutional question. They have themselves twice decided against their right, and twice for it. Many of the States have been uniform in denying it, and between such parties the Constitution has provided no umpire. —
TITLE: To John Adams.
EDITION: Washington ed.vii ,142.
EDITION: Ford ed.,x, 147.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: Nov. 1819
See Money and Paper Money.
We have now in the United States a negro, the son of a black man born in Africa, and a black woman born in the United States, who is a very respectable mathematician. I procured him to be employed under one of our chief directors in laying out the new Federal city on the Potomac, and in the intervals of his leisure, while on that work, he made an almanac for the next year, which he sent me in his own handwriting, and which I enclose to you. I have seen very elegant solutions of geometrical problems by him. Add to this that he is a very worthy and respectable member of society. He is a free man. I shall be delighted to see these instances of moral eminence so multiplied as to prove that the want of talents, observed in them, is merely the effect of their degraded condition, and not proceeding from any difference in the structure of the parts on which intellect depends. —
TITLE: To Marquis de Condorcet.
EDITION: Ford ed.,v, 379.
PLACE: Philadelphia ,
DATE: 1791
We are destined to be a barrier against the return of ignorance and barbarism. —
TITLE: To John Adams.
EDITION: Washington ed.vii ,27.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1816
Barbarism [* * *] will in time, I trust, disappear from the earth. —
TITLE: To William Ludlow.
EDITION: Washington ed.vii ,377.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1824
See Captives.
I was very unwilling that we should acquiesce in the European humiliation of paying a tribute to those [* * *] pirates, and endeavored to form an association of the powers subject to habitual depredations from them. I accordingly prepared, and proposed to their ministers at Paris, for consultation with their governments, articles of a special confederation. —
TITLE: Autobiography.
EDITION: Washington ed.i ,65.
EDITION: Ford ed.,i, 91.
PLACE: [none given]
DATE: 1821
Proposals for concerted operation among the powers at war with the piratical States of Barbary: 1. It is proposed, that the several powers at war with the piratical States of Barbary, or any two or more of them who shall be willing, shall enter into a convention to carry on their operations against those States, in concert, beginning with the Algerines. 2. This convention shall remain open to any other power who shall at any future time wish to accede to it; the parties reserving the right to prescribe the conditions of such accession, according to the circumstances existing at the time it shall be proposed. 3.
TITLE: Autobiography.
EDITION: Washington ed.i ,65.
EDITION: Ford ed.,i, 91.
Nothing was now wanting to bring it into direct and formal consideration but the assent of our government, and their authority to make the formal proposition. I communicated to them the favorable prospect of protecting our commerce from the Barbary depredations, and for such a continuance of time as, by an exclusion of them from the sea, to change their habits and characters from a predatory to an agricultural people: towards which however it was expected they [Col 2] would contribute a frigate, and its expenses to be in constant cruise. But they were in no condition to make any such engagement. Their recommendatory powers for obtaining contributions were so openly neglected by the several States that they declined an engagement which they were conscious they could not fulfil with punctuality; and so it fell through. —
TITLE: Autobiography.
EDITION: Washington ed.i ,67.
EDITION: Ford ed.,i, 93.
PLACE: [none given]
DATE: 1821
Spain had just concluded a treaty with Algiers, at the expense of three millions of dollars, and did not like to relinquish the benefit of that until the other party should fail in their observance of it. Portugal, Naples, the two Sicilies, Venice, Malta, Denmark and Sweden were favorably disposed to such an association; but their representatives at Paris expressed apprehensions that France would interfere, and, either openly or secretly support the Barbary powers; and they required that I should ascertain the dispositions of the Count de Vergennes on the subject. I had before taken occasion to inform him of what we were proposing, and therefore did not think it proper to insinuate any doubt of the fair conduct of his government; but stating our propositions, I mentioned the apprehensions entertained by us that England would interfere in behalf of those piratical governments. “She dares not do it,” said he. I pressed it no further. The other Agents were satisfied with this indication of his sentiments. —
TITLE: Autobiography.
EDITION: Washington ed.i ,67.
EDITION: Ford ed.,i, 3.
PLACE: [none given]
DATE: 1821
I hinted to the Count de Vergennes that I thought the English capable of administering aid to the Algerines. He seemed to think it impossible on account of the scandal it would bring on them. —
TITLE: To John Jay.
EDITION: Washington ed.i ,575.
EDITION: Ford ed.,iv, 228.
PLACE: Paris
DATE: 1786
Our instructions relative to the Barbary States having required us to proceed by way of negotiation to obtain their peace, it became our duty to do this to the best of our power. Whatever might be our private opinions, they were to be suppressed, and the line marked out to us was to be followed. It has been so, honestly and zealously. It was, therefore, never material for us to consult together, on the best plan of conduct toward these States. I acknowledge, I very early thought it would be best to effect a peace through the medium of war. Though it is a question with which we have nothing to do, yet as you propose some discussion of it, I shall trouble you with my reasons. Of the four positions laid down by you, I agree to the three first, which are, in substance, that the good offices of our friends cannot procure us a peace without paying its price; that they cannot materially lessen that price; and that paying it, we can have the peace in spite of the intrigues of our enemies. As to the fourth, that the longer the negotiation is delayed, the larger will be the demand; this will depend on the intermediate captures: if they are many and rish, the price may be raised; if few and poor, it will be lessened. However, if it is decided that we shall buy a peace, I know no reason for delaying the operation, but should rather think it ought to be hastened; but I should prefer the obtaining it by war. 1. Justice is in favor of this opinion. 2. Honor favors it. 3. It will procure us respect in Europe; and respect is a safeguard to
TITLE: To John Adams.
EDITION: Washington ed.i ,591.
PLACE: Paris
DATE: July. 1786
Were the honor and advantage of establishing such a confederacy [against the piratical powers] out of the question, yet the necessity that the United States should have some marine force, and the hap [Col 2] piness of this, as the ostensible cause for beginning it, would decide on its propriety. It will be said, there is no money in the treasury. There never will be money in the treasury, till the confederacy shows its teeth. The States must see the rod; perhaps it must be felt by some one of them. I am persuaded, all of them would rejoice to see every one obliged to furnish its contributions. It is not the difficulty of furnishing them, which beggars the treasury, but the fear that others will not furnish as much. Every rational citizen must wish to see an effective instrument of coercion, and should fear to see it on any other element than the water. —
TITLE: To James Monroe.
EDITION: Washington ed.i ,606.
EDITION: Ford ed.,iv, 264.
PLACE: Paris
DATE: 1786
Algiers, Tunis and Tripoli, remaining hostile, will shut up the Mediterranean to us. —
TITLE: To Governor Henry.
EDITION: Washington ed.i ,601.
PLACE: Paris
DATE: 1786
The Algerines form an obstacle; but the object of our commerce in the Mediterranean is so immense that we ought to surmount that obstacle, and I believe it can be done by means in our power, and which, instead of fouling us with the dishonorable and criminal baseness of France and England, will place us in the road to respect with all the world. —
TITLE: To E. Rutledge.
EDITION: Washington ed.iii ,110.
PLACE: Paris
DATE: 1789
See Morocco.
What will you do with the piratical States? Buy a peace at their enormous price; force one; or abandon the carriage into the Mediterranean to other powers? All these measures are disagreeable. —
TITLE: To Elbridge Gerry.
EDITION: Washington ed.i ,557.
PLACE: Paris
DATE: 1786
The States of Algiers, Tunis and Tripoli hold their peace at a price which would be felt by every man in his settlement with the taxgatherer. —
TITLE: To Patrick Henry.
EDITION: Washington ed.i ,601.
PLACE: Paris
DATE: 1786
It is not in the choice of the States, whether they will pay money to cover their trade against the Algerines. If they obtain a peace by negotiation, they must pay a great sum of money for it; if they do nothing, they must pay a great sum of money in the form of insurance; and in either way, as great a one as in the way of force, and probably less effectual. —
TITLE: To James Monroe.
EDITION: Washington ed.i ,607.
EDITION: Ford ed.,iv, 265.
PLACE: Paris
DATE: 1786
Congress must begin by getting money. When they have this, it is a matter of calculation whether they will buy a peace, or force one, or do nothing. —
TITLE: To John Adams.
EDITION: Washington ed.i ,585.
PLACE: Paris
DATE: 1786
The continuance of [a purchased] peace with the Barbary States will depend on their idea of our power to enforce it, and on the life of the particular Dey, or other head of the government, with whom it is contracted. Congress will, no doubt, weigh these circumstances against the expense and probable success of compelling a peace by arms. —
TITLE: To James Monroe.
EDITION: Washington ed.i ,565.
EDITION: Ford ed.,iv, 221.
PLACE: Paris
DATE: 1786
In London Mr. Adams and I had conferences with a Tripoline ambassador, named Abdrahaman. He asked us thirty thousand guineas for a peace with his court, and as much for Tunis, for which he
TITLE: To William Carmichael.
EDITION: Washington ed.i ,551.
PLACE: Paris
DATE: 1786
The Tripoline ambassador offered peace for 30,000 guineas for Tripoli, and as many for Tunis. Calculating on this scale, Morocco should ask 60,000, and Algiers 120,000. —
TITLE: To David Humphreys.
EDITION: Washington ed.i ,559.
PLACE: Paris
DATE: 1786
A second plan might be, to obtain peace by purchasing it. For this we have the example of rich and powerful nations, in this instance counting their interest more than their honor. —
TITLE: Report on Mediterranean Trade.
EDITION: Washington ed.vii ,522.
PLACE: [none given]
DATE: 1790
As the duration of this peace cannot be counted on with certainty, and we look forward to the necessity of coercion by cruises on their coast, to be kept up during the whole of their cruising season, you will be pleased to inform yourself [* * *] of every circumstance which may influence or guide us in undertaking and conducting such an operation. —
TITLE: To John Paul Jones.
EDITION: Washington ed.iii ,438.
PLACE: Philadelphia ,
DATE: 1792 1792 gt;
The attempts heretofore made to suppress the [Barbary] powers have been to exterminate them at one blow. They are too numerous and powerful by land for that. A small effort, but long continued, seems to be the only method. By suppressing their marine and trade totally, and continuing this till the present race of seamen should be pretty well out of the way, and the younger people betake themselves to husbandry for which their soil and climate are well fitted, these nests of banditti might be reformed. —
TITLE: To James Monroe.
EDITION: Ford ed.,iv, 33.
PLACE: Paris
DATE: 1785
It is impossible I fear to find out what [tribute] is given by other countries [to the piratical States] . Either shame or jealousy makes them wish to keep it secret. —
TITLE: To James Monroe.
EDITION: Ford ed.,iv, 31.
PLACE: Paris
DATE: 1785
The Algerines, I fear, will ask such a tribute for the forbearance of their piracies as the United States would be unwilling to pay. When this idea comes across my mind my faculties are absolutely suspended between indignation and impotence. I think whatever sums we are obliged to pay for freedom of navigation in the European seas, should be levied on European commerce with us, by a separate impost; that these powers may see that they protect these enormities for their own loss.
TITLE: To Nathaniel Greene.
EDITION: Ford ed.,iv, 25.
PLACE: Paris
DATE: 1785
Such [European] powers as should refuse [to join a confederation to suppress the Barbary piracies] would give us a just right to turn pirates also on their West India trade, and to require an annual tribute which might reimburse what we may be obliged to pay to obtain a safe navigation in their seas. —
TITLE: To James Monroe.
EDITION: Ford ed.,iv, 33.
PLACE: Paris
DATE: 1785
From what I learn from the temper of my [Col 2] countrymen and their tenaciousness of money, it will be more easy to raise ships to fight these pirates into reason than money to bribe them. —
TITLE: To Ezra Stiles.
EDITION: Washington ed.ii ,78.
PLACE: Paris
DATE: 1786
The motives pleading for war rather than tribute [to the piratical States] are numerous and honorable; those opposing them are mean and short-sighted. —
TITLE: To James Monroe.
EDITION: Ford ed.,iv, 32.
PLACE: Paris
DATE: 1785
See Tripoli.
These pirates are contemptibly weak. Morocco, who has just dared to commit an outrage on us, owns only four or five frigates of 18 or 20 guns. There is not a port in their country which has more than 13 feet of water. Tunis is not quite so strong (having three or four frigates only, small and worthless); is more mercantile than predatory, and would easily be led to treat either by money or fear. Tripoli has one frigate only. Algiers alone possesses any power, and they are brave. As far as I have been able to discover, she possesses about sixteen vessels, from 22 up to 52 guns; but the vessels of all these powers are wretched in the last degree, being mostly built of the discordant pieces of other vessels which they take and pull asunder; their cordage and sails are of the same kind, taken from vessels of different sizes and powers, seldom any two guns of the same bore and all of them light. —
TITLE: To James Monroe.
EDITION: Ford ed.,iv, 31.
PLACE: Paris
DATE: 1785
See Morocco, Tripoli and Tunis.
Though we are not authorized to delegate to Mr. Barclay the power of ultimately signing the treaty, yet such is our reliance on his wisdom, his integrity, and his attention to the instructions with which he is charged, that we assure his Majesty, the conditions which he shall arrange and send to us, shall be returned with our signature. 44 —
TITLE: To the Emperor of Morocco.
EDITION: Washington ed.i ,419.
PLACE: Paris
DATE: 1785
Mr. Barclay's mission has been attended with complete success. For this we are indebted, unquestionably, to the influence and good offices of the court of Madrid. —
TITLE: To John Jay.
EDITION: Washington ed.ii ,85.
PLACE: Paris
DATE: 1786
You have my full and hearty approbation of the treaty you obtained from Morocco, which is better and on better terms than I expected. —
TITLE: To Thomas Barclay.
EDITION: Washington ed.ii ,125.
PLACE: Paris
DATE: 1787
You are appointed by the President [* * *] to go to the court of Morocco, for the purpose of obtaining from the new Emperor, a recognition of our treaty with his father. As it is thought best that you should go in some definite character, that of consul has been adopted. —
TITLE: To Thomas Barclay.
EDITION: Washington ed.iii ,261.
PLACE: Paris
DATE: 1791
As you have acted since my arrival in France, in the characters of Consul General for that country, and Minister to the Court of Morocco, and also as agent in some particular transactions for the State of Virginia, I think it is a duty to yourself, to truth, and to justice, on your departure for America, to declare that in all these characters,
TITLE: To Thomas Barclay.
EDITION: Washington ed.ii ,211.
PLACE: Paris
DATE: 1787
Mr. Madison and myself have cut out a piece of work for you, which is to write the history of the United States, from the close of the war downwards. We are rich ourselves in materials, and can open all the public archives to you; but your residence here [Washington] is essential, because a great deal of the knowledge of things is not on paper, but only within ourselves, for verbal communication. John Marshall is writing the life of General Washington from his papers. It is intended to come out just in time to influence the next Presidential election. It is written, therefore, principally with a view to electioneering purposes. But it will consequently be out in time to aid you with information, as well as to point out the perversions of truth necessary to be rectified. —
TITLE: To Joel Barlow.
EDITION: Washington ed.iv ,438.
EDITION: Ford ed.,viii, 151.
PLACE: Washington
DATE: May. 1802
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 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 ridden by him who has genius enough to get a bridle into his mouth. —
TITLE: To Joel Barlow.
EDITION: Washington ed.v ,496.
EDITION: Ford ed.,ix, 269.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1810
I felicitate you on your destination to Paris [as minister] . [* * *] Yet it is not unmixed with regret. What is to become of our post-revolutionary history? Of the antidotes of truth to the misrepresentations of Marshall? This example proves the wisdom of the maxim, never put off till to-morrow what can be done to-day. —
TITLE: To Joel Barlow.
EDITION: Washington ed.v ,587.
EDITION: Ford ed.,ix, 322.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: April. 1811
I thank you for your “Conspiracy of Kings” and advice to the privileged orders. Be assured that your endeavours to bring the transAtlantic world into the road of reason, are not without their effect in America. Some here are disposed to move retrograde, and to take their stand in the rear of Europe, now advancing to the high ground of natural right. —
TITLE: To Joel Barlow.
EDITION: Washington ed.iii ,451.
EDITION: Ford ed.,vi, 88.
PLACE: Paris
DATE: 1792
Thomas Jefferson returns thanks to Mr. Barlow for the copy of the “Columbiad” he has been so kind as to send him; the eye discovers at once the excellence of the mechanical execution of the work, and he is persuaded that the mental part will be found to have merited it. He will not do it the injustice of giving it such a reading as his situation here [Washington] would admit, [Col 2] of a few minutes at a time, and at intervals of many days. He will reserve it for that retirement after which he is panting, and not now very distant, where he may enjoy it in full concert with its kindred scenes, amidst those rural delights which join in chorus with the poet, and give to his song all its magic effect. —
TITLE: To Joel Barlow.
EDITION: Washington ed.v ,238.
PLACE: Washington
DATE: 1808
See Illuminati.
See Mourning.
The mob, now openly joined by the French guards, forced the prison of St. Lazare, released all the prisoners, and took a great store of corn, which they carried to the corn market. Here they got some arms, and the French guards began to form and train them. The committee determined to raise forty-eight thousand Bourgeoise, or rather to restrain their numbers to forty-eight thousand. On the 14th [July] , they sent one of their members (Monsieur de Corny, whom we knew in America) to the Hotel des Invalides, to ask arms for their Garde Bourgeoise. He was followed by, or he found there, a great mob. The Governor of the Invalides came out, and represented the impossibility of delivering his arms, without the orders of those from whom he received them. De Corny advised the people then to retire, and retired himself; and the people took possession of the arms. It was remarkable, that not only the Invalides themselves made no opposition, but that a body of five thousand foreign troops, encamped within four hundred yards, never stirred. Monsieur de Corny and five others were then sent to ask arms of Monsieur de Launey, Governor of the Bastile. They found a great collection of people already before the place, and they immediately planted a flag of truce, which was answered by a like flag hoisted on the parapet. The deputation prevailed on the people to fall back a little, advanced themselves to make their demand of the Governor, and in that instant a discharge from the Bastile killed four of those nearest to the deputies. The deputies retired; the people rushed against the place, and almost in an instant were in possession of a fortification, defended by one hundred men, of infinite strength, which in other times had stood several regular sieges, and had never been taken. How they got in, has, as yet, been impossible to discover. Those who pretend to have been of the party tell so many different stories, as to destroy the credit of them all. They took all the arms, discharged the prisoners, and such of the garrison as were not killed in the first moment of fury: carried the Governor and Lieutenant Governor to the Gréve (the place of public execution), cut off their heads, and sent them through the city in triumph to the Palais Royal. —
TITLE: To John Jay.
EDITION: Washington ed.iii ,76.
PLACE: Paris
DATE: July 19 1789
I find Bastrop's case less difficult than I had expected. My view of it is this: The Governor of Louisiana being desirous of introducing the culture of wheat into that province, engages Bastrop as an agent for carrying that object into effect. He agrees to lay off twelve leagues square on the Washita and Bayou liard as a settlement for the culture of wheat, to which Bastrop is to bring five hundred families, each of which families is to have four hundred arpens of the land; the residue of
TITLE: To Albert Gallatin.
EDITION: Washington ed.v ,231.
DATE: Jan. 1808
Mr. Livingston, [* * *] finding that we considered the Batture as now resting with Congress, 46 and that it is our duty to keep it clear of all adversary possession till their decision is obtained [has written] a letter to the Secretary of State, which, if we understand it, amounts to a declaration that he will [* * *] bring the authority of the court into array against that of the Executive, and endeavor to obtain a forcible possession. But I presume that the court knows too well that the title of the United States to land is subject to the jurisdiction of no court, it having never been deemed safe to submit the major interests of the nation to an ordinary tribunal, or to any one but such as the Legislature establishes for the special occasion; and the marshal will find his duty too plainly marked out in the act of March 3, 1807, to be at a loss to determine what authority he is to obey. —
TITLE: To Governor Claiborne.
EDITION: Washington ed.v ,319.
PLACE: Washington
DATE: July. 1808
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 interests of the nation, and among these with the preservation of their lands from intrusion, I exercised, on their behalf, a right [Col 2] 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. —
TITLE: To Governor Claiborne.
EDITION: Washington ed.v ,518.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1810
Livingston has served a writ on me, stating damages at $100,000. —
TITLE: To President Madison.
EDITION: Ford ed.,ix, 275.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1810
In speaking of Livingston's suit, I omitted to observe that it is a little doubted that his knowledge of Marshall's character has induced him to bring this action. His twistifications in the case of Marbury, in that of Burr, and the Yazoo case show how dexterously he can reconcile law to his own personal biasses; and nobody seems to doubt that he is ready prepared to decide that Livingston's right to the batture is unquestionable, and that I am bound to pay for it with my private fortune. —
TITLE: To President Madison.
EDITION: Ford ed.,ix, 276.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1810
What the issue of the case ought to be, no unbiased man can doubt. What it will be, no one can tell. The judge's [Marshall's] inveteracy is profound, and his mind of that gloomy malignity which will never let him forego the opportunity of satiating it on a victim. His decisions, his instructions to a jury, his allowances and disallowances and garblings of evidence, must all be subjects of appeal. I consider that as my only chance of saving my fortune from entire wreck. And to whom is my appeal? From the judge in Burr's case to himself and his associate judges in the case of Marbury v. Madison. Not exactly, however. I observe old Cushing is dead. At length, then, we have a chance of getting a republican majority in the Supreme judiciary. —
TITLE: To Albert Gallatin.
EDITION: Ford ed.,ix, 284.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: Sep. 1810
I have no concern at all in maintaining the title to the batture. It would be totally unnecessary for me to employ counsel to go into the question at all for my own defence. That is solidly built on the simple fact, that if I were in error, it was honest, and not imputable to that gross and palpable corruption or injustice which makes a public magistrate responsible to a private party. —
TITLE: To Albert Gallatin.
EDITION: Washington ed.v ,537.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1810
If human reason is not mere illusion, and law a
TITLE: Batture Case.
EDITION: Washington ed.viii ,604.
PLACE: [none given]
DATE: 1812
Edward Livingston tells me that Bayard applied to-day or last night to General Samuel Smith, and represented to him the expediency of his coming over to the States who vote for Burr [for President] , that there was nothing in the way of appointment which he might not command, and particularly mentioned the Secretaryship of the Navy. Smith asked him if he was authorized to make the offer. He said he was authorized. Smith told this to Livingston, and to W. C. Nicholas who confirms it to me. Bayard, in like manner, tempted Livingston, not by offering any particular office, but by representing to him his (Livingston's) intimacy and connection with Burr; that from him he had everything to expect, if he would come over to him. To Doctor Linn of New Jersey, they have offered the government of New Jersey. —
TITLE: The Anas.
EDITION: Washington ed.ix ,202.
EDITION: Ford ed.,i, 291.
DATE: Feb. 1808
See Elections, Presidential, 1800.
I hear that Mr. Beaumarchais means to make himself heard, if the memorial which he sends by an agent in the present packet is not attended to as he thinks it ought to be. He called on me with it and desired me to recommend his case to a decision, and to note in my dispatch that it was the first time he had spoken to me on the subject. This is true, it being the first time I ever saw him; but my recommendations would be as displaced as unnecessary. I assured him Congress would do in that business what justice should require, and their means enabled them. —
TITLE: To John Jay.
EDITION: Washington ed.ii ,232.
PLACE: Paris
DATE: 1787
A final decision of some sort should be made on Beaumarchais's affairs. —
TITLE: To James Madison.
EDITION: Washington ed.ii ,209.
EDITION: Ford ed.,iv, 423.
PLACE: Paris
DATE: 1787
The honey-bee is not a native of our continent. Maregrove, indeed, mentions a species of honey-bee in Brazil. But this has no sting, and is therefore different from the one we have, which resembles perfectly that of Europe. The Indians concur with us in the tradition that it was brought from Europe; but when, and by whom, we know not. The bees have generally extended themselves into the country, a little in advance of the white settlers. The Indians, therefore, call them the white man's fly, and consider their approach as indicating the approach of the settlements of the whites. —
TITLE: Notes on Virginia.
EDITION: Washington ed.viii ,319.
EDITION: Ford ed.,iii, 175.
PLACE: [none given]
DATE: 1782
How far northwardly have these insects been found? That they are unknown in Lapland, I infer from Scheffer's information, that the Laplanders eat the pine bark, prepared in a certain way, instead of those things sweetened with sugar. [* * *] Certainly if they had honey, it would be a better substitute for sugar than any preparation of the pine bark. Kalm tells us the honey-bee cannot live through the winter in Canada. They furnish then an additional remarkable fact, first observed by the Count de Buffon, and which has thrown such a blaze of light on the field of natural history, that no animals are found in both continents, but those which are able to bear the cold of those regions where they probably [Col 2] join. —
TITLE: Notes on Virginia.
EDITION: Washington ed.viii ,320.
EDITION: Ford ed.,iii, 176.
PLACE: [none given]
DATE: 1782
There is before the Assembly [of Virginia] a petition of a Captain Miller, which I have at heart, because I have great esteem for the petitioner as an honest and useful man. He is about to settle in our country, and to establish a brewery, in which art I think him as skilful a man as has ever come to America. I wish to see this beverage become common instead of the whisky which kills one-third of our citizens, and ruins their families. He is staying with me until he can fix himself, and I should be thankful for information from time to time of the progress of his petition. —
TITLE: To Charles Yancey.
EDITION: Washington ed.vi ,515.
EDITION: Ford ed.,x, 2.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1815
First, The original arming and equipping of vessels in the ports of the United States by any of the belligerent powers for military service, offensive or defensive, is deemed unlawful. Second. Equipment of merchant vessels by either of the belligerent parties in the ports of the United States, purely for the accommodation of them as such, is deemed lawful. Third. Equipments in the ports of the United States of vessels of war in the immediate service of the government of any of the belligerent parties, which, if done to other vessels, would be of a doubtful nature, as being applicable either to commerce or war, are deemed lawful, except those which shall have made prize of the subjects, people or property of France, coming with their prizes into the ports of the United States, pursuant to the seventeenth article of our treaty of amity and commerce with France. Fourth. Equipments in the ports of the United States by any of the parties at war with France, of vessels fitted for merchandise and war, whether with or without commissions, which are doubtful in their nature, as being applicable either to commerce or war. are deemed lawful, except those which shall have made prize, &c. Fifth. Equipments of any of the vessels of France in the ports of the United States, which are doubtful in their nature, as being applicable to commerce or war, are deemed lawful. Sixth. Equipments of every kind in the ports of the United States of privateers of the powers at war with France, are deemed unlawful. Seventh. Equipments of vessels in the ports of the United States which are of a nature solely adapted to war, are deemed unlawful; except those stranded or wrecked, as mentioned in [the] eighteenth article of our treaty with France, the sixteenth of our treaty with the United Netherlands, the ninth of our treaty with Prussia, and except those mentioned in the nineteenth article of our treaty with France, the seventeenth of our treaty with the United Netherlands, the eighteenth of our treaty with Prussia. Eighth. Vessels of either of the parties not armed, or armed previous to their coming into the ports of the United States, which shall not have infringed any of the foregoing rules may lawfully engage or enlist therein their own subjects, or aliens not being inhabitants of the United
TITLE: Cabinet Decision.
EDITION: Washington ed.ix ,440.
EDITION: Ford ed.,vi, 358.
DATE: Aug. 3, 1793
At a cabinet meeting on account of the British letter-of-marque ship Jane, said to have put up waste boards, to have pierced two port-holes, and mounted two cannon (which she brought in) on new carriages which she did not bring in, and consequently having sixteen, instead of fourteen, guns mounted, it was agreed that a letter-of-marque, or vessel armé en guerre, and en marchandise, is not a privateer, and, therefore, not to be ordered out of our ports. It was agreed by Hamilton, Knox, and myself, that the case of such a vessel does not depend on the treaties, but on the law of nations. Edmund Randolph thought, as she had a mixed character of merchant vessel and privateer, she might be considered under the treaty; but this being overruled, the following paper was written: Rules proposed by Attorney General: 1. That all equipments purely for the accommodation of vessels, as merchantmen, be admitted. (Agreed.) 2d. That all equipments, doubtful in their nature, and applicable equally to commerce or war, be admitted, as producing too many minutiæ. (Agreed.) 3. That all equipments, solely adapted to military objects, be prohibited. (Agreed.) Rules proposed by the Secretary of the Treasury: 1st. That the original arming and equipping of vessels for military service, offensive or defensive, in the ports of the United States, be considered as prohibited to all. (Agreed.) 2d. That vessels which were armed before their coming into our ports, shall not be permitted to augment these equipments in the ports of the United States, but may repair or replace any military equipments which they had when they began their voyage for the United States; that this, however, shall be with the exception of privateers of the parties opposed to France, who shall not fit or repair (Negatived, the Secretary of the Treasury only holding this opinion). 3d. That for convenience, vessels armed and commissioned before they come into our ports, may engage their own citizens, not being inhabitants of the United States. (Agreed.) I subjoined the following: I concur in the rules proposed by the AttorneyGeneral, as far as respects materials or means of annoyance furnished by us; and I should be for an additional rule, that as to means or materials brought into this country, and belonging to themselves, they are free to use them. —
TITLE: The Anas.
EDITION: Washington ed.ix ,161.
EDITION: Ford ed.,i, 250.
DATE: July. 1793
Far from a disposition to avail ourselves of the peculiar situation of any belligerent nation to ask concessions incompatible [Col 2] with their rights, with justice, or reciprocity, we have never proposed to any the sacrifice of a single right: and in consideration of existing circumstances, we have ever been willing, where our duty to other nations permitted us, to relax for a time, and in some cases, that strictness of right which the laws of nature, the acknowledgments of the civilized world, and the equality and independence of nations entitle us to. —
TITLE: R. To A. Orleans Legislature.
EDITION: Washington ed.viii ,129.
DATE: June. 1808
May an armed vessel, arriving here, be prohibited to employ their own citizens found here, as seamen or mariners? They cannot be prohibited to recruit their own citizens. —
TITLE: The Anas.
EDITION: Washington ed.ix ,158.
EDITION: Ford ed.,i, 242.
PLACE: [none given]
DATE: 1793
Our citizens have been always free to make, vend and export arms. It is the constant occupation and livelihood of some of them. To suppress their callings, the only means perhaps of their subsistence, because a war exists in foreign and distant countries, in which we have no concern, would scarcely be expected. It would be hard in principle, and impossible in practice. The law of nations, therefore, respecting the rights of those at peace, does not require from them such an internal derangement in their occupations. It is satisfied with the external penalty pronounced in the President's proclamation, that of confiscation of such portion of these arms as shall fall into the hands of any of the belligerent powers on their way to the ports of their enemies. To this penalty our citizens are warned that they will be abandoned; and that even private contraventions may work no inequality between the parties at war, the benefits of them will be left equally free and open to all. —
TITLE: To George Hammond.
EDITION: Washington ed.iii ,558.
EDITION: Ford ed.,vi, 253.
DATE: May. 1793
The United States, being a ship-building nation, may they sell ships, prepared for war, to both parties? They may sell such ships in their ports to both parties, or carry them for sale to the dominions of both parties. —
TITLE: The Anas.
EDITION: Washington ed.ix ,158.
EDITION: Ford ed.,i, 242.
PLACE: [none given]
DATE: 1793
It is well enough agreed, in the law of nations, that for a neutral power to give or refuse permission to the troops of either belligerent party to pass through their territory, is no breach of neutrality, provided the same refusal or permission be extended to the other party. —
TITLE: Official Opinion.
EDITION: Washington ed.vii ,500.
DATE: Aug. 1790
See Neutrality.
I believe [* * *] that every human mind feels pleasure in doing good to another. —
TITLE: To John Adams.
EDITION: Washington ed.vii ,39.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1816
These decrees and orders [of council] , taken together, want little of amounting to a declaration that every neutral
TITLE: Special Message.
EDITION: Washington ed.viii ,100.
EDITION: Ford ed.,ix, 185.
DATE: March 17, 1808
See Embargo.
I had not supposed there was a family in this State [Virginia] not possessing a Bible, and wishing without having the means to procure one. When, in earlier life, I was intimate with every class, I think I never was in a house where that was the case. However, circumstances may have changed, and the [Bible] Society, I presume, have evidence of the fact. I, therefore, enclose you cheerfully, an order [* * *] for fifty dollars, for the purposes of the Society. —
TITLE: To Samuel Greenhow.
EDITION: Washington ed.vi ,308.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1814
There never was a more pure and sublime system of morality delivered to man than is to be found in the four Evangelists. —
TITLE: To Samuel Greenhow.
EDITION: Washington ed.vi ,309.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1814
As to tradition, if we are Protestants we reject all tradition, and rely on the Scripture alone, for that is the essence and common principle of all the Protestant churches. —
TITLE: Notes on Religion.
EDITION: Ford ed.,ii, 96.
PLACE: [none given]1776?
I propose [after retirement] , among my first employments, to give to the Septuagint an attentive persual. 47 —
TITLE: To Charles Thomson.
EDITION: Washington ed.v ,403.
EDITION: Ford ed.,ii, 234.
PLACE: Washington
DATE: 1808
Bigotry is the disease of ignorance, of morbid minds; enthusiasm of the free and buoyant. Education and free discussion are the antidotes of both. —
TITLE: To John Adams.
EDITION: Washington ed.vii ,27.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1816
What an effort of bigotry in politics and religion have we gone through! The barbarians really flattered themselves they should be able to bring back the times of Vandalism, when ignorance put everything into the hands of power and priestcraft. All advances in science were proscribed as innovations. They pretended to praise and encourage education, but it was to be the education of our ancestors. We were to look backwards, not forwards for improvement; the President himself [John Adams] declaring [* * *] that we were never to expect to go beyond them in real science. —
TITLE: To Dr. Joseph Priestley.
EDITION: Washington ed.iv ,373.
EDITION: Ford ed.,viii, 21.
PLACE: Washington
DATE: March. 1801
Ignorance and bigotry, like other insanities, are incapable of self-government. —
TITLE: To Marquis Lafayette.
EDITION: Washington ed.vii ,67.
EDITION: Ford ed.,x, 84.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1817
All bigotries hang to one another. —
TITLE: To John Adams.
EDITION: Washington ed.vi ,305.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1814
The enlightened part of Europe have given us the greatest credit for inventing this instrument of security for the rights of the people, and have been not a little surprised to see us so soon give it up [not having incorporated one in the new Constitution] . —
TITLE: To F. Hopkinson.
EDITION: Washington ed.ii ,586.
EDITION: Ford ed.,v, 77.
PLACE: Paris
DATE: March. 1789
I do not like [in the Federal Constitution] first, the omission of a bill of rights, providing clearly and without the aid of sophisms for freedom of religion, freedom of the press, protection against standing armies, restriction against monopolies, the eternal and unremitting force of the habeas corpus laws, and trials by jury in all matters of fact triable by the laws of the land, and not by the law of nations. To say, as Mr. Wilson does, that a bill of rights was not necessary, because all is reserved in the case of the General Government which is not given, while in the particular ones, all is given which is not reserved, might do for the audience to whom it was addressed; but it is surely a gratis dictum, opposed by strong inferences from the body of the instrument, as well as from the omission of the clause of our present confederation, which had declared that in express terms. It was a hard conclusion to say, because there has been no uniformity among the States as to the cases triable by jury, because some have been so incautious as to abandon this mode of trial, therefore the more prudent States shall be reduced to the same level of calamity. It would have been much more just and wise to have concluded the other way, that as most of the States had judiciously preserved this palladium, those who had wandered should be brought back to it, and to have established general right instead of general wrong. 48 Let me add that a bill of rights is what the people are entitled to against every government on earth, general or particular; and what no just government should refuse or rest on inferences. —
TITLE: To James Madison.
EDITION: Washington ed.ii ,329.
EDITION: Ford ed.,iv, 476.
PLACE: Paris
DATE: Dec. 1787
I am in hopes that the annexation of a bill of rights to the Constitution will alone draw over so great a proportion of the minorities, as to leave little danger in the opposition of the residue; and that this annexation may be made by Congress and the Assemblies, without calling a convention which might endanger the most valuable parts of the system. —
TITLE: To General Washington.
EDITION: Washington ed.ii ,533.
EDITION: Ford ed.,v, 56.
PLACE: Paris
DATE: Dec. 1788
I sincerely rejoice at the acceptance of our new Constitution by nine States. It is a good canvas on which some strokes only want retouching. What these are, I think are sufficiently manifested by the general voice from north to south, which calls for a bill of rights. It seems pretty generally understood that this should go to juries, habeas corpus, standing armies, printing, religion, and monopolies. I conceive there may be difficulty in finding general modifications of these, suited to the habits of all the States. But if such cannot be found, then it is better to establish trials by jury, the right of habeas corpus, freedom of the press, and freedom of religion, in all cases, and to abolish standing armies in time of peace, and monopolies in all cases, than not to do it in any. The few cases wherein these things may do evil, cannot be weighed against the multitude wherein the want of them will do evil. In disputes between a foreigner and a native, a trial by jury may be improper. But if this exception cannot be agreed to, the remedy will be to model the jury by giving the mediatas linguæ in civil as well as criminal cases. Why suspend the habeas corpus in insurrections and rebellions? The parties who may be arrested, may be changed instantly with a well-defined crime; of course, the judge will remand them. If the public safety requires that the government should have a man imprisoned on less probable testimony in this than in other emergencies, let him be taken and tried, and retaken and retried, while the necessity continues, only giving them redress against the government, for damages. Examine the history of England. See how few of the cases of the suspension of the habeas corpus law have been worthy of that suspension. They have been either real treason, wherein the parties might as well have been charged at once, or sham plots, where it was shameful they should ever have been suspected. Yet for the few cases wherein the suspension of the habeas corpus has done real good, that operation is now become habitual, and the mass of the nation almost prepared to live under its constant suspension. A declaration, that the Federal government will never restrain the presses from printing anything they please, will not take away the liability of the printers for false facts printed. The declaration, that religious faith shall be unpunished, does not give impunity to criminal acts, dictated by religious error. The saying there shall be no monopolies, lessens the incitements to ingenuity, which is spurred on by the hope of a monopoly for a limited time, as of fourteen years; but the benefit of even limited monopolies is too doubtful to be opposed to that of their general suppression. If no check can be found to keep the number of standing troops within safe bounds, while they are tolerated as far as necessary, abandon them altogether; discipline well the militia, and guard the magazines with them. More than magazine guards will be useless if few, and dangerous if many. No European nation can ever send against us such a regular army as [Col 2] we need fear; and it is hard if our militia are not equal to those of Canada or Florida. My idea then, is that though proper exceptions to these general rules are desirable, and probably practicable, yet if the exceptions cannot be agreed on, the establishment of the rules in all cases will do ill in very few. I hope, therefore, a bill of rights will be formed, to guard the people against the Federal Government, as they are already guarded against their State governments in most instances. —
TITLE: To James Madison.
EDITION: Washington ed.ii ,445.
EDITION: Ford ed.,v, 45.
PLACE: Paris
DATE: July. 1788
By a declaration of rights I mean one which shall stipulate freedom of religion, freedom of the press, freedom of commerce against monopolies, trial by juries in all cases, no suspensions of the habeas corpus, no standing armies. These are fetters against doing evil which no honest government should decline. —
TITLE: To A. Donald.
EDITION: Washington ed.ii ,355.
PLACE: Paris
DATE: Feb. 1788
I disapproved from the first moment [in the new Constitution] the want of a bill of rights, to guard liberty against the legislative as well as the executive branches of the government; that is to say, to secure freedom in religion, freedom of the press, freedom from monopolies, freedom from unlawful imprisonment, freedom from a permanent military, and a trial by jury, in all cases determinable by the laws of the land. —
TITLE: To F. Hopkinson.
EDITION: Washington ed.ii ,586.
EDITION: Ford ed.,v, 76.
PLACE: Paris
DATE: March. 1789
I like the declaration of rights as far as it goes, but I should have been for going further. For instance, the following alterations and additions would have pleased me. “Article IV. The people shall not be deprived or abridged of their right to speak, to write, or otherwise to publish anything but false facts affecting injuriously the life, liberty, or reputation of others, or affecting the peace of the Confederacy with foreign nations. Article VII. All facts put in issue before any judicature shall be tried by jury except, 1, in cases of admiralty jurisdiction wherein a foreigner shall be interested; 2, in cases cognizable before a court martial, concerning only the regular officers and soldiers of the United States, or members of the militia in actual service in time of war or insurrection; and, 3, in impeachments allowed by the Constitution. Article VIII. No person shall be held in confinement more than — days after he shall have demanded and been refused a writ of habeas corpus by the judge appointed by law, nor more than — days after such a writ shall have been served on the person holding him in confinement, and no order given on due examination for his remandment or discharge, nor more than — hours in any place of a greater distance than — miles from the usual residence of some judge authorized to issue the writ of habeas corpus: nor shall that writ be suspended for any term
TITLE: To James Madison.
EDITION: Washington ed.iii ,100.
EDITION: Ford ed.,v, 112.
PLACE: Paris
DATE: Aug. 1789
In the arguments in favor of the declaration of rights, you omit one which has great weight with me: the legal check which it puts into the hands of the judiciary. This is a body which, if rendered independent and kept strictly to their own department, merits great confidence for their learning and integrity. In fact, what degree of confidence would be too much for a body composed of such men as Wythe, Blair and Pendleton? On characters like these, the “civium ardor prava jubentium” would make no impression. I am happy to find that, on the whole, you are a friend to this amendment. The declaration of rights is, like all other human blessings, alloyed with some inconveniences, and not accomplishing fully its object. But the good in this instance vastly outweights the evil. —
TITLE: To James Madison.
EDITION: Washington ed.iii ,3.
EDITION: Ford ed.,v, 80.
PLACE: Paris
DATE: March. 1789
A bill of rights is what the people are entitled to against every government on earth, general or particular; and what no just government should refuse, or rest on inferences. —
TITLE: To James Madison.
EDITION: Washington ed.ii ,330.
EDITION: Ford ed.,iv, 477.
PLACE: Paris
DATE: Dec. 1787
A general concurrence of opinion seems to authorize us to say the Constitution has some defects. I am one of those who think it a defect that the important rights, not placed in security by the frame of the Constitution itself, were not explicitly secured by a supplementary declaration. There are rights which it is useless to surrender to the government, and which governments have yet always been found to invade. These are the rights of thinking, and publishing our thoughts by speaking or writing; the right of free commerce; the right of personal freedom. There are instruments for administering the government so particularly trustworthy, that we should never leave the legis [Col 2] lature at liberty to change them. The new Constitution has secured these in the Executive and Legislative departments: but not in the Judiciary. It should have established trials by the people themselves, that is to say, by jury. There are instruments so dangerous to the rights of the nation, and which place them so totally at the mercy of their governors, that those governors, whether legislative or executive, should be restrained from keeping such instruments on foot, but in well defined cases. Such an instrument is a standing army. We are now allowed to say such a declaration of rights, as a supplement to the Constitution where that is silent, is wanting, to secure us in these points. The general voice has legitimated this objection. —
TITLE: To David Humphreys.
EDITION: Washington ed.iii ,12.
EDITION: Ford ed.,v, 89.
PLACE: Paris
DATE: March. 1789
I am one of those who think it a defect [in the new Constitution] , that the important rights, not placed in security by the frame of the Constitution itself, were not explicitly secured by a supplementary declaration [of rights] . —
TITLE: To David Humphreys.
EDITION: Washington ed.iii ,12.
EDITION: Ford ed.,v, 89.
PLACE: Paris
DATE: March. 1789
I cannot refrain from making short answers to the objections which your letter states to have been raised. 1. That the rights in question are reserved by the manner in which the Federal powers are granted. Answer. A constitutive act may, certainly, be so formed as to need no declaration of rights. The act itself has the force of a declaration as far as it goes; and if it goes to all material points, nothing more is wanting. In the draft of a Constitution which I had once a thought of proposing in Virginia, I endeavored to reach all the great objects of public liberty, and did not mean to add a declaration of rights. Probably the object was imperfectly executed; but the deficiencies would have been supplied by others, in the course of discussion. But in a constitutive act which leaves some precious articles unnoticed, and raises implications against others, a declaration of rights becomes necessary by way of supplement. This is the case of our new Federal Constitution. This instrument forms us into one State, as to certain objects, and gives us a legislative and executive body for these objects. It should, therefore, guard against their abuses of power within the field submitted to them. 2. A positive declaration of some essential rights could not be obtained in the requisite latitude. Answer. Half a loaf is better than no bread. If we cannot secure all our rights, let us secure what we can. 3. The limited powers of the Federal Government and jealousy of the subordinate governments, afford a security which exists in no other instance. Answer. The first member of this seems resolvable into the first objection before stated. The jealousy of the subordinate governments is a precious reliance. But observe that these governments are only agents. They must have principles furnished
TITLE: To James Madison.
EDITION: Washington ed.iii ,4.
EDITION: Ford ed.,v, 81.
PLACE: Paris
DATE: March. 1789
1. The States General shall assemble, uncalled, on the first day of November, annually, and shall remain together so long as they shall see cause. They shall regulate their own elections and proceedings, and until they shall ordain otherwise, their elections shall be in the forms observed in the present year, and shall be triennial. 2. The States General alone shall levy money on the nation, and shall appropriate it. 3. Laws shall be made by the States General only, with the consent of the King. 4. No person shall be restrained of his liberty, but by regular process from a court of justice, authorized by a general law. (Except that a Noble may be imprisoned by order of a court of justice, on the prayer of twelve of his nearest relations.) On complaint of an unlawful imprisonment, to any judge whatever, he shall have the prisoner immediately brought before him, and shall discharge him, if his imprisonment be unlawful. The officer in whose custody the prisoner is, shall obey the orders of the judge; and both judge and officer shall be [Col 2] responsible, civilly and criminally, for a failure of duty herein. 5. The military shall be subordinate to the civil authority. 6. Printers shall be liable to legal prosecution for printing and publishing false facts, injurious to the party prosecuting; but they shall be under no other restraint. 7. All pecuniary privileges and exemptions, enjoyed by any description of persons, are abolished. 8. All debts already contracted by the King, are hereby made the debts of the nation; and the faith thereof is pledged for their payment in due time. 9. Eighty million of livres are now granted to the King, to be raised by loan, and reimbursed by the nation; and the taxes heretofore paid, shall continue to be paid to the end of the present year, and no longer. 10. The States General shall now separate, and meet again on the 1st day of November next. Done, on behalf of the whole nation, by the King and their representatives in the States General, at Versailles, this — day of June, 1789. Signed by the King, and by every member individually, and in his presence. 49 —
TITLE: French Charter of Rights.
EDITION: Washington ed.iii ,47.
EDITION: Ford ed.,v, 101.
PLACE: Paris
DATE: June. 1789
After you [M. de St. Etienne] quitted us yesterday evening, we continued our conversation (Monsr de Lafayette, Mr. Short and myself) on the subject of the difficulties which environ you. The desirable object being to secure the good which the King has offered and to avoid the ill which seems to threaten, an idea was suggested, which appearing to make an impression on Mons de Lafayette, I was encouraged to pursue it on my return to Paris, to put it into form, and now to send it to you and him. It is this, that the King, in a seance royale should come forward with a Charter of Rights in his hand, to be signed by himself, and by every member of the three orders. This Charter to contain the five great points which the Resultat of December offered on the part of the King, the abolition of pecuniary privileges offered by the privileged orders, and the adoption of the national debt, and a grant of the sum of money asked from the nation. This last will be a cheap price for the preceding articles, and let the same act declare your immediate separation till the next anniversary meeting. You will carry back to your constituents more good than ever was effected before without violence, and you will stop exactly at the point where violence would otherwise begin. Time will be gained, the public mind will continue to ripen and to be informed, a basis of support may be prepared with the people themselves, and expedients occur for gaining still something further at your next meeting, and for stopping again at the point of force. I have ventured to send to yourself and Monsieur de Lafayette a sketch of my ideas of what this act might contain without endangering any dispute. But it is offered merely as a canvas
TITLE: To M. de St. Etienne.
EDITION: Ford ed.,v, 99.
PLACE: Paris
DATE: June. 1789
See Rights.
Though Bingham is not in diplomatic office, yet as he wishes to be so, I will mention such circumstances of him, as you might otherwise be deceived in. He will make you believe he was on the most intimate footing with the first characters in Europe, and versed in the secrets of every cabinet. Not a word of this is true. He had a rage for being presented to great men, and had no modesty in the methods by which he could if he attained acquaintance. —
TITLE: To James Madison.
EDITION: Washington ed.ii ,108.
EDITION: Ford ed.,iv, 366.
PLACE: Paris
DATE: 1787
Teach all the children to venerate the mocking-bird as a superior being in the form of a bird, or as a being which will haunt them if any harm is done to itself or its eggs. I shall hope that the multiplication of the cedar in the neighborhood, and of the trees and shrubs round the house [Monticello] will attract more of them; for they like to be in the neighborhood of our habitations if they furnish cover. —
TITLE: To Martha Jefferson Randolph.
EDITION: D. L. J., 221.
PLACE: Philadelphia ,
DATE: 1793 1793 gt;
I have heard the nightingale in all its perfection, and I do not hesitate to pronounce that in America it would be deemed a bird of the third rank only, our mocking-bird, and fox-colored thrush being unquestionably superior to it. —
TITLE: To Mrs. John Adams.
EDITION: Ford ed.,iv, 63.
PLACE: Paris
DATE: 1785
I have been for a week past sailing on the canal of Languedoc, cloudless skies above, limpid waters below, and on each hand a row of nightingales in full chorus. This delightful bird had given me a rich treat before, at the fountain of Vaucluse. After visiting the tomb of Laura at Avignon, I went to see this fountain — a noble one of itself, and rendered famous forever by the songs of Petrarch, who lived near it. I arrived there somewhat fatigued, and sat down by the fountain to repose myself. It gushes, of the size of a river, from a secluded valley of the mountains, the ruins of Petrarch's chateau being perched on a rock two hundred feet perpendicular above. To add to the enchantment of the scene, every tree and bush was filled with nightingales in full song. I think you told me that you had not yet noticed this bird. As you have trees in the garden of the convent, there might be nightingales in them, and this is the season of their song. Endeavor to make yourself acquainted with the music of this bird, that when you return to your own country, you may be able to estimate its merit in comparison with that of the mocking-bird. The latter has the advantage of singing through a [Col 2] great part of the year, whereas the nightingale sings about five or six weeks in the spring, and a still shorter term, and with a more feeble voice, in the fall. —
TITLE: To Martha Jefferson.
EDITION: Ford ed.,iv, 388.
PLACE: [none given]
DATE: 1787
There are two or three objects which you should endeavor to enrich our country with, — the skylark, the redlegged partridge. I despair too much of the nightingale to add that. —
TITLE: To James Monroe.
EDITION: Ford ed.,vii, 21.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1795
I suppose the opinion to be universal that the turkey is a native of America. Nobody, as far as I know, has ever contradicted it but Daines Barrington; and the arguments he produces are such as none but a head, entangled and kinked as his is, would ever have urged. Before the discovery of America, no such bird is mentioned in a single author, all those quoted by Barrington, by description referring to the crane, hen, pheasant, or peacock; but the book of every traveller, who came to America soon after its discovery, is full of accounts of the turkey and its abundance; and immediately after that discovery we find the turkey served up at the feasts of Europe, as their most extraordinary rarity. —
TITLE: To Dr. Hugh Williamson.
EDITION: Washington ed.iv ,346.
EDITION: Ford ed.,vii, 480.
PLACE: Washington
DATE: Jan. 1801
I have taken measures to obtain the crested turkey, and will endeavor to perpetuate that beautiful and singular characteristic, and shall be not less earnest in endeavors to raise the Moronnier. —
TITLE: To M. Correa.
EDITION: Washington ed.vii ,95.
PLACE: Poplar Forest, Va. ,,
DATE: 1817 1817 gt;
Mr. William Strickland, the eldest son of St. George Strickland, of York, in England, told me this anecdote: Some ancestor of his commanded a vessel in the navigations of Cabot. Having occasion to consult the Herald's office concerning his family, he found a petition from that ancestor to the Crown, stating that Cabot's circumstances being slender, he had been rewarded by the bounties, he needed from the Crown; that as to himself, he asked nothing in that way, but that as a consideration for his services in the same way, he might be permitted to assume for the crest of his family arms, the turkey, an American bird; and Mr. Strickland observed that their crest is actually a turkey. —
TITLE: To Dr. Hugh Williamson.
EDITION: Washington ed.iv ,346.
EDITION: Ford ed.,vii, 480.
PLACE: Washington
DATE: Jan. 1801
For promoting the public happiness, those persons, whom nature has endowed with genius and virtue, should be rendered by liberal education worthy to receive, and able to guard the sacred deposit of the rights and liberties of their fellow citizens; and they should be called to that charge without regard to [* * *] birth, or other accidental condition or circumstance. —
TITLE: Diffusion of Knowledge Bill.
EDITION: Ford ed.,ii, 221.
PLACE: [none given]
DATE: 1779
Disapproving myself of transferring the honors and veneration for the great birthday of our Republic to any individual, or of dividing them with individuals, I have declined [letting] my own birthday be known, and have engaged my family not to communicate it. This has been the uniform answer to every application of the kind. —
TITLE: To Levi Lincoln.
EDITION: Washington ed.iv ,504.
EDITION: Ford ed.,viii, 246.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: Aug. 1803
The only birthday which I recognize is that of my country's liberties. 50 —
TITLE: Rayner's Life of Jefferson. p. 18.
A great ball is to be given here [Philadelphia] on the 22d, and in other great towns of the Union. This is, at least, very indelicate, and probably excites uneasy sensations in some. I see in it, however, this useful deduction, that the birthdays, which have been kept, have been, not those of the President, but of the General. —
TITLE: To James Madison.
EDITION: Washington ed.iv ,212.
EDITION: Ford ed.,vii, 203.
PLACE: Philadelphia ,
DATE: Feb. 1798
The late birth-night has certainly sown tares among the exclusive federalists. It has winnowed the grain from the chaff. The sincerely Adamites did not go. The Washingtonians went religiously, and took the secession of the others in high dudgeon. The one sect threaten to desert the levees, the other the parties. The whigs went in number, to encourage the idea that the birth-nights hitherto kept had been for the General and not the President, and of course that time would bring an end to them. —
TITLE: To James Madison.
EDITION: Washington ed.iv ,218.
EDITION: Ford ed.,vii, 211.
PLACE: Philadelphia ,
DATE: Feb. 1798
I have received the remonstrance you were pleased to address to me, on the appointment of Samuel Bishop to the office of Collector of New Haven, lately vacated by the death of Daniel Austin. The right of our fellow citizens to represent to the public functionaries their opinion on proceedings interesting to them, is unquestionably a constitutional right, often useful, sometimes necessary, and will always be respectfully acknowledged by me. Of the various executive duties, no one excites more anxious concern than that of placing the interests of our fellow citizens in the hands of honest men, with understandings sufficient for their stations. No duty, at the same time, is more difficult to fulfil. The knowledge of characters possessed by a single individual is, of necessity, limited. To seek out the best through the whole Union, we must resort to other information, which, from the best of men, acting disinterestedly and with the purest motives, is sometimes incorrect. In the case of Samuel Bishop, however, the subject of your remonstrance, time was taken, information was sought, and such obtained as could leave no room for doubt of his fitness. From private sources it was learned that his understanding was sound, his integrity pure, his character unstained. And the offices confided to him within his own State, are public evidences of the estimation in which he is held by the State in general, and the city and township particularly in which he lives. He is said to be the town clerk, a justice of the peace, mayor of the city of New Haven, an office held at the will of the legislature, chief judge of the court of common pleas for New Haven County, a court of high criminal and [Col 2] civil jurisdiction wherein most causes are decided without the right of appeal or review, and sole judge of the court of Probates, wherein he singly decides all questions of wills, settlement of estates, testate and intestate, appoints guardians, settles their accounts, and in fact has under his jurisdiction and care all the property, real and personal, of persons dying. The two last offices, in the annual gift of the legislature, were given to him in May last. Is it possible that the man to whom the legislature of Connecticut has so recently committed trusts of such difficulty and magnitude, is “unfit to be the collector of the district of New Haven,” though acknowledged in the same writing, to have obtained all this confidence “by a long life of usefulness”? It is objected, indeed, in the remonstrance, that he is seventy-seven years of age; but at a much more advanced age, our Franklin was the ornament of human nature. He may not be able to perform in person all the details of his office; but if he gives us the benefit of his understanding, his integrity, his watchfulness and takes care that all the details are well performed by himself or his necessary assistants, all public purposes will be answered. The remonstrance, indeed, does not allege that the office has been illy conducted, but only apprehends that it will be so. Should this happen in event, be assured I will do in it what shall be just and necessary for the public service. In the meantime, he should be tried without being prejudged. —
TITLE: To the New Haven Committee.
EDITION: Washington ed.iv ,402.
EDITION: Ford ed.,viii, 67.
PLACE: Washington
DATE: July. 1801
The removal, as it is called, of Mr. [Elizur] Goodrich, promises another subject of complaint. Declarations by myself in favor of political tolerance, exhortations to harmony and affection in social intercourse, and to respect for the equal rights of the minority, have, on certain occasions, been quoted and misconstrued into assurances that the tenure of offices was to be undisturbed. But could candor apply such a construction? It is not, indeed, in the remonstrance that we find it; but it leads to the explanations which that calls for. When it is considered, that during the late administration, those who were not of a particular sect of politics were excluded from all office: when, by a steady pursuit of this measure, nearly the whole officers of the United States were monopolized by that sect; when the public sentiment at length declared itself, and burst open the doors of honor and confidence to those whose opinions they more approved, was it to be imagined that this monopoly of office was still to be continued in the hands of the minority? Does it violate their equal rights, to assert some rights in the majority also? Is it political intolerance to claim a proportionate share in the direction of the public affairs? Can they not harmonize in society unless they have everything in their own hands? If the will of the nation, manifested by their various
TITLE: To the New Haven Committee.
EDITION: Washington ed.iv ,403.
EDITION: Ford ed.,viii, 69.
PLACE: Washington
DATE: July. 1801
Mr. Goodrich's removal has produced a bitter remonstrance, with much personality against the two Bishops. I am sincerely sorry to see the inflexibility of the federal spirit there, for I cannot believe they are all monarchists. —
TITLE: To Levi Lincoln.
EDITION: Washington ed.iv ,399.
EDITION: Ford ed.,viii, 67.
PLACE: Washington
DATE: July. 1801
Some occasion of public explanation was eagerly desired, when the [Col 2] New Haven remonstrance offered us that occasion. The answer was meant as an explanation to our friends. It has had on them, everywhere, the most wholesome effect. Appearances of schismatizing from us have been entirely done away. I own I expected it would check the current with which the republican federalists were returning to their brethren, the republicans. I extremely lamented this effect; for the moment which should convince me that a healing of the nation into one is impracticable, would be the last moment of my wishing to remain where I am. —
TITLE: To Levi Lincoln.
EDITION: Washington ed.iv ,406.
EDITION: Ford ed.,viii, 84.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: Aug. 1801
See Goodrich.
The exclusion from the courts of the malign influence of all authorities after the Georgium Sidus became ascendant, would uncanonize Blackstone, whose book, although the most elegant and best digested of our law catalogue, has been perverted, more than all others, to the degeneracy of legal science. A student finds there a smattering of everything, and his indolence easily persuades him that if he understands that book, he is master of the whole body of the law. The distinction between these, and those who have drawn their stores from the deep and rich mines of Coke on Littleton, seems well understood even by the unlettered common people, who apply the appellation of Blackstone lawyers to these ephemeral insects of the law. —
TITLE: To Judge Tyler.
EDITION: Washington ed.vi ,66.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1812
Blackstone and Hume have made tories of all England, and are making tories of those young Americans whose native feelings of independence do not place them above the wily sophistries of a Hume or a Blackstone. These two books, but especially the former, have done more towards the suppression of the liberties of man, than all the million of men in arms of Bonaparte, and the millions of human lives with the sacrifice of which he will stand loaded before the judgment seat of his Maker. —
TITLE: To Horatio G. Spafford.
EDITION: Washington ed.vi ,335.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1814
Colonel Richard Bland was the most learned and logical man of those who took prominent lead in public affairs, profound in constitutional lore, a most ungraceful speaker (as were Peyton Randolph and Robinson, in a remarkable degree.) He wrote the first pamphlet on the nature of the connection with Great Britain which had any pretension to accuracy of view on that subject, but it was a singular one. He would set out on sound principles, pursue them logically till he found them leading to the precipice which he had to leap, start back alarmed, then resume his ground, go over it in another direction, be led again by the correctness of his reasoning to the same place, and again back out, and try other processes to reconcile right and wrong, but finally left his reader and himself bewildered between the steady index of the compass in their hand, and the phantasm to which it seemed to point. Still there was more sound matter in his pamphlet than in the celebrated “Farmer's Letters,”
TITLE: To William Wirt.
EDITION: Washington ed.vi ,485.
EDITION: Ford ed.,ix, 474.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1815
When the fleet of any nation actually beleaguers the port of its enemy, no other has a right to enter their line any more than their line of battle in the open sea, or their lines of circumvallation, or of encampment, or of battle array on land. The space included within their lines in any of those cases, is either the property of their enemy, or it is common property, assumed and possessed for a moment, which cannot be intruded on, even by a neutral, without committing the very trespass we are now considering, that of intruding into the lawful possession of a friend. —
TITLE: To Robert R. Livingston.
EDITION: Washington ed.iv ,410.
EDITION: Ford ed.,viii, 91.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1801
When two nations go to war, it does not abridge the rights of neutral nations but in the two articles of blockade and contraband of war. —
TITLE: To Benjamin Stoddert.
EDITION: Washington ed.v ,425.
EDITION: Ford ed.,ix, 245.
PLACE: Washington
DATE: 1809
The instruction [to commanders of British war ships] which allows the armed vessels of Great Britain to seize, for condemnation, all vessels, on their first attempt to enter a blockaded port, except those of Denmark and Sweden, which are to be prevented only, but not seized, on their first attempt. Of the nations inhabiting the shores of the Atlantic ocean, and practising its navigation, Denmark, Sweden and the United States, alone are neutral. To declare, then, all neutral vessels (for as to the vessels of the belligerent powers no order was necessary) to be legal prize, which shall attempt to enter a blockaded port, except those of Denmark and Sweden, is exactly to declare that the vessels of the United States shall be lawful prize, and those of Drnmark and Sweden shall not. It is of little consequence that the article has avoided naming the United States, since it has used a description applicable to them, and to them alone, while it exempts the others from its operation, by name. You will be pleased to ask an explanation of this distinction; and you will be able to say in discussing its justice, that in every circumstance, we treat Great Britain on the footing of the most favored nation, where our treaties do not preclude us, and that even these are just as favorable to her as hers are to us. Possibly she may be bound by treaty to admit this exception in favor of Denmark and Sweden, but she cannot be bound by treaty to withhold it from us; and if it be withheld merely because not established with us by treaty, what might not we, on the same ground, have withheld from Great Britain, during the short course of the present war, as well as the peace which has preceded it? —
TITLE: To Thomas Pinckney.
EDITION: Washington ed.iv ,62.
EDITION: Ford ed.,vi, 416.
PLACE: Philadelphia ,
DATE: Sep. 1793
You express your apprehension that some of the belligerent powers [Col 2] may stop our vessels going with grain to the ports of their enemies, and ask instructions which may meet the question in various points of view, intending, however, in the meantime to contend for the amplest freedom of neutral nations. Your intention in this is perfectly proper, and coincides with the ideas of our own government in the particular case you put, as in general cases. Such a stoppage to an unblockaded port would be so unequivocal an infringement of the neutral rights, that we cannot conceive it will be attempted. —
TITLE: To Thomas Pinckney.
EDITION: Washington ed.iii ,551.
EDITION: Ford ed.,vi, 242.
PLACE: Philadelphia ,
DATE: May. 1793
It is most evident, that the antirepublicans wish to get rid of Blount's impeachment. Many metaphysical niceties are handing about in conversation, to show that it cannot be sustained. To show the contrary, it is evident must be the task of the republicans, or of nobody. —
TITLE: To James Madison.
EDITION: Washington ed.iv ,206.
EDITION: Ford ed.,vii, 190.
PLACE: Philadelphia ,
DATE: Jan. 1798
See Impeachment.
Lord Bolingbroke and Thomas Paine were alike in making bitter enemies of the priests and pharisees of their day. Both were honest men; both advocates for human liberty. Paine wrote for a country which permitted him to push his reasoning to whatever length it would go. Lord Bolingbroke in one restrained by a constitution, and by public opinion. He was called indeed a tory; but his writings prove him a stronger advocate for liberty than any of his countrymen, the whigs of the present day. Irritated by his exile, he committed one act unworthy of him, in connecting himself momentarily with a prince rejected by his country. But he redeemed that single act by his establishment of the principles which proved it to be wrong. These two persons differed remarkably in the style of their writing, each leaving a model of what is most perfect in both extremes of the simple and sublime. No writer has exceeded Paine in ease and familiarity of style, in perspicuity of expression, happiness of elucidation, and in simple and unassuming language. In this he may be compared with Dr. Franklin; and indeed his Common Sense was, for awhile, believed to have been written by Dr. Franklin, and published under the borrowed name of Paine, who had come over with him from England. Lord Bolingbroke's, on the other hand, is a style of the highest order. The lofty, rythmical, fullflowing eloquence of Cicero; periods of just measure their members proportioned, their close full and round. His conceptions, too, are bold and strong, his diction copious, polished and commanding as his subject. His writings are certainly the finest samples in the English language of the eloquence proper for the senate. His political tracts are safe reading for the most timid religionist, his philosophical, for those who are not afraid to trust their reason with discussions of right and wrong. —
TITLE: To Francis Eppes.
EDITION: Washington ed.vii ,197.
EDITION: Ford ed.,x, 183.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1821
I am sorry to tell you that Bollman was Burr's right hand man in all his guilty schemes. On being brought to prison here [Washington] , he communicated to Mr. Madison and myself the whole of the plans, always, however, apologetically for Burr, as far as they would bear. But his subsequent tergiversations have proved
TITLE: To Marquis de Lafayette.
EDITION: Washington ed.v ,130.
EDITION: Ford ed.,ix, 114.
PLACE: Washington
DATE: July. 1807
Dr. Bollman, on his arrival in Washington in custody in January, voluntarily offered to make communications to me, which he accordingly did, Mr. Madison also being present. I previously and subsequently assured him (without, however, his having requested it), that they should never be used against himself. Mr. Madison on the same evening committed to writing, by memory, what he had said; and I moreover asked of Bollman to do it himself, which he did, and I now enclose it to you. The object is, as he is to be a witness, that you may know how to examine him, and draw everything from him. I wish the paper to be seen and known only to yourself and the gentlemen who aid you, and to be returned to me. If he should prevaricate, I should be willing you should go so far as to ask him whether he did not say so and so to Mr. Madison and myself, in order to let him see that his prevarications will be marked. Mr. Madison will forward you a pardon for him, which we mean should be delivered previously. It is suspected by some he does not intend to appear. If he does not, I hope you will take effectual measures to have him immediately taken into custody. Some other blank pardons are sent on to be filled up at your discretion, if you should find a defect of evidence, and believe that this would supply it, [* * *] avoiding to give them to the gross offenders, unless it be visible that the principal will otherwise escape. —
TITLE: To George Hay.
EDITION: Ford ed.,ix, 52.
PLACE: Washington
DATE: May. 1807
A report reaches us from Baltimore, [* * *] that Mr. Jerome Bonaparte, brother of the First Consul, is married to Miss Patterson, of that city. The effect of this measure on the mind of the First Consul, is not for me to suppose; but as it might occur to him, prima facie, that the Executive of the United States ought to have prevented it, I have thought it advisable to mention the subject to you, that, if necessary, you may by explanation set that idea to rights. You know that by our laws, all persons are free to enter into marriage, if of twenty-one years of age, no one having a power to restrain it, not even their parents; and that under that age, no one can prevent it but the parent or guardian. The lady is under age, and the parents, placed between her affections, which were strongly fixed, and the considerations opposing the measure, yielded with pain and anxiety to the former. Mr. Patterson is the President of the Bank of Baltimore, the wealthiest man in Maryland, perhaps in the United States, except Mr. Carroll; a man of great virtue and respectability; the mother is the sister of the lady of General Samuel Smith; and, consequently, the station of the family in society is with the first of the United States. These circumstances fix [Col 2] rank in a country where there are no hereditary titles. —
TITLE: To Robert R. Livingston.
EDITION: Washington ed.iv ,510.
EDITION: Ford ed.,viii, 277.
PLACE: Washington
DATE: Nov. 1803
If Bonaparte declares for royalty, either in his own person, or for Louis XVIII., he has but a few days to live. In a nation of so much enthusiasm, there must be a million of Brutuses who will devote themselves to destroy him. —
TITLE: To Henry Innes.
EDITION: Washington ed.iv ,315.
EDITION: Ford ed.,vii, 412.
PLACE: Philadelphia ,
DATE: Jan. 1800
Had the consuls been put to death in the first tumult, and before the nation had time to take sides, the Directory and Councils might have reestablished themselves on the spot. But that not being done, perhaps it is now to be wished that Bonaparte may be spared, as, according to his protestations, he is for liberty, equality and representative government, and he is more able to keep the nation together, and to ride out the storm than any other. Perhaps it may end in their establishing a single representative, and that in his person. I hope it will not be for life, for fear of the influence of the example on our countrymen. It is very material for the latter to be made sensible that their own character and situation are materially different from the French; and that whatever may be the fate of republicanism there, we are able to preserve it inviolate here. —
TITLE: To John Breckenridge.
EDITION: Ford ed.,vii, 418.
PLACE: Philadelphia ,
DATE: Jan. 1800
My confidence has been placed in the head, not in the heart of Bonaparte. I hoped he would calculate truly the difference between the fame of a Washington and a Cromwell. —
TITLE: To Samuel Adams.
EDITION: Washington ed.iv ,321.
EDITION: Ford ed.,vii, 425.
PLACE: Philadelphia ,
DATE: Feb. 1800
No man on earth has stronger detestation than myself of the unprincipled tyrant who is deluging the continent of Europe with blood. No one was more gratified by his disasters of the last campaign. 51 —
TITLE: To Dr. George Logan.
EDITION: Washington ed.vi ,216.
EDITION: Ford ed.,ix, 423.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: Oct. 1813
The explanation of his principles given you by the French Emperor, in conversation, is correct as far as it goes. He does not wish us to go to war with England, knowing we have no ships to carry on that war. To submit to pay to England the tribute on our commerce which she demands by her orders of council, would be to aid her in the war against him, and would give him just ground to declare war with us. He, concludes, therefore,
From the painting by Charles Wilson Peale hanging in Independence Hall, Philadelphia.
TITLE: To Robert R. Livingston.
EDITION: Washington ed.v ,370.
EDITION: Ford ed.,ix, 209.
PLACE: Washington
DATE: Oct. 1808
— To complete and universalize the desolation of the globe, it has been the will of Providence to raise up, at the same time, a tyrant as unprincipled and as overwhelming, for the ocean. Not in the poor maniac George, but in his government and nation. Bonaparte will die, and his tyrannies with him. But a nation never dies. The English government, and its piratical principles and practices, have no fixed term of duration. Europe feels, and is writhing under the scorpion whips of Bonaparte. We are assailed by those of England. The one continent thus placed under the gripe of England, and the other of Bonaparte, each has to grapple with the enemy immediately pressing on itself. We must extinguish the fire kindled in our own house, and leave to our friends beyond the water that which is consuming theirs. —
TITLE: To Madame de Stael.
EDITION: Washington ed.vi ,115.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: May. 1813
I know nothing which can so severely try the heart and spirit of man, and especially of the man of science, as the necessity of a passive acquiescence under the abominations of an unprincipled tyrant who is deluging the earth with blood to acquire for himself the reputation of a Cartouche or a Robin Hood. The petty larcenies of the Blackbeards and Buccaneers of the ocean, the more immediately exercised on us, are dirty and grovelling things addressed to our contempt, while the horrors excited by the Scelerat of France are beyond all human execrations. —
TITLE: To Dr. Morrell.
EDITION: Washington ed.vi ,100.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: Feb. 1813
Bonaparte was a lion in the field only. In civil life, a cold-blooded, calculating, unprincipled usurper, without a virtue; no statesman, knowing nothing of commerce, political economy, or civil government, and supplying ignorance by bold presumption. I had supposed him a great man until his entrance into the Assembly des cinq cens, [Col 2] eighteen Brumaire (an. 8.) From that date, however, I set him down as a great scoundrel only. —
TITLE: To John Adams.
EDITION: Washington ed.vi ,352.
EDITION: Ford ed.,ix, 461.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: July. 1814
Bonaparte hates our government because it is a living libel on his. —
TITLE: To William Duane.
EDITION: Washington ed.v ,553.
EDITION: Ford ed.,ix, 287.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1810
Bonaparte's hatred of us is only a little less than that he bears to England, and England to us. Our form of government is odious to him, as a standing contrast between republican and despotic rule; and as much from that hatred, as from ignorance in political economy, he had excluded intercourse between us and his people, by prohibiting the only articles they wanted from us, cotton and tobacco. —
TITLE: To Thomas Leiper.
EDITION: Washington ed.vi ,464.
EDITION: Ford ed.,ix, 520.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: June. 1815
It is not possible Bonaparte should love us; and of that our commerce had sufficient proof during his power. Our military achievements, indeed, which he is capable of estimating, may in some degree, moderate the effect of his aversions; and he may, perhaps, fancy that we are to become the natural enemies of England, as England herself has so steadily endeavored to make us, and as some of our own over-zealous patriots would be willing to proclaim; and in this view, he may admit a cold toleration of some intercourse and commerce between the two nations. He has certainly had time to see the folly of turning the industry of France from the cultures for which nature has so highly endowed her, to those of sugar, cotton, tobacco, and others, which the same creative power has given to other climates; and, on the whole, if he can conquer the passions of his tyrannical soul, if he has understanding enough to pursue from motives of interest, what no moral motives lead him to, the tranquil happiness and prosperity of his country, rather than a ravenous thirst for human blood, his return may become of more advantage than injury to us. —
TITLE: To John Adams.
EDITION: Washington ed.vi ,458.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: June. 1815
A conqueror roaming over the earth with havoc and destruction. —
TITLE: To Dr. Walter Jones.
EDITION: Washington ed.v ,511.
EDITION: Ford ed.,ix, 274.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1810
Should it be really true that Bonaparte has usurped the government with an intention of making it a free one, whatever his talents may be for war, we have no proofs that he is skilled in forming governments friendly to the people. Wherever he has meddled, we have seen nothing but fragments of the old Roman government stuck into materials with which they can form no cohesion. We see the bigotry of an Italian to the ancient splendor of his country, but nothing which bespeaks a luminous view of the organization of rational government. Perhaps, however, this may end better than we augur; and it certainly will, if his head is equal to true and
TITLE: To T. M. Randolph.
EDITION: Washington ed.iv ,319.
EDITION: Ford ed.,vii, 422.
PLACE: Philadelphia ,
DATE: Feb. 1800
Bonaparte has been the author of more misery and suffering to the world, than any being who ever lived before him. After destroying the liberties of his country, he has exhausted all its resources, physical and moral, to indulge his own maniac ambition, his own tyrannical and overbearing spirit. His sufferings cannot be too great. —
TITLE: To Albert Gallatin.
EDITION: Washington ed.vi ,499.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: Oct. 1815
Of the principles and advantages of commerce, Bonaparte appears to be ignorant. —
TITLE: To Joel Barlow.
EDITION: Washington ed.v ,601.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1812
The Attila of the age dethroned, the ruthless destroyer of ten millions of the human race, whose thirst for blood appeared unquenchable, the great oppressor of the rights and liberties of the world, shut up within the circle of a little island of the Mediterranean, and dwindled to the condition of an humble and degraded pensioner on the bounty of those he had most injured. How miserable, how meanly, has he closed his inflated career! What a sample of the bathos will his history present! He should have perished on the swords of his enemies, under the walls of Paris. —
TITLE: To John Adams.
EDITION: Washington ed.vi ,352.
EDITION: Ford ed.,ix, 461.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: July. 1814
The fear that Bonaparte will come over 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, Aeolia and Bithynia,” the fine countries on the Euphrates and Tigris, the Oxus and Indus, and all beyond the Hypasis, 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 is 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? [Col 2] 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 ourselves the Cyclop's boon of being the last devoured. While all this is doing, are we to suppose the chapter of accidents read out, and that nothing can happen to cut short or disturb his enterprises? —
TITLE: To John Langdon.
EDITION: Washington ed.v ,512.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: March. 1810
I assured M. Pichon [French Minister] that I had more confidence in the word of the First Consul than in all the parchment we could sign. —
TITLE: To Robert R. Livingston.
EDITION: Washington ed.iv ,511.
EDITION: Ford ed.,viii, 278.
PLACE: Washington
DATE: Nov. 1803
Your emperor has done more splendid things, but he has never done one which will give happiness to so great a number of human beings as the ceding of Louisiana to the United States. 52 —
TITLE: To Marquis de Lafayette.
EDITION: Ford ed.,ix, 67.
PLACE: Washington
DATE: May. 1807
See Louisiana.
O'Meara's book proves that nature had denied Bonaparte the moral sense, the first excellence of well organized man. If he could seriously and repeatedly affirm that he had raised himself to power without ever having committed a crime, it proves that he wanted totally the sense of right and wrong. If he could consider the millions of human lives which he had destroyed, or caused to be destroyed, the desolations of countries by plunderings, burnings and famine, the destitutions of lawful rulers of the world without the consent of their constituents, to place his brothers and sisters on their thrones, the cutting up of established societies of men and jumbling them discordantly together again at his caprice, the demolition of the fairest hopes of mankind for the recovery of their rights and amelioration of their condition, and all the numberless train of his other enormities; the man I say, who could consider all these as no crimes, must have been a moral monster, against whom every hand should have been lifted to slay him. —
TITLE: To John Adams.
EDITION: Washington ed.vii ,275.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1823
Bonaparte's restless spirit leaves no hope of peace to the world. —
TITLE: To Thomas Leiper.
EDITION: Washington ed.vi ,464.
EDITION: Ford ed.,ix, 520.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1815
As to Bonaparte, I should not doubt the revocation of his edicts, were he governed by reason. But his policy is so crooked that it eludes conjecture. I fear his first object now is to dry up the sources of British prosperity by excluding her manufactures from the continent. He may fear that opening the ports of Europe to our vessels will open them to an inundation of British wares. He ought
TITLE: To President Madison.
EDITION: Washington ed.v ,444.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: April. 1809
I view Bonaparte as a political engine only, and a very wicked one; you, I believe, as both political and religious, and obeying, as an instrument, an Unseen Hand. I still deprecate his becoming sole lord of the continent of Europe, which he would have been, had he reached in triumph the gates of St. Petersburg. The establishment in our day of another. Roman Empire, spreading vassalage and depravity over the face of the globe, is not, I hope, within the purposes of Heaven. —
TITLE: To Thomas Leiper.
EDITION: Washington ed.vi ,463.
EDITION: Ford ed.,ix, 519.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: June. 1815
Promises cost him nothing when they could serve his purpose. On his return from Elba, what did he not promise? But those who had credited them a little, soon saw their total insignificance, and, satisfied that they could not fall under worse hands, refused every effort after the defeat of Waterloo. —
TITLE: To Benjamin Austin.
EDITION: Washington ed.vi ,554.
EDITION: Ford ed.,x, II.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1816
Here you will find reioicings on the [restoration] of Bonaparte, and by a strange quid pro quo, not by the party hostile to liberty, but by its zealous friends. In this they see nothing but the scourge reproduced for the back of England. They do not permit themselves to see in it the blast of all the hopes of mankind, and that however it May jeopardize England, it gives to her self-defence the lying countenance again of being the sole champion of the rights of man, to which in all other nations she is most adverse. —
TITLE: To M. Dupont de Nemours.
EDITION: Washington ed.vi ,457.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: May. 1815
I have grieved to see even good republicans so infatuated as to this man, as to consider his downfall as calamitous to the cause of liberty. In their indignation against England which is just, they seem to consider all her enemies as our friends, when it is well known there was not a being on earth who bore us so deadly a hatred. [* * *] To whine after this exorcised demon is a disgrace to republicans, and must have arisen either from want of reflection, or the indulgence of passion against principle. —
TITLE: To Benjamin Austin.
EDITION: Washington ed.vi ,553.
EDITION: Ford ed.,x, II.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: Feb. 1816
— You despair of your country, and so do I. A military despotism is now fixed upon it permanently, especially if the son of the tyrant should have virtues and talents. What a treat it would be to me, to be with you, and to learn from you all the intrigues, apostacies and treacheries which have produced this last death's blow to the hopes of France. For, although not in the will, there was in the imbecility of the Bourbons a foundation of hope that the patriots of France might obtain a moderate representative government. —
TITLE: To M. Dupont de Nemours.
EDITION: Washington ed.vi ,457.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: May. 1815
The new treaty of the allied powers declares that the French nation shall not have Bonaparte, and shall have Louis XVIII. for their ruler. They are all then as great rascals as Bonaparte himself. While he was in the wrong, I wished him exactly as much success as would answer our purposes, and no more. Now that they are in the wrong and he in the right, he shall have all my prayers for success, and that he may dethrone every man of them. —
TITLE: To Thomas Leiper.
EDITION: Washington ed.vi ,467.
EDITION: Ford ed.,ix, 522.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: June. 1815
As far as we can judge from appearances, Bonaparte, from being a mere military usurper, seems to have become the choice of his nation; and the allies in their turn, the usurpers and spoliators of the European world. The rights of nations to self-government being my polar star, my partialities are steered by it, without asking whether it is a Bonaparte or an Alexander towards whom the helm is directed. —
TITLE: To M. Correa.
EDITION: Washington ed.vi ,480.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: June. 1815
No man more severely condemned Bonaparte than myself during his former career, for his unprincipled enterprises on the liberty of his own country, and the independence of others. But the allies having now taken up his pursuits, and he arrayed himself on the legitimate side, I also am changed as to him. He is now fighting for the independence of nations, of which his whole life hitherto had been a continued violation, and he has now my prayers as sincerely for success as he had before for his overthrow. He has promised a free government to his own country, and to respect the rights of others; and although his former conduct does
TITLE: To Phillip Mazzei.
EDITION: Ford ed.,ix, 525.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: Aug. 1815
At length Bonaparte has got on the right side of a question. From the time of his entering the legislative hall to his retreat to Elba, no man has execrated him more than myself. I will not except even the members of the Essex Junto; although for very different reasons; I, because he was warring against the liberty of his own country, and independence of others; they, because he was the enemy of England, the Pope and the Inquisition. But at length, and as far as we can judge, he seems to have become the choice of his nation. At least, he is defending the cause of his nation, and that of all mankind, the rights of every people to independence and self-government. He and the allies have now changed sides. They are parcelling out among themselves, Poland, Belgium, Saxony, Italy, dictating a ruler and government to France, and looking askance at our republic, the splendid libel on their governments, and he is fighting for the principles of national independence of which his whole life hitherto has been a continued violation. He has promised a free government to his own country, and to respect the rights of others; and although his former conduct inspires little confidence in his promises, yet we had better take the chance of his word for doing right, than the certainty of the wrong which his adversaries are doing and avowing. If they succeed ours is only the boon of the Cyclops to Ulysses, of being the last devoured. 53 —
TITLE: To John Adams.
EDITION: Washington ed.vi ,490.
EDITION: Ford ed.,ix, 529.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: Aug. 1815
Robespierre met the fate, and his memory the execration, he so justly merited. The rich were his victims, and perished by thousands. It is by millions that Bonaparte destroys the poor, and he is eulogized and deified by the sycophants even of science. These merit more than the mere oblivion to which they will be consigned: and the day will come when a just posterity will give to their hero the only preeminence he has earned, that of having been the greatest of the destroyers of the human race. What year of his military life has not consigned a million of human beings to death, to poverty and wretchedness! What field in Europe may not raise a monument of the murders, the burnings, the desolations, the famines, and miseries it has witnessed from him? And all [Col 2] this to acquire a reputation, which Cartouche attained with less injury to mankind, of being fearless of God or man. —
TITLE: To Madame de Stael.
EDITION: Washington ed.vi ,114.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: May. 1813
I see in Bonaparte's expulsion of the Bourbons, a valuable lesson to the world, as showing that its ancient dynasties may be changed for their misrule. Should the allied powers presume to dictate a ruler and government to France, and follow the example he had set of parcelling and usurping to themselves their neighbor nations, I hope he will give them another lesson in vindication of the rights of independence and self-government, which himself had hitherto so much abused, and that in this contest he will wear down the maritime power of England to limitable and safe dimensions. So far, good. It cannot be denied, on the other hand, that his successful perversion of the force (committed to him for vindicating the rights and liberties of his country) to usurp its government, and to enchain it under an hereditary despotism, is of baneful effect in encouraging future usurpations, and deterring those under oppression from rising to redress themselves. —
TITLE: To Thomas Leiper.
EDITION: Washington ed.vi ,464.
EDITION: Ford ed.,ix, 519.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1815
If adversity should have taught him wisdom, of which I have little expectation, he may yet render some service to mankind, by teaching the ancient dynasties that they can be changed for misrule, and by wearing down the maritime power of England to limitable and safe dimensions. —
TITLE: To John Adams.
EDITION: Washington ed.vi ,458.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: June. 1815
Bonaparte saw nothing in this world but himself, and looked on the people under him as his cattle, beasts for burthen and slaughter. —
TITLE: To Benjamin Austin.
EDITION: Washington ed.vi ,553.
EDITION: Ford ed.,x, 11.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1816
I have just finished reading O'Meara's Bonaparte. It places him in a higher scale of understanding than I had allotted him. I had thought him the greatest of all military captains, but an indifferent statesman, and misled by unworthy passions. The flashes, however, which escaped from him in these conversations with O'Meara, prove a mind of great expansion, although not of distinct development and reasoning. He seizes results with rapidity and penetration, but never explains logically the processes of reasoning by which he arrives at them. —
TITLE: To John Adams.
EDITION: Washington ed.vii ,275.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1823
O'Meara's Bonaparte makes us forget his atrocities for a moment, in commiseration of his sufferings. I will not say that the authorities of the world, charged with the care of their country and people, had not a right to confine him for life, as a lion or a tiger, on the principle of self-preservation. There was no safety to nations while he was permitted to roam at large. But the putting him to
TITLE: To John Adams.
EDITION: Washington ed.vii ,275.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1823
Bonaparte's domineering temper deafens him to the dictates of interest, of honor, and of morality. —
TITLE: To Joel Barlow.
EDITION: Washington ed.v ,601.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1811
A ruthless tyrant, drenching Europe in blood to obtain through future time the character of the destroyer of mankind. —
TITLE: To Henry Middleton.
EDITION: Washington ed.vi ,91.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: Jan. 1813
That Bonaparte is an unprincipled tyrant, who is deluging the continent of Europe with blood, there is not a human being, not even the wife of his bosom who does not see. —
TITLE: To Thomas Leiper.
EDITION: Washington ed.vi ,283.
EDITION: Ford ed.,ix, 445.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: Jan. 1814
Considering the character of Bonaparte, I think it material at once to let him see that we are not of the powers who will receive his orders. —
TITLE: To James Madison.
EDITION: Washington ed.iv ,585.
EDITION: Ford ed.,viii, 377.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: Aug. 1805
I never expected to be under the necessity of wishing success to Bonaparte. But the English being equally tyrannical at sea as he is on land, and that tyranny bearing on us in every point of either honor or interest, I say, “down with England, ” and as for what Bonaparte is then to do to us, let us trust to the chapter of accidents. I cannot, with the Anglomen, prefer a certain present evil to a future hypothetical one. —
TITLE: To Thomas Leiper.
EDITION: Ford ed.,ix, 130.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: Aug. 1807
Although we neither expected, nor wished any act of friendship from Bonaparte, and always detested him as a tyrant, yet he gave employment to much of the force of the nation who was our common enemy. So far, his downfall was illy timed for us; it gave to England an opportunity to turn full-handed on us, when we were unprepared. No matter, we can beat her on our own soil, leaving the laws of the ocean to be settled by the maritime powers of Europe, who are equally oppressed and insulted by the usurpations of England on that element. —
TITLE: To W. H. Crawford.
EDITION: Washington ed.vi ,418.
EDITION: Ford ed.,ix, 502.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: Feb. 1815
There cannot, I think, be a doubt as to the line we wish drawn between Bonaparte's successes and those of Alexander. Surely none of us wish to see Bonaparte conquer Russia, and lay thus at his feet the whole continent of Europe. This done, England would be but a breakfast: and although I am free from the visionary fears which the votaries of England have affected to entertain. because I believe he cannot effect the conquest of Europe; yet put all Europe into his hands, [Col 2] and he might spare such a force, to be sent in British ships, as I would as lief not have to encounter, when I see how much trouble a handful of soldiers in Canada has given us. No. It cannot be to our interest that all Europe should be reduced to a single monarchy. The true line of interest for us, is, that Bonaparte should be able to effect the complete exclusion of England from the whole continent of Europe, in order, by this peaceable engine of constraint to make her renounce her views of dominion over the ocean, of permitting no other nation to navigate it but with her license, and on tribute to her, and her aggressions on the persons of our citizens who may choose to exercise their right of passing over that element. And this would be effected by Bonaparte succeeding so far as to close the Baltic against her. This success I wished him the last year, this I wish him this year; but were he again advanced to Moscow, I should again wish him such disasters as would prevent his reaching St. Petersburg. And were the consequences even to be the longer continuance of our war, I would rather meet them than see the whole force of Europe wielded by a single hand. —
TITLE: To Thomas Lieper.
EDITION: Washington ed.vi ,283.
EDITION: Ford ed.,ix, 445.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: Jan. 1814
I have gone into this explanation [* * *] because I am willing to trust to your discretion the explaining me to our honest fellow laborers, and the bringing them to pause and reflect, if any of them have not sufficiently reflected on the extent of the success we ought to wish to Bonaparte, with a view to our own interests only; and even were we not men, to whom nothing human should be indifferent. But is our particular interest to make us insensible to all sentiments of morality? Is it then become criminal, the moral wish that the torrents of blood this man is shedding in Europe, the sufferings of so many human beings, good as ourselves, on whose necks he is trampling, the burnings of ancient cities, devastations of great countries, the destruction of law and order, and demoralization of the world, should be arrested, even if it should place our peace a little further distant? No. You and I cannot differ in wishing that Russia, and Sweden, and Denmark, and Germany, and Spain, and Portugal, and Italy, and even England, may retain their independence. —
TITLE: To Thomas Leiper.
EDITION: Washington ed.vi ,283.
EDITION: Ford ed.,ix, 446.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: Jan. 1814
It is cruel that we should have been forced to wish any success to such a destroyer of the human race. Yet while it was our interest and that of humanity that he should not subdue Russia, and thus lay all Europe at his feet, it was desirable to us that he should so far succeed as to close the Baltic to our enemy, and force him, by the pressure of internal distress, into a disposition to return to the paths of justice towards us. —
TITLE: To John Clarke.
EDITION: Washington ed.vi ,308.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: Jan. 1814
The unprincipled tyrant of the land is
TITLE: To Cæsar A. Rodney.
EDITION: Washington ed.vi ,448.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1815
On the general scale of nations, the greatest wonder is Napoleon at St. Helena; and yet it would have been well for the lives and happiness of millions and millions, had he been deposited there twenty years ago. France would now have a free government, unstained by the enormities she has enabled him to commit on the rest of the world, and unprostrated by the vindictive hand, human or divine, now so heavily bearing upon her. —
TITLE: To Mrs. Trist.
EDITION: D. L. J.363.
PLACE: Poplar Forest, Va. ,,
DATE: April. 1816
What is infinitely interesting [in the letters you enclosed to me] , is the scene of the exchange of Louis XVIII. for Bonaparte. What lessons of wisdom Mr. [John Quincy] Adams must have read in that short space of time! More than fall to the lot of others in the course of a long life. Man, and the man of Paris, under those circumstances, must have been a subject of profound speculation! It would be a singular addition to that spectacle to see the same beast in the cage at St. Helena, like a lion in the tower. That is probably the closing verse of the chapter of his crimes. —
TITLE: To Mrs. John Adams.
EDITION: Washington ed.vii ,52.
EDITION: Ford ed.,x, 69.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1817
Had Bonaparte reflected that such is the moral construction of the world, that no national crime passes unpunished in the long run, he would not now be in the cage of St. Helena. —
TITLE: M. De Marbois.
EDITION: Washington ed.vii ,76.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1817
See France.
Some few years ago when the tariff was before Congress, I engaged some of our members of Congress to endeavor to get the duty repealed, and wrote on the subject to some other acquaintances in Congress, and pressingly to the Secretary of the Treasury. The effort [* * *] failed. [* * *] There is a consideration going to the injustice of the tax [* * *] . Books constitute capital. A library book lasts as long as a house, for hundreds of years. It is not, then, an article of mere consumption but fairly of capital, and often in the case of professional men, setting out in life, it is their only capital. Now there is no other form of capital which is first taxed 18 per cent. on the gross, and the proprietor then left to pay the same taces in detail with others whose capital has paid no tax on the gross. Nor is there a description of men less proper to be singled out for extra taxation. —
TITLE: To James Madison.
EDITION: Ford ed.,x, 194.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: Sep. 1821
I am mortified to be told that, in the United States of America, the sale of a book 54 can become a subject of inquiry, and of criminal inquiry too, as an offence against religion; that a [Col 2] question like this can be carried before the civil magistrate. Is this then our freedom of religion? And are we to have a censor whose imprimatur shall say what books May be sold, and what we may buy? And who is thus to dogmatize religious opinions for our citizens? Whose foot is to be the measure to which ours are all to be cut or stretched? Is a priest to be our inquisitor, or shall a layman, simple as ourselves, set up his reason as the rule for what we are to read, and what we must believe? It is an insult to our citizens to question whether they are rational beings or not, and blasphemy against religion to suppose it cannot stand the test of truth and reason. If M. de Becourt's book be false in its facts, disprove them; if false in its reasoning, refute it. But, for God's sake, let us freely hear both sides, if we choose. I know little of its contents, having barely glanced over here and there a passage, and over the table of contents. From this, the Newtonian philosophy seemed the chief object of attack, the issue of which might be trusted to the strength of the two combatants; Newton certainly not needing the auxiliary arm of the government, and still less the Holy Author of our religion, as to what in it concerns Him. I thought the work would be very innocent, and one which might be confided to the reason of any man; not likely to be much read if let alone, but, if persecuted, it will be generally read. Every man in the United States will think it a duty to buy a copy, in vindication of his right to buy, and to read what he pleases. —
TITLE: To M. Dufief.
EDITION: Washington ed.vi ,340.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1814
I have been just reading the new constitution of Spain. One of its fundamental bases is expressed in these words: “The Roman Catholic religion, the only true one, is, and always shall be, that of the Spanish nation. The government protects it by wise and just laws, and prohibits the exercise of any other whatever.” Now I wish this presented to those who question what you may sell, 55 or we may buy with a request to strike out the words, “Roman Catholic, ” and to insert the denomination of their own religion. This would ascertain the code of dogmas which each wishes should domineer over the opinions of all others, and be taken, like the Spanish religion, under the “protection of wise and just laws.” It would show to what they wish to reduce the liberty for which one generation has sacrificed life and happiness. It would present our boasted freedom of religion as a thing of theory only, and not of practice, as what would be a poor exchange for the theoretic thraldom, but practical freedom of Europe. —
TITLE: To M. Dufief.
EDITION: Washington ed.vi ,340.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1814
To prohibit us from the benefit of foreign light, is to consign us to long darkness. —
TITLE: To — —.
EDITION: Washington ed.vii ,221.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1821
I hope a crusade will be kept up against the duty on books until those
TITLE: To Jared Sparks.
EDITION: Washington ed.vii ,335.
EDITION: Ford ed.,X, 293.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1824
I hear nothing definitive of the three thousand dollars duty [on books for the University of Virginia] of which we are asking the remission from Congress.
TITLE: -To James Madison.
EDITION: Washington ed.vii ,433.
EDITION: Ford ed.,X, 376.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1826
The government of the United States, at a very early period, when establishing its tariff on foreign importations, were very much guided in their selection of objects by a desire to encourage manufactures within ourselves. Among other articles then selected were books, on the importation of which a duty of fifteen per cent. was imposed, which, by ordinary custom house charges, amounts to about eighteen per cent., and adding the importing booksellers' profit on this, becomes about twenty-seven per cent. This was useful at first, perhaps, towards exciting our printers to make a beginning in that business here. But it is found in experience that the home demand is not sufficient to justify the reprinting any but the most popular English works, and cheap editions of a few of the classics for schools. For the editions of value, enriched by notes, commentaries, &c., and for books in foreign living languages, the demand here is too small and sparse to re-imburse the expense of reprinting them. None of these, therefore, are printed here, and the duty on them becomes consequently not a protecting, but really a prohibitory one. It makes a very serious addition to the price of the book and falls chiefly on a description of persons little able to meet it. Students who are destined for professional callings, as most of our scholars are, are barely able for the most part to meet the expenses of tuition. The addition of eighteen or twenty-seven per cent. on the books necessary for their instruction, amounts often to a prohibition as to them. For want of these aids, which are open to the students of all other nations but our own, they enter on their course on a very unqual footing with those of the same professions in foreign countries, and our citizens at large, too, who employ them, do not derive from that employment all the benefit which higher qualifications would give them. It is true that no duty is required on books imported for seminaries of learning, but these, locked up in libraries, can be of no avail to the practical man when he wishes a recurrence to them for the uses of life. Of many important books of reference there is not perhaps a single copy in the United States; of others but a few, and these too distant often to be accessible to scholars generally. It is believed, therefore, that if the attention of Congress could be drawn to this article, they would, in their wisdom, see its impolicy. Science is more important in a republican than in any other government. And in an infant country like ours, we must much depend for improvement [Col 2] on the science of other countries, longer established, possessing better means, and more advanced than we are. To prohibit us from the benefit of foreign light, is to consign us to long darkness. The northern seminaries following with parental solicitude the interest of their elevès in the course for which they have prepared them, propose to petition Congress on this subject, and wish for the cooperation of those of the south and west, and I have been requested, as more convenient in position than they are, to solicit that cooperation. Having no personal acquaintance with those who are charged with the direction of the college of — —, I do not know how more effectually to communicate these views to them, than by availing myself of the knowledge I have of your zeal for the happiness and improvement of our country. I take the liberty, therefore, of requesting you to place the subject before the proper authorities of that institution, and if they approve the measure, to solicit a concurreat proceeding on their part to carry it into effect. Besides petitioning Congress, I would propose that they address, in their corporate capacity, a letter to their delegates and senators in Congress, soliciting their best endeavors to obtain the repeal of the duty on imported books. I cannot but suppose that such an application will be respected by them, and will engage their votes and endeavors to effect an object so reasonable. A conviction that science is important to the preservation of our republican government, and that it is also essential to its protection against foreign power, induces me, on this occasion, to step beyond the limits of that retirement to which age and inclination equally dispose me.-
TITLE: To — —.
EDITION: Washington ed.vii ,220.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1821
The losses I have sustained by lending my books will be my apology to you for asking your particular attention to the replacing them in the presses as fast as you finish them, and not to lend them to anybody else, nor suffer anybody to have a book out of the study under cover of your name. —
TITLE: To John Garland Jefferson.
EDITION: Ford Ed.,v, 182.
PLACE: New York ,
DATE: 1790 1790 gt;
I cannot live without books. —
TITLE: To John Adams.
EDITION: Washington ed.vi ,460.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1815
French books are to be bought here [Paris] for two-thirds of what they can in England. English and Greek and Latin authors cost from twenty-five to fifty per cent. more here than in England. —
TITLE: To Edmund Randolph.
EDITION: Washington ed.i ,434.
PLACE: Paris
DATE: 1785
Greek and Roman authors are dearer here [France] than I believe anywhere in the world. Nobody here reads them, wherefore they are not printed. —
TITLE: To James Madison.
EDITION: Washington ed.i ,414.
PLACE: Paris
DATE: 1785
It is with extreme reluctance that I permit myself to usurp the office of an adviser of the public, what books they should read, and what not. I yield, however, on this occasion to your wish and that of Colonel Taylor, and do
TITLE: To Spencer Roane.
EDITION: Washington ed.vii ,212.
EDITION: Ford ed.,x, 189.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1821
This book [“ Constructions Construed”] is the most effectual retraction of our government to its original principles which has ever yet been sent by heaven to our aid. Every State in the Union should give a copy to every member they elect, as a standing instruction, and ours should set the example. —
TITLE: To Archibald Thweat.
EDITION: Washington ed.vii ,199.
EDITION: Ford ed.,x, 184.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1821
You ask for my opinion of the work you, send me, and to let it go out to the public. This I have ever made a point of declining (one or two instances only excepted ). Complimentary thanks to writers who have sent me their works, have betrayed me sometimes before the public, without my consent having been asked. But I am far from presuming to direct the reading of my fellow citizens, who are good enough judges themselves of what is worthy their reading. —
TITLE: To Thoms Ritchie.
EDITION: Washington ed.vii ,192.
EDITION: Ford ed.,xvi, 171.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1820
The [French] literati are half a dozen years before us. Books, really good, acquire just reputation in that time, and so become known to us, and communicate to us all their advances in knowledge. Is not this delay compensated, by our being placed out of the reach of that swarm of nonsensical publications which issues daily from a thousand presses, and perishes almost in issuing? —
TITLE: To Mr. Bellini.
EDITION: Washington ed.i ,445.
PLACE: Paris
DATE: 1785
I make it a rule never to read translations when I can read the original. —
TITLE: To Edmund Randolph.
EDITION: Washington ed.iv ,101.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1794
After the severe chastisement given by Mr. Walsh in his American Register to English scribblers, which they well deserved, and I was delighted to see, I hoped there would be an end of this intercrimination, and that both parties would prefer the course of courtesy and conciliation, and I think their considerate writers have since shown that disposition, and that it would prevail if equally cultivated by us. Europe is doing us full justice; why then detract from her? —
TITLE: To Charles Jared Ingersoll.
EDITION: Ford ed.,x, 325.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1824
All such assumptions of unlawful power [as the Boston Port act] are dangerous to the right to the British empire in general, and should be considered as its common cause; and we will ever be ready to join with our fellow-subjects in every part of the same, in executing all those rightful powers which God has given us, for the reestablishment and guaranteeing [* * *] their constitutional rights, when, where, and by whomsoever invaded. 56 —
TITLE: Resolution of Albemarle County.
EDITION: Ford ed.,i, 419.
DATE: July 26, 1774
The Legislature of Virginia happened to be in session, in Williamsburg, when news was received of the passage by the British Parliament of the Boston Port [Col 2] Bill, which was to take effect on the first day of June [1774] then ensuing. The House of Burgesses thereupon passed a resolution, recommending to their fellow citizens, that that day should be set apart for fasting and prayer to the Supreme Being, imploring Him to avert the calamities then threatening us, and to give us one heart and one mind to oppose every invasion of our liberties. The next day, May 20, 1774, the Governor dissolved us. —
TITLE: Jefferson Papers.
EDITION: Washington ed.i ,122.
PLACE: [none given]
DATE: 1821
See Fast Days.
By an act (7. G. 3) to discontinue in such manner, and for such time as they are therein mentioned, the landing and discharging, lading or shipping of goods, wares and merchandize, at the town and within the harbor of Boston, [* * *] a large and populous town, whose trade was their sole subsistence, was deprived of that trade, and involved in utter ruin. Let us for a while, suppose the question of right suspended, in order to examine this act on principles of justice: An act of Parliament had been passed imposing duties on teas, to be paid in America, against which act the Americans had protested as inauthoritative. The East India Company, who till that time had never sent a pound of tea to America on their own account, step forth on that occasion the asserters of Parliamentary right, and send hither many ship loads of that obnoxious commodity. The masters of their several vessels, however, on their arrival in America, wisely attended to admonition, and returned with their cargoes. In the province of Massachusetts alone, the remonstrances of the people were disregarded, and a compliance, after being many days waited for, was flatly refused. Whether in this the master of the vessel was governed by his obstinacy, or his instructions, let those who know say. There are extraordinary situations which require extraordinary interposition. An exasperated people, who feel that they possess power, are not easily restrained within limits strictly regular. A number of them assembled in the town of Boston, threw the tea into the ocean, and dispersed without doing any other act of violence. If in this they did wrong, they were known and were amenable to the laws of the land, against which it could not be objected that they had ever, in any instance, been obstructed or diverted from their regular course in favor of popular offenders. They should, therefore, not have been distrusted on this occasion. But that ill-fated colony had formerly been bold in their enmities against the house of Stuart, and were now devoted to ruin by that unseen hand which governs the momentous affairs of this great empire. On the partial representations of a few worthless ministerial dependents, whose constant office it has been to keep that government embroiled, and who, by their treacheries, hope to obtain the dignity of British Knighthood, 57 without calling for the party accused, with
TITLE: Rights of British America.
EDITION: Washington ed.i ,131.
EDITION: Ford ed.,i, 436.
PLACE: [none given]
DATE: 1734
See Deportation, Tea.
You will find botany offering its charms to you, at every step during summer. —
TITLE: To T. M. Randolph, Jr.
EDITION: Ford ed.,iv, 290.
PLACE: Paris
DATE: 1786
We were [* * *] pleased with the botanical objects which continually presented themselves. Those either unknown or rare in Virginia were the sugar maple in vast abundance, the silver fir, white pine, pitch pine, spruce pine, a shrub with decumbent stems which they call juniper, an azalea, very different from the nudiflora, with very large clusters of flowers, more thickly set on the branches, of a deeper red, and high pink-fragrance. It is the richest shrub I have seen. The honeysuckle of the gardens growing wild on the banks of Lake George, the paper birch, an aspen with a velvet leaf, a shrub willow with downy catkins, a wild gooseberry, the wild cherry with single fruit (not the bunch cherry), strawberries in abundance. —
TITLE: To T. M. Randolph.
EDITION: Ford ed.,v, 340.
DATE: June. 1791
It is time to think of the introduction of the school of Botany into our institution. (University of Virginia). [* * *] 1. Our first operation must be the se [Col 2] lection of a piece of ground of proper soil and site, suppose of about six acres, as M. Correa proposes. In choosing this we are to regard the circumstances of soil, water, and distance. I have diligently examined all our grounds with this view, and think that on the public road, at the upper corner of our possessions, where the stream issues from them, has more of the requisite qualities than any other spot we possess. One hundred and seventy yards square, taken at that angle, would make the six acres we want. [* * *] 2. Enclose the ground with a serpentine brick wall seven feet high. This would take about 80,000 bricks and cost $800, and it must depend on our finances whether they will afford that immediately, or allow us, for awhile, but enclosure of posts and rails. 3. Form all the hill sides into level terraces of convenient breadth, curving with the hill, and the level ground into beds and alleys. 4. Make out a list of the plants thought necessary and sufficient for botanical purposes, and of the trees we propose to introduce, and take measures in time for procuring them. As to the seeds of plants, much may be obtained from the gardeners of our own country. I have, moreover, a special resource. For three and twenty years of the last twenty-five, my good old friend Thonin, superintendent of the Jardin des Plantes at Paris, has regularly sent me a box of seeds of such exotics, as to us, as would suit our climate, and containing nothing indigenous to our country. These I regularly sent to the public and private gardens of the other States, having as yet no employment for them here. [* * *] The trees I should propose would be exotics of distinguished usefulness, and accommodated to our climate; such as the Larch, Cedar of Libanus, Cork, Oak, the Maronnier, Mahogany? the Catachu or Indian rubber tree of Napul (30°), Teak tree, or Indian oak of Burmah (23°), the various woods of Brazil, &c. The seed of the Larch can be obtained from a tree at Monticello. Cones of the Cedar of Libanus are in most of our seed shops, but may be had fresh from the trees in the English gardens. The Maronnier and Cork tree I can obtain from France. There is a Maronnier at Mount Vernoa, but it is a seedling, and not, therefore, select. The others may be got through the means of our ministers and consuls in the countries where they grow, or from the seed shops of England, where they May very possibly be found. Lastly, a gardener of sufficient skill must be found. 58 —
TITLE: To Dr. Emmett.
EDITION: Washington ed.vii ,438.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1826
Botany I rank with the most valuable sciences, whether we consider its subjects as furnishing the principal subsistence of life to man and beast, delicious varieties for our tables, refreshments from our orchards, the adornments of our flower borders, shade and perfume of our groves, materials for our buildings, or medicaments for our bodies. To the gentleman it is certainly more interesting than mineralogy (which I by no means, however, undervalue), and is more at hand for his amusement; and to a country family it constitutes a great portion of their social entertainment. No country gentleman should be without what amuses every step he takes into his fields. —
TITLE: To Thomas Cooper.
EDITION: Washington ed.vi ,390.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1814
— BOTTA'S (C.), History. — See History.
Lord Bottetourt was an honourable man.
TITLE: Conversation with Daniel Webster.
EDITION: Ford ed.,x, 330.
PLACE: [none given]
DATE: 1824
The boundaries of Louisiana, which I deem not admitting question, are the highlands on the western side of the Mississippi enclosing all its waters, the Missouri of course, and terminating in the line drawn from the northwestern point of the Lake of the Woods to the nearest source of the Mississippi, as lately settled between Great Britain and the United States. We have some claims, to extend on the seacoast westwardly to the Rio Norte or Bravo, and better, to go eastwardly to the Rio Perdido, between Mobile and Pensacola, the ancient boundary of Louisiana. Those claims will be a subject of negotiation with Spain, and if, as soon as she is at war, we push them strongly with one hand, holding out a price in the other, we shall certainly obtain the Floridas, and, all in good time. In the meanwhile, without waiting for permission, we shall enter into the exercise of the natural right we have always insisted on with Spain, to wit, that of a nation holding the upper part of streams, having a right of innocent passage through them to the ocean. We shall prepare her to see us practice on this, and she will not oppose it by force. —
TITLE: To John C. Breckenridge.
EDITION: Washington ed.iv ,498.
EDITION: Ford ed.,viii, 242.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: Aug. 1803
We are attached to the retaining of the Bay of St. Bernard, because it was the first establishment of the unfortunate La Salle, was the cradle of Louisiana, and more incontestibly covered and conveyed to us by France, under that name, than any other spot in the country. —
TITLE: To James Bowdoin.
EDITION: Washington ed.v ,19.
PLACE: Washington ,
DATE: 1806
You know the French considered themselves entitled to the Rio Bravo, and that Laussat declared his orders to be to receive possession to that limit, but not to Perdido; and that France has to us been always silent as to the western boundary, while she spoke decisively as to the eastern. You know Turreau agreed with us that neither party should strengthen themselves in the disputed country during negotiation; and [General] Armstrong, who says Monroe concurs with him, is of opinion, from the character of the Emperor, that were we to restrict ourselves to taking posts on the west side of the Mississippi, and threaten a cessation of intercourse with Spain, Bonaparte would interpose efficiently to prevent the quarrel going further. Add to these things the fact that Spain has sent five hundred colonists to San Antonio, and one hundred troops to Nacogdoches, and probably has fixed or prepared a post at the Bay of St. Bernard, at Matagordo. Supposing, [Col 2] then, a previous alliance with England to guard us in the worst event, I should propose that Congress should pass acts, 1, authorizing the Executive to suspend intercourse with Spain at discretion; 2, to dislodge the new establishments of Spain between the Mississippi and Bravo; and, 3, to appoint commissioners to examine and ascertain all claims for spoliation that they might be preserved for future indemnification. —
TITLE: To James Madison.
EDITION: Washington ed.iv ,587.
EDITION: Ford ed.,viii, 379.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: Sep. 1805
By the charter of Louis XIV. all the country comprehending the waters which flow into the Mississippi, was made a part of Louisiana. Consequently its northern boundary was the summit of the highlands in which its northern waters rise. But by the Xth Art. of the Treaty of Utrecht, France and England agreed to appoint commissioners to settle the boundary between their possessions in that quarter, and those commissioners settled it at the 49th degree of latitude. (See Hutchinson's Topographical Description of Louisiana, p. 7.) This it was which induced the British Commissioners, in settling the boundary with us, to follow the northern water line to the Lake of the Woods, at the latitude of 49°, and then go off on that parallel. This, then, is the true northern boundary of Louisiana. The western boundary of Louisiana is, rightfully, the Rio Bravo (its main stream), from its mouth to its source, and thence along the highlands and mountains dividing the waters of the Mississippi from those of the Pacific. The usurpations of Spain on the east side of that river, have induced geographers to suppose the Puerco or Salado to be the boundary. The line along the highlands stands on the charter of Louis XIV., that of the Rio Bravo on the circumstance that, when La Salle took possession of the Bay of St. Bernard, Panuco was the nearest possession of Spain, and the Rio Bravo the natural half-way boundary between them. On the waters of the Pacific, we can found no claims in right of Louisiana. —
TITLE: To John Mellish.
EDITION: Washington ed.vii ,51.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1816
and New York. — I enclose you a Massachusetts paper, whereby you will see that some acts of force have taken place on our eastern boundary. [* * *] The want of an accurate map of the Bay of Passamaquoddy renders it difficult to form a satisfactory opinion in the point in contest. [* * *] There is a report that some acts of force have taken place on the northern boundary of New York, and are now under the consideration of the government of that State. The impossibility of bringing the court of London to an adjustment of any difference whatever, renders our situation perplexing. Should any applications from the States or their citizens be so urgent as to require something to be said before your return, my opinion would be that they should be desired to make no new settlements on our part, nor suffer any to be made on the part of the British, within the disputed territory; and if any attempt should be made to remove them from the settlements already made, that they are to repel force by force, and ask aid of the neighboring militia to do this and no more. I see no other way of forcing the British government to come forward themselves and demand an amicable settlement. —
TITLE: To President Washington.
EDITION: Washington ed.iii ,230.
PLACE: Philadelphia ,
DATE: March. 1791
[In a conversation with George Hammond, the
TITLE: The Anas.
EDITION: Washington ed.ix ,428.
EDITION: Ford ed.,i, 195.
DATE: June. 1792
The principle on which the boundary between Pennsylvania and this State is to be run having been fixed, it is now proposed by President Reed that commissioners proceed to execute the work from the termination of Mason and Dixon's line to the completion of five degrees of longitude, and thence on a meridian to the Ohio. We propose that the extent of the five degrees of longitude shall be determined by celestial observation. Of course it will require one set of astronomers to be at Philadelphia, and another at Fort Pitt. We ask the favor of yourselves to undertake this business, the one to go to the one place, the other to the other, meaning to add a coadjutor to each of you. —
TITLE: To Rev. James Madison and Robert Andrews.
EDITION: Ford ed.,ii, 513.
PLACE: Richmond
DATE: 1781
No mode of determining the extent of the five degrees of longitude of Delaware river, in the latitude of Mason and Dixon's Line having been pointed out by your Excellency [Joseph Reed] , I shall venture to propose that this be determined by astronomical observations, to be made at or near the two extremities of the line, as being in our opinion the most certain and unexceptionable mode of determining that point which, being fixed, everything else will be easy. —
TITLE: To President Reed.
EDITION: Ford ed.,iii, 15.
PLACE: Richmond
DATE: 1781
A further knowledge of the ground in the north-eastern and north-western angles of the United States has evinced that the boundaries established by the treaty of Paris, between the British territories and ours in those parts, were too imperfectly described to be susceptible of execution. It has, therefore, been thought worthy of attention, for preserving and cherishing the harmony and useful intercourse subsisting between the two nations, to remove by timely arrangements what unfavorable incidents might otherwise render a ground of future misunderstanding. A convention has, therefore, been entered into which provides for a practical demarcation of those limits to the satisfaction of both parties. —
TITLE: Third Annual Message.
EDITION: Washington ed.viii ,26.
EDITION: Ford ed.,viii, 270.
DATE: Oct. 1803
The southern limits of Georgia depend chiefly on, 1. The charter of Carolina to the Lords Proprietors, in 1663, extending southwardly to the river Matheo, now called St. John's, supposed in the charter to be in latitude 31°, and 50° west in a direct line as far as the South Sea. See the charter in 4th Manoires de l'Amerique, 554. 2. On the proclamation of the British King, in 1763, establishing the boundary between Georgia and the two Floridas, to begin in the Mississippi, in thirty-one degrees of latitude north of the equator, and running eastwardly to the Apalachicola; thence, along the said river to the mouth of the Flint; thence, in a direct line, to the source of the St Mary's River, and down the same to the ocean. 3. On the treaties between the United States and Great Britain, of November 30, 1782, and September 3, 1783, repeating and confirming these ancient boundaries. There was an intermediate transaction, to wit: a convention concluded at the Pardo, in 1739, whereby it was agreed that Ministers Plenipotentiary should be immediately appointed by Spain and Great Britain for settling the limits of Florida and Carolina. The convention is to be found in the collections of treaties. But the proceedings of the Plenipotentiaries are unknown here. [* * *] —
TITLE: Mississippi River Instructions.
EDITION: Washington ed.vii ,573.
EDITION: Ford ed.,v, 464.
PLACE: [none given]
DATE: 1792
To this demonstration of our rights may be added the explicit declaration of the court of Spain, that she would accede to them. This took place in conversations and correspondence thereon between Mr. Jay, Minister Plenipotentiary for the United States at the court of Madrid, the Marquis de Lafayette, and the Count de Florida Blanca. Monsieur de Lafayette, in his letter of February 19, 1783, to the Count de Florida Blanca, states the result of their conversations on limits in these words: “With respect to limits, his Catholic Majesty has adopted those that are determined by the preliminaries of the 30th of November, between the United States and the court of London.” The Count de Florida Blanca, in his answer of February 22d, to M. de Lafayette, says, “although it is his Majesty's intention to abide for the present by the limits established by the treaty of the 30th of November, 1782, between the English and the Americans, the King intends to inform himself particularly whether it can be in any ways inconvenient or prejudicial to settle that affair amicably with the United States;” and M. de Lafayette, in his letter of the same day to Mr. Jay, wherein he had inserted the preceding. says, “On receiving the answer of the
TITLE: Mississipppi River Instructions.
EDITION: Washington ed.vii ,574.
EDITION: Ford ed.,v, 465.
PLACE: [none given]
DATE: 1792
To conclude the subject of boundary, the following condition is to be considered by the commissioners as a sine quâ non: That our southern boundary remain established at the completion of thirty-one degrees of latitude on the Mississippi, and so on to the ocean, [* * *] and our western one along the middle of the channel of the Mississippi, however that channel may vary, as it is constantly varying, and that Spain cease to eccupy, or to exercise jurisdiction in any part northward or eastward of these boundaries. —
TITLE: Mississippi River Instructions.
EDITION: Washington ed.vii ,585.
EDITION: Ford ed.,v, 475.
PLACE: [none given]
DATE: 1792
It is not true that our ministers, in agreeing to establish the Colorado as our western boundary, had been obliged to exceed the authority of their instructions. Although we considered out title good as far as the Rio Bravo, yet in proportion to what they could obtain east of the Mississippi, they were to relinquish to the westward, and successive sacrifices were marked out, of which even the Colorado was not the last. 59
TITLE: — To W. A. Burwell.
EDITION: Washington ed.v ,20.
EDITION: Ford ed.,viii, 469.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: Sep. 1806
I suppose you are informed of the proceeding commenced by the Legislature of Maryland, to claim the south branch of the Potomac as their boundary, and thus of Albemarle, now the central county of the State, to make a frontier. As it is impossible upon any consistent principles, and after such a length of undisturbed possession, that they can expect to establish their claim, it can be ascribed to no other than intention to irritate and divide; and there can be no doubt from what bow the shaft is shot. However, let us cultivate Pennsylvania, and we need not fear the universe. The Assembly have named me among those who are to manage this controversy. But I am so averse to motion and contest, and the other members are so fully equal to the business, that I cannot undertake to act in it. I wish you were added to them. —
TITLE: To James Madison.
EDITION: Washington ed.iv ,162.
EDITION: Ford ed.,vii, 109.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: Jan. 1797
It is not the policy of the government in America to give aid to works of any kind. They let things take their natural course without help or impediment, which is generally the best policy. —
TITLE: To Thomas Digges.
EDITION: Washington ed.ii ,413.
EDITION: Ford ed.,v, 29.
PLACE: Paris
DATE: 1788
Among the purposes to which the Constitution [Col 2] permits Congress to apply money, the granting premiums or bounties is not enumerated, and there has never been a single instance of their doing it, although there has been a multiplicity of applications. The Constitution has left these encouragements to the separate States. I have in two or three messages to Congress recommended an amendment to the Constitution, which shall extend their power to these objects. But nothing is yet done in it. I fear, therefore, that the institution you propose must rest on the patronage of the State in which it is to be. I wish I could have answered you more to my own mind, as well as yours; but truth is the first object. —
TITLE: To Dr. Maese.
EDITION: Washington ed.v ,412.
PLACE: Washington
DATE: Jan. 1809
A new trial of the Bourbons has proved to the world their incompetence to the functions of the stations they have occupied; and the recall of the usurper has clothed him with the semblance of a legitimate autocrat. —
TITLE: To John Adams.
EDITION: Washington ed.vi ,458.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: June. 1815
I [* * *] enclose you [the British Minister] an extract of a letter [* * *] giving information of a Mr. Bowles, 60 lately come from England into the Creek country, endeavoring to excite that nation of Indians to war against the United States, and pretending to be employed by the government of England. We have other testimony of these pretensions, and that he carries them much farther than there stated. We have too much confidence in the justice and wisdom of the British government to believe they can approve of the proceedings of this incendiary and impostor, or countenance for a moment a person who takes the liberty of using their name for such a purpose. —
TITLE: To George Hammond.
EDITION: Ford ed.,v.
PLACE: Philadelphia ,
DATE: 1791
Of this adventurer the Spanish government rid us. —
TITLE: To Carmichael and Short.
EDITION: Washington ed.iv ,11.
EDITION: Ford ed.,vi, 332.
PLACE: Philadelphia ,
DATE: 1793 1793 gt;
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. —
TITLE: To Rev. Mr. Knox.
EDITION: Washington ed.v ,502.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1810
See Children.
Procure for us all the information possible as to the strength, riches, resources, lights and dispositions of Brazil. The jealousy of the court of Lisbon on this subject will, of course, inspire you with due caution in making and communicating these inquiris. —
TITLE: To David Humphreys.
EDITION: Ford ed.,v, 317.
PLACE: Philadelphia ,
DATE: 1791
Having learned the safe arrival of your Royal Highness at the city of Rio Janeiro I perform with pleasure the duty of offering you my sincere congratulations [* * *] . I trust that this event will be as propitious to the prosperity of your faithful subjects as to the happiness of your Royal Highness in which the United
TITLE: To The Emperor of Brazil.
EDITION: Washington ed.v ,285.
DATE: May. 1808
Republicanism in. — I shall not wonder if Brazil should revolt in mass, and send their royal family back to Portugal. Brazil is more populous, more wealthy, more energetic, and as wise as Portugal. —
TITLE: To Marquis Lafayette.
EDITION: Washington ed.vii ,68.
EDITION: Ford ed.,X, 85.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1817
Although we have no right to intermeddle with the form of government of other nations, yet it is lawful to wish to see no emperors nor kings in our hemisphere, and that Brazil as well as Mexico will homologize with us. —
TITLE: To President Monroe.
EDITION: Ford ed.,X, 244.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: Dec. 1822
Electoral. — No person shall be capable of acting in any office, civil, military, or ecclesiastical, who shall have given any bribe to obtain such office. —
TITLE: Proposed Va. Constitution.
EDITION: Ford ed.,ii, 28.
DATE: June. 1776
Every person [* * *] qualified to elect [to the House of Representatives of Virginia] , shall be capable of being elected [to the House of Representatives] ; provided he shall have given no bribe, either directly or indirectly, to any elector. —
TITLE: Proposed Va. Constitution.
EDITION: Ford ed.,ii, 14.
DATE: June. 1776
The Senators' qualifications shall be [* * *] the having given no bribe, directly or indirectly, to obtain their appointment. —
TITLE: Proposed Va. Constitution.
EDITION: Ford ed.,ii, 16.
DATE: June. 1776
The known practice [of the British Government] is to bribe whom they can, and whom [Col 2] they cannot to calumniate. They have found scoundrels in America, and either judging from that, or their own principles, they would pretend to believe all are so. If pride of character be of worth at any time, it is when it disarms the efforts of malice. What a miserable refuge is individual slander to so glorious a nation as Great Britain has been. —
TITLE: To General Nelson.
EDITION: Ford ed.,ii, 464.
PLACE: Richmond
DATE: 1781
Of you, my neighbors, I may ask, in the face of the world, “whose ox have I taken, or whom have I defrauded? Whom have I oppressed, or of whose hand have I received a bribe to blind mine eyes therewith? On your verdict I rest with conscious security. —
TITLE: To The Inhabitants Of Albemarle County.
EDITION: Washington ed.v ,439.
EDITION: Ford ed.,ix, 251.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: April. 1809
In general, I am confident that you will receive notice of the [trade] regulations of this country [France] respecting their islands, by the way of those islands before you will from hence [Paris] . Nor can this be remedied but by a system of bribery which would end in the corruption of your own ministers, and produce no good adequate to the expense. —
TITLE: To James Monroe.
EDITION: Washington ed.i ,590.
EDITION: Ford ed.,iv, 250.
PLACE: Paris
DATE: 1786
See Corruption.
(Isaac), Scientific Attainments of. — I have appointed Isaac Briggs, of Maryland, surveyor of the lands south of Tennessee. He is a Quaker, a sound republican, and of a pure and unspotted character. In point of science, in astronomy, geometry and mathematics, he stands in a line with Mr. Ellicott, and second to no man in the United States. I recommend him to your particular patronage; the candor, modesty and simplicity of his manners cannot fail to gain your esteem. For the office of surveyor, men of the first order of science in astronomy and mathematics are essentially necessary. —
TITLE: To Governor Claiborne.
EDITION: Washington ed.iv ,489.
PLACE: Washington
DATE: 1803
(Marshal de), Character of. — The Marshal de Broglio, is a high flying aristocrat, cool and capable of everything. —
TITLE: To John Jay.
EDITION: Washington ed.iii ,74.
PLACE: Paris
DATE: 1789
(James), Loyalty of. — That you ever participated in any plan for a division of the Union, I never for a moment believed. I knew your Americanism too well. But as the enterprise against Mexico was of a very different character, I had supposed what I heard on that subject to be possible. You disavow it; that is enough for me, and I forever dismiss the idea. —
TITLE: To Dr. James Brown.
EDITION: Washington ed.v ,378.
EDITION: Ford ed.,ix, 210.
PLACE: Washington
DATE: 1808
Speculative. — The American mind is now in that state of fever which the world has so often seen in the history of other nations. We are under the bank bubble, as England was under the South Sea bubble, France under the Mississippi bubble, and as every nation is liable to be, under whatever bubble, design, or delusion may puff up in moments when off their guard. —
TITLE: To Charles Yancey.
EDITION: Washington ed.vi ,515.
EDITION: Ford ed.,X, 2.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: Jan. 1816
See Speculation.
He is an honorable, patriotic, and virtuous character [and] , was in correspondence with Dr. Franklin and General Washington. —
TITLE: To James Monroe.
EDITION: Ford ed.,viii, 287.
PLACE: Washington
DATE: 1804
— 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 intrusted 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. 61 —
TITLE: To Rev. Mr. Knox.
EDITION: Washington ed.v ,502.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1810
His latinity is so pure as to claim a place in school reading. —
TITLE: To Rev. Mr. Knox.
EDITION: Washington ed.v ,502.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1810
The opinion advanced by the Count de Buffon, is, 1. That the animals common both to the old and new world are smaller in the latter. 2. That those peculiar to the new are on a smaller scale. 3. That those which have been domesticated in both have degenerated in America; and 4. That on the whole it exhibits fewer species. And the reason he thinks is, that the heats of America are less; that more waters are spread over its surface by nature, and fewer of these drained off by the hand of man. In other words, that heat is friendly, and moisture adverse to the production and development of large quadrupeds. I will not meet this hypothesis on its first doubtful ground, whether the climate of America be comparatively more humid, because we are not furnished with observations sufficient to decide this question. And though, till it be decided, we are as free to deny as others are to affirm the fact, yet for a moment let it be supposed. The hypothesis after this supposition, proceeds to another; that moisture is unfriendly to animal growth. The truth of this is inscrutable to us by reasonings à priori. Nature has hidden from us her modus agendi. Our only appeal on such questions is to experience; and I think that experience is against the supposition. It is by the assistance of heat and moisture that vegetables are elaborated from the elements of earth, air, water, and fire. We accordingly see the more humid climates produce the greater quantity of vegetables. Vegetables are mediately or immediately the food of every animal; and in proportion to the quantity of food, we see animals not only multiplied in their numbers, but improved in their bulk, as far as the laws of their nature will admit. Of this opinion is the Count de Buffon himself in another part of his work: “En general il paroit que les pays un peu froids conviennent mieux á nos boeufs que les pays chauds et qu'ils sont d'autant plus gros et plus grands que le climat est plus [Col 2] humide et plus abondans en paturages. Les boeufs de Danemarck, de la Podolie, de l'Ukraine et de la Tartarie qu'habitent les Calmouques sont les plus grands de tous.” Here then a race of animals, and one of the largest too, has been increased in its dimensions by cold and moisture, in direct opposition to the hypothesis, which supposes that these two circumstances diminish animal bulk, and that it is their contraries, heat and dryness which enlarge it. —
TITLE: Notes on Virginia.
EDITION: Washington ed.viii ,290.
EDITION: Ford ed.,iii, 135.
PLACE: [none given]
DATE: 1782
The mammoth should have sufficed to have rescued the earth it inhabited, and the atmosphere it breathed, from the imputation of impotence in the conception and nourishment of animal life on a large scrale; to have stifled, in its birth, the opinion of a writer, the most learned, too, of all others in the science of animal history, that in the new world. “La nature vivante est beaucoup moins agissante, beaucoup moins forte”; that nature is less active, less energetic on one side of the globe than she is on the other. As if both sides were not warmed by the same genial sun; as if a soil of the same chemical composition was less capable of elaboration into animal nutriment; as if the fruits and grains from that soil and sun yielded a less rich chyle, gave less extension to the solids and fluids of the body, or produced sooner in the cartilages, membranes, and fibres, that rigidity which restrains all further extension, and terminates animal growth. The truth is that a pigmy and a Patagonian, a mouse and a mammoth, derive their dimensions from the same nutritive juices. The difference of increment depends on circumstances unsearchable to beings with our capacities. Every race of animals seems to have received from their Maker certain laws of extension at the time of their formation. Their elaborate organs were formed to produce this, while proper obstacles were opposed to its further progress. Below these limits they cannot fall, nor rise above them: What intermediate station they shall take may depend on soil, on climate, on food, on a careful choice of breeders. But all the manna of heaven would never raise the mouse to the bulk of the mammoth. —
TITLE: Notes on Virginia.
EDITION: Washington ed.viii ,289.
EDITION: Ford ed.,iii, 134.
PLACE: [none given]
DATE: 1782
See Mammoth.
I wrote to some of my friends in America desiring they would send me such of the spoils of the moose, caribou, elk and deer, as might throw light on that class of animals. [* * *] I am happy to be able to present to you [* * *] the bones and skin of a moose, the horns of the caribou, the elk, the deer, the spiked horned buck, and the roebuck of America. They all come from New Hampshire and Massachusetts. —
TITLE: To Comte de Buffon.
EDITION: Washington ed.ii ,285.
EDITION: Ford ed.,iv, 457.
PLACE: Paris
DATE: 1787
Bunker's Hill, or rather Breed's Hill, whereon the action was, is a peninsula joined to the mainland by a neck of land almost level with the water, a few paces wide, and about one or two hundred toises long. On one side of this neck
TITLE: To M. Soules.
EDITION: Washington ed.ix ,293.
EDITION: Ford ed.,iv, 301.
PLACE: Paris
DATE: 1786
The Revolution of France does not astonish me so much as the revolution of Mr. Burke. I wish I could believe the latter proceeded from as pure motives as the former. But what demonstration could scarcely have established before, less than the hints of Dr. Priestley and Mr. Paine establish firmly now. How mortifying that this evidence of the rottenness of his mind must oblige us now to ascribe to wicked motives those actions of his life which wore the mark of virtue and patriotism. —
TITLE: To Benjamin Vaughan.
EDITION: Ford ed.,v, 333.
PLACE: [none given]
DATE: 1791
Men come into business at first with visionary principles. It is practice alone which can correct and conform them to the actual current of affairs. In the meantime, those to whom their errors were first applied have been their victims. —
TITLE: To James Madison.
EDITION: Ford ed.,v, 16.
PLACE: Paris
DATE: 1788
— I never thought him an honest, frank-dealing man, but considered him as a crooked gun, or other perverted machine, whose aim or shot you could never be sure of. Still, while he possessed the confidence of the nation, I thought it my duty to respect in him their confidence, and to treat him as if he deserved it. —
TITLE: To William B. Giles.
EDITION: Washington ed.v ,68.
EDITION: Ford ed.,ix, 46.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: April. 1807
I had never seen Colonel Burr till he came here as a member of the Senate. His conduct very soon inspired me with distrust. I habitually cautioned Mr. Madison against trusting him too much. I saw afterwards that under General Washington's and Mr. Adams's administrations, whenever a great military appointment or a diplomatic one was to be made, he came post to Philadelphia to show himself and in fact that he was always at market, if they had wanted him. He was indeed told by Dayton in 1800 he might be Secretary of War; but this bid was too late. His election as V. P. was then foreseen. With these impressions of Colonel Burr there never had been any intimacy between us, and but little association. When I destined him for a high appointment, it was out of respect for the favor he had obtained with the republican party by his extraordinary exertions and successes in the New York election in 1800. —
TITLE: The Anas.
EDITION: Washington ed.ix ,207.
EDITION: Ford ed.,i, 304.
PLACE: [none given]
DATE: 1804
Against Burr, personally, I never had one [Col 2] hostile sentiment. —
TITLE: To William B. Giles.
EDITION: Washington ed.v ,68.
EDITION: Ford ed.,ix, 46.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: April. 1807
No man's history proves better the value of honesty. With that, what might he not have been! —
TITLE: To Levi Lincoln.
EDITION: Washington ed.v ,55.
PLACE: Washington
DATE: 1807
Burr has indeed made a most inglorious exhibition of his much overrated talents. —
TITLE: To Robert R. Livingston.
EDITION: Washington ed.v ,55.
EDITION: Ford ed.,ix, 38.
PLACE: Washington
DATE: 1807
A great man in little things, he is really small in great ones. —
TITLE: To George Hay.
EDITION: Washington ed.v ,88.
EDITION: Ford ed.,ix, 55.
PLACE: Washington
DATE: 1807
— He has certainly greatly merited of his country, and the republicans in particular, to whose efforts his have given a chance of success. —
TITLE: To Pierce Butler.
EDITION: Ford ed.,vii, 449.
DATE: Aug. 1800
While I must congratulate you on the issue of this contest [the Presidential] , because it is more honorable, and, doubtless, more grateful to you than any station within the competence of the Chief Magistrate, yet for myself, and for the substantial service of the public, I feel most sensibly the loss we sustain of your aid in our new administration. It leaves a chasm in my arrangements, which cannot be adequately filled up. I had endeavored to compose an administration whose talents, integrity, names, and dispositions, should at once inspire unbounded confidence in the public mind, and insure a perfect harmony in the conduct of the public business. I lose you from the list, and am not sure of all the others. Should the gentlemen, who possess the public confidence, decline taking a part in their affairs, and force us to take persons unknown to the people, the evil genius of this country May realize his avowal that “he will beat down the administration.” —
TITLE: To Aaron Burr.
EDITION: Washington ed.iv ,341.
EDITION: Ford ed.,vii, 467.
PLACE: Washington
DATE: Dec. 1800
It was to be expected that the enemy would endeavor to sow tares between us, that they might divide us and our friends. Every consideration satisfies me you will be on your guard against this, as I assure you I am strongly. I hear of one stratagem so imposing and so base that it is proper I should notice it to you. Mr. Munford says he saw at New York an original letter of mine to Judge Breckenridge, in which are sentiments highly injurious to you. He knows my handwriting, and did not doubt that to be genuine. I enclose you a copy taken irom the press copy of the only letter I ever wrote to Judge Breckenridge in my life. [* * *] Of consequence, the letter seen by Mr. Munford must be a forgery, and if it contains a sentiment unfriendly or disrespectful to you, I affirm it solemnly to be a forgery; as also if it varies from the copy enclosed. With the common trash of slander I should not think of troubling you; but the forgery of one's handwriting is too imposing to be neglected. —
TITLE: To Aaron Burr.
EDITION: Washington ed.iv ,349.
EDITION: Ford ed.,vii, 485.
PLACE: Washington
DATE: Feb. 1801
See Elections — Presidential, 1800.
Colonel Burr, the Vice President,
I answered by recapitulating to him what had been my conduct previous to the election of 1800. That I had never interfered directly or indirectly with my friends or any others, to influence the election either for him or myself; that I considered it as my duty to be merely passive, except that in Virginia, I had taken some measures to procure for him the unanimous vote of that State, because I thought any failure there might be imputed to me. That in the election now coming on, I was observing the same conduct, held no councils with anybody respecting it, nor suffered any one to speak to me on the subject, believing it my duty to leave myself to the free discussion of the public, that I do not at this moment know, nor have ever heard, who were to be proposed as candidates for the public choice, except so far as could be gathered from the newspapers. That as to the attack excited against him in the newspapers, I had noticed it but as the passing wind; that I had seen complaints that Cheetham, employed in publishing the laws, should be permitted to eat the public bread and abuse its second officer; that as to this, the publishers of the laws were appointed by the Secretary of State, without any reference to me; that to make the notice general, it was often given to one republican and one federal printer of the same place; that these federal printers did not in the least intermit their abuse of me, though receiving emoluments from the government, and that I never thought it [Col 2] proper to interfere for myself, and consequently not in the case of the Vice-President. That as to the letter he referred to, I remembered it, and believed he had only mistaken the date at which it was written; that I thought it must have been on the first notice of the event of the election of South Carolina; and that I had taken that occasion to mention to him, that I had intended to have proposed to him one of the great offices, if he had not been elected; but that his election in giving him a higher station had deprived me of his aid in the Administration. The letter alluded to was, in fact, mine to him of December the 15th, 1800. I now went on to explain to him verbally, what I meant by saying I had lost him from my list. That in General Washington's time, it had been signified to him that Mr. Adams, the Vice-President, would be glad of a foreign embassy; that General Washington mentioned it to me, expressed his doubts whether Mr. Adams was a fit character for such an office, and his still greater doubts, indeed his conviction, that it would not be justifiable to send away the person who, in case of his death, was provided by the Constitution to take his place; that it would moreover appear indecent for him to be disposing of the public trusts, in apparently buying off a competitor for the public favor. I concurred with him in the opinion, and, if I recollect rightly, Hamilton, Knox, and Randolph were consulted and gave the same opinions. That when Mr. Adams came to the Administration, in his first interview with me, he mentioned the necessity of a mission to France, and how desirable it would have been to him if he could have got me to undertake it; but that he conceived it would be wrong in him to send me away, and assigned the same reasons General Washington had done; and, therefore, he should appoint Mr. Madison, &c. That I had myself contemplated his (Colonel Burr's) appointment to one of the great offices, in case he was not elected Vice-President; but that as soon as that election was known, I saw it could not be done, for the good reasons which had led General Washington and Mr. Adams to the same conclusion; and therefore, in my first letter to Colonel Burr, after the issue was known, I had mentioned to him that a chasm in my arrangements had been produced by this event. I was thus particular in rectifying the date of this letter, because it gave me an opportunity of explaining the grounds on which it was written, which were, indirectly an answer to his present hints. He left the matter with me for consideration, and the conversation was turned to indifferent subjects. I should here notice, that Colonel Burr must have thought that I could swallow strong things in my own favor, when he founded his acquiescence in the nomination as Vice-President, to his desire of promoting my honor, the being with me, whose company and conversation had always been fascinating with him, &c. —
TITLE: The Anas.
EDITION: Washington ed.ix ,204.
EDITION: Ford ed.,i, 301.
DATE: Jan. 1804
About a month ago [March 1806] Colonel Burr called on me, and entered into a conversation, in which he mentioned that a little before my coming into office, I had written to him a later intimating that I had destined him for high employ, had he not been placed by the people in a different one; that he had signified his willingness to resign as Vice-President, to give aid to the Administration in any other place, that he had never asked an office, however; he asked aid of nobody, but could walk on his own legs and take care of himself; that
TITLE: The Anas.
EDITION: Washington ed.ix ,208.
EDITION: Ford ed.,i, 311.
DATE: April. 1806
During the last session of Congress, Colonel Burr who was here [Washington] , finding no hope of being employed in any department of the government, opened himself confidentially to some persons on whom he thought he could rely, on a scheme of separating the Western from the Atlantic States, and erecting the former into an independent confederacy. He had before made a tour of those States which had excited suspicions, as every nation does of such a Catalinian character. [* * *] We [the cabinet] are of opinion unanimously, that confidential letters be written to the Governors of Ohio, Indiana, Mississippi and Orleans [* * *] to have him strictly watched and on his committing any overt act unequivocally, to have him arrested and tried for treason, [Col 2] misdemeanor, or whatever other offence the act may amount to. And in like manner to arrest and try any of his followers committing acts against the laws. —
TITLE: The Anas.
EDITION: Ford ed.,i, 318.
DATE: July. 1806
— Burr has been able to decoy a great proportion of his people by making them believe the government secretly approves of this expedition against the Spanish territories. We are looking with anxiety to see what exertions the Western country will make in the first instance for their own defence; and I confess that my confidence in them is entire. —
TITLE: To Governor Claiborne.
EDITION: Ford ed.,viii, 502.
PLACE: Washington
DATE: Dec. 1806
It is understood that wherever Burr met with subjects who did not choose to embark in his projects, unless approved by their government, he asserted that he had that approbation. Most of them took his word for it, but it is said that with those who would not, the following stratagem was practiced. A forged letter, purporting to be from General Dearborn, was made to express his approbation, and to say that I was absent at Monticello, but that there was no doubt that, on my return, my approbation of his enterprises would be given. This letter was spread open on his table, so as to invite the eye of whoever entered his room, and he contrived occasions of sending up into his room those whom he wished to become witnesses of his acting under sanction. By this means he avoided committing himself to any liability to prosecution for forgery, and gave another proof of being a great man in little things, while he is really small in great ones. I must add General Dearborn's declaration, that he never wrote a letter to Burr in his life, except that when here, once in a winter, he usually wrote him a billet of invitation to dine. —
TITLE: To George Hay.
EDITION: Washington ed.v ,87.
EDITION: Ford ed.,ix, 54.
PLACE: Washington
DATE: June. 1807
The designs of our Cataline are as real as they are romantic, but the parallel he has selected from history for the model of his own course corresponds but by halves. It is true in its principal character, but the materials to be employed are totally different from the scourings of Rome. I am confident he will be completely deserted on the appearance of the proclamation, because his strength was to consist of people who had been persuaded that the government connived at the enterprise. —
TITLE: To Caesar A. Rodney.
EDITION: Ford ed.,viii, 497.
PLACE: Washington
DATE: Dec. 1806
Burr's object is to take possession of New Orleans, as a station whence to make an expedition against Vera Cruz and Mexico. His party began their formation at the mouth of the Beaver, whence they started the 1st or 2d of his month, and would collect all the way down the Ohio. We trust that the opposition we have provided at Marietta, Cincinnati, Louisville, and Massac will be sufficient to stop him; but we are not certain because we do not know his strength. It is, therefore, possible he may escape, and then his great rendezvous is to be at Natchez. [* * *] We expect you will collect all your force of militia, act in conjunction with Colonel Freeman, and take such a stand as shall be concluded best. —
TITLE: To Governor Claiborne.
EDITION: Ford ed.,viii, 501.
PLACE: Washington
DATE: Dec. 1806
His first enterprise was to have been to seize New Orleans, which he
TITLE: To Marquis de Lafayette.
EDITION: Washington ed.v ,131.
EDITION: Ford ed.,x, 144.
PLACE: Washington
DATE: July. 1807
Burr's enterprise is the most extrarodinary since the days of Don Quixote. It is so extravagant that those who know his understanding, would not believe it if the proofs admitted doubt. He has meant to place himself on the throne of Montezuma, and extend his empire to the Alleghany, seizing on New Orleans as the instrument of compulsion for western States. —
TITLE: To Rev. Chas. Clay.
EDITION: Washington ed.v ,28.
EDITION: Ford ed.,ix, 7.
PLACE: Washington
DATE: Jan. 1807
For myself, even in Burr's most flattering periods of the conspiracy, I never entertained one moment's fear. My long and intimate knowledge of my countrymen, satisfied and satisfies me, that let there ever be occasion to display the banners of the law, and the world will see how few and pitiful are those who shall array themselves in opposition. —
TITLE: To Dr. James Brown.
EDITION: Washington ed.v ,379.
EDITION: Ford ed.,ix, 211.
PLACE: Washington
DATE: Oct. 1808
His conspiracy has been one of the most flagitious of which history will ever furnish an example. He meant to separate the Western States from us, to add Mexico to them, place himself at their head, establish what he would deem an energetic government, and thus provide an example and an instrument for the subversion of our freedom. The man who could expect to effect this, with American materials, must be a fit subject for Bedlam. —
TITLE: To Marquis de Lafayette.
EDITION: Washington ed.v ,129.
EDITION: Ford ed.,ix, 113.
PLACE: Washington
DATE: July. 1807
Burr's conspiracy has been one of the most flagitious of which history will ever furnish an example. He had combined the objects of separating the Western States from us, of adding Mexico to them, and of placing himself at their head. But he who could expect to effect such objects by the aid of American citizens, must be perfectly ripe for Bedlam. —
TITLE: To Dupont de Nemours.
EDITION: Washington ed.v ,128.
EDITION: Ford ed.,ix, 111.
PLACE: Washington
DATE: July. 1807
It has given me infinite satisfaction that not a single native Creole of Louisiana, and but one American, settled there before the delivery of the country to us, were in his interest. His partisans there were made up of fugitives from justice, or from their debts, who had flocked there from other parts of the United States, after the delivery of the country, and of adventurers and speculators of all descriptions. —
TITLE: To Dupont de Nemours.
EDITION: Washington ed.v ,128.
EDITION: Ford ed.,ix, 113.
PLACE: Washington
DATE: July. 1807
The native inhabitants were unshaken in their fidelity. But there was a small band of American adventurers who had fled from their debts, and who were longing to dip their hands into the mines of Mexico, enlisted in Burr's double project of attacking that country, and severing our Union. Had Burr had a little success in the upper country, these parricides would have joined him. —
TITLE: To Marquis de Lafayatte.
EDITION: Ford ed.,ix, 65.
PLACE: Washington
DATE: May. 1807
The hand of the people has given the mortal blow to a conspiracy which, in other countries, would have called for an appeal to [Col 2] armies, and has proved that government to be the strongest of which every man feels himself a part. It is a happy illustration, too, of the importance of preserving to the State authorities all that vigor which the Constitution foresaw would be necessary, not only for their own safety, but for that of the whole. —
TITLE: To Governor H. D. Tiffin.
EDITION: Washington ed.v ,38.
EDITION: Ford ed.,ix, 21.
PLACE: Washington
DATE: Feb. 1807
The whole business has shown that neither Burr nor his [associates] knew anything of the people of this country. A simple proclamation informing the people of these combinations, and calling on them to suppress them, produced an instantaneous levee en masse of our citizens wherever there appeared anything to lay hold of, and the whole was crushed in one instant. —
TITLE: To Marquis de Lafayatte.
EDITION: Ford ed.,ix, 66.
PLACE: Washington
DATE: May. 1807
Their crimes are defeated, and whether they shall be punished or not belongs to another department, and is not the subject of even a wish on my part. —
TITLE: To J. H. Nicholson.
EDITION: Washington ed.v ,45.
EDITION: Ford ed.,ix, 31.
PLACE: Washington
DATE: Feb. 1807
The suppression of the late conspiracy by the hand of the people, uplifted to destroy it wherever it reared its head, manifests their fitness for self-government, and the power of a nation, of which every individual feels that his own will is part of the public authority. —
TITLE: R. To A. New Jersey Legislature.
EDITION: Washington ed.viii ,122.
DATE: (Dec. 1807.)
The proof we have lately seen of the innate strength of our government, is one of the most remarkable which history has recorded, and shows that we are a people capable of self-government, and worthy of it. The moment that a proclamation apprised our citizens that there were traitors among them, and what was the object, they rose upon them wherever they lurked, and crushed by their own strength what would have produced the march of armies and civil war in any other country. The government which can wield the arm of the people must be the strongest possible.
TITLE: To Mr. Weaver.
EDITION: Washington ed.v ,89.
PLACE: Washington ,
DATE: June. 1807
Nothing has ever so strongly proved the innate force of our form of government, as this conspiracy. Burr had probably engaged one thousand men to follow his fortunes, without letting them know his projects, otherwise than by assuring them that the government approved them. The moment a proclamation was issued, undeceiving them, he found himself left with about thirty desperadoes only. The people rose in mass wherever he was, or was suspected to be, and by their own energy the thing was crushed in one instant, without its having been necessary to employ a man of the military but to take care of their respective stations. —
TITLE: To Marquis de Lafayette.
EDITION: Washington ed.v ,130.
EDITION: Ford ed.,ix, 114.
PLACE: Washington
DATE: July. 1807
This affair has been a great confirmation in my mind of the innate strength of the form of our government. He had probably induced near a thousand men to engage with him, by making them believe the government connived at it. A proclamation alone, by undeceiving them, so completely disarmed him, that he had not above thirty men left, ready to go all lengths with him. —
TITLE: To Dupont de Nemours.
EDITION: Washington ed.v ,128.
EDITION: Ford ed.,ix, 111.
PLACE: Washington
DATE: July. 1807
I informed Congress at their last session 62 of the enterprises against the public peace which were believed to be in preparation by Aaron Burr and his associates, of the measures taken to defeat them, and to bring the offenders to justice. Their enterprises were happily defeated by the patriotic extertions of the militia wherever called into action, by the fidelity of the army, and energy of the commander-in-chief in promptly arranging the difficulties presenting themselves on the Sabine, repairing to meet those arising on the Mississippi, and dissipating, before their explosion, plots engendering them. —
TITLE: Seventh Annual Message.
EDITION: Washington ed.viii ,87.
EDITION: Ford ed.,ix, 162.
DATE: Oct. 1807
The enterprise has done good by proving that the attachment of the people in the West is as firm as that in the East to the union of our country, and by establishing a mutual and universal confidence. —
TITLE: To Marquis de Lafayette.
EDITION: Ford ed.,ix, 66.
PLACE: Washington
DATE: May. 1807
Your sending here [Washington] Swartwout and Ballman and adding to them Burr, Blennerhassett and Tyler, should they fall into your hands, will be supported by the public opinion. [* * *] I hope, however, you will not extend this deportation to persons against whom there is only suspicion, or shades of offence not strongly marked. In that case, I fear the public sentiment would desert you: because seeing no danger here, violations of law are felt with strength. —
TITLE: To General Wilkinson.
EDITION: Washington ed.v ,39.
EDITION: Ford ed.,ix, 4.
PLACE: Washington
DATE: Feb. 1807
That the arrest of Colonel Burr was military has been disproved; but had it been so, every honest man and good citizen is bound, by any means in his power, to arrest the author of projects so daring and dangerous. —
TITLE: To Edmund Pendleton Gaines.
EDITION: Washington ed.v ,141.
EDITION: Ford ed.,ix, 122.
PLACE: Washington
DATE: July. 1807
See Bollman.
I do suppose the following overt acts will be proved. 1. The enlistment of men in a regular way. 2. The regular mounting of guard round Blennerhassett's Island [* * *] . 3. The rendezvous of Burr with his men at the mouth of the Cumberland. 4. His letter to the acting Governor of Mississippi, holding up the prospect of civil war. 5. His capitulation regularly signed with the aids of the Governor, as between two independent and hostile commanders. —
TITLE: To William B. Giles.
EDITION: Washington ed.v ,66.
EDITION: Ford ed.,ix, 43.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: April. 1807
That there should be anxiety and doubt in the public mind, in the present defective state of the proof, is not wonderful; and this has been sedulously encouraged by the tricks of the judges to force trials before it is possible to collect the evidence, dispersed through a line of two thousand miles from Maine to Orleans. —
TITLE: To William B. Giles.
EDITION: Washington ed.v ,65.
EDITION: Ford ed.,ix, 42.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: April. 1807
Although there is not a man in the United States who doubts his guilt, such are the jealous provisions of our laws in [Col 2] favor of the accused against the accuser, that 1 question if he is convicted. —
TITLE: To Marquis de Lafayette.
EDITION: Washington ed.v ,130.
EDITION: Ford ed.,ix, 113.
PLACE: Washington
DATE: July. 1807
Hitherto we have believed our law to be, that suspicion on probable grounds was sufficient cause to commit a person for trial, allowing time to collect witnesses till the trial. But the judges have decided, that conclusive evidence of guilt must be ready in the moment of arrest, or they will discharge the malefactor. If this is still insisted on, Burr will be discharged; because his crimes having been sown from Maine through the whole line of the western waters to New Orleans, we cannot bring the witnesses here under four months. —
TITLE: To James Bowdoin.
EDITION: Washington ed.v ,65.
EDITION: Ford ed.,ix, 41.
PLACE: Washington
DATE: April. 1807
A moment's calculation will show that the evidence cannot be collected under four months, probably five, from the moment of deciding when and where the trial shall be. I desired Mr. Rodney [Attorney General] expressly to inform the Chief Justice of this, inofficially. But Mr. Marshall says: “More than five weeks have elapsed since the opinion of the Supreme Court has declared the necessity of proving the overt acts,-if they exist. Why are they not proved?” In what terms of decency can we speak of this? As if an express could go to Natchez, or the mouth of the Cumberland, and return in five weeks, to do what has never taken less than twelve. Again: “If, in November or December last, a body of troops had been assembled on the Ohio, it is impossible to suppose the affidavits establishing the fact could not have been obtained by the last of March.” But I ask the judge where they should have been lodged? At Frankfort? at Cincinnati? at Nashville? St. Louis? Natchez? New Orleans? These were the probable places of apprehension and examination. It was not known at Washington till the 26th of March that Burr would escape from the Western tribunals, be retaken and brought to an Eastern one; and in five days after (neither five months nor five weeks, as the judge calculated), he says. “it is impossible to suppose the affidavits could not have been obtained”. Where? At Richmond he certainly meant, or meant only to throw dust in the eyes of his audience. But all the principles of law are to be perverted which would bear on the favorite offenders who endeavor to overturn this odious Republic. “I understand”, says the judge, “probable cause of guilt to be a case made out by proof furnishing good reason to believe”, &c. Speaking as a lawyer, he must mean legal proof, i. e., proof on oath, at least. But this is confounding probability and proof. We had always before understood that where there was reasonable ground to believe guilt, the offender must be put on his trial. That guilty intentions were probable, the judge believed. And as to the overt acts, were not the bundle of letters of information in Mr. Rodney's hands, the lefters and facts published in the local newspapers, Burr's flight, and the universal belief or rumor of his guilt, probable ground for presuming the facts of enlistment, military guard, rendezvous, threats of civil war, or capitulation, so as to put him on trial? Is there a candid man in the United States who does not believe some one, if not all, of these overt acts to have taken place? —
TITLE: To William B. Giles.
EDITION: Washington ed.v ,67.
EDITION: Ford ed.,ix, 44.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: April. 1807
See Papers (Executive).
The federalists appear to make Burr's cause their own, and to spare no efforts to screen his adherents. Their great mortification is at the failure of his plans. Had a little success dawned on him, their openly joining him might have produced some danger. —
TITLE: To Colonel G. Morgan.
EDITION: Washington ed.v ,57.
PLACE: Washington
DATE: March. 1807
The federalists, too, give all their aid, making Burr's cause their own, mortified only that he did not separate the Union or overturn the government, and proving, that had he had a little dawn of success, they would have joined him to introduce his object, their favorite monarchy, as they would any other enemy, foreign or domestic, who could rid them of this hateful Republic for any other government in exchange. —
TITLE: To William B. Giles.
EDITION: Washington ed.v ,66.
EDITION: Ford ed.,ix, 42.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: April. 1807
The fact is that the federalists make Burr's case their own, and exert their whole influence to shield him from punishment, as they did the adherents of Miranda. And it is unfortunate that federalism is still predominant in our Judiciary department, which is in opposition to the Legislative and Executive branches, and is able to baffle their measures often. —
TITLE: To James Bowdoin.
EDITION: Washington ed.v ,65.
EDITION: Ford ed.,ix, 41.
PLACE: Washington
DATE: April. 1807
The first ground of complaint [by the federalists] was the supine inattention of the Administration to a treason stalking through the land in open day. The present one, that they have crushed it before it was ripe for execution, so that no overt acts can be produced. This last may be true; though I believe it is not. Our information having been chiefly by way of letter, we do not know of a certainty yet what will be proved. We have set on foot an inquiry through the whole of the country which has been the scene of these transactions, to be able to prove to the courts, if they will give time, or to the public by way of communication to Congress, what the real facts have been. For obtaining this, we are obliged to appeal to the patriotism of particular persons in different places, of whom we have requested to make the inquiry in their neighborhood, and on such information as shall be voluntarily offered. Aided by no process or facilities from the federal courts, but frowned on by their new born zeal for the liberty of those men whom we would not permit to overthrow the liberties of their country, we can expect no revealments from the accomplices of the chief offender. Of treasonable intentions the judges have been obliged to confess there is probable appearance. What loophole they will find in the case, when it comes to trial, we cannot foresee. Eaton, Stoddart, Wilkinson, and two others whom I must not name, will satisfy the world, if not the judges, of Burr's guilt. —
TITLE: To William B. Giles.
EDITION: Washington ed.v ,66.
EDITION: Ford ed.,ix, 42.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: April. 1807
The favor of the marshal and the judge promises Burr all which can depend on them. A grand jury of two “feds”, four “quids” and ten republicans, does not seem to be a fair representation of the State of Virginia. I have always entertained a high opinion of the marshal's intergrity and political correctness. But in a State where there are not more than eight “quids”, how five of them should have [Col 2] been summoned to one jury, is difficult to explain from accident. But all this will show the original error of establishing a judiciary independent of the nation, and which, from the citadel of the law, can turn its guns on those they were meant to defend, and control and fashion their proceedings to its own will. —
TITLE: To John W. Eppes.
EDITION: Ford ed.,ix, 68.
PLACE: Washington
DATE: May. 1807
Before an impartial jury, Burr's conduct would convict himself, were not one word of testimony to be offered against him. But to what a state will our law be reduced by party feelings in those who administer it? 63 —
TITLE: To George Hay.
EDITION: Washington ed.v ,174.
EDITION: Ford ed.,ix, 62.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: Aug. 1807
See President.
If there ever had been an instance in this or the preceding administrations, of federal judges so applying principles of law as to condemn a federal or acquit a republican offender, I should have judged them in the present case with more charity. All this, however, will work well. The nation will judge both the offender and judges for themselves. If a member of the Executive or Legislature does wrong, the day is never far distant when the people will remove him. They will see then and amend the error in our Constitution, which makes any branch independent of the nation. They will see that one of the great coordinate branches of the government, setting itself in opposition to the other two, and to the common sense of the nation, proclaims impunity to that class of offenders which endeavors to overturn the Constitution, and are themselves protected in it by the Constitution itself; for impeachment is a farce which will not be tried again. If their protection of Burr produces this amendment, it will do more good than his condemnation would have done. [* * *] If his punishment can be commuted now for an useful amendment of the Constitution, I shall rejoice in it. —
TITLE: To William B. Giles.
EDITION: Washington ed.v ,68.
EDITION: Ford ed.,ix, 45.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: April. 1807
Burr's trial goes on to the asconishment of all, as to the manner of conducting it. —
TITLE: To Albert Gallatin.
EDITION: Washington ed.v ,172.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: Aug. 1807
The scenes which have been acted at Richmond are such as have never before been exhibited in any country where all regard to public character has not yet been thrown off. They are equivalent to a proclamation of impunity to every traitorous combination which may be formed to destroy the Union; and they preserve a head for all such combinations as may be formed within, and a centre for all the intrigues and machinations which foreign governments may nourish to disturb us. However, they will produce an amendment to the Constitution which, keeping the judges independent of the Executive, will not leave them so, of the nation. —
TITLE: To General Wilkinson.
EDITION: Washington ed.v ,198.
EDITION: Ford ed.,ix, 142.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: Sep. 1807
The scenes which have been acting at Richmond are sufficient to fill us with alarm. We had supposed we possessed fixed laws to guard us equally against treason and oppression. But it now appears we have no law but the will of the judge. Never will chicanery have a more difficult task than has been
TITLE: To William Thompson.
EDITION: Ford ed.,ix, 143.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: Sep. 1807
See Marbury vs. Madison, Marshall.
The event has been — (blank in the original) not only to clear Burr, but to prevent the evidence from ever going before the world. But this latter case must not take place. It is now, therefore, more than ever indispensable, that not a single witness be paid or permitted to depart until his testimony has been committed to writing, either as delivered in court, or taken by yourself in the presence of any of Burr's counsel, who May choose to attend to cross-examine. These whole proceedings will be laid before Congress, that they may decide whether the defect has been in the evidence of guilt, or in the law, or in the application of the law, and that they May provide the proper remedy for the past and the future. —
TITLE: To George Hay.
EDITION: Washington ed.v ,188.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: Sep. 1807
The criminal is preserved to become the rallying point of all the disaffected and the worthless of the United States, and to be the pivot on which all the intrigues and the conspiracies which foreign governments may wish to disturb us with, are to turn. If he is convicted of the misdemeanor, the judge must in decency give us a respite by some short confinement of him; but we must expect it to be very short. —
TITLE: To George Hay.
EDITION: Washington ed.v ,187.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: Sep. 1807
Be [* * *] the result before the formal tribunal fair or false, it becomes our duty to provide that full testimony shall be laid before the Legislature, and through them the public. For this purpose, it is necessary that we be furnished with the testimony of every person who shall be with you as a witness. * * * Go into any expense necessary for this purpose [* * *] . —
TITLE: To George Hay.
EDITION: Washington ed.v ,81.
EDITION: Ford ed.,ix, 52.
PLACE: Washington
DATE: May. 1807
I shall think it my duty to lay before you the proceedings and the evidence publicly exhibited on the arraignment of the principal offenders before the Circuit Court of Virginia. You will be enabled to judge whether the defeat was in the testimony, in the law, or in the administration of the law; and wherever it shall be found, the Legislature alone can apply or originate the remedy. The framers of our Constitution certainly supposed they had guarded, as well their government against destruction by treason, as their citizens against oppression, under pretence of it; and if these ends are not attained, it is of importance to inquire by what means, more effectual, they may be secured. 64 —
TITLE: Seventh Annual Message.
EDITION: Washington ed.viii ,87.
EDITION: Ford ed.,viii, 163.
DATE: Oct. 1807