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No. 234
MODERN XL IBRARY BOOKS
THE BEST OF THE WORLD'S BEST BOOKS
THE LIFE
AND SELECTED
WRITINGS OF
THOMAS JEFFERSON
Edited by
ADRIENNE KOCH and
WILLIAM PEDEN
For a long time the editors of the Mod-
ern Library have sought a volume of
Jefferson's works which would be both
comprehensive in terms of his prolific
literary output and representative of
his contribution to liberal thought.
Within the scope of this book of al-
most 800 pages are to be found the
Autobiography, which includes the
original and revised versions of the
Declaration of Independence; the com-
plete Anas; the Travel Journals; the
Essay on Anglo-Saxon; Biographical
Sketches of Famous Men; Notes on
Virginia; and a generous collection of
Letters.
THE MODERN LIBRARY
OF THE WORLD'S BEST BOOKS
THE LIFE AND
SELECTED WRITINGS
OF THOMAS JEFFERSON
The publishers will be pleased to send, upon request, an
illustrated folder setting forth the purpose and scope oj
THE MODERN LIBRARY, and lifting each volume
in the series. Every reader of books will find titles he has
been looking for, handsomely printed, in unabridged
editions, and at an unusually low price.
^^^
Directions in Jefferson's hcniduritingjor his tombsJone, with inslruttions for
the epitaph bearing testimony to the three achievements "moil to be remembered"
The Life and
Selefted Writings of
TH OMAS
JEFFERSON
'Edited, and with an Introduction by
Adrienne Koch & William Peden
THE MODERN LIBRARY NEW TORK
Copyright, 1944, by Random House. Ine.
is THE PUBLISHER OF
THE MODERN LIBRARY
BENNETT A. CERF • DONALD S. KLOPFER • ROBERT K. HAAS
Manufactured in the United States of America
By II. Wolff
^PREFACE
THIS selection from the writings of Thomas Jefferson id
planned to be a comprehensive presentation of his thought.
The greatest amount of space has been allotted to his letters,
in the belief that they are of primary importance in revealing
the man and his intellect. Jefferson's two original full-length
works, the Notes on Virginia and the Autobiography, are given
virtually complete. Along with his best-known public papers,
selections from his minor writings are also included. Together,
all these serve to depict the man who more aptly than any of
his countrymen might be called the American Leonardo.
Despite its limitations, the Memorial Edition (Andrew A.
Lipscomb and Albert Ellery Bergh, sds., The Writings of
Thomas Jeffcrscm, 20 vols., The Thomas Jefferson Memorial
Association, Washington, D. C., 1905) has been used as the
basis of the text. The Ford Edition, though better edited, does
not offer the quantity and variety of the Memorial Edition.
Whenever the Memorial Edition is not the source, we have
cited the editor or author, or the manuscript collection from
which an item is taken.
We wish to thank the staffs of the Alderman Library of the
University of Virginia and of the Library of Ccpgress for thei>
generous co-operation.
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION *?
/ ^UTOBIOGRAPHT 3
Including The Declaration of Independence
// TH8 *ANAS 117
/// TRAVEL JOURNALS 135
IV eSSAT ON <JNGLO-SAXON 157
V BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES OF FAMOUS MSN 173
VI ^OTSS ON VIRGINIA 187
VII TUB LIC TAP8RS 293
. A Summary View of the Rights of British America, 1774 293
An Act for Establishing Religious Freedom, 1779 311
Report of Government for the Western Territories, 1784 313
Opinion of Secretary of State, July 15, 1790 316
Opinion of Secretary of State, March 18, 1792 316
Opinion of Secretary of State, April 28, 1793 317
Opinion of Secretary of State, December 16, 1793 319
Inaugural Address, March 4, 1801 321
First Annual Message, December 8, 1801 325
Reply to Danbury Baptist Association, January i, 1803 332
Indian Address, January 7, 1802 333
Second Annual Message, December 15, 1802 334
Third Annual Message, October 17, 1803 334
Fourth Annual Message, November 8, 1804 338
Second Inaugural Address, March 4, 1805 339
To the General Assembly of North Carolina, January 10,
1808 345
To the Society of Tammany, February 29, 1808 346
Eighth Annual Message, November 8, 1808 347
vii
VIII : LSffeRS 351
To: John Harvie, Jan. 14, 1760 351
John Page, Dec. 25, 1762 351
John Page, July 15, 1763 355
John Page, Oct. 7, 1763 356
Robert Skipwith, Aug. 3, 1771 357
Dr. William Small, May 7, 1775 358
John Randolph, Esq., Nov. 29, 1775 359
Francis Eppes, July 15, 1776 361
John Fabroni, June 8, 1778 363
Col. James Monroe, May 20, 1782 364
Francois Jean, Chevalier de Chastellux, Nov. 26, 1782 365
Martha Jefferson, Dec. 22, 1783 366
Col. Monroe, June 17, 1785 366
Dr. Price, Aug. 7, 1785 367
The Count de Vergennes, Aug. 15, 1785 369
Mrs. Trist, Aug. 18, 1785 371
Peter Carr, Aug. 19, 1785 373
John Jay, Aug. 23, 1785 377
Baron Geismer, Sept. 6, 1785 37Q
James Madison, Sept. 20, 1785 380
Mr. Bellini, Sept. 30, 1785 382
Hogendorp, Oct. 13, 1785 384
J. Bannister, Jr., Oct. 15, 1785 38--
Rev. James Madison, Oct. 28, 1785 388
A. Stuart, Esq., Jan. 25, 1786 390
James Madison, Feb. 8, 1786 392
John Page, May 4, 1786 392
Mr. Wythe, Aug. 13, 1786 304
Mrs. Cosway, Oct. 12, 1786 395
James Madison, Dec. 16, 1786 407
John Jay, Jan. 9, 1787 409
Monsieur de Creve-Coeur, Jan. 15, 1787 409
Col. Edward Carrington, Jan. 16, 1787 411
James Madison, Jan. 30, 1787 412
Madame la Comtesse de Tesse, March 20, 1787 414
Martha Jefferson, March 28, 1787 416
Martha Jefferson, April 7, 1787 419
The Marquis de Lafayette, April n, 1787 420
viii
CONTENTS
To: James Madison, June 20, 1787 422
T. M. Randolph, Jr., July 6, 1787 . 424
Edward Carrington, Aug. 4, 1787 427
Col. Monroe, Aug. 5, 1787 428
Peter Carr, Aug. 10, 1787 429
John Adams, Aug. 30, 1787 434
John Adams, Nov. 13, 1787 435
Col. Smith, Nov. 13, 1787 436
James Madison, Dec. 20, 1787 436
E. Carrington, Dec. 21, 1787 441
Mr. A. Donald, Feb. 7, 1788 442
The Count de Moustier, May 17, 1788 443
William Carmichael, May 27, 1788 445
Col. Carrington, May 27, 1788 446
Mr. Izard, July 17, 1788 448
E. Rutledge, July 18, 1788 448
Mr. Cutting, July 24, 1788 449
James Madison, July 31, 1788 450
James Madison, Nov. 18, 1788 452
Dr. Price, Jan. 8, 1789 453
John Jay, Jan. n, 1789 457
Francis Hopkinson, March 13, 1789 459
James Madison, March 15, 1789 462
Col. Humphreys, March 18, 1789 464
Dr. Willard, March 24, 1789 467
General Washington, May 10, 1789 468
Monsieur de St. Etienne, June 3, 1789 469
John Jay, June 24, 1789 471
John Jay, June 29, 1789 476
Thomas Paine, July n, 1789 478
John Jay, July 19, 1789 481
James Madison, Sept. 6, 1789 488
William Hunter, Esq., Mayor of Alexandria,
March n, 1790 493
The Marquis de Lafayette, April 2, 1790 494
Maria Jefferson, April n, 1790 495
Mr. Thomas Mann Randolph, May 30, 1790 496
John Garland Jefferson, June n, 1790 497
Maria Jefferson, June 13, 1790 500
Count de Moustier, Dec. 13, 1790 501
ix
CONTENTS
To: Martha Jefferson Randolph, Dec. 23, 1790 501
Mr. Hazard, Feb. 18, 1791 502
Major L'Enfant, April 10, 1791 502
Thomas Mann Randolph, June 5, 1791 504
T. M. Randolph, July 3, 1791 504
John Adams, July 17, 1791 506
William Short, July 28, 1791 507
Benjamin Banneker, Aug. 30, 1791 508
Martha Jefferson Randolph, Jan. 15, 1792 509
The President of the United States, May 23, 1792 510
Thomas Paine, June IQ, 1792 516
The President of the United States, Sept. 9, 1792 517
William Short, Jan. 3, 1793 521
James Madison, June 9, 1793 522
The President of the United States, July 31, 1793 525
Eli Whitney, Nov. 16, 1793 526
John Adams, April 25, 17 94 527
Tench Coxe, May i, 1794 528
James Madison, Dec. 28, 1794 529
Monsieur D'lvernois, Feb. 6, 1795 530
M. de Meusnier, April 29, 1795 533
Mann Page, Aug. 30, 1795 534
George Wythe, Jan. 16, 1796 535
Philip Mazzei, April 24, 1796 537
John Adams, Dec. 28, 1796 538
James Madison, Jan. i, 1797 539
Elbridge Gerry, May 13, 1797 540
Edward Rutlcdge, June 24, 1797 544
Elbridge Gerry, Jan. 26, 1799 544
Edmund Pcndleton, Jan. 29, 1799 547
Maria Jefferson Eppcs, Feb. 7, 1799 548
Edmund Randolph, Aug. 18, 1799 549
Dr. Joseph Priestley, Jan. 18, 1800 552
Dr. Joseph Priestley, Jan. 27, 1800 554
Dr. William Bache, Feb. 2, 1800 556
Samuel Adams, Feb. 26, 1800 556
Dr. Benjamin Rush, Sept. 23, 1800 557
Martha Jefferson Randolph, Jan. 26, 1801 558
T. M. Randolph, Feb. 19, 1801 559
John Dickinson, March 6, 1801 560
CONTENTS
Tc: Dr. Joseph Priestley, March 21, 1801 561
Samuel Adams, March 29, 1801 563
Robert R. Livingston, Sept. 9, 1801 564
The Secretary of the Treasury
(Albert Gallatin), April i, 1802 • 566
Dr. Benjamin Rush, April 21, 1803 566
General Horatio Gates, July n, 1803 571
Monsieur Cabanis, July 12, 1803 572
Wilson C. Nicholas, Sept. 7, 1803 572
Jean Baptiste Say, Feb. i, 1804 574
Judge John Tyler, June 28, 1804 576
C. F. C. de Volney, Feb. 8, 1805 577
The Chiefs of the Cherokee Nation, Jan. 10, 1806 578
The Reverend G. C. Jenncr, May 14, 1806 580
John Norvell, June n, 1807 581
Governor James Sullivan, June 19, 1807 582
Dr. Casper Wistar, June 21, 1807 583
Monsieur de Nemours, July 14, 1807 585
Charles Pinckney, March 30, 1808 586
The Prince Regent of Portugal, May 5, 1808 587
Monsieur Lastcyrie, July 15, 1808 588
Thomas Jefferson Randolph, Nov. 24, 1808 589
Thomas Leiper, Jan. 21, 1809 593
John Hollins, Feb. 19, 1809 594
M. Henri Grcgoire, Jfiveque et Senateur a Paris,
Feb. 25, 1809 594
Monsieur DuPont dc Nemours, March 2, 1809 595
The Inhabitants of Albemarle County, in Virginia,
April 3, 1809 596
John Wyche, May 19, 1809 597
Dr. B. S. Barton, Sept. 21, 1809 598
Rev. Samuel Knox, Feb. 12, 1810 599
General Thaddeus Kosciusko, Feb. 26, 1810 600
Governor John Langdon, March 5, 1810 603
Governor John Tyler, May 26, 1810 604
Colonel William Duane, Aug. 12, 1810 605
J. B. Colvin, Sept. 20, 1810 606
Dr. Benjamin Rush, Jan. 16, 1811 607
Colonel William Duane, March 28, 1811 613
Dr. Benjamin Rush, Aug. 17, 1811 614
xi
CONTENTS
To: John Adams, Jan. 21, 1812 615
F. A. Van der Kemp, March 22, 1812 618
James Maury, April 25, 1812 619
John Melish, Jan. 13, 1813 620
Colonel William Duane, Jan. 22, 1813 625
Colonel William Duane, April 4, 1813 626
John Adams, May 27, 1813 626
John Adams, June 27, 1813 627
Dr. Samuel Brown, July 14, 1813 628
Isaac McPherson, Aug. 13, 1813 629
John Adams, Oct. 13, 1813 631
John Adams, Oct. 28, 1813 632
Dr. Thomas Cooper, Jan. 16, 1814 634
Monsieur N. G. Dufief, April 19, 1814 635
Thomas Law, June 13, 1814 636
John Adams, July 5, 1814 640
Edward Coles, Aug. 25, 1814 641
Peter Carr, Sept. 7, 1814 642
Dr. Thomas Cooper, Sept. 10, 1814 649
Samuel H. Smith, Esq., Sept. 21, 1814 650
William Short, Esq., Nov. 28, 1814 652
The Marquis de Lafayette, Feb. 14, 1815 654
James Maury, June 15, 1815 655
Albert Gallatin, October 16, 1815 656
Colonel Charles Yancey, Jan. 6, 1816 657
Charles Thomson, Jan. 9, 1816 659
Joseph C. Cabell, Feb. 2, 1816 660
Joseph Milligan, April 6,1816 662
John Adams, April 8, 1816 667
John Taylor, May 28, 1816 668
Samuel Kercheval, July 12, 1816 673
John Adams, Aug. i, 1816 676
Abigail Adams, Jan. 11,1817 677
Charles Thomson, Jan. 29, 1817 679
Joseph Delaplaine, April 12, 1817 679
Von Humboldt, June 13, 1817 681
Monsieur Barbe de Marbois, June 14, 1817 681
George Ticknor, Nov. 25, 1817 683
John Trumbull, Jan. 8, 1818 683
Count Dugnani, Feb. 14, 1818 684
xii
CONTSNTS
To: Dr. Benjamin Waterhouse, March 3, 1818 685
Nathaniel Burwell, Esq., March 14, 1818 687
John Adams, Nov. 13, 1818 690
Dr. Vine Utley, March 21, 1819 690
Mr. Laporte, June 4, 1819 692
William Short, Oct. 31, 1819 693
Dr. Thomas Cooper, March 13, 1820 697
John Holmes, April 22, 1820 698
William Short, Aug. 4, 1820 699
John Adams, Aug. 15, 1820 700
William Roscoe, Dec. 27, 1820 702
John Adams, Sept. 12, 1821 702
James Smith, Dec. 8, 1822 703
Robert Walsh, April 5, 1823 704
John Adams, April n, 1823 705
General Samuel Smith, May 3, 1823 707
The President of the United States
(James Monroe), Oct. 24, 1823 708
Monsieur A. Coray, Oct. 31, 1823 711
The Marquis de Lafayette, Nov. 4, 1823 712
Mr. David Harding, President of the Jefferson Debating
Society of Hingham, April 20, 1824 713
Major John Cartwright, June 5, 1824 714
Henry Lee, August 10, 1824 714
Charles Sigourney, Aug. 15, 1824 715
John Adams, Jan. 8, 1825 716
Thomas Jefferson Smith, Feb. 21, 1825 717
Henry Lee, May 8, 1825 719
Ellen W. Coolidge, August 27, 1825 720
Dr. James Mease, Sept. 26, 1825 722
George Washington Lewis, Oct. 25, 1825 722
James Madison, Feb. 17, 1826 726
Roger C. Weightman, June 24, 1826 729
Xlll
INTRODUCTION
by zAdrienne I^och and
William Teden
r I ^HE writings of Thomas Jefferson are today more mean-
JL ingful than ever before in America's history. No better
record of the social principles which are the heart of the
American democratic "experiment" exists than these letters and
documents. Those who are eager to know the varied and subtle
character of the man will find in them another, not inconsider-
able, reward. No leader in the period of the American Enlight-
enment was as articulate, as wise, as conscious of the implica-
tions and consequences of free society as he. To Jefferson,
therefore, we must go for fresh contacts with the commanding
personalities and events of those days, and for the fullest ex-
pression of government through consent, through reason,
through law, and through energetic and progressive change.
Thomas Jefferson was born on April 13 (April 2, Old Style),
1743, at Shadwell, the most important of the tobacco planta-
tions owned by his father Peter Jefferson, in the Virginia up-
country. A vigorous and intelligent man, although uneducated,
Peter Jefferson became a successful surveyor, prosperous land-
owner, and member of the Virginia House of Burgesses from
Albemarle County. His wife Jane Randolph, a member of one
of the most distinguished Virginia families, could trace her
pedigree far back in English and Scottish annals. Concerning
this, Jefferson, late in life, laconically remarked, "To which
let every one ascribe the faith and merit he chooses."
Perhaps the young Jefferson might not have made such a
statement. Certainly as a child he enjoyed to the full the
xv
THOMAS ySFFSRSON
numerous advantages accompanying his family's substantial
position: the books, the horses, the good life of the "Big
Houses" at Tuckahoe and Shadwell. And when Peter Jefferson
died he left his fourteen-year-old son not only valuable lands
and property—the base and measure of Virginia wealth at that
time— but sound and loving advice. Denied a formal education
himself, he was careful to direct that his son be given complete
classical training. Years later, Thomas Jefferson often referred
to the effect the classical moralists, philosophers, poets, and
dramatists had had upon him. Quite honestly he could say, in
1800, "I thank on my knees, Him who directed my early
education, for having put into my possession this rich source
of delight; and I would not exchange it for anything which I
could then have acquired. . . ." No matter how scientific and
progressive Jefferson became in his outlook, the moral and
political wisdom of Greece and Rome continued to give depth
and flavor to his thought.
As his father had stipulated, Thomas studied at Reverend
Mr. Maury's school, just a few miles from Shadwell. After two
years' coaching by this "correct classical scholar," in the spring
of 1760 he left his native Albemarle to attend William and
Mary College.
During these early years in Williamsburg, colonial capital of
Virginia, Jefferson gives every evidence of enjoying to the full
the parties, the music, the dancing, the flirtations, the versify-
ing, the punch-drinking—in short, the good society of the
sparkling young Virginians who were his friends. Fond of
cotillions, the theatre, and races, he is far from unhappy in
these frivolous surroundings. No Beau Brummel, the tall
gangling redhead possessed humor, warmth, and intelligence
which won him many close friends. Apparently more successful
in gaining the boon companionship of friends like John Page
than in capturing the hearts of the Williamsburg belles, he
occasionally luxuriates in the despondent mood of a romantic
failure. Jefferson's letters devoted to this theme, sometimes gay,
sometimes gloomy, but always dashed off in the extreme and
xvi
THOMAS jeFFSRSON
impetuous language of youth, are a good corrective to the
serious picture painted of him by keepers of the public faith.
But indications of discipline and earnestness are present as
solidly as rocks in a swirl of water. Jefferson's passion for
rationalization, as well as his pose of stoic detachment, is well
illustrated in his "love affair" with Rebecca Burwell. In the
midst of a dance in the Apollo Room of the Raleigh Tavern,
later the scene of momentous political stratagems, Jefferson
blurted a stumbling marriage proposal to his "Belinda." Sub-
jecting even this action to his habit of deliberation, shortly
thereafter he confessed to Page careful plans for his travel and
further education abroad. Meanwhile "Belinda," one surmisesy
must patiently await his return, schooling herself in the duties
necessary for a Virginia housewife and manager. Jefferson
alone was surprised, and even he did not claim to be morally
injured, when the spirited girl announced her engagement to
a less phlegmatic and more immediate suitor.
Jefferson had already matured intellectually more than the
average diligent student. He became a favorite of the social
and intellectual leaders of Williamsburg, including Dr. William
Small, his learned professor of mathematics and moral philoso-
phy, George Wythe, foremost legal mind in Virginia, and Gov-
ernor Fauquier, finished gentleman and patron of the arts.
Respected for his abundant intellectual curiosity and his
modest but sympathetic nature, Jefferson was a welcome fourth
at the dinner parties in the Governor's Palace where the group
engaged in spirited discussions of ideas, politics, literature, and
music. Jefferson was a good conversationalist —not in the sense
of being a self-conscious perfectionist, but rather because of
his almost organic interest in ideas, and his tireless curiosity
about human nature, history, and science. His letters suggest
the kind of talk he was capable of: courteous, deferential,
mild; completely honest and sincere; steeped in the flavor of
philosophy yet integrated with specific data drawn from his
own experience and wide reading.
After graduating from William and Mary in the spring of
xvii
THOMAS J8FF8RSON
1762, Jefferson studied law five years under George Wythe.
His attitude toward the law is in itself a good index to his
sense of values. Knowledge of the law, an essential prerequisite
to an understanding of governmental procedure, he respected.
He recognized the fact that good government depended upon
law as the stabilizer of national will. Realizing the termino-
logical hair-splitting of lawyers as a group and aware of the
crushing weight of precedent in law, he regarded it merely as
an instrument of the people's service and protection rather
than as their master. It was fitting, then, that he become a
successful practicing lawyer, but even more fitting that he
should forsake the single practice of law as a career.
Jefferson was just turning thirty when he began his political
career in earnest. In January of 1772 he had married the much-
courted and girlish widow, Martha Wayles Skelton. With her,
he had established residence in his still incompleted Monti-
cello, not far from his old home Shadwell, which had been
destroyed by fire in 1770. By the time of his marriage, he
already possessed some political experience. As law student
in Williamsburg, he had been impressed by Patrick Henry's
"splendid display" of oratory in the Virginia House of Burgess
debates concerning the Anti-Stamp Act Resolutions of 1765.
He had been a member of the Virginia House of Burgesses
from 1769, where his first action was an unsuccessful bill al-
lowing owners to free their slaves.
The impending crisis in British-Colonial relations, however,
soon overshadowed routine affairs of legislature. In 1772 pub-
lic indignation against George the Third's political and eco-
nomic tyranny had culminated in the burning of the British
revenue cutter Gaspee. When the Crown threatened to trans-
port to England the "traitors" suspected of the deed, a small
group of Virginia patriots, including Jefferson and Patrick
Henry, decided that colonial committees of correspondence
were needed as protection against further British encroach-
ments.
Inevitably, inter-colonial bonds were cemented by such ac~
xviii
THOMAS JSFFeRSON
tions. In 1774, for example, the first of the "Intolerable Acts'*
closed the port of Boston until Massachusetts should pay for
the Boston Tea Party of the preceding year. When this news
reached Wiliiamsburg, Jefferson and other younger members
of the Virginia Assembly, now in control of formulating Vir-
ginia policy, ordained a day of fasting and prayer to demon-
strate their sympathy with Massachusetts. Thereupon, Vir-
ginia's Royal Governor Dunmore once again dissolved the
Assembly. Meeting, as usual, in the Apollo Room of the
Raleigh Tavern, the members then planned to call together an
inter-colonial congress.
The machinery for this dynamic national action having been
set up, Jefferson began writing resolutions which were more
radical and better written than those from other counties and
colonies. He rehearsed some arguments against British tyranny
in his " Resolves for Albemarle County.7' This was soon fol-
lowed by Jefferson's impassioned tract on natural rights and
limited privileges, "A Summary View of the Rights of British
America." Read at the Virginia convention in Wiliiamsburg
(August, 1774), these resolutions were considered too revolu-
tionary and not adopted. They were printed, however, and
widely circulated. Thenceforth, important writing assignments
almost automatically were entrusted to Jefferson.
When Jefferson arrived in Philadelphia in June, 1775, as a
Virginia delegate to the Second Continental Congress, he al-
ready possessed, as John Adams remarked, "a reputation for
literature, science, and a happy talent of composition." It was
inevitable that the Congress make full use of this happy talent,
and almost immediately Jefferson's pen was enlisted in the
cause of independence. When he returned to the Congress the
following year, he was appointed to the live-man committee,
including Benjamin Franklin and John Adams, which was
charged with the most momentous assignment ever given in
the history of America: the drafting of a formal declaration of
independence from Great Britain. On Jefferson alone was
placed the responsibility of preparing the draft. The confidence
xij
THOMAS JSFF&RSON
placed in him as a man to make and weigh judgments, to
reason cogently in legal, historical, and political affairs, and to
write with feeling and technical mastery was strikingly justi-
fied. The document, after heated debate, was finally approved
by Congress on July 4, 1776. Cut and occasionally altered by
Adams, or Franklin, or the Congress itself, the Declaration is
almost completely Jefferson's, and is undoubtedly the triumph
and culmination of his early career. Jefferson was not unaware
of the importance of this document. It, along with his " Statute
of Virginia for Religious Freedom," and his work in founding
the University of Virginia, is one of the three things he wished
remembered in his epitaph.
By the age of thirty-three, his reputation as a master of the
art of government by committee was great. Had he chosen
political leadership it is logical to believe he could have at-
tained it. Instead, he made the choice which shows instantly
the kind of man he was and would always prefer to be. His
absence had been missed at home by his wife who was in poor
health. His estate needed his management. He preferred to
return to Mrs. Jefferson and Monticello, and to give his public
service to Virginia.
Three years of hard work and little glory followed this
choice. Returning to the Virginia House of Delegates in Oc-
tober, 1776, Jefferson at once set to work on a carefully planned
reform of the laws of Virginia, a reform aimed, in effect, at
the realization of the "inalienable rights" of man embodied
in the Declaration of Independence.
He lost no time in successfully introducing a bill to re-
organize the courts of justice, and another, still more impor-
tant, to abolish primogeniture and entails, thereby terminating
an antiquated patrician pattern of society. Then, along with
George Wythe and Edmund Pendleton, he devoted his energies
to a thorough revision of the laws of Virginia. This revision was
completed in 1779; the majority of its bills, however, were
not enacted until 1785 or later. Herein, Jefferson made the
most of his opportunity to modernize and to prune from the
xx
THOMAS JBFFBRSON
body of the law some of its flagrant redundancies. Further,
he surveyed the whole field of education, and proposed a
systematic plan of statewide education. And, as his crowning
effort, he attempted to write religious toleration into the laws
of Virginia by separating Church and State; when the "Bill
for Establishing Religious Freedom" was finally passed in
1785, he considered it a major contribution to American so-
ciety.
In addition to leading this social revolution in Virginia,
Jefferson found time to enjoy the companionship of his wife
and children, to study nature and delight in its wonders, to
cultivate his lands and manage his private affairs, to ride and
read and write vigorous letters to his many friends and ac-
quaintances. It was not long, however, before public life again
claimed him.
In June of 1779, Jefferson was elected Governor of Virginia
He commenced his career as a public executive sanguine, con
fident of his abilities, assured of the respect and almost tin
affection of his commonwealth. Any other years, however
would have been less fraught with pitfalls for the head of <*
state. Jefferson took up his duties at a time when the British
were raiding Virginia; in control of the sea, they could send
forth plundering parties to capture food and ammunition, and
destroy property. Indian warfare on Virginia's western border
was a perpetual source of worry and unrest. The treasury funds
were at their lowest ebb in Virginia's history. General Wash-
ington needed support from Virginia in the north. Men and
supplies were required to support the new nation on battle-
fields in the Carolinas. By 1781 the Governor found himself in
the plight of watching, with hands almost tied, the British
sweep through his state, burning and ravaging as they ad-
vanced. Jefferson petitioned General Washington to dispatch
troops to meet the threat of Cornwallis's invasion, but Wash-
ington, hard pressed in the north and short of men, could do
nothing. Consequently the burden of Virginia's defense fell
upon an untrained and insufficient militia. Jefferson himself
xxi
THOMAS JSFF8RSON
narrowly escaped capture at the hands of troops dispatched
by Colonel Tarleton. The legislators, at considerable loss of
face, were forced to flee their new capital city of Richmond.
Jefferson, as head of the state, was inevitably singled out for
criticism and abuse.
No evidence has ever shown that Jefferson failed in his
attempts to provide a suitable defense for Virginia. Later ma-
terial indeed, including his letters to Generals Washington
and Greene, shows him to have been an extraordinarily consci-
entious Governor, diligent, zealous, careful of the welfare of
his fellow-citizens. Perhaps a dictator was wanted. This Jef-
ferson would not and could not be. The crisis over and his
second term at an end, he influenced his friends to support a
military governor and announced his retirement.
Washington's complete approval of Jefferson's actions as
Governor is in marked contrast to the heated charges of
dereliction of duty made by certain members of the legislature.
When the war fever subsided, the same legislature shame-
facedly passed a resolution officially clearing Jefferson of all
Such charges. These experiences would have been cruel for
any public figure; for Jefferson, with his whole-souled attitude
toward public service and his extreme sensitivity to hostility
of any kind, his last months as Governor had been crushing
ones. Nevertheless, politically and intellectually he was a
tougher man from that point onward; he had developed a
realism which was to stand him in good stead in later years.
Home at Monticello, Jefferson buried himself in writing. In
June of 1781 he Had injured his wrist and was unable to ride
for some time. During this period of enforced idleness, he
wrote careful replies to a series of questions about Virginia
put him by the Marquis de Marbois, Secretary of the French
Legation at Philadelphia. The careful observations Jefferson
had been making for years about the surrounding country, its
climate, its natural beauties, its fauna and flora, minerals,
waterways, agriculture, and its government somehow added up
to an impressive total. The manuscript was later the Notes on
xxii
1'HOMAS JSFFSRSON
Virginia. This remarkable book, as rich in its minute analysis
of the details of external nature as in its clarification of moral,
political, and social issues, was read by savants and scientists
of two continents for years to come.
The intellectual exhilaration and comfort Jefferson derived
from these months of writing was soon submerged by the
greatest personal tragedy he had ever borne. His wife, ill since
the birth of their last daughter in May, 1782, died early in
September of the same year. Jefferson kept to his room for
three weeks thereafter, pacing, in the words of his daughter
Martha, "almost incessantly night and day, only lying down
occasionally, when nature was completely exhausted." A man
of extreme reserve, he rarely mentioned his wife in his letters.
Yet it was well known among his intimates that he never for-
got this woman he had lived with and loved for ten years.
Many, many, years later, when Lafayette lost his own wife,
he wrote to Jefferson as the one man wlio could best under-
stand the peculiar depth of sorrow he was then enduring.
In the months following Mrs. Jefferson's death, Monticello
lost much of its normal charm for the lonely refugee from
politics. Previously he had steadily declined numerous ap-
pointments. But the day came when he was in a mood to
accept an offer from Congress to go to Europe to negotiate
peace. His mission, however, was cancelled when it was learned
that preliminary negotiations had already been engineered.
Shortly thereafter (in June, 1783), the General Assembly of
Virginia elected Jefferson a delegate to the Confederation Con-
gress where he again headed important committees and drafted
many reports and official papers. Here, he criticized the pro-
posed currency system and provided, in his "Notes on the
Establishment of a Money Unit," a sound coinage system to
take its place. He drew up a draft for temporary government
of the Western Territory (the original of his better-known
"Ordinance of the Northwestern Territory"), stressing the im-
portance of equality between the original and the new states,
and attempting to exclude slavery from all the territories. He
xxiii
THOMAS
advocated the necessity of more favorable international com-
mercial relations, and compiled, in April and May of 1784,
instructions for ministers negotiating commercial treaties with
European nations.
Finally, on May 7, 1784, Jefferson was appointed Minister
Plenipotentiary of the United States to assist Benjamin Frank-
lin and John Adams, both of whom had preceded him to
Europe to arrange commercial agreements. Thus, through the
medium of commerce, Jefferson entered the European stage
where diplomacy and society, arts and sciences, revolution and
love were to provide him the richest years of his life.
In one sense, Jefferson was experienced and highly civilised
before he set out for Paris. In another, his real understanding
of men and ideas matured in Europe. That complex pattern
of habits which had characterized Jefferson up to this time—
his curiosity, his patient observation, his learning, his atten-
tion to the manners, the personalities and the needs of the
people around him— was crystallized during his five-year resi-
dence abroad. He listened attentively to foreign philosophers,
to foreign writers, to foreign politicians and statesmen of all
creeds, doctrines, and dogmas. He bought books, many of
them, wandering by the hour among the second-hand book-
stalls on the Quai, " hand-picking" his volumes, gathering the
treasures of classical learning, of humanism and the Renais-
sance, of the advanced, rational European age in which he
was then so active. He met the leaders of French society. He
became a favored habituti of the most intellectual and powerful
salons in Paris. In 1785, on Franklin's departure for America,
Jefferson was made Minister Plenipotentiary to the Court of
France. He was regarded favorably as a symbol of rational,
republican America, Virginia-gentleman style— not, as he had
so gracefully commented, "replacing" Franklin, but "succeed-
ing" him admirably.
Lafayette proved to be an invaluable friend. He coached
Jefferson in the intricacies of European royal politics; his
friends and acquaintances were made accessible to the Ameri-
xxiv
THOMAS J8FF8RSON
can Minister when he needed information or contacts. Jeffer-
son, in his turn, advised the impetuous nobleman and patriot.
His experience as a fighter for a free democratic republic was
inestimably valued by Lafayette, who consulted Jefferson more
and more as the forces of revolution began to make themselves
felt throughout France. He brought his numerous political
friends to listen to the talk of Jefferson and the men gathered
at his table. Jefferson at this time believed that, through dis-
cussion of the people's needs and the King's privileges, com-
promise was possible. He thought that a limited monarchy,
capable of solving the pressing national problems, could be
achieved without bloodshed. He proposed that a charter of
rights be offered by the King to the people, and went so far
as to write a draft of the charter which he sent to Lafayette.
That Jefferson should speak his mind concerning matters
of fundamental political principle was inevitable. Occasionally,
disturbed at his violation of that neutrality which tends to
make ciphers of visiting diplomats, he withdrew into the shell
of his reserve, and maintained the proprieties, keeping silent
even when he knew what was happening and knew what was
needed to direct or avert it. One meeting, at Lafayette's re-
quest, took place at Jefferson's residence, where eight leading
members of the "Patriot" (Reform) Party spent several hours
projecting a constitution in behalf of the Assembly. Jefferson
later justified his conduct by explaining that he had sat by in
complete silence while their "chaste eloquence" reigned. The
next morning he called on Count Montmorin, the Foreign
Minister, to explain why his house had been pressed into such
service, and to offer apologies. Montmorin, who already knew
what had taken place, strongly urged Jefferson's assistance in
all such future meetings, knowing, he said, that Jefferson
would throw his weight only on the side of "wholesome and
practicable reformation."
These were happy, as well as politically stirring and intel-
lectually stimulating, years for Jefferson. Martha, his oldetf
daughter, had accompanied her father from the beginning; a
xxv
THOMAS J8FF8RSON
year and a half later, little Mary arrived in Paris to reside
under the watchful eye of her adoring papa. And in the sum-
mer of 1786 he met Maria Cosway, one of the most beautiful
and gifted women in the French or British capitals. The wife
of a fashionable English painter, charming, talented, warmly
feminine, Maria Cosway affected Jefferson as no other woman
ever would again. When the Cosways left Paris in the fall of
1786, Jefferson was desolate and wrote her the longest letter
of his life, the impassioned "Dialogue between the Head and
the Heart," in which his restraint makes the head win, but
so unconvincingly that both writer and lady must have been
wretched with the logic of the argument. On his subsequent
trips through Southern France and Italy, and later, Jefferson
wrote to her again, more intimately than before. That Maria
Cosway returned his affection is unquestionable. While Jeffer-
«on, in succeeding years, urges Maria to come to Paris with-
out the great following of friends and admirers who manage
to steal her from him, she reproaches him for not writing
enough, for not coming to London to visit for a long time, for
not, in truth, allowing his heart to triumph over his head.
Enjoying the fulness of his life in Paris, only the most
urgent duties could have persuaded Jefferson to leave the Conti-
nent. He wished his daughters to grow up in the world in
which they would have to marry and live; he believed it was
necessary to renew personal contact, for a short time, with his
own people and government. For these reasons, he thought it
best to return to America. Just before leaving he wrote a
brief farewell note to Maria Cosway in London, more affec-
tionate than usual and full of references to a speedy return.
It was late in October of 1789 when he sailed for America
from Cowes. He never went back.
Almost unconsciously, little by little, his European experi-
ences had increased the range and power of Jefferson's politi-
cal understanding. Although he was the first to insist on loyalty
to America and things American, his view of history and
government was so broad that he had no respect for the cul-
xxvi
THOMAS JSFF8RSON
tural isolationists whose ignorance of European affairs was
being converted into a fetichistic patriotism. He returned, bring-
ing to his countrymen a knowledge of comparative statecraft
almost unparalleled at that time. He had grown wise in the
ways of the commercial and financial world through his role
as promoter of American commerce abroad, and by his efforts
to pull American credit out of the slump into which it had
fallen in the banking houses and bourses of Europe. He had
traveled through France, Italy, Holland, Germany; he had
visited England; and every place he went he was not only the
American diplomat, but the student of the useful sciences. He
showed tireless interest in local methods and improvements,
jotting down notes on variations in making wine and cheese,
planting and harvesting crops, and raising livestock. His keen
eye had missed no single detail of wages for workers, the kind
and quantity of food they normally consumed, the degree to
which they were satisfied or oppressed by their economic op-
portunities. He sent home information on the culture of rice
and capers, of figs and olive trees, and forwarded to America,
the actual seeds of a variety of grasses not native to America,
olive plants, and Italian rice. Nor did he ever miss a nightin-
gale's song, or fail to record the color of the soil and sky.
Returning to America, Jefferson had not only grown in-
wardly: it seemed to be universal opinion that he had achieved
an outstanding success as American Ambassador to France.
Even the critical Edinburgh Review admitted that "The skill
and knowledge with which he argued the different questions
of national interest that arose during his residence will not
suffer even in comparison with Franklin's diplomatic talents."
American problems proved to be more demanding and just
as compelling as those of republican France. The Constitu-
tion, which had been adopted during Jefferson's absence and
about which he had written critical letters from Paris, was now
being launched in earnest. No sooner had Jefferson's ship
docked at Norfolk than he saw in a newspaper that President
Washington, busy forming his first Cabinet, wished him as
xxvii
THOMAS JSFFeRSON
Secretary of State. A few days later, in November, he re-
ceived Washington's letter confirming the news. Jefferson's
reply was reluctant, stating his desire to return to France, and
his hesitation at undertaking an office at once so important
and so confining. The President's courteous but firmly re-
peated invitation was the next step. A little personal pressure
from Madison followed, and the deed was done. There were
only a few months left to spend at Monticello, reminiscing
about his friends in France, taking leave of them by letter,
and preparing himself for the American political world, vibrant
with personalities and issues, which he was to enter.
Jefferson was shocked, after arriving in New York in March
of 1790, to contrast the political temper and sentiment of
French revolutionary patriots with old-guard American loyal-
ists who were the leaders of New York society. The prelimi-
nary battle for democratic reliance on the sense and reponsi-
bility of athe people" had not been won in these quarters.
Jefferson found them hankering after the very system whose
corruption and decline he had witnessed in Europe— a system
of aristocratic privilege, headed by a King in deed if not in
name. These anti-democrats, with their fawning admiration for
the British scheme of government, constituted, Jefferson be-
lieved, a mountainous obstacle in the path of progress. Earlier,
Jefferson had objected vigorously to party membership, stat-
ing, "If I could not go to heaven but with a party, I would not
go there at all." Despite this attitude, his .general support of
the Constitution, and his belief in its usefulness in binding
together the people and their local governments, had brought
him closer to the Federalists than to the anti-Federalists. Now
that the Constitution, supplemented by the Bill of Rights,
was the unquestioned charter of the democratic system in the
United States, there were no existing political parties. In-
evitably, however, as conflicts born of clashing political beliefs
arose, political parties developed.
Alexander Hamilton, Washington's brilliant and ambitious
Secretary of the Treasury, had proved himself a man to be
xxviii
THOMAS JSFFSRSON
reckoned with even before Jefferson commenced his official
duties as Secretary of State. His plan for funding at par the
national debt already passed, Hamilton was busy sponsoring
his Assumption Bill which he represented to Jefferson as the
only practical method of securing the credit of the United
States, particularly abroad. Jefferson, knowing that sharpers
and speculators had been buying up the "worthless" paper
money from innocent citizens in anticipation of some such
national measure, was distrustful of this plan in which the
States' debts were to be taken over by the national government.
But Hamilton, shrewdly understanding Jefferson's desire to
locate the capital city in the South, won Jefferson's support
of the Assumption Bill in exchange for northern support of
a national capital on the Potomac after a ten-year period in
Philadelphia. When Hamilton followed his successful Assump-
tion Bill with chartering the Bank of the United States, and
then passing the Excise Bills, Jefferson realized how adroitly
he had been duped. The "general principles" which he felt
were at issue between Hamilton and himself were fundamen-
tally and irrevocably opposed. All of Hamilton's acts, Jeffer-
son thought, were dominated by one controlling purpose: to
establish government by and for a privileged few. Actually
Hamilton wanted more than this. He wanted, and vigorously
fought for, a king, titles, rule by a central executive and
aristocratic aides rather than by representatives of the people.
Jefferson repeatedly thought of retiring from the vexations
of a cabinet post in which he was constantly pitted against the
most power-hungry man in the capital. The bitter political
contest was no longer a matter confined to the comparative
quiet of cabinet meetings. Conducted publicly largely through
the medium of two partisan newspapers— John Fenno's United
States Gazette, the mouthpiece of the Hamiltonians, and
Philip Freneau's belligerently Jeffersonian National Gazette—
the issues became, in the heat of conflict, exaggerated or dis-
torted. Groups forming around Madison and Jefferson began
to think of themselves as democratic Republicans. Those who
xxix
THOMAS JSFFSRSON
sympathized with Hamilton's ideas of centralization of power
and approved of his taxation policy, his encouragement of
commerce, and his banking and credit schemes, became the
nucleus of the new Federalist Party.
Only Washington's repeated requests that he remain in
office, and the disturbing developments in French-American
relations known to the world as the "Affair of Citizen Genet"
kept Jefferson from returning to Monticello. Citizen Genet
had arrived in America in April, 1793, with a revolutionary
conception of the role which a French minister abroad could
play. His newly established republic was badly in need of
funds to finance the war which had broken out, in February
of 1793, between France and Great Britain. Genet was de-
termined to get these funds, and to stir up trouble for Great
Britain. Jefferson, as Secretary of State, found himself in a
difficult position. He believed sincerely that France deserved
the loyalty and co-operation of the States. The American
people, too, were so enthusiastic in their desire to support
Republican France that war with England was imminent.
Jefferson had to argue with Hamilton and his pro-English sup-
porters that our treaties with France were still valid, and made
it state policy to honor our debts to France. On the other
hand, he was faced with the problem of moderating the mount-
ing excitement of the American people and rebuking the in-
creasingly undisciplined Genet who had ignored Washington's
declaration of neutrality (April 22, 1793). When Genet found
that the American advance on the debt to France was to be
less than he had expected, he spoke of going over President
Washington's head and of carrying the issue directly to the
people. Jefferson, despite his sympathy with the French cause,
was heartily disgusted with the French minister —"hot headed,
all imagination, passionate, disrespectful"; in August, his re-
quest that Genet be recalled was acceded to, although Genet
remained in this country as a private citizen.
Jefferson could now see his way to retirement. He had per-
formed well the difficult task of negotiating his country's for-
XXX
THOMAS J8FF8RSON
eign affairs. The President was loathe to see him depart. Even
John Marshall, relaxing momentarily his customary antago-
nism toward Jefferson, admitted that "this gentleman withdrew
from political station at a moment when he stood particularly
high in the esteem of his own countrymen." More important
to Jefferson, back at Monticello by the middle of January of
1794, were the rewards of being once more a private citizen,
a free man able to read, to write, to hear music, to talk at
leisure with his friends and family, and to express opinions
without entering into the daily battle of the capital. He re-
joiced in the thought that he had said farewell forever to
public life. He felt tired. In his own opinion he was, at fifty,
already an old man.
After the first months of his retirement Jefferson recovered
his customary energy. He supervised the farming of his estates,
and designed a plow which revolutionized agriculture; he
started a nailery in one of his workshops; he tended his library
like a garden; he changed the architectural plans for Monti-
cello, and supervised the construction; he entertained his
neighbors and men of good will from all Europe, including a
radical French republican and a liberal French ex-nobleman.
And inevitably, despite his once firm desire not to meddle
with contemporary political problems, he began to write letters
of policy to old friends like Madison— letters about avoiding
war with Britain, and on the growing power of the "Anglican,
monarchical, aristocratical party," the Federalists, who, he
felt, were perverting republican principles of government.
After three rather active years of "retirement," Jefferson
felt refreshed and encouraged. He evinced renewed interest in
politics. When, therefore, the Republican Party drafted him
in 1796 to run for President (doing so in face of his express
wish that Madison be the party candidate), he dubiously ac-
cepted. Jefferson seemed genuinely moved by his Party's pref-
erence, yet hesitant to undertake a task of such magnitude.
He wrote his objections, however, not as a weary Odysseus buf
as one mindful of having been one.
xxxi
THOMAS J8FFSRSON
So Jefferson ran for President, not against Hamilton, as he
might have thought, but against John Adams. The contest was
close, with Jefferson finally trailing his Federalist opponent
by three votes, which, under the prevailing system, meant
being elected Vice President. Jefferson was quite happy to
serve under the older Adams, with whom he had worked ami-
cably in Europe and who, he felt, might be induced to abandon
some of his Federalist persuasions and serve as an effective
barrier against Hamilton. Of all the political positions which
Jefferson might have held, that of Vice President seems to have
been, at this time, most attractive to him. In March of 1797,
Jefferson again returned to Philadelphia, where he could wit-
ness the ensuing political drama and have a hand in legislative
affairs, without the wearing passions and responsibilities so
certain to be the President's.
Jefferson soon realized that the pronounced Hamiltonian
tendencies of Adams' cabinet made political compromise im-
possible. Subsequent events confirmed his impressions. Foreign
affairs still constituted the crucible of political conviction for
the American people; Anglophiles fought Francophiles until
Jefferson sternly recommended a "divorce from both nations."
He strove to make the Republicans consciously a peace party.
Although the Jay treaty had for the time averted the threat
of war with Britain, the decrees of the French Directory
against neutral commerce had caused American war sentiment
to flare up against France. Jefferson, closely scrutinizing events
in Europe, was dismayed by the news that the American peace
mission— Gerry, Pinckney, and Marshall— had been flagrantly
insulted by Talleyrand's brokers, the men subsequently desig-
nated UX. Y. Z." The country at lar.^e was aroused by the
attempt to obtain a bribe from the American envoys, and a
united Federalist-Republican chorus of revenge burst upon the
Administration.
The next move was as ill-fated as it was unexpected. The
Administration turned upon its political opponents, using the
xxxii
THOMAS JEFFERSON
popular hysteria of the war fever of 1798 for its own purposes.
In rapid succession it passed the Alien Act, to deport foreign
radicals and liberals, propagandists and agitators, and the
Sedition Act, to curb the "licentiousness" of the. press. The
Sedition Act in practice was particularly formidable, empower-
ing the Administration so to fine, imprison, and legally prose-
cute any opposition writer that the Republicans were virtually
muzzled in the remaining years of Adams's administration.
Such was the setting for Jefferson's famous Kentucky Reso-
lution. The Kentucky Resolution, along with Madison's Vir-
ginia Resolution, declared the illegality of the Alien and
Sedition Laws because of their violation of the Constitution,
and were skillfully devised to check the partisan encroachment
of the Chief Executive. Just as Jefferson feared a large standing
army, and held its presence in France responsible for the
emergence of the dictator Bonaparte, so he saw in these Fed-
eralist measures, which were eating away the basic guarantees
of individual liberty, the re-introduction of despotism. Techni-
cally, the issue had to be stated in terms of basic constitutional
law, States' Rights, and limited powers of the Chief Executive.
Therefore, Jefferson tried to make the existing states serve as
barriers against an Administration which was assuming the
character of an Inquisition— Jefferson called it a "witch-hunt."
Devised primarily as expedients in this particular situation,
the underlying principle of the Resolutions is as firm as any
article in Jefferson's political creed: that of ensuring freedom of
person, of thought and action, of property, to the free citizens
of America.
The Republicans were quick to take advantage of the split
ensuing in Federalist ranks when President Adams, having
listened to suggestions of peace reliably attributed to a chas-
tened Talleyrand, opened negotiations with France. Prior to
the presidential election, Adams dismissed his Hamiltonian
Secretaries of War and State; Hamilton lost his temper, wrote
a pamphlet attacking Adams, and tried to manipulate his
xxxiii
THOMAS J8FFSRSON
erstwhile chief out of the Federalist candidacy, but failea.
Clearly, it was the Republican's day, with Jefferson running
for President and Aaron Burr for Vice President.
The electoral vote, in marked contrast to the popular vote,
resulted in a tie between Jefferson and Burr. The last desperate
device of the Federalists, whose campaign against Jefferson
had scraped the muddiest bottom of political trickery and
libel known at that time, was the Machiavellian ruse of using
this deadlock as a lever to extract concessions from Jefferson
before he assumed office. Should Jefferson refuse to bargain,
they threatened that Burr would be made President in the
re-vote. Jefferson stood firm, made no promises, and waited
without noticeable loss of composure through the really dan-
gerous week of balloting when rumors throughout the capital
whispered of a bill to cede the Administration to the Federal-
ists. He at last triumphed when the Federalists gave way be-
fore his obvious merits and the people's obvious choice.
Mindful of Adams and Marshall's unseemly effort to sew up
the incoming administration by packing American courts with
Federal judgeships, lawyers, and clerks; recalling the feverish
days when fundamental American rights had been revoked in
the very home of the "great experiment"; remembering the
defiant, fantastic schemes for South American exploitation
projected by Hamilton; still smarting from the slander, the
unclean epithets picturing him as infidel, atheist, and apostle
of the "race-track and the cock-pit," Jefferson wrote his In-
augural Address. In the light of such events, Jefferson's feeling
that the triumph of the people and of the Republican Party
was a revolution comparable to that of 1776 is understandable.
America, he felt, had been plunged into terrifying depths of
political intrigue and corruption, yet had managed to recover.
The Inaugural Address of March 4, 1801, in accents of un-
feigned piety, rejoiced that the democratic experiment had been
given a new lease on life.
As President, Jefferson's first project was to eradicate the
intolerance which had recently infected America, and to do
xxxiv
THOMAS J8FP8RSON
it quickly before it became a permanent part of the national
heritage. Sounding the keynote of his administration with the
words "We are all Republicans— we are all Federalists," and
taking advantage of the lack of affection many of the Feder-
alists now entertained for their party leaders, Jefferson offered
them ungrudging union with the Republicans. For the most
part, they accepted. Much of the rancor and party strife of
the preceding decade was obliterated during Jefferson's first
months as President. His policy of general reconciliation and
reform and his success in freeing the victims of the Alien and
Sedition laws were generally supported by a favorable Con-
gress. He was aided greatly in his Presidential duties by a
sympathetic and capable Cabinet headed by the ever-reliable
Madison as Secretary of State, and including the Swiss eco-
nomic expert Albert Gallatin who, as Secretary of the Treasury,
saw eye to eye with Jefferson on questions of reduced taxation,
government frugality, and a minimum public debt. Although
his simple manners as President in the newly established capi'
tal city of Washington irked and bewildered some people who
thought his very avoidance of ceremony ostentatious, Jeffer-
son's popularity as a public figure was greater during his first
term as President than at any other time in his entire career.
Even the depredations of the Barbary pirates had been swiftly
crushed and Jefferson could remark to a friend that things
were noiseless, "unattractive of notice"— a sure sign that so-
ciety was happy.
Such noiselessness and happiness were soon disturbed, how-
ever, by the menacing news that Spain by the secret treaty
of San Ildefonso (1800) had transferred to France its rights
over the mouth of the Mississippi, the port of New Orleans,
and the great stretch of land constituting the province of
Louisiana. Western farmers and merchants depended upon the
outlet of New Orleans for their shipping; Jefferson, even dur-
ing his career as Secretary of State, had been aware of the
strategic importance of Louisiana. Louisiana in the strong
hands of the French rather than the weak hands of Spain
xxxv
THOMAS jeFFSRSON
placed an almost insurmountable obstacle in the path of Ameri-
can growth and prosperity. It was essential that America
acquire the Louisiana territory— either through peaceful nego-
tiation or by war. When the French dictator Napoleon, fearing
the renewal of war with Great Britain, suddenly offered to
sell for $15,000,000 not only the port of New Orleans but the
entire fabulous slice of land from the Mississippi to the Rock-
ies, Jefferson was confronted with perhaps the most momentous
problem of his career.
For years Jefferson had been the guardian of democratic
rights for the individual, small local units, and the states. He
had taken his stand on the "strict construction" interpretation
of the Constitution. Now he was faced with a decision in which
quick— and unauthorized— executive action would guarantee
doubling America's territory and increasing the chance of
maintaining the self-government and independence for which
American blood had already been spilled. Was he to take
Napoleon's offer and violate a cherished principle, or should
he wait upon a Constitutional amendment authorizing such an
act and possibly lose the very territory so vital to national
existence and well-being? In very genuine distress, he wrote
to his friends Thomas Paine, John Breckenridge, and Wilson
Gary Nicholas, soliciting their opinions. Eventually, of course,
after tremendous moral strain, Jefferson authorized the pur-
chase, the treaty being signed on May 2, 1803. Although he
was reluctant to do so, he was fortified largely by the consid-
eration that his dictatorial use of power was in this case the
lesser evil.
The subtleties of principle underlying this purchase were
of small concern to Americans in general. The financial big-
wigs of New York and New England still feared and opposed
him; nor had reactionary and orthodox churchmen completely
abandoned their habit of tongue-lashing the "Atheist." But
without question Jefferson's first term closed in a blaze of
glory when the people, united in their national good fortune,
xxxvi
St* JSFl BRSON
almost unanimously sent their President back for a second
term.
Busy as he had been during these momentous years, Jeffer-
son had found time to follow his favorite intellectual pursuits.
He had not only aided in establishing a National Library, but
had made many valuable additions to his own private collec-
tion. He had pondered the morality of early Christianity with
liberal thinkers like Priestley and Rush. He had found time to
enlarge his extensive collection of primitive Indian vocabu-
laries. His interest in science and agriculture had remained
as keen as ever. In short, these were rich and productive years,
marred solely by the death of Maria (Jefferson) Eppes, his
younger daughter, a blow comparable only to the loss suffered
years before upon the death of his wife.
As his second term began, Jefferson was plunged into diffi-
culties against which his ingenuity or wisdom could make little
headway. The national and international strife which char-
acterized his second administration is in marked contrast to
the comparative tranquility of the earlier years of the century.
The exact boundaries of the territory retroceded from Spain
to France, and thereafter sold to America, had never been ac-
curately established. Jefferson's knowledge of American maps
and geography together with research in his valuable collection
of Americana at Monticello, convinced him that the land of
Western Florida was included in the Louisiana Purchase. He
was avowedly eager to possess not only Western Florida but
Eastern Florida and Texas as well, as all were essential to a
solid American coastline on the Gulf of Mexico. He directed
negotiations for this purpose through his envoys in Spain and
through the Spanish Minister in Washington. In 1805, when
a state of war existed between England and Spain, he con-
sidered a "provisional alliance" between America and her old
enemy England, as a possible means of achieving the expansion
of America. Still later, he tried to purchase the territory.
Although frustrated in all these attempts, his policy bore fruit
xxxvii
THOMAS J8FF8RSON
in later years when all the disputed territory finally came into
the possession of the United States.
The problems of rounding out America's natural boundaries
were minor, however, compared with the deluge of European
interference with our shipping. Powerful British mercantile
Interests had long been worried by America's emergence as a
maritime power. In April, 1806,, England culminated her blows
against American shipping in a blockade of the Continental
coast. In November of the same year, Napoleon retaliated with
decrees blockading Britain. The practical effect of such block-
ades on a neutral country like America was severe impairment
of its European import and export trade, amounting virtually
to ultimate economic annihilation.
Further, as seizure of American ships by the belligerents
mounted and as impressment of seamen on American vessels
grew more frequent, American prestige was seriously threat-
ened. Jefferson had proclaimed that "peace was his passion/'
and there is every reason to believe that it was. He also had
judgment to back his passion, in this case, since America
could gain nothing at this time by war with powerful England
or France. For these reasons, Jefferson judged it essential to
fight a delaying action. The Non-Intercourse Act of 1806 and
the much discussed Embargo terminating all foreign commerce
of the United States (1807) were measures promulgated in
this spirit. Jefferson described the Embargo as "the last card
we have to play short of war"; and he was determined that it
be played. Although it meant tying up our trade and shipping
until either England or France yielded on the question of the
rights of neutral nations to the freedom of the seas, Jefferson
saw no equally practical and honorable alternative. It is note-
worthy, too, that however much his Embargo was criticized,
no workable suggestions were proposed to replace it.
To make still heavier the load of his second term, the do-
mestic front was racked with defections and desertions. Im-
patient John Randolph of Roanoke had been outraged by
Jefferson's conciliatory methods of dealing with the Federalists.
xxxviii
THOMAS J8FF8RSON
Rejecting Jefferson's policy involving territorial controversies
with Spain, he led a small but troublesome faction of anti-
Administration Republicans in the House of Representatives.
Much more sensational was the Burr conspiracy to lead a
revolution in the Western States, and, after welding them into
an empire with Mexico, to become their resplendent dictator.
John Marshall, presiding over the Circuit Court, used the en-
suing treason trial as an opportunity for political warfare
against his old enemy Jefferson who, for his part, had betrayed
his strong desire for Burr's conviction. The country had not
yet forgotten Burr's duel with Hamilton, and never before
was a legal case followed by the American public with such
intensity. Despite the strength of public opinion against Burr,
and many evidences of guilt adduced, he was acquitted by the
jury.
As Jefferson's second term drew to a close, the peaceful
instrument he had devised to stave off bloodshed was subjected
to unrelenting attack. The Embargo had not been able to effect
a repeal of the British or French decrees. At home all that big
New England shippers and merchants, together with Southern
and Western planters and farmers, could see was the stagnation
of their export trade before their very eyes. Jefferson himself
faced this prospect, and, as a matter of fact, stood to lose as
much financially by the Embargo as other landowners did.
Ever since the British attack upon the Chesapeake, Jefferson
had believed that war was the only honorable solution for
America. He had also been deeply depressed by John Quincy
Adams' news of violent New England opposition to the Em-
bargo which threatened to culminate in secession. In addition,
since it had proved impossible to enforce the Embargo, par-
ticularly in New York and New England, Jefferson was thor-
oughly disappointed in the ineffectual measure. Not wishing,
however, to set a definite policy for the incoming President to
follow, he left the final disposition of the Embargo to the
Congress. The Embargo was repealed and replaced with the
weaker Non-Intercourse with Great Britain and France Act,
xxxix
THOMAS JSFFSRSON
a result more of confusion and Republican timidity than a
serious step toward the solution of a critical problem. When
his Presidential term expired on March 3, 1809, and he was
free at last to turn over the reins of government to his trusted
successor Madison, Jefferson was surfeited with "politics." The
"hated occupation" had absorbed some forty years, and no
fields ever looked greener than those which led away from
power to the peace and freedom of private life.
Jefferson's real nobility of mind and spirit deepened when
he finally returned to Monticello. He was sixty-s^x when he
was at last permitted to live in that intimate, less troubled
world where, as he had so often said, his deepest satisfactions
were centered. There are men whose political ambitions and
prejudices are their chief sources of vital enjoyment. For
them, the end of a political career is like the end of life itself.
Not so Jefferson, who regarded the realm of knowledge, friend-
ship, and love as ideal and the only one for which he would
willingly suffer.
Jefferson's old age is a remarkable proof of the observation
made by his daughter Martha that her father had never for-
saken a friend or a principle. Jefferson kept alive his acquaint-
ance with friends of Revolutionary days; he wrote to the men
and women he had known in France; he continued his spirited
contacts with distinguished thinkers and scientists, American
and European. He wrote, as always, to Madison and Monroe,
to Lafayette and Kosciusko. With Joseph Priestley, Thomas
Cooper, Benjamin Waterhouse, and William Short he ex-
changed searching philosophic opinions. He and John Adams,
their earlier political differences reconciled, wrote many letters
—provocative, stimulating, probing the mystery of what the
human mind had solved in their day, and what it had thus far
failed to solve. Jefferson frequently complained about the time
consumed in maintaining his ever-increasing correspondence
but he could not resist an intellectual challenge or turn down
an appeal for his opinion, advice, or help, and continued to dis-
cuss with frankness, thoroughness, and a brilliant clarity such
xl
THOMAS JSFFSRSON
diverse subjects as anthropology and political theory, religion
and zoology.
There was so much at Monticello to absorb his time and
engage his affections that the days never seemed -long enough.
Over the years his family had gained many new members: by
1811 he was a great-grandfather. Much of the same love and
affection he had lavished on his two daughters flourished anew
for his grandchildren who, in turn, revered him and cherished
his memory for their lifetimes. His estates were in need of
personal overseeing. Almost until his death Jefferson went on
daily rides over his many acres. Monticello, not yet quite per-
fect in his eyes, always needed a little altering here or some
additional building there. Guests, some of them friends whom
Jefferson was delighted to entertain, others mere acquaintances
or friends of acquaintances, made their claim upon his time.
Occasionally he was forced to flee to Poplar Forest, his estate
near Lynchburg, where he could read much in the blessed
quiet of his brick cottage, and work on some project which
then engrossed him.
In a large sense, Jefferson's major concern during these last
years was education and educational philosophy. Personally^
Jefferson considered knowledge not only a means to an end,
but an end in itself, enjoyed for its own sake. Socially, he felt,
it was the key to virtue as it was to happiness. It was the
basic necessity for self-government. Free government could
exist only by its grace and through its habitual action. Jeffer-
son had safeguarded men's liberties in earlier days on the
well-founded belief that only in an environment where men
are free from religious dictation, political tyranny, and per-
sonal oppression, could the mind be free to advance knowledge
and foster the arts and sciences. Political experience had
served only to reinforce this belief, and to show more clearly
the pitfalls existing where fear and prejudice thrive. Educa-
tional facilities, general and specialized, equally open to all
whose aptitudes rendered them fit, became crucial require-
ments for a flourishing and well-organized society. It was with
xli
THOMAS jet PERSON
some sense of urgency, therefore, that Jefferson reopened his
campaign for a system of general education in Virginia, his
"bantling of forty years' growth and nursing/' the apex of
which was to be a State University for Virginia. Jefferson
was convinced that this single institution could be the greatest
achievement in a lifetime dedicated to the belief that truth
makes men free.
The "little academical village" which was born of Jefferson's
anxious motherhood, fatherhood, and midwifery was not only
the first great University of the South, but the first American
University to be free of official church connection. The Uni-
versity of Virginia was Jefferson's daily concern during his last
seven years. He sent abroad a special emissary to select the
most distinguished faculty available. He chose the books for
the college library, drew up the curriculum, designed the build-
ings, and supervised their construction. Even the ordering of
the bell which was to ring out upon the Charlottesville air
could not be left to a casual and possible unconscientious hand!
How characteristic was this constant busy-ness! The Uni-
versity, unquestionably first in his interests and duties, finally
opened in 1825— the winter before Jefferson's death. Despite
this preoccupation, however, Jefferson continued to pursue a
multitude of other tasks. In his eightieth vear, for example,
he wrote with singular energy on politics, sending President
Monroe long expositions later known to the world in Monroe's
version as the Monroe Doctrine.
Amidst these interests there was one intrusion on his time
and thought which caused Jefferson endless mortifications. His
finances, often strained before and in recent years growing
more shaky and unreliable with every adverse national financial
upheaval, at last collapsed. Jefferson had frequently advanced
money to friends who fancied themselves more hard-pressed
than he, and occasionally had been forced to make good on
their notes when they found it impossible to do so. He had
spent money lavishly on his libraries and the arts, on Monti-
cello, on his quests, on his children's education. He had under-
xlii
THOMAS JSfFSRSON
taken so many projects for the advancement of a neighbor or
friend, a worthy paper, book, or cause, that, carefully as he
kept his accounts, his expenses still ran high. His passion for
architecture, it has been remarked, cost him a small fortune.
His unwillingness to overwork his overseers, hired people, and
slaves was another notorious drain on his pocketbook. At the
final stage of his financial distress, Jefferson petitioned the
Virginia legislature to grant him permission to dispose of
Monticello and its farms by lottery. The almost immediate
response of private citizens, in New York, Philadelphia, and
Baltimore, on hearing this news was to subscribe a sum of over
$16,000 to aid the leader who had devoted his industry arid
resourcefulness to all America for half a century. The sting
of being thus "helped" was almost dissolved in Jefferson's
recognition that the subscription had been spontaneous, the
citizens' "pure and unsolicited offering of love."
So there was hardly time to waste even in the last years,
months, and days of his long and good life. Less than two
weeks before he died, Jefferson sat down at his much-used
writing desk to reply to an invitation to attend the celebration
of the fiftieth anniversary of American independence. He was
conscious of the significance of the coming ceremony as was
no one else in America. His life had been rich and deep,
astonishing in its complexity, rewarding to his family, his
friends, his countrymen, and, in a very real sense, to the civi-
lized European world. Not politics, but the image of that moraJ
freedom and peace which had animated democracy for the
Greeks, Republicanism for the Romans, the Eternal City for
the Middle Ages, Scientific Utopia for the tyrant-ridden Ren-
aissance, and modern representative democracy for eighteenth-
century America and France— this was still, as it had always
been, his cherished ideal.
He therefore wrote, expressing his real disappointment that
he was old and ill and would be unable to celebrate the day
on which the choice was made which had revolutionized a
world. Ten days before the Fourth of July, 1826, ten day?
xliii
THOMAS JSFFSRSON
before he died, Jefferson wrote of America's day with that
moving honesty characteristic of the many letters which help
form the record of his life:
May it be to the world, what I believe it will be (to some parts
sooner, to others later, but finally to all), the signal of arousing
men to burst the chains under which monkish ignorance and super-
stition had persuaded them to bind themselves, and to assume the
blessings and security of self-government. That form which we have
substituted, restores the free right to the unbounded exercise of
reason and freedom of opinion. All eyes are opened, or opening,
to the rights of man. The general spread of the light of science
has already laid open to every view the palpable truth, that the
mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs,
nor a favored few, booted and spurred, ready to ride them legiti-
mately, by the Grace of God. These are grounds of hope for others.
For ourselves, let the annual return of this day forever refresh our
recollections of these rights, and an undiminished devotion to them.
War, disillusionment, corruption, betrayal, inequality have
since found old outlets and new formulas. As Jefferson foresaw,
the favored few, booted and spurred, have ridden far and ridden
hard— and will ride again. The "blessings and security of self-
government'7 are not easily won. But in America, North and
South, in Europe, in Africa, and in Asia, those who love the
ideas for which jetferson struggled may some day perfect the
? ^hich can best promote their realization.
xltv
INTRODUCTION
THOMAS JEFFERSON'S Autobiography, which he began at
the advanced age of seventy -seven, was composed for his "more
ready reference'' and for the information of his family. This
work furnishes an honest, revealing, and usually interesting ac-
count of Jefferson's career and the epoch-making times in
which he lived, from his birth until March, 1790, when he be-
came George Washington's Secretary of State. Compiled from
notes and memoranda taken in some cases almost half a cen-
tury earlier, reminiscences, letters, and similar sources of in-
formation, the Autobiography contains occasional inconsist-
encies or misstatements of fact. For example, in 1787 Jefferson
said that John Adams had been elected Vice President of the
United States while in Europe. Actually, Adams had returned
to America before his election. Despite such limitations, the
Autobiography contributes to the understanding of a great
American and one of the most significant periods of Ameri-
can history.
With the exception of minor deletions of footnotes or illus-
trative material, the Autobiography is printed in its entirety.
THE ^AUTOBIOGRAPHY
OF THOMAS JEFFERSON
January 6, 1821
A? the age of 77, I begin to make some memoranda, and
state some recollections of dates and facts concerning
myself, for my own more ready reference, and for the informa-
tion of my family.
The tradition in my father's family was, that their ancestor
came to this country from Wales, and from near the mountain
of Snowdon, the highest in Great Britain. I noted once a case
from Wales, in the law reports, where a person of our name was
either plaintiff or defendant; and one of the same name was
secretary to the Virginia Company. These are the only instances
in which I have met with the name in that country. I have
found it in our early records; but the first particular informa-
tion I have of any ancestor was of my grandfather, who lived
at the place in Chesterfield called Ozborne's, and owned the
lands afterwards the glebe of the parish. He had three sons;
Thomas who died young, Field who settled on the waters of
Roanoke and left numerous descendants, and Peter, my fa-
ther, who settled on the lands I still own, called Shadwell, ad-
joining my present residence. He was born February 29,
1707-8, and intermarried 1739, with Jane Randolph, of the
age of 19, daughter of Isham Randolph, one of the seven sons
of that name and family, settled at Dungeoness in Goochland.
They trace their pedigree far back in England and Scotland, to
which let every one ascribe the faith and merit he chooses.
My father's education had been quite neglected; but being
of a strong mind, sound judgment, and eager after information.
OF
he read much and improved himself, insomuch that he was
chosen, with Joshua Fry, Professor of Mathematics in William
and Mary college, to continue the boundary line between Vir-
ginia and North Carolina, which had been begun by Colonel
Byrd; and was afterwards employed with the same Mr. Fry, to
make the first map of Virginia which had ever been made, that
of Captain Smith being merely a conjectural sketch. They pos-
sessed excellent materials for so much of the country as is
below the Blue Ridge; little being then known beyond that
ridge. He was the third or fourth settler, about the year
1737, of the part of the country in which I live. He died, Au-
gust 1 7th, 1757, leaving my mother a widow, who lived till
1776, with six daughters and two sons, myself the elder. To
my younger brother he left his estate on James River, called
Snowdon, after the supposed birth-place of the family: to my*
Belf, the lands on which I was born and live.
He placed me at the English school at five years of age; and
at the Latin at nine, where I continued until his death. My
teacher, Mr. Douglas, a clergyman from Scotland, with the
rudiments of the Latin and Greek languages, taught me the
French; and on the death of my father, I went to the Reverend
Mr. Maury, a correct classical scholar, with whom I continued
two years; and then, to wit, in the spring of 1760, went to Wil-
liam and Mary college, where I continued two years. It was my
great good fortune, and what probably fixed the destinies of my
We, that Dr. William Small of Scotland, was then Professor
of Mathematics, a man profound in most of the useful branches
of science, with a happy talent of communication, correct and
gentlemanly manners, and an enlarged and liberal mind. He,
most happily for me, became soon attached to me, and made
me his daily companion when not engaged in the school; and
from his conversation 1 got my first views of the expansion of
science, and of the system of things in which we are placed.
Fortunately, the philosophical chair became vacant soon after
my arrival at college, and he was appointed to fill it per in-
terim: and he was the first who ever gave, in that college, regu-
THOMAS J8FFSRSON
lar lectures in Ethics, Rhetoric and Belles Lettres. He returned
to Europe in 1762, having previously filled up the measure of
his goodness to me, by procuring for me, from his most inti-
mate friend, George Wythe, a reception as a student of law,
under his direction, and introduced me to the acquaintance and
familiar table of Governor Fauquier, the ablest man who had
ever filled that office. With him, and at his table, Dr. Small and
Mr. Wythe, his amid omnium horarum,1 and myself, formed
a partie quarce, and to the habitual conversations on these
occasions I owed much instruction. Mr. Wythe continued to be
my faithful and beloved mentor m youth, and my most affec-
tionate friend through life. In 1767, he led me into the prac-
tice of the law at the bar of the General court, at which I con-
tinued until the Revolution shut up the courts of justice.
In 1769, I became a member of the legislature by the choice
of the county in which I live, and so continued until it was
closed by the Revolution. I made one effort in that body for the
permission of the emancipation of slaves, which was rejected:
and indeed, during the regal government, nothing liberal could
expect success. Our minds were circumscribed within narrow
limits, by an habitual belief that it was our duty to be subor-
dinate to the mother country in all matters of government, to
direct all our labors in subservience to her interests, and even
to observe a bigoted intolerance for all religions but hers. The
difficulties with our representatives were of habit and despair,
not of reflection and conviction. Experience soon proved that
they could bring their minds to rights, on the first summons
of their attention. But the King's Council, which acted as an-
other house of legislature, held their places at will, and were in
most humble obedience to that will : the Governor too, who had
a negative on our laws, held by the same tenure, and with still
greater devotedness to it: and, last of all, the Royal negative
Uosed the last door to every hope of amelioration.
On the ist of January, 1772, I was married to Martha Skel-
ton, widow of Bathurst Skelton, and daughter of John Waylesl
i. Friends of all the hours.
OF
then twenty-three years old. Mr. Wayles was a lawyer of much
practice, to which he was introduced more by his great indus-
try, punctuality, and practical readiness, than by eminence in
the science of his profession. He was a most agreeable com-
panion, full of pleasantry and good humor, and welcomed in
every society. He acquired a handsome fortune, and died in
May, 1773, leaving three daughters: the portion which came
on that event to Mrs. Jefferson, after the debts should be paid,
which were very considerable, was about equal to my own
patrimony, and consequently doubled the fease of our circum-
stances.
When the famous Resolutions of 1765, against the Stamp-
act, were proposed, I was yet a student of law in Williamsburg.
I attended the debate, however, at the door of the lobby of the
House of Burgesses, and heard the splendid display of Mr.
Henry's talents as a popular orator. They were great indeed;
such as I have never heard from any other man. He appeared
to me to speak as Homer wrote. Mr. Johnson, a lawyer, and
member from the Northern Neck, seconded the resolutions, and
by him the learning and the logic of the case were chiefly main-
tained. My recollections of these transactions may be seen on
page 60 of the life of Patrick Henry, by Wirt, to whom I fur-
nished them.
In May, 1769, a meeting of the General Assembly was
called by the Governor, Lord Botetourt. I had then become a
member; and to that meeting became known the joint resolu-
tions and address of the Lords and Commons, of 1768-9, on
the proceedings in Massachusetts. Counter-resolutions, and an
address to the King by the House of Burgesses, were agreed to
with little opposition, and a spirit manifestly displayed itself
of considering the cause of Massachusetts as a common one.
The Governor dissolved us: but we met the next day in the
Apollo [public room] of the Raleigh tavern, formed ourselves
into a voluntary convention, drew up articles of association
against the use of any merchandise imported from Great Brit-
ain, sigped and recommended them to the people, repaired to
6
THOMAS JSFFSRSON
our several counties, and were re-elected without any other ex-
ception than of the very few who had declined assent to our
proceedings.
Nothing of particular excitement occurring for a consider-
able time, our countrymen seemed to fall into a state of insen-
sibility to our situation; the duty on tea, not yet repealed, and
the declaratory act of a right in the British Parliament to bind
us by their laws in all cases whatsoever, still suspended over
us. But a court of inquiry held in Rhode Island in 1762, with
a power to send persons to England to be tried for offences com-
mitted here, was considered, at our session of the spring of
1773, as demanding attention. Not thinking our old and lead-
ing members up to the point of forwardness and zeal which
the times required, Mr. Henry, Richard Henry Lee, Francis
L. Lee, Mr. Carr and myself agreed to meet in the evening, in
a private room of the Raleigh, to consult on the state of things.
There may have been a member or two more whom I do not
recollect. We were all sensible that the most urgent of all meas-
ures was that of coming to an understanding with all the other
colonies, to consider the British claims as a common cause to
all, and to produce a unity of action: and, for this purpose,
that a committee of correspondence in each colony would be
the best instrument of intercommunication: and that their
first measure would probably be, to propose a meeting of dep-
uties from every colony, at some central place, who should be
charged with the direction of the measures which should be
taken by all. We, therefore, drew up the resolutions which may
be seen in Wirt, page 87. The consulting members proposed
to me to move them, but I urged that it should be done by Mr.
Carr, my friend and brother-in-law, then a new member, to
whom I wished an opportunity should be given of making
known to the house his great worth and talents. It was so
agreed; he moved them, they were agreed to nem. con.* and
a committee of correspondence appointed, of whom Peyton
Randolph, the speaker, was chairman. The Governor (then
i. unanimously.
OF
Lord Dunmore) dissolved us, but the committee met the next
iay, prepared a circular letter to the speakers of the other
:olonies, inclosing to each a copy of the resolutions, and left
it in charge with their chairman to forward them by expresses.
The origination of these committees of correspondence be-
tween the colonies has been since claimed for Massachusetts,
and Marshall has given into this error,1 although the very note
)f his appendix to which he refers, shows that their establish-
ment was confined to their own towns. This matter will be
seen clearly stated in a letter of Samuel Adams Wells to me
af April 2nd, 1819, and my answer of May i2th. I was cor-
rected by the letter of Mr. Wells in the information I had given
Mr. Wirt, as stated in his note, page 87, that the messenger
Df Massachusetts and Virginia crossed each other on the way,
bearing similar propositions; for Mr. Wells shows that Massa-
chusetts did not adopt the measure, but on the receipt of our
proposition, delivered at their next session. Their message,
therefore, which passed ours, must have related to something
else, for I well remember Peyton Randolph's informing me of
the crossing of our messengers.
The next event which excited our sympathies for Massacmi-
setts, was the Boston port bill, by which that port was to be
shut up on the ist of June, 1774. This arrived while we were
in session in the spring of that year. The lead in the House, on
these subjects, being no longer left to the old members, Mr.
Henry, R. H. Lee, Fr. L. Lee, three or four other members,
whom I do not recollect, and myself, agreeing that we must
boldly take an unequivocal stand in the line with Massachu-
setts, determined to meet and consult on the proper measure^,
in the council-chamber, for the benefit of the library in that
room. We were under conviction of the necessity of arousing
our people from the lethargy into which they had fallen, as to
passing events; and thought that the appointment of a day of
general fasting and prayer would be most likely to call up and
alarm their attention. No example of such a solemnity had
i. Jefferson is referring to John Marshall's Life of Washington.
8
THOMAS JSFFeRSON
existed since the days of our distresses in the war of '55, since
which a new generation had grown up. With the help, there-
fore, of Rushworth, whom we rummaged over for the revolu-
tionary precedents and forms of the Puritans of that day, pre-
served by him, we cooked up a resolution, somewhat moderniz-
ing their phrases, for appointing the ist day of June, on which
the portbill was to commence, for a day of fasting, humiliation,
and prayer, to implore Heaven to avert from us the evils of
civil war, to inspire us with firmness in support of our rights,
and to turn the hearts of the King and Parliament to modera-
tion and justice. To give greater emphasis to our proposition,
we agreed to wait the next morning on Mr. Nicholas, whose
grave and religious character was more in unison with the tone
of our resolution, and to solicit him to move it. We accordingly
went to him in the morning. He moved it the same day; the
ist of June was proposed; and it passed without opposition.
The Governor dissolved us, as usual. We retired to the Apollo,
as before, agreed to an association, and instructed the com-
mittee of correspondence to propose to the corresponding com-
mittees of the other colonies, to appoint deputies to meet in
Congress at such place, annually, as should be convenient, to
direct, from time to time, the measures required by the gen-
eral interest: and we declared that an attack on any one col-
ony, should be considered as an attack on the whole. This was
in May. We furthered recommended to the several counties to
elect deputies to meet at Williamsburg, the ist of August en*
suing, to consider the state of the colony, and particularly to
appoint delegates to a general Congress, should that measure
be acceded to by the committees of correspondence generally.
It was acceded to; Philadelphia was appointed for the place,
and the 5th of September for the time of meeting. We returned
home, and in our several counties invited the clergy to meet
assemblies of the people on the ist of June, to perform the
ceremonies of the day, and to address to them discourses suited
to the occasion. The people met generally, with anxiety and
alarm in their countenances, and the effect of the day, through
^UTOBIOGRAPHT OF
the whole colony, was like a shock of electricity, arousing every
man, and placing him erect and solidly on his centre. They
chose, universally, delegates for the convention. Being elected
one for my own county, I prepared a draught of instructions
to be given to the delegates whom we should send to the Con-
gress, which I meant to propose at our meeting. In this I took
the ground that, from the beginning, I had thought the only
one orthodox or tenable, which was, that the relation between
Great Britain and these colonies was exactly the same as thai
of England and Scotland, after the accession of James, and
until the union, and the same as her present relations with
Hanover, having the same executive chief, but no other neces-
sary political connection; and that our emigration from Eng-
land to this country gave her no more rights over us, than the
emigrations of the Danes and Saxons gave to the present au-
thorities of the mother country, over England. In this doctrine,
however, I had never been able to get any one to agree with me
but Mr. Wythe. He concurred in it from the first dawn of the
question, What was the political relation between us and Eng-
land? Our other patriots, Randolph, the Lees, Nicholas, Pen-
dleton, stopped at the half-way house of John Dickinson, who
admitted that England has a right to regulate our commerce,
and to lay duties on it for the purposes of regulation, but not
of raising revenue. But for this ground there was no founda-
tion in compact, in any acknowledged principles of colonization,
nor in reason: expatriation being a natural right, and acted on
as such, by all nations, in all ages. I set out for Williamsburg
some days before that appointed for our meeting, but was taken
ill of a dysentery on the road, and was unable to proceed. I sent
on, therefore, to Williamsburg, two copies of my draught, the
one under cover to Peyton Randolph, who I knew would be in
the chair of the convention, the other to Patrick Henry.
Whether Mr. Henry disapproved the ground taken, or was too
lazy to read it (for he was the laziest man in reading I ever
knew) I never learned: but he communicated it to nobody.
Peyton Randolph informed the convention he had received such
10
THOMAS J8FF8RSON
a paper from a member, prevented by sickness from offerir
it in his place, and he laid it on the table for perusal. It w;
read generally by the members, approved by many, thou£
thought too bold for the present state of things; but th(
printed it in pamphlet form, under the title of "A Summai
View of the Rights of British America." It found its way
England, was taken up by the opposition, interpolated a litt
by Mr. Burke so as to make it answer opposition purpose
and in that form ran rapidly through several editions. This ii
formation I had from Parson Hurt, who happened at the tin
to be in London, whither he had gone to receive clerical o
ders; and I was informed afterwards by Peyton Randolph, th;
it had procured me the honor of having my name inserted
a long list of proscriptions, enrolled in a bill of attainder con
menced in one of the Houses of Parliament, but suppressed
embryo by the hasty step of events, which warned them to 1
a little cautious. Montague, agent of the House of Burgesses
England, made extracts from the bill, copied the names, ar
sent them to Peyton Randolph. The names, I think, were aboi
twenty, which he repeated to me, but I recollect those only i
Hancock, the two Adamses, Peyton Randolph himself ar
myself. The convention met on the ist of August, renewed the
association, appointed delegates to the Congress, gave them i
structions very temperately and properly expressed, both as
style and matter ; and they repaired to Philadelphia at the tin
appointed. The splendid proceedings of that Congress, at the
first session, belong to general history, are known to evei
one, and need not therefore be noted here. They terminate
their session on the 26th of October, to meet again on the 101
of May ensuing. The convention, at their ensuing session i
March, '75, approved of the proceedings of Congress, thanke
their delegates, and reappointed the same persons to repr
sent the colony at the meeting to be held in May: and for
seeing the probability that Peyton Randolph, their presiden
and speaker also of the House of Burgesses, might be called o
they added me, in that event, to the delegation.
ii
OF
Mr. Randolph was, according to expectation, obliged to
leave the chair of Congress, to attend the General Assembly
summoned by Lord Dunmore, to meet on the ist day of June,
1775. Lord North's conciliatory propositions, as they were
called, had been received by the Governor, and furnished the
subject for which this assembly was convened. Mr. Randolph
accordingly attended, and the tenor of these propositions being
generally known, as having been addressed to all the governors,
he was anxious that the answer of our Assembly, likely to be
the first, should harmonize with what he knew to be the senti-
ments and wishes of the body he had recently left. He feared
that Mr. Nicholas, whose mind was not yet up to the mark of
the times, would undertake the answer, and therefore pressed
me to prepare it. I did so, and, with his aid, carried it through
the House, with long and doubtful scruples from Mr. Nicholas
and James Mercer, and a dash of cold water on it here and
there, enfeebling it somewhat, but finally with unanimity, or
a vote approaching it. This being passed, I repaired imme-
diately to Philadelphia, and conveyed to Congress the first
notice they had of it. It was entirely approved there. I took my
seat with them on the 2ist of June. On the 24th, a committee
which had been appointed to prepare a declaration of the causes
of taking up arms, brought in their report (drawn I believe by
J. Rutledge) which, not being liked, the House recommitted
it, on the 26th, and added Mr. Dickinson and myself to the
committee. On the rising of the House, the committee having
not yet met, I happened to find myself near Governor W. Liv-
ingston, and proposed to him to draw the paper. He excused
himself and proposed that I should draw it. On my pressing
him with urgency, "We are as yet but new acquaintances, sir,"
said he; "why are you so earnest for my doing it?" "Because,"
said I, "I have been informed that you drew the Address to the
people of Great Britain, a production, certainly, of the finest
pen in America." "On that," says he, "perhaps, sir, you may
not have been correctly informed." I had received the informa-
tion in Virginia from Colonel Harrison on his return from that
THOMAS J8FF8RSON
Congress. Lee, Livingston, and Jay had been the committee foi
that draught. The first, prepared by Lee, had been disapproved
and recommitted. The second was drawn by Jay, but being
presented by Governor Livingston, had led Colonel Harrison
into the error. The next morning, walking in the hall of Con-
gress, many members being assembled, but the House not yet
formed, I observed Mr. Jay speaking to R. H. Lee, and lead-,
ing him by the button of his coat to me. "I understand, sir,"
said he to me, "that this gentleman informed you, that Gov-
ernor Livingston drew the Address to the people of Great Brit-
ain." I assured him, at once, that I had not received that in-
formation from Mr. Lee, and that not a word had ever passed
on the subject between Mr. Lee and myself; and after some
explanations the subject was dropped. These gentlemen had had
some sparrings in debate before, and continued ever very hos-
tile to each other.
I prepared a draught of the declaration committed to us. It
was too strong for Mr. Dickinson. He still retained the hope af
reconciliation with \he mother country, and was unwilling it
should be lessened by offensive statements. He was so honest
a man, and so able a one, that he was greatly indulged even
by those who could not feel his scruples. We therefore re-
quested him to take the paper, and put it into a form he could
approve. He did so, preparing an entire new statement, and
preserving of the former only the last four paragraphs and half
of the preceding one. We approved and reported it to Congress,
who accepted it. Congress gave a signal proof of their indul-
gence to Mr. Dickinson, and of their great desire not to go too
fast for any respectable part of our body, in permitting him to
draw their second petition to the King according to his own
ideas, and passing it with scarcely any amendment. The disgust
against this humility was general; and Mr. Dickinson's delight
at its passage was the only circumstance which reconciled them
to it. The vote being passed, although further observation on
it was out of order, he could not refrain from rising and ex-
pressing his satisfaction, and concluded by saying, "There i*
13
dUTOBIOGRAPHT OF
but one word, Mr. President, in the paper which T disapprove,
and that is the word Congress" ; on which Ben Harrison rose
and said, "There is but one word in the paper, Mr. President,
of which I approve, and that is the word Congress"
On the 22d of July, Dr. Franklin, Mr. Adams, R. H. Lee,
and myself, were appointed a committee to consider and re-
port on Lord North's conciliatory resolution. The answer of
the Virginia Assembly on that subject having been approved,
I was requested by the committee to prepare this report, which
will account for the similiarity of feature in the two instruments.
On the 1 5th of May, 1776, the convention of Virginia in-
structed their delegates in Congress, to propose to that body to
declare the colonies independent of Great Britain, and appoint
a committee to prepare a declaration of rights and plan of
government.
In Congress, Friday, June 7, 1776.
The delegates from Virginia moved, in obedience to instruc-
tions from their constituents, that the Congress should declare
that these United colonies are, and of right ought to be, free
and independent states, that they are absolved from all alle-
giance to the British crown, and that all political connection
between them and the state of Great Britain is, and ought to
be, totally dissolved; that measures should be immediately
taken for procuring the assistance of foreign powers, and a
Confederation be formed to bind the colonies more closely to-
gether.
The House being obliged to attend at that time to some other
business, the proposition was referred to the next day, when
the members were ordered to attend punctually at ten o'clock.
Saturday, June 8. They proceeded to take it into considera-
tion, and referred it to a committee of the whole, into which
' they immediately resolved themselves, and passed that day and
Monday, the loth, in debating on the subject.
It was argued by Wilson, Robert R. Livingston, E. Rutledge,
Dickinson, and others—
14
THOMAS jeFFSRSON
That, though they were friends to the measures themselves,
and saw the impossibility that we should ever again be united
with Great Britain, yet they were against adopting them
at this time :
That the conduct we had formerly observed was wise and
proper now, of deferring to take any capital step till the voice
of the people drove us into it:
That they were our power, and without them our declara-
tions could not be carried into effect:
That the people of the middle colonies (Maryland, Dela-
ware, Pennsylvania, the Jerseys and New York) were not yet
ripe for bidding adieu to British connection, but that they
were fast ripening, and, in a short time, would join in the
general voice of America:
That the resolution, entered into by this House on the i$th
of May, for suppressing the exercise of all powers derived from
the crown, had shown, by the ferment into which it had thrown
these middle colonies, that they had not yet accommodated
their minds to £ separation from the mother country:
That some of them had expressly forbidden their delegates
to consent to such a declaration, and others had given no in-
structions, and consequently no powers to give such consent:
That if the delegates of any particular colony had no power
to declare such colony independent, certain they were, the
others could not declare it for them; the colonies being as yet
perfectly independent of each other:
That the assembly of Pennsylvania was now sitting above
stairs, their convention would sit within a few days, the con-
vention of New York was now sitting, and those of the Jer-
seys and Delaware counties would meet on the Monday fol-
lowing, and it was probable these bodies would take up the
question of Independence, and would declare to their delegates
the voice of their state:
That if such a declaration should now be agreed to, these
delegates must retire, and possibly their colonies might secede
from the Union:
JiUI'OBlOGRAPHr OF
That such a secession would weaken us more than could be
compensated by any foreign alliance:
That in the event of such a division, foreign powers would
either refuse to join themselves to our fortunes, or, having us
so much in their power as that desperate declaration would
place us, they would insist on terms proportionably more hard
and prejudicial:
That we had little reason to expect an alliance with those
to whom alone, as yet, we had cast our eyes:
That France and Spain had reason to be jealous of that rising
power, which would one day certainly strip them of all their
American possessions:
That it was more likely they should form a connection with
the British court, who, if they should find themselves unable
otherwise to extricate themselves from their difficulties, would
agree to a partition of our territories, restoring Canada to
France, and the Floridas to Spain, to accomplish for them-
selves a recovery of these colonies:
That it would not be long before we should receive certain
information of the disposition of the French court, from the
agent whom we had sent to Paris for that purpose:
That if this disposition should be favorable, by waiting the
event of the present campaign, which we all hoped would be
successful, we should have reason to expect an alliance on bet-
ter terms:
That this would in fact work no delay of any effectual aid
from such ally, as, from the advance of the season and distance
of our situation, it was impossible we could receive any assist-
ance during this campaign:
That it was prudent to fix among ourselves the terms on
which we should form alliance, before we declared we would
form one at all events:
And that if these were agreed on, and our Declaration of
Independence ready by the time our Ambassador should be pre-
pared to sail, it would be as well as to go into that Declaration
at this day.
16
THOMAS JSFFSRSON
On the other side, it was urged by J. Adams, Lee, Wythe,
and others, that no gentleman had argued against the policy or
the right of separation from Britain, nor had supposed it pos-
sible we should ever renew our connection; that they had only
opposed its being now declared:
That the question was not whether, by a Declaration of In-
dependence, we should make ourselves what we are not; but
whether we should declare a fact which already exists:
That, as to the people or parliament of England, we had al-
ways been independent of them, their restraints on our trade
deriving efficacy from our acquiescence only, and not from
any rights they possessed of imposing them, and that so far,
our connection had been federal only, and was now dissolved
by the commencement of hostilities:
That, as to the King, we had been bound to him by alle-
giance, but that this bond was now dissolved by his assent to
the last act of Parliament, by which he declares us out of his
protection, and by his levying war on us, a fact which had
long ago proved us out of his protection; it being a certain
position in law, that allegiance and protection are reciprocal;
the one ceasing when the other is withdrawn:
That James the Second never declared the people of Eng-
land out of his protection, yet his actions proved it, and the
Parliament declared it:
No delegates then can be denied, or ever want, a power of
declaring an existing truth:
That the delegates from the Delaware counties having de-
clared their constituents ready to join, there are only two col-
onies, Pennsylvania and Maryland, whose delegates are abso-
lutely tied up, and that these had, by their instructions, only
reserved a right of confirming or rejecting the measure:
That the instructions from Pennsylvania might be accounted
for from the times in which they were drawn, near a twelve-
month ago, since which the face of affairs has totally changed;
That within that time, it had become apparent that Britain
was determined to accept nothing less than a carte-blanche, and
17
OF
that the King's answer to the Lord Mayor, Aldermen and Com-
mon Council of London, which had come to hand four days
ago, must have satisfied every one of this point:
That the people wait for us to lead the way:
That they are in favor of the measure, though the instruc-
tions given by some of their representatives are not:
That the voice of the representatives is not always consonant
with the voice of the people, and that this is remarkably the
case in these middle colonies:
That the effect of the resolution of the i5th of May has
proved this, which, raising the murmurs of some in the col-
onies of Pennsylvania and Maryland, called forth the opposing
voice of the freer part of the people, and proved them to be
the majority even in these colonies:
That the backwardness of these two colonies might be as-
cribed, partly to the influence of proprietary power and con-
nections, and partly, to their having not yet been attacked by
the enemy:
That these causes were not likely to be soon removed, as
there seemed no probability that the enemy would make either
of these the seat of this summer's war:
That it would be vain to wait either weeks or months for
perfect unanimity, since it was impossible that all men should
ever become of one sentiment on any question:
That the conduct of some colonies, from the beginning of
this contest, had given reason to suspect it was their settled
policy to keep in the rear of the confederacy, that their par-
ticular prospect might be better, even in the worst event:
That, therefore, it was necessary for those colonies who had
thrown themselves forward and hazarded all from the begin-
ning, to come forward now also, and put all again to their own
hazard :
That the history of the Dutch Revolution, of whom three
states only confederated at first, proved that a secession of
some colonies would not be so dangerous as some apprehended:
That a Declaration of Independence alone could render it
18
THOMAS JSFFSRSON
consistent with European delicacy, for European powers t(>
treat with us, or even to receive an Ambassador from us:
That till this, they would not receive our vessels into their
ports, nor acknowledge the adjudications of our courts of ad-
miralty to be legitimate, in cases of capture of British vessels:
That though France and Spain may be jealous of our rising
power, they must think it will be much more formidable with
the addition of Great Britain; and will therefore see it their
interest to prevent a coalition; but should they refuse, we si all
be but where we are; whereas without trying, we shall never
know whether they will aid us or not:
That the present campaign may be unsuccessful, and there-
fore we had better propose an alliance while our affairs wear a
hopeful aspect:
That to wait the event of this campaign will certainly work
delay, because, during the summer, France may assist us ef-
fectually, by cutting off those supplies of provisions from Eng-
land and Ireland, on which the enemy's armies here are to de-
pend; or by setting in motion the great power they have col-
lected in the West Indies, and calling our enemy to the defence
of the possessions they have there:
That it would be idle to lose time in settling the terms of
alliance, till we had first determined v/e would enter into alli-
ance:
That it is necessary to lose no time in opening a trade for
our people, who will want clothes, and will want money too, for
the payment of taxes:
And that the only misfortune is, that we did not enter into
alliance with France six months sooner, as, besides opening her
ports for the vent of our last year's produce, she might have
marched an army into Germany, and prevented the petty
princes there, from selling their unhappy subjects to subdue us.
It appearing in the course of these debates, that the colonies
of New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland,
and South Carolina were not yet matured for falling from the
parent stem, but that they were fast advancing to that state,
JIUrOBIOGRAPHT OF
it was thought most prudent to wait a while for them, and to
postpone the final decision to July ist; but, that this might
occasion as little delay as possible, a committee was appointed
to prepare a Declaration of Independence. The committee were
John Adams, Dr. Franklin, Roger Sherman, Robert R. Living-
ston, and myself. Committees were also appointed, at the same
time, to prepare a plan of confederation for the colonies, and
to state the terms proper to be proposed for foreign alliance.
The commiteee for drawing the Declaration of Independence,
desired me to do it. It was accordingly done, and being ap-
proved by them, I reported it to the House on Friday, the 28th
of June, when it was read, and ordered to lie on the table. On
Monday, the ist of July, the House resolved itself into a com-
mittee of the whole, and resumed the consideration of the
original motion made by the delegates of Virginia, which, be-
ing again debated through the day, was carried in the affirma-
tive by the votes of New Hampshire, Connecticut, Massachu-
setts, Rhode Island, New Jersey, Maryland, Virginia, North
Carolina and Georgia. South Carolina and Pennsylvania voted
against it. Delaware had but two members present, and they
were divided. The delegates from New York declared they were
for it themselves, and were assured their constituents were for
it; but that their instructions having been drawn near a twelve-
month before, when reconciliation was still the general object,
they were enjoined by them to do nothing which should im-
pede that object. They, therefore, thought themselves not jus-
tifiable in voting on either side, and asked leave to withdraw
from the question; which was given them. The committee rose
and reported their resolution to the House. Mr. Edward Rut-
ledge, of South Carolina, then requested the determination
might be put off to the next day, as he believed his colleagues,
though they disapproved of the resolution, would then join in it
for the sake of unanimity. The ultimate question, whether the
House would agree to the resolution of the committee, was ac-
cordingly postponed to the next day, when it was again moved,
and South Carolina concurred in voting for it. In the mean-
THOMAS JSFFeRSON
time, a third member had come post from the Delaware
ties, and turned the vote of that colony in favor of the resolu-
tion. Members of a different sentiment attending that morn-
ing from Pennsylvania also, her vote was changed, so that the
whole twelve colonies who were authorized to vote at all, gave
then voices for it; and, within a few days, the convention of
New York approved of it, and thus supplied the void occa-
sioned by the withdrawing of her delegates from the vote.
Congress proceeded the same day to consider the Declara-
tion of Independence, which had been reported and lain on
the table the Friday preceding, and on Monday referred to a
committee of the whole. The pusillanimous idea that we had
friends in England worth keeping terms with, still haunted the
minds of many. For this reason, those passages which con-
veyed censures on the people of England were struck out, lest
they should give them offence. The clause too, reprobating the
enslaving the inhabitants of Africa, was struck out in com-
plaisance to South Carolina and Georgia, who had never at-
tempted to restrain the importation of slaves, and who, on the
contrary, still wished to continue it. Our northern brethren also,
I believe, felt a little tender under those censures; for though
their people had very few slaves themselves, yet they had been
pretty considerable carriers of them to others. The debates,
having taken up the greater parts of the 2d, 3d, and 4th days
of July, were, on the evening of the last, closed; the Declara-
tion was reported by the committee, agreed to by the House,
and signed by every member present, except Mr. Dickinson.
As the sentiments of men are known not only by what they
receive, but what they reject also, I will state the form of the
Declaration as originally reported. The parts struck out by
Congress shall be distinguished by a black line drawn under
them;1 and those inserted by them shall be placed in the mar-
gin, or in a concurrent column.'
1. The editors have substituted the device of italicizing and enclosing
in brackets the parts struck out by Congress.
2. These insertions are printed in capitals.
21
JUTOBIOGRAPHT OF
A DECLARATION BY THE REPRESENTATIVES OF THE
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, IN GENERAL CONGRESS
ASSEMBLED
When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary
for one people to dissolve the political bands which have con-
nected them with another, and to assume among the powers
of the earth the separate and equal station to which the laws
of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to
the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the
causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self evident: that all men are cre-
ated equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with CER-
TAIN [inherent and] inalienable rights; that among these are
life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these
rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their
just powers from the consent of the governed; that whenever
any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it
is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to in-
stitute new government, laying its foundation on such prin-
ciples, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall
seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence,
indeed, will dictate that governments long established should
not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly
all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to
suffer while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by
abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when
a long train of abuses and usurpations, [begun at a distin-
guished period and] pursuing invariably the same object,
evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it
is their right, it is their duty to throw off such government,
and to provide new guards for their future security. Such has
been the patient sufferance of these colonies; and such is now
the necessity which constrains them to ALTER [expunge]
their former systems of government. The history of the present
THOMAS J8FFSRSON
king of Great Britain is a history of REPEATED [unremit-
ting] injuries and usurpations, ALL HAVING [among which
appears no solitary fact to contradict the uniform tenor of the
rest, but all have] in direct object the establishment of an ab-
solute tyranny over these states. To prove this, let facts be sub-
mitted to a candid world \jor the truth of which we pledge a
faith yet unsullied by falsehood].
He has refused his assent to laws the most wholesome and
necessary for the public good.
He has forbidden his governors to pass laws of immediate
and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation
till his assent should be obtained; and, when so suspended, he
has utterly neglected to attend to them.
He has refused to pass other laws for the accommodation
of large districts of people, unless those people would relin-
quish the right of representation in the legislature, a right in-
estimable to them, and formidable to tyrants only.
He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual,
uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public
records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance
with his measures.
He has dissolved representative houses repeatedly [and con-
tinually] for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the
rights of the people.
He has refused for a long time after such dissolutions to
cause others to be elected, whereby the legislative powers, in-
capable of annihilation, have returned to the people at large
for their exercise, the state remaining, in the meantime, exposed
to all the dangers of invasion from without and convulsions
within.
He has endeavored to prevent the population of these states;
for that purpose obstructing the laws for naturalization of for-
eigners, refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations
hither, and raising the conditions of new appropriations of
lands.
OF
He has OBSTRUCTED [suffered] the administration of
justice BY [totally to cease in some of these states] refusing
his assent to laws for establishing judiciary powers.
He has made [our] judges dependent on his will alone for
the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their
salaries.
He has erected a multitude of new offices, [by a self-assumed
power] and sent hither swarms of new officers to harass our
people and eat out their substance.
He has kept among us in times of peace standing armies
[and ships of war] without the consent of our legislatures.
He has affected to render the military independent of, and
superior to, the civil power.
He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction
foreign to our constitutions and unacknowledged by our laws,
giving his assent to their acts of pretended legislation for quai
tering large bodies of armed troops among us; for protecting
them by a mock trial from punishment for any murders which
they should commit on the inhabitants of these states; for cut-
ting off our trade with all parts of the world; for imposing
taxes on us without our consent; for depriving us IN MANY
CASES of the benefits of trial by jury; for transporting us be-
yond seas to be tried for pretended offences; for abolishing the
free system of English laws in a neighboring province, estab
lishing therein an arbitrary government, and enlarging its
boundaries, so as to render it at once an example and fit in-
strument for introducing the same absolute rule into these
COLONIES [states] ; for taking away our charters, abolishing
our most valuable laws, and altering fundamentally the forms
of our governments; for suspending our own legislatures, and
declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in
all cases whatsoever.
He has abdicated government here BY DECLARING US
OUT OF HIS PROTECTION, AND WAGING WAR
AGAINST US [withdrawing his governors, and declaring us
out of his allegiance and protection].
24
THOMAS J8FF8RSON
He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our
towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
He is at this time transporting large armies of foreign mer-
cenaries to complete the works of death, desolation and tyranny
already begun with circumstances of cruelty and perfidy
SCARCELY PARALLELED IN THE MOST BARBAROUS
AGES, AND TOTALLY unworthy the head of a civilized
nation.
He has constrained our fellow citizens taken captive on the
high seas, to bear arms against their country, to become the
executioners of their friends and brethren, or to fall them-
selves by their hands.
He has EXCITED DOMESTIC INSURRECTION
AMONG US, AND HAS endeavored to bring on the inhabit-
ants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian savages, whose
known rule of warfare is an undistinguished destruction of all
ages, sexes and conditions [of existence].
[He has incited treasonable insurrections of our fellow citi-
zens, with the allurements of forfeiture and confiscation of our
property,
He has waged cruel war against human nature itself, vio-
lating its most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons
of a distant people who never offended him, captivating and
carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur
miserable death in their transportation hither. This piratical
warfare, the opprobrium of INFIDEL powers, is the warfare
of the CHRISTIAN king of Great Britain. Determined to
keep open a market where MEN should be bought and sold, he
has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative
attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable commerce. And
that this assemblage of horrors might want no fact of distin-
guished die, he is now exciting those very people to rise in arms
among us, and to purchase that liberty of which he has
deprived them, by murdering the people on whom he also
obtruded them: thus paying off former crimes committed
against the LIBERTIES of one people, with crimes which
25
JUTOBIOGRAPfir OF
he urges them to commit against the LIVES of another.]
In every stage of these oppressions we have petitioned for
/edress in the most humble terms: our repeated petitions have
been answered only by repeated injuries.
A prince whose character is thus marked by every act which
may define a tyrant is unfit to be the ruler of a FREE people
[who mean to be free. Future ages will scarcely believe that
'he hardiness of one man adventured, within the short compass
of twelve years only, to lay a foundation so broad and so un-
disguised for tyranny over a people fostered and fixed in prin-
ciples of freedom.]
Nor have we been wanting in attentions to our British breth-
ren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by
their legislature to extend AN UNWARRANTABLE [a] juris-
diction over US [these our states]. We have reminded them
of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here, \no
one of which could warrant so strange a pretension: that these
were effected at the expense of our own blood and treasure, un-
assisted by the wealth or the strength of Great Britain: that in
Constituting indeed our several forms of government, we had
adopted one common king, thereby laying a foundation for per-
petual league and amity with them: but that submission to
their parliament was no part of our constitution, nor ever in
idea, if history may be credited: and,] we HAVE appealed to
their native justice and magnanimity AND WE HAVE CON-
TURED THEM BY [as well as to] the ties of our common
kindred to disavow these usurpations which WOULD INEVI-
TABLY [were likely to] interrupt our connection and corre-
spondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and
of consanguinity. WE MUST THEREFORE [and when occa-
sions have been given *hcm, by the regular course of their laws,
of removing from their c mncils the disturbers of our harmony.
they have, by their free election, re-established them in power.
At this very time too, they are permitting their chief magistrate
to send over not only soldiers of our common blood, but Scotch
and foreign mercenaries to invade and destroy us. These facts
26
THOMAS JSFF8RSON
have given the last stab to agonizing affection, and manly spirit
bids us to renounce forever these unfeeling brethren. We must
endeavor to forget our former love )or them, and hold them
as we hold the rest of mankind, enemies in war, in peace
friends. We might have a free and a great people together; but
a communication of grandeur and of freedom, it seems, is be-
low their dignity. Be it so, since they will have it. The road to
happiness and to glory is open to us, too. We will tread it apart
from them, and] acquiesce in the necessity which denounces our
[eternal] separation AND HOLD THEM AS WE HOLD
THE REST OF MANKIND, ENEMIES IN WAR, IN
PEACE FRIENDS!
1 We therefore the repre-
sentatives of the United States
of America in General Con-
gress assembled, do in the
name, and by the authority
of the good people of these
[states reject and renounce all
allegiance and subjection to
the kings of Great Britain and
all others who may hereafter
claim by, through or under
them; we utterly dissolve all
political connection which
may heretofore have subsisted
between us and the people or
parliament of Great Britain:
and finally we do assert and
declare these colonies to be
free and independent states,]
and that as free and independ-
ent states, they have full pow-
We, therefore, the repre-
sentatives of the United States
of America in General Con-
gress assembled, appealing to
the supreme judge of the
world for the rectitude of our
intentions, do in the name, and
by the authority of the good
people of these colonies, sol-
emnly publish and declare,
that these united colonies are,
and of right ought to be free
and independent states; that
they are absolved from all al-
legiance to the British crown,
and that all political connec-
tion between them and the
state of Great Britain is, and
ought to be, totally dissolved;
and that as free and independ-
ent states, they have full power
i. In this closing section, where additions and deletions have been
lengthy, the editors follow Jefferson's device of printing his version in
the left column, and the final adopted text in the right column.
27
OF
er to levy war, conclude peace, to levy war, conclude peace,
contract alliances, establish contract alliances, establish
commerce, and to do all other commerce, and to do all other
acts and things which inde- acts and things which inde-
pendent states may of right do. pendent states may of right do.
And for the support of And for the support of this
this declaration, we mutually declaration, with a firm reli-
pledge to each other our lives, ance on the protection of di-
our fortunes, and our sacred vine providence, we mutually
honor. pledge to each other our lives,
our fortunes, and our sacred
honor.
The Declaration thus signed on the 4th, on paper, was en-
grossed on parchment, and signed again on the 2d of August.
[Some erroneous statements of the proceedings on the Dec-
laration of Independence having got before the public in lat-
ter times, Mr. Samuel A. Wells asked explanations of me,
which are given in my letter to him of May 12, '19, before and
now again referred to. I took notes in my place while these
things were going on, and at their close wrote them out in
form and with correctness, and from i to 7 of the two pre-
ceding sheets, are the originals then written; as the two fol-
lowing are of the earlier debates on the Confederation, which I
took in like manner.]1
On Friday, July 12, the committee appointed to draw the
articles of Confederation reported them, and, on the 22d, the
House resolved themselves into a committee to take them into
consideration. On the 3Oth and 3ist of that month, and ist of
the ensuing, those articles were debated which determined the
proportion, or quota, of money which each state should fur-
nish to the common treasury, and the manner of voting in
Congress. The first of these articles was expressed in the
original draught in these words. "Art. XI. All charges of war
and all other expenses that shall be incurred for the common
defence, or general welfare, and allowed by the United States
i. In this case, the remarks in brackets are Jefferson's.
THOMAS jeFFSRSON
assembled, shall be defrayed out of a common treasury, which
shall be supplied by the several colonies in proportion to the
number of inhabitants of every age, sex, and quality, except
Indians not paying taxes, in each colony, a true account of
which, distinguishing the white inhabitants, shall be triennially
taken and transmitted to the Assembly of the United States. '
Mr. Chase moved that the quotas should be fixed, not by the
number of inhabitants of every condition, but by that of the
"white inhabitants." He admitted that taxation should be al-
ways in proportion to property, that this was, in theory, the
true rule; but that, from a variety of difficulties, it was a
rule which could never be adopted in practice. The value of
the property in every State, could never be estimated justly
and equally. Some other measure for the wealth of the State
must therefore be devised, some standard referred to, which
would be more simple. He considered the number of inhabitants
as a tolerably good criterion of property, and that this might
always be obtained. He therefore thought it the best mode
which we could adopt, with one exception only: he observed
that negroes are property, and as such, cannot be distinguished
from the lands or personalities held in those States where there
are few slaves; that the surplus of profit which a Northern
farmer is able to lay by, he invests in cattle, horses, &c., where-
as a Southern farmer lays out the same surplus in slaves.
There is no more reason, therefore, for taxing the Southern
States on the farmer's head, and on his slave's head, than the
Northern ones on their farmer's heads and the heads of their
cattle; that the method proposed would, therefore, tax the
Southern States according to their numbers and their wealth
conjunctly, while the Northern would be taxed on numbers
only: that negroes, in fact, should not be considered as mem-
bers of the State, more than cattle, and that they have no more
interest in it.
Mr. John Adams observed, that the numbers of people were
taken by this article, as an index of the wealth of the State,
and not as subjects of taxation; that, as to this matter, it v/as of
29
OF
no consequence by what name you called your people, whether
by that of freemen or of slaves; that in some countries the
laboring poor were called freemen, in others they were called
slaves; but that the difference as to the state was imaginary
only. What matters it whether a landlord, employing ten la-
borers on his farm, gives them annually as much money as will
buy them the necessaries of life, or gives them those neces-
saries at short hand? The ten laborers add as much wealth an-
nually to the State, increase its exports as much in the one
^ase as the other. Certainly five hundred freemen produce no
more profits, no greater surplus for the payment of taxes, than
five hundred slaves. Therefore, the State in which are the
laborers called freemen, should be taxed no more than that
in which are those called slaves. Suppose, by an extraordinary
operation of nature or of law, one-half the laborers of a State
could in the course of one night be transformed into slaves;
would the State be made the poorer or the less able to pay
taxes? That the condition of the laboring poor in most coun-
tries, that of the fishermen particularly of the Northern States,
is as abject as that of slaves. It is the number of laborers which
produces the surplus for taxation, and numbers, therefore, in-
discriminately, are the fair index of wealth; that it is the use
of the word "property" here, and its application to some of the
people of the State, which produces the fallacy. How does the
Southern farmer procure slaves? Either by importation or by
purchase from his neighbor. If he imports a slave, he adds one
to the number of laborers in his country, and proportionably
to its profits and abilities to pay taxes; if he buys from his
neighbor, it is only a transfer of a laborer from one farm to
another, which does not change the annual produce of the State,
and therefore, should not change its tax: that if a Northern
farmer works ten laborers on his farm, he can, it is true, invest
the surplus of ten men's labor in cattle; but so may the South-
ern farmer, working ten slaves; that a State of one hundred
thousand freemen can maintain no more cattle, than one of one
hundred thousand slaves. Therefore, they have no more of that
30
THOMAS JSFFSRSON
kind of property; that a slave may indeed, from the custom of
speech, be more properly called the wealth of his master, than
the free laborer might be called the wealth of his employer; but
as to the State, both were equally its wealth, and should, there-
fore, equally add to the quota of its tax.
Mr. Harrison proposed, as a compromise, that two slaves
should be counted as one freeman. He affirmed that slaves did
not do as much work as freemen, and doubted if two effected
more than one; that this was proved by the price of labor;
the hire of a laborer in the Southern colonies being from £8 to
£12, while in the Northern it was generally £24.
Mr. Wilson said, that if this amendrnenl should take place,
the Southern colonies would have all the benefit of slaves, whilst
the Northern ones would bear the burthen: trul slaves increase
the profits of a State, which the Southern States mean to take
to themselves; that they also increase the burthen cf defence,
which would of course fall so much the heavier on the North-
ern: that slaves occupy the places of freemen, and eat their
food. Dismiss your slaves, and freemen will take their places.
It is our duty to lay every discouragement on the importation
of slaves; but this amendment would give the jus trium liber o-
rum1 to him who would import slaves: that other kinds of
property were pretty equally distributed through all the col-
onies: there were as many cattle, horses and sheep, in the
North as the South, and South as the North ; but not so as to
slaves: that experience has shown that those colonies have been
always able to pay most, which have the most inhabitants,
whether they be black or white; and the practice of the South-
ern colonies has always been to make every farmer pay poll
taxes upon all his laborers, whether black or white. He ac-
knowledges, indeed, that freemen work the most; but they con-
sume the most also. They do not produce a greater surplus for
taxation. The slave is neither fed nor clothed so expensively as
a freeman. Again, white women are exempted from labor gen-
erally, but negro women are not. In this, then, the Southern
i. Right of three freemen.
31
OF
States have an advantage as the article now stands. It has some-
times been said, that slavery is necessary, because the com-
modites they raise would be too dear for market if cultivated
by freemen; but now it is said that the labor of the slave is
the dearest.
Mr. Payne urged the original resolution of Congress, to pro-
portion the quotas of the States to the number of souls.
Dr. Witherspoon was of opinion, that the value of lands and
houses was the best estimate of the wealth of a nation, and
that it was practicable to obtain such a valuation. This is the
Uue barometer of wealth. The one now proposed is imperfect
in itself, and unequal between the States. It has been objected
that negroes eat the food of freemen, and, therefore, should be
taxed; horses also eat the food of freemen; therefore they also
should be taxed. It has been said too, that in carrying slaves
into the estimate of the taxes the State is to pay, we do no
more than those States themselves do, who always take slaves
into the estimate of the taxes the individual is to pay. But the
cases are not parallel. In the Southern colonies slaves pervade
the whole colony; but they do not pervade the whole conti-
nent. That as to the original resolution of Congress, to propor-
tion the quotas according to the souls, it was temporary only,
and related to the moneys heretofore emitted: whereas we are
now entering into a new compact, and therefore stand on origi-
nal ground.
August i. The question being put, the amendment proposed
was rejected by the votes of New Hampshire, Massachusetts,
Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, and Penn-
sylvania, against those of Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North
and South Carolina. Georgia was divided.
The other article was in these words. "Art. XVII. In deter-
mining questions, each colony shall have one vote."
July 30, 31, August i. Present forty-one members. Mr. Chase
observed this article was the most likely to divide us, of any one
proposed in the draught then under consideration: that the
larger colonies had threatened they would not confederate at
32
THOMAS ySFFBRSON
all, if their weight in Congress should not be equal to the num-
bers of people they added to the confederacy; while the smaller
ones declared against a union, if they did not retain an equal
vote for the protection of their rights. That it was of the utmost
consequence to bring the parties together, as, should we sever
from each other, either no foreign power will ally with us at all,
or the different States will form different alliances, and thus
increase the horrors of those scenes of civil war and bloodshed,
which in such a state of separation and independence, would
render us a miserable people. That our importance, our in-
terests, our peace required that we should confederate, and
that mutual sacrifices should be made to effect a compromise
of this difficult question. He was of opinion, the smaller colonies
would lose their rights, if they were not in some instances al-
lowed an equal vote; and, therefore, that a discrimination should
take place among the questions which would come before Con-
gress. That the smaller States should be secured in all questions
concerning life or liberty, and the greater ones, in all respecting
property. He, therefore, proposed, that in votes relating to
money, the voice of each colony should be proportioned to the
number of its inhabitants.
Dr. Franklin thought, that the votes should be so propor-
tioned in all cases. He took notice that the Delaware counties
had bound up their delegates to disagree to this article. He
thought it a very extraordinary language to be held by any
State, that they would not confederate with us, unless we would
let them dispose of our money. Certainly, if we vote equally,
we ought to pay equally; but the smaller States will hardly
purchase the privilege at this price. That had he lived in a State
where the representation, originally equal, had become unequal
by time and accident, he might have submitted rather than
disturb government; but that we should be very wrong to set
out in this practice, when it is in our power to establish what
is right. That at the time of the Union between England and
Scotland, the latter had made the objection which the smaller
States now do; but experience had proved that no unfairness
33
dUTOBIOGRAPHT OF
had ever been shown them: that their advocates had prognosti-
cated that it would again happen, as in times of old, that the
whale would swallow Jonas [sic], but he thought the prediction
reversed in event, and that Jonas had swallowed the whale;
for the Scotch had in fact got possession of the government,
and gave laws to the English. He reprobated the original agree-
ment of Congress to vote by colonies, and, therefore, was for
their voting, in all cases, according to the number of taxables.
Dr. Witherspoon opposed every alteration of the article. All
men admit that a confederacy is necessary. Should the idea get
abroad that there is likely to be no union among us, it will damp
the minds of the people, diminish the glory of our struggle, and
lessen its importance; because it will open to our view future
prospects of war and dissension among ourselves. If an equal
vote be refused, the smaller States will become vassals to the
larger; and all experience has shown that the vassals and sub-
jects of free States are the most enslaved. He instanced the
Helots of Sparta, and the provinces of Rome. He observed that
foreign powers, discovering this blemish, would make it a handle
for disengaging the smaller States from so unequal a confeder-
acy. That the colonies should in fact be considered as individ-
uals; and that, as such, in all disputes, they should have an
equal vote; that they are now collected as individuals making
a bargain with each other, and, of course, had a right to vote as
individuals. That in the East India Company they voted by per-
sons, and not by their proportion of stock. That the Belgic con-
federacy voted by provinces. That in questions of war the
smaller States were as much interested as the larger, and, there-
fore, should vote equally; and indeed, that the larger States
were more likely to bring war on the confederacy, in proportion
as their frontier was more extensive. He admitted that equality
of representation was an excellent principle, but then it must be
of things which are co-ordinate; that is, of things similar, and
of the same nature: that nothing relating to individuals could
ever come before Congress; nothing but what would respect
colonies. He distinguished between an incorporating and a
34
THOMAS J8FF8RSON
federal union. The union of England was an incorporating one;
yet Scotland had suffered by that union; for that its inhabitants
were drawn from it by the hopes of places and employments:
nor was it an instance of equality of representation; because,
while Scotland was allowed nearly a thirteenth of representa-
tion they were to pay only one-fortieth of the land tax. He
expressed his hopes, that in the present enlightened state of
men's minds, we might expect a lasting confederacy, if it was
founded on fair principles.
John Adams advocated the voting in proportion to numbers.
He said that we stand here as the representatives of the people:
that in some States the people are many, in others they are few;
that therefore, their vote here should be proportioned to the
numbers from whom it comes. Reason, justice and equity never
had weight enough on the face of the earth, to govern the
councils of men. It is interest alone which does it, and it is
interest alone which can be trusted: that therefore the interests
within doors, should be the mathematical representatives of the
interests without doors: that the individuality of the colonies
is a mere sound. Does the individuality of a colony increase its
wealth or numbers? If it does, pay equally. If it does not add
weight in the scale of the confederacy, it cannot add to their
rights, nor weigh in argument. A. has £50, B £500, C. £1000 in
partnership. Is it just they should equally dispose of the
moneys of the partnership? It has been said, we are independent
individuals making a bargain together. The question is not
what we are now, but what we ought to be when our bargain
shall be made. The confederacy is to make us one individual
only; it is to form us like separate parcels of metal, into one
common mass. We shall no longer retain our separate individ-
uality, but become a single individual as to all questions sub-
mitted to the confederacy. Therefore, all those reasons, which
prove the justice and expediency of equal representation in other
assemblies, hold good here. It has been objected that a propor-
tional vote will endanger the smaller States. We answer that an
equal vote will endanger the larger. Virginia, Pennsylvania, and
35
^UTOBIOGRAPHT OF
Massachusetts, are the three greater colonies. Consider their
distance, their difference of produce, of interests, and of man-
ners, and it is apparent they can never have an interest or in-
clination to combine for the oppression of the smaller: that the
smaller will naturally divide on all questions with the larger.
Rhode Island, from its relation, similarity and intercourse, will
generally pursue the same objects with Massachusetts; Jersey,
Delaware, and Maryland, with Pennsylvania.
Dr. Rush took notice, that the decay of the liberties of the
Dutch republic proceeded from three causes, i. The perfect
unanimity requisite on all occasions. 2. Their obligation to
consult their constituents. 3. Their voting by provinces. This
last destroyed the equality of representation, and the liberties
of Great Britain also are sinking from the same defect. That a
part of our rights is deposited in the hands of our legislatures.
There, it was admitted, there should be an equality of repre-
sentation. Another part of our rights is deposited in the hands
of Congress : why is it not equally necessary there should be an
equal representation there? Were it possible to collect the whole
body of the people together, they would determine the questions
submitted to them by their majority. Why should not the same
majority decide when voting here, by their representatives?
The larger colonies are so providentially divided in situation,
as to render every fear of their combining visionary. Their
interests are different, and their circumstances dissimilar. It is
more probable they will become rivals, and leave it in the power
of the smaller States to give preponderance to any scale they
please. The voting by the number of free inhabitants, will have
one excellent effect, that of inducing the colonies to discourage
slavery, and to encourage the increase of their free inhabitants.
Mr. Hopkins observed, there were four larger, four smaller,
and four middle-sized colonies. That the four largest would con-
tain more than half the inhabitants of the confederated States,
and therefore, would govern the others as they should please.
That history affords no instance of such a thing as equal repre-
sentation. The Germanic body votes by States. The Helvetic
36
THOMAS J8FF8RSON
body does the same; and so does the Belgic confederacy. That
too little is known of the ancient confederations, to say what
was their practice.
Mr. Wilson thought, that taxation should be in- proportion to
wealth, but that representation should accord with the number
of freemen. That government is a collection or result of the
wilk of all : that if any government could speak the will of all,
it would be perfect; and that, so far as it departs from this,
it becomes imperfect. It has been said that Congress is a repre-
sentation of States, not of individuals. I say, that the objects of
its care are all the individuals of the States. It is strange that
annexing the name of "State" to ten thousand men, should
give them an equal right with forty thousand. This must be the
effect of magic, not of reason. As to those matters which are
referred to Congress, we are not so many States; we are one
large State. We lay aside our individuality, whenever we come
here. The Germanic body is a burlesque on government; and
their practice, on any point, is a sufficient authority and proof
that it is wrong. The greatest imperfection in the constitution
of the Belgic confederacy is their voting by provinces. The in-
terest of the whole is constantly sacrificed to that of the small
States. The history of the war in the reign of Queen Anne
sufficiently proves this. It is asked, shall nine colonies put it
into the power of four to govern them as they please? I invert
the question, and ask, shall two millions of people put it in the
power of one million to govern them as they please? It is pre-
tended, too, that the smaller colonies will be in danger from the
greater. Speak in honest language and say, the minority will
be in danger from the majority. And is there an assembly on
earth, where this danger may not be equally pretended? The
truth is, that our proceedings will then be consentaneous with
the interests of the majority, and so they ought to be. The
probability is much greater, that the larger States will disagree,
than that they will combine. I defy the wit of man to invent a
possible case, or to suggest any one thing on earth, which shaU
be for the interests of Virginia, Pennsylvania and Massachu-
Of
setts, and which will not also be for the interest of the other
States.
These articles, reported July 12, '76, were debated from day
to day, and time to time, for two years, were ratified July 9,
'78, by ten States, by New Jersey on the 26th of November of
the same year, and by Delaware on the 23d of February follow-
ing. Maryland alone held off two years more, acceding to them
March i, '81, and thus closing the obligation.
Our delegation had been renewed for the ensuing year, com-
mencing August 1 1 ; but the new government was now organ-
ized, a meeting of the legislature was to be held in October, and
I had been elected a member by my county. 1 knew that our
legislation, under the regal government, had many very vicious
points which urgently required reformation, and I thought I
could be of more use in forwarding that work. I therefore re-
tired from my seat in Congress on the 2d of September, re-
signed it, and took my place in the legislature of my State, on
the 7th of October.
On the nth, I moved for leave to bring in a bill for the
establishment of courts of justice, the organization of which
was of importance. I drew the bill; it was approved by the com-
mittee, reported and passed, after going through its due course.
On the 1 2th, I obtained leave to bring in a bill declaring
tenants in tail to hold their lands in fee simple. In the earlier
times of the colony, when lands were to be obtained for little or
nothing, some provident individuals procured large grants; and;
desirous of founding great families for themselves, settled them
on their descendants in fee tail. The transmission of this prop-
erty from generation to generation, in the same name, raised up
a distinct set of families, who, being privileged by law in the
perpetuation of their wealth, were thus formed into a Patrician
order, distinguished by the splendor and luxury of their estab-
lishments. From this order, too, the king habitually selected his
counsellors of State; the hope of which distinction devoted the
whole corps to the interests and will of the crown. To annul
this privilege, and instead of an aristocracy of wealth, of more
38
THOMAS J8FF8RSON
harm and danger, than benefit, to society, to make an opening
for the aristocracy of virtue and talent, which nature has wisely
provided for the direction of the interests of society, and scat-
tered with equal hand through all its conditions, was deemed
essential to a well-ordered republic.— To effect it, no violence
was necessary, no deprivation of natural right, but rather an
enlargement of it by a repeal of the law. For this would author-
ize the present holder to divide the property among his children
equally, as his affections were divided; and would place them,
by natural generation, on the level of their fellow citizens. But
this repeal was strongly opposed by Mr. Pendleton, who was
zealously attached to ancient establishments; and who, taken
all in all, was the ablest man in debate I have ever met with.
He had not indeed the poetical fancy of Mr. Henry, his sub-
lime imagination, his lofty and overwhelming diction; but he
was cool, smooth and persuasive; his language flowing, chaste
and embellished; his conceptions quick, acute and full of re-
source; never vanquished: for if he lost the main battle, he
returned upon you, and regained so much of it as to make it a
drawn one, by dexterous manoeuvres, skirmishes in detail, and
the recovery of small advantages which, little singly, were
important all together. You never knew when you were clear
of him, but were harassed by his perseverance, until the patience
was worn down of all who had less of it than himself. Add to
this, that he was one of the most virtuous and benevolent of
men, the kindest friend, the most amiable and pleasant of com-
panions, which ensured a favorable reception to whatever came
from him. Finding that the general principle of entails could
not be maintained, he took his stand on an amendment which
he proposed, instead of an absolute abolition, to permit the
tenant in tail to convey in fee simple, if he chose it; and he was
within a few votes of saving so much of the old law. But the
bill passed finally for entire abolition.
In that one of the bills for organizing our judiciary system,
which proposed a court of Chancery, I had provided for a
trial by jury of all matters of fact, in that as well as in the
39
AUTOBIOGRAPHY' OF
courts of law. He defeated it by the introduction of four words
only, "*/ either party choose." The consequence has been, that
as no suitor will say to his judge, "Sir, I distrust you, give me
a jury," juries are rarely, I might say, perhaps, never, seen in
that court, but when called for by the Chancellor of his own
accord.
The first establishment in Virginia which became permanent,
was made in 1607. I have found no mention of negroes in the
colony until about 1650. The first brought here as slaves were
by a Dutch ship ; after which the English commenced the trade,
and continued it until the revolutionary war. That suspended,
ipso jactoy their further importation for the present, and the
business of the war pressing constantly on the legislature, this
subject was not acted on finally until the year '78, when I
brought in a bill to prevent their further importation. This
passed without opposition, and stopped the increase of the evil
by importation, leaving to future efforts its final eradication.
The first settlers of this colony were Englishmen, loyal sub-
jects to their king and church, and the grant to Sir Walter
Raleigh contained an express proviso that their laws "should
not be against the true Christian faith, now professed in the
church of England." As soon as the state of the colony admitted,
it was divided into parishes, in each of which was established a
minister of the Anglican church, endowed with a fixed salary,
in tobacco, a glebe house and land with the other necessary
appendages. To meet these expenses, all the inhabitants of the
parishes were assessed, whether they were or not, members of
the established church. Towards Quakers who came here, they
were most cruelly intolerant, driving them from the colony by
the severest penalties. In process of time, however, other sec-
tarisms were introduced, chiefly of the Presbyterian family;
and the established clergy, secure for life in their glebes and
salaries, adding to these, generally, the emoluments of a classi-
cal school, found employment enough, in their farms and school-
rooms, for the rest of the week, and devoted Sunday only to
the edification of their flock, by service, and a sermon at their
40
THOMAS JSFFSRSON
parish church. Their other pastoral functions were little attended
to. Against this inactivity, the zeal and industry of sectarian
preachers had an open and undisputed field; and by the time
of the revolution, a majority of the inhabitants had become
dissenters from the established church, but were still obliged to
pay contributions to support the pastors of the minority. This
unrighteous compulsion, to maintain teachers of what they
deemed religious errors, was grievously felt during the regal
government, and without a hope of relief. But the first republi-
can legislature, which met in '76, was crowded with petitions
to abolish this spiritual tyranny. These brought on the severest
contests in which I have ever been engaged. Our great opponents
were Mr. Pendleton and Robert Carter Nicholas; honest men,
but zealous churchmen. The petitions were referred to the com-
mittee of the whole house on the state of the country; and,
after desperate contests in that committee, almost daily from
the nth of October to the 5th of December, we prevailed so far
only, as to repeal the laws which rendered criminal the mainte-
nance of any religious opinions, the forbearance of repairing to
church, or the exercise of any mode of worship; and further, to
exempt dissenters from contributions to the support of the es-
tablished church; and to suspend, only until the next session,
levies on the members of that church for the salaries of their
own incumbents. For although the majority of our citizens were
dissenters, as has been observed, a majority of the legislature
were churchmen. Among these, however, were some reasonable
and liberal men, who enabled us, on some points, to obtain
feeble majorities. But our opponents carried, in the general
resolutions of the committee of November 79, a declaration
that religious assemblies ought to be regulated, and that pro-
vision ought to be made for continuing the succession of the
clergy, and superintending their conduct. And, in the bill now
passed, was inserted an express reservation of the question,
Whether a general assessment should not be established by law,
on every one, to the support of the pastor of his choice; or
whether all should be left to voluntary contributions; and on
<AU<rOBIOGRAPHT OF
this question, debated at every session, from '76 to '79, (some
of our dissenting allies, having now secured their particular ob-
ject, going over to the advocates ot a general assessment,) we
could only obtain a suspension from session to session until '79,
when the question against a general assessment was finally
carried, and the establishment of the Anglican church entirely
put down. In justice to the two honest but zealous opponents
who have been named, I must add, that although, from their
natural temperaments, they were more disposed generally to
acquiesce in things as they are, than to risk innovations, yet
whenever the public will had once decided, none were more
faithful or exact in their obedience to it.
The seat of our government had originally been fixed in the
peninsula of Jamestown, the first settlement of the colonists;
and had been afterwards removed a few miles inland to Wil-
liamsburg. But this was at a time when our settlements had not
extended beyond the tide waters. Now they had crossed the
Alleghany; and the centre of population was very far removed
from what it had been. Yet Williamsburg was still the deposi-
tory of our archives, the habitual residence of the Governor and
many other of the public functionaries, the established place for
the sessions of the legislature, and the magazine of our military
stores; and its situation was so exposed that it might be taken
at any time in war, and, at this time particularly, an enemy
might in the night run up either of the rivers, between which it
lies, land a force above, and take possession of the place, with-
out the possibility of saving either persons or things. I had
proposed its removal so early as October, '76; but it did not
prevail until the session of May, '79.
Early in the session of May, '79, I prepared, and obtained
leave to bring in a bill, declaring who should be deemed citizens,
asserting the natural right of expatriation, and prescribing the
mode of exercising it. This, when I withdrew from the House,
on the ist of June following, I left in the hands of George
Mason, and it was passed on the 26th of that month.
In giving this account of the laws of which I was myself the
42
THOMAS JEFFERSON
mover and draughtsman, I, by no means, mean to claim to my-
self the merit of obtaining their passage. I had many occasional
and strenuous coadjutors in debate, and one, most steadfast,
able and zealous; who was himself a host. This was George
Mason, a man of the first order of wisdom among those who
acted on the theatre of the revolution, of expansive mind, pro-
found judgment, cogent in argument, learned in the lore of our
former constitution, and earnest for the republican change on
democratic principles. His elocution was neither flowing nor
smooth; but his language was strong, his manner most impres-
sive, and strengthened by a dash of biting cynicism, when
provocation made it seasonable.
Mr. Wythe, while speaker in the two sessions of 1777, be-
tween his return from Congress and his appointment to the
Chancery, was an able and constant associate in whatever was
before a committee of the whole. His pure integrity, judgment
and reasoning powers, gave him great weight. . . .
Mr. Madison came into the House in 1776, a new member
and young; which circumstances, concurring with his extreme
modesty, prevented his venturing himself in debate before his
removal to the Council of State, in November, '77. From thence
he went to Congress, then consisting of few members. Trained
in these successive schools, he acquired a habit of self-posses-
sion, which placed at ready command the rich resources of his
luminous and discriminating mind, and of his extensive in-
formation, and rendered him ihe first of every assembly after-
wards, of which he became a member. Never wandering from
his subject into vain declamation, but pursuing it closely, in
language pure, classical and copious, soothing always the feel-
ings of his adversaries by civilities and softness of expression,
he rose to the eminent station which he held in the great Na-
tional Convention of 1787; and in that of Virginia which fol-
lowed, he sustained the new constitution in all its parts, bearing
off the palm against the logic of George Mason, and the fervid
declamation of Mr. Henry. With these consummate powers,
were united a pure and spotless virtue, which no calumny has
43
JUjrOBlQGRAPHT OF
ever attempted to sully. Of the powers and polish of his pen,
and of the wisdom of his administration in the highest office of
the nation, I need say nothing. They have spoken, and will
forever speak for themselves.
So far we were proceeding in the details of reformation only ;
selecting points of legislation, prominent in character and prin-
ciple, urgent, and indicative of the strength of the general pulse
of reformation. When I left Congress, in '76, it was in the
persuasion that our whole code must be reviewed, adapted to
our republican form of government; and, now that we had no
negatives of Councils, Governors, and Kings to restrain us from
doing right, it should be corrected, in all its parts, with a single
eye to reason, and the good of those for whose government it
was framed. Early, therefore, in the session of '76, to which T
returned, I moved and presented a bill for the revision of the
laws, which was passed on the 24th of October; and on the 5th
of November, Mr. Pendleton, Mr. Wythe, George Mason,
Thomas L. Lee, and myself, were appointed a committee to exe-
cute the work. We agreed to meet at Fredericksburg to settle
the plan of operation, and to distribute the work. We met there
accordingly, on the i3th of January, 1777. The first question
was, whether we should propose to abolish the whole existing
system of laws, and prepare a new and complete Institute, or
preserve the general system, and only modify it to the present
state of things. Mr. Pendleton, contrary to his usual disposition
in favor of ancient things, was for the former proposition, in
which he was joined by Mr. Lee. To this it was objected, that
to abrogate our whole system would be a bold measure, and
probably far beyond the views of the legislature; that they had
been in the practice of revising, from time to time, the laws of
the colony, omitting the expired, the repealed, and the obsolete,
amending only those retained, and probably meant we should
now do the same, only including the British statutes as well as
our own: that to compose a new Institute, like those of Jus-
tinian and Bracton, or that of Blackstone, which was the model
proposed by Mr, Pendleton, would be an arduous undertaking,
44
THOMAS J8FFSRSON
of vast research, of great consideration and judgment; and
when reduced to a text, every word of that text, from the im-
perfection of human language, and its incompetence to express
distinctly every shade of idea, would become a subject of ques-
tion and chicanery, until settled by repeated adjudications; and
this would involve us for ages in litigation, and render property
uncertain, until, like the statutes of old, every word had been
tried and settled by numerous decisions, and by new volumes of
reports and commentaries; and that no one of us, probably,
would undertake such a work, which to be systematical, must
be the work of one hand. This last was the opinion of Mr.
Wythe, Mr. Mason, and myself. When we proceeded to the dis-
tribution of the work, Mr. Mason excused himself, as, being
no lawyer, he felt himself unqualified for the work, and he re-
signed soon after. Mr. Lee excused himself on the same ground;
and died, indeed, in a short time. The other two gentlemen,
therefore, and myself divided the work among us. The common
law and statutes to the 4 James I. (when our separate legisla-
ture was established) were assigned to me; the British statutes,
from that period to the present day, to Mr. Wythe; and the
Virginia laws to Mr. Pendleton. As the law of Descents, and the
criminal law fell of course within my portion, I wished the com-
mittee to settle the leading principles of these, as a guide for
me in framing them; and, with respect to the first, i proposed
to abolish the law of primogeniture, and to make real estate
descendible in parcenary to the next of kin, as personal property
is, by the statute of distribution. Mr. Pendleton wished to pre-
serve the right of primogeniture, but seeing at once that that
could not prevail, he proposed we should adopt the Hebrew
principle, and give a double portion to the elder son. I observed,
that if the eldest son could eat twice as much, or do double
work, it might be a natural evidence of his right to a double
portion; but being on a par in his powers and wants, with his
brothers and sisters, he should be on a par also in the partition
of the patrimony; and such was the decision of the other mem-
bers.
45
<AUrOBIOGRAPHT OF
On the subject of the Criminal law, all were agreed, that the
punishment of death should be abolished, except for treason
and murder; and that, for other felonies, should be substituted
hard labor in the public works, and in some cases, the Lex
talionis.^ How this last revolting principle came to obtain our
approbation, I do not remember. There remained, indeed, in
our laws, a vestige of it in a single case of a slave; it was the
English law, in the time of the Anglo-Saxons, copied probably
from the Hebrew law of "an eye for an eye, a tooth for a
tooth," and it was the law of several ancient people; but the
modern mind had left it far in the rear of its advances. These
points, however, being settled, we repaired to our respective
homes for the preparation of the work.
In the execution of my part, I thought it material not to
vary the diction of the ancient statutes Dy modernizing it, nor
to give rise to new questions by new expressions. The text of
these statutes had been so fully explained and defined, by
numerous adjudications, as scarcely ever now to produce a
question in our courts. I thought it would be useful, also, in all
new draughts, to reform the style of the later British statutes,
and of our own acts of Assembly; which, from their verbosity,
their endless tautologies, their involutions of case within case,
and parenthesis within parenthesis, and their multiplied efforts
at certainty, by saids and ajorcsaids, by ors and by ands, to
make them more plain, are really rendered more perplexed and
incomprehensible, not only to common readers, but to the
lawyers themselves. We were employed in this work from that
time to February, 1779, when we met at Williamsburg, that is
to say, Mr. Pendleton, Mr. Wythe and myself; and meeting
day by day, we examined critically our several parts, sentence
by sentence, scrutinizing and amending, until we had agreed on
the whole. We then returned home, had fair copies made of our
several parts, which were reported to the General Assembly,
June 18, 1779, by Mr. Wythe and myself, Mr. Pendleton's
residence being distant, and he having authorized us by letter
i. The law of retaliation.
46
THOMAS
to declare his approbation. We had, in this work, brought so
much of the Common law as it was thought necessary to alter,
all the British statutes from Magna Charta to the present day,
and all the laws of Virginia, from the establishment of our
legislature, in the 4th Jac. I. to the present time, which we
thought should be retained, within the compass of one hundred
.^nd twenty-six bills, making a printed folio of ninety pages
only. Some bills were taken out, occasionally, from time to
time, and passed; but the main body of the work was not
entered on by the legislature until after the general peace, in
1785, when, by the unwearied exertions of Mr. Madison, in
opposition to the endless quibbles, chicaneries, perversions,
vexations and delays of lawyers and demi-lawyers, most of the
bills were passed by the legislature, with little alteration.
The bill for establishing religious freedom, the principles of
which had, to a certain degree, been enacted before, I had
drawn in all the latitude of reason and right. It still met with
opposition; but, with some mutilations in the preamble, it was
finally passed ; and a singular proposition proved that its pro-
tection of opinion was meant to be universal. Where the pre-
amble declares, that coercion is a departure from the plan of
the holy author of our religion, an amendment was proposed,
by inserting the word "Jesus Christ/' so that it should read, "a
departure from the plan of Jesus Christ, the holy author of our
religion;1' the insertion was rejected by a great majority, in
proof that they meant to comprehend, within the mantle of its
protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mahome-
tan, the Hindoo, and Infidel of every denomination.
Beccaria, and other writers on crimes and punishments, had
satisfied the reasonable world of the unrightfulness and ineffi-
cacy of the punishment of crimes by death; and hard labor on
roads, canals and other public works, had been suggested as a
proper substitute. The Revisors had adopted these opinions;
but the general idea of our country had not yet advanced to
that point. The bill, therefore, for proportioning crimes and
punishments, was lost in the House of Delegates by a majority
47
AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF
<of a single vote. I learned afterwards, that the substitute of hard
labor in public, was tried (I believe it was in Pennsylvania)
without success. Exhibited as a public spectacle, with shaved
heads and mean clothing, working on the high roads, produced
in the criminals such a prostration of character, such an aban-
donment of self-respect, as, instead of reforming, plunged them
into the most desperate and hardened depravity of morals and
character. To pursue the subject of this law.— -I was written to
in 1785 (being then in Paris) by directors appointed to superin-
tend the building of a Capitol in Richmond, to advise them as
to a plan, and to add to it one of a Prison. Thinking it a
favorable opportunity of introducing into the State an example
of architecture, in the classic style of antiquity, and the Maison
Quarree of Nismes, an ancient Roman temple, being considered
as the most perfect model existing of what may be called Cubic
architecture, I applied to M. Clerissault, who had published
drawings of the Antiquities of Nismes, to have me a model of
the building made in stucco, only changing the order from
Corinthian to Ionic, on account of the difficulty of the Corin-
thian capitals. I yielded, with reluctance, to the taste of Cleris-
sault, in his preference of the modern capital of Scamozzi to the
more noble capital of antiquity. This was executed by the
artist whom Choiseul Goumer had carried with him to Con-
stantinople, and employed, while Ambassador there, in making
those beautiful models of the remains of Grecian architecture
which are to be seen at Paris. To adapt the exterior to our use,
I drew a plan for the interior, with the apartments necessary for
legislative, executive, and judiciary purposes; and accommo-
dated in their size and distribution to the form and dimension?,
of the building. These were forwarded to the Directors, in 1786,
and were carried into execution, with some variations, not for
the better, the most important of which, however, admit of
future correction. With respect to the plan of a Prison, re-
quested at the same time, I had heard of a benevolent society,
in England, which had been indulged by the government, in an
experiment of the effect of labor, in solitary confinement, on
48
THOMAS JSFFeRSON
some of their criminals; which experiment had succeeded be-
yond expectation. The same idea had been suggested in France,
and an Architect of Lyons had proposed a plan of a well-con^
trived edifice, on the principle of solitary confinement. I pro-
cured a copy, and as it was too large for our purposes, I drew
one on a scale less extensive, but susceptible of additions as
they should be wanting. This I sent to the Directors, instead of
a plan of a common prison, in the hope that it would suggest the
idea of labor in solitary confinement, instead of that on the
public works, which we had adopted in our Revised Code. Its
principle, accordingly, but not its exact form, was adopted by
Latrobe in carrying the plan into execution, by the erection of
what is now called the Penitentiary, built under his direction,
In the meanwhile, the public opinion was ripening, by time, by
reflection, and by the example of Pennsylvania, where labor on
the highways had been tried, without approbation, from 1786 to
'89, and had been followed by their Penitentiary system on the
principle of confinement and labor, which was proceeding aus-
piciously. In 1796, our legislature resumed the subject, and
passed the law for amending the Penal laws of the common-
wealth. They adopted solitary, instead of public, labor, estab-
lished a gradation in the duration of the confinement, approxi-
mated the style of the law more to the modern usage, and,
instead of the settled distinctions of murder and manslaughter,
preserved in my bill, they introduced the new terms of murder
in the first and second degree. Whether these have produced
more or fewer questions of definition, I am not sufficiently in-
formed of our judiciary transactions to say. . . .
The acts of Assembly concerning the College of William and
Mary, were properly within Mr. Pendleton's portion of our
work; but these related chiefly to its revenue, while its consti-
tution, organization and scope of science, were derived from its
charter. We thought that on this subject, a systematical plan of
general education should be proposed, and I was requested to
undertake it. I accordingly prepared three bills for the Revisal,
proposing three distinct grades of education, reaching all
49
JIUrOBlOGRAPHT OF
classes, ist. Elementary schools, for all children generally, rich
and poor. 2d. Colleges, for a middle degree of instruction, cal-
culated for the common purposes of life, and such as would be
desirable for all who were in easy circumstances. And, 3d, an
ultimate grade for teaching the sciences generally, and in their
highest degree. The first bill proposed to lay off every county
into Hundreds, or Wards, of a proper size and population for a
school, in which reading, writing, and common arithmetic
should be taught; and that the whole State should be divided
into twenty-four districts, in each of which should be a school
for classical learning, grammar, geography, and the higher
branches of numerical arithmetic. The second bill proposed to
amend the constitution of William and Mary college, to enlarge
its sphere of science, and to make it in fact a University. The
third was for the establishment of a library. These bills were
not acted on until the same year, '96, and then only so much
of the first as provided for elementary schools. The College of
William and Mary was an establishment purely of the Church
of England; the Visitors were required to be all of that
Church; the Professors to subscribe its thirty-nine Articles;
its Students to learn its Catechism; and one of its fundamental
objects was declared to be, to raise up Ministers for that
church. The religious jealousies, therefore, of all the dissenters,
took alarm lest this might give an ascendancy to the Anglican
sect, and refused acting on that bill. Its local eccentricity, too,
and unhealthy autumnal climate, lessened the general inclina-
tion towards it. And in the Elementary bill, they inserted a
provision which completely defeated it; for they left it to the
court of each county to determine for itself, when this act
should be carried into execution, within their county. One pro-
vision of the bill was, that the expenses of these schools should
be borne by the inhabitants of the county, every one in pro-
portion to his general tax rate. This would throw on wealth the
education of the poor; and the justices, being generally of the
more wealthy class, were unwilling to incur that burden, and
I believe it was not suffered to commence in a single county.
SO
THOMAS JEFFERSON
I shall recur again to this subject, towards the close of my
story, if I should have life and resolution enough to reach that
term; for I am already tired of talking about myself.
The bill on the subject of slaves, was a mere digest of the
existing laws respecting them, without any intimation of a
plan for a future and general emancipation. It was thought bet-
ter that this should be kept back, and attempted only by way
of amendment, whenever the bill should be brought on. The
principles of the amendment, however, were agreed on, that
is to say, the freedom of all born after a certain day, and de-
portation at a proper age. But it was found that the public
mind would not yet bear the proposition, nor will it bear it
even at this day. Yet the day is not distant when it must bear
and adopt it, or worse will follow. Nothing is more certainly
written in the book of fate, than that these people are to be
free; nor is it less certain that the two races, equally free, can-
not live in the same government. Nature, habit, opinion have
drawn indelible lines of distinction between them. It is still in
our power to direct the process of emancipation and deporta-
tion, peaceably, and in such slow degree, as that the evil will
wear off insensibly, and their place be, part passuf filled up by
free white laborers. If, on the contrary, it is left to force itself
on, human nature must shudder at the prospect held up. We
should in vain look for an example in the Spanish deportation
or deletion of the Moors. This precedent would fall far short of
our case.
I consider four of these bills, passed or reported, as forming
a system by which every fibre would be eradicated of ancient
or future aristocracy; and a foundation laid for a government
truly republican. The repeal of the laws of entail would pre-
vent the accumulation and perpetuation of wealth, in select
families, and preserve the soil of the country from being daily
more and more absorbed in mortmain. The abolition of primo-
geniture, and equal partition of inheritances, removed the
feudal and unnatural distinctions which made one member of
i. On an equal basis.
51
JUTOBIOGRAPHT OF
«very family rich, and all the rest poor, substituting equal par-
tition, the best of all Agrarian laws. The restoration of the
rights of conscience relieved the people from taxation for the
support of a religion not theirs; for the establishment was
truly of the religion of the rich, the dissenting sects being en-
tirely composed of the less wealthy people; and these, by the
bill for a general education, would be qualified to understand
their rights, to maintain them, and to exercise with intelli-
gence their parts in self-government; and all this would be ef-
fected, without the violation of a single natural right of any
one individual citizen. To these, too, might be added, as a
further security, the introduction of the trial by jury, into the
Chancery courts, which have already ingulfed, and continue to
ingulf, so great a proportion of the jurisdiction over our prop-
erty.
On the ist of June, 1779, I was appointed Governor of the
Commonwealth, and retired from the legislature. Being elected,
also, one of the Visitors of William and Mary college, a self-
electing body, I effected, during my residence in Williamsburg
that year, a change in the organization of that institution, by
abolishing the Grammar school, and the two professorships of
Divinity and Oriental languages, and substituting a professor-
ship of Law and Police, one of Anatomy, Medicine and Chem-
istry, and one of Modern languages; and the charter confining
us to six professorships, we added the Law of Nature and Na-
tions, and the Fine Arts to the duties of the Moral professor,
and Natural History to those of the professor of Mathematics
and Natural Philosophy.
Being now, as it were, identified with the Commonwealth
itself, to write my own history, during the two years of my
administration, would be to write the public history of that
portion of the revolution within this State. This has been done
by others, and particularly by Mr. Girardin, who wrote his
Continuation of Burke's History of Virginia, while at Milton,
in this neighborhood, had free access to all my papers while
composing it, and has given as faithful an account as 1 could
52
THOMAS J6FFSRSON
myself. For this portion, therefore, of my own life, I refer al
together to his history. From a belief that, under the pressure
of the invasion under which we were then laboring, the public
would have more confidence in a Military chief, and that the
Military commander, being invested with the Civil power also,
both might be wielded with more energy, promptitude and
effect for the defence of the State, I resigned the administra-
tion at the end of my second year, and General Nelson was
appointed to succeed me.
Soon after my leaving Congress, in September, '76, to wit,
on the last day of that month, I had been appointed, with Dr.
Franklin, to go to France, as a Commissioner, to negotiate
treaties of alliance and commerce with that government. Silas
Deane, then in France, acting as agent for procuring military
stores, was joined with us in commission. But such was the
state of my family that I could not leave it, nor could I ex-
pose it to the dangers of the sea, and of capture by the British
ships, then covering the ocean. I saw, too, that the laboring
oar was really at home, where much was to be done, of the
most permanent interest, in new modeling our governments
and much to defend our fanes and fire-sides from the desola
tions of an invading enemy, pressing on our country in every
point. I declined, therefore, and Mr. Lee was appointed in my
place. On the i5th of June, 1781, I had been appointed, with
Mr. Adams, Mr. Franklin, Mr. Jay, and Mr. Laurence, a Min-
ister Plenipotentiary for negotiating peace, then expected to be
effected through the mediation of the Empress of Russia. The
same reasons obliged me still to decline; and the negotiation
was in fact never entered on. But, in the autumn of the next
year, 1782, Congress receiving assurances that a general peace
would be concluded in the winter and spring, they renewed my
appointment on the i3th of November of that year. I had, two
months before that, lost the cherished companion of my life,
in whose affections, unabated on both sides, I had lived the last
ten years in unchequered happiness.1 With the public interests,
i. Jefferson is, of course, referring to the death of Mrs. Jefferson.
53
AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF
the state of my mind concurred in recommending the change
of scene proposed; and I accepted the appointment, and left
Monticello on the igth of December, 1782, for Philadelphia,
where I arrived on the 27th. The Minister of France, Luzerne,
offered me a passage in the Romulus frigate, which I accepted;
but she was then lying a few miles below Baltimore, blocked up
in the ice. I remained, therefore, a month in Philadelphia, look-
ing over the papers in the office of State, in order to possess
myself of the general state of our foreign relations, and then
went to Baltimore, to await the liberation of the frigate from
the ice. After waiting there nearly a month, we received in-
formation that a Provisional treaty of peace had been signed
by our Commissioners on the 3d of September, 1782, to become
absolute, on the conclusion of peace between France and Great
Britain. Considering my proceeding to Europe as now of no
utility to the public, I returned immediately to Philadelphia,
to take the orders of Congress, and was excused by them
from further proceeding. I, therefore, returned home, where I
arrived on the i$th of May, 1783.
On the 6th of the following month, I was appointed by the
legislature a delegate to Congress, the appointment to take
place on the ist of November ensuing, when that of the existing
delegation would expire. I, accordingly, left home on the i6th
of October, arrived at Trenton, where Congress was sitting, on
the 3rd day of November, and took my seat on the 4th, on
which day Congress adjourned, to meet at Annapolis on the 2 6th.
Congress had now become a very small body, and the mem-
bers very remiss in their attendance on its duties, insomuch,
that a majority of the States, necessary by the Confederation
to constitute a House even for minor business, did not assemble
until the i3th of December.
They, as early as January 7, 1782, had turned their atten-
tion to the moneys current in the several States, and had di-
rected the Financier, Robert Morris, to report to them a table
of rates, at which the foreign coins should be received at the
treasury. That officer, or rather his assistant, Gouverneur Mor-
54
THOMAS J8FF8RSON
ris, answered them on the i5th, in an able and elaborate state-
ment of the denominations of money current in the several
States, and of the comparative value of the foreign coins chietly
in circulation with us. He went into the consideration of the
necessity of establishing a standard of value with us, and of
the adoption of a money Unit. He proposed for that Unit, such
a fraction of pure silver as would be a common measure of the
penny of every State, without leaving a fraction. This common
divisor he found to be 1-1440 of a dollar, or 1-1600 of the
crown sterling. The value of a dollar was, therefore, to be ex-
pressed by 1,440 units, and of a crown by 1,600; each Unit
rontaining a quarter of a grain of fine silver. Congress turn-
ing again their attention to this subject the following year, the
Financier, by a letter of April 30, 1783, further explained and
urged the Unit he had proposed; but nothing more was done
in it until the ensuing year, when it was again taken up, and
referred to a committee, of which I was a member. The gen-
eral views of the Financier were sound, and the principle was
ingenious on which he proposed to found his Unit; but it was
too minute for ordinary use, too laborious for computation,
either by the head or in figures. The price of a loaf of bread,
i -20 of a dollar, would be 72 units.
A pound of butter, 1-5 of a dollar, 288 units.
A horse or bullock, of eighty dollars value, would require a
notation of six figures, to wit, 115,200, and the public debt,
suppose of eighty millions, would require twelve figures, to wit,
115,200,000,000 units. Such a system of money-arithmetic
would be entirely unmanageable for the common purposes of
society. I proposed, therefore, instead of this, to adopt the
Dollar as our Unit of account and payment, and that its divi-
sions and sub-divisions should be in the decimal ratio. I wrote
some notes on the subject, which I submitted to the considera-
tion of the Financier. I received his answer and adherence to
his general system, only agreeing to take for his Unit one hun-
dred of those he first proposed, so that a Dollar should be 14
40-100, and a crown 16 units. I replied to this, and printed
55
OF
my notes and reply on a flying sheet, which I put into the
hands of the members of Congress for consideration, and the
Committee agreed to report on my principle. This was adopted
the ensuing year, and is tlie system which now prevails. I in-
sert, here, the Notes and Reply, as showing the different views
on which the adoption of our money system hung.1 The divi-
sions into dimes, cents, and mills is now so well understood,
that it would be easy of introduction into the kindred branches
of weights and measures. I use when I travel, an Odometer of
Clark's invention, which divides the mile into cents, and I find
every one comprehends a distance readily, when stated to him
in miles and cents; so he would in feet and cents, pounds and
cents, &c.
The remissness of Congress, and their permanent session, be-
gan to be a subject of uneasiness; and even some of the legis-
latures had recommended to them intermissions, and periodical
sessions. As the Confederation had made no provision for a vis-
ible head of the government, during vacations of Congress, and
such a one was necessary to superintend the executive business,
to receive and communicate with foreign ministers and nations,
and to assemble Congress on sudden and extraordinary emer-
gencies, I proposed, early in April, the appointment of a com-
mittee, to be called the "Committee of the States," to consist
of a member from each State, who should remain in session
during the recess of Congress: that the functions of Congress
should be divided into executive and legislative, the latter to
be reserved, and the former, by a general resolution, to be
delegated to that Committee. This proposition was afterwards
agreed to; a Committee appointed, who entered on duty on
the subsequent adjournment of Congress, quarreled very soon,
split into two parties, abandoned their post, and left the gov-
ernment without any visible head, until the next meeting in
Congress. We have since seen the same thing take place in
the Directory of France; and I believe it will forever take
place in any Executive consisting of a plurality. Our plan, best,
i. The appendix is not included in this volume.
56
THOMAS JBFFSRSON
I believe, combines wisdom and practicability, by providing a
plurality of Counsellors, but a single Arbiter for ultimate deci-
sion. I was in France when we heard of this schism, and sep-
aration of our Committee, and, speaking with Dr. Franklin of
this singular disposition of men to .quarrel, and divide into
parties, he gave his sentiments, as usual, by way of Apologue.
He mentioned the Eddystone lighthouse, in the British chan-
nel, as being built on a rock, in the mid-channel, totally in-
accessible in winter, from the boisterous character of that sea,
in that season; that, therefore, for the two keepers employed
to keep up the lights, all provision for the winter were neces-
sarily carried to them in autumn, as they could never be visited
again till the return of the milder season; that, on the first
practicable day in the spring, a boat put off to them with fresh
supplies. The boatman met at the door one of the keepers,
and accosted him with a "How goes it, friend? Very well. How
is your companion? I do not know. Don't know? Is not he
here? I can't tell. Have not you seen him to-day? No. When
did you see him? Not since last fall. You have killed him? Not
I, indeed." They were about to lay hold of him, as having cer-
tainly murdered his companion; but he desired them to go
up stairs and examine for themselves. They went up, and there
found the other keeper. They had quarrelled, it seems, soon
after being left there, had divided into two parties, assigned
the cares below to one, and those above to the other, and had
never spoken to, or seen, one another since.
But to return to our Congress at Annapolis. The definitive
treaty of peace which had been signed at Paris on the 3d of
September, 1783, and received here, could not be ratified witb-
out a House of nine States. On the 23d of December, therefore,
we addressed letters to the several Governors, stating the re-
ceipt of the definitive treaty; that seven States only were in
attendance, while nine were necessary to its ratification; and
urging them to press on their delegates the necessity of their
immediate attendance. And on the 26th, to save time, I moved
that the Agent of Marine (Robert Morris) should be instructed
57
^UTOBICGRAPHT OF
to have ready a vessel at this place, at New York, and at some
Eastern port, to carry over the ratification of the treaty when
agreed to. It met the general sense of the House, but was op-
posed by Dr. Lee, on the ground of expense, which it would
authorize the Agent to incur for us; and, he said, it would be
better to ratify at once, and send on the ratification. Some
members had before suggested, that seven States were com-
petent to the ratification. My motion was therefore postponed,
and another brought forward by Mr. Read, of South Carolina,
for an immediate ratification. This was debated the 26th and
27th. Read, Lee, Williamson and Jeremiah Chase, urged that
ratification was a mere matter of form, that the treaty was con-
clusive from the moment it was signed by the ministers; that,
although the Confederation requires the assent of nine States
to enter into a treaty, yet, that its conclusion could not be
called entrance into it; that supposing nine States requisite,
it would be in the power of five States to keep us always at
war; that nine States had virtually authorized the ratification,
having ratified the provisional treaty, and instructed their min-
isters to agree to a definitive one in the same terms, and the
present one was, in fact, substantially, and almost verbatim,
the same; that there now remain but sixty-seven days for the
ratification, for its passage across the Atlantic, and its ex-
change; that there v;as no hope of our soon having nine States
present; in fact, that this was the ultimate point of time to
which we could venture to wait; that if the ratification was not
in Paris by the time stipulated, the treaty would become void;
that if ratified by seven States, it would go under our seal, with-
out its being known to Great Britain that only seven had con-
curred; that it was a question of which they had not right to
take cognizance, and we were only answerable for it to our
constituents; that it was like the ratification which Great Brit-
ain had received from the Dutch, by the negotiations of Sir
William Temple.
On the contrary, it was argued by Monroe, Gerry, Howel,
Ellery and myself, that by the modern usage of Europe, the
58
THOMAS JSFFSRSON
ratification was considered as the act which gave validity to a
treaty, until which, it was not obligatory.1 That the commis-
sion to the ministers reserved the ratification to Congress; that
the treaty itself stipulated that it should be ratified; that it be-
came a second question, who were competent to the ratifica-
tion? That the Confederation expressly required nine States
to enter into any treaty; that, by this, that instrument must
have intended, that the assent of nine States should be neces-
sary, as well to the completion as to the commencement of the
treaty, its object having been to guard the rights of the Union
in all those important cases where nine States are called for;
that by the contrary construction, seven States, containing less
than one-third of our whole citizens, might rivet on us a treaty,
commenced indeed under commission and instructions from
nine States, but formed by the minister in express contradic-
tion to such instructions, and in direct sacrifice of the interests
of so great a majority; that the definitive treaty was admitted
not to be a verbal copy of the provisional one, and whether the
departures from it were of substance, or not, was a question on
which nine States alone were competent to decide; that the cir-
cumstances of the ratification of the provisional articles by nine
States, the instructions to our ministers to form a definitive one
by them, and their actual agreement in substance, do not ren-
der us competent to ratify in the present instance; if these cir-
cumstances are in themselves a ratification, nothing further is
requisite than to give attested copies of them, in exchange for
the British ratification; if they are not, we remain where we
were, without a ratification by nine States, and incompetent
ourselves to ratify; that it was but four days since the seven
States, now present, unanimously concurred in a resolution, to
be forwarded to the Governors of the absent States, in which
they stated as a cause for urging on their delegates, that nine
States were necessary to ratify the treaty; that in the case of
the Dutch ratification, Great Britain had courted it, and there-
fore was glad to accept it as it was; that they knew our Consti-
i. Jefferson's footnote omitted here.
59
OF
tution, and would object to a ratification by seven; that, if that
circumstance was kept back, it would be known hereafter, and
would give them ground to deny the validity of a ratification,
into which they should have been surprised and cheated, and it
would be a dishonorable prostitution of our seal ; that there is
a hope of nine States; that if the treaty would become null, if
not ratified in time, it would not be saved by an imperfect rati-
fication; but that, in fact, it would not be null, and would be
placed on better ground, going in unexceptionable form, though
a few days too late, and rested on the small importance of this
drcumstance, and the physical impossibilities which had pre-
vented a punctual compliance in point of time; that this would
be approved by all nations, and by Great Britain herself, if not
determined to renew the war, and if so determined, she would
never want excuses, were this out of the way. Mr. Read gave
notice, he should call for the yeas and nays; whereon those in
opposition, prepared a resolution, expressing pointedly the rea-
sons of their dissent from his motion. It appearing, however,
that his proposition could not be carried, it was thought better
to make no entry at all. Massachusetts alone would have been
for it; Rhode Island, Pennsylvania and Virginia against it,
Delaware, Maryland and North Carolina, would have been
divided.
Our body was little numerous, but very contentious. Day
after day was wasted on the most unimportant questions. A
member, one of those afflicted with the morbid rage of debate,
of an ardent mind, prompt imagination, and copious flow of
words, who heard with impatience any logic which was not his
own, sitting near me on some occasion of a trifling but wordy
debate, asked me how I could sit in silence, hearing so much
false reasoning, which a word should refute? I observed to him,
that to refute indeed was easy, but to silence was impossible;
that in measures brought forward by myself, I took the labor-
ing oar, as was incumbent on me; but that in general, I was
willing to listen; that if every sound argument or objection
was used by some one or other of the numerous debaters, it
60
THOMAS J8FF8RSON
was enough ; if not, I thought it sufficient to suggest the omis-
sion, without going into a repetition of what had been already
said by others: that this v/as a waste and abuse of the time
and patience of the House, which could not be justified. And I
believe, that if the members of deliberate bodies were to ob-
serve this course generally, they would do in a day, what takes
them a week; and it is really more questionable, than may at
first be thought, whether Bonaparte's dumb legislature, which
said nothing, and did much, may not be preferable to one
which talks much, and does nothing. I served with General
Washington in the legislature of Virginia, before the revolu-
tion, and. during it, with Dr. Franklin in Congress. I never
heard either of them speak ten minutes at a time, nor to any
but the main point, which was to decide the question. They
laid their shoulders to the great points, knowing that the little
ones would follow of themselves. If the present Congress errs
in too much talking, how can it be otherwise, in a body to
which the people send one hundred and fifty lawyers, whose
trade it is to question everything, yield nothing, and talk by
the hour? That one hundred and fifty lawyers should do busi-
ness together, ought not to be expected. But to return again to
our subject.
Those who thought seven States competent to the ratifica-
tion, being very restless under the loss of their motion, I pro-
posed, on the third of January, to meet them on middle
ground, and therefore moved a resolution, which premised, that
there were but seven States present, who were unanimous for
the ratification, but that they differed in opinion on the ques-
tion of competency; that those however in the negative were
unwilling that any powers which it might be supposed they
possessed, should remain unexercised for the restoration of
peace, provided it could be done, saving their good faith, and
without importing any opinion of Congress, that seven States
were competent, and resolving that the treaty be ratified so far
as they had power; that it should be transmitted to our minis-
ters, with instructions to keep it uncommunicated ; to endeavor
61
<AUrOBIOGRAPHT OF
to obtain three months longer for exchange of ratifications;
that they should be informed, that so soon as nine States shall
be present, a ratification by nine shall be sent them: if this
should get to them before the ultimate point of time for ex-
change, they were to use it, and not the other; if not, they
were to offer the act of the seven States in exchange, inform-
ing them the treaty had come to hand while Congress was not
in session; that but seven States were as yet assembled, and
these had unanimously concurred in the ratification. This was
debated on the third and fourth; and on the fifth, a vessel be-
ing to sail for England, from this port (Annapolis), the House
directed the President to write to our ministers accordingly.
January 14. Delegates from Connecticut having attended
yesterday, and another from South Carolina coming in this
day, the treaty was ratified without a dissenting voice; and
three instruments of ratification were ordered to be made out,
one of which was sent by Colonel Harmcr, another by Colonel
Franks, and the third transmitted to the Agent of Marine, to
be forwarded by any good opportunity.
Congress soon took up the consideration of their foreign re-
lations. They deemed it necessary to get their commerce placed
with every nation, on a footing as favorable as that of other
nations; and for this purpose, to propose to each a distinct
treaty of commerce. This act too would amount to an acknowl-
edgment, by each, of our independence, and of our reception
into the fraternity of nations; which, although as possessing
our station of right, and in fact we would not condescend to
ask, we were not unwilling to furnish opportunties for receiving
their friendly salutations and welcome. With France, the United
Netherlands, and Sweden, we had already treaties of com-
merce; but commissions were given for those countries also,
should any amendments be thought necessary. The other States
to which treaties were to be proposed, were England, Hamburg,
Saxony, Prussia, Denmark, Russia, Austria, Venice, Rome,
Naples, Tuscany, Sardinia, Genoa, Spain, Portugal, the Porte,
Algiers, Tripoli, Tunis, and Morocco.
62
THOMAS JSFFSRSON
On the yth of May Congress resolved that a Minister Pleni-
potentiary should be appointed, in addition to Mr. Adams and
Dr. Franklin, for negotiating treaties of commerce with for-
eign nations, and I was elected to that duty. I accordingly left
Annapolis on the nth, took with me my eldest daughter, then
at Philadelphia (the two others being too young for the voy-
age), and proceeded to Boston, in quest of a passage. While
passing through the different States, I made a point of inform-
ing myself of the state of the commerce of each; went on to
New Hampshire with the same view, and returned to Boston.
Thence I sailed on the 5th of July, in the Ceres, a merchant
ship of Mr. Nathenial Tracey, bound to Cowes. He was himself
a passenger, and, after a pleasant voyage of nineteen days, from
land to land, we arrived at Cowes on the 26th. 1 was detained
there a few days by the indisposition of my daughter. On the
3oth, we embarked for Havre, arrived there on the 3ist, left
it on tLe 3d of August, and arrived at Paris on the 6th. I called
immediately on Dr. Franklin, at Passy, communicated to him
our charge, and we wrote to Mr. Adams, then at the Hague, to
join us at Paris.
Before I had left America, that is to say, in the year 1781,
I had received a letter from M. de Marbois, of the French lega-
tion in Philadelpnia, informing me, he had been instructed
by his government to obtain such statistical accounts of the dif-
ferent States of our Union, as might be useful for their infor-
mation; and addressing to me a number of queries relative to
the State of Virginia. I had always made it a practice, whenever
an opportunity occurred of obtaining any information of our
country, which might be of use to me in any station, public
or private, to commit it to writing. These memoranda were on
loose papers, bundled up without order, and difficult of recur-
rence, when I had occasion for a particular one. I thought this
a good occasion to embody their substance, which I did in the
order of Mr. Marbois' queries, so as to answer his wish, and
to arrange them for my own use. Some friends, to whom they
were occasionally communicated, wished for copies; but their
63
AUfOBlOGRAPHT OF
volume rendering this too laborious by hand, I proposed to get
a few printed, for their gratification. I was asked such a price,
however, as exceeded the importance of the object. On my ar-
rival at Paris, I found it could be done for a fourth of what I
had been asked here. I therefore corrected and enlarged them,
and had two hundred copies printed, under the title of "Notes
on Virginia/' I gave a very few copies to some particular
friends in Europe, and sent the rest to my friends in America.
A European copy, by the death of the owner, got into the
hands of a bookseller, who engaged its translation, and when
ready for the press, communicated his intentions and manu-
script to me, suggesting that I should correct it, without ask-
ing any other permission for the publication. I never had seen
so wretched an attempt at translation. Interverted, abridged,
mutilated, and often reversing the sense of the original, I
found it a blotch of errors, from beginning to end. I corrected
some of the most material, and, in that form, it was printed
in French. A London bookseller, on seeing the translation, re-
quested me to permit him to print the English original. I
thought it best to do so, to let the world see that it was not
really so bad as the French translation had made it appear.
And this is the true history of that publication.
Mr. Adams soon joined us at Paris, and our first employ-
ment was to prepare a general form, to be proposed to such
nations as were disposed to treat with us. During the negotia-
tions for peace with the British Commissioner, David Hartley,
our Commissioners had proposed, on the suggestion of Dr.
Franklin, to insert an article, exempting from capture by the
public or private armed ships, of either belligerent, when at
war, all merchant vessels and their cargoes, employed merely
in carrying on the commerce between nations. It was refused
by England, and unwisely, in my opinion. For, in the case of a
war with us, their superior commerce places infinitely more at
hazard on the ocean, than ours; and, as hawks abound in pro-
portion to game, so our privateers would swarm, in proportion
to the wealth exposed to their prize, while theirs would be
THOMAS J8FF8RSON
few, for want of subjects of capture. We inserted this article
in our form, with a provision against the molestation of fisher-
men, husbandmen, citizens unarmed, and following their occu-
pations in unfortified places, for the humane treatment of pris-
oners of war, the abolition of contraband of war, which exposes
merchant vessels to such vexatious and ruinous detentions and
abuses; and for the principle of free bottoms, free goods.
In conference with the Count de Vergennes, it was thought
better to leave to legislative regulation, on both sides, such
modifications of our commercial intercourse, as would volun
tarily flow from amicable dispositions. Without urging, we
sounded the ministers of the several European nations, at the
court of Versailles, on their dispositions towards mutual com-
merce, and the expediency of encouraging it by the protection
of a treaty. Old Frederic, of Prussia, met us cordially, and
without hesitation, and appointing the Baron de Thulemeyer,
his minister at the Hague, to negotiate with us, we communi-
cated to him our Projet, which, with little alteration by the
King, was soon concluded. Denmark and Tuscany, entered
also into negotiations with us. Other powers appearing indiffer-
ent; we did not think it proper to press them. They seemed,
in fact, to know little about us, but as rebels, who had been
successful in throwing off the yoke of the mother country. They
were ignorant of our commerce, which had been always monop-
olized by England, and of the exchange of articles it might offer
advantageously to both parties. They were inclined, therefore,
to stand aloof, until they could see better what relations might
be usefully instituted with us. The negotiations, therefore, be-
gun with Denmark and Tuscany, we protracted designedly,
until our powers had expired; and abstained from making new
propositions to others having no colonies; because our com-
merce being an exchange of raw for wrought materials, is a
competent price for admission into the colonies of those pos-
sessing them; but were we to give it, without price, to others,
all would claim it, without price, on the ordinary ground of
gentis amicissimae.1
i.t Most favored nation.
OF
Mr. Adams being appointed Minister Plenipotentiary of the
United States, to London, left us in June, and in July, 1785,
Dr. Franklin returned to America, and I was appointed his
successor at Paris. In February, 1780, Mr. Adams wrote to me,
pressingly, to join him in London immediately, as he thought
he discovered there some symptoms of better disposition to-
wards us. Colonel Smith, his secretary of legation, was the
bearer of his urgencies for my immediate attendance. I, accord-
ingly, left Paris on the ist of March, and, on my arrival in
London, we agreed on a very summary form of tr.aty, propos-
ing an exchange of citizenship for our citizens, our ships, and
our productions generally, except as to office. On my presenta-
tion, as usual, to the King and Queen, at their levees, it was
impossible for anything to be more ungracious, than their no-
tice of Mr. Adams and myself. I saw, at once, that the ulcera-
tions of mind in that quarter, left nothing to be expected on
the subject of my attendance; and, on the first conference
with the Marquis of Caermarthen, the Minister for foreign
affairs, the distance and disinclination which he betrayed in
his conversation, the vagueness and evasions of his answers to
us, confirmed me in the belief of their aversion to have any-
thing to do with us. We delivered him, however, our Projet,
Mr. Adams not despairing as much as I did, of its effect. We
afterwards, by one or more notes, requested his appointment of
an interview and conference, which, without directly declining,
he evaded, by pretences of other pressing occupations for the
moment. After staying there seven weeks, till within a few days
of the expiration of our commission, I informed the minister,
by note, that my duties at Paris required my return to that
place, and that I should, with pleasure, be the bearer of any
commands to his Ambassador there. He answered, that he had
none, and, wishing me a pleasant journey, I left London the
26th, and arrived at Paris the 3Oth of April.
While in London, we entered into negotiations with the
Chevalier Pinto, Ambassador of Portugal, at that place. The
only article of difficulty between us was, a stipulation that our
66
THOMAS JSFFSRSON
bread stuff should be received in Portugal, in the form of flour
as well as of grain. He approved of it himself, but observed
that several Nobles, of great influence at their court, were the
owners of wind-mills in the neighborhood of Lisbon, which
depended much for their profits on manufacturing our wheat,
and that this stipulation would endanger the whole treaty. He
signed it, however, and its fate was what he had candidly por-
tended.
My duties, at Paris, were confined to a few objects; the re-
ceipt of our whale-oils, salted fish, and salted meats, on favor-
able terms; the admission of our rice on equal terms with that
of Piedmont, Egypt and the Levant; a mitigation of the mo-
nopolies of our tobacco by the Farmers-general, and a free
admission of our productions into their islands, were the prin-
cipal commercial objects which required attention; and, on
these occasions, I was powerfully aided by all the influence and
the energies of the Marquis de La Fayette, who proved him-
self equally zealous for the friendship and welfare of both
nations; and, in justice, I must also say, that I found the gov-
ernment entirely disposed to befriend us on all occasions, and
to yield us every indulgence, not absolutely injurious to them-
selves. The Count de Vergennes had the reputation, with the
diplomatic corps, of being wary and slippery in his diplo-
matic intercourse; and so he might be with those whom he
knew to be slippery, and doublefaced themselves. As he saw
that I had no indirect views, practised no subtleties, meddled
in no intrigues, pursued no concealed objects, I found him as
frank, as honorable, as easy of access to reason, as any man
with whom I had ever done business; and I must say the same
for his successor, Montmorin, one of the most honest and wor-
thy of human beings.
Our commerce, in the Mediterranean, was placed under early
alarm, by the capture of two of our vessels and crews by the
Barbary cruisers. I was very unwilling that we should acquiesce
in the European humiliation, of paying a tribute to those law-
less pirates, and endeavored to form an association of the pow-
^UTOBIOGRAPHT OF
ers subject to habitual depredations from them. I accordingly
prepared, and proposed to their Ministers at Paris, for con-
sultation with their governments, articles of a special confed-
eration, in the following form:
"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 powers,
who shall, at any future time, wish to accede to it; the parties
reserving the right to prescribe the conditions of such acces-
sion, according to the circumstances existing at the time it shall
be proposed.
3. "The object of the convention shall be, to compel the
piratical States to perpetual peace, without price, and to guar-
antee that peace to each other.
4. "The operations for obtaining this peace shall be con-
stant cruises on their coast, with a naval force now to be agreed
on. It is not proposed that this force shall be so considerable
as to be inconvenient to any party. It is believed that half a
dozen frigates, with as many Tenders or Xebecs, one half of
which shall be in cruise, while the other half is at rest, will
suffice.
5. "The force agreed to be necessary, shall be furnished by
the parties, in certain quotas, now to be fixed; it being ex-
pected, that each will be willing to contribute, in such propor-
tion as circumstances may render reasonable.
6. "As miscarriages often proceed from the want of har-
mony among officers of different nations, the parties shall now
consider and decide, whether it will not be better to contribute
their quotas in money, to be employed in fitting out and keep-
ing on duty, a single fleet of the force agreed on.
7. "The difficulties and delays, too, which will attend the
68
THOMAS J8FF8RSON
management of these operations, if conducted by the parties
themselves separately, distant as their courts may be from one
another, and incapable of meeting in consultation, suggest a
question, whether it will not be better for them to give full
powers, for that purpose, to their Ambassadors, or other Min-
isters resident at some one court of Europe, who shall form a
Committee, or Council, for carrying this convention into effect;
wherein, the vote of each member shall be computed m pro-
portion to the quota of his sovereign, and the majority so
computed, shall prevail in all questions within the view of this
convention. The court of Versailles is proposed, on account of
its neighborhood to the Mediterranean, and because all those
powers are represented there, who are likely to become parties
to this convention.
8. "To save to that Council the embarrassment of personal
solicitations for office, and to assure the parties that their con-
tributions will be applied solely to the object for which they
are destined, there shall be no establishment of officers for the
said Council, such as Commissioners, Secretaries, or any other
kind, with either salaries or perquisites, nor any other lucra-
tive appointments but such whose functions are to be exercised
on board the said vessels.
9. "Should war arise between any two of the parties to this
convention, it shall not extend to this enterprise, nor interrupt
it; but as to this they shall be reputed at peace.
10. "When Algiers shall be reduced to peace, the other pi-
ratical States, if they refuse to discontinue their piracies, shall
become the objects of this convention, either successively or
together, as shall seem best.
11. "Where this convention would interfere with treaties ac-
tually existing between any of the parties and the States of
Barbary, the treaty shall prevail, and such party shall be al-
lowed to withdraw from the operations against that State."
Spain had just concluded a treaty with Algiers, at the ex-
pense of three millions of dollars, and did not like to relin-
quish the benefit of that, until the other party should fail in
69
^UTOBIOGRAPHT OF
their observance of it. Portugal, Naples, the two Sicilies, Ven-
ice, Malta, Denmark and Sweden, were favorably disposed to
such an association; but their representatives at Paris ex-
pressed apprehensions that France would interfere, and, either
openly or secretly, support the Barbary powers; and they re-
quired, that I should ascertain the dispositions of the Count de
Vergennes on the subject. I had before taken occasion to in-
form 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 ap-
prehensions 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 satis-
fied with this indication of his sentiments, and 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 depre-
dations, 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: toward which,
however, it was expected they would contribute a frigate, and
its expenses, to be in constant cruise. But they were in no con-
dition 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 fulfill with punctuality;
and so it fell through.
In 1786, while at Paris, I became acquainted with John Led-
yard, of Connecticut, a man of genius, of some science, and of
fearless courage and enterprise. He had accompanied Captain
Cook in his voyage to the Pacific, had distinguished himself
on several occasions by an unrivalled intrepidity, and published
an account of that voyage, with details unfavorable to Cook's
deportment towards the savages, and lessening our regrets at
his fate. Ledyard had come to Paris, in the hope of forming a
70
THOMAS J8FFSRSON
company to engage in the fur trade of the Western coast of
America. He was disappointed in this, and, being out of busi-
ness, and of a roaming, restless character, I suggested to him
the enterprise of exploring the Western part of our continent,
by passing through St. Petersburg to Kamschatka, and procur-
ing a passage thence in some of the Russian vessels to Nootka
Sound, whence he might make his way across the continent to
the United States; and I undertook to have the permission of
the Empress of Russia solicited. He eagerly embraced the prop-
osition, and M. de Semoulin, the Russian Ambassador, and more
particularly Baron Grimm, the special correspondent of the
Empress, solicited her permission for him to pass through her
dominions, to the Western coast of America. And here I must
correct a material error, which I have committed in another
place, to the prejudice of the Empress. In writing some notes
of the life of Captain Lewis, prefixed to his "Expedition to the
Pacific," I stated that the Empress gave the permission asked,
and afterwards retracted it. This idea, after a lapse of twenty-
six years, had so insinuated itself into my mind, that I com-
mitted it to paper, without the least suspicion of error. Yet I
find, on recurring to my letters of that date, that the Empress
refused permission at once, considering the enterprise as en-
tirely chimerical. But Ledyard would not relinquish it, per-
suading himself that, by proceeding to St. Petersburg, he could
satisfy the Empress of its practicability, and obtain her per-
mission. He went accordingly, but she was absent on a visit tc
some distant part of her dominions, and he pursued his course
to within two hundred miles of Kamschatka, where he was
overtaken by an arrest from the Empress, brought back to
Poland, and there dismissed. I must therefore, in justice, acquit
the Empress of ever having for a moment countenanced, ever*
by the indulgence of an innocent passage through her terri-
tories, this interesting enterprise.
The pecuniary distresses of France produced this year g
measure of which there had been no example for nearly two
centuries, and the consequences of which, good and evil, are
OF
not yet calculable. For its remote causes, we must go a little
back.
Celebrated writers of France and England had already
sketched good principles on the subject of government; yet the
American Revolution seems first to have awakened the think-
ing part of the French nation in general, from the sleep of
despotism in which they were sunk. The officers too, who had
been to America, were mostly young men, less shackled by
habit and prejudice, and more ready to assent to the sugges-
tions of common sense, and feeling of common rights, than
others. They came back with new ideas and impressions. The
press, notwithstanding its shackles, began to disseminate them ;
conversation assumed new freedoms ; Politics became the theme
of all societies, male and female, and a very extensive and zeal-
ous party was formed, which acquired the appellation of the
Patriotic party, who, sensible of the abusive government under
which they lived, sighed for occasions of reforming it. This
party comprehended all the honesty of the kingdom, sufficiently
at leisure to think, the men of letters, the easy Bourgeois, the
young nobility, partly from reflection, partly from mode; for
these sentiments became matter of mode, and as such, united
most of the young women to the party. Happily for the na-
tion, it happened, at the same moment, that the dissipations of
the Queen and court, the abuses of the pension-list, and dilapi-
dations in the administration of every branch of the finances,
had exhausted the treasures and credit of the nation, insomuch
that its most necessary functions were paralyzed. To reform
these abuses would have overset the Minister; to impose new
taxes by the authority of the King, was known to be impos-
sible, from the determined opposition of the Parliament to
their enregistry. No resource remained then, but to appeal to
the nation. He advised, therefore, the call of an Assembly of
the most distinguished characters of the nation, in the hope
that, by promises of various and valuable improvements in the
organization and regimen of the government, they would be
induced to authorize new taxes, to control the opposition of the
72
THOMAS ySFFSRSON
Parliament, and to raise the annual revenue to the level of ex-
penditures. An Assembly of Notables therefore, about one hun-
dred and fifty in number, named by the King, convened on the
22d of February. The Minister (Calonne) stated to them, that
the annual excess of expenses beyond the revenue, when Louis
XVI. carne to the throne, was thirty-seven millions of livres;
that four hundred and forty millions had been borrowed to re-
establish the navy; that the American war had cost them four-
teen hundred and forty millions (two hundred and fifty-six
millions of dollars), and that the interest of these sums, with
other increased expenses, had added forty millions more to the
annual deficit. (But a subsequent and more candid estimate
made it fifty-six millions.) He proffered them a universal re-
dress of grievances, laid open those grievances fully, pointed
out sound remedies, and, covering his canvas with objects of
this magnitude, the deficit dwindled to a little accessory,
scarcely attracting attention. The persons chosen were the
most able and independent characters in the kingdom, and
their support, if it could be obtained, would be enough for
him. They improved the occasion for redressing their griev-
ances, and agreed that the public wants should be relieved;
but went into an examination of the causes of them. It was
supposed that Calonne was conscious that his accounts could
not bear examination; and it was said, and believed, that he
asked of the King, to send four members to the Bastile, of
whom the Marquis de La Fayette was one, to banish twenty
others, and two of his Ministers. The King found it shorter to
banish him. His successor went on in full concert with the As-
sembly. The result was an augmentation of the revenue, a
promise of economies in its expenditure, of an annual settle-
ment of the public accounts before a council, which the Comp-
troller, having been heretofore obliged to settle «only with the
King in person, of course never settled at all; an acknowledg-
ment that the King could not lay a new tax, a reformation of
the Criminal laws, abolition of torture, suppression of corvees,
reformation of the gabelles, removal of the interior Custom
73
^UTOBIOGRAPHT OF
Houses, free commerce of grain, internal and external, and
the establishment of Provincial Assemblies; which, altogether,
constituted a great mass of improvement in the condition of
the nation. The establishment of the Provincial Assemblies
was, in itself, a fundamental improvement. They would be of
the choice of the people, one-third renewed every year, in those
provinces where there are no States, that is to say, over abouf
three-fourths of the kingdom. They would be partly an Execu-
tive themselves, and partly an Executive Council to the In-
tendant, to whom the Executive power, in his province, had
been heretofore entirely delegated. Chosen by the people, they
would soften the execution of hard laws, and, having a right of
representation to the King, they would censure bad laws, sug-
gest good ones, expose abuses, and their representations, when
united, would command respect. To the other advantages,
might be added the precedent itself of calling the Assemblee
des Notables, which would perhaps grow into habit. The hope
was, that the improvements thus promised would be carried
into effect; that they would be maintained during the present
reign, and that that would be long enough for them to take
some root in the constitution, so that they might come to be
considered as a part of that, and be protected by time, and the
attachment of the nation.
The Count de Vergennes had died a few days before the
meeting of the Assembly, and the Count de Montmorin had
been named Minister of Foreign Affairs, in his place. Villedeuil
succeeded Calonne, as Comptroller General, and Lomenie de
Bryenne, Archbishop of Thoulouse, afterwards of Sens, and
ultimately Cardinal Lomenie, was named Minister principal,
with whom the other Ministers were to transact the business of
their departments, heretofore done with the King in person;
and the Duke de Nivernois, and M. de Malesherbes, were
called to the Council. On the nomination of the Minister prin-
cipal, the Marshals de Segur and de Castries retired from the
departments of War and Marine, unwilling to act subordi-
nately, or to share the blame of proceedings taken out of their
74
THOMAS ySFFSRSON
direction. They were succeeded by the Count de Brienne,
brother of the Prime Minister, and the Marquis de La Luzerne,
brother to him who had been Minister in the United States.
A dislocated wrist, unsuccessfully set, occasioned advice
from my surgeon, to try the mineral waters of Aix, in Pro-
vence, as a corroborant. I left Paris for that place therefore,
on the 28th of February, and proceeded up the Seine, through
Champagne and Burgundy, and down the Rhone through the
Beaujolais by Lyons, Avignon, Nismes to Aix; where, finding
on trial no benefit from the waters, I concluded to visit the
rice country of Piedmont, to see if anything might be learned
there, to benefit the rivalship of our Carolina rice with that,
ind thence to make a tour of the seaport towns of France,
along its Southern and Western coast, to inform myself, if any-
thing could be done to favor our commerce with them. From
Aix, therefore, I took my route by Marseilles, Toulon, Hieres,
Nice, across the Col de Tende, by Coni, Turin, Vercelli, No-
vara, Milan, Pavia, Novi, Genoa. Thence, returning along the
coast of Savona, Noli, Albenga, Oneglia, Monaco, Nice, An-
tibes, Frejus, Aix, Marseilles, Avignon, Nismes, Montpcllier,
Frontignan, Cette, Agde, and along the canal of Languedoc,
by Bezieres, Narbonne, Cascassonne, Castelnaudari, through
the Souterrain of St. Feriol, and back by Castelnaudari, to
Toulouse; thence to Montauban, and down the Garonne by
Langon to Bordeaux. Thence to Rochefort, la Rochelle, Nantes,
L'Orient; then back by Rennes to Nantes, and up the Loire
by Angers, Tours, Ambolse, Blois to Orleans, thence direct tc
Paris, where I arrived on the loth of June. Soon after my re-
turn from this journey, to wit, about the latter part of July,
I received my younger daughter, Maria, from Virginia, by the
way of London, the youngest having died some time before.
The treasonable perfidy of the Prince of Orange, Stadtholder
and Captain General of the United Netherlands, in the war
which England waged against them, for entering into a treaty
of commerce with the United States, is known to all. As their
Executive officer, charged with the conduct of the war, he con-
^UTOJBIOGRAPHT OP
trived to baffle all the measures of the States General, to dis-
locate all their military plans and played false into the hands
of England against his own country, on every possible occa-
sion, confident in her protection, and in that of the King of
Prussia, brother to his Princess. The States General, indig-
nant at this patricidal conduct, applied to France for aid, ac-
cording to the stipulations of the treaty concluded with her in
'85. It was assured to them readily, and in cordial terms, in a
letter from the Count de Vergennes, to the Marquis de Verac,
Ambassador of France at the Hague, of which the following is
an extract:
Extract from the despatch of the Count de Vergennes?
to the Marquis de Verac, Ambassador from France, at the
Hague, dated March i, 1786:
"The King will give his aid, as far as may be in his power,
towards the success of the affair, and will, on his part, invite
the Patriots to communicate to him their views, their plans,
and their discontents. You may assure them that the King
lakes a real interest in themselves as well as their cause, and
that they may rely upon his protection. On this they may place
the greater dependence, as we do not conceal, that if the Stadt-
holder resumes his former influence, the English System will
soon prevail, and our alliance become a mere affair of the imagi-
nation. The Patriots will readily feel, that this position would
be incompatible both with the dignity and consideration of his
Majesty. But in case the Chief of the Patriots should have to
fear a division, they would have time sufficient to reclaim those
whom the Anglomaniacs had misled, and to prepare matters in
such a manner, that the question when again agitated, might
be decided according to their wishes. In such a hypothetical
case, the King authorizes you to act in concert with them, to
pursue the direction which they may think proper to give you,
and to employ every means to augment the number of the
partisans of the good cause. It remains for me to speak of the
personal security of the Patriots. You may assure them, that
under every circumstance, the King will take them under his
76
THOMAS JEFFERSON
immediate protection, and you will make known wherever you
may judge necessary, that his Majesty will regard as a personal
offence every undertaking against their liberty. It is to be pre-
sumed that this language, energetically maintained, may have
some effect on the audacity of the Anglomaniacs, and that the
Prince de Nassau will feel that he runs some risk in provoking
the resentment of his Majesty." 1
This letter was communicated by the Patriots to me, when
at Amsterdam, in 1788, and a copy sent by me to Mr. Jay, in
my letter to him of March 16, 1788.
The object of the Patriots was, to establish a representa-
tive and republican government. The majority of the States
General were with them, but the majority of the populace of
the towns was with the Prince of Orange ; and that populace was
played off with great effect, by the triumvirate of ... Harris,
the English Ambassador, afterwards Lord Malmesbury, the
Prince of Orange, a stupid man, and the Princess as much a
man as either of her colleagues, in audaciousness, in enterprise,
and in the thirst of domination. By these, the mobs of the
Hague were excited against the members of the States Gen-
eral; their persons were insulted and endangered in the streets;
the sanctuary of their houses was violated; and the Prince,
whose function and duty it was to repress and punish these
violations of order, took no steps for that purpose. The States
General, for their own protection, were therefore obliged to
place their militia under the command of a Committee. The
Prince filled the courts of London and Berlin with complaints
at this usurpation of his prerogatives, and, forgetting that he
was but the first servant of a Republic, marched his regular
troops against the city of Utrecht, where the States were in
session. They were repulsed by the militia. His interests now
became marshalled with those of the public enemy, and against
his own country. The States, therefore, exercising their rights
of sovereignty, deprived him of all his powers. The great Fred-
i. Translation supplied by editors of Memorial Edition; in Jefferson'^
text this appears in French,
77
OF
eric hari died in August, '86. He had never intended to break
with France in support of the Prince of Orange. During the
illness of which he died, he had, through the Duke of Bruns-
wick, declared to the Marquis de La Fayette, who was then
at Berlin, that he meant not to support the English interest in
Holland: that he might assure the government of France, his
only wish was, that some honorable place in the Constitution
should be reserved for the Stadtholder and his children, and
that he would take no part in the quarrel, unless an entire
abolition of the Stadtholderate should be attempted. But his
place was now occupied by Frederic William, his great nephew,
a man of little understanding, much caprice, and very incon-
siderate; and the Princess, his sister, although her husband
was in arms against the legitimate authorities of the country,
attempting to go to Amsterdam, for the purpose of exciting
the mobs of that place, and being refused permission to pass a
military post on the way, he put the Duke of Brunswick at the
head of twenty thousand men, and made demonstrations of
marching on Holland. The King of France hereupon declared,
by his Charge des Affaires in Holland, that if the Prussian
troops continued to menace Holland with an invasion, his Maj-
esty, in quality of Ally, was determined to succor that prov-
ince. In answer to this, Eden gave official information to Count
Montmorin, that England must consider as at an end its con-
vention with France relative to giving notice of its naval arma-
ments, and that she was arming generally. War being now
imminent, Eden, since Lord Aukland, questioned me on the
effect of our treaty with France, in the case of a war, and what
might be our dispositions. I told him frankly, and without hesi-
tation, that our dispositions would be neutral, and that I
thought it would be the interest of both these powers that we
should be so; because, it would relieve both from all anxiety
as to feeding their West India islands; that England, too, by
suffering us to remain so, would avoid a heavy land war on
our Continent, which might very much cripple her proceedings
elsewhere; that our treaty, indeed, obliged us to receive into
78
THOMAS JSFFSRSON
our ports the.armed vessels of France, with their prizes, and tG
refuse admission to the prizes made on her by her enemies: that
there was K clause, also, by which we guaranteed to France her
American possessions, which might perhaps force us into tha
war, if these were attacked. "Then it will be war," said he, "for
they will assuredly be attacked." Liston, at Madrid, about the
same time, made the same inquiries of Carmichael. The Gov-
ernment of France then declared a determination to form a
camp of observation at Givet, commenced arming her marine,
and named the Bailli de Suffrein their Generalissimo on the
Ocean. She secretly engaged, also, in negotiations with Rus-
sia, Austria, and Spain, to form a quadruple alliance. The
Duke of Brunswick having advanced to the confines of Hol-
land, sent some of his officers to Givet, to reconnoitre the state
of things there, and report them to him. He said afterwards,
that "if there had been only a few tents at that place, he should
not have advanced further, for that the King would not, merely
for the interest of his sister, engage in a war with France."
But, finding that there was not a single company there, he
boldly entered the country, took their towns as fast as he pre-
sented himself before them, and advanced on Utrecht. The
States had appointed the Rhingrave of Salm their Commander-
in-Chief; a Prince without talents, without courage, and with-
out principle. He might have held out in Utrecht for a con-
siderable time, but he surrendered the place without firing a
gun, literally ran away and hid himself, so that for months it
was not known what had become of him. Amsterdam was then
attacked, and capitulated. In the meantime, the negotiations
for the quadruple alliance were proceeding favorably; but the
secrecy with which they were attempted to be conducted, was
penetrated by Fraser, Charge d'Affaires of England at St.
Petersburg, who instantly notified his court, and gave the alarm
to Prussia. The King saw at once what would be his situation,
between the jaws of France, Austria, and Russia. In great dis-
may, he besought the court of London not to abandon him, sent
Alvensleben to Paris to explain and soothe; and England,
79
tAUTOBIOGRAPHT OF
through the Duke of Dorset and Eden, renewed her confer-
ences for accommodation. The Archbishop, who shuddered at
the idea of war, and preferred a peaceful surrender of right
to an armed vindication of it, received them with open arms,
entered into cordial conferences, and a declaration, and count-
er-declaration, were cooked up at Versailles, and sent to Lon-
don for approbation. They were approved there, reached Paris
at one o'clock of the 2;th, and were signed that night at Ver-
sailles. It was said and believed at Paris, that M. de Mont-
morin, literally "pleuroit comme un enfant," when obliged to
sign this counter-declaration; so distressed was he by the dis-
honor of sacrificing the Patriots, after assurances so solemn of
protection, and absolute encouragement to proceed. The Prince
of Orange was reinstated in all his powers, now become regal.
A great emigration of the Patriots took place; all were deprived
of office, many exiled, and their property confiscated. They
were received in France, and subsisted, for some time, on her
bounty. Thus fell Holland, by the treachery of her Chief, from
her honorable independence, to become a province of England ;
and so, also, her Stadtholder, from the high station of the first
citizen of a free Republic, to be the servile Viceroy of a foreign
Sovereign. And this was effected by a mere scene of bullying
and demonstration; not one of the parties, France, England, or
Prussia, having ever really meant to encounter actual war for
the interest of the Prince of Orange. But it had all the effect of
a real and decisive war,
Our first essay, in America, to establish a federative govern-
ment had fallen, on trial, very short of its object. During the
war of Independence, while the pressure of an external enemy
hooped us together, and their enterprises kept us necessarily on
the alert, the spirit of the people, excited by danger, was a sup-
plement to the Confederation, and urged them to zealous exer-
tions, whether claimed by that instrument or not; but, when
peace arid safety were restored, and every man became engaged
in useful and profitable occupation, less attention was paid to
the calls of Congress. The fundamental defect of the Confed-
80
THOMAS JSFFSRSON
eration was, that Congress was not authorized to act immedi-
ately on the people, and by its own officers. Their power was
only requisitory, and these requisitions were addressed to the
several Legislatures, to be by them carried into execution, with-
out other coercion than the moral principle of duty. This al-
lowed, in fact, a negative to every Legislature, on every meas-
ure proposed by Congress; a negative so frequently exercised
in practice, as to benumb the action of the Federal govern-
ment, and to render it inefficient in its general objects, and
more especially in pecuniary and foreign concerns. The want,
too, of a separation of the Legislative, Executive, and Judiciar
functions, worked disadvantageously in practice. Yet this statt
of things afforded a happy augury of the future march of our
Confederacy, when it was seen that the good sense and good
dispositions of the people, as soon as they perceived the in-
competence of their first compact, instead of leaving its correc-
tion to insurrection and civil war, agreed, with one voice, to
elect deputies to a general Convention, who should peaceably
meet and agree on such a Constitution as "would ensure peace,
justice, liberty, the common defence and general welfare."
This Convention met at Philadelphia on the 25th of May,
'87. It sat with closed doors, and kept all its proceedings
secret, until its dissolution on the iyth of September, when the
results of its labors were published all together. I received a
copy, early in November, and read and contemplated its pro-
visions with great satisfaction. As not a member of the Con-
vention, however, nor probably a single citizen of the Union,
had approved it in all its parts, so I, too, found articles which
I thought objectionable. The absence of express declarations
ensuring freedom of religion, freedom of the press, freedom of
the person under the uninterrupted protection of the Habea*
corpus, and trial by jury in Civil as well as in Criminal
cases, excited my jealousy; and the re-eligibility of the Presi
dent for life, I quite disapproved. I expressed freely, in
letters to my friends, and most particularly to Mr. Madison
and General Washington, my approbations and objections,
81
^UTOBIOGRAPHT OF
How the good should be secured and the ill brought to rights.,
was the difficulty. To refer it back to a new Convention might
endanger the loss of the whole. My first idea was, that
the nine States first acting, should accept it unconditionally,
and thus secure what in it was good, and that the four
last should accept on the previous condition, that certain
amendments should be agreed to; but a better course was de-
vised, of accepting the whole, and trusting that the good sense
and honest intentions of our citizens, would make the altera-
tions which should be deemed necessary. Accordingly, all ac-
cepted, six without objection, and seven with recommendations
of specified amendments. Those respecting the press, religion,
and juries, with several others, of great value, were accord-
ingly made; but the Habeas corpus was left to the discretion
of Congress, and the amendment against the re-eligibility of
the President was not proposed. My fears of that feature were
founded on the importance of the office, on the fierce conten-
tions it might excite among ourselves, if continuable for life,
and the dangers of interference, either with money or arms,
by foreign nations, to whom the choice of an American Presi-
dent might become interesting. Examples of this abounded in
history; in the case of the Roman Emperors, for instance; of
the Popes, while of any significance; of the German Emperors;
the Kings of Poland, and the Deys of Barbary. I had ob-
served, too. in the feudal history, and in the recent instance,
particularly, of the Stadtholder of Holland, how easily offices,
or tenures for life, slide into inheritances. My wish, therefore,
was, that the President should be elected for seven years, and
be ineligible afterwards. This term I thought sufficient to en-
able him, with the concurrence of the Legislature, to carry
through and establish any system of improvement he should
propose for the general good. But the practice adopted, I think,
is better, allowing his continuance for eight years, with a lia-
bility to be dropped at half way of the term, making that a
period of probation. That his continuance should be restrained
to seven years,, was the opinion of the Convention at an earlier
82
THOMAS
stage of its session, when it voted that term, by a majority oi
eight against two, and by a simple majority that he should be
ineligible a second time. This opinion was confirmed by the
House so late as July 26, referred to the Committee of detail,
reported favorably by them, and changed to the present form
by final vote, on the last day but one only of their session. Of
this change, three States expressed their disapprobation; New
York, by recommending an amendment, that the President
should not be eligible a third time, and Virginia and North
Carolina that he should not be capable of seiving more than
eight, in any term of sixteen years; and though this amend-
ment has not been made in form, yet practice seems to have
established it. The example of four Presidents voluntarily re-
tiring at the end of their eighth year, and the progress of pub-
lic opinion, that the principle is salutary, have given it in prac-
tice the force of precedent and usage; insomuch, that, should
a President consent to be a candidate for a third election,
I trust he would be rejected, on this demonstration of ambitious
views.
But there was another amendment, of which none of us
thought at the time, and in the omission of which, lurks the
germ that is to destroy this happy combination of National
powers in the General government, for matters of National
concern, and independent powers in the States, for what con-
cerns the States severally. In England, it was a great point
gained at the Revolution, that the commissions of the Judges,
which had hitherto been during pleasure, should thenceforth
be made during good behavior. A Judiciary, dependent on the
will of the King, had proved itself the most oppressive of all
tools, in the hands of that Magistrate. Nothing, then, could be
more salutary, than a change there, to the tenure of good be-
havior; and the question of good behavior, left to the vote of
a simple majority in the two Houses of Parliament. Before the
Revolution, we were all good English Whigs, cordiiil in their
free principles, and in their jealousies of their Executive Magis-
trate. These jealousies are very apparent, in all our state Consti-
83
^UTOBIOGRAPHT OF
Uitions; and, in the General government in this instance, we
have gone even beyond the English caution, by requiring a
vote of two-thirds, in one of the Houses, for removing a Judge;
a vote so impossible, where l any defence is made, before men
of ordinary prejudices and passions, that our Judges are effectu-
ally independent of the nation. But this ought not to be. I would
not, indeed, make them dependent on the Executive authority,
as they formerly were in England ; but I deem it indispensable
to the continuance of this government, that they should be
submitted to some practical and impartial control; and that
this, to be imparted, must be compounded of a mixture of
State and Federal authorities. It is not enough that honest men
are appointed Judges. All know the influence of interest on the
mind of man, and how unconsciously his judgment is warped
by that influence. To this bias add that of the esprit de corps,
of their peculiar maxim and creed, that "it is the office of a
good Judge to enlarge his jurisdiction," and the absence of
responsibility; and how can we expect impartial decision
between the General government, of which they are themselves
so eminent a part, and an individual State, from which they
have nothing to hope or fear? We have seen, too, that contrary
to all correct example, they are in the habit of going out of the
question before them, to throw an anchor ahead, and grapple
further hold for future advances of power. They are then, in
fact, the corps of sappers and miners, steadily working to un-
dermine the independent rights of the States, and to consoli-
date all power in the hands of that government in which they
have so important a freehold estate. But it is not by the consoli-
dation, or concentration of powers, but by their distribution,
that good government is effected. Were not this great country
already divided into States, that division must be made, that
each might do for itself what concerns itself directly, and what
it can so much better do than a distant authority. Every State
i. In the impeachment of Judge Pickering, of New Hampshire, a ha-
bitual and maniac drunkard, no defence was made. Had there been, the
party vote of more than one-third of the Senate would have acquitted
him. [Jefferson's footnote.]
THOMAS JSFFSRSON
again is divided into counties, each to take care of what lies
within its local bounds; each county again into townships or
wards, to manage minuter details; and every ward into farms,
to be governed each by its individual proprietor. Were we di-
rected from Washington when to sow, and when to reap, we
should soon want bread. It is by this partition of cares, descend-
ing in gradation from general to particular, that the mass of
human affairs may be best managed, for the good and prosperity
of all. I repeat, that I do not charge the Judges with wilful and
ill-intentioned error; but honest error must be arrested, where
its toleration leads to public ruin. As, for the safety of society,
we commit honest maniacs to Bedlam, so judges should be
withdrawn from their bench, whose erroneous biases are leading
us to dissolution. It may, indeed, injure them in fame or in
fortune; but it saves the Republic, which is the first and su-
preme law.
Among the debilities of the government of the Confedera^
tion, no one was more distinguished or more distressing, than
the utter impossibility of obtaining, from the States, the moneys
necessary for the payment of debts, or even for the ordinary
expenses of the government. Some contributed a little, some
less, and some nothing; and the last furnished at length an
excuse for the first to do nothing also. Mr. Adams, while residing
at the Hague, had a general authority to borrow what sums
might be requisite, for ordinary and necessary expenses. In-
terest on the public debt, and the maintenance of the diplo-
matic establishment in Europe, had been habitually provided
in this way. He was now elected Vice-President of the United
States, was soon to return to America, and had referred our
bankers to me for future counsel, on our affairs in their hands.
But I had no powers, no instructions, no means, and no famili-
arity with the subject. It had always been exclusively under his
management, except as to occasional and partial deposits in
the hands of Mr. Grand, banker in Paris, for special and local
purposes. These last had been exhausted for some time, and I
had fervently pressed the Treasury board to replenish this
85
JUTOBIOGRAPHT OF
particular deposit, as Mr. Grand now refused to make further
advances. They answered candidly, that no funds could be ob-
tained until the new government should get into action, and
have time to make its arrangements. Mr. Adams had received
his appointment to the court of London, while engaged at Paris,
with Dr. Franklin and myself, in the negotiations under our
joint commissions. He had repaired thence to London, without
returning to the Hague, to take leave of that government. He
thought it necessary, however, to do so now, before he should
leave Europe, and accordingly went there. I learned his depar-
ture from London, by a letter from Mrs. Adams, received on the
very day on which he would arrive at the Hague. A consulta-
tion with him, and some provision for the future, was indispen-
sable, while we could yet avail ourselves of his powers; for when
they would be gone, we should be without resource. I was daily
dunned by a Company who had formerly made a small loan to
the United States, the principal of which was now become due;
and our bankers in Amsterdam, had notified me that the inter-
est on our general debt would be expected in June; that if we
failed to pay it, it would be deemed an act of bankruptcy, and
would effectually destroy the credit of the United States, and
all future prospect of obtaining money there; that the loan they
had been authorized to open, of which a third only was filled,
had now ceased to get forward, and rendered desperate that
hope of resource. I saw that there was not a moment to lose,
and set out for the Hague on the second morning after receiv-
ing the information of Mr. Adams's journey. I went the direct
road by Louvres, Senlis, Roye, Pont St. Maxence, Bois le due,
Gournay, Peronne, Cambray, Bouchain, Valenciennes, Mons,
Bruxelles, Malines, Antwerp, Mordick, and Rotterdam, to the
Hague, where I happily found Mr. Adams. He concurred with
me at once in opinion, that something must be done, and that
we ought to risk ourselves on doing it without instructions, to
save the credit of the United States. We foresaw, that before
the new government could be adopted, assembled, establish its
financial system, get the money into the Treasury, and place it
86
THOMAS J8FF8RSON
in Europe, considerable time would elapse; that, therefore, we
had better provide at once, for the years '88, '89, and '90, in
order to place our government at its ease, and our credit in
security, during that trying interval. We set out, therefore, by
the way of Leyden, for Amsterdam, where we arrived on the
loth. I had prepared an estimate, showing that
Florins.
There would be necessary for the year '88 531,937-10
'89 538>54o
'9° 473,540
Total 1,544,017-10
Florins.
To meet this, the bankers had in hand . . . 79,268-2-8
and the unsold bonds would yield . . . . 542,800
622,068-2-8
Leaving a deficit of 921,949-7-4
We proposed then to borrow a million, yielding 920,000
Which would leave a small deficiency of 1,949-7-4
Mr. Adams accordingly executed 1000 bonds, for 1000 florins
each, and deposited them in the hands of our bankers, with
instructions, however, not to issue them until Congress should
ratify the measure. This done, he returned to London, and I
set out for Paris; and, as nothing urgent forbade it, I determined
to return along the banks of the Rhine, to Strasburg, and thence
strike off to Paris. I accordingly left Amsterdam on the 3oth of
March, and proceeded by Utrecht, Nimeguen, Cleves, Duys-
berg, Dusseldorf, Cologne, Bonne, Coblentz, Nassau, Hocheim,
Frankfort, and made an excursion to Hanau, thence to Ma-
yence, and another excursion to Rudesheim, and Johansberg;
then by Oppenheim, Worms, and Manheim, making an excur-
sion to Heidelberg, then by Spire, Carlsruh, Rastadt and Kelh,
to Strasburg, where I arrived April the i6th, and proceeded
again on the i8th, by Phalsbourg, Fenestrange, Dieuze, Mo-
yenvie, Nancy, Toul, Ligny, Bar-le-duc, St. Diziers, Vitry,
Chalons sur Marne, Epernay, Chateau Thierri, Meaux, to Paris,
JUTOBIOGRAPHT OF
Where I arrived on the 236 of April; and I had the satisfac-
tion to reflect, that by this journey our credit was secured,
the new government was placed at ease for two years to come,
and that, as well as myself, relieved from the torment of inces-
sant duns, whose just complaints could not be silenced by any
means within our power.
A Consular Convention had been agreed on in '84, between
Dr. Franklin and the French government, containing several
articles, so entirely inconsistent with the laws of the several
States, and the general spirit of our citizens, that Congress
withheld their ratification, and sent it back to me, with instruc-
tions to get those articles expunged, or modified so as to render
them compatible with our laws. The Minister unwillingly re-
leased us from these concessions, which, indeed, authorized
the exercise of powers very offensive in a free State. After much
discussion, the Convention was reformed in a considerable
degree, and was signed by the Count Montmorin and myself, on
the 1 4th of November, '88; not, indeed, such as I would have
wished, but such as could be obtained with good humor and
friendship.
On my return from Holland, I found Paris as I had left it,
still in high fermentation. Had the Archbishop, on the close of
the Assembly of Notables, immediately carried into opera-
tion the measures contemplated, it was believed they would
all have been registered by the Parliament; but he was slow,
presented his edicts, one after another, and at considerable
intervals, which gave time for the feelings excited by the pro-
ceedings of the Notables to cool off, new claims to be advanced,
and a pressure to arise for a fixed constitution, not subject to
changes at the will of the King. Nor should we wonder at this
pressure, when we consider the monstrous abuses of power
under which this people were ground to powder; when we pass
in review the weight of their taxes, and the inequality of their
distribution; the oppressions of the tithes, the tailles, the
corvees, the gabelles, the farms and the barriers; the shackles
on commerce by monopolies; on industry by guilds and corpo-
88
THOMAS J8FF6RSON
rations; on the freedom of conscience, of thought, and ol
speech; on the freedom of the press by the Censure; and of the
person by Lettres de Cachet; the cruelty of the Criminal code
generally; the atrocities of the Rack; the venality of the
Judges, and their partialities to the rich; the monopoly of
Military honors by the Noblesse; the enormous expenses of the
Queen, the Princes and the Court; the prodigalities of pensions;
and the riches, luxury, indolence and immorality of the Clergy.
Surely under such a mass of misrule and oppression, a people
might justly press for a thorough reformation, and might even
dismount their rough-shod riders, and leave them to walk on
their own legs. The edicts, relative to the corvees and free circu-
lation of grain, were first presented to the Parliament and regis-
tered; but those for the impot territorial, and stamp tax, offered
some time after, were refused by the Parliament, which proposed
a call of the States General, as alone competent to their author-
ization. Their refusal produced a Bed of justice, and their exile
to Troyes. The Advocates, however, refusing to attend them,
a suspension in the administration of justice took place. The
Parliament held out for awhile, but the ennui of their exile and
absence from Paris, began at length to be felt, and some dispo-
sitions for compromise to appear. On their consent, therefore,
to prolong some of the former taxes, they were recalled from
exile, the King met them in session, November 19, '87, promised
to call the States General in the year '92, and a majority ex-
pressed their assent to register an edict for successive and
annual loans from 1788 to '92; but a protest being entered by
the Duke of Orleans, and this encouraging others in a disposi-
tion to retract, the King ordered peremptorily the registry of
the edict, and left the Assembly abruptly. The Parliament im-
mediately protested, that the votes for the enregistry had not
been legally taken, and that they gave no sanction to the loans
proposed. This was enough to discredit and defeat them. Here-
upon issued another edict, for the establishment of a cour
pleniere, and the suspension of all the Parliaments in the king-
dom. This being opposed, as might be expected, by reclama-
89
tAUTOBIOGRAPHT OF
tions from all the Parliaments and Provinces, the King gave
way, and by an edict of July 5th, '88, renounced his cour
pleniere, and promised the States General for the ist of May,
of the ensuing year; and the Archbishop, finding the times
beyond his faculties, accepted the promise of a Cardinal's hat,
was removed [September '88 ] from the Ministry, and M.
Necker was called to the department of finance. The innocent
rejoicings of the people of Paris on this change provoked the
interference of an officer of the city guards, whose order for
their dispersion not being obeyed, he charged them with fixed
bayonets, killed two or three, and wounded many. This dis-
persed them for the moment, but they collected the next day
in great numbers, burnt ten or twelve guard-houses, killed two
or three of the guards, and lost six or eight more of their own
number. The city was hereupon put under Martial law, and
after awhile the tumult subsided. The effect of this change of
ministers, and the promise of the States General at an early
day, tranquillized the nation. But two great questions now oc-
curred, i st. What proportion shall the number of deputies of
the Tiers fitat bear to those of the Nobles and Clergy? Ano
2d, shall they sit in the same or in distinct apartments? M.
Necker, desirous of avoiding himself these knotty questions,
proposed a second call of the same Notables, and that their
advice should be asked on the subject. They met, November 9,
'88; and, by five bureaux against one, they recommended the
forms of the States General of 1614; wherein the Houses were
separate, and voted by orders, not by persons. But the whole
nation declaring at once against this, and that the Tiers Etat
should be, in numbers, equal to both the other orders, and the
Parliament deciding for the same proportion, it was determined
so to be, by a declaration of December 27th, '88. A Report of
M. Necker, to the King, of about the same date, contained
other very important concessions, i. That the King could
neither lay a new tax, nor prolong an old one. 2 . It expressed a
readiness to agree on the periodical meeting of the States. 3. To
consult on the necessary restriction on Lettres de Cachet; and
90
THOMAS J8FF8RSON
4, How far the press might be made free. 5. It admits that the
States are to appropriate the public money; and 6. That Minis-
ters shall be responsible for public expenditures. And these
concessions came from the very heart of the King. He had not
a wish but for the good of the nation; and for that object, no
personal sacrifice would ever have cost him a moment's regret;
but his mind was weakness itself, his constitution timid, his
judgment null, and without sufficient firmness even to stand
by the faith of his word. His Queen, too, haughty and bearing
no contradiction, had an absolute ascendency over him; and
around her were rallied the King's brother d'Artois, the court
generally, and the aristocratic part of his Ministers, particu-
larly Breteuil, Broglio, Vauguyon, Foulon, Luzerne, men whose
principles of government were those of the age of Louis XIV.
Against this host, the good counsels of Necker, Montmorin, St.
Priest, although in unison with the wishes of the King himself,
were of little avail. The resolutions of the morning, formed
under their advice, would be reversed in the evening, by the
influence of the Queen and court. But the hand of heaven
weighed heavily indeed on the machinations of this junto;
producing collateral incidents, not arising out of the case, yet
powerfully co-exciting the nation to force a regeneration of its
government, and overwhelming with accumulated difficulties,
this liberticide resistance. For, while laboring under the want of
money for even ordinary purposes, in a government which
required a million of livres a day, and driven to the last ditch
by the universal call for liberty, there came on a winter of
such severe cold, as was without example in the memory of
man, or in the written records of history. The Mercury was at
times 50° below the freezing point of Fahrenheit, and 22°
below that of Reaumur. All out-door labor was suspended, and
the poor, without the wages of labor were, of course, without
either bread or fuel. The government found its necessities
aggravated by that of procuring immense quantities of fire-
wood, and of keeping great fires at all the cross streets, around
which the people gathered in crowds, to avoid perishing with
OF
cold. Bread, too, was to be bought, and distributed daily,
gratis, until a relaxation of the season should enable the people
to work; and the slender stock of bread stuff had for some time
threatened famine, and had raised that article to an enormous
price. So great, indeed, was the scarcity of bread, that, from the
highest to the lowest citizen, the bakers were permitted to deal
but a scanty allowance per head, even to those who paid for it;
and, in cards of invitation to dine in the richest houses, the
guest was notified to bring his own bread. To eke out the exis-
tence of the people, every person who had the means, was
called on for a weekly subscription, which the Cures collected,
and employed in providing messes for the nourishment of the
poor, and vied with each other in devising such economical
compositions of food, as would subsist the greatest number
with the smallest means. This want of bread had been foreseen
for some time past, and M. de Montmorin had desired me to
notify it in America, and that, in addition to the market price,
a premium should be given on what should be brought from
the United States. Notice was accordingly given, and produced
considerable supplies. Subsequent information made the im-
portations from America, during the months of March, April
land May, into the Atlantic ports of France, amount to about
twenty-one thousand barrels of flour, besides what went to
other ports, and in other months; while our supplies to their
West Indian islands relieved them also from that drain. This
distress for bread continued till July.
Hitherto no acts of popular violence had been produced by
the struggle for political reformation. Little riots, on ordinary
incidents, had taken place as at other times, in different parts
of the kingdom, in which some lives, perhaps a dozen or
twenty, had been lost; but in the month of April, a more seri-
ous one occurred in Paris, unconnected, indeed, with the Revo-
lutionary principle, but making part of the history of the day.
The Fauxbourg St. Antoine is a quarter of the city inhabited
entirely by the class of day laborers and journeymen in
every line. A rumor was spread among them, that a great paper
92
THOMAS
manufacturer, of the name of Reveillon, had proposed, on
some occasion, that their wages should be lowered to fifteen
sous a day. Inflamed at once into rage, and without inquiring
into its truth, they flew to his house in vast numbers, destroyed
everything in it, and in his magazines and work-shops, without
secreting, however, a pin's worth to themselves, and were con-
tinuing this work of devastation, when the regular troops were
called in. Admonitions being disregarded, they were of neces-
sity fired on, and a regular action ensued, in which about one
hundred of them were killed, before the rest would disperse.
There had rarely passed a year without such a riot, in some
part or other of the Kingdom ; and this is distinguished only as
contemporary with the Revolution, although not produced
by it.
The States General were opened on the 5th of May, '89, by
speeches from the King, the Garde des Sceaux, Lamoignon,
and M. Necker. The last was thought to trip too lightly over
the constitutional reformations which were expected. His no-
tices of them in this speech, were not as full as in his previous
'Rapport au Roi.' This was observed, to his disadvantage; but
much allowance should have been made for the situation in
which he was placed, between his own counsels, and those of
the ministers and party of the court. Overruled in his own
opinions, compelled to deliver, and to gloss over those of his
opponents, and even to keep their secrets, he could not come
forward in his own attitude.
The composition of the Assembly, although equivalent, on
the whole, to what had been expected, was something different
in its elements. It had been supposed, that a superior education
would carry into the scale of the Commons a respectable por-
tion of the Noblesse. It did so as to those of Paris, of its vicin-
ity, and of the other considerable cities, whose greater inter-
course with enlightened society had liberalized their minds,
and prepared them to advance up to the measure of the times.
But the Noblesse of the country, which constituted two-thirds
of that body, were far in their rear. Residing constantly on
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OF
their patrimonial feuds, and familiarized, by daily habit, with
Seigneurial powers and practices, they had not yet learned to
suspect their inconsistence with reason and right. They were
willing to submit to equality of taxation, but not to descend
from their rank and prerogatives to be incorporated in session
with the Tiers fitat. Among the Clergy, on the other hand, it
had been apprehended that the higher orders of the Hierarchy,
by their wealth and connections, would have carried the elec-
tions generally; but it turned out, that in most cases, the lower
clergy had obtained the popular majorities. These consisted of
the Cur6s, sons of the peasantry, who had been employed to
do all the drudgery of parochial services for ten, twenty, or
thirty Louis ay ear; while their superiors were consuming their
princely revenues in palaces of luxury and indolence.
The objects for which this body was convened, being of the
first order of importance, I felt it very interesting to understand
the views of the parties of which it was composed, and espe-
cially the ideas prevalent as to the organization contemplated
for their government. I went, therefore, daily from Paris to
Versailles, and attended their debates, generally till the hour of
adjournment. Those of the Noblesse were impassioned and
tempestuous. They had some able men on both sides, actuated
by equal zeal. The debates of the Commons were temperate,
rational, and inflexibly firm. As preliminary to all other busi-
ness, the awful questions came on, shall the States sit in one, or
in distinct apartments? And shall they vote by heads or
houses? The opposition was soon found to consist of the Epis-
copal order among the clergy, and two-thirds of the Noblesse;
while the Tiers fitat were, to a man, united and determined.
After various propositions of compromise had failed, the Com-
mons undertook to cut the Gordian knot. The Abbe Sieyes, the
most logical head of the nation, (author of the pamphlet
"Qu'est ce que le Tiers fitat?" which had electrified that coun-
try, as Paine's Common Sense did us,) after an impressive
speech on the loth of June, moved that a last invitation should
be sent to the Noblesse and Clergy, to attend in the hall of
94
THOMAS JSFF8RSON
the States, collectively or individually, for the verification of
powers, to which the Commons would proceed immediately,
either in their presence or absence. This verification being fin-
ished, a motion was made, on the i5th, that they snould con-
stitute themselves a National Assembly; which was decided on
the iyth, by a majority of four-fifths. During the debates on
this question, about twenty of the Cures had joined them, and
a proposition was made, in the chamber of the Clergy, that
their whole body should join. This was rejected, at first, by a
small majority only; but, being afterwards somewhat modi-
fied, it was decided affirmatively, by a majority of eleven.
While this was under debate, and unknown to the court, to
wit, on the igth, a council was held in the afternoon, at Marly,
wherein it was proposed that the King should interpose, by a
declaration of his sentiments, in a seance royale. A form of
declaration was proposed by Necker, which, while it censured,
in general, the proceedings, both of the Nobles and Commons,
announced the King's views, such as substantially to coincide
with the Commons. It was agreed to in Council, the seance
was fixed for the 22d, the meetings of the States were till then
to be suspended, and everything, in the meantime, kept secret.
The members, the next morning (the 2Oth) repairing to their
house, as usual, found the doors shut and guarded, a proclama-
tion posted up for a seance royale on the 22d, and a suspen-
sion of their meetings in the meantime. Concluding that their
dissolution was now to take place, they repaired to a building
called the "Jeu de paume" (or Tennis court) and there bound
themselves by oath to each other, never to separate, of their
own accord, till they had settled a constitution for the nation,
on a solid basis, and, if separated by force, that they would re-
assemble in some other place. The next day they met in the
church of St. Louis, and were joined by a majority of the
clergy. The heads of the Aristocracy saw that all was lost with-
out some bold exertion. The King was still at Marly. Nobody
was permitted to approach him but their friends. He was as-
sailed by falsehoods in all shapes. He was made to believe that
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OF
the Commons were about to absolve the army from their oath
of fidelity to him, and to raise their pay. The court party were
now all rage and desperation. They procured a committee to
be held, consisting of the King and his Ministers, to which
Monsieur and the Count d'Artois should be admitted. At this
committee, the latter attacked M. Necker personally, ar-
raigned his declaration, and proposed one which some of his
prompters had put into his hands. M. Necker was brow-beaten
and intimidated, and the King shaken. He determined that the
two plans should be deliberated on the next day, and the seance
royale put off a day longer. This encouraged a fiercer attack
on M. Necker the next day. His draught of a declaration was
entirely broken up, and that of the Count d'Artois inserted
into it. Himself and Montmorin offered their resignation, which
was refused; the Count d'Artois saying to M. Necker, "No,
sir, you must be kept as the hostage; we hold you responsible
for all the ill which shall happen. " This change of plan was
immediately whispered without doors. The Noblesse were in
triumph; the people in consternation. I was quite alarmed at
this state of things. The soldiery had not yet indicated which
side they should take, and that which they should support
would be sure to prevail. I considered a successful reforma-
tion of government in France, as insuring a general refor-
mation through Europe, and the resurrection, to a new life,
of their people, now ground to dust by the abuses of the
governing powers. I was much acquainted with the leading
patriots of the Assembly. Being from a country which had suc-
cessfully passed through a similar reformation, they were dis-
posed to my acquaintance, and had some confidence in me. I
urged, most strenuously, an immediate compromise; to secure
what the government was now ready to yield, and trust to fu-
ture occasions for what might still be wanting. It was well un-
derstood that the King would grant, at this time, i. Freedom
of the person by Habeas corpus: 2. Freedom of conscience:
3. Freedom of the press: 4. Trial by jury: 5. A representative
Legislature: 6. Annual meetings: 7. The origination of laws:
96
THOMAS JSFFSRSON
8. The exclusive right of taxation and appropriation: and 9.
The responsibility of Ministers; and with the exercise of these
powers they could obtain, in future, whatever might be further
necessary to improve and preserve their constitution. They
thought otherwise, however, and events have proved their la-
mentable error. For, after thirty years of war, foreign and
domestic, the loss of millions of lives, the prostration of private
happiness, and the foreign subjugation of their own country
for a time, they have obtained no more, nor even that securely.
They were unconscious of (for who could foresee?) the melan-
choly sequel of their well-meant perseverance; that their physi-
cal force would be usurped by a first tyrant to trample on the
independence, and even the existence, of other nations: that
this would afford a fatal example for the atrocious conspiracy
of Kings against their people; would generate their unholy
and homicide alliance to make common cause among them-
selves, and to crush, by the power of the whole, the efforts of
any part to moderate their abuses and oppressions.
When the King passed, the next day, through the lane
formed from the Chateau to the "Hotel des Etats," there was
a dead silence. He was about an hour in the House, delivering
his speech and declaration. On his coming out, a feeble cry of
"vive le Roi" was raised by some children, but the people re-
mained silent and sullen. In the close of his speech, he had
ordered that the members should follow him, and resume their
deliberations the next day. The Noblesse followed him, and so
did the Clergy, except about thirty, who, with the Tiers, re-
mained in the room, and entered into deliberation. They pro-
tested against what the King had done, adhered to all their
former proceedings, and resolved the inviolability of their own
persons. An officer came, to order them out of the room in the
King's name. "Tell those who sent you/' said Mirabeau, "that
we shall not move hence but at our own will, or the point of
the bayonet." In the afternoon, the people, uneasy, began to
assemble in great numbers in the courts, and vicinities of the
palace. This produced alarm. The Queen sent for M. Necker.
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OF
He was conducted, amidst the shouts and acclamations of the
multitude, who filled all the apartments of the palace. He was
a few minutes only with the Queen, and what passed between
them did not transpire. The King went out to ride. He passed
through the crowd to his carriage, and into it, without being
in the least noticed. As M. Necker followed him, universal ac-
clamations were raised of "vive Monsieur Necker, vive le
sauveur de la France opprimee." He was conducted back to
his house with the same demonstrations of affection and anx-
iety. About two hundred deputies of the Tiers, catching the
enthusiasm of the moment, went to his house, and extorted
from him a promise that he would not resign. On the 25th,
forty-eight of the Nobles joined the Tiers, and among them
the Duke of Orleans. There were then with them one hundred
and sixty-four members of the Clergy, although the minority
of that body still sat apart, and called themselves the Cham-
ber of the Clergy. On the 26th, the Archbishop of Paris joined
the Tiers, as did some others of the Clergy and of the No-
blesse.
These proceedings had thrown the people into violent fer-
ment. It gained the soldiery, first of the French guards, extended
to those of every other denomination, except the Swiss, and even
to the body guards of the King. They began to quit their bar-
racks, to assemble in squads, to declare they would defend
the life of the King, but would not be the murderers of their
fellow-citizens. They called themselves the soldiers oj the na-
tion, and left now no doubt on which side they would be, in
case of rupture. Similar accounts came in from the troops in
other parts of the kingdom, giving good reason to believe they
would side with their fathers and brothers, rather than with
their officers. The operation of this medicine at Versailles was
as sudden as it was powerful. The alarm there was so complete,
that in the afternoon of the 27th, the King wrote, with his
own hand, letters to the Presidents of the Clergy and Nobles,
engaging them immediately to join the Tiers. These two bodies
were debating, and hesitating, when notes from the Count
98
THOMAS J8FF8RSON
d'Artois decided their compliance. They went in a body, and
took their seats with the Tiers, and thus rendered the union of
the orders in one chamber complete.
The Assembly now entered on the business of their mission,
and first proceeded to arrange the order in which they would
take up the heads of their constitution, as follows:
First, and as Preliminary to the whole, a general Declara-
tion of the Rights of Man. Then, specifically, the Principles of
the Monarchy; Rights of the Nation; Rights of the King;
Rights of the Citizens; Organization and Rights of the Na-
tional Assembly; Forms necessary for the enactment of Laws;
Organization and Functions of the Provincial and Municipal
Assemblies; Duties and Limits of the Judiciary power; Func-
tions and Duties of the Military power.
A Declaration of the Rights of Man, as the preliminary of
their work, was accordingly prepared and proposed by the
Marquis de La Fayette.
But the quiet of their march was soon disturbed by infor-
mation that troops, and particularly the foreign troops, were
advancing on Paris from various quarters. The King had prob-
ably been advised to this, on the pretext of preserving peace
in Paris. But his advisers were believed to have other things in
contemplation. The Marshal de Broglio was appointed to their
command, a high-flying aristocrat, cool and capable of every-
thing. Some of the French guards were soon arrested, under
other pretexts, but really, on account of their dispositions in
favor of the National cause. The people of Paris forced their
prison, liberated them, and sent a deputation to the Assembly
to solicit a pardon. The Assembly recommended peace and
order to the people of Paris, the prisoners to the King, and
asked from him the removal of the troops. His answer was
negative and dry, saying they might remove themselves, if
they pleased, to Noyons or Soissons. In the meantime, these
troops, to the number of twenty or thirty thousand, had ar-
rived, and were posted in, and between Paris and Versailles.
The bridges and passes were guarded. At three o'clock in the
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^fUTOBIOGRAPHT OF
afternoon of the nth of July, the Count de La Luzerne was
sent to notify M. Necker of his dismission, and to enjoin him
to retire instantly, without saying a word of it to anybody.
He went home, dined, and proposed to his wife a visit to a
friend, but went in fact to his country house at St. Ouen, and
at midnight set out for Brussels. This was not known till the
next day (the i2th,) when the whole Ministry was changed,
except Villedeuil, of the domestic department, and Barenton
Garde des Sceaux. The changes were as follows:
The Baron de Breteuil, President of the Council of Finance;
de la Galaisiere, Comptroller General, in the room of M.
Necker; the Marshal de Broglio, Minister of War, and Foulon
under him, in the room of Puy-Segur; the Duke de la Vau-
guyon, Minister of Foreign Affairs, instead of the Count de
Montmorin; de La Porte, Minister of Marine, in place of the
Count de La Luzerne; St. Priest was also removed from the
Council. Luzerne and Puy-Segur had been strongly of the Aris-
tocratic party in the Council, but they were not considered
equal to the work now to be done. The King was now com-
pletely in the hands of men, the principal among whom had
been noted, through their lives, for the Turkish despotism of
their characters, and who were associated around the King, as
proper instruments for what was to be executed. The .news of
this change began to be known at Paris, about one or two
o'clock. In the afternoon, a body of about one hundred Ger-
man cavalry were advanced, and drawn up in the Place Louis
XV., and about two hundred Swiss posted at a little distance
in their rear. This drew people to the spot, who thus acci
dentally found themselves in front of the troops, merely a'
first as spectators; but, as their numbers increased, their in-
dignation rose. They retired a few steps, and posted themselves
on and behind large piles of stones, large and small, collected
in that place for a bridge, which was to be built adjacent to it.
In this position, happening to be in my carriage on a visit, I
passed through the lane they had formed, without interruption.
But the moment after I had passed, the people attacked the
100
THOMAS J8FF8RSON
cavalry with stones. They charged, but the advantageous posi-
tion of the people, and the showers of stones, obliged the horse
to retire, and quit the field altogether, leaving one of their
number on the ground, and the Swiss in the rear not moving
to their aid. This was the signal for universal insurrection,
and this body of cavalry, to avoid being massacred, retired
towards Versailles. The people now armed themselves with
such weapons as they could find in armorer's shops, and private
houses, and with bludgeons; and were roaming all night,
through all parts of the city, without any decided object. The
next day (the i3th,) the Assembly pressed on the King to
send away the troops, to permit the Bourgeoisie of Paris to
arm for the preservation of order in the city, and offered to
send a deputation from their body to tranquillize them; but
their propositions were refused. A committee of magistrates and
electors of the city were appointed by those bodies, to take
upon them its government. The people, 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 car-
ried to the corn-market. Here they got some arms, and the
French guards began to form and train them. The city-com-
mittee determined to raise forty-eight thousand Bourgeoise,
or rather to restrain their numbers to forty-eight thousand. On
the 1 4th, they sent one of their members (Monsieur de Corny)
to the Hotel des Invalides, to ask arms for their Garde Bour-
geoise. He was followed by, and he found there, a great collec-
tion of people. The Governor of the Invalids came out, and
represented the impossibility of his delivering arms, without
the orders of those from whom he received them. De Corny
advised the people then to retire, and retired himself; but the
people took possession of the arms. It was remarkable, that not
only the Invalids themselves made no opposition, but that a
body of five thousand foreign troops, within four hundred
yards, never stirred. M. de Corny, and five others, were then
sent to ask arms of M. de Launay, Governor of the Bastile.
They found a great collection of people already before the
101
^UTOBIOGRAPHT OF
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 them-
selves to make their demand of the Governor, and in that in-
stant, a discharge from the Bastile killed four persons of those
nearest to the deputies. The deputies retired. I happened to
be at the house of M. de Corny, when he returned to it, and
received from him a narrative of these transactions. On the
retirement of the deputies, the people rushed forward, and
almost in an instant, were in possession of a fortification of
infinite strength, defended by one hundred men, which in other
times had stood several regular sieges, and had never been
taken. How they forced their entrance has never been ex-
plained. 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
Place de Greve, (the place of public execution,) cut off their
heads, and sent them through the city, in triumph, to the
Palais royal. About the same instant, a treacherous corre-
spondence having been discovered in M. de Flesselles, Prevot
des Marchands, they seized him in the Hotel de Ville, where
he was in the execution of his office, and cut off his head. These
events, carried imperfectly to Versailles, were the subject of
two successive deputations from the Assembly to the King, to
both of which he gave dry and hard answers; for nobody had
AS yet been permitted to inform him, truly and fully, of what
had passed at Paris. But at night, the Duke de Liancourt
forced his way into the King's bed chamber, and obliged him
to hear a full and animated detail of the disasters of the day
in Paris. He went to bed fearfully impressed. The decapitation
of de Launay worked powerfully through the night on the
whole Aristocratic party; insomuch, that in the morning, those
of the greatest influence on the Count d'Artois, represented to
him the absolute necessity that the King should give up every-
thing to the Assembly. This according with the dispositions of
the King, he went about eleven o'clock, accompanied only by
T02
THOMAS JSFFSRSON
his brothers, to the Assembly, and there read to them a speech,
in which he asked their interposition to re-establish order. Al-
though couched in terms of some caution, yet the manner in
which it was delivered, made it evident that it was meant as
a surrender at discretion. He returned to the Chateau on foot,
accompanied by the Assembly. They sent off a deputation to
quiet Paris, at the head of which was the Marquis de La Fa-
yette, who had, the same morning, been named Commandant
en chef of the Milice Bourgeoise; and Monsieur Bailly, former
President of the States General, was called for as Prevot des
Marchands. The demolition of the Bastile was now ordered
and begun. A body of the Swiss guards, of the regiment of
Ventimille, and the city horse guards joined the people. The
alarm at Versailles increased. The foreign troops were ordered
off instantly. Every Minister resigned. The King confirmed
Bailly as Prevot des Marchands, wrote to M. Necker, to re-
call him, sent his letter open to the Assembly, to be forwarded
by them, and invited them to go with him to Paris the next
day, to satisfy the city of his dispositions; and that night, and
the next morning, the Count d'Artois, and M. de Montesson,
a deputy connected with him, Madame de Polignac, Madame
de Quiche, and the Count de Vaudreuil, favorites of the Queen,
the Abbe de Vermont her confessor, the Prince of Conde, and
Duke of Bourbon fled. The King came to Paris, leaving the
Queen in consternation for his return. Omitting the less im-
portant figures of the procession, the King's carriage was in the
centre; on each side of it, the Assembly, in two ranks a
foot; at their head the Marquis de La Fayette, as Commander-
in-chief, on horseback, and Bourgeois guards before and be-
hind. About sixty thousand citizens, of all forms and condi-
tions, armed with the conquest of the Bastile and Invalids, as
far as they would go, the rest with pistols, swords, pikes, prun-
ing-hooks, scythes, &c., lined all the streets through which the
procession passed, and with the crowds of people in the streets,
doors, and windows, saluted them everywhere with the cries of
"vive la nation," but not a single "vive le Roi" was heard.
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OF
The King stopped at the Hotel de Ville. There M. Bailly pre-
sented, and put into his hat, the popular cockade, and ad-
dressed him. The King being unprepared, and unable to an-
swer, Bailly went to him, gathered from him some scraps of
sentences, and made out an answer, which he delivered to the
audience, as from the King. On their return, the popular cries
were "vive le Roi et la nation.' He was conducted by a garde
Bourgeoise to his palace at Versailles, and thus concluded an
"amende honorable/5 as no sovereign ever made, and no people
ever received.
And here, again, was lost another precious occasion of spar-
ing to France the crimes and cruelties through which she has
since passed, and to Europe, and finally America, the evils
which flowed on them also from this mortal source. The King
was now become a passive machine in the hands of the Na-
tional Assembly, and had he been left to himself, he would
have willingly acquiesced in whatever they should devise as
best for the nation. A wise constitution would have been
tormed, hereditary in his line, himself placed at its head/ with
powers so large as to enable him to do all the good of his sta-
tion, and so limited, as to restrain him from its abuse. This he
would have faithfully administered, and more than this, I do
not believe, he ever wished. But he had a Queen of absolute
sway over his weak mind and timid virtue, and of a character
the reverse of his in all points. This angel, as gaudily painted
in the rhapsodies of Burke, with some smartness of fancy, but
no sound sense, was proud, disdainful of restraint, indignant
at all obstacles to her will, eager in the pursuit of pleasure,
and firm enough to hold to her desires, or perish in their wreck.
Her inordinate gambling and dissipations, with those of the
Count d'Artois, and others of her clique, had been a sensible
item in the exhaustion of the treasury, which called into action
the reforming hand of the nation; and her opposition to it, her
inflexible perverseness, and dauntless spirit, led herself to the
Guillotine, drew the King on with her, and plunged the world
into crimes and calamities which will forever stain the pages of.
104
THOMAS J8FFSRSON
modern history. I have ever believed, that had there been no
Queen, there would have been no revolution. No force would
have been provoked, nor exercised. The King would have gone
hand in hand with the wisdom of his sounder counsellors, who,
guided by the increased lights of the age, wished only, with the
same pace, to advance the principles of their social constitu-
tion. The deed which closed the mortal course of these sov-
ereigns, I shall neither approve nor condemn. I am not pre-
pared to say, that the first magistrate of a nation cannot
commit treason against his country, or is unamenable to its
punishment; nor yet, that where there is no written law, no
regulated tribunal, there is not a law in our hearts, and a
power in our hands, given for righteous employment in main-
taining right, and redressing wrong. Of those who judged the
King, many thought him wilfully criminal; many, that his
existence would keep the nation in perpetual conflict with the
horde of Kings who would war against a generation which
might come home to themselves, and that it were better that
one should die than all. I should not have voted with this poiv
tion of the legislature. I should have shut up the Queen in a
convent, putting harm out of her power and placed the King
in his station, investing him with limited powers, which, I ver-
ily believe, he would have honestly exercised, according to
the measure of his understanding. In this way, no void would
have been created, courting the usurpation of a military ad-
venturer, nor occasion given for those enormities which de-
moralized the nations of the world, and destroyed, and is yet
to destroy, millions and millions of its inhabitants. There are
three epochs in history, signalized by the total extinction of
national morality. The first was of the successors of Alexander,
not omitting himself: The next, the successors of the first
Caesar: The third, our own age. This was begun by the parti-
tion of Poland, followed by that of the treaty of Pilnitz; next
the conflagration of Copenhagen; then the enormities of Bona-
parte, partitioning the earth at his will, and devastating it
with fire and sword; now the conspiracy of Kings, the suo
105
OF
cessors of Bonaparte, blasphemously calling themselves the
Holy Alliance, and treading in the footsteps of their incarcer-
ated leader; not yet, indeed, usurping the government of other
nations, avowedly and in detail, but controlling by their armies
the forms in which they will permit them to be governed; and
reserving, in peito, the order and extent of the usurpations
further meditated. But I will return from a digression, antici-
pated, too, in time, into which I have been led by reflection
on the criminal passions which refused to the world a favor-
able occasion of saving it from the afflictions it has since suf-
fered.
M. Necker had reached Basle before he was overtaken by
the letter of the King, inviting him back to resume the office
he had recently left. He returned immediately, and all the
other Ministers having resigned, a new administration was
named, to wit: St. Priest and Montmorin were restored; the
Archbishop of Bordeaux was appointed Garde des Sceaux, La
Tour du Pin, Minister of War; La Luzerne, Minister of Ma-
rine. This last was believed to have been effected by the friend-
ship of Montmorin; for although differing in politics, they con-
tinued firm in friendship, and Luzerne, although not an able
man, was thought an honest one. And the Prince of Bauvau
was taken into the Council.
Seven Princes of the blood Royal, six ex-Ministers, and many
of the high Noblesse, having fled, and tne present Ministers,
except Luzerne, being all of the popular party, all the func-
tionaries of government moved, for the present, in perfect har-
mony.
In the evening of August the 4th, and on the motion of the
Viscount de Noailles, brother in law of La Fayette, the As-
sembly abolished all titles of rank, all the abusive privileges of
feudalism, the tithes and casuals of the Clergy, all Provincial
privileges, and, in fine, the Feudal regimen generally. To the
suppression cf tithes, the Abbe Sieyes was vehemently op-
posed; but his learned and logical arguments were unheeded,
and his estimation lessened by a contrast of his egoism (for
106
THOMAS JSFFSRSON
he was beneficed on them), with the generous abandonment
of rights by the other members of the Assembly. Many days
were employed in putting into the form of laws, the numerous
demolitions of ancient abuses; which done, they proceeded to
the preliminary work of a Declaration of Rights. There being
much concord of sentiment on the elements of this instrument,
it was liberally framed, and passed with a very general appro-
bation. They then appointed a Committee for the "reduction
of a projet" of a constitution, at the head of which was the
Archbishop of Bordeaux. I received from him, as chairman of
the Committee, a letter of July 2oth, requesting me to attend
and assist at their deliberations; but I excused myself, on the
obvious considerations, that my mission was to the King as
Chief Magistrate of the nation, that my duties were limited to
the concerns of my own country, and forbade me to inter-
meddle with the internal transactions of that, in which I had
been received under a specific character only. Their plan of a
constitution was discussed in sections, and so reported from
time to time, as agreed to by the Committee. The first re-
spected the general frame of the government; and that this
should be formed into three departments, Executive, Legisla-
tive and Judiciary, was generally agreed. But when they pro-
ceeded to subordinate developments, many and various shades
of opinion came into conflict, and schism, strongly marked,
broke the Patriots into fragments of very discordant principles.
The first question, Whether there should be a King? met with
no open opposition; and it was readily agreed, that the gov-
ernment of France should be monarchical and hereditary. Shall
the King have a negative on the laws? shall that negative be
absolute, or suspensive only? Shall there be two Chambers of
Legislation, or one only? If two, shall one of them be heredi-
tary? or for life? or for a fixed term? and named by the King?
or elected by the people? These questions found strong dif-
ferences of opinion, and produced repulsive combinations
among the Patriots. The Aristocracy was cemented by a com-
mon principle, of preserving the ancient regime, or whatever
107
tAUTOBIOGRAPHT OF
should be nearest to it. Making this their polar star, they
moved in phalanx, gave preponderance on every question to
the minorities of the Patriots, and always to those who advo-
cated the least change. The features of the new constitution
were thus assuming a fearful aspect, and great alarm was pro-
duced among the honest Patriots by these dissensions in their
ranks. In this uneasy state of things, I received one day a
note from the Marquis de La Fayette, informing me that he
should bring a party of six or eight friends to ask a dinner of
me the next day. I assured him of their welcome. When they
arrived, they were La Fayette himself, Duport, Barnave, Alex-
ander la Meth, Blacon, Mounier, Maubourg, and Dagout.
These were leading Patriots, of honest but differing opinions,
sensible of the necessity of effecting a coalition by mutual
Sacrifices, knowing each other, and not afraid, therefore, to
unbosom themselves mutually. This last was a material prin-
ciple in the selection. With this view, the Marquis had invited
the conference, and had fixed the time and place inadvertently,
as to the embarrassment under which it might place me. The
cloth being removed, and wine set on the table, after the Ameri-
can manner, the Marquis introduced the objects of the confer-
ence, by summarily reminding them of the state of things in
the Assembly, the course which the principles of the Constitu-
tion were taking, and the inevitable result, unless checked by
more concord among the Patriots themselves. He observed,
that although he also had his opinion, he was ready to sacri-
fice it to that of his brethren of the same cause; but that a
common opinion must now be formed, or the Aristocracy would
carry everything, and that, whatever they should now agree on,
he, at the head of the National force, would maintain. The
discussions began at the hour of four, and were continued till
ten o'clock in the evening; during which time, I was a silent
witness to a coolness and candor of argument, unusual in the
conflicts of political opinion; to a logical reasoning, and chaste
eloquence, disfigured by no gaudy tinsel of rhetoric or declama-
tion, and truly worthy of being placed in parallel with the fin-
108
THOMAS J8FF8RSON
est dialogues of antiquity, as handed to us by Xenophon, by
Plato and Cicero. The result was, that the King should have
a suspensive veto on the laws, that the legislature should be
composed of a single body only, and that to be chosen by the
people. This Concordate decided the fate of the constitution.
The Patriots all rallied to the principles thus settled, carried
every question agreeably to them, and reduced the Aristocracy
to insignificance and impotence. But duties of exculpation were
now incumbent on me. I waited on Count Montmorin the next
morning, and explained to him, with truth and candor, how it
had happened that my house had been made the scene of con-
ferences of such a character. He told me, he already knew
everything which had passed, that so far from taking umbrage
at the use made of my house on that occasion, he earnestly
wished I would habitually assist at such conferences, being
sure I should be useful in moderating the warmer spirits, and
promoting a wholesome and practicable reformation only. I
told him, I knew too well the duties I owed to the King, to the
nation, and to my own country, to take any part in councils
concerning their internal government, and that I should per-
severe, with care, in the character of a neutral and passive
spectator, with wishes only, and very sincere ones, that those
measures might prevail which would be for the greatest good
of the nation. I have no doubts, indeed, that this conference
was previously known and approved by this honest Minister,
who was in confidence and communication with the Patriots,
and wished for a reasonable reform of the Constitution.
Here I discontinue my relation of the French Revolution.
The minuteness with which I have so far given its details, is
disproportioned to the general scale of my narrative. But I
have thought it justified by the interest which the whole world
must take in this Revolution. As yet, we are but in the first
chapter of its history. The appeal to the rights of man, which
had been made in the United States, was taken up by France,
first of the European nations. From her, the spirit has spread
over those of the South. The tyrants of the North have allied
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JlUrOBIOGRAPHT OF
indeed against it; but it is irresistible. Their opposition will
only multiply its millions of human victims; their own satel-
lites will catch it, and the condition of man through the civil-
ized world, will be finally and greatly ameliorated. This is a
wonderful instance of great events from small causes. So in-
scrutable is the arrangement of causes and consequences in this
world, that a two-penny duty on tea, unjustly imposed in a
sequestered part of it, changes the condition of all its in-
habitants. I have been more minute in relating the early trans-
actions of this regeneration, because I was in circumstances
peculiarly favorable for a knowledge of the truth. Possessing
the confidence and intimacy of the leading Patriots, and more
than all, of the Marquis Fayette, their head and Atlas, who had
no secrets from me, I learned with correctness the views and
proceedings of that party; while my intercourse with the diplo-
matic missionaries of Europe at Paris, all of them with the
court, and eager in prying into its councils and proceedings,
gave me a knowledge of these also. My information was al-
ways, and immediately committed to writing, in letters to Mr.
Jay, and often to my friends, and a recurrence to these letters
now insures me against errors of memory.
These opportunities of information ceased at this period,
with my retirement from this interesting scene of action. I had
been more than a year soliciting leave to go home, with a view
to place my daughters in the society and care of their friends,
and to return for a short time to my station at Paris. But the
metamorphosis through which our government was then pass-
ing from its Chrysalid to its Organic form suspended its action
in a great degree; and it was not till the last of August, that I
received the permission I had asked. And here, I cannot leave
this great and good country, without expressing my sense of
its pre-eminence of character among the nations of the earth.
A more benevolent people I have never known, nor greater
warmth and devotedness in their select friendships. Their kind-
ness and accommodation to strangers is unparalleled, and the
hospitality of Paris is beyond anything I had conceived to
no
THOMAS
be practicable in a large city. Their eminence, too, in science,
the communicative dispositions of their scientific men, the
politeness of the general manners, the ease and vivacity of their
conversation, give a charm to their society, to be found no-
where else. In a comparison of this, with other countries, we
have the proof of primacy, which was given to Themistocles,
after the battle of Salamis. Every general voted to himself the
first reward of valor, and the second to Themistocles. So, ask
the travelled inhabitant of any nation, in what country on
earth would you rather live?— Certainly, in my own, where
are all my friends, my relations, and the earliest and sweetest
affections and recollections of my life. Which would be your
second choice? France.
On the 26th of September I lefc Paris for Havre, where I was
detained by contrary winds until the 8th of October. On that
day, and the 9th, I crossed over to Cowes, where I had engaged
the Clermont, Capt. Colley, to touch for me. She did so; but
here again we were detained by contrary winds, until the 2 ad,
wnen we embarked, and landed at Norfolk on the 23d of No-
vember. On my way home, I passed some days at Eppington,
in Chesterfield, the residence of my friend and connection,
Mr. Eppes; and, while there, I received a letter from the
President, General Washington, by express, covering an ap-
pointment to be Secretary of State. I received it with real re-
gret. My wish had been to return to Paris, where I had left
my household establishment, as if there myself, and to see the
end of the Revolution, which I then thought would be cer-
tainly and happily closed in less than a year. I then meant to
return home, to withdraw from political life, into which I had
been impressed by the circumstances of the times, to sink into
the bosom of my family and friends, and devote myself to
studies more congenial to my mind. In my answer of Decem-
ber 1 5th, I expressed these dispositions candidly to the Presi-
dent, and my preference of a return to Paris; but assured
him, that if it was believed I could be more useful in the ad-
ministration of the government, I would sacrifice my own in-
JTI
^UTOBIOGRAPHT OF
clinations without hesitation, and repair to that destination;
this I left to his decision. I arrived at Monticello on the 23d
of December, where I received a second letter from the Presi-
dent, expressing his continued wish that I should take my sta-
tion there, but leaving me still at liberty to continue in my
former office, if I could not reconcile myself to that now pro-
posed. This silenced my reluctance, and I accepted the new
appointment.
In the interval of my stay at home, my eldest daughter had
been happily married to the eldest son of the Tuckahoe branch
of Randolphs, a young gentleman of genius, science, and hon-
orable mind, who afterwards filled a dignified station in the
General Government, and the most dignified in his own State.
I left Monticello on the first of March, 1790, for New York.
At Philadelphia I called on the venerable and beloved Frank-
lin. He was then on the bed of sickness from which he never
rose. My recent return from a country in which he had left so
many friends, and the perilous convulsions to which they had
been exposed, revived all his anxieties to know what part they
had taken, what had been their course, and what their fate. He
went over all in succession, with a rapidity and animation al-
most too much for his strength. When all his inquiries were
satisfied, and a pause took place, I told him I had learned with
much pleasure that, since his return to America, he had been
occupied in preparing for the world the history of his own life.
I cannot say much of that, said he; but I will give you a sam-
ple of what I shall leave; and he directed his little grandson
(William Bache) who was standing by the bedside, to hand
him a paper from the table, to which he pointed. He did so;
and the Doctor putting it into my hands, desired me to take
it and read it at my leisure. It was about a quire of folio
paper, written in a large and running hand, very like his own.
I looked into it slightly, then shut it, and said I would accept
his permission to read it, and would carefully return it. He
«aid. "no, keep it." Not certain of his meaning, I again looked
into it, folded it for my pocket, and said again, I would certainly
112
THOMAS
return it. "No/' said he, "keep it." I put it into my pocket,
and shortly after took leave of him. He died on the iyth of the
ensuing month of April; and as I understood that he had be-
queathed all his papers to his grandson, William Temple Frank-
lin, I immediately wrote to Mr. Franklin, to inform him I
possessed this paper, which I should consider as his property,
and would deliver to his order. He came on immediately to
New York, called on me for it, and I delivered it to him. As
he put it into his pocket, he said carelessly, he had either the
original, or another copy of it, I do not recollect which. This
last expression struck my attention forcibly, and for the first
time suggested to me the thought that Dr. Franklin had meant
it as a confidential deposit in my hands, and that I had done
wrong in parting from it. I have not yet seen the collection he
published of Dr. Franklin's works, and, therefore, know not if
this is among them. I have been told it is not. It contained a
narrative of the negotiations between Dr. Franklin and the
British Ministry, when he was endeavoring to prevent the con-
test of arms which followed. The negotiation was brought about
by the intervention of Lord Howe and his sister, who, I be-
lieve, was called Lady Howe, but I may misremember her
title. Lord Howe seems to have been friendly to America, and
exceedingly anxious to prevent a rupture. His intimacy with
Dr. Franklin, and his position with the Ministry, induced him
to undertake a mediation between them; in which his sister
seemed to have been associated. They carried from one to the
other, backwards and forwards, the several propositions and
answers which passed, and seconded with their own interces-
sions, the importance of mutual sacrifices, to preserve the peace
and connection of the two countries. I remember that Lord
North's answers were dry, unyielding, in the spirit of uncondi-
tional submission, and betrayed an absolute indifference to the
occurrence of a rupture; and he said to the mediators dis-
tinctly, at last, that "a rebellion was not to be deprecated on
the part of Great Britain; that the confiscations it would pro-
duce would provide for many of their friends." This expression
dUTOBIOGRAPHT
was reported by the mediators to Dr. Franklin, and indicated
so cool and calculated a purpose in the Ministry, as to render
compromise hopeless, and the negotiation was discontinued.
If this is not among the papers published, we ask, what has
become of it? I delivered it with my own hands, into those of
Temple Franklin. It certainly established views so atrocious
in the British government, that its suppression would, to them,
be worth a great price. But could the grandson of Dr. Frank-
lin be, in such degree, an accomplice in the parricide of the
memory of his immortal grandfather? The suspension for more
than twenty years of the general publication, bequeathed and
confided to him, produced, for awhile, hard suspicions against
him; and if, at last, all are not published, a part of these sus-
picions may remain with some.
I arrived at New York on the 2ist of March, where Con-
gress was in session.
114
THE
INTRODUCTION
JEFFERSON'S Anas, or Notes, amounts virtually to a contin-
uation of the Autobiography from his second year as Secretary
of State until his last year as President, 1791-1809. During
these stormy years, which saw the growth and eventual decline
of the Federalist Party, Jefferson was in the habit of making
frequent memoranda concerning the struggles and intrigues be-
tween the Federalists and the Republicans. These notes, writ-
ten during the peak of the "passions of the times," were several
years later revised by Jefferson, with the purpose of removing
any data which might have been "incorrect, or doubtful, or
merely personal or private." The following selections from the
Anas consist of Jefferson's long explanatory note, dated Feb. 4.
1818, and three or four isolated anecdotes which are character-
istic of the tone and temper of the whole.
THE ANAS
IN these three volumes will be found copies of the official
opinions given in writing by me to General Washington,
while I was Secretary of State, with sometimes the documents
belonging to the case. Some of these are the rough draughts,
some press copies, some fair ones. In the earlier part of my act-
ing in that office, I took no other note of the passing transac-
tions; Dut after awhile, I saw the importance of doing it in aid
of my memory. Very often, therefore, I made memorandums
on loose scraps of paper, taken out of my pocket in the mo-
ment, and laid by to be copied fair at leisure, which, however,
they hardly ever were. These scraps, therefore, ragged, rubbed,
and scribbled as they were, I had bound with the others by a
binder who came into my cabinet, did it under my own eye,
and without the opportunity of reading a single paper. At this
day, after the lapse of twenty-five years, or more, from their
dates, I have given to the whole a calm revisal, when the pas-
sions of the time are passed away, and the reasons of the trans-
actions act alone on the judgment. Some of the informations I
had recorded, are now cut out from the rest, because I have
seen that they were incorrect, or doubtful, or merely personal
or private, with which we have nothing to do. I should per-
haps have thought the rest not worth preserving, but for their
testimony against the only history of that period, which pre-
tends to have been compiled from authentic and unpublished
documents.
But a short review of facts . . . will show, that the contests
of that day were contests of principle, between the advocates
of republican, and those of kingly government, and that had
not the former made the efforts they did, our government
would have been, even at this early day, a very different thing
117
THS <ANAS OF
from what the successful issue of those efforts have made it.
The alliance between the States under the old Articles of
Confederation, for the purpose of joint defence against the
aggression of Great Britain, was found insufficient, as treaties
of alliance generally are, to enforce compliance with their
mutual stipulations; and these, once fulfilled, that bond was
to expire of itself, and each State to become sovereign and in-
dependent in all things. Yet it could not but occur to every
one, that these separate independencies, like the petty States
of Greece, would be eternally at war with each other, and would
become at length the mere partisans and satellites of the lead-
ing powers of Europe. All then must have looked forward to
some further bond of union, which would insure eternal peace,
and a political system of our own, independent of that of
Europe. Whether all should be consolidated into a single gov-
ernment, or each remain independent as to internal matters,
and the whole form a single nation as to what was foreign only,
and whether that national government should be a monarchy
or republic, would of course divide opinions, according to the
constitutions, the habits, and the circumstances of each in-
dividual. Some officers of the army, as it has always been said
and believed (and Steuben and Knox have ever been named
as the leading agents), trained to monarchy by military hab-
its, are understood to have proposed to General Washington to
decide this great question by the army before its disbandment,
and to assume himself the crown on the assurance of their
support. The indignation with which he is said to have scouted
this parricide proposition was equally worthy of his virtue and
wisdom.
The next effort was (on suggestion of the same individuals,
in the moment of their separation), the establishment of an
hereditary order under the name of the Cincinnati, ready pre-
pared by that distinction to be ingrafted into the future frame
of government, and placing General Washington still at their
head. The General wrote to me on this subject, while I was in
Congress at Annapolis, and an extract from my letter is in-
118
THOMAS JSFF8RSON
serted in 5th Marshall's history, page 28. He afterwards called
on me at that place on his way to a meeting of the society,
and after a whole evening of consultation, he left that place
fully determined to use all his endeavors for its total suppres-
sion. But he found it so firmly riveted in the affections of the
members, that, strengthened as they happened to be by an ad-
ventitious occurrence of the moment, he could effect no more
than the abolition of its hereditary principle. He called again
on his return, and explained to me fully the opposition which
had been made, the effect of the occurrence from France, and
the difficulty with which its duration had been limited to the
lives of the present members. Further details will be found
among my papers, in his and my letters, and some in the En-
cyclop6dle Methodique ct Dictionnaire ^Economic Politique,
communicated by myself to M. Meusnier, its author, who had
made the establishment of this society the ground, in that
work, of a libel on our country.
The want of some authority which should procure justice to
the public creditors, and an observance of treaties with foreign
nations, produced, some time after, the call of a convention of
the States at Annapolis. Although, at this meeting, a difference
of opinion was evident on the question of a republican or kingly
government, yet, so general through the States was the senti-
ment in favor of the former, that the friends of the latter con-
fined themselves to a course of obstruction only, and delay, to
everything proposed; they hoped, that nothing being done, and
all things going from bad to worse, a kingly government might
be usurped, and submitted to by the people, as better than
anarchy and wars internal and external, the certain conse-
quences of the present want of a general government. The ef-
fect of their manoeuvres, with the defective attendance of
Deputies from the States, resulted in the measure of calling
a more general convention, to be held at Philadelphia. At this,
the same party exhibited the same practices, and with the same
views of preventing a government of concord, which they fore-
saw would be republican, and of forcing through anarchy their
119
THS *ANAS OF
way to monarchy. But the mass of that convention was too
honest, too wise, and too steady, to be baffled and misled by
their manoeuvres.
One of these was a form of government proposed by Colonel
Hamilton, which would have been in fact a compromise be-
tween the two parties of royalism and republicanism. Accord-
ing to this, the executive and one branch of the legislature
were to be during good behavior, i. e. for life, and the gov-
ernors of the States were to be named by these two permanent
organs. This, however, was rejected; on which Hamilton left
the convention, as desperate, and never returned again until
near its final conclusion. These opinions and efforts, secret or
avowed, of the advocates for monarchy, had begotten great
jealousy through the States generally; and this jealousy it was
which excited the strong opposition to the conventional con-
stitution; a jealousy which yielded at last only to a general
determination to establish certain amendments as barriers
against a government either monarchical or consolidated. In
what passed through the whole period of these conventions, I
have gone on the information of those who were members of
them, being absent myself on my mission to France.
I returned from that mission in the first year of the new gov-
ernment, having landed in Virginia in December, 1789, and
proceeded to New York in March, 1790, to enter on the office
of Secretary of State. Here, certainly, I found a state of things
which, of all I had ever contemplated, I the least expected. I
had left France in the first year of her revolution, in the fervor
of natural rights, and zeal for reformation. My conscientious
devotion to these rights could not be heightened, but it had
been aroused and excited by daily exercise. The President re-
ceived me cordially, and my colleages and the circle of prin-
cipal citizens apparently with welcome. The courtesies of din-
ner parties given me, as a stranger newly arrived among them,
placed me at once in their familiar society. But I cannot de-
scribe the wonder and mortification with which the table con-
versations filled me. Politics were the chief topic, and a
120
THOMAS JSFFSRSON
preference of kingly over republican government was evidently
the favorite sentiment. An apostate I could not be, nor yet a
hypocrite; and I found myself, for the most part, the only ad-
vocate on the republican side of the question, unless among the
guests there chanced to be some member of that party from
the legislative Houses. Hamilton's financial system had then
passed. It had two objects; ist, as a puzzle, to exclude popular
understanding and inquiry; 2d, as a machine for the corrup-
tion of the legislature; for he avowed the opinion, that man
could be governed by one of two motives only, force or inter-
est ; force, he observed, in this country was out of the question,
and the interests, therefore, of the members must be laid hold
of, to keep the legislative in unison with the executive. And
with grief and shame it must be acknowledged that his machine
was not without effect; that even in this, the birth of our gov-
ernment, some members were found sordid enough to bend
their duty to their interests, and to look after personal rather
than public good.
It is well known that during the war the greatest difficulty
we encountered was the want of money or means to pay our
soldiers who fought, or our farmers, manufacturers and mer-
chants, who furnished the necessary supplies of food and cloth-
ing for them. After the expedient of paper money had exhausted
itself, certificates of debt were given to the individual cred-
itors, with assurance of payment so soon as the United States
should be able. But the distresses of these people often obliged
them to part with these for the half, the fifth, and even a tenth
of their value; and speculators had made a trade of cozening
them from the holders by the most fraudulent practices, and
persuasions that they would never be paid. In the bill for fund-
ing and paying these, Hamilton made no difference between the
original holders and the fraudulent purchasers of this paper.
Great and just repugnance arose at putting these two classes
of creditors on the same footing, and great exertions were used
to pay the former the full value, and to the latter, the price
only which they had paid, with interest. But this would have
121
rne <JNAS OF
prevented the game .which was to be played, and for which the
minds of greedy members were already tutored and prepared.
When the trial of strength on these several efforts had indi-
cated the form in which the bill would finally pass, this being
known within doors sooner than without, and especially, than
to those who were in distant parts of the Union, the base
scramble began. Couriers and relay horses by land, and swift
sailing pilot boats by sea, were flying in all directions. Ac-
tive partners and agents were associated and employed in every
State, town, and country neighborhood, and this paper was
bought up at five shillings, and even as low as two shillings in
the pound, before the holder knew that Congress had already
provided for its redemption at par. Immense sums were thus
filched from the poor and ignorant, and fortunes accumulated
by those who had themselves been poor enough before. Men
thus enriched by the dexterity of a leader, would follow of
course the chief who was leading them to fortune, and become
the zealous instruments of all his enterprises.
This game was over, and another was on the carpet at the
moment of my arrival; and to this I was most ignorantly and
innocently made to hold the candle. This fiscal manoeuvre is
well known by the name of the Assumption. Independently of
the debts of Congress, the States had during the war con-
tracted separate and heavy debts; and Massachusetts particu-
larly, in an absurd attempt, absurdly conducted, on the British
post of Penobscot: and the more debt Hamilton could rake
up, the more plunder for his mercenaries. This money, whether
wisely or foolishly spent, was pretended to have been spent
for general purposes, and ought, therefore, to be paid from the
general purse. But it was objected, that nobody knew what
these debts were, what their amount, or what their proofs. No
matter; we will guess them to be twenty millions. But of these
twenty millions, we do not know how much should be reim-
bursed to one State, or how much to another. No matter; we
will guess. And so another scramble was set on foot among the
several States, and some got much, some little, some nothing.
122
THOMAS J8FF8RSON
But the main object was obtained, the phalanx of the Treas-
ury was reinforced by additional recruits. This measure pro-
duced the most bitter and angry contest ever known in Con-
gress, before or since the Union of the States. I arrived in the
midst of it. But a stranger to the ground, a stranger to the ac-
tors on it, so long absent as to have lost all familiarity with
the subject, and as yet unaware of its object, 1 took no con-
cern in it.
The great and trying question, however, was lost in the
House of Representatives. So high were the feuds excited by
this subject, that on its rejection business was suspended. Con-
gress met and adjourned from day to day without doing any-
thing, the parties being too much out of temper to do business
together. The eastern members particularly, who, with Smith
from South Carolina, were the principal gamblers in these
scenes, threatened a secession and dissolution. Hamilton was
in despair. As I was going to the President's one day, I met
him in the street. He walked me backwards and forwards be-
fore the President's door for half an hour. He painted pa-
thetically the temper into which the legislature had been
wrought; the disgust of those who were called the creditor
States; the danger of the secession of their members, and the
separation of the States. He observed that the members of the
administration ought to act in concert; that though this ques-
tion was not of my department, yet a common duty should
make it a common concern; that the President was the centre
on which all administrative questions ultimately rested, and
that all of us should rally around him, and support, with joint
efforts, measures approved by him; and that the question hav
ing been lost by a small majority only, it was probable that
an appeal from me to the judgment and discretion of some of
my friends, might effect a change in the vote, and the machine
of government, now suspended, might be again set into motion.
I told him that I was really a stranger to the whole subject;
that not having yet informed myself of the system of finances
adopted, I knew not how far this was a necessary sequence;
123
rue ^NAS OF
that undoubtedly, if its rejection endangered a dissolution of
our Union at this incipient stage, I should deem that the most
unfortunate of all consequences, to avert which all partial and
temporary evils should be yielded. I proposed to him, however,
to dine with me the next day, and I would invite another
friend or two, bring them into conference together, and I
thought it impossible that reasonable men, consulting together
coolly, could fail, by some mutual sacrifices of opinion, to form
a compromise which was to save the Union.
The discussion took place. I could take no part in it but an
exhortatory one, because I was a stranger to the circumstances
which should govern it. But it was finally agreed, that what-
ever importance had been attached to the rejection of this
proposition, the preservation of the Union and of concord
among the States was more important, and that therefore it
would be better that the vote of rejection should be rescinded,
to effect which, some members should change their votes. But
it was observed that this pill would be peculiarly bitter to the
southern States, and that some concomitant measure should be
adopted, to sweeten it a little to them. There had before been
propositions to fix the seat of government either at Philadel-
phia, or at Georgetown on the Potomac; and it was thought
that by giving it to Philadelphia for ten years, and to George-
town permanently afterwards, this might, as an anodyne, calm
in some degree the ferment which might be excited by the
other measure alone. So two of the Potomac members (White
and Lee, but White with a revulsion of stomach almost con-
vulsive) agreed to change their votes, and Hamilton under-
took to carry the other point. In doing this, the influence he
had established over the eastern members, with the agency of
Robert Morris with those of the middle States, effected his
side of the engagement; and so the Assumption was passed,
and twenty millions of stock divided among favored States,
and thrown in as a pabulum to the stock- jobbing herd. This
added to the number of votaries to the Treasury, and made its
chief the master of every vote in the legislature, which might
124
THOMAS J8FF8RSON
give to the government the direction suited to his political
views.
I know well, and so must be understood, that nothing like
a majority in Congress had yielded to this corruption. Far from
it. But a division, not very unequal, had already taken place
in the honest part of that body, between the parties styled re-
publican and federal. The latter being monarchists in prin-
ciple, adhered to Hamilton of course, as their leader in that
principle, and this mercenary phalanx added to them, insured
him always a majority in both Houses; so that the whole ac-
tion of 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, would be temporary; it would
be lost with the loss of the individual members whom it has en-
riched, and some engine of influence more permanent must be
contrived, while these myrmidons were yet in place to carry it
through all opposition. This engine was the Bank of the United
States. All that history is known, so I shall say nothing about
it. While the government remained at Philadelphia, a selec-
tion of members of both Houses were constantly kept as di-
rectors 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 stock-holding members, could al-
ways make the federal vote that of the majority. By this com-
bination, 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.
Here then was the real ground of the opposition which was
made to the course of administration. Its object was to pre-
serve the legislature pure and independent of the executive,
to restrain the administration to republican forms and prin-
ciples, and not permit the constitution to be construed into a
monarchy, and to be warped, in practice, into all the principles
and pollutions of their favorite English model. Nor was this
125
rue JNAS OF
an opposition to General Washington. He was true to the re-
publican charge confided to him; and has solemnly and re-
peatedly protested to me, in our conversations, that he would
lose the last drop of his blood in support of it; and he did this
the oftener and with the more earnestness, because he knew
my suspicions of Hamilton's designs against it, and wished to
quiet them. For he was not aware of the drift, or of the effect
of Hamilton's schemes. Unversed in financial projects and cal-
culations and budgets, his approbation of them was bottomed
on his confidence in the man.
But Hamilton was not only a monarchist, but for a monarchy
bottomed on corruption. In proof of this, I will relate an anec-
dote, for the truth of which I attest the God who made me.
Before the President set out on his southern tour in April,
1791, he addressed a letter of the fourth of that month, from
Mount Vernon, to the Secretaries of State, Treasury and War,
desiring that if any serious and important cases should arise
during his absence, they would consult and act on them. And
he requested that the Vice President should also be consulted.
This was the only occasion on which that officer was ever re-
quested to take part in a cabinet question. Some occasion for
consultation arising, I invited those gentlemen (and the Attor-
ney General, as well as I remember) to dine with me, in order
to confer on the subject. After the cloth was removed, and our
question agreed and dismissed, conversation began on other
matters, and by some circumstance, was led to the British con-
stitution, on which Mr. Adams observed, "purge that constitu-
tion of its corruption, and give to its popular branch equality
of representation, and it would be the most perfect constitution
ever devised by the wit of man." Hamilton paused and said,
"purge it of its corruption, and give to its popular branch
equality of representation, and it would become an impracti-
cable government: as it stands at present, with all its supposed
defects, it is the most perfect government which ever existed."
And this was assuredly the exact line which separated the po-
litical creeds of these two gentlemen. The one was for two
126
THOMAS J8FF8RSON
hereditary branches and an honest elective one; the other, for
an hereditary King, with a House of Lords and Commons cor-
rupted to his will, and standing between him and the people.
Hamilton was, indeed, a singular character. Of acute under-
standing, disinterested, honest, and honorable in all private
transactions, amiable in society, and duly valuing virtue in
private life, yet so bewitched and perverted by the British
example, as to be under thorough conviction that corruption
was essential to the government of a nation. Mr. Adams had
originally been a republican. The glare of royalty and nobility,
during his mission to England, had made him believe their
fascination a necessary ingredient in government; and Shay's
[sic] rebellion, not sufficiently understood where he then was,
seemed to prove that the absence of want and oppression, was
not a sufficient guarantee of order. His book on the American
constitutions having made known his political bias, he was
taken up by the monarchical federalists in his absence, and on
his return to the United States, he was by them made to be-
lieve that the general disposition of our citizens was favorable
to monarchy. He here wrote his "Davila," as a supplement to a
former work, and his election to the Presidency confirmed him
in his errors. Innumerable addresses too, artfully and indus-
triously poured in upon him, deceived him into a confidence
that he was on the pinnacle of popularity, when the gulf was
yawning at his feet, which was to swallow up him and his de-
ceivers. For when General Washington was withdrawn, these
energumeni of royalism, kept in check hitherto by the dread
of his honesty, his firmness, his patriotism, and the authority
of his name, now mounted on the car of State and free from
control, like Phaeton on that of the sun, drove headlong and
wild, looking neither to right nor left, nor regarding anything
but the objects they were driving at; until, displaying these
fully, the eyes of the nation were opened, and a general dis-
bandment of them from the public councils took place.
Mr. Adams, I am sure, has been long since convinced of the
treacheries with which he was surrounded during his adminis-
127
rne J[NAS OF
tration. He has since thoroughly seen, that his constituents were
devoted to republican government, and whether his judgment
is re-settled on its ancient basis, or not, he is conformed as a
good citizen to the will of the majority, and would now, I am
persuaded, maintain its republican structure with the zeal and
fidelity belonging to his character. For even an enemy has said,
"he is always an honest man, and often a great one." But in
the fervor of the fury and follies of those who made him their
stalking horse, no man who did not witness it can form an
idea of their unbridled madness, and the terrorism with which
they surrounded themselves. The horrors of the French revolu-
tion, then raging, aided them mainly, and using that as a raw
head and bloody bones, they were enabled by their stratagems
of X. Y. Z. in which this historian * was a leading mountebank,
their tales of tub-plots, ocean massacres, bloody buoys, and
pulpit lyings and slanderings, and maniacal ravings of their
Gardeners, their Osgoods and parishes, to spread alarm into all
but the firmest breasts. Their Attorney General had the im-
pudence to say to a republican member, that deportation must
be resorted to, of which, said he, "you republicans have set
the example7'; thus daring to identify us with the murderous
Jacobins of France.
These transactions, now recollected but as dreams of the
night, were then sad realities; and nothing rescued us from
their liberticide effect, but the unyielding opposition of those
firm spirits who sternly maintained their post in defiance of
terror, until their fellow citizens could be aroused to their
own danger, and rally and rescue the standard of the constitu-
tion. This has been happily done. Federalism and monarchism
have languished from that moment, until their treasonable com-
binations with the enemies of their country during the late war,
their plots of dismembering the Union, and their Hartford con-
vention, have consigned them to the tomb of the dead; and I
fondly hope, "we may now truly say, we are all republicans,
all federalists," and that the motto of the standard to which
i. I.e., Jeffeison. Deleted from Memorial Edition.
128
THOMAS JSFFSRSON
our country will forever rally, will be, "federal union, and re-
publican government"; and sure I am we may say, that we are
indebted for the preservation of this point of ralliance, to that
opposition of which so injurious an idea is so artfully insin-
uated and excited in this history.
Much of this relation is notorious to the world; and many
intimate proofs of it will be found in these notes. From the
moment where they end, of my retiring from the administra-
tion, the federalists got unchecked hold of General Washing-
ton. His memory was already sensibly impaired by age, the
firm tone of mind for which he had been remarkable, was be-
ginning to relax, its energy was abated, a listlessness of labor,
a desire for tranquility had crept on him, and a willingness to
let others act, and even think for him. Like the rest of man-
kind, he was disgusted with atrocities of the French revolu-
tion, and was not sufficiently aware of the difference between
the rabble who were used as instruments of their perpetration,
and the steady and rational character of the American people,
in which he had not sufficient confidence. The opposition too
of the republicans to the British treaty, and the zealous sup-
port of the federalists in that unpopular but favorite measure
of theirs, had made him all their own. Understanding, more-
over, that I disapproved of that treaty, and copiously nour-
ished with falsehoods by a malignant neighbor of mine, who
ambitioned to be his correspondent, he had become alienated
from myself personally, as from the republican body generally
of his fellow-citizens; and he wrote the letters to Mr. Adams
and Mr. Carroll, over which, in devotion to his imperishable
fame, we must forever weep as monuments of mortal decay.
February 4th, 1818.
Conversation with President Washington
February the fth, 1793
.... as to a coalition with Mr. Hamilton, if by that was
meant that either was to sacrifice his general system to the
129
TH8 ^NAS OF
other, it was impossible. We had both, no doubt, formed our
conclusions after the most mature consideration; and principles
conscientiously adopted, could not be given up on either side.
My wish was, to see both Houses of Congress cleansed of all
persons interested in the bank or public stocks; and that a pure
legislature being given us, I should always be ready to ac-
quiesce under their determinations, even if contrary to my
own opinions; for that I subscribe to the principle, that the will
of the majority, honestly expressed, should give law. . . .
February the i6thy 1793
E. Randolph tells J. Madison and myself, a curious fact
which he had from Lear. When the President went to New
York, he resisted for three weeks the efforts to introduce levees.
At length he yielded, and left it to Humphreys and some others
to settle the forms. Accordingly, an ante-chamber and pres-
ence room were provided, and when those who were to pay their
court were assembled, the President set out, preceded by
Humphreys. After passing through the ante-chamber, the door
of the inner room was thrown open, and Humphreys entered
first, calling out with a loud voice, "the President of the United
States." The President was so much disconcerted with it, that
he did not recover from it the whole time of the levee, and
when the company was gone, he said to Humphreys, "Well,
you have taken me in once, but by God you shall never take
me in a second time."
May the 2 3d, [1793]
.... He [President Washington] adverted to a piece in
Freneau's paper * of yesterday; he said he despised all their at-
tacks on him personally, but that there never had been an
act of the Government, not meaning in the executive line only,
but in any line, which that paper had not abused. He had also
marked the word republic thus, where it was applied to the
j. Philip Freneau's anti-federalist paper, The National Gazette.
130
S J8FF8RSON
French republic. . . . He was evidently sore and warm, and
I took his intention to be, that I should interpose in some way
with Freneau, perhaps withdraw his appointment of translating
clerk to my office. But I will not do it. His paper has saved our
Constitution, which was galloping fast into monarchy, and has
been checked by no one means so powerfully as by that paper.
It is well and universally known, that it has been that paper
which has checked the career of the monocrats; and the Presi-
dent, not sensible of the designs of the party, has not with his
usual good sense and sang jroid, looked on the efforts and ef-
fects of this free press, and seen that, though some bad things
have passed through it to the public, yet the good have pre-
ponderated immensely.
January. the 24th, [1800]
Mr. Smith, a merchant of Hamburg, gives me the following
information: The St. Andrew's Club of New York (all of
Scotch tories) gave a public dinner lately. Among other guests,
Alexander Hamilton was one. After dinner, the first toast was,
"The President of the United States/' It was drunk without
any particular approbation. The next was, "George the Third."
Hamilton started up on his feet, and insisted on a bumper and
three cheers. The whole company accordingly rose and gave
the cheers. . . .
13*
TRAVEL JO URNALS
DURING his five-year residence in Paris as Minister to the
Court of Louis XVI, Jefferson made only occasional trips from
the capital: one to England in March and April of 1786, dur-
ing which he was presented to the King, made a perfunctory
visit to Shakespeare's grave, and had his portrait painted by
Mather Brown; one to Southern France and Northern Italy
in March, April, May, and June of the following year; and a
third to Amsterdam and Strasburg in February, March, and
April of 1788. A man with a keen eye for detail, and an in-
finite capacity for taking pains, Jefferson was in the habit of
making daily entries in a journal concerning the sights he had
seen, the places he had visited, the people he had talked with,
and the useful products and inventions he might borrow for
America. Selections from the journal of his second trip, that
to France and Italy, together with an interesting "traveler's
guide" compiled for two fellow Americans, appear on the fol-
towing pages.
TRAVEL JOURNALS
MEMORANDA taken on a Journey from Paris into the
Southern Parts of France, and Northern of Italy, in the
year 1787.
CHAMPAGNE. March 3. Sens to Vermanton. The face of the
country is in large hills, not too steep for the plough, somewhat
resembling the Elk hill, and Beaver-dam hills of Virginia. The
soil is generally a rich mulatto loam, with a mixture of coarse
sand and some loose stone. The plains of the Yonne are of the
same color. The plains are in corn, the hills in vineyard, but
the wine not good. There are a few apple trees, but none of
any other kind, and no inclosures. No cattle, sheep, or swine;
fine mules.
Few chateaux; no farm-houses, all the people being gathered
in villages. Are they thus collected by that dogma of their re-
ligion, which makes them believe, that to keep the Creator in,
good humor with His own works, they must mumble a mass
every day? Certain it is, that they are less happy and less
virtuous in villages, than they would be insulated with their
families on the grounds they cultivate. The people are illy
clothed. Perhaps they have put on their worst clothes at this
moment, as it is raining. But I observe women and children
carrying heavy burdens, and laboring with the hoe. This is an
unequivocal indication of extreme poverty. Men, in a civilized
country, never expose their wives and children to labor above
their force and sex, as long as their own labor can protect them
from it. I see few beggars. Probably this is the effect of a
police.
BURGUNDY. March 4. Lucy le bois. Cussy les forges. Rouv-
ray. Maison-neuve. Vitteaux. La Chaleure. Pont de Panis.
Dijon. The hills are higher and more abrupt. The soil, a good
red loam and sand, mixed with more or less grit, small stone,
JOURNALS OF
and sometimes rock. All in corn. Some forest wood here and
there, broom, whins and holly, and a few inclosures of quick
hedge. Now and then a flock of sheep.
The people are well clothed, but it is Sunday. They have the
appearance of being well fed. The Chateau de Sevigny, near
Cussy les forges, is a charming situation. Between Maison-
neuve and Vitteaux the road leads through an avenue of trees,
eight American miles long, in a right line. It is impossible to
paint the ennui of this avenue. . . .
March 7 and 8. From la Bar ague to Chagny
.... The corn lands here rent for about fifteen livres the
arpent. They are now planting, pruning, and sticking their
vines. When a new vineyard is made, they plant the vines in
gutters about four feet apart. As the vines advance, they lay
them down. They put out new shoots, and fill all the inter-
mediate space, till all trace of order is lost. They have ultimately
about one foot square to each vine. They begin to yield good
profit at five or six years old, and last one hundred, or one
hundred and fifty years. A vigneron at Voulenay carried me
into his vineyard, which was of about ten arpents. He told me
that some years it produced him sixty pieces of wine, and some,
not more than three pieces. The latter is the most advantageous
produce, because the wine is better in quality, and higher in
price in proportion as less is made, and the expenses at the
same time diminish in the same proportion. Whereas, when
much is made, the expenses are increased, while the price and
quality become less. In very plentiful years, they often give
one half the wine for casks to contain the other half. The cask
for two hundred and fifty bottles, costs six livres in scarce
years, and ten in plentiful. The Feuillette is of one hundred
and twenty-five bottles, the Piece of two hundred and fifty,
and the Queue or Botte, of five hundred. An arpent rents at
from twenty to sixty livres. A farmer of ten arpents has about
three laborers engaged by the year. He pays four louis to a
man, and half as much to a woman, and feeds them. He kills
hog, and salts it, which is all the meat used in the family
136
THOMAS J8FF6RSON
during the year. Their ordinary food is bread and vegetables.
At Pommard and Voulenay, I observed them eating good wheat
bread; at Meursault, rye. I asked the reason of this difference.
They told me that the white wines fail in quality much oftener
than the red, and remain on hand. The farmer, therefore, can-
not afford to feed his laborers so well. At Meursault, only white
wines are made, because there is too much stone for the red.
On such slight circumstances depends the condition of man!
The wines which have given such celebrity to Burgundy, grow
only on the Cote, an extent of about five leagues long, and half
a league wide. They begin at Chambertin, and go through
Vougeau, Romanie, Veaune, Nuys, Beaune, Pommard, Voule-
nay, Meursault, and end at Monrachet. Those of the two last
are white, the others red. Chambertin, Vougeau and Veaune
are strongest, and will bear transportation arid keeping. They
sell, therefore, on the spot for twelve hundred livres the queue,
which is forty-eight sous the bottle. Voulenay is the best of
the other reds, equal in flavor to Chambertin, etc., but being
lighter, will not keep, and therefore sells for not more than
three hundred livres the queue, which is twelve sous the bottle.
It ripens sooner than they do, and consequently is better for
those who wish to broach at a year old. In like manner of
the white wines, and for the same reason, Monrachet sells for
twelve hundred livres the queue (forty-eight sous the bottle),
and Meursault of the best quality, viz., the Goutte d'or, at only
one hundred and fifty livres (six sous the bottle). It is re-
markable, that the best of each kind, that is, of the red and
white, is made at the extremities of the line, to wit, at Cham-
bertin and Monrachet. It is pretended that the adjoining vine-
yards produce the same qualities, but that belonging to obscure
individuals, they have not obtained a name, and therefore sell
as other wines. The aspect of the Cote is a little south of east.
The western side is also covered with vines, and is apparently
of the same soil, yet the wines are of the coarsest kinds. Such4
too, are those which are produced in the plains; but there tht
soil is richer and less strong. Vougeau is the property of tho
137
TRAVSL JOURNALS OF
monks of Citeaux, and produces about two hundred pieces.
Monrachet contains about fifty arpents, and produces, one
year with another, about one hundred and twenty pieces. It
belongs to two proprietors only, Monsieur de Clarmont, who
leases to some wine merchants, and the Marquis de Sarsnet, of
Dijon, whose part is farmed to a Monsieur de la Tour, whose
family for many generations have had the farm. The best wines
are carried to Paris by land. The transportation costs thirty-
six livres the piece. The more indifferent go by water. Bottles
cost four and a half sous each. . . .
BEAUJOLOIS. Maison blanche. St. George. Chateau de Laye-
Epinaye.
.... The wages of a laboring man here, are five louis; of
a woman, one half. The women do not work with the hoe;
they only weed the vines, the corn, etc., and spin. They speak
a patois very difficult to understand. I passed some time at the
Chateau de Laye-Epinaye. Monsieur de Laye has a seignory of
about fifteen thousand arpents, in pasture, corn, vines, and
wood. He has over this, as is usual, a certain jurisdiction, both
criminal and civil. But this extends only to the first crude
examination, which is before his judges. The subject is referred
for final examination and decision, to the regular judicatures of
the country. The Seigneur is keeper of the peace on his do-
mains. He is therefore subject to the expenses of maintaining
it. A criminal prosecuted to sentence and execution, costs M.
de Laye about five thousand livres. This is so burdensome to
the Seigneurs, that they are slack in criminal prosecutions. A
good effect from a bad cause. Through all Champagne, Bur-
gundy, and the Beaujolois, the husbandry seems good, except
that they manure too little. This proceeds from the shortness
of their leases. The people of Burgundy and Beaujolois are
well clothed, and have the appearance of being well fed. But
they experience all the oppressions which result from the
nature of the general government, and from that of their
particular tenures, and of the seignorial government to which
138
THOMAS J8FFBRSON
they are subject. What a cruel reflection, that a rich country
cannot long be a free one. M. de Laye has a Diana and Endy-
mion, a very superior morsel of sculpture by Michael Angelo
Slodtz, done in 1740. The wild gooseberry is in leaf; the wild
pear and sweet briar in bud.
Lyons. There are some feeble remains here, of an amphi-
theatre of two hundred feet diameter, and of an aqueduct in
brick. The Pont d'Ainay has nine arches of forty feet from
centre to centre. The piers are of six feet. The almond is in
bloom.
.... Nice. The pine bur is used here for kindling fires.
The people are in separate establishments. With respect to the
orange, there seems to be no climate on this side of the Alps,
sufficiently mild in itself to preserve it without shelter. At
Olioules, they are between two high mountains; at Hieres, cov-
ered on the north by a very high mountain; at Antibes and
Nice, covered by mountains, and also within small high en-
closures. Quere. To trace the true line from east to west, which
forms the northern and natural limit of that fruit? Saw an
elder tree (sambucus) near Nice, fifteen inches in diameter,
and eight feet stem. The wine made in this neighborhood is
good, though not of the first quality. There are one thousand
mules, loaded with merchandise, which pass every week be-
tween Nice and Turin, counting those coming as well as going.
.... April i4th. Ciandola. Tende.
.... Tende is a very inconsiderable village, in which they
have not yet the luxury of glass windows; nor in any of the
villages on this passage, have they yet the fashion of powder-
ing the hair. Common stone and limestone are so abundant,
that the apartments of every story are vaulted with stone, to
save wood.
April 1 5th. Limone. Coni.
.... A great deal of golden willow all along the rivers, on
the whole of this passage through the Alps. The southern parts
of France, but still more the passage through the Alps, enable
TRAV6L JOURNALS OF
one to form a scale of the tenderer plants, arranging them
according to their several powers of resisting cold. Ascending
three different mountains, Braus, Brois, and Tende, they dis^
appear one after another; and descending on the other side,
they show themselves again one after another. This is their
order, from the tenderest to the hardiest. Caper, orange, palm,
aloe, olive, pomegranate, walnut, fig, almond. But this must be
understood of the plant; for as to the fruit, the order is some-
what different. The caper, for example, is the tenderest plant,
yet being so easily protected, it is the most certain in its fruit.
The almond, the hardiest plant, loses its fruit the oftenest, on
account of its forwardness. The palm hardier than the caper
and the orange, never produces perfect fruit in these parts.
Coni is a considerable town, and pretty well built. It is walled.
.... April iQth. Settimo. Chivasco. Ciliano. S. Germano.
Vercelli. The country continues plain and rich, the soil black.
The culture, corn, pasture, maize, vines, mulberries, walnuts,
some willow and poplar. The maize bears a very small propor-
tion to the small grain. The earth is formed into ridges from
three to four feet wide, and the maize sowed in the broadcast
on the higher parts of the ridge, so as to cover a third or half of
the whole surface. It is sowed late in May. This country is
plentifully arid beautifully watered at present. Much of it is
by torrents which are dry in summer. These torrents make a
great deal of waste ground, covering it with sand and stones.
These wastes are sometimes planted in trees, sometimes quite
unemployed. They make hedges of willows, by setting the
plants from one to three feet apart. When they are grown to
the height of eight or ten feet, they bend them down, and
interlace them one with another. I do not see any of these,
however, which are become old. Probably, therefore, they soon
die. The women here smite on the anvil, and work with the
maul and spade. The people of this country are ill dressed in
comparison with those of France, and there are more spots of
uncultivated ground. The plough here is made with a single
handle, which is a beam twelve feet long, six inches in diameter
140
THOMAS J8FF8RSON
below, and tapered to about two inches at the upper end. They
use goads for the oxen, not whips. The first swallows I have
seen, are to-day. . . .
April 2ist, 22d. Milan. Figs and pomegranates grow here
unsheltered, as I am told. I saw none, and therefore suppose
them rare. They had formerly olives; but a great cold in
1 709 killed them, and they have not been replanted. Among a
great many houses painted al fresco, the Casa Roma and Casa
Candiani, by Appiani, and Casa Belgioiosa, by Martin, are
superior. In the second is a small cabinet, the ceiling of which
is in small hexagons, within which are cameos and heads
painted alternately, no two the same. The salon of the Casa
Belgioiosa is superior to anything I have ever seen. The mix-
ture called Scaiola, of which they make their walls and floors,
is so like the finest marble as to be scarcely distinguishable
from it. The nights of the 2oth and 2ist instant the rice ponds
froze half an inch thick. Drouths of two or three months are
not uncommon here in summer. About five years ago, there
was such a hail as to kill cats. The Count del Verme tells me
of a pendulum odometer for the wheel of a carriage. Leases
here are mostly for nine years. Wheat costs a louis d'or the
one hundred and forty pounds. A laboring man receives sixty
livres, and is fed and lodged. The trade of this country is
principally rice, raw silk, and cheese.
April 23d. Casino, five miles from Milan. I examined another
rice-beater of six pestles. They are eight feet nine inches long.
Their ends, instead of being a truncated cone, have nine teetb
of iron, bound closely together. Each tooth is a double pyra-
mid, joined at the base. When put together, they stand with the
upper ends placed in contact, so as to form them into one
great cone, and the lower ends diverging. The upper are sock-
eted into the end of the pestle, and the lower, when a little
blunted by use, are not unlike the jaw teeth of the mammoth,
with their studs. They say here, that pestles armed with these
teeth, clean the rice faster, and break it less.
. . . . Rozzano. Parmesan cheese. It is supposed this was
TRAVEL JOURNALS OF
formerly made at Parma, and took its name thence, but none is
made there now. It is made through all the country extending
from Milan for one hundred and fifty miles. . . .
The milk, . . . receives its due quantity of rennet, and is
gently warmed, if the season requires it. In about four hours
it becomes a slip. Then the whey begins to separate. A little of
it is taken out. The curd is then thoroughly broken by a ma-
chine like a chocolate mill. A quarter of an ounce of saffron is
put to seven brenta of milk, to give color to the cheese. The
kettle is then moved over the hearth, and heated by a quick
lire till the curd is hard enough, being broken into small lumps
by continued stirring. It is moved off the fire, most of the
'whey taken out, the curd compressed into a globe by the hand,
a linen cloth slipped under it, and it is drawn out in that. A
loose hoop is then laid on a bench, and the curd, as wrapped
in the linen, is put into the hoop; it is a little pressed by the
.hand, the hoop drawn tight and made fast. A board two inches
thick is laid on it, and a stone on that of about twenty pounds
weight. In an hour, the whey is run off, and the cheese finished.
They sprinkle a little salt on it every other day in summer,
and every day in winter, for six weeks. Seven brentas of milk
make a cheese of fifty pounds, which requires six months to
ripen, and is then dried to forty-five pounds. It sells on the
5pot for eighty-eight livres the one hundred pounds. There are
now one hundred and fifty cheeses in this dairy. They are
nineteen inches diameter, and six inches thick. They make a
cheese a day in summer, and two in three days, or one in two
days, in winter.
.... April 26th. Genoa. Strawberries at Genoa. Scaffold
poles for the upper parts of a wall, as for the third story, rest
on the window sills of the story below. Slate is used here for
paving, for steps, for stairs, (the rise as well as tread) and for
fixed Venetian blinds. At the Palazzo Marcello Durazzo,
benches with straight legs, and bottoms of cane. At the Palazzo
del prencipe Lomellino, at Sestri, a phaeton with a canopy. At
1 the former; tables folding into one plane. At Nervi they have
142
THOMAS JSFFSRSON
peas, strawberries, etc., all the year round. The gardens of the
Count Durazzo at Nervi exhibit as rich a mixture of the uttte
dulci, as I ever saw. All the environs in Genoa, are in olives,
figs, oranges, mulberries, corn, and garden stuff. Aloes in many
places, but they never flower.
April 28th. Noli. The Apennine and Alps appear to me, to
be one and the same continued ridge of mountains, separating
everywhere the waters of the Adriatic Gulf from those of the
Mediterranean. Where it forms an elbow, touching the Medi-
terranean, as a smaller circle touches a larger, within which it
is inscribed, in the manner of a tangent, the name changes from
Alps to Apennine. It is the beginning of the Apennine which
constitutes the State of Genoa, the mountains there generally
falling down in barren naked precipices into the sea. . . .
Noli, into which I was obliged to put, by a change of wind,
is forty miles from Genoa. There are twelve hundred inhabit-
ants in the village, and many separate houses round about.
One of the precipices hanging over the sea is covered with
aloes. But neither here, nor anywhere else I have been, could
I procure satisfactory information that they ever flower. The
current of testimony is to the contrary. Noli furnishes many
fishermen. Paths penetrate up into the mountains in several
directions, about three-fourths of a mile; but these are prac-
ticable only for asses and mules. I saw no cattle nor sheep in
the settlement. The wine they make, is white and indifferent.
A curious cruet for oil and vinegar in one piece, I saw here. A
bishop resides here, whose revenue is two thousand livres,
equal to sixty-six guineas. I heard a nightingale here.
April 2gth. Albenga. In walking along the shore from Lou-
ano to this place, I saw no appearance of shells. The tops of
the mountains are covered with snow, while there are olive
trees, etc., on the lower parts. I do not remember to have seen
assigned anywhere, the cause of the apparent color of the
sea. Its water is generally clear and colorless, if taken up and
viewed in a glass. That of the Mediterranean is remarkably so.
Vet in the mass, it assumes, by refection, the color of the sky
143
TRAVSL JOURNALS OF
or atmosphere, black, green, blue, according to the state of
the weather. If any person wished to retire from his acquaint-
ance, to live absolutely unknown, and yet in the midst of
physical enjoyments, it should be in some of the little villages of
this coast, where air, water and earth concur to offer what each
has most precious. Here are nightingales, beccaficas, ortolans,
pheasants, partridges, quails, a superb climate, and the power
of changing it from summer to winter at any moment, by
ascending the mountains. The earth furnishes wine, oil, figs,
oranges, and every production of the garden, in every season.
The sea yields lobsters, crabs, oysters, thunny, sardines, an-
chovies, etc.
May 15. Bezieres. Argilies. Le Saumal.
.... The canal of Languedoc, along which I now travel, is
six toises wide at bottom, and ten toises at the surface of the
water, which is one toise deep. The barks which navigate it are
seventy and eighty feet long, and seventeen or eighteen feet
wide. They are drawn by one horse, and worked by two hands,
one of which is generally a woman. The locks are mostly kept
by women, but the necessary operations are much too laborious
for them. The encroachments by the men, on the offices proper
for the women, is a great derangement in the order of things.
Men are shoemakers, tailors, upholsterers, stay-makers,
mantua-makers, cooks, housekeepers, house-cleaners, bed-
makers; they coiffe the ladies, and bring them to bed: the
women, therefore, to live, are obliged to undertake the offices
which they abandon. They become porters, carters, reapers,
sailors, lock-keepers, smiters on the anvil, cultivators of the
earth, etc. Can we wonder, if such of them as have a little
beauty, prefer easier courses to get their livelihood, as long as
that beauty lasts? Ladies who employ men in the offices which
should be reserved for their sex, are they not bawds in effect?
For every man whom they thus employ, some girl, whose place
he has thus taken, is driven to whoredom.
.... June 6th, yth, 8th. Nantes. Ancenis, Angers. Tours.
.... Tours is at the one hundred and nineteenth mile-
144
THOMAS JSFFSRSON
stone. Being desirous of inquiring here into a fact stated by
Voltaire, in his Questions Encyclopediques, article Coquilles,
relative to the growth of shells unconnected with animal bodies,
at the Chateau of Monsieur de la Sauvagiere, near Tours, I
called on Monsieur Gentil, premier secretaire de Flntendance,
to whom the Intendant had written on my behalf, at the re-
quest of the Marquis de Chastellux. I stated to him the fact as
advanced by Voltaire, and found he was, of all men, the best to
whom I could have addressed myself. He told me he had been
in correspondence with Voltaire on that very subject, and was
perfectly acquainted with Monsieur de la Sauvagiere, and the
Faluniere where the fact is said to have taken place. It is at the
Chateau de Grillemont, six leagues from Tours, on the road
to Bordeaux, belong now to Monsieur d'Orcai. He says, that
de la Sauvagiere was a man of truth, and might be relied on
for whatever facts he stated as of his own observations; but
that he was overcharged with imagination, which, in matters of
opinion and theory, often led him beyond his facts; that this
feature in his character had appeared principally in what he
wrote on the antiquities of Touraine; but that, as to the fact in
question, he believed him. That he himself, indeed, had not
watched the same identical shells, as Sauvagiere had done,
growing from small to great; but that he had often seen such
masses of those shells of all sizes, from a point to a full size,
as to carry conviction to his mind that they were in the act of
growing; that he had once made a collection of shells for the
Emperor's cabinet, reserving duplicates of them for himself;
and that these afforded proofs of the same fact; that he after-
wards gave those duplicates to a Monsieur du Verget, a physi-
cian of Tours, of great science and candor, who was collecting
on a larger scale, and who was perfectly in sentiment with
Monsieur de la Sauvagiere, that not only the Faluniere, but
many other places about Tours, would convince any unbiased
observer, that shells are a fruit of the earth, spontaneously
produced; and he gave me a copy of de la Sauvagiere's Re»
cueil de Dissertations, presented by the author, wherein is one
145
TRAVSL JOURNALS OF
Sur la vegetation spontanee des coquilles du Chateau des
Places. So far, I repeat from him. What are we to conclude?
That we have not materials enough yet, to form any conclu-
sion. The fact stated by Sauvagiere is not against any law of
nature, and is therefore possible; but it is so little analogous
to her habitual processes, that, if true, it would be extraordi-
nary; that to command our belief, therefore, there should be
such a suite of observations, as that their untruth would be
more extraordinary than the existence of the fact they affirm.
The bark of trees, the skin of fruits and animals, the feathers
of birds, receive their growth and nutriment from the internal
circulation of a juice through the vessels of the individual
they cover. We conclude from analogy, then, that the shells of
the testaceous tribe, receive also their growth from a like inter-
nal circulation. If it be urged, that this does not exclude the
possibility of a like shell being produced by the passage of a
fluid through the pores of the circumjacent body, whether of
earth, stone, or water; I answer, that it is not within the us-
ual economy of nature, to use two processes for one species of
production. While I withhold my assent, however, from this
hypothesis, I must deny it to every other 1 have ever seen, by
which their authors pretend to account for the origin of shells
in high places. Some of these are against the laws of na-
ture, and therefore impossible; and others are built on positions
more difficult to assent to, than that of de la Sauvagiere. They
all suppose the shells to have covered submarine animals, and
have then to answer the question, How came they fifteen thou-
sand feet above the level of the sea? And they answer it, by
demanding what cannot be conceded. One, therefore, who had
rather have no opinion than a false one, will suppose this ques-
tion one of those beyond the investigation of human sagacity;
or wait till further and fuller observations enable him to de-
cide it.
Chantcloup. I heard a nightingale to-day at Chanteloup. The
gardener says, it is the male who alone sings, while the female
*its; and that when the young are hatched, he also ceases. In
146
THOMAS JSFFSRSON
the border at Chanteloup, is an ingenious contrivance to hide
the projecting steps of a stair-case. Three steps were of neces-
sity to project into the boudoir: they are therefore made tri-
angular steps; and instead of being rested on the floor, as usual,
they are made fast at their broad end to the stair door, swing-
ing out and in, with that. When it shuts, it runs them under the
other steps; when open, it brings them out to their proper
place.
TRAVELLING NOTES FOR MR. RUTLEDGE AND
MR. SHIPPEN, JUNE 3, 1788
General Observations.— On arriving at a town, the first thing
is to buy the plan of the town, and the book noting its curiosi-
ties. Walk round the ramparts when there are any, go to the
top of a steeple to have a view of the town and its environs.
When you are doubting whether a thing is worth the trouble
of going to see, recollect that you will never again be so near
it, that you may repent the not having seen it, but can never
repent having seen it. But there is an opposite extreme too,
that is, the seeing too much. A judicious selection is to be
aimed at, taking care that the indolence of the moment have
no influence in the decision. Take care particularly not to let
the porters of churches, cabinets, etc., lead you through all the
little details of their profession, which will load the memory
with trifles, fatigue the attention, and waste that and your
time. It is difficult to confine these people to the few objects
worth seeing and remembering. They wish for your money,
and suppose you give it the more willingly the more they de-
tail to you.
When one calls in the taverns for the vin du pays, they give
what is natural and unadulterated and cheap: when vin etran*
gere is called for, it only gives a pretext for charging an ex-
travagant price for an unwholesome stuff, very often of their
own brewery. The people you will naturally see the most of
will be tavern keepers, valets de place, and postilions. These ar*
TAT
TRAV6L JOURNALS OF
the hackneyed rascals of every country. Of course they must
never be considered when we calculate the national character.
Objects of attention for an American.— i. Agriculture. Every-
thing belonging to this art, and whatever has a near relation
to it. Useful or agreeable animals which might be transported
to America. Species of plants for the farmer's garden, accord-
ing to the climate of the different States.
2. Mechanical arts, so far as they respect things necessary in
America, and inconvenient to be transported thither ready-
made, such as forges, stone quarries, boats, bridges, (very
especially,) etc., etc.
3. Lighter mechanical arts, and manufactures. Some of these
will be worth a superficial view; but circumstances rendering
it impossible that America should become a manufacturing
country during the time of any man now living, it would be a
waste of attention to examine these minutely.
4. Gardens peculiarly worth the attention of an American,
because it is the country of all others where the noblest gar-
dens may be made without expense. We have only to cut out
the superabundant plants.
5. Architecture worth great attention. As we double our num-
bers every twenty years, we must double our houses. Besides,
we build of such perishable materials, that one half of our
houses must be rebuilt in every space of twenty years, so
that in that time, houses are to be built for three-fourths of our
inhabitants. It is, then, among the most important arts; and it
is desirable to introduce taste into an art which shows so much.
6. Painting. Statuary. Too expensive for the state of wealth
among us. It would be useless, therefore, and preposterous, for
us to make ourselves connoisseurs in those arts. They are worth
seeing, but not studying.
7. Politics of each country, well worth studying so far as re-
spects internal affairs. Examine their influence on the happi-
ness of the people. Take every possible occasion for entering
into the houses of the laborers, and especially at the moments
of their repast; see what they eat, how they are clothed,
148
THOMAS JSFFeRSON
whether they are obliged to work too hard; whether the gov-
ernment or their landlord takes from them an unjust propor-
tion of their labor; on what footing stands the property they
call their own, their personal liberty, etc., etc.
8. Courts. To be seen as you would see the tower of London
or menagerie of Versailles with their lions, tigers, hyenas, and
other beasts of prey, standing in the same relation to their fel-
lows. A slight acquaintance with them will suffice to show you
that, under the most imposing exterior, they are the weakest
and worst part of mankind. Their manners, could you ape
them, would not make you beloved in your own country, nor
would they improve it could you introduce them there to the
exclusion of that honest simplicity now prevailing in America
and worthy of being cherished.
149
Towards Facilitating Instruction in the
o- Saxon and Modern Dialects of the
English Language for the Use of
the University of Virginia
INTRODUCTION
IN his interest in the Anglo-Saxon language Thomas Jefferson
was a pioneer and trail blazer. In an age in which Anglo-Saxon
was generally neglected, he advocated its study in American
colleges and universities, made provisions for teaching it in his
own University of Virginia, and wrote a book on the subject.
Portions from this book, the Essay on Anglo-Saxon, appear
on the following pages. Jefferson first became interested in
Anglo-Saxon while he was reading law in Williamsburg, Vir-
ginia, at which time he "devoted some time to its study," at-
tempting to simplify the grammar, modernize the spelling, and
the like. Later, in 1798, he sent the results of his labors to the
English philologist, Herbert Crofts. This section was revised
and rewritten, in 1818, for the proposed University of Virginia.
Still later, less than a year before his death, Jefferson added a
prolonged P. S., making use of recent British research in the
field of Anglo-Saxon. These two sections comprise Jefferson's
Essay on Anglo-Saxon in its final form, and were first printed
twenty-five years after his death, in 1851.
To Herbert Croft, £sq.y LL.B., London
tMonttcello, Oflober joth, 1798
SIR, —The copy of your printed letter on the English and
German languages, which you have been so kind as tc*
send me, has come to hand; and I pray you to accept my
thanks for this mark of your attention. I have perused it with
singular pleasure, and, having long been sensible of the im-
portance of a knowledge of the Northern languages to the
understanding of English, I see it, in this letter, proved and
specifically exemplified by your collations of the English and
German. I shall look with impatience for the publication of
your "English and German Dictionary." Johnson, besides the
want of precision in his definitions, and of accurate distinction
in passing from one shade of meaning to another of the same
word, is most objectionable in his derivations. From a want
probably of intimacy with our own language while in the
Anglo-Saxon form and type, and of its kindred languages of the
North, he has a constant leaning towards Greek and Latin for
English etymon. Even Skinner has a little of this, who, when he
has given the true Northern parentage of a word, often tells
you from what Greek and Latin source it might be derived by
those who have that kind of partiality. He is, however, on the
whole, our best etymologist, unless we ascend a step higher
to the Anglo-Saxon vocabulary; and he has set the good ex-
ample of collating the English word with its kindred word in
the several Northern dialects, which often assist in ascertaining
its true meaning.
Your idea is an excellent one, in producing authorities for
the meaning of words, "to select the prominent passages in our
best writers, to make your dictionary a general index to Eng-
lish literature, and thus intersperse with verdure and flowers
the barren deserts of Philology." And I believe with you that
"wisdom, morality, religion, thus thrown down, as if without
intention, before the reader, in quotations, may often produce
153
more effect than the very passages in the books themselves. "~
"that the cowardly suicide, in search of a strong word for his
dying letter, might light on a passage which would excite him
to blush at his want of fortitude, and to forego his purpose;"
— "and that a dictionary with examples at the words may, in
regard to every branch of knowledge, produce more real ef-
fect than the whole collection of books which it quotes." I
have sometimes myself used Johnson as a Repertory, to find
favorite passages which I wished to recollect, but too rarely
with success.
I was led to set a due value on the study of the Northern
languages, and especially of our Anglo-Saxon, while I was a
student of the law, by being obliged to recur to that source
for explanation of a multitude of law-terms. A preface to
Fortescue on Monarchies, written by Fortescue Aland, and
afterwards premised to his volume of Reports, develops the
advantages to be derived to the English student generally, and
particularly the student of law, from an acquaintance with
the Anglo-Saxon; and mentions the books to which the learner
may have recourse for acquiring the language. I accordingly
devoted some time to its study, but my busy life has not per-
mitted me to indulge in a pursuit to which I felt great attrac-
tion. While engaged in it, however, some ideas occurred for
facilitating the study by simplifying its grammar, by reducing
the infinite diversities of its unfixed orthography to single and
settled forms, indicating at the same time the pronunciation
of the word by its correspondence with the characters and pow-
ers of the English alphabet. Some of these ideas I noted at the
time on the blank leaves of my Elstob's Anglo-Saxon Gram-
mar: but there I have left them, and must leave them, unpur-
sued, although I still think them sound and useful. Among the
works which I proposed for the Anglo-Saxon student, you will
find such literal and verbal translations of the Anglo-Saxon
writers recommended, as you have given us of the German in
your printed letter. Thinking that I cannot submit those ideas
to a better judge than yourself, and that if you find them of
IS4
any value you may put them to some use, either as hints in
your dictionary, or in some other way, I will copy them as a
sequel to this letter, and commit them without reserve to your
better knowledge of the subject. Adding my sincere wishes for
the speedy publication of your valuable dictionary, I tender
*r~" the assurance of my high respect and consideration.
155
AN ESSAY
on the ^Anglo-Saxon Language
r I ^HE importance of the Anglo-Saxon dialect toward a per-
JL feet understanding of the English language seems not to
have been duly estimated by those charged with the education
of youth; and yet it is unquestionably the basis of our present
tongue. It was a full-formed language; its frame and construc-
tion, its declension of nouns and verbs, and its syntax were
peculiar to the Northern languages, and fundamentally differ-
ent from those of the South. It was the language of all Eng-
land, properly so called, from the Saxon possession of that
country in the sixth century to the time of Henry III in the
thirteenth, and was spoken pure and unmixed with any other.
Although the Romans had been in possession of that country
for nearly five centuries from the time of Julius Caesar, yet it
was a military possession chiefly, by their soldiery alone, and
with dispositions intermutually jealous and unamicable. They
seemed to have aimed at no lasting settlements there, and to
have had little familiar mixture with the native Britons. In
this state of connection there would probably be little incor-
poration of the Roman into the native language, and on their
subsequent evacuation of the island its traces would soon be
lost altogether. And had it been otherwise, these innovations
would have been carried with the natives themselves when
driven into Wales by the invasion and entire occupation of
the rest of the Southern portion of the island by the Anglo-
Saxons.
The language of these last became that of the country from
that time forth, for nearly seven centuries; and so little atten-
tion was paid among them to the Latin, that it was known to a
few individuals only as a matter of science, and without any
chance of transfusion into the vulgar language. We may safely
ON <ANGLO-SAXON
repeat the affirmation, therefore, that the pure Anglo-Saxon
constitutes at this day the basis of our language. That it was
sufficiently copious for the purposes of society in the existing
condition of arts and manners, reason alone would satisfy us
from the necessity of the case. Its copiousness, too, was much
favored by the latitude it allowed of combining primitive words
so as to produce any modification of idea desired. In this char-
acteristic it was equal to the Greek, but it is more especially
proved by the actual fact of the books they have left us in the
various branches of history, geography, religion, law, and
poetry. And although since the Norman conquest it has re-
ceived vast additions and embellishments from the Latin,
Greek, French, and Italian languages, yet these are but en-
graftments on its idiomatic stem; its original structure and
syntax remain the same, and can be but imperfectly under-
stood by the mere Latin scholar. Hence the necessity of making
the Anglo-Saxon a regular branch of academic education. In
the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries it was assiduously cul-
tivated by a host of learned men. The names of Lambard,
Parker, Spelman, Wheeloc, Wilkins, Gibson, Hickes, Thwaites,
Somner, Benson, Mareschal, Elstob, deserve to be ever remem-
bered with gratitude for the Anglo-Saxon works which they
have given us through the press, the only certain means of pre-
serving and promulgating them. For a century past this study
has been too much neglected. The reason of this neglect, and
its remedy, shall be the subject of some explanatory observa-
tions. These will respect—I. The Alphabet. II. Orthography.
III. Pronunciation. IV. Grammar.
I. THE ALPHABET
The Anglo-Saxon alphabet, as known to us in its printer*
forms, consists of twenty-six characters, about the half of
which are Roman, the others of forms peculiarly Saxon. These,
mixed with the others, give an aspect to the whole rugged,
uncouth, and appalling to an eye accustomed to the roundness
and symmetry of the Roman character. This is a first discour-
158 .
THOMAS jeFFSRSON
agement to the English student. Next, the task of learning a
new alphabet, and the time and application necessary to render
it easy and familiar to the reader, often decides the doubting
learner against an enterprise so apparently irksome.
The earliest remains extant of Saxon writing are said to be
of the seventh century; and the latest of the thirteenth. The
black letter seems to have been introduced by William the
Conqueror, whose laws are written in Norman French, and
in that letter. The full alphabet of Roman characters was first
used about the beginning of the sixteenth century. But the ex-
pression of the same sounds, by a different character did not
change these sounds, nor the language which they constituted;
did not make the language of Alfred a different one from that
of Piers Ploughman, of Chaucer, Douglas, Spenser, and Shake-
speare, any more than the second revolution, which substituted
the Roman for the English black letter, made theirs a different
language from that of Pope and Bolingbroke; or the writings
of Shakespeare, printed in black letter, different from the same
as now done in Roman type. The life of Alfred, written in
Latin and in Roman character by Asser, was reprinted by
Archbishop Parker in Anglo-Saxon letters. But it is Latin
still, although the words are represented by characters differ-
ent from those of Asser's original. And the extracts given us
by Dr. Hickes from the Greek Septuagint, in Anglo-Saxon
characters, are Greek still, although the Greek sounds are rep-
resented by other types. Here then I ask, why should not this
Roman character, with which we are all familiar, be substi-
tuted now for the Anglo-Saxon, by printing in the former the
works already edited in the latter type? and also the manu-
scripts still inedited? This may be done letter for letter, and
would remove entirely the first discouraging obstacle to the
general study of the Anglo-Saxon.
II. ORTHOGRAPHY
In the period during which the Anglo-Saxon alphabet was
in use, reading and writing were rare arts. The highest dig-
159
8SSAT ON .ANGLO-SAXON
nitaries of the church subscribed their marks, not knowing
how to write their names. Alfred himself was taught to read in
his thirty-sixth year only, or, as some editions of Asser say,
in his thirty-ninth. Speaking of learning in his Preface to the
Pastoral of Gregory, Alfred says, "Swa clean hi was oth-fallen
on Angelkin that swithe few were on behinan Humber the hior
thenung cuthon understandan on Englisc, oth furthon an er-
rand y-write of Latin on Englisc areckon. And I ween that not
many beyondan Humber nay aren; swa few hior weron that I
furthon ane on lepne nay may y-thinkan be-Suthan Thames
tha tha I to ric fang." Or, as literally translated into later
English by Archbishop Parker, "So clean was it fallen amongst
the English nation, that very few were on this side Humber
which their service could understand in English, or else fur-
thermore an epistle from Latin into English to declare. And
1 ween that not many beyond Humber were not. So few of
them were that I also one only may not remember by South
Tamise when as I to reign undertook." In this benighted state,
so profoundly illiterate, few read at all, and fewer wrote: and
the writer having no examples of orthography to recur to, think-
ing them indeed not important, had for his guide his own
ideas only of the power of the letters, unpractised and indis-
tinct as they might be. He brought together, therefore, those
letters which he supposed must enter into the composition of
the sound he meant to express, and was not even particular in
arranging them in the order in which the sounds composing
the word followed each other. Thus, birds was spelt brides;
grass, gaers; run, yrnan; cart, craett; fresh, fersh. They seemed
to suppose, too, that a final vowel was necessary to give sound
to the consonant preceding it, and they used for that purpose
any vowel indifferently. A son was suna, sune, sunu; maera,
maere, maero, maeru; fines, limites; ge, ye, y, i, are various
spellings of the same prefix. The final e mute in English is a
remain of this, as in give, love, curse.
The vowels were used indiscriminately also lor every vowel
sound. Thus.
1 60
THOMAS
The comparative ended in ar, er, ir, or, ur, yr.
The superlative ended in ast, est, ist, ost, ust, yst.
The participle present ended in and, end, ind, ond, und, ynd.
The participle past ended in ad, ed, id, od, ud, yd.
Other examples are, betweox, betwix, betwox, betwux, betwyx, lor
betwixt; egland, igland, ygland, for island.
Of this promiscuous use of the vowels we have also abundant
remains still in English. For according to the powers given to
our letters we often use them indifferently for the same sound,
as in bulwark, assert, stir, work, lurk, myrtle. The single word
many, in Anglo-Saxon, was spelt, as Dr. Hickes has observed,
in twenty different ways; to wit, maenigeo, maenio, maeniu,
menio, meniu, maenigo, maenego, manige, menigo, manegeo,
maenegeo, menegeo, maenygeo, menigeo, manegu, maenigu,
menegu, menego, menigu manigo. To prove, indeed, that every
one spelt according to his own notions, without regard to any
standard, we have only to compare different editions of the
same composition. . . ,1
This unsettled orthography renders it necessary to swell the
volume of the dictionaries, by giving to each word as many
places in order of the alphabet as there are different modes of
spelling it; and in proportion as this is omitted, the difficulty
of finding the words increases on the student.
Since, then, it is apparent that the Anglo-Saxon writers had
established no particular standard of orthography, but each
followed arbitrarily his own mode of combining the letters, we
are surely at liberty equally to adopt any mode which, estab-
lishing uniformity, may be more consonant with the power of
the letters, and with the orthography of the present dialect, as
established by usage. The latter attention has the advantage
of exhibiting more evidently the legitimate parentage of the
two dialects.
i. Here Jefferson cites various printed versions of Alfred's Preface to
Pope Gregory's Pastoral Care.
161
SSSAT ON <ANGLO-SAXON
III. PRONUNCIATION
To determine what that was among the Anglo-Saxons, our
means are as defective as to determine the long-agitated ques-
tion what was the original pronunciation of the Greek and Latin
languages. The presumption is certainly strong that in Greece
and Italy, the countries occupied by those languages, their pro-
nunciation has been handed down, by tradition, more nearly
than it can be known to other countries: and the rather, as
there has been no particular point of time at which those an-
cient languages were changed into the modern ones occupy-
ing the same grounds. They have been gradually worn down
to their present forms by time, and changes of modes and cir-
cumstances. In like manner there has been no particular point
of time at which the Anglo-Saxon has been changed into its
present English form. The languages of Europe have generally,
in like manner, undergone a gradual metamorphosis, some of
them in name as well as in form. We should presume, there-
fore, that in those countries of Great Britain which were oc-
cupied earliest, longest, and latest by the Saxon immigrants,
the pronunciation of their language has been handed down
more nearly than elsewhere; and should be searched for in the
provincial dialects of those countries. But the fact is, that these
countries have divaricated in their dialects, so that it would be
difficult to decide among them which is the most genuine. Un-
der these doubts, therefore, we may as well take the pronuncia-
tion now in general use as the legitimate standard, and that
form which it is most promotive of our object to infer the
Anglo-Saxon pronunciation. It is, indeed, the forlorn hope of
all aim at their probably pronunciation; for were we to regard
the powers of the letters only, no human organ could articulate
their uncouth jumble. We will suppose, therefore, the power
of the letters to have been generally the same in Anglo-Saxon
as now in English; and to produce the same sounds we will
combine them, as nearly as may be, conformably with the pres-
162
THOMAS JSFFSRSON
ent English orthography. This is, indeed, a most irregular and
equivocal standard; but a conformity with it will bring the
two dialects nearer together in sound and semblance, and fa-
cilitate the transition from the one to the other more auspi-
ciously than a rigorous adherence to any uniform system of
orthography which speculation might suggest.
IV. GRAMMAR
Some observations on Anglo-Saxon grammar may show how
much easier that also may be rendered to the English student.
Dr. Hickes may certainly be considered as the father of this
branch of modern learning. He has been the great restorer of
the Anglo-Saxon dialect from the oblivion into which it was
fast falling. His labors in it were great, and his learning not
less than his labors. His grammar may be said to be the only
one we yet possess: for that edited at Oxford in 1711 is but an
extract from Hickes, and the principal merit of Mrs. Elstob's
is, that it is written in English, without anything original in it.
Some others have been written, taken also, and almost en-
tirely from Hickes. In his time there was too exclusive a preju-
dice in favor of the Greek and Latin languages. They were
considered as the standards of perfection, and the endeavor
generally was to force other languages to a conformity with
these models. But nothing can be more radically unlike than
the frames of the ancient languages, Southern and Northern,
of the Greek and Latin languages, from those of the Gothic
family. Of this last are the Anglo-Saxon and English; and had
Dr. Hickes, instead of keeping his eye fixed on the Greek and
Latin languages, as his standard, viewed the Anglo-Saxon in
its conformity with the English only, he would greatly have en-
larged the advantages for which we are already so much in-
debted to him. His labors, however, have advanced us so far
on the right road, and a correct pursuit of it will be a just hom-
age to him.
ON ^NGLO-SAXON
A noun is to be considered under its accidents of genders,
cases, and numbers. The word gender is, in nature, synonymous
with sex. To all the subjects of the animal kingdom nature has
given sex, and that is twofold only, male or female, masculine
or feminine. Vegetable and mineral subjects have no distinc-
tion of sex, consequently are of no gender. Words, like other
inanimate things, have no sex, are of no gender. Yet in the
construction of the Greek and Latin languages, and of the mod-
ern ones of the same family, their adjectives being varied in
termination, and made distinctive of animal sex, in conformity
with the nouns or names of animal subject, the two real gen-
ders, which nature has established, are distinguished in these
languages. But, not stopping here, they have by usage, thrown
a number of unsexual subjects into the sexual classes, leaving
the residuary mass to a third class, which grammarians call
neutral— that is to say, of no gender or sex: and some Latin
grammarians have so far lost sight of the real and natural gen-
ders as to ascribe to that language seven genders, the mascu-
line, feminine, neuter, gender common to two, common to
three, the doubtful, and the epicene; than which nothing can
be more arbitrary, and nothing more useless. But the language
of the Anglo-Saxons and English is based on principles totally
different from those of the Greek and Latin, and is constructed
on laws peculiar and idiomatic to itself. Its adjectives have no
changes of termination on account of gender, number or case.
Each has a single one applicable to every noun, whether it be
the name of a thing having sex, or not. To ascribe gender to
nouns in such a case would be to embarrass the learner with
unmeaning and useless distinctions.
It will be said, e.g., that a priest is of one gender, and a
priestess of another; a poet of one, a poetess of another, etc.;
and that therefore the words designating them must be of dif-
ferent genders. I say, not at all; because although the thing
designated may have sex, the word designating it, like other
inanimate things, has no sex, no gender. In Latin, we well know
164
THOMAS JSFFSRSON
that the thing may be of one gender and the word designating
it of another. See Martial vii., Epig. 17. The ascription of gen-
der to it is artificial and arbitrary, and, in English and Anglo-
Saxon, absolutely useless. Lowthe, therefore, among the most
correct of our English grammarians, has justly said that in the
nouns of the English language there is no other distinction of
gender but that of nature, its adjectives admitting no change
but of the degrees of comparison. We must guard against the
conclusion of Dr. Hickes that the change of termination in
the Anglo-Saxon adjectives, as god, gode, for example, is an
indication of gender; this, like others of his examples of inflec-
tion, is only an instance of unsettled orthography. In the lan-
guages acknowledged to ascribe genders to their words, as
Greek, Latin, Italian, Spanish, French, their dictionaries indi-
cate the gender of every noun; but the Anglo-Saxon and Eng-
lish dictionaries give no such indication ; a proof of the general
sense that gender makes no part of the character of the noun.
We may safely therefore dismiss the learning of genders from
our language, whether in its ancient or modern form.
2. Our law of Cases is different. They exist in nature, accord-
ing to the difference of accident they announce. No language
can be without them, and it is an error to say that the Greek
is without an ablative. Its ablative indeed is always like its
dative; but were that sufficient to deny its existence, we might
equally say that the Latins had no ablative plural, because in
all nouns of every declension, their ablative plural is the same
with the dative. It would be to say that to go to a place, or
from a place, means the same thing. The grammarians of Port-
Royal, therefore, have justly restored the ablative to Greek
nouns. Our cases are generally distinguished by the aid of the
prepositions of, to, by, from, or with, but sometimes also by
change of teimination. But these changes are not so general
or difficult as to require, or to be capable of a distribution into
declensions. Yet Dr. Hickes, having in view the Saxon declen-
sions of the Latin, and ten of the Greek language, has given
165
SSSAT ON ^NGLO-SAXON
six, and Thwaytes seven to the Anglo-Saxon. The whole of
them, however, are comprehended under the three simple
canons following:
(i.) The datives and ablatives plural of all nouns end in urn.
(2.) Of the other cases, some nouns inflect their genitive
singular only, and some their nominative, accusative and voca-
tive plural also in y, as in English.
(3.) Others, preserving the primitive form in their nomina-
tive and vocative singular, inflect all the other cases and num-
bers in en.
3. Numbers. Every language, as I presume, has so formed its
nouns and verbs as to distinguish a single and a plurality of
subjects, and all, as far as I know, have been contented with
the simple distinction of singular and plural, except the Greeks,
who have interposed between them a dual number, so distinctly
formed by actual changes of termination and inflection, as to
leave no doubt of its real distinction from the other numbers.
But they do not uniformly use their dual for its appropriate
purpose. The number two is often expressed plurally, and some-
times by a dual noun and plural verb. Dr. Hickes supposes the
Anglo-Saxon to have a dual number also, not going through the
whole vocabulary of nouns and verbs, as in Greek, but confined
to two particular pronouns, i.e., wit and yit, which he trans-
lates we two, and ye two. But Benson renders wit by nos, and
does not give yit at all. And is it worth while to embarrass
grammar with an extra distinction for two or three, or half a
dozen words? And why may not wit, we two, and yit, ye two,
be considered plural, as well as we three, or we four? as duo,
ambo, with the Latins? We may surely say then that neither
the Anglo-Saxon nor English have a dual number.
4. Verbs, moods. To the verbs in Anglo-Saxon Dr. Hickes
gives six moods. The Greeks, besides the four general moods,
Indicative, Subjunctive, Imperative, and Infinitive, have really
an Optative mood, distinguished from the others by actual dif-
ferences of termination. And some Latin grammarians, besides
the Optative, have added, in that language, a Potential mood;
166
THOMAS JEFFERSON
neither of them distinguished by differences of termination or
inflection. They have therefore been disallowed by later and
sounder grammarians; and we may, in like manner, disembar-
rass our Anglo-Saxon and English from the Optatives and Po-
tentials of Dr. Hickes.
Supines and Gerunds
He thinks, too, that the Anglo-Saxon has supines and ger-
unds among its variations; accidents certainly peculiar to Latin
verbs only. He considers lufian, to love, as the infinitive, and
to lufian, a supine. The exclusion, therefore, of the preposition
to, makes with him the infinitive, while we have ever considered
it as the essential sign of that mood. And what all grammarians
have hitherto called the infinitive, he considers as a supine or
gerund. . . .
From these aberrations, into which our great Anglo-Saxon
leader, Dr. Hickes, has been seduced by too much regard to
the structure of the Greek and Latin languages and too little
to their radical difference from that of the Gothic family, we
have to recall our footsteps into the right way, and we shall
find our path rendered smoother, plainer, and more direct to
the object of profiting of the light which each dialect throws
on the other. . . .
As we are possessed in America of the printed editions of
the Anglo-Saxon writings, they furnish a fit occasion for this
country to make some return to the older nations for the sci-
ence for which we are indebted to them; and in this task I
hope an honorable part will in time be borne by our University,
for which, at an hour of life too late for anything elaborate, I
hazard these imperfect hints, for consideration chiefly on a
subject on which I pretend not to be profound. The publica-
tion of the inedited manuscripts which exist in the libraries of
Great Britain only, must depend on the learned of that nation.
Their means of science are great. They have done much, and
much is yet expected from them. Nor will they disappoint us.
167
8SSAT ON <ANGLO-SAXON
Our means are as yet small; but the widow's mite was piously
given and kindly accepted. How much would contribute to
the happiness of these two nations a brotherly emulation in
doing good to each other, rather than the mutual vituperations
so unwisely and unjustifiably sometimes indulged in by both.
And this too by men on both sides of the water, who think
themselves of a superior order of understanding, and some of
whom are truly of an elevation far above the ordinary stature
of the human mind. No two people on earth can so much help
or hurt each other. Let us then yoke ourselves jointly to the
same car of mutual happiness, and vie in common efforts to
do each other all the good we can —to reflect on each other the
lights of mutual science particularly, and the kind affections of
kindred blood. Be it our task, in the case under consideration,
to reform and republish, in forms more advantageous, what we
already possess, and theirs to add to the common stock the in-
edited treasures which have been too long buried in their de-
positories.
P. S. January, 1825. In the year 1818, by authority of the
legislature of Virginia, a plan for the establishment of an Uni-
versity was prepared and proposed by them. In that plan the
Anglo-Saxon language was comprehended as a part of the circle
of instruction to be given to the students; and the preceding
pages were then committed to writing for the use of the Uni-
versity. I pretend not to be an Anglo-Saxon scholar. From an
early period of my studies, indeed, I have been sensible of the
importance of making it a part of the regular education of our
youth; and at different times, as leisure permitted, I applied
myself to the study of it, with some degree of attention. But
my life has been too busy in pursuits of another character to
have made much proficiency in this. The leading idea which
very soon impressed itself on my mind, and which has con-
tinued to prevail through the whole of my observations on the
language, was, that it was nothing more than the Old English
of a period of some ages earlier than that of Piers Ploughman;
and under this view my cultivation of it has been continued. It
168
THOMAS J8FF8RSON
was apparent to me that the labors of Dr. Hickes, and other
very learned men, have been employed in a very unfortunate
direction, in endeavors to give it the complicated structure of
the Greek and Latin languages. I have just now received a
copy of a new work, by Mr. Bosworth, on the elements of
Anglo-Saxon grammar, and it quotes two other works, by
Turner and Jamieson, both of great erudition, but not yet
known here.
Mr. Bosworth's is, indeed, a treasure of that venerable learn-
ing. It proved the assiduity with which he has cultivated it, the
profound knowledge in it which he has attained, and that he
has advanced far beyond all former grammarians in the science
of its structure. Yet, I own, I was disappointed on finding that
in proportion as he has advanced on and beyond the footsteps
of his predecessors, he has the more embarrassed the language
with rules and distinctions, in imitation of the grammars of
Greek and Latin; has led it still further from its genuine type
of old English, and increased its difficulties by the multitude
and variety of new and minute rules with which he has charged
it. ... And this leads to such an infinitude of minute rules and
observances, as are beyond the power of any human memory
to retain. If, indeed, this be the true genius of the Anglo-Saxon
language, then its difficuties go beyond its worth, and render a
knowledge of it no longer a compensatoin for the time and
labor its acquisition will require; and, in that case, I would rec-
ommend its abandonment in our University, as an unattain-
able and unprofitable pursuit.
But if, as I believe, we may consider it as merely an anti-
quated form of our present language, if we may throw aside
the learned difficulties which mask its real character, liberate
it from these foreign shackles, and proceed to apply ourselves
to it with little more preparation than to Piers Ploughman,
Douglas, or Chaucer, then I am persuaded its acquisition will
require little time or labor, and will richly repay us by the
intimate insight it will give us into the genuine structure, pow-
ers, and meanings of the language we now read and speak. We
169
ON JNGLO-SAXON
shall then read Shakespeare and Milton with a superior degree
of intelligence and delight, heightened by the new and deli-
cate shades of meaning developed to us by a knowledge of the
original sense of the same words.
This rejection of the learned labors of our Anglo-Saxon doc-
tors, may be considered, perhaps, as a rebellion against science.
My hope, however, is, that it may prove a revolution. Two
great works, indeed, will be wanting to effect all its advantages,
i. A grammar on the simple principles of the English grammar,
analogizing the idiom, the rules and principles of the one and
the other, eliciting their common origin, the identity of their
structure, laws, and composition, and their total unlikeness to
the genius of the Greek and Latin. 2. A dictionary, on the plan
of Stephens or Scapula, in which the Anglo-Saxon roots should
be arranged alphabetically, and the derivatives from each root,
Saxon and English, entered under it in their proper order and
connection. Such works as these, with new editions of the
Saxon writings, on the plan I venture to propose, would show
that the Anglo-Saxon is really old English, little more difficult
to understand than works we possess, and read, and still call
English. They would recruit and renovate the vigor of the Eng-
lish language, too much impaired by the neglect of its ancient
constitution and dialects, and would remove, for the student,
the principal difficulties of ascending to the source of the Eng-
Jish Jangiw/jf., the main object of what has been here proposed.
170
biographical (§ketches of
FAMOUS MEN
INTRODUCTION
AS one of the founding fathers of the Republic and as a man
\vho knew intimately most of the outstanding men connected
with the early history of the United States, Thomas Jeffer-
son, in his later years particularly, was frequently asked to
furnish material to historians and biographers. The following
biographical sketches were all written in compliance with such
requests and are reprinted in their entirety.
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES OF
FAMOUS MEN
I
The Character of George Washington *
THINK I knew General Washington intimately
and thoroughly; and were I called on to delineate
his character, it should be in terms like these.
His mind was great and powerful, without being of the very
first order; his penetration strong, though not so acute as that
of a Newton, Bacon, or Locke; and as far as he saw, no judg-
ment was ever sounder. It was slow in operation, being little
aided by invention or imagination, but sure in conclusion.
Hence the common remark of his officers, of the advantage he
derived from councils of war, where hearing all suggestions,
he selected whatever was best; and certainly no general ever
planned his battles more judiciously. But if deranged during
the course of the action, if any member of his plan was dis-
located by .sudden circumstances, he was slow in re-adjust-
ment. The consequence was, that he often failed in the field,
and rarely against an enemy in station, as at Boston and York.
He was incapable of fear, meeting personal dangers with the
calmest unconcern. Perhaps the strongest feature in his char-
acter was prudence, never acting until every circumstance,
every consideration, was maturely weighed; refraining if he
saw a doubt, but, when once decided, going through with his
purpose, whatever obstacles opposed. His integrity was most
pure, his justice the most inflexible I have ever known, no mo-
i. From Jefferson's letter to Dr. Walter Jones, January 2, 1814.
Dr. Jones had written Jefferson saying he was having trouble, with a
historical work under preparation, in depicting Washington's role during
the Federalist-Republican struggle.
173
BIOGRAPHICAL SK8TCHES
lives of interest or consanguinity, of friendship or hatred, be-
ing able to bias his decision. He was, indeed, in every sense of
the words, a wise, a good, and a great man. His temper was
naturally irritable and high toned; but reflection and resolu-
tion had obtained a firm and habitual ascendency over it. If
ever, however, it broke its bonds, he was most tremendous in
his wrath. In his expenses he was honorable, but exact; liberal
in contributions to whatever promised utility; but frowning
and unyielding on all visionary projects, and all unworthy calls
on his charity. His heart was not warm in its affections; but he
exactly calculated every man's value, and gave him a solid es-
teem proportioned to it. His person, you know, was fine, his
stature exactly what one would wish, his deportment easy, erect
and noble; the best horseman of his age, and the most grace-
ful figure that could be seen on horseback. Although in the
circle of his friends, where he might be unreserved with safety,
he took a free share in conversation, his colloquial talents were
not above mediocrity, possessing neither copiousness of ideas,
nor fluency of words. In public, when called on for a sudden
opinion, he was unready, short and embarrassed. Yet he wrote
readily, rather diffusely, in an easy and correct style. This he
had acquired by conversation with the world, for his education
was merely reading, writing and common arithmetic, to which
he added surveying at a later day. His time was employed
in action chiefly, reading little, and that only in agriculture
and English history. His correspondence became necessarily
extensive, and, with journalizing his agricultural proceedings,
occupied most of his leisure hours within doors. On the whole,
his character was, in its mass, perfect, in nothing bad, in few
points indifferent; and it may truly be said, that never did
nature and fortune combine more perfectly to make a man
great, and to place him in the same constellation with what-
ever worthies have merited from man an everlasting remem-
brance. For his was the singular destiny and merit, of leading
the armies of his country successfully through an arduous
war, for the establishment of its independence; of conducting
174.
THOMAS J8FF8RSON
its councils through the birth of a government, new in its forms
and principles, until it had settled down into a quiet and or-
derly train; and of scrupulously obeying the laws through the
whole of his career, civil and military, of which the history of
the world furnishes no other example.
.... I am satisfied the great body of republicans think of
him as I do. We were, indeed, disssatisfied with him on his
ratification of the British treaty. But this was short lived. We
knew his honesty, the wiles with which he was encompassed,
and that age had already begun to relax the firmness of his
purposes; and I am convinced he is more deeply seated in the
love and gratitude of the republicans, than in the Pharisaical
homage of the federal monarchists. For he was no monarchist
from preference of his judgment. The soundness of that gave
him correct views of the rights of man, and his severe justice
devoted him to them. He has often declared to me that he
considered our new Constitution as an experiment on the prac-
ticability of republican government, and with what dose of
liberty man could be trusted for his own good; that he was
determined the experiment should have a fair trial, and would
lose the last drop of his blood in support of it. And these dec-
larations he repeated to me the oftener and more pointedly,
because he knew my suspicions of Colonel Hamilton's views,
and probably had heard from him the same declarations which
I had, to wit, "that the British constitution, with its unequal
representation, corruption and other existing abuses, was the
most perfect government which had ever been established on
earth, and that a reformation of those abuses would make it
an impracticable government." I do believe that General Wash-
ington had not a firm confidence in the durability of our gov-
ernment. He was naturally distrustful of men, and inclined to
gloomy apprehensions; and I was ever persuaded that a be-
lief that we must at length end in something like a British
constitution, had some weight in his adoption of the ceremonies
of levees, birthdays, pompous meetings with Congress, and
other forms of the same character, calculated to prepare us
175
BIOGRAPHICAL SK8TCHES
gradually for a change which he believed possible, and to let
it come on with as little shock as might be to the public mind.
These are my opinions of General Washington, which I
would vouch at the judgment seat of God, having been formed
on an acquaintance of thirty years. I served with him in the
Virginia legislature from 1769 to the Revolutionary war, and
again, a short time in Congress, until he left us to take com-
mand of the army. During the war and after it we corresponded
occasionally, and in the four years of my continuance in the
office of Secretary of State, our intercourse was daily, confiden-
tial and cordial. After I retired from that office, great and
malignant pains were taken by our federal monarchists, and
not entirely without effect, to make him view me as a theorist,
holding French principles of government, which would lead in-
fallibly to licentiousness and anarchy. And to this he listened
the more easily, from my known disapprobation of the British
treaty. I never saw him afterwards, or these malignant insin-
uations should have been dissipated before his just judgment,
as mists before the sun. I felt on his death, with my country-
men, that "verily a great man hath fallen this day in Israel."
Anecdotes of Benjamin Franklin *
Our revolutionary process, as is well known, commenced by
petitions, memorials, remonstrances, etc., from the old Con-
gress. These were followed by a non-importation agreement,
as a pacific instrument of coercion. While that was before us,
and sundry exceptions, as of arms, ammunition, etc., were
moved from different quarters of the house, I was sitting by
Dr. Franklin and observed to him that I thought we should
except books; that we ought not to exclude science, even com-
ing from an enemy. He thought so too, and I proposed the
exception, which was agreed to. Soon after it occurred that
medicine should be excepted, and I suggested that also to the
Doctor. "As to that," said he, "I will tell you a story. When I
i. These anecdotes were written by Jefferson at the request of Robert
Walsh, journalist and publisher, and were inclosed to him with a letter
of December 4, 1818.
176
THOMAS J8FF8RSON
was in London, in such a year, there was a weekly club of
physicians, of which Sir John Pr ingle was president, and I was
invited by my friend Dr. Fothergill to attend when conven-
ient. Their rule was to propose a thesis one week and discuss
it the next. I happened there when the question to be con-
sidered was whether physicians had, on the whole, done most
good or harm? The young members, particularly, having dis-
cussed it very learnedly and eloquently till the subject was
exhausted, one of them observed to Sir John Pringle, that al-
though it was not usual for the President to take part in a de-
bate, yet they were desirous to know his opinion on the ques-
tion. He said they must first tell him whether, under the
appellation of physicians, they meant to include old women,
if they did he thought they had done more good than harm,
otherwise more harm than good."
The confederation of the States, while on the carpet before
the old Congress, was strenuously opposed by the smaller
States, under apprehensions that they would be swallowed up
by the larger ones. We were long engaged in the discussion;
it produced great heats, much ill humor, and intemperate dec^
larations from some members. Dr. Franklin at length brought
the debate to a close with one of his little apologues. He ob-
served that "at the time of the union of England and Scotland,
the Duke of Argyle was most violently opposed to that measure
and among other things predicted that, as the whale had swal-
lowed Jonah, so Scotland would be swallowed by England.
However," said the Doctor, "when Lord Bute came into the
government, he soon brought into its administration so many
of his countrymen, that it was found in event that Jonah swal-
lowed the whale." This little story produced a general laugh,
and restored good humor, and the article of difficulty was
passed.
When Dr. Franklin went to France, on his revolutionary
mission, his eminence as a philosopher, his venerable appear-
ance, and the cause on which he was sent, rendered him ex-
tremely popular. For all ranks and conditions of men there;
177
BIOGRAPHICAL SKBTCHES
entered warmly into the American interest. He was, therefore,
feasted and invited into all the court parties. At these he
sometimes met the old Duchess of Bourbon, who, being a chess
player of about his force, they very generally played together.
Happening once to put her king into prize, the Doctor took it.
"Ah," said she, "we do not take kings so.7' "We do in Amer-
ica," said the Doctor.
At one of these parties the Emperor Joseph III, then at
Paris, incog., under the title of Count Falkenstein, was over-
looking the game in silence, while the company was engaged
in animated conversations on the American question. "How
happens it M. le Comte," said the Duchess, "that while we all
feel so much interest in the cause of the Americans, you say
nothing for them?" "I am a king by trade," said he.
When the Declaration of Independence was under the con-
sideration of Congress, there were two or three unlucky expres-
sions in it which gave offence to some members. The words
"Scotch and other foreign auxiliaries" excited the ire of a gen-
tleman or two of that country. Severe strictures on the conduct
of the British king, in negotiating our repeated repeals of the
law which permitted the importation of slaves, were disap-
proved by some Southern gentlemen, whose reflections were
not yet matured to the full abhorrence of that traffic. Although
the offensive expressions were immediately yielded these gen-
tlemen continued their depredations on other parts of the in-
strument. I was sitting by Dr. Franklin, who perceived that I
was not insensible to these mutilations. "I have made it a
rule," said he, "whenever in my power, to avoid becoming the
draughtsmen of papers to be reviewed by a public body. I took
my lesson from an incident which I will relate to you. When I
was a journeyman printer, one of my companions, an appren-
tice hatter, having served out his time, was about to open shop
for himself. His first concern was to have a handsome sign-
board, with a proper inscription. He composed it in these
words, * John Thompson, Hatter, makes and sells hats for ready
money/ with a figure of a hat subjoined; but he thought he
178
1'HOMAS JSFFSRSON
would submit it to his friends for their amendments. The first
he showed it to thought the word 'Hatter' tautologous, because
followed by the words 'makes hats/ which show he was a hat-
ter. It was struck out. The next observed that the word 'makes'
might as well be omitted, because his customers would not
care who made the hats. If good and to their mind, they would
buy, by whomsoever made. He struck it out. A third said he
thought the words 'jor ready money' were useless, as it was
not the custom of the place to sell on credit. Every one who
purchased expected to pay. They were parted with, and the
inscription now stood, 'John Thompson sells hats.' 'Sells hats!'
says his next friend. Why nobody will expect you to give them
away, what then is the use of that word? It was stricken out,
and 'hats' followed it, the rather as there was one painted on
the board. So the inscription was reduced ultimately to 'John
Thompson' with the figure of a hat subjoined."
The Doctor told me at Paris the two following anecdotes of
the Abbe Raynal. He had a party to dine with him one day at
Passy, of whom one half were Americans, the other half
French, and among the last was the Abbe. During the dinner
he got on his favorite theory of the degeneracy of animals, and
even of man, in America, and urged it with his usual eloquence.
The Doctor at length noticing the accidental stature and posi-
tion of his guests, at table, "Come," says he, "M. 1'Abbe, let
us try this question by the fact before us. We are here one half
Americans, and one half French, and it happens that the
Americans have placed themselves on one side of the table,
and our French friends are on the other. Let both parties rise,
and we will see on which side nature has degenerated." It hap-
pened that his American guests were Carmichael, Harmer,
Humphreys, and others of the finest stature and form; while
those of the other side were remarkably diminutive, and the
Abbe himself particularly, was a mere shrimp. He parried the
appeal, however, by a complimentary admission of exceptions,
among which the Doctor himself was a conspicuous one.
The Doctor and Silas Deane were in conversation one day
179
BIOGRAPHICAL SKBfCHES
at Pass/, on the numerous errors in the Abbe's Histoire des
deux Indes, when he happened to step in. After the usual salu-
tations, Silas Deane said to him, "The Doctor and myself,
Abbe, were just speaking of the errors of fact into which you
have been led in your history." "Oh, no Sir," said the Abbe,
"that is impossible. I took the greatest care not to insert a
single fact, for which I had not the most unquestionable au-
thority." "Why," says Deane, "there is the story of Polly
Baker, and the eloquent apology you have put into her mouth,
when brought before a court of Massachusetts to suffer punish-
ment under a law which you cite, for having had a bastard. I
know there never was such a law in Massachusetts." "Be as-
sured," said the Abbe, "you are mistaken, and that that is a
true story. I do not immediately recollect indeed the particular
information on which I quote it; but I am certain that I had
for it unquestionable authority." Doctor Franklin, who had
been for some time shaking with unrestrained laughter at the
Abbe's confidence in his authority for that tale, said, "I will
tell you, Abbe, the origin of that story. When I was a printer
and editor of a newspaper, we were sometimes slack of news,
and to amuse our customers, I used to fill up our vacant col-
umns with anecdotes and fables, and fancies of my own, and
this of Polly Baker is a story of my making, on one of these
occasions. The Abbe, without the least disconcert, exclaimed
with a laugh, "Oh, very well, Doctor, I had rather relate your
stories than other men's truths."
Notes for the Biography of George Wythe *
George Wythe was born about the year 1727, or 1728, of a
respectable family in the County of Elizabeth City, on the
shores of the Chesapeake. He inherited, from his father, a for-
tune sufficient for independence and ease. He had not the bene-
fit of a regular education in the schools, but acquired a good
one of himself, and without assistance; insomuch, as to become
i. This biographical sketch was furnished to John Saunderson, who
had written Jefferson concerning a proposed biography of Wythe. It
was sent him with a letter of August 31, 1820.
1 80
THOMAS JSFFBRSON
the best Latin and Greek scholar in the State. It is said, that
while reading the Greek Testament, his mother held an Eng-
lish one, to aid him in rendering the Greek text conformably
with that. He also acquired, by his own reading, a good knowl-
edge of Mathematics, and of Natural and Moral Philosophy.
He engaged in the study of the law under the direction of a
Mr. Lewis, of that profession, and went early to the bar of the
General Court, then occupied by men of great ability, learning,
and dignity in their profession. He soon became eminent
among them, and, in process of time, the first at the bar, tak-
ing into consideration his superior learning, correct elocution,
and logical style of reasoning; for in pleading he never in-
dulged himself with an useless or declamatory thought or word ;
and became as distinguished by correctness and purity of con-
duct in his profession, as he was by his industry and fidelity to
those who employed him. He was early elected to the House
of Representatives, then called the House of Burgesses, and
continued in it until the Revolution. On the first dawn of that,
instead of higgling on half-way principles, as others did who
feared to follow their reason, he took his stand on the solid
ground that the only link of political union between us and
Great Britain, was the identity of our Executive; that that na-
tion and its Parliament had no more authority over us, than
we had over them, and that we were co-ordinate nations with
Great Britain and Hanover.
In 1774, he was a member of a Committee of the House of
Burgesses, appointed to prepare a Petition to the King, a Me-
morial to the House of Lords, and a Remonstrance to the
House of Commons, on the subject of the proposed Stamp Act.
He was made draughtsman of the last, and, following his own
principles, he so far overwent the timid hesitations of his col-
leagues, that his draught was subjected by them to material
modifications; and, when the famous Resolutions of Mr. Henry,
in 1775, were proposed, it was not on any difference of prin-
ciple that they were opposed by Wythe, Randolph, Pendleton,
Nicholas, Bland, and other worthies, who had long been the
181
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES
habitual leaders of the House; but because those papers of the
preceding session had already expressed the same sentiments
and assertions of right, and that an answer to them was yet to
be expected.
In August, 1775, he was appointed a member of Congress,
and in 1776, signed the Declaration of Independence, of which
he had, in debate, been an eminent supporter. And subse-
quently, in the same year, he was appointed, by the Legisla-
ture of Virginia, one of a Committee to revise the laws of the
State, as well of British as of Colonial enactment, and to pre-
pare bills for re-enacting them, with such alterations as the
change in the form and principles of the government, and other
circumstances, required; and of this work, he executed the
period commencing with the revolution in England, and ending
with the establishment of the new government here; excepting
the Acts for regulating descents, for religious freedom, and
for proportioning crimes and punishments. In 1777, he was
chosen Speaker of the House of Delegates, being of distin-
guished learning in Parliamentary law and proceedings; and
towards the end of the same year, he was appointed one of the
three Chancellors, to whom that department of the Judiciary
was confided, on the first organization of the new government.
On a subsequent change of the form of that court, he was ap-
pointed sole Chancellor, in which office he continued to act
until his death, which happened in June, 1806, about the
seventy-eighth or seventy-ninth year of his age.
Mr. Wythe had been twice married: first, I believe, to a
daughter of Mr. Lewis, with whom he had studied law, and
afterwards to a Miss Taliaferro, of a wealthy and respectable
family in the neighborhood of Williamsburg ; by neither of
whom did he leave issue.
No man ever left behind him a character more venerated
than George Wythe. His virtue was of the purest tint; his
integrity inflexible, and his justice exact; of warm patriotism,
and, devoted as he was to liberty, and the natural and equal
rights of man, he might truly be called the Cato of his country,
182
THOMAS
without the avarice of the Roman; for a more disinterested
person never lived. Temperance and regularity in all his habits,
gave him general good health, and his unaffected modesty and
suavity of manners endeared him to every one. He was of easy
elocution, his language chaste, methodical in the arrangement
of his matter, learned and logical in the use of it, and of
great urbanity in debate; not quick of apprehension, but, with
a little time, profound in penetration, and sound in conclusion.
In his philosophy he was firm, and neither troubling, nor per-
haps trusting, any one with his religious creed, he left the
world to the conclusion, that that religion must be good which
could produce a life of such exemplary virtue.
His stature was of the middle size, well formed and propor-
tioned, and the features of his face were manly, comely, and
engaging. Such was George Wythe, the honor of his own, and
the model of future times.
1-83
on Virginia1
i. The full title is: Notes on the State of Virginia; written in the
year 1781, somewhat corrected and enlarged in the winter of 1782, for
the use of a Foreigner of distinction, in answer to certain queries pro-
posed by him respecting its boundaries; rivers; sea ports; mountains;
cascades and caverns; productions mineral, vegetable and animal; cli-
mate; population; military force; marine force; aborigines; counties and
towns; constitution; laws; colleges, buildings, and roads; proceedings
as to tories; religion; manners; manufactures; subjects of commerce;
Weights, Measures and Money; public revenue and expenses; histories,
memorials, and state papers.
INTRODUCTION
JEFFERSON'S Notes on Virginia, his only original full-length
book, was written, for the most part, in answer to inquiries
made to him by the Marquis de Barbe-Marbois, then Secretary
of the French Legation in Philadelphia. Following his resigna-
tion as Governor of Virginia, during a rare period of leisure
while recuperating from the effects of being thrown from a
horse, Jefferson had occasion to work over the material con-
cerning Virginia he had assiduously collected over a period of
many years. These notes were revised and enlarged during the
winter of 1782-83, but were not immediately published in this
country, largely for financial reasons. The Notes on Virginia
were first anonymously published at Jefferson's expense in an
edition of 200 copies, Paris, 1784 (dated 1782), shortly after
Jefferson's arrival in that capital. This very limited edition
was followed, within the next five years, by popular French,
English, German, and American printings, authorized and un-
authorized. The Notes made a great impression on the French
political world, where French liberals paid particular attention
to the sections on the free institutions of republican govern-
ment.
Important not only as a notable contribution to American
scientific writing (formulating principles of scientific geography
later developed by von Humboldt), it has been praised by rep-
utable twentieth-century historians of science as the most in-
fluential scientific book written by an American. The Notes
continue to be of interest for the clarity, vigor, and occasional
beauty of Jefferson's prose.
With the exception of statistical tables, insignificant on
repetitive detail, and technical footnotes, the Notes on Virginia
is printed complete.
NOTES ON VIRGINIA
QUERY I
An exact description of the limits and boundaries of the State
of Virginia?
Virginia is bounded on the east by the Atlantic; on the
north by a line of latitude crossing the eastern shore through
Watkin's Point, being about 37° 57' north latitude; from thence
by a straight line to Cinquac, near the mouth of the Po-
tomac; thence by the Potomac, which is common to Virginia
and Maryland, to the first fountain of its northern branch;
thence by a meridian line, passing throught that fountain till
it intersects a line running east and west, in latitude 39° 43'
42.4" which divides Maryland from Pennsylvania, and which
was marked by Messrs. Mason and Dixon; thence by that
line, and a continuation of it westwardly to the completion of
five degrees of longitude from the eastern boundary of Penn-
sylvania, in the same latitude, and thence by a meridian line
to the Ohio; on the west by the Ohio and Mississippi, to lati-
tude 36° 30' north, and on the south by the line of latitude
last mentioned. . . . These boundaries include an area some-
what triangular of one hundred and twenty-one thousand five
hundred and twenty-five square miles, whereof seventy-nine
thousand six hundred and fifty lie westward of the Alleghany
mountains, and fifty-seven thousand and thirty-four westward
of the meridian of the mouth of the Great Kanhaway. This
State is therefore one-third larger than the islands of Great
Britain and Ireland, which are reckoned at eighty-eight thou-
sand three hundred and fifty-seven square miles.
These limits result from, i. The ancient charters from the
crown of England. 2. The grant of Maryland to the Lord Balti-
187
ON VIRGINIA
more, and the subsequent determinations of the British court
as to the extent of that grant. 3. The grant of Pennsylvania to
William Penn, and a compact between the general assemblies
of the commonwealths of Virginia and Pennsylvania as to the
extent of that grant. 4. The grant of Carolina, and actual loca-
tion of its northern boundary, by consent of both parties.
5. The treaty of Paris of 1763. 6. The confirmation of the
charters of the neighboring States by the convention of Virginia
at the time of constituting their commonwealth. 7. The cession
made by Virginia to Congress of all the lands to which they had
title on the north side of the Ohio.
QUERY II
A notice of its rivers, rivulets, and how jar they are navigable?
An inspection of a map of Virginia, will give a better idea
of the geography of its rivers, than any description in writing.
Their navigation may be imperfectly noted.
Roanoke, so far as it lies within the State, is nowhere
navigable but for canoes, or light batteaux; and even for these
in such detached parcels as to have prevented the inhabitants
from availing themselves of it at all.
James River, and its waters, afford navigation as follows:
The whole of Elizabeth River, the lowest of those which run
into James River, is a harbor, and would contain upwards of
three hundred ships. The channel is from one hundred and fifty
to two hundred fathoms wide and at common flood tide affords
eighteen feet water to Norfolk. The Stafford, a sixty gun ship,
went there, lightening herself to cross the bar at Sowel's Point.
The Fier Rodrigue, pierced for sixty- four guns, and carrying
fifty, went there without lightening. Craney Island, at the mouth
of this river, commands its channel tolerably well.
Nansemond River is navigable to Sleepy Hole for vessels of
two hundred and fifty tons; to Suffolk for those of one hundred
tons; and to Milner's for those of twenty-five.
Pagan Creek affords eight or ten feet water to Smithfield,
which admits vessels of twenty tons.
188
THOMAS JSFFSRSON
Chickahominy has at its mouth a bar, on which is onl}
twelve feet water at common flood tide. Vessels passing that,
may go eight miles up the river; those of ten feet draught may
go four miles further, and those of six tons burden twenty
miles further.
Appomattox may be navigated as far as Broadways, by any
vessel which has crossed Harrison's bar in James River; it
keeps eight or ten feet water a mile or two higher up to Fisher's
bar, and four feet on that and upwards to Petersburg, where
all navigation ceases.
James River itself affords a harbor for vessels of any size in
Hampton Road, but not in safety through the whole winter;
and there is navigable water for them as far as Mulberry Is-
land. A forty gun ship goes to Jamestown, and lightening her-
self, may pass Harrison's bar; on which there is only fifteen
feet water. Vessels of two hundred and fifty tons may go to
Warwick; those of one hundred and twenty-five go to Rocket's,
a mile below Richmond ; from thence is about seven feet water
to Richmond; and about the centre of the town, four feet and
a half, where the navigation is interrupted by falls, which in
a course of six miles, descend about eighty-eight feet perpen-
dicular; above these it is resumed in canoes and batteaux,
and is prosecuted safely and advantageously to within ten miles
of the Blue Ridge; and even through the Blue Ridge a ton
weight has been brought; and the expense would not be great,
when compared with its object, to open a tolerable navigation
up Jackson's river and Carpenter's creek, to within twenty-five
miles of Howard's creek of Green Briar, both of which have
then water enough to float vessels into the Great Kanhaway.
In some future state of population I think it possible that its
navigation may also be made to interlock with that of the
Potomac, and through that to communicate by a short portage
with the Ohio. It is to be noted that this river is called in the
maps James River, only to its confluence with the Rivanna;
thence to the Blue Ridge it is called the Fluvanna; and thence
to its source Jackson's river. But in common speech, it is called
James River to its source.
189
ON VIRGINIA
The Rivanna, a branch of James River, is navigable for
canoes and batteaux to its intersection with the South-West
mountains, which is about twenty-two miles; and may easily
be opened to navigation through these mountains to its fork
above Charlottesville. . . .
The Mississippi will be one of the principal channels of
future commerce for the country westward of the Alleghany.
From the mouth of this river to where it receives the Ohio,
is one thousand miles by water, but only five hundred by
land, passing through the Chickasaw country. From the mouth
of the Ohio to that of the Missouri, is two hundred and
thirty miles by water, and one hundred and forty by land, from
thence to the mouth of the Illinois river, is about twenty-five
miles. The Mississippi, below the mouth of the Missouri, is
always muddy, and abounding with sand bars, which fre-
quently change their places. However, it carries fifteen feet
water to the mouth of the Ohio, to which place it is from one
and a half to two miles wide, and thence to Kaskaskia from one
mile to a mile and a quarter wide. Its current is so rapid, that
it never can be stemmed by the force of the wind alone, acting
on sails. Any vessel, however, navigated with oars, may come
up at any time, and receive much aid from the wind. A batteau
passes from the mouth of Ohio to the mouth of Mississippi in
three weeks, and is from two to three months getting up again.
During its floods, which are periodical as those of the Nile,
the largest vessels may pass down it, if their steerage can be
insured. These floods begin in April, and the river returns into
its banks early in August. The inundation extends further on
the western than eastern side, covering the lands in some
places for fifty miles from its banks. Above the mouth of the
Missouri it becomes much such a river as the Ohio, like it clear
and gentle in its current, not quite so wide, the period of its
floods nearly the same, but not rising to so great a height.
The streets of the village at Cohoes are not more than ten feet
above the ordinary level of the water, and yet were never
overflowed. Its bed deepens every year. Cohoes, in the memory
190
THOMAS JEFFERSON
of many people now living, was insulated by every flood of the
river. What was the eastern channel has now become a lake,
nine miles in length and one in width, into which the river at
this day never flows. This river yields turtle of a peculiar kind,
perch, trout, gar, pike, mullets, herrings, carp, spatula-fish of
fifty pounds weight, cat-fish of one hundred pounds weight,
buffalo fish, and sturgeon. Alligators or crocodiles have been
seen as high up as the Acansas. It also abounds in herons,
cranes, ducks, brant, geese, and swans. Its passage is com-
manded by a fort established by this State, five miles below
the mouth of the Ohio, and ten miles above the Carolina
boundary.
The Missouri, since the treaty of Paris, the Illinois and
northern branches of the Ohio, since the cession to Congress,
are no longer within our limits. Yet having been so heretofore,
and still opening to us channels of extensive communication
with the western and north-western country, they shall be
noted in their order.1
QUERY III
.4 notice of the best Seaports of the State and how big are the
vessels they can receive?
Having no ports but our rivers and creeks, this Query has
been answered under the preceding one.
QUERY IV
A notice of its Mountains?
For the particular geography of our mountains I must refer
to Fry and Jefferson's map of Virginia; and to Evans' analysis
of this map of America, for a more philosophical view of them
than is to be found in any other work. It is worthy of notice,
i. The remainder of this Query enumerates and describes the follow-
ing rivers: Missouri, Illinois, Kaskaskia, Ohio, Tennessee, Cumberland,
Wabash, Green, Kentucky, Great Miami, Salt River, Little Miami, Sioto,
Great Sandy, Guiandot, Great Kanhaway, Hockhocking, Little Kanha-
way, Muskingum, Monongahela, and Alleghany.
IQI
ON VIRGINIA
that our mountains are not solitary and scattered confusedly
over the face of the country; but that they commence at about
one hundred and fifty miles from the sea-coast, are disposed in
ridges, one behind another, running nearly parallel with the
sea-coast, though rather approaching it as they advance north-
eastwardly. To the south-west, as the tract of country between
the sea-coast and the Mississippi becomes narrower, the moun-
tains converge into a single ridge, which, as it approaches the
Gulf of Mexico, subsides into plain country, and gives rise to
some of the waters of that gulf, and particularly to a river
called the Apalachiocola, probably from the Apalachies, an In-
dian nation formerly residing on it. Hence, the mountains giv-
ing rise to that river, and seen from its various parts, were called
the Apalachian mountains, being in fact the end or termi-
nation only of the great ridges passing through the conti-
nent. European geographers, however, extended the name north-
wardly as far as the mountains extended; some giving it, after
their separation into different ridges, to the Blue Ridge, others
to the North Mountain, others to the Alleghany, others to the
Laurel Ridge, as may be seen by their different maps. But the
fact I believe is, that none of these ridges were ever known by
that name to the inhabitants, either native or emigrant, but as
they saw them so called in European maps. In the same direc-
tion, generally, are the veins of limestone, coal, and other min-
erals hitherto discovered; and so range the falls of our great
rivers. But the courses of the great rivers are at right angles
with these. James and Potomac penetrate through all the ridges
of mountains eastward of the Alleghany; that is, broken by no
water course. It is in fact the spine of the country between the
Atlantic on one side, and the Mississippi and St. Lawrence on
the other. The passage of the Potomac through the Blue Ridge
is, perhaps, one of the most stupendous scenes in nature. You
stand on a very high point of land. On your right comes up the
Shenandoah, having ranged along the foot of the mountain an
hundred miles to seek a vent. On your left approaches the Po-
tomac, in quest of a passage also. In the moment of their junc-
192
THOMAS JSFFeRSON
tion, they rush together against the mountain, rend it asunder,
and pass off to the sea. The first glance of this scene hurries
our senses into the opinion, that this earth has been created in
time, that the mountains were formed first, that the rivers
began to flow afterwards, that in this place, particularly, they
have been dammed up by the Blue Ridge of mountains, and
have formed an ocean which filled the whole valley; that con-
tinuing to rise they have at length broken over at this spot, and
have torn the mountain down from its summit to its base. The
piles of rock on each hand, but particularly on the Shenandoah,
the evident marks of their disrupture and avulsion from their
beds by the most powerful agents of nature, corroborate the
impression. But the distant finishing which nature has given
to the picture, is of a very different character. It is a true con-
trast to the foreground. It is as placid and delightful as that is
wild and tremendous. For the mountain being cloven asunder,
she presents to your eye, through the cleft, a small catch of
smooth blue horizon, at an infinite distance in the plain coun-
try, inviting you, as it were, from the riot and tumult roaring
around, to pass through the breach and participate of the calm
below. Here the eye ultimately composes itself; and that way,
too, the road happens actually to lead. You cross the Potomac
above the junction, pass along its side through the base of
the mountain for three miles, its terrible precipices hanging in
fragments over you, and within about twenty miles reach Fred-
ericktown, and the fine country round that. This scene is worth
a voyage across the Atlantic. Yet here, as in the neighborhood
of the Natural Bridge, are people who have passed their lives
within half a dozen miles, and have never been to survey these
monuments of a war between rivers and mountains, which must
have shaken the earth itself to its centre. . . .
The height of our mountains has not yet been estimated with
any degree of exactness. The Alleghany being the great ridge
which divides the waters of the Atlantic from those of the Mis-
sissippi, its summit is doubtless more elevated above the ocean
than that of any other mountain. But its relative height, com-
ON VIRGINIA
pared with the base on which it stands, is not so great as that
of some others, the country rising behind the successive ridges
like the steps of stairs. The mountains of the Blue Ridge, and
of these the Peaks of Otter, are thought to be of a greater
height, measured from their base, than any others in our coun-
try, and perhaps in North America. From data, which may
found a tolerable conjecture, we suppose the highest peak to
be about four thousand feet perpendicular, which is not a fifth
part of the height of the mountains of South America, nor one-
third of the height which would be necessary in our latitude to
preserve ice in the open air unmelted through the year. The
ridge of mountains next beyond the Blue Ridge, called by us
the North mountain, is of the greatest extent; for which reason
they were named by the Indians the endless mountains.
A substance supposed to be Pumice, found floating on the
Mississippi, has induced a conjecture that there is a volcano
on some of its waters; and as these are mostly known to their
sources, except the Missouri, our expectations of verifying the
conjecture would of course be led to the mountains which di-
vide the waters of the Mexican Gulf from those of the South
Sea; but no volcano having ever yet been known at such a dis-
tance from the sea, we must rather suppose that this floating
substance has been erroneously deemed Pumice.
QUERY V
Its Cascades and Caverns?
The only remarkable cascade in this country is that of the
Falling Spring in Augusta. It is a water of James' river where
it is called Jackson's river, rising in the warm spring mountains,
about twenty miles southwest of the warm spring, and flowing
into that valley. About three-quarters of a mile from its source
it falls over a rock two hundred feet into the valley below.
The sheet of water is broken in its breadth by the rock, in two
or three places, but not at all in its height. Between the sheet
and the rock, at the bottom, you may walk across dry. This
cataract will bear no comparison with that of Niagara as to the
194
THOMAS J8FF8RSON
quantity of water composing it; the sheet being only twelve or
fifteen feet wide above and somewhat more spread below; but
it is half as high again, the latter being only one hundred and
fifty-six feet, according to the mensuration made by order of
M. Vaudreuil, Governor of Canada, and one hundred and
thirty according to a more recent account.
In the lime-stone country there are many caverns of very
considerable extent. The most noted is called Madison's Cave,1
and is on the north side of the Blue Ridge, near the intersec-
tion of the Rockingham and Augusta line with the south fork
of the southern river of Shenandoah. It is in a hill of about two
hundred feet perpendicular height, the ascent of which, on one
side, is so steep that you may pitch a biscuit from its summit
into the river which washes its base. The entrance of the cave
is, in this side, about two-thirds of the way up. It extends into
the earth about three hundred feet, branching into subordinate
caverns, sometimes ascending a little, but more generally de-
scending, and at length terminates, in two different places, at
basins of water of unknown extent, and which I should judge
to be nearly on a level with the water of the river; however, I
do not think they are formed by refluent water from that, be-
cause they are never turbid; because they do not rise and fall
in correspondence with that in times of flood or of drought;
and because the water is always cool. It is probably one of the
many reservoirs with which the interior parts of the earth are
supposed to abound, and yield supplies to the fountains of wa-
ter, distinguished from others only by being accessible. The
vault of this cave is of solid lime-stone, from twenty to forty
or fifty feet high; through which water is continually percolat-
ing. This, trickling down the sides of the cave, has incrusted
them over in the form of elegant drapery; and dripping from
the top of the vault generates on that and on the base below,
stalactites of a conical form, some of which have met and
formed massive columns.
i. Jefferson includes a diagram of Madison's Cave which is omitted
in the present edition.
195
ON VIRGINIA
Another of these caves is near the North Mountain, in the
county of Frederic, on the lands of Mr. Zane. The entrance
into this is on the top of an extensive ridge. You descend thirty
or forty feet, as into a well, from whence the cave extends,
nearly horizontally, four hundred feet into the earth, preserving
a breadth of from twenty to fifty feet, and a height of from five
to twelve feet. After entering this cave a few feet, the mercury,
which in the open air was 50°, rose to 57° of Fahrenheit's ther-
mometer, answering to 11° of Reaumur's, and it continued at
that to the remotest parts of the cave. The uniform tempera-
ture of the cellars of the observatory of Paris, which are ninety
feet deep, and of all subterraneous cavities of any depth, where
no chemical agencies may be supposed to produce a factitious
heat, has been found to be 10° of Reaumur, equal to 54^2° of
Fahrenheit. The temperature of the cave above mentioned so
nearly corresponds with this, that the difference may be ascribed
to a difference of instruments.
At the Panther gap, in the ridge which divides the waters
of the Cow and the Calf pasture, is what is called the Blowing
Cave. It is in the side of a hill, is of about one hundred feet di-
ameter, and emits constantly a current of air of such force as to
keep the weeds prostrate to the distance of twenty yards before
it. This current is strongest in dry, frosty weather, and in long
spells of rain weakest. Regular inspirations and expirations of
air, by caverns and fissures, have been probably enough ac-
counted for by supposing them combined with intermitting
fountains; as they must of course inhale air while their reser-
voirs are emptying themselves, and again emit it while they are
filling. But a constant issue of air, only varying in its force
as the weather is drier or damper, will require a new hypothesis,
There is another blowing cave in the Cumberland mountain,
about a mile from where it crosses the Carolina line. All we know
of this is, that it is not constant, and that a fountain of water
issues from it.
The Natural Bridge, the most sublime of nature's works.
196
THOMAS JSFFeRSON
though not comprehended under the present head, must not be
pretermitted. It is on the ascent of a hill, which seems to have
been cloven through its length by some great convulsion. The
fissure, just at the bridge, is, by some admeasurements, two
hundred and seventy feet deep, by others only two hundred
and five. It is about forty-five feet wide at the bottom and
ninety feet at the top; this of course determines the length of
the bridge, and its height from the water. Its breadth in the
middle is about sixty feet, but more at the ends, and the thick-
ness of the mass, at the summit of the arch, about forty feet.
A part of this thickness is constituted by a coat of earth, which
gives growth to many large trees. The residue, with the hill on
both sides, is one solid rock of lime-stone. The arch approaches
the semi-elliptical form; but the larger axis of the ellipsis,
which would be the cord of the arch, is many times longer than
the transverse. Though the sides of this bridge are provided
in some parts with a parapet of fixed rocks, yet few men have
resolution to walk to them, and look over into the abyss. You
involuntarily fall on your hands and feet, creep to the para-
pet, and peep over it. Looking down from this height about a
minute, gave me a violent headache. If the view from the top
be painful and intolerable, that from below is delightful in an
equal extreme. It is impossible for the emotions arising from
the sublime to be felt beyond what they are here; so beautiful
an arch, so elevated, so light, and springing as it were up to
heaven! The rapture of the spectator is really indescribable!
The fissure continuing narrow, deep, and straight, for a con-
siderable distance above and below the bridge, opens a short
but very pleasing view of the North mountain on one side and
the Blue Ridge on the other, at the distance each of them of
about five miles. This bridge is in the county of Rockbridge,
to which it has given name, and affords a public and com-
modious passage over a valley which cannot be crossed else-
where for a considerable distance. The stream passing under it
is called Cedar creek. It is a water of James' river, and suffi-
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ON VIRGINIA
cient in the driest seasons to turn a grist-mill, though its foun-
tain is not more than two miles above.1
QUERY VI
A notice of the mines and other subterraneous riches;
its trees, plants, fruits, etc.
I knew a single instance of gold found in this State. It was
interspersed in small specks through a lump of ore of about
four pounds weight, which yielded seventeen pennyweights of
gold, of extraordinary ductility. This ore was found on the
north side of Rappahanoc, about four miles below the falls. I
never heard of any other indication of gold in its neighbor-
hood. . . .
Near the eastern foot of the North mountain are immense
bodies of Schist, containing impressions of shells in a variety
•of forms. I have received petrified shells of very different kinds
from the first sources of Kentucky, which bear no resemblance
to any I have ever seen on the tide-waters. It is said that shells
are found in the Andes, in South America, fifteen thousand feet
above the level of the ocean. This is considered by many, both
of the learned and unlearned, as a proof of an universal deluge.
To the many considerations opposing this opinion, the follow-
ing may be added: The atmosphere, and all its contents,
whether of water, air, or other matter, gravitate to the earth;
that is to say, they have weight. Experience tells us, that the
weight of all these together never exceeds that of a column of
mercury of thirty-one inches height, which is equal to one of
rain water of thirty-five feet high. If the whole contents of
the atmosphere, then, were water, instead of what they are, it
would cover the globe but thirty-five feet deep; but as these
waters, as they fell, would run into the seas, the superficial
measure of which is to that of the dry parts of the globe, as
two to one, the seas would be raised only fifty-two and a half
feet above their present level, and of course would overflow
the lands to that height only. In Virginia this would be a very
i. A long footnote supplied by Jefferson is omitted here.
198
THOMAS JSFF8RSON
small proportion even of the champaign country, the banks
of our tide waters being frequently, if not generally, of a
greater height. Deluges beyond this extent, then, as for in-
stance, to the North mountain or to Kentucky, seem out of the
laws of nature. But within it they may have taken place to a
greater or less degree, in proportion to the combination of nat-
ural causes which may be supposed to have produced them.
History renders probably some instances of a partial deluge in
the country lying round the Mediterranean sea. It has been
often * supposed, and it is not unlikely, that that sea was once
a lake. VVhile such, let us admit an extraordinary collection
of the waters of the atmosphere from the other parts of the
globe to have been discharged over that and the countries whose
waters run into it. Or without supposing it a lake, admit such
an extraordinary collection of the waters of the atmosphere,
and an influx from the Atlantic ocean, forced by long-contin-
ued western winds. The lake, or that sea, may thus have been
so raised as to overflow the low lands adjacent to it, as those
of Egypt and Armenia, which, according to a tradition of the
Egyptians and Hebrews, were overflowed about two thousand
three hundred years before the Christian era; those of Attica,
said to have been overflowed in the time of Ogyges, about five
hundred years later; and those of Thessaly, in the time of
Deucalion, still three hundred years posterior. But such deluges
as these will not account for the shells found in the higher
lands. A second opinion has been entertained, which is, that in
times anterior to the records either of history or tradition, the
bed of the ocean, the principal residence of the shelled tribe,
has, by some great convulsion of nature, been heaved to the
heights at which we now find shells and other marine animals.
The favorers of this opinion do well to suppose the great events
on which it rests to have taken place beyond all the eras of
history; for within these, certainly, none such are to be found;
and we may venture to say farther, that no fact has taken place.
i. Buff on Epoqucs, 96. [Jefferson's footnote.l Jefferson evidently
means Vol. II of Buffon's Epoques. — Eds.
199
adores ON VIRGINIA
either in our own days, or in the thousands of years recorded in
history, which proves the existence of any natural agents, within
or without the bowels of the earth, of forces sufficient to heave,
to the height of fifteen thousand feet, such masses as the Andes.
The difference between the power necessary to produce such
an effect, and that which shuffled together the different parts
of Calabria in our days, is so immense, that from the existence
of the latter, we are not authorized to infer that of the former.
M. de Voltaire lias suggested a third solution of this diffi-
culty. (Quest. Encycl. Coquilles.) He cites an instance in Tou-
raine, where, in the space of eighty years, a particular spot of
earth had been twice metamorphosed into soft stone, which
had become hard when employed in building. In this stone
shells of various kinds were produced, discoverable at first only
with a microscope, but afterwards growing with the stone. From
this fact, I suppose, he would have us infer, that, besides the
usual process for generating shells by the elaboration of earth
and water in animal vessels, nature may have provided an
equivalent operation, by passing the same materials through
the pores of calcareous earths and stones; as we see calcareous
drop-stones generating every day, by the percolation of water
through lime-stone, and new marble forming in the quarries
from which the old has been taken out. And it might be asked,
whether is it more difficult for nature to shoot the calcareous
juice into the form of a shell, than other juices into the forms
of crystals, plants, animals, according to the construction of
the vess'els through which they pass? There is a wonder some-
where. Is it greatest on this branch of the dilemma; on that
which supposes the existence of a power, of which we have no
evidence in any other case; or on the first, which requires us
to believe the creation of a body of water and its subsequent
annihilation? The establishment of the instance, cited by M.
de Voltaire, of the growth, of shells unattached to animal
bodies, would have been that of his theory. But he has not es-
tablished it. He has not even left it on ground so respectable
as to have rendered it an object of inquiry to the literati of his
200
THOMAS jeFFSRSON
own country. Abandoning this fact, therefore, the three hypoth-
eses are equally unsatisfactory; and we must be contented to
acknowledge, that this great phenomenon is as yet unsolved.
Ignorance is preferable to error; and he is less remote from the
truth who believes nothing, than he who believes what is wrong.
.... Our farms produce wheat, rye, barley, oats, buck-wheat,
broom corn, and Indian corn. The climate suits rice well enough,
wherever the lands do. Tobacco, hemp, flax, and cotton, are
staple commodities. Indigo yields two cuttings. The silk-worm
is a native, and the mulberry, proper for its food, grows kindly.
We cultivate, also, potatoes, both the long and the round,
turnips, carrots, parsnips, pumpkins, and ground nuts (Ara-
chis). Our grasses are lucerne, st. foin, burnet, timothy, ray,
and orchard grass; red, white, and yellow clover; greensward,
blue grass, and crab grass.
The gardens yield musk-melons, water-melons, tomatoes,
okra, pomegranates, figs, and the esculent plants of Europe.
The orchards produce apples, pears, cherries, quinces,
peaches, nectarines, apricots, almonds, and plums.
Our quadrupeds have been mostly described by Linnaeus
and Mons. de Buffon. Of these the mammoth, or big buffalo>
as called by the Indians, must certainly have been the largest.
Their tradition is, that he was carnivorous, and still exists in
the northern parts of America. A delegation of warriors from
the Delaware tribe having visited the Governor of Virginia,
during the revolution, on matters of business, after these had
been discussed and settled in council, the Governor asked them
some questions relative to their country, and among others,
what they knew or had heard of the animal whose bones were
found at the Saltlicks on the Ohio. Their chief speaker imme-
diately put himself into an attitude of oratory, and with a pomp
suited to what he conceived the elevation of his subject, in-
formed him that it was a tradition handed down from their
fathers, "That in ancient times a herd of these tremendous
animals came to the Big-bone licks, and began an universal
destruction of the bear, deer, elks, buffaloes, and other ani-
201
chores ON VIRGINIA
mals which had been created for the use of the Indians; that
the Great Man above, looking down and seeing this, was so
enraged that he seized his lightning, descended on the earth,
seated himself on a neighboring mountain, on a rock of which
his seat and the print of his feet are still to be seen, and hurled
his bolts among them till the whole were slaughtered, except
the big bull, who presenting his forehead to the shafts, shook
them off as they fell; but missing one at length, it wounded
him in the side; whereon, springing round, he bounded over the
Ohio, over the Wabash, the Illinois, and finally over the great
lakes, where he is living at this day." It is well known, that on
the Ohio, and in many parts of America further north, tusks,
grinders, and skeletons of unparalleled magnitude, are found
in great numbers, some lying on the surface of the earth, and
some a little below it. A Mr. Stanley, taken prisoner near the
mouth of the Tennessee, relates, that after being transferred
through several tribes, from one to another, he was at length
carried over the mountains west of the Missouri to a river which
runs westwardly; that these bones abounded there, and that
the natives described to him the animal to which they be-
longed as still existing in the northern parts of their country;
from which description he judged it to be an elephant. Bones
of the same kind have been lately found, some feet below the
surface of the earth, in salines opened on the North Holston, a
branch of the Tennessee, about the latitude of 36^° north.
From the accounts published in Europe, I suppose it to be de-
cided that these are of the same kind with those found in Si-
beria. Instances are mentioned of like animal remains found
in the more southern climates of both hemispheres; but they
are either so loosely mentioned as to leave a doubt of the fact,
so inaccurately described as not to authorize the classing them
with the great northern bones, or so rare as to found a sus-
picion that they have been carried thither as curiosities from
the northern regions. So that, on the whole, there seem to be
no certain vestiges of the existence of this animal farther south
than the salines just mentioned. It is remarkable that the tusks
202
THOMAS J8FF8RSON
and skeletons have been ascribed by the naturalists of Europe?
to the elephant, while the grinders have been given to the
hippopotamus, or river horse. Yet it is acknowledged, that the
tusks and skeletons are much larger than those of the elephant,
and the grinders many times greater than those of the hippo-
potamus, and essentially different in form. Wherever these
grinders are found, there also we find the tusks and skeleton;
but no skeleton of the hippopotamus nor grinders of the ele-
phant. It will not be said that the hippopotamus and elephant
came always to the same spot, the former to deposit his grind-
ers, and the latter his tusks and skeleton. For what became of
the parts not deposited there? We must agree then, that these
remains belong to each other, that they are of one and the same
animal, that this was not a hippopotamus, because the hippo-
potamus had no tusks, nor such a frame, and because the
grinders differ in their size as well as in the number and form
of their points. That this was not an elephant, I think ascer-
tained by proofs equally decisive. I will not avail myself oi
the authority of the celebrated 1 anatomist, who, from an ex-
amination of the form and structure of the tusks, has declared
they were essentially different from those of the elephant; be-
cause another 2 anatomist, equally celebrated, has declared, on
a like examination, that they are precisely the same. Between
two such authorities I will suppose this circumstance equivocal.
But, i. The skeleton of the mammoth (for so the incognitum
has been called) bespeaks an animal of five or six times the
cubic volume of the elephant, as Mons. de Buffon has admitted.
2. The grinders are five times as large, are square, and the
grinding surface studded with four or five rows of blunt points;
whereas those of the elephant are broad and thin, and their
grinding surface flat. 3. I have never heard an instance, and
suppose there has been none, of the grinder of an elephant be-
ing found in America. 4. From the known temperature and con-
stitution of the elephant, he could never have existed in thosa
1. Hunter. [Jefferson's footnote.]
2. D'Aubenton. [Jefferson's footnote.]
205
ON VIRGINIA
regions where the remains of the mammoth have been found.
The elephant is a native only of the torrid zone and its vicini-
ties; if, with the assistance of warm apartments and warm
clothing, he has been preserved in the temperate climates of
Europe, it has only been for a small portion of what would have
been his natural period, and no instance of his multiplication
in them has ever been known. But no bones of the mammoth,
as I have before observed, have been ever found further south
than the salines of Holston, and they have been found as far
north as the Arctic circle. Those, therefore, who are of opinion
that the elephant and mammoth are the same, must believe, i.
That the elephant known to us can exist and multiply in the
frozen zone; or, 2. That an eternal fire may once have warmed
those regions, and since abandoned them, of which, however,
the globe exhibits no unequivocal indications; or, 3. That the
obliquity of the ecliptic, when these elephants lived, was so
great as to include within the tropics all those regions in which
the bones are found; the tropics being, as is before observed,
the natural limits of habitation for the elephant. But if it be
admitted that this obliquity has really decreased, and we adopt
the highest rate of decrease yet pretended, that is, of one min-
ute in a century, to transfer the northern tropic to the Arctic
circle, would carry the existence of these supposed elephants
two hundred and fifty thousand years back; a period far be-
yond our conception of the duration of animal bones less ex-
posed to the open air than these are in many instances. Be-
sides, though these regions would then be supposed within the
tropics, yet their winters would have been too severe for the
sensibility of the elephant. They would have had, too, but one
day and one night in the year, a circumstance to which we
have no reason to suppose the nature of the elephant fitted.
However, it has been demonstrated, that, if a variation of
obliquity in the ecliptic takes place at all, it is vibratory, and
never exceeds the limits of nine degrees, which is not sufficient
to bring these bones within the tropics. One of these hypoth-
eses, or some other equally voluntary and inadmissible to cau-
204
THOMAS J6FF8RSON
tious philosophy, must be adopted to support the opinion that
these are the bones of the elephant. For my own part, I find
it easier to believe that an animal may have existed, resembling
the elephant in his tusks, and general anatomy, while his na-
ture was in other respects extremely different. From the 3oth
degree of south latitude to the 3Oth degree of north, are nearly
the limits which nature has fixed for the existence and multi-
plication of the elephant known to us. Proceeding thence north-
wardly to 36^2 degrees, we enter those assigned to the mam-
moth. The farther we advance north, the more their vestiges
multiply as far as the earth has been explored in that direction;
and it is as probable as otherwise, that this progression con-
tinues to the pole itself, if land extends so far. The centrte of the
frozen zone, then, may be the acme of their vigor, as that of
the torrid is of the elephant. Thus nature seems to have drawn
a belt of separation between these two tremendous animals,
whose breadth, indeed, is not precisely known, though at pres-
ent we may suppose it about 6^ degrees of latitude; to have
assigned to the elephant the region south of these confines, and
those north to the mammoth, founding the constitution of the
one in her extreme of heat, and that of the other in the extreme
of cold. When the Creator has therefore separated their nature
as far as the extent of the scale of animal life allowed to this
planet would permit, it seems perverse to declare it the same,
from a partial resemblance of their tusks and bones. But to
whatever animal we ascribe these remains, it is certain such a
one has existed in America, and that it has been the largest
of all terrestrial beings. It 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 scale; 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:" l
that nature is less active, less energetic on one side of the globe
i. Buffon, xviii. 112 edit. Paris, 1764. [Jefferson's footnote.]
205
ON VIRGINIA
dian 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 composi-
tion 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 ca-
pacities. Every race of animals seems to have received from
their Maker certain laws of extension at the time of their for-
mation. 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.
The opinion advanced by the Count de Buffon,1 is i. 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
pmaller 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 ad-
verse 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
i. Buffon, xviii. 100, 156. [Jefferson's footnote.]
206
THOMAS J6FF8RSON
let it be supposed. The hypothesis, after this supposition, pro-
ceeds to another; that moisture is unfriendly to animal growth.
The truth of this is inscrutable to us by reasonings a priori. Na-
ture has hidden from us her modus agcndi. 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 oi
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; l "in gen-
eral, it appears that rather cold countries are more suitable to
our oxen than rather warm countries, and that they (the oxen)
are all the larger and greater in proportion as the climate is
damper and more abounding in pasturage. . . ." ~ Here then
a race of animals, and one of the largest too, has been in-
creased in its dimensions by cold and moisture, in direct op-
position to the hypothesis, which supposes that these two cir-
cumstances diminish animal bulk, and that it is their contraries
heat and dryncss which enlarge it. But when we appeal to ex-
perience we are not to rest satisfied with a single fact. Let us,
therefore, try our question on more general ground. Let us
take two portions of the earth, Europe and America for in-
stance, sufficiently extensive to give operation to general causes;
let us consider the circumstances peculiar to each, and observe
their effect on animal nature. America, running through the
torrid as well as temperate zone, has more heat collectively
taken, than Europe. But Europe, according to our hypothesis,
is the dryest. They are equally adapted then to animal produc-
tions; each being endowed with one of those causes which be-
friends animal growth, and with one which opposes it. If it be
1. viii, 134. [Jefferson's note.]
2. In Jefferson's text, this is given in French.
207
ON VIRGINIA
thought unequal to compare Europe with America, which is so
much larger, I answer, not more so than to compare America
with the whole world. Besides, the purpose of the comparison
is to try an hypothesis, which makes the size of animals de-
pend on the heat and moisture of climate. If, therefore, we
take a region so extensive as to comprehend a sensible distinc-
tion of climate, and so extensive, too, as that local accidents,
or the intercourse of animals on its borders, may not materially
affect the size of those in its interior parts, we shall comply
with those conditions which the hypothesis may reasonably de-
mand. The objection would be the weaker in the present case,
because any intercourse of animals which may take place on
the confines of Europe and Asia, is to the advantage of the for-
mer, Asia producing certainly larger animals than Europe. Let
us then take a comparative view of the quadrupeds of Europe
and America, presenting them to the eye in three different
tables, in one of which shall be enumerated those found in both
countries; in a second, those found in one only; in a third,
those which have been domesticated in both. 1 To facilitate
the comparison, let those of each table be arranged in gradation
according to their sizes, from the greatest to the smallest, so
far as their sizes can be conjectured. The weights of the large
animals shall be expressed in the English avoirdupois and its
decimals; those of the smaller, in the same ounce and its deci-
mals. . . . The white bear of America is as large as that of
Europe. The bones of the mammoth which has been found in
America, are as large as those found in the old world. It may be
asked, why I insert the mammoth, as if it still existed? I ask in
return, why I should omit it, as if it did not exist? Such is the
economy of nature, that no instance can be produced, of her
having permitted any one race of her animals to become ex-
tinct; of her having formed any link in her great work so weak
as to be broken. To add to this, the traditionary testimony of
the Indians, that this animal still exists in the northern and
T. These tables have been omitted in the present edition.
208
THOMAS JSFFSRSON
western parts of America, would be adding the light of a taper
to that of the meridian sun. Those parts still remain in their
aboriginal state, unexplored and undisturbed by us, or by others
for us. He may as well exist there now, as he did formerly where
we find his bones. If he be a carnivorous animal, as some anat-
omists have conjectured, and the Indians affirm, his early re-
tirement may be accounted for from the general destruction of
the wild game by the Indians, which commences in the firs/
instant of their connection with us, for the purpose of purchas-
ing match-coats, hatchets, and fire-locks, with their skins. There
remain then the buffalo, red deer, fallow deer, wolf, roe, glut-
ton, wild cat, monax, bison, hedgehog, marten, and water-rat,
of the comparative sizes of which we have not sufficient testi-
mony. It does not appear that Messieurs de Buffon and D'Au-
benton have measured, weighed, or seen those of America. It
is said of some of them, by some travellers, that they are smaller
than the European. But who were these travellers? Have they
not been men of a very different description from those who
have laid open to us the other three quarters of the world? Was
natural history the object of their travels? Did they measure or
weigh the animals they speak of? or did they not judge of them
by sight, or perhaps even from report only? Were they ac-
quainted with the animals of their own country, with which
they undertake to compare them? Have they not been so ig-
norant as often to mistake the species? A true answer to these
questions would probably lighten their authority, so as to ren-
der it insufficient for the foundation of an hypothesis. How
unripe we yet are, for an accurate comparison of the animals
of the two countries, will appear from the work of Monsieur
de Buffon. The ideas we should have formed of the sizes of
some animals, from the formation he had received at his first
publications concerning them, are very different from what his
subsequent communications give us. And indeed his candor m
this can never be too much praised. One sentence of his book
must do him immortal honor. "I like a person who points out
209
ON VIRGINIA
a mistake just as much as one who teaches me a truth, because,
in effect, a corrected mistake is a truth." * . . .
Hitherto I have considered this hypothesis as applied to
brute animals only, and not in its extension to the man of
America, whether aboriginal or transplanted. It is the opinion
of Mons. de Buffon that the former furnishes no exception
to it 2
An afflicting picture, indeed, which for the honor of human
nature, I am glad to believe has no original. Of the Indian of
South America I know nothing ; for I would not honor with the
appellation of knowledge, what I derive from the fables pub-
lished of them. These I believe to be just as true as the fables
of ^Esop. This belief is founded on what I have seen of
man, white, red, and black, and what has been written of him
by authors, enlightened themselves, and writing among an
enlightened people. The Indian of North America being more
within our reach, I can speak of him somewhat from my own
knowledge, but more from the information of others better ac-
quainted with him, and on whose truth and judgment I can rely.
From these sources I am able to say, in contradiction to this
representation, that he is neither more defective in ardor, nor
more impotent with his female, than the white reduced to the
same diet and exercise; that he is brave, when an enterprise
depends on bravery; education with him making the point of
honor consist in the destruction of an enemy by stratagem, and
in the preservation of his own person free from injury; or, per-
haps, this is nature, while it is education which teaches us to 3
honor force more than finesse; that he will defend himself
against a host of enemies, always choosing to be killed, rather
than to surrender,4 though it be to the whites, who he knows
will treat him well; that in other situations, also, he meets death
with more deliberation, and endures tortures with a firmness
Unknown almost to religious enthusiasm with us; that he is af-
1. In Jefferson's text, this is given in French.
2. Jefferson cites Buffon's thesis at this point.
3. Jefferson's footnote omitted.
4. Jefferson's footnote omitted.
210
THOMAS J8FF8RSON
fectionate to his children, careful of them, and indulgent in the
extreme; that his affections comprehend his other connections,
weakening, as with us, from circle to circle, as they recede from
the centre; that his friendships are strong and faithful to the
uttermost * extremity ; that his sensibility is keen, even the war-
riors weeping most bitterly on the loss of their children, though
in general they endeavor to appear superior to human events;
that his vivacity and activity of mind is equal to ours in the
same situation; hence his eagerness for hunting, and for games
of chance. The women are submitted to unjust drudgery. This
I believe is the case with every barbarous people. With such,
force is law. The stronger sex imposes on the weaker. It is civ-
ilization alone which replaces women in the enjoyment of
their natural equality. That first teaches us to subdue the selfish
passions, and to respect those rights in others which we value
in ourselves. Were we in equal barbarism, our females would
be equal drudges. The man with them is less strong than with
us, but their women stronger than ours; and both for the same
obvious reason; because our man and their woman is habit-
uated to labor, and formed by it. With both races the sex which
is indulged with ease is the least athletic. An Indian man is
small in the hand and wrist, for the same reason for which a
sailor is large and strong in the arms and shoulders, and ?
porter in the legs and thighs. They raise fewer children than
we do. The causes of this are to be found, not in a difference of
nature, but of circumstance. The women very frequently at-
tending the men in their parties of war and of hunting, child -
bearing becomes extremely inconvenient to them. It is said,
therefore, that they have learned the practice of procuring abor-
tion by the use of some vegetable; and that it even extends to
prevent conception for a considerable time after. During these
parties they are exposed to numerous hazards, to excessive
exertions, to the greatest extremities of hunger. Even at their
homes the nation depends for food, through a certain part of
every year, on the gleanings of the forest; that is, they experi-
i. Jefferson's footnote omitted.
211
scores ON VIRGINIA
ence a famine once in every year. With all animals, if the female
be badly fed, or not fed at all, her young perish; and if both
male and female be reduced to like want, generation becomes
less active, less productive. To the obstacles, then, of want and
hazard, which nature has opposed to the multiplication of wild
animals, for the purpose of restraining their numbers within
certain bounds, those of labor and of voluntary abortion are
added with the Indian. No wonder, then, if they multiply less
than we do. Where food is regularly supplied, a single farm
will show more of cattle, than a whole country of forests can
of buffaloes. The same Indian women, when married to white
traders, who feed them and their children plentifully and regu-
larly, who exempt them from excessive drudgery, who keep
them stationary and unexposed to accident, produce and raise
as many children as the white women. Instances are known,
under these circumstances, of their rearing a dozen children.
An inhuman practice once prevailed in this country, of making
slaves of the Indians. It is a fact well known with us, that the
Indian women so enslaved produced and raised as numerous
families as either the whites or blacks among whom they lived.
It has been said that Indians have less hair than the whites,
except on the head. But this is a fact of which fair proof can
scarcely be had. With them it is disgraceful to be hairy on the
body. They say it likens them to hogs. They therefore pluck
the hair as fast as it appears. But the traders who marry their
women, and prevail on them to discontinue this practice, say,
that nature is the same with them as with the whites. Nor, if
the fact be true, is the consequence necessary which has been
drawn from it. ...
Before we condemn the Indians of this continent as wanting
genius, we must consider that letters have not yet been intro-
duced among them. Were we to compare them in their present
state with the Europeans, north of the Alps, when the Roman
arms and arts first crossed those mountains, the comparison
would be unequal, because, at that time, those parts of Europe
212
THOMAS jeFFBRSON
were swarming with numbers; because numbers produce emu-
lation, and multiply the chances of improvement, and one im-
provement begets another. Yet I may safely ask, how many
good poets, how many able mathematicians, how many great
inventors in arts or sciences, had Europe, north of the Alps,
then produced? And it was sixteen centuries after this before a
Newton could be formed. I do not mean to deny that there are
varieties in the race of man, distinguished by their powers
both of body and mind. I believe there are, as I see to be the
case in the races of other animals. I only mean to suggest a
doubt, whether the bulk and faculties of animals depend on
the side of the Atlantic on which their food happens to grow,
or which furnishes the elements of which they are compounded?
Whether nature has enlisted herself as a Cis or Trans-Atlantic
partisan? I am induced to suspect there has been more elo-
quence than sound reasoning displayed in support of this the-
ory; that it is one of those cases where the judgment has been
seduced by a glowing pen ; and whilst I render every tribute of
honor and esteem to the celebrated zoologist, who has added>
and is still adding, so many precious things to the treasures of
science, I must doubt whether in this instance he has not cher-
ished error also, by lending her for a moment his vivid imagina-
tion and bewitching language. . . .
So far the Count de Buffon has carried this new theory of the
tendency of nature to belittle her productions on this side the
Atlantic. Its application to the race of whites transplanted from
Europe, remained for the Abbe Raynal. "One must be aston-
ished (he says) that America has not yet produced a good poet,
an able mathematician, a man of genius in a single art or single
science." * When we shall have existed as a people as long as the
Greeks did before they produced a Homer, the Romans a Vir-
gil, the French a Racine and Voltaire, the English a Shake-
speare and Milton, should this reproach be still true, we will
inquire from what unfriendly causes it has proceeded, that the
i. In Jefferson's text, this is given in French.
213
chores ON VIRGINIA
other countries of Europe and quarters of the earth shall not
have inscribed any name in the roll of poets.1 But neither has
America produced "one able mathematician, one man of genius
in a single art or a single science." In war we have produced a
Washington, whose memory will be adored while liberty shall
have votaries, whose name shall triumph over time, and will in
future ages assume its just station among the most celebrated
worthies of the world, when that wretched philosophy shall be
forgotten which would have arranged him among the degen-
eracies of nature. In physics we have produced a Franklin,
than whom no one of the present age has made more important
discoveries, nor has enriched philosophy with more, or more
ingenious solutions of the phenomena of nature. We have sup-
posed Mr. Rittenhouse second to no astronomer living; that in
genius ne must be the first, because he is self taught. As an
artist he has exhibited as great a proof of mechanical genius
as the world has ever produced. He has not indeed made a
world; but he has by imitation approached nearer its Maker
than any man who has lived from the creation to this day.2 As
in philosophy and war, so in government, in oratory, in paint-
ing, in the plastic art, we might show that America, though but
a child of yesterday, has already given hopeful proofs of genius,
as well as of the nobler kinds, which arouse the best feelings of
man, which call him into action, which substantiate his free-
dom, and conduct him to happiness, as of the subordinate,
which serve to amuse him only. We therefore suppose, that this
reproach is as unjust as it is unkind: and that, of the geniuses
1. Has the world as yet produced more than two poets, acknowledged
to be such by all nations? An Englishman only reads Milton with
delight, an Italian, Tasso, a Frenchman the Henriade; a Portuguese,
Camoens; but Homer and Virgil have been the rapture of every age
and nation; they are read with enthusiasm in their originals by those
who can read the originals, and in translations by those who cannot.
[Jefferson's footnote.]
2. There are various ways of keeping truth out of sight. Mr. Ritten-
house's model of the planetary system has the plagiary application of
an Orrery; and the quadrant invented by Godfrey, an American also,
and with the aid of which the European nations traverse the globe, is
nailed Hartley's quadrant. [Jefferson's footnote.]
214
THOMAS JBFFSRSON
which adorn the present age, America contributes its full share,
For comparing it with those countries where genius is most cul-
tivated, where are the most excellent models for art, and scaf-
foldings for the attainment of science, as France and England
for instance, we calculate thus: The United States contains
three millions of inhabitants; France twenty millions; and the
British islands ten. We produce a Washington, a Franklin, a
Rittenhouse. France then should have half a dozen in each of
these lines, and Great Britain half that number, equally emi-
nent. It may be true that France has; we are but just becom-
ing acquainted with her, and our acquaintance so far gives us
high ideas of the genius of her inhabitants. It would be injuring
too many of them to name particularly a Voltaire, a Buffon, the
constellation of Encyclopedists, the Abbe Raynal himself, etc.,
etc. We, therefore, have reason to believe she can produce her
full quota of genius. The present war having so long cut off
all communication with Great Britain, we are not able to make
a fair estimate of the state of science in that country. The spirit
in which she wages war, is the only sample before our eyes, and
that does not seem the legitimate offspring either of science or
of civilization. The sun of her glory is fast descending to the
horizon. Her philosophy has crossed the channel, her freedom
the Atlantic, and herself seems passing to that awful dissolu-
tion whose issue is not given human foresight to scan.1
QUERY VII
A notice of all that can increase the progress of
Human Knowledge?
[This section, which is concerned with an analysis of local
climatic conditions, is omitted in the present.]
QUERY VIII
Tne number of its inhabitants?
.... During the infancy of the colony, while numbers were
small, wars, importations, and other accidental circumstances
i. Jefferson's footnote omitted.
215
scores ON VIRGINIA
render the progression fluctuating and irregular. By the year
1654, however, it becomes tolerably uniform, importations hav-
ing in a great measure ceased from the dissolution of the com-
pany, and the inhabitants become too numerous to be sensibly
affected by Indian wars. Beginning at that period, therefore, we
find that from thence to the year 1772, our tythes had in-
creased from 7,209 to 153,000. The whole term being of one
hundred and eighteen years, yields a duplication once in every
twenty-seven and a quarter years. The intermediate enumer-
ations taken in 1700, 1748, and 1759, furnish proofs of the
uniformity of this progression. Should this rate of increase con-
tinue, we shall have between six and seven millions of in-
habitants within ninety-five years. If we suppose our country
to be bounded, at some future day, by the meridian of the
mouth of the Great Kanhaway, (within which it has been be-
fore conjectured, are 64,461 square miles) there will then be
one hundred inhabitants for every square mile, which is nearly
the state of population in the British Islands.
Here I will beg leave to propose a doubt. The present desire
of America is to produce rapid population by as great importa-
tions of foreigners as possible. But is this founded in good pol-
icy? The advantage proposed is the multiplication of numbers.
Now let us suppose (for example only) that, in this state, we
could double our numbers in one year by the importation of for-
eigners; and this is a greater accession than the most sanguine
advocate for emigration has a right to expect. Then I say, be-
ginning with a double stock, we shall attain any given degree
of population only twenty-seven years, and three months sooner
than if we proceed on our single stock. If we propose four mil-
lions and a half as a competent population for this State, we
should be fifty-four and a half years attaining it, could we at
once double our numbers; and eighty-one and three quarter
years, if we rely on natural propagation, as may be seen by
the following tablet:
216
THOMAS jeFFSRSON
Proceeding on Proceeding on
our present stock. a double stock.
1781 5&7>6i4 1,135,228
1808^4 1,135,228 2,270,456
1835^ 2,270,456 4,540,912
1862^4 4,540,912
In the first column are stated periods of twenty-seven and
a quarter years; in the second are our numbers at each period,
as they will be if we proceed on our actual stock; and in the
third are what they would be, at the same periods, were we
to set out from the double of our present stock. I have taken
the term of four million and a half of inhabitants for example's
sake only. Yet I am persuaded it is a greater number than the
country spoken of, considering how much inarable land it con-
tains, can clothe and feed without a material change in the
quality of their diet. But are there no inconveniences to be
thrown into the scale against the advantage expected from a
multiplication of numbers by the importation of foreigners? It
is for the happiness of those united in society to harmonize as
much as possible in matters which they must of necessity trans-
act together. Civil government being the sole object of forming
societies, its administration must be conducted by common
consent. Every species of government has its specific principles.
Ours perhaps are more peculiar than those of any other in the
universe. It is a composition of the freest principles of the Eng-
lish constitution, with others derived from natural right and
natural reason. To these nothing can be more opposed than the
maxims of absolute monarchies. Yet from such we are to ex-
pect the greatest number of emigrants. They will bring with
them the principles of the governments they leave, imbibed
in their early youth; or, if able to throw them off, it will be in
exchange for an unbounded licentiousness, passing, as is usual,
from one extreme to another. It would be a miracle were they
to stop precisely at the point of temperate liberty. These prin-
ciples, with their language, they will transmit to their children.
In proportion to their numbers, they will share with us the
-17
ON VIRGINIA
legislation. They will infuse into it their spirit, warp and bias
its directions, and render it a heterogeneous, incoherent, dis-
tracted mass. I may appeal to experience, during the present
contest, for a verification of these conjectures. But, if they
be not certain in event, are they not possible, are they not prob-
able? Is it not safer to wait with patience twenty-seven years
and three months longer, for the attainment of any degree of
population desired or expected? May not our government be
more homogeneous, more peaceable, more durable? Suppose
twenty millions of republican Americans thrown all of a sud-
den into France, what would be the condition of that kingdom?
If it would be more turbulent, less happy, less strong, we may
believe that the addition of half a million of foreigners to our
present numbers would produce a similar effect here. If they
come of themselves they are entitled to all the rights of citizen-
ship; but doubt the expediency of inviting them by extraordi-
nary encouragements. I mean not that these doubts should be
extended to the importation of useful artificers. The policy of
that measure depends on very different considerations. Spare no
expense in obtaining them. They will after a while go to the
plough and the hoe; but, in the mean time, they will teach us
something we do not know. It is not so in agriculture. The in-
different state of that among us does not proceed from a want
of knowledge merely; it is from our having such quantities of
land to waste as we please. In Europe the object is to make
the most of their land, labor being abundant ; here it is to make
the most of our labor, land being abundant. . . .
During the regal government we had at one time obtained a
law which imposed such a duty on the importation of slaves as
amounted nearly to a prohibition, when one inconsiderate as-
sembly, placed under a peculiarity of circumstance, repealed
the law. This repeal met a joyful sanction from the then reign-
ing sovereign, and no devices, no expedients, which could ever
be attempted by subsequent assemblies, and they seldom met
without attempting them, could succeed in getting the royal as-
sent to a renewal of the duty. In trie very first session held
under the republican government, the assembly passed a law
218
THOMAS J8FF8RSON
for the perpetual prohibition of the importation of slaves. This
will in some measure stop the increase of this great political
and moral evil, while the minds of our citizens may be ripening
for a complete emancipation of human nature.
QUERY IX
The number and condition of the Militia and Regular
Troops, and their Pay?
Every able-bodied freeman, between the ages of sixteen and
fifty, is enrolled in the militia. Those of every county are
formed into companies, and these again into one or more bat-
talions, according to the numbers in the county. They are com-
manded by colonels, and other subordinate officers, as in the
regular service. In every county is a county-lieutenant, who
commands the whole militia of his county, but ranks only as a
colonel in the field. We have no general officers always existing,
These are appointed occasionally, when an invasion or insur-
rection happens, and their commission determines with the
occasion. The Governor is head of the military, as well as civil
power. The law requires every militia-man to provide himself
with the arms usual in the regular service. But this injunction
was always indifferently complied with, and the arms they had,
have been so frequently called for to arm the regulars, that in
the lower parts of the country they are entirely disarmed. In
the middle country a fourth or fifth part of them may have
such firelocks as they had provided to destroy the noxious ani-
mals which infest their farms; and on the western side of the
Blue Ridge they are generally armed with rifles. The pay of
our militia, as well as of our regulars, is that of the continental
regulars. The condition of our regulars, of whom we have none
but continentals, and part of a battalion of state troops, is so
constantly on the change, that a state of it at this day would
not be its state a month hence. It is much the same with the
condition of the other continental troops, which is well enough
known.
210
ON VIRGINIA
QUERY X
The Marine?
Before the present invasion of this State by the British, un-
der the command of General Phillips, we had three vessels of
sixteen guns, one of fourteen, five small gallies, and two or
three armed boats. They were generally so badly manned as
seldom to be in a condition for service. Since the perfect pos-
session of our rivers assumed by the enemy, I believe we are
left with a single armed boat only.
QUERY XI
A description of the Indians established in that State?
When the first effectual settlement of our colony was made,
which was in 1607, the country from the seacoast to the moun-
tains, and from the Potomac to the most southern waters of
James' river, was occupied by upwards of forty different tribes
of Indians. Of these the Powhatans, the Mannahoacs, and
Monacans, were the most powerful. Those between the sea-
coast and falls of the rivers, were in amity with one another,
and attached to the Powhatans as their link of union. Those
between the falls of the rivers and the mountains, were divided
into two confederacies; the tribes inhabiting the head waters
of Potomac and Rappahannock, being attached to the Manna-
hoacs; and those on the upper parts of James' river to the
Monacans. But the Monacans and their friends were in amity
with the Mannahoacs and their friends, and waged joint and
perpetual war against the Powhatans. We are told that the
Powhatans, Mannahoacs, and Monacans, spoke languages so
radically different, that interpreters were necessary when they
transacted business. Hence we may conjecture, that this was
not the case between all the tribes, and, probably, that each
spoke the language of the nation to which it was attached;
which we know to have been the case in many particular in-
stances. Very possibly there may have been anciently three
220
THOMAS JSFFeRSON
different stocks, each of which, multiplying in a long course of
time, had separated into so many little societies. This practice
results from the circumstance of their having never submitted
themselves to any laws, any coercive power, any shadow of gov-
ernment. Their only controls are their manners, and that moral
sense of right and wrong, which, like the sense of tasting and
feeling in every man, makes a part of his nature. An offence
against these is punished by contempt, by exclusion from so-
ciety, or, where the case is serious, as that of murder, by the
individuals whom it concerns. Imperfect as this species of coer-
cion may seem, crimes are very rare among them; insomuch
that were it made a question, whether no law, as among the
savage Americans, or too much law, as among the civilized
Europeans, submits man to the greatest evil, one who has seen
both conditions of existence would pronounce it to be the last;
and that the sheep are happier of themselves, than under care
of the wolves. It will be said, the great societies cannot exist
without government. The savages, therefore, break them into
small ones.
The territories of the Powhatan confederacy, south of the
Potomac, comprehended about eight thousand square miles,
thirty tribes, and two thousand four hundred warriors. Captain
Smith tells us, that within sixty miles of Jamestown were five
thousand people, of whom one thousand five hundred were war-
riors. From this we find the proportion of their warriors to their
whole inhabitants, was as three to ten. The Powhatan confed-
eracy, then, would consist of about eight thousand inhabitants,
which was one for every square mile; being about the twentieth
part of our present population in the same territory, and the
hundredth of that of the British islands.
Besides these were the Nottoways, living on Nottoway river,
the Meherrins and Tutelovs on Meherrin river, who were con-
nected with the Indians of Carolina, probably with the
Chowanocs. . . .
I know of no such thing existing as an Indian monument;
for I would not honor with that name arrow points, stone
221
ON VIRGINIA
hatchets, stone pipes, and half shapen images. Of labor on the
large scale, I think there is no remain as respectable as would
be a common ditch for the draining of lands; unless indeed it
would be the barrows, of which many are to be found all over
this country. These are of different sizes, some of them con-
structed of earth, and some of loose stones. That they were
repositories of the dead, has been obvious to all; but on what
particular occasion constructed, was a matter of doubt. Some
have thought they covered the bones of those who have fallen
in battles fought on the spot of interment. Some ascribed them
to the custom, said to prevail among the Indians, of collecting,
at certain periods, the bones of all their dead, wheresoever de-
posited at the time of death. Others again supposed them the
general sepulchres for towns, conjectured to have been on or
near these grounds; and this opinion was supported by the qual-
ity of the lands in which they are found (those constructed of
earth being generally in the softest and most fertile m'eadow-
grounds on river sides), and by a tradition, said to be handed
down from the aboriginal Indians, that when they settled in a
town, the first person who died was placed erect, and earth put
about him, so as to cover and support him; that when another
died, a narrow passage was dug to the first, the second re-
clined against him, and the cover of earth replaced, and so on.
There being one of these in my neighborhood, I wished to sat-
isfy myself whether any, and which of these opinions were just.
For this purpose I determined to open and examine it thor-
oughly. It was situated on the low grounds of the Rivanna,
about two miles above its principal fork, and opposite to some
hills, on which had been an Indian town. It was of a spheroi-
dical form, of about forty feet diameter at the base, and haa
been of about twelve feet altitude, though now reduced by the
plough to seven and a half, having been under cultivation about
a dozen years. Before this it was covered with trees of twelve
inches diameter, and round the base was an excavation of five
feet depth and width, from whence -the earth had been taken
of which the hillock was formed. I first dug superficially in seT
222
THOMAS JSFFSRSON
eral parts of it, and came to collections of human bones, at
different depth, from six inches to three feet below the surface.
These were lying in the utmost confusion, some vertical, some
oblique, some horizontal, and directed to every point of the
compass, entangled and held together in clusters by the earth.
Bones of the most distant parts were found together, as, for in-
stance, the small bones of the foot in the hollow of a scull;
many sculls would sometimes be in contact, lying on the face,
on the side, on the back, top or bottom, so as, on the whole, to
give the idea of bones emptied promiscuously from a bag or
a basket, and covered over with earth, without any attention to
their order. The bones of which the greatest numbers remained,
were sculls, jaw-bones, teeth, the bones of the arms, thighs, legs,
feet and hands. A few ribs remained, some vertebrae of the
neck and spine, without their processes, and one instance only
of the bone * which serves as a base to the vertebral column.
The sculls were so tender, that they generally fell to pieces
on being touched. The other bones were stronger. There were
some teeth which were judged to be smaller than those of an
adult; a scull, which on a slight view, appeared to be that of
an infant, but it fell to pieces on being taken out, so as to pre-
vent satisfastory examination; a rib, and a fragment of the
under-jaw of a person about half grown; another rib of an in-
fant; and a part of the jaw of a child, which had not cut its
teeth. This last furnishing the most decisive proof of the burial
of children here, I was particular in my attention to it. It was
part of the right half of the under-jaw. The processes, by which
it was attenuated to the temporal bones, were entire, and the
bone itself firm to where it had been broken off, which, as
nearly as I could judge, was about the place of the eye-tooth.
Its upper edge, wherein would have been the sockets of the
teeth, was perfectly smooth. Measuring it with that of an adult,
by placing their hinder processes together, its broken end ex-
tended to the penultimate grinder of the adult. This bone was
white, all the others of a sand color. The bones of infants being
i. The os sacrum, f Jefferson's note.]
ON VIRGINIA
soft, they probably decay sooner, which might be the cause so
few were found here. I proceeded then to make a perpendicular
cut through the body of the barrow, that I might examine its
internal structure. This passed about three feet from its centre,
was opened to the former surface of the earth, and was wide
enough for a man to walk through and examine its sides. At
the bottom, that is, on the level of the circumjacent plain, I
found bones; above these a few stones, brought from a cliff a
quarter of a mile off; then a large interval of earth, then a
stratum of bones, and so on. At one end of the section were
four strata of bones plainly distinguishable; at the other, three;
the strata in one part not ranging with those in another. The
bones nearest the surface were least decayed. No holes were
discovered in any of them, as if made with bullets, arrows, or
other weapons. I conjectured that in this barrow might have
been a thousand skeletons. Every one will readily seize the
circumstances above related, which militate against the opinion,
that it covered the bones only of persons fallen in battle; and
against the tradition also, which would make it the common
sepulchre of a town, in which the bodies were placed upright,
and touching each other. Appearances certainly indicate that
it has derived both origin and growth from the accustomary
collection of bones, and deposition of them together; that the
first collection had been deposited on the common surface of
the earth, a few stones put over it, and then a covering of
earth, that the second had been laid on this, had covered more
or less of it in proportion to the number of bones, and was then
also covered with earth; and so on. The following are the par-
ticular circumstances which give it this aspect, i. The number
of bones. 2. Their confused position. 3. Their being in different
strata. 4. The strata in one part having no correspondence with
those in another. 5. The different states of decay in these strata,
which seem to indicate a difference in the time of inhumation.
6. The existence of infant bones among them.
But on whatever occasion they may have been made, they
are of considerable notoriety among the Indians; for a party
224
THOMAS JEFFERSON
passing, about thirty years ago, through the part of the coun-
try where this barrow is, went through the woods directly to
it, without any instructions or inquiry, and having staid about
it for some time, with expressions which were construed to
be those of sorrow, they returned to the high road, which
they had left about half a dozen miles to pay this visit, and
pursued their journey. There is another barrow much resem-
bling this, in the low grounds of the south branch of Shenan-
doah, where it is crossed by the road leading from the Rock-
fish gap to Staunton. Both of these have, within these dozer-
years, been cleared of their trees and put under cultivation,
are much reduced in their height, and spread in width, by the
plough, and will probably disappear in time. There is another
on a hill in the Blue Ridge of mountains, a few miles north of
Wood's gap, which is made up of small stones thrown together.
This has been opened and found to contain human bones, as
the others do. There are also many others in other parts of
the country.
Great question has arisen from whence came those aborigi-
nals of America? Discoveries, long ago made, were sufficient to
show that the passage from Europe to America was always
practicable, even to the imperfect navigation of ancient times,
In going from Norway to Iceland, from Iceland to Greenland,
from Greenland to Labrador, the first traject is the widest;
and this having been practised from the earliest times of which
we have any account of that part of the earth, it is not difficult
to suppose that the subsequent trajects may have been some-
times passed. Again, the late discoveries of Captain Cook,
coasting from Kamschatka to California, have proved that if
the two continents of Asia and America be separated at all, it
is only by a narrow strait. So that from this side also, inhabit-
ants may have passed into America; and the resemblance be-
tween the Indians of America and the eastern inhabitants of
Asia, would induce us to conjecture, that the former are the
descendants of the latter, or the latter of the former; Excepting
indeed the Esquimaux, who, from the same circumstance ot
225
ON VIRGINIA
resemblance, and from identity of language, must be derived
from the Greenlanders, and these probably from some of the
northern parts of the old continent. A knowledge of their sev-
eral languages would be the most certain evidence of their deri-
vation which could be produced. In fact, it is the best proof of
the affinity of nations which ever can be referred to. How many
ages have elapsed since the English, the Dutch, the Germans,
the Swiss, the Norwegians, Danes and Swedes have separated
from their common stock? Yet how many more must elapse be-
fore the proofs of their common origin, which exist in their
several languages, will disappear? It is to be lamented then,
very much to be lamented, that we have suffered so many of the
Indian tribes already to extinguish, without our having previ-
ously collected and deposited in the records of literature, the
general rudiments at least of the languages they spoke. Were
vocabularies formed of all the languages spoken in North and
South America, preserving their appellations of the most com-
mon objects in nature, of those which must be present to every
nation barbarous or civilized, with the inflections of their nouns
and verbs, their principles of regimen and concord, and these
deposited in all the public libraries, it would furnish opportuni-
ties to those skilled in the languages of the old world to com-
pafe them with these, now, or at any future time, and hence to
construct the best evidence of the derivation of this part of the
human race.
But imperfect as is our knowledge of the tongues spoken in
America, it suffices to discover the following remarkable fact:
Arranging them under the radical ones to which they may be
palpably traced, and doing the same by those of the red men
of Asia, there will be found probably twenty in America, for
one in Asia, of those radical languages, so called because if
they were ever the same they have lost all resemblance to one
another. A separation into dialects may be the work of a few
ages only, but for two dialects to recede from one another till
they have lost all vestiges of their common origin, must require
an immense course of time; perhaps not less than many people
226
THOMAS J8FF8RSON
give to the age of the earth. A greater number of those radical
changes of language having taken place among the red men of
America, proves them of greater antiquity than those of Asia.
QUERY XII
A notice of the counties y cities, townships, and villages?
The counties have been enumerated under Query IX. They
are seventy-four in number, of very unequal size and popula-
tion. Of these thirty-five are on the tide waters, or in that par-
allel ; twenty-three are in the midlands, between the tide waters
and Blue Ridge of mountains; eight between the Blue Ridge
and Alleghany; and eight westward of the Alleghany.
The State, by another division, is formed into parishes, many
of which are commensurate with the counties; but sometimes a
county comprehends more than one parish, and sometimes a
parish more than one county. This division had relation to the
religion of the State, a portion of the Anglican church, with a
fixed salary, having been heretofore established in each parish.
The care of the poor was another object of the parochial divi-
sion.
We have no townships. Our country being much intersected
with navigable waters, and trade brought generally to our
doors, instead of our being obliged to go in quest of it, has
probably been one of the causes why we have no towns of any
consequence. Williamsburg, which, till the year 1780, was the
seat of our government, never contained above 1,800 inhabit-
ants; and Norfolk, the most populous town we ever had, con-
tained but 6,000. . . .
There are other places at which, like some of the foregoing,
the laws have said there shall be towns; but nature has said
there shall not, and they remain unworthy of enumeration.
Norfolk will probably be the emporium for all the trade of the
Chesapeake bay and its waters; and a canal of eight or ten
miles will bring to it all that of Albemarle sound and its waters.
Secondary to this place, are the towns at the head of the tide
227
whores ON VIRGINIA
waters, to wit, Petersburg on Appomattox; Richmond on
James' river; Newcastle on York river; Alexandria on Poto-
mac, and Baltimore on Patapsco. From these the distribution
'?vill be to subordinate situations in the country. Accidental cir-
cumstances, however, may control the indications of nature,
and in no instance do they do it more frequently than in the
'fise and fall of towns.
QUERY XIII
The constitution of the State and its several charters?
Queen Elizabeth by her letters patent, bearing date March
25, 1584, licensed Sir Walter Raleigh to search for remote
heathen lands, not inhabited by Christian people, and granted
to him in fee simple, all the soil within two hundred leagues
of the places where his people should, within six years, make
their dwellings or abidings; reserving only to herself and her
successors, their allegiance and one-fifth part of all the gold
and silver ore they should obtain. Sir Walter immediately sent
out two ships, which visited Wococon island in North Carolina,
and the next year despatched seven with one hundred and
seven men, who settled in Roanoke island, about latitude
35° 5°'- Here Okisko, king of the Weopomeiocs, in a full
council of his people is said to have acknowledged himself the
homager of the Queen of England, and, after her, of Sir Wal-
ter Raleigh. A supply of fifty men were sent in 1586, and one
hundred and fifty in 1587. With these last Sir Walter sent a
governor, appointed him twelve assistants, gave them a char-
ter of incorporation, and instructed them to settle on Chesa-
peake bay. They landed, however, at Hatorask. In 1588, when
a fleet was ready to sail with a new supply of colonists and
necessaries, they were detained by the Queen to assist against
the Spanish armada. Sir Walter having now expended £40,000
in these enterprises, obstructed occasionally by the crown with-
out a shilling of aid from it, was under a necessity of engaging
others to adventure their money. He, therefore, by deed bear-
ing date the yth of March, 1589, by the name of Sir Walter
228
THOMAS JSFFSRSON
Raleigh, Chief Governor of Assamacomoc, (probably Acomkc,)
alias Wingadacoia, alias Virginia, granted to Thomas Smith
and others, in consideration of their adventuring certain sums
of money, liberty to trade to this new country free from all
customs and taxes for seven years, excepting the fifth part of
the gold and silver ore to be obtained; and stipulated with
them and the other assistants, then in Virginia, that he would
confirm the deed of incorporation which he had given in 1587,
with all the prerogatives, jurisdictions, royalties and privi-
leges granted to him by the Queen. Sir Walter, at different
times, sent five other adventurers hither, the last of which was
in 1602; for in 1603 he was attainted and put into close im-
prisonment, which put an end to his cares over his infant col-
ony. What was the particular fate of the colonists he had before
sent and seated, has never been known; whether they were
murdered, or incorporated with the savages.
Some gentlemen and merchants, supposing that by the at-
tainder of Sir Walter Raleigh the grant to him was forfeited,
not inquiring over carefully whether the sentence of an Eng-
lish court could affect lands not within the jurisdiction of that
court, petitioned king James for a new grant of Virginia to
them. He accordingly executed a grant to Sir Thomas Gates
and others, bearing date the gth of March, 1607, under which,
in the same year, a settlement was effected at Jamestown, and
ever after maintained. Of this grant, however, no particular
notice need be taken, as it was superseded by letters patent of
the same king, of May 23, 1609, to the Earl of Salisbury and
others, incorporating them by the name of "The Treasurer and
company of Adventurers and Planters of the City of London
for the first colony in Virginia," granting to them and their
successors all the lands in Virginia from Point Comfort along
the sea-coast, to the northward two hundred miles, and from
the same point along the sea-coast to the southward two hun-
dred miles, and all the space from this precinct on the sea-coast
up into the land, west and north-west, from sea to sea, and the
islands within one hundred miles of it, with all the communi-
229
ON VIRGINIA
ties, jurisdictions, royalties, privileges, franchises, and pre-emi-
nencies, within the same, and thereto and thereabouts, by sea
and land, appertaining in as ample manner as had before been
granted to any adventurer; to be held of the king and his suc-
cessors, in common soccage, yielding one-fifth part of the gold
and silver ore to be therein found, for all manner of services;
establishing a counsel in England for the direction of the enter-
prise, the members of which were to be chosen and displaced by
the voice of the majority of the company and adventurers, and
were to have the nomination and revocation of governors, offi-
cers, and ministers, which by them should be thought needful
for the colony, the power of establishing laws and forms of
government and magistracy, obligatory not only within the
colony, but also on the seas in going and coming to and from
it; authorizing them to carry thither any persons who should
consent to go, freeing them forever from all taxes and im-
positions on any goods or merchandise on importations into the
colony, or exportation out of it, except the five per cent, due
for custom on all goods imported into the British dominions,
according to the ancient trade of merchants; which five per
cent, only being paid they might, within thirteen months, re-
export the same goods into foreign parts, without any custom,
tax, or other duty, to the king or any of his officers, or depu-
ties; with powers of waging war against those who should an-
noy them; giving to the inhabitants of the colony all the
rights of natural subjects, as if born and abiding in England;
and declaring that these letters should be construed, in all
doubtful parts, in such manner as should be most for the bene-
fit of the grantees.
Afterwards on the 1 2th of March, 1612, by other letters pat-
ent, the king added to his former grants, all islands in any
part of the ocean between the 30th and 4ist degrees of lati-
tude, and within three hundred leagues of any of the parts be-
fore granted to the treasurer and company, not being possessed
or inhabited by any other Christian prince or state, nor within
the limits of the northern colony.
230
THOMAS ySFFSRSON
In pursuance of the authorities given to the company by
these charters, and more especially of that part in the charter
of 1609, which authorized them to establish a form of govern-
ment, they on the 24th of July, 1621, by charter under their
common seal, declared that from thenceforward there should
be two supreme councils in Virginia, the on'e to be called the
council of state, to be placed and displaced by the treasurer,
council in England, and company from time to time, whose
office was to be that of assisting and advising the governor;
the other to be called the general assembly, to be convened by
the governor once yearly or oftener, which was to consist of
the council of state, and two burgesses out of every town,
hundred, or plantation, to be respectively chosen by the in-
habitants. In this all matters were to be decided by the greater
part of the votes present; reserving to the governor a nega-
tive voice; and they were to have power to treat, consult, and
conclude all emergent occasions concerning the public weal,
and to make laws for the behoof and government of the col-
ony, imitating and following the laws and policy of England as
nearly as might be; providing that these laws should have no
force till ratified in a general court of the company in England,
and returned under their common seal; and declaring that,
after the government of the colony should be well framed and
settled, no orders of the council in England should bind the
colony unless ratified in the said general assembly. The king
and company quarrelled, and by a mixture of law and force,
the latter were ousted of all their rights without retribution,
after having expended one hundred thousand pounds in estab-
lishing the colony, without the smallest aid from government.
King James suspended their powers by proclamation of July
15, 1624, and Charles I. took the government into his own
hands. Both sides had their partisans in the colony, but, in
truth, the people of the colony in general thought themselves
little concerned in the dispute. There being three parties inter-
ested in these several charters, what passed between the first
and second, it was thought could not affect the third. If the
231
ON VIRGINIA
king seized on the powers of the company, they only passed
into other hands, without increase or diminution, while the
rights of the people remained as they were. But they did not
remain so long. The northern parts of their country were
granted away to the lords Baltimore and Fairfax; the first of
these obtaining also the rights of separate jurisdiction and gov-
ernment. And in 1650 the parliament, considering itself as
standing in the place of their deposed king, and as having suc-
ceeded to all his powers, without as well as within the realm,
began to assume a right over the colonies, passing an act for
inhibiting their trade with foreign nations. This succession to
the exercise of kingly authority gave the first color for parlia-
mentary interference with the colonies, and produced that
fatal precedent which they continued to follow, after they had
retired, in other respects, within their proper functions. When
this colony, therefore, which still maintained its opposition to
Cromwell and the parliament, was induced in 1651 to lay down
their arms, they previously secured their most essential rights
by a solemn convention, which, having never seen in print, I
will here insert literally from the records.
"ARTICLES agreed on and concluded at James Cittie in Virginia
tor the surrendering and settling of that plantation under the obedi-
ence and government of the commonwealth of England by the com-
missioners of the Councill of State by authoritie of the parliamt of
England, and by the Grand assembly of the Governour, Councill,
and Burgesses of that countrey.
"First it is agreed and consted that the plantation of Virginia, and
all the inhabitants thereof, shall be and remain in due obedience and
subjection to the Commonwealth of England, according to the laws
vhere established, and that this submission and subscription bee ac-
knowledged a voluntary act not forced nor constrained by a conquest
upon the countrey, and that they shall have and enjoy such freedoms
and priviledges as belong to the free borne people of England, and
that the former government by the Commissions and Instructions be
void and null.
"2ly. That the Grand assembly as formerly shall convene and
transact the affairs of Virginia, wherein nothing is to be acted or done
232
THOMAS jeFFSRSON
contrairie to the government of the Commonwealth of England and
the lawes there established.
U3ly. That there shall be a full and totall remission and indemp'
nitie of all acts, words, or writeings done or spoken against the par-
liament of England in relation to the same.
"4-ly. That Virginia shall have and enjoy the antient bounds and
lymitts granted by the charters of the former kings, and that we shall
seek a new charter from the parliament to that purpose against any
that have intrencht upon the rights thereof.
U5ly. That all the pattents of land granted under the colony seal
by any of the precedent governours shall be and remaine in their full
force and strength.
"61y. That the priviledge of haveing ffiftie acres of land for every
person transported in that collonie shall continue as formerly granted,
"yly. That the people of Virginia have free trade as the people of
England do enjoy to all places and with all nations according to the
lawes of that commonwealth, and that Virginia shall enjoy all privi-
ledges equall with any English plantations in America.
U81y. That Virginia shall be free from all taxes, customs and impo-
sitions whatsoever, and none to be imposed on them without consent
of the Grand assembly; and soe that neither fforts nor castle bee
erected or garrisons maintained without their consent.
"Qly. That noe charge shall be required from this country in re-
spect of this present ffleet.
"loly. That for the future settlement of the countrey in their due
obedience, the engagement shall be tendred to all the inhabitants ac-
cording to act of parliament made to that purpose, that all persons
who shall refuse to subscribe the said engagement, shall have a
yeare's time if they please to remove themselves and their estates
out of Virginia, and in the meantime during the said yeare to have
equall justice as formerly,
"uly. That the use of the booke of common prayer shall be per-
mitted for one yeare ensueinge with referrence to the consent of the
major part of the parishes, provided that those which relate to king'
shipp or that government be not used publiquely, and the continu-
ance of ministers in their places, they not misdemeaning themselves,
and the payment of their accustomed dues and agreements made
with them respectively shall be left as they now stand dureing this
ensueing yeare.
"i2ly. That no man's cattell shall be questioned as the companies
233
chores ON VIRGINIA
unless such as have been entrusted with them or have disposed of
them without order.
"i3ly. That all ammunition, powder and armes, other than for
private use, shall be delivered up, securitie being given to make
satisfaction for it.
"i4ly. That all goods allreadie brought hither by the Dutch or
others which are now on shoar shall be free from surprizall.
"i5ly. That the quittrents granted unto us by the late kinge for
seaven yeares bee confirmed.
"i61y. That the commissioners for the parliament subscribeing
these articles engage themselves and the honour of parliament for
the full performance thereof; and that the present governour, and
the councill, and the burgesses do likewise subscribe and engage the
whole collony on their parts.
RICHARD BENNETT. — Scale.
WILLIAM CLATBORNE. — Scale.
EDMOND CURTIS. — Scale.
"Theise articles were signed and sealed by the Commissioners of
the Councill of state for the Commonwealth of England the
twelveth day of March 1651."
The colony supposed, that, by this solemn convention, en-
tered into with arms in their hands, they had secured the an-
cient limits of their country, its free trade, its exemption from
taxation but by their own assembly, and exclusion of military
force from among them. Yet in every of these points was this
convention violated by subsequent kings and parliaments, and
other infractions of their constitution, equally dangerous com-
mitted. Their general assembly, which was composed of the
council of state and burgesses, sitting together and deciding
by plurality of voices, was split into two houses, by which the
council obtained a separate negative on their laws. Appeals
from their supreme court, which had been fixed by law in their
general assembly, were arbitrarily revoked to England, to be
there heard before the king and council. Instead of four hun-
dred miles on the seacoast, they were reduced, in the space of
thirty years, to about one hundred miles. Their trade with for-
eigners was totally suppressed, and 'when carried to Great Brit-
234
THOMAS JEFFERSON
ain, was there loaded with imposts. It is unnecessary, however,
to glean up the several instances of injury, as scattered through
American and British history, and the more especially as, by
passing on to the accession of the present king, we shall find
specimens of them all, aggravated, multiplied and crowded
within a small compass of time, so as to evince a fixed design
of considering our rights natural, conventional and chartered
as mere nullities. The following is an epitome of the first six-
teen years of his reign: The colonies were taxed internally and
externally; their essential interests sacrificed to individuals in
Great Britain; their legislatures suspended; charters annulled;
trials by juries taken away; their persons subjected to trans-
portation across the Atlantic, and to trial before foreign judica-
tories; their supplications for redress thought beneath answer:
themselves published as cowards in the councils of their mother
country and courts of Europe; armed troops sent among them
to enforce submission to these violences; and actual hostilities
commenced against them. No alternative was presented but
resistance, or unconditional submission. Between these could be
no hesitation. They closed in the appeal to arms. They declared
themselves independent states. They confederated together into
one great republic; thus securing to every State the benefit
of an union of their whole force. In each State separately a
new form of government was established. Of ours particularly
the following are the outlines: The executive powers are lodged
in the hands of a governor, chosen annually, and incapable
of acting more than three years in seven. He is assisted by a
council of eight members. The judiciary powers are divided
among several courts, as will be hereafter explained. Legisla-
tion is exercised by two houses of assembly, the one called the
house of Delegates, composed of two members from each
county, chosen annually by the citizens, possessing an estate
for life in one hundred acres of uninhabited land, or twenty-
five acres with a house on it, or in a house or lot in some town:
the other called the Senate, consisting of twenty-four mem-
bers, chosen quadrenially by the same electors, who for this
235
ON VIRGINIA
purpose are distributed into twenty-four districts. The concur-
rence of both houses is necessary to the passage of a law. They
have the appointment of the governor and council, the judges
of the superior courts, auditors, attorney-general, treasurer,
register of the land office, and delegates to Congress. As the
dismemberment of the State had never had its confirmation,
but, on the contrary, had always been the subject of protesta-
tion and complaint, that it might never be in our own power
to raise scruples on that subject, or to disturb the harmony of
our new confederacy, the grants to Maryland, Pennsylvania,
and the two Carolinas, were ratified.
This constitution was formed when we were new and un-
experienced in the science of government. It was the first, too,
which was formed in the whole United States. No wonder then
that time and trial have discovered very capital defects in it.
1. The majority of the men in the State, who pay and fight
for its support, are unrepresented in the legislature, the roll
of freeholders entitled to vote not including generally the half
of those on tht roll of the militia, or of the tax-gatherers.
2. Among those who share the representation, the shares are
very unequal. Thus the county of Warwick, with only one
hundred fighting men, has an equal representation with the
county of Loudon, which has one thousand seven hundred and
forty-six. So that every man in Warwick has as much influ-
ence in the government as seventeen men in Loudon. But lest it
should be thought that an equal interspersion of small among
large counties, through the whole State, may prevent any dan-
ger of injury to particular parts of it, we will divide it into
districts, and show the proportions of land, of fighting men,
and of representation in each. . . .1
3. The senate is, by its constitution, too homogeneous with
the house of delegates. Being chosen by the same electors, at
the same time, and out of the same subjects, the choice falls
of course on men of the same description. The purpose of
establishing different houses of legislation is to introduce the
i. A table, compiled by Jefferson, is omitted here.
236
THOMAS JEFFERSON
influence of different interests or different principles. Thus in
Great Britain it is said their constitution relies on the house
of commons for honesty, and the lords for wisdom; which
would be a rational reliance, if honesty were to be bought with
money, and if wisdom were hereditary. In some of the Ameri-
can States, the delegates and senators are so chosen, as that
the first represent the persons, and the second the property of
the State. But with us, wealth and wisdom have equal chance
for admission into both houses. We do not, therefore, derive
from the separation of our legislature into two houses, those
benefits which a proper complication of principles are capable
of producing, and those which alone can compensate the evils
which may be produced by their dissensions.
4. All the powers of government, legislative, executive, and
judiciary, result to the legislative body. The concentrating
these in the same hands is precisely the definition of despotic
government. It will be no alleviation that these powers will be
exercised by a plurality of hands, and not by a single one.
One hundred and seventy-three despots would surely be as
oppressive as one. Let those who doubt it turn their eyes on
the republic of Venice. As little will it avail us that they are
chosen by ourselves. An elective despotism was not the govern-
ment we fought for, but one which should not only be founded
on free principles, but in which the powers of government
should be so divided and balanced among several bodies of
magistracy, as that no one could transcend their legal limits,
without being effectually checked and restrained by the others.
For this reason that convention which passed the ordinance of
government, laid its foundation on this basis, that the legisla-
tive, executive, and judiciary departments should be separate
and distinct, so that no person should exercise the powers of
more than one of them at the same time. But no barrier was
provided between these several powers. The judiciary and
executive members were left dependent on the legislative,
for their subsistence in office, and some of them for their
continuance in it. If, therefore, the legislature assumes execu-
237
ON VIRGINIA
tive and judiciary powers, no opposition is likely to be made;
nor, if made, can it be effectual; because in that case they may
put their proceedings into the form of an act of assembly,
which will render them obligatory on the other branches.
They have, accordingly, in many instances, decided rights
which should have been left to judiciary controversy; and
the direction of the executive, during the whole time of their
session, is becoming habitual and familiar. And this is done
with no ill intention. The views of the present members are
perfectly upright. When they are led out of their regular
province, it is by art in others, and inadvertance in them-
selves. And this will probably be the case for some time to
come. But it will not be a very long time. Mankind soon learn
to make interested uses of every right and power which they
possess, or may assume. The public money and public liberty,
intended to have been deposited with three branches of
magistracy, but found inadvertently to be in the hands of one
only, will soon be discovered to be sources of wealth and
dominion to those who hold them; distinguished, too, by this
tempting circumstance, that they are the instrument, as well
as the object of acquisition. With money we will get men,
said Caesar, and with men we will get money. Nor should our
assembly be deluded by the integrity of their own purposes,
and conclude that these unlimited powers will never be abused,
because themselves are not disposed to abuse them. They
should look forward to a time, and that not a distant one,
when a corruption in this, as in the country from which we
derive our origin, will have seized the head of government, and
be spread by them through the body of the people; when they
will purchase the voices of the people, and make them pay
the price. Human nature is the same on every side of the
Atlantic, and will be alike influenced by the same causes. The
time to guard against corruption and tyranny, is before they
shall have gotten hold of us. It is better to keep the wolf out
of the fold, than to trust to drawing his teeth and claws after
238
THOMAS JEFFERSON
he shall have entered. To render these considerations the mor*
cogent, we must observe in addition:
5. That the ordinary legislature may alter the constitution
itself. On the discontinuance of assemblies, it became neces-
sary to substitute in their place some other body, competent
to the ordinary business of government, and to the calling
forth the powers of the State for the maintenance of our
opposition to Great Britain. Conventions were therefore intro-
duced, consisting of two delegates from each county, meeting
together and forming one house, on the plan of the former
house of burgesses, to whose places they succeeded. These
were at first chosen anew for every particular session. But in
March 1775, they recommended to the people to choose a
convention, which should continue in office a year. This was
done, accordingly, in April 1775, and in the July following
that convention passed an ordinance for the election of dele-
gates in the month of April annually. It is well known, that
in July 1775, a separation from Great Britain and establish-
ment of republican government, had never yet entered into
any person's mind. A convention, therefore, chosen under that
ordinance, cannot be said to have been chosen for the purposes
which certainly did not exist in the minds of those who passed
it. Under this ordinance, at the annual election in April 1776,
a convention for the year was chosen. Independence, and the
establishment of a new form of government, were not even
yet the objects of the people at large. One extract from the
pamphlet called Common Sense had appeared in the Virginia
papers in February, and copies of the pamphlet itself had got
in a few hands. But the idea had not been opened to the
mass of the people in April, much less can it be said that they
had made up their minds in its favor.
So that the electors of April 1776, no more than the
legislators of July 1775, not thinking of independence and a
permanent republic, could not mean to vest in these delegates
powers of establishing them, or any authorities other than
239 '
ON VIRGINIA
those of the ordinary legislature. So far as a temporary organi-
zation of government was necessary to render our opposition
energetic, so far their organization was valid. But they received
in their creation no powers but what were given to every
legislature before and since. They could not, therefore, pass
an act transcendent to the powers of other legislatures. If
the present assembly pass an act, and declare it shall be
irrevocable by subsequent assemblies, the declaration is merely
void, and the act repealable, as other acts are. So far, and no
farther authorized, they organized the government by the
ordinance entitled a constitution or form of government. It
pretends to no higher authority than the other ordinances of
the same session; it does not say that it shall be perpetual;
that it shall be unalterable by other legislatures; that it shall
be transcendent above the powers of those who they knew
would have equal power with themselves. Not only the silence
of the instrument is a proof they thought it would be alter-
able, but their own practice also; for this very convention,
meeting as a house of delegates in general assembly with the
Senate in the autumn of that year, passed acts of assembly in
contradiction to their ordinance of government; and every
assembly from that time to this has done the same. I am safe,
therefore, in the position that the constitution itself is alter-
able by the ordinary legislature. Though this opinion seems
founded on the first elements of common sense, yet is the
contrary maintained by some persons, i. Because, say they,
the conventions were vested with every power necessary to
make effectual opposition to Great Britain. But to complete
this argument, they must go on, and say further, that effectual
opposition could not be made to Great Britain without estab-
lishing a form of government perpetual and unalterable by the
legislature; which is not true. An opposition which at some
time or other was to come to an end, could not need a perpetual
institution to carry it on; and a government amendable as its
defects should be discovered, was as likely to make effectual
"resistance, as one that should be unalterably wrong. Besides,
240 ;
THOMAS JSFFSRSON
the assemblies were as much vested with all powers requisite
far resistance as the conventions were. If, therefore, these
powers included that of modelling the form of government in
the one case, they did so in the other. The assemblies then as
well as the conventions may model the government; that is;
they may alter the ordinance of government. 2. They urge,
that if the convention had meant that this instrument should
be alterable, as their other ordinances were, they would have
called it an ordinance; but they have called it a constitution,
which, ex vi termini, means "an act above the power of the
ordinary legislature." I answer that constitutio, constitutium,
statutum, lex, are convertible terms. . . . Thus in the statute 25
Hen. VIII. c. 19, § i, "Constitutions and ordinances" are used
as synonymous. The term constitution has many other signifi
cations in physics and politics; but in jurisprudence, whenevel
it is applied to any act of the legislature, it invariably means a
statute, law, or ordinance which is the present case. No in-
ference then of a different meaning can be drawn from the
adoption of this title; on the contrary, we might conclude
that, by their affixing to it a term synonymous with ordinance
or statute. But of what consequence is their meaning, where
their power is denied? If they meant to do more than the}1
had power to do, did this give them power? It is not the name,
but the authority that renders an act obligatory. ... To get
rid of the magic supposed to be in the word constitution, let
us translate it into its definition as given by those who think it
above the power of the law ; and let us suppose the convention
instead of saying, "We the ordinary legislature, establish a
constitution" had said, "We the ordinary legislature, establish
an act above the power of the ordinary legislature" Does not
this expose the absurdity of the attempt? 3. But, say they, the
people have acquiesced, and this has given it an authority
superior to the laws. It is true that the people did not rebel
against it; and was that a time for the people to rise in rebel-
lion? Should a prudent acquiescence, at a critical time, be
construed into a confirmation of every illegal thing done during
241
ON VIRGINIA
that period? Besides, why should they rebel? At an annual
election they had chosen delegates for the year, to exercise the
ordinary powers of legislation, and to manage the great contest
in which they were engaged. These delegates thought the
contest would be best managed by an organized government.
They therefore, among others, passed an ordinance of govern-
ment. They did not presume to call it perpetual and unalter-
able. They well knew they had no power to make it so; that
our choice of them had been for no such purpose, and at a time
when we could have no such purpose in contemplation. Had an
unalterable form of government been meditated, perhaps we
should have chosen a different set of people. There was no
cause then for the people to rise in rebellion. But to what
dangerous lengths will this argument lead? Did the acquies-
cence of the colonies under the various acts of power exercised
by Gieat Britain in our infant State, confirm these acts, and
so far invest them with the authority of the people as to render
them unalterable, and our present resistance wrong? On every
unauthoritative exercise of power by the legislature must the
people rise in rebellion, or their silence be construed into a
surrender of that power to them? If so, how many rebellious
should we have had already? One certainly for every session
of assembly. The other States in the union have been of opinion
that to render a form of government unalterable by ordinary
acts of assembly, the people must delegate persons with special
powers. They have accordingly chosen special conventions to
form and fix their governments. The individuals then who
maintain the contrary opinion in this country, should have
the modesty to suppose it possible that they may be wrong,
and the rest of America right. But if there be only a possibility
of their being wrong, if only a plausible doubt remains of the
validity of the ordinance of government, is it not better to
remove that doubt by placing it on a bottom which none will
dispute? If they be right we shall only have the unnecessary
trouble of meeting once in convention. If they be wrong, they
fixoose us to the hazard of having no fundamental rights at
242
THOMAS
all. True it is, this is no time for deliberating on forms of go#«
ernment. While an enemy is within our bowels, the first object
is to expel him. But when this shall be done, when peace shalf
be established, and leisure given us for intrenching within
good forms, the rights for which we have bled, let no man be
found indolent enough to decline a little more trouble for
placing them beyond the reach of question. If anything more
be requisite to produce a conviction of the expediency of call-
ing a convention at a proper season to fix our form of govern-
ment, let it be the reflection:
6. That the assembly exercises a power of determining the
quorum of their own body which may legislate for us. After
the establishment of the new form they adhered to the Lex
majoris partis, founded in common law as well as common
right. It is the natural law of every assembly of men, whose
numbers are not fixed by any other law. They continued for
some time to require the presence of a majority of their whole
number, to pass an act. But the British parliament fixes its
own quorum; our former assemblies fixed their own quorum;
and one precedent in favor of power is stronger than an
hundred against it. The house of delegates, therefore, have
lately voted that, during the present dangerous invasion, forty
members shall be a house to proceed to business. They have
been moved to this by the fear of not being able to collect a
house. But this danger could not authorize them to call that
a house which was none; and if they may fix it at one number,
they may at another, till it loses its fundamental character of
being a representative body. As this vote expires with the
present invasion, it is probable the former rule will be per-
mitted to revive; because at present no ill is meant. The power,
however, of fixing their own quorum has been avowed, and a
precedent set. From forty it may be reduced to four, and from
four to one; from a house to a committee, from a committee to
a chairman or speaker, and thus an oligarchy or monarchy be
substituted under forms supposed to be regular. "All bad
precedents arise out of good; but where power comes into ine
ON VIRGINIA
hands of the ignorant or the indifferent, that new precedent
proceeds from the worthy and the fit to the unworthy and the
unfit." *
When, therefore, it is considered, that there is no legal
obstacle to the assumption by the assembly of all the powers
legislative, executive, and judiciary, and that these maj come
to the hands of the smallest rag of delegation, surely the people
will say, and their representatives, while yet they have honest
representatives, will advise them to say, that they will not
acknowledge as laws any acts not considered and assented to
by the major part of their delegates.
In enumerating the defects of the Constitution, it would be
wrong to count among them what is only the error of particular
persons. In December 1776, our circumstances being much dis-
tressed, it was proposed in the house of delegates to create a
dictator, invested with every power legislative, executive, and
judiciary, civil and military, of life and of death, over our
persons and over our properties; and in June 1781, again
under calamity, the same proposition was repeated, and wanted
a few votes only of being passed. One who entered into this
contest from a pure love of liberty, and a sense of injured
rights, who determined to make every sacrifice, and to meet
every danger, for the re-establishment of those rights on a firm
basis, who did not mean to expend his blood and substance
for the wretched purpose of changing this matter for that,
but to place the powers of governing him in a plurality of
hands of his own choice, so that the corrupt will of no one
man might in future oppress him, must stand confounded and
dismayed when he is told, that a considerable portion of that
plurality had mediated the surrender of them into a single
hand, and, in lieu of a limited monarchy, to deliver him over
to a despotic one! How must we find his efforts and sacrifices
abused and baffled, if he may still, by a single vote, be laid
prostrate at the feet of one man! In God's name, from whence
have they derived this power? Is it from our ancient laws?
I. In Jefferson's text this is given in Latin.
244
THOMAS JSFF8RSON
None such can be produced. Is it from any principle in our ne\*
Constitution expressed or implied? Every lineament expressed
or implied, is in full opposition to it. Its fundamental principle
is, that the State shall be governed as a commonwealth. It
provides a republican organization, proscribes under the name
of prerogative the exercise of all powers undefined by the laws;
places on this basis the whole system of our laws; and by con-
solidating them together, chooses that they should be left to
stand or fall together, never providing for any circumstances,
nor admitting that such could arise, wherein either should be
suspended; no, not for a moment. Our ancient laws expressly
declare, that those who are but delegates themselves shall not
delegate to others powers which require judgment and integrity
in their exercise. Or was this proposition moved on a supposed
right in the movers, of abandoning their posts in a moment of
distress t The same laws forbid the abandonment of that post,
even on ordinary occasions; and much more a transfer of their
powers into other hands and other forms, without consulting
the people. They never admit the idea that these, like sheep or
cattle, may be given from hand to hand without an appeal
to their own will. Was it from the necessity of the case?
Necessities which dissolve a government, do not convey its
authority to an oligarchy or a monarchy. They throw back,
into the hands of the people, the powers they had delegated;
and leave them as individuals to shift for themselves. A leader
may offer, btt not impose himself, nor be imposed on them.
Much less can their necks be submitted to his sword, their
breath to be held at his will or caprice. The necessity which
should operate these tremendous effects should at least be
palpable and irresistible. Yet in both instances, where it was
feared, or pretended with us, it was belied by the event. It was
belied, too, by the preceding experience of our sister States,
several of whom had grappled through greater difficulties
without abandoning their forms of government. When the
proposition was first made, Massachusetts had found even the
government of committees sufficient to carry them through an
245
ON VIRGINIA
invasion. But we at the time of that proposition, were under no
invasion. When the second was made, there had been added
to this example those of Rhode Island, New York, New Jersey,
and Pennsylvania, in all of which the republican form had
been found equal to the task of carrying them through the
severest trials. In thib State alone did there exist so little
virtue, that fear was to be fixed in the hearts of the people,
and to become the motive of their exertions, and principle of
their government? The very thought alone was treason against
the people; was treason against mankind in general; as rivet-
ing forever the chains which bow down their necks, by giving to
their oppressors a proof, which they would have trumpeted
through the universe, of the imbecility of republican govern-
ment, in times of pressing danger, to shield them from harm.
Those who assume the right of giving away the reins of gov-
ernment in any case, must be sure that the herd, whom they
hand on to the rods and hatchet of the dictator, will lay their
necks on the block when they shall nod to them. But if our
assemblies supposed such a recognition in the people, I hope
tthey mistook their character. I am of opinion, that the gov-
ernment, instead of being braced and invigorated for greater
.exertions under their difficulties, would have been thrown back
upon the bungling machinery of county committees for ad-
ministration, till a convention could have been called, and its
wheels again set into regular motion. What a cruel moment
was this for creating such an embarrassment, for putting to
the proof the attachment of our countrymen to republican
government! Those who meant well, of the advocates of this
measure, (and most of them meant well, for I know them
personally, had been their fellow-laborer in the common cause,
and had often proved the purity of their principles,) had
been seduced in their judgment by the example of an ancient
republic, whose constitution and circumstances were funda-
mentally different. They had sought this precedent in the his-
tory of Rome, where alone it was to be found, and where at
length, too, it had pioved fatal. They had taken it from a
THOMAS
republic rent by the most bitter factions and tumults, where
the government was of a heavy-handed unfeeling aristocracy,
over a people ferocious, and rendered desperate by poverty
and wretchedness; tumults which could not be allayed under
the most trying circumstances, but by the omnipotent hand
of a single despot. Their constitution, therefore, allowed a
temporary tyrant to be erected, under the name of a dictator;
and that temporary tyrant, after a few examples, became per-
petual. They misapplied this precedent to a people mild in
their dispositions, patient under their trial, united for the
public liberty, and affectionate to their leaders. But if from
the constitution of the Roman government there resulted to
their senate a power of submitting all their rights to the will
of one man, does it follow that the assembly of Virginia have
the same authority? What clause in our constitution has sub-
stituted that of Rome, by way of residuary provision, for all
cases not otherwise provided for? Or if they may step ad
libitum into any other form of government for precedents to
rule us by, for what oppression may not a precedent be found
in this world of the ballum omnium in omnia? Searching for
the foundations of this proposition, I can find none which may
pretend a color of right or reason, but the defect before devel-
oped, that there being no barrier between the Igislative, execu-
tive, and judiciary departments, the legislature may seize the
whole; that having seized it, and possessing a right to fix their
own quorum, they may reduce that quorum to one, wiiom they
may call a chairman, speaker, dictator, or by any other name
they please. Our situation is indeed perilous, and I hope my
countrymen will be sensible of it, and will apply, at a proper
season, the proper remedy; which is a convention to fix the con-
stitution, to amend its defects, to bind up the several branches
of government by certain laws, which, when they transgress,
their acts shall become nullities; to render unnecessary an ap-
peal to the people, or in other words a rebellion, on every in-
fraction of their rights, on the peril that their acquiescence
shall be construed into an intention to surrender those rights.
247
ON VIRGINIA
QUERY XIV
The administration of justice and the description of the laws?
The State is divided into counties. In every county are ap-
pointed magistrates, called justices of the peace, usually from
eight to thirty or forty in number, in proportion to the size of
the county, of the most discreet and honest inhabitants. They
are nominated by their fellows, but commissioned by the gov-
ernor, and act without reward. These magistrates have juris-
diction both criminal and civil. If the question before them be
a question of law only, they decide on it themselves; but if it
be of fact, or of fact and law combined, it must be referred
to a jury. In the latter case, of a combination of law and
fact, it is usual for the jurors to decide the fact, and to refer
the law arising on it to the decision of the judges. But this
division of the subject lies with their discretion only. And if
the question relate to any point of public liberty, or if it be one
of those in which the judges may be suspected of bias, the
jury undertake to decide both law and fact. If they be mis-
taken, a decision against right, which is casual only, is less
dangerous to the State, and less afflicting to the loser, than one
which makes part of a regular and uniform system. In truth, it
is better to toss up cross and pile in a cause, than to refer it to
a judge whose mind is warped by any motive whatever, in that
particular case. But the common sense of twelve honest men
gives still a better chance of just decision, than the hazard of
cross and pile. These judges execute their process by the sheriff
or coroner of the county, or by constables of their own appoint-
ment. If any free person commit an offense against the com-
monwealth; if it be below the degree of felony, he is bound by
a justice to appear before their court, to answer it on an indict-
ment or information. If it amount to felony, he is committed
to jail; a court of these justices is called; if they on examina-
tion think him guilty, they send him to the jail of the general
court, before which court he is to be tried first by a grand jury
of twenty-four, of whom thirteen must concur in opinion; if
248
THOMAS
they find him guilty, he is then tried by a jury of twelve men
of the county where the offence was committed, and by their
verdict, which must be unanimous, he is acquitted or con-
demned without appeal. If the criminal be a slave, the trial
by the county court is final. In every case, however, except
that of high treason, there resides in the governor a power of
pardon. In high treason the pardon can only flow from the
general assembly. In civil matters these justices have juris-
diction in all cases of whatever value, not appertaining to the
department of the admiralty. This jurisdiction is twofold. If
the matter in dispute be of less value than four dollars and
one-sixth, a single member may try it at any time and place
within his county, and may award execution on the goods of
the party cast. If it be of that or greater value, it is determin-
able before the county court, which consists of four at the
least of those justices and assembles at the courthouse of the
county on a certain day in every month. From their determina-
tion, if the matter be of the value of ten pounds sterling, or
concern the title or bounds of land, an appeal lies to one of the
superior courts.
The laws of England seem to have been adopted by con-
sent of the settlers, which might easily enough be done whilst
they were few and living all together. Of such adoption, how-
ever, we have no other proof than their practice till the year
1 66 1, when they were expressly adopted by an act of the
assembly, except so far as "a difference of condition" ren-
dered them inapplicable. Under this adoption, the rule, in our
courts of judicature was, that the common law of England,
and the general statutes previous to the fourth of James, were
in force here; but that no subsequent statutes were, unless we
were named in them, said the judges and other partisans of the
crown/ but named or not named, said those who reflected freely.
It will be unnecessary to attempt a description of the laws of
England, as that may be found in English publications. To
those which were established here, by the adoption of the leg-
249
ON VIRGINIA
islature, have been since added a number of acts of assembly
passed during the monarchy, and ordinances of convention and
acts of assembly enacted since the establishment of the re-
public. The following variations from the British model are
perhaps worthy of being specified:
Debtors unable to pay their debts, and making faithful
delivery of their whole effects, are released from confinement,
and their persons forever discharged from restraint for such
previous debts; but any property they may afterwards acquire
will be subject to their creditors.
The poor unable to support themselves, are maintained by
an assessment on the tytheable persons in their parish. This
assessment is levied and administered by twelve persons in
each parish, called vestrymen, originally chosen by the house-
keepers of the parish, but afterwards filling vacancies in their
own body by their own choice. These are usually the most
discreet farmers, so distributed through their parish, that
every part of it may be under the immediate eye of some one
of them. They are well acquainted with the details and econ-
omy of private life, and they find sufficient inducements to
execute their charge well, in their philanthropy, in the approba-
tion of their neighbors, and the distinction which that gives
them. The poor who have neither property, friends, nor
strength to labor, are boarded in the houses of good farmers,
to whom a stipulated sum is annually paid. To those who are
able to help themselves a little, or have friends from whom
they derive some succors, inadequate however to their full
maintenance, supplementary aids are given which enable them
to live comfortably in their own houses, or in the houses of
their friends. Vagabonds without visible property or vocation,
are placed in work houses, where they are well clothed, fed,
lodged and made to labor. Nearly the same method of providing
for the poor prevails through all our States; and from Savan-
nah to Portsmouth you will seldom meet a beggar. In the large
towns, indeed, they sometimes present themselves. These are
usually foreigners, who have never obtained a settlement in
250-
THOMAS JSFFSRSON
any parish. I never yet saw a native American begging in the
streets or highways. A subsistence is easily gained here; and if,
by misfortunes, they are thrown on the charities of the world,
those provided by their own country are so comfortable and
so certain, that they never think of relinquishing them to be-
come strolling beggars. Their situation too, when sick, in the
family of a good farmer, where every member is emulous to do
them kind offices, where they are visited by all the neighbors,
who bring them the little rarities which their sickly appetites
may crave, and who take by rotation the nightly watch over
them, when their condition requires it, is without comparison
better than in a general hospital, where the sick, the dying and
the dead are crammed together in the same rooms, and often
in the same beds. The disadvantages, inseparable from general
hospitals, are such as can never be counterpoised by all the
regularities of medicine and regimen. Nature and kind nursing
save a much greater proportion in our plain way, at a smaller
expense, and with less abuse. One branch only of hospital insti-
tutions is wanting with us; that is, a general establishment for
those laboring under difficult cases of chirurgery. The aids of
this art are not equivocal. But an able chirurgeon cannot be
had in every parish. Such a receptacle should therefore be
provided for those patients; but no others should be admitted.
Marriages must be solemnized either on special license,
granted by the first magistrate of the county, on proof of the
consent of the parent or guardian of either party under age,
or after solemn publication, on three several Sundays, at some
place of religious worship, in the parishes where the parties
reside. The act of solemnization may be by the minister of any
society of Christians, who shall have been previously licensed
for this purpose by the court of the county. Quakers and
Menonists, however, are exempted from all these conditions,
and marriage among them is to be solemnized by the society
itself.
A foreigner of any nation, not in open war with us, becomes
naturalized by removing to the State to reside, and taking an
251
ON VIRGINIA
oath of fidelity; and thereupon acquires every right of a native
citizen; and citizens may divest themselves of that character,
by declaring, by solemn deed, or in open court, that they mean
to expatriate themselves, and no longer to be citizens of this
State.
Conveyances of land must be registered in the court of the
county wherein they lie, or in the general court, or they are
void, as to creditors, and subsequent purchasers.
Slaves pass by descent and dower as lands do. Where the
descent is from a parent, the heir is bound to pay an equal
share of their value in money to each of their brothers and
sisters.
Slaves, as well as lands, were entailable during the mon-
archy; but by an act of the first republican assembly, all
donees in tail, present and future, were vested with the absolute
dominion of the entailed subject.
Bills of exchange, being protested, carry ten per cent interest
from their date.
No person is allowed, in any other case, to take more than
five per cent per annum simple interest for the loan of moneys.
Gaming debts are made void, and moneys actually paid to
discharge such debts (if they exceed forty shillings) may be
recovered by the payer within three months, or by any other
person afterwards.
Tobacco, flour, beef, pork, tar, pitch, and turpentine must
be inspected by persons publicly appointed, before they can
be exported.
The erecting iron-works and mills is encouraged by many
privileges; with necessary cautions however to prevent their
dams from obstructing the navigation of the water-courses.
The general assembly have on several occasions shown a great
desire to encourage the opening the great falls of James and
Potomac rivers. As yet, however, neither of these have been
effected.
The laws have also descended to the preservation and im-
provement of the races of useful animals, such as horses, cattle,
252'
THOMAS J8FF8RSON
deer; to the extirpation of those which are noxious, as wolves,
squirrels, crows, blackbirds; and to the guarding our citizens
against infectious disorders, by obliging suspected vessels com-
ing into the State, to perform quarantine, and by regulating
the conduct of persons having such disorders within the State.
The mode of acquiring lands, in the earliest times of our
settlement, was by petition to the general assembly. If the
lands prayed for were already cleared of the Indian title, and
the assembly thought the prayer reasonable, they passed the
property by their vote to the petitioner. But if they had not
yet been ceded by the Indians, it was necessary that the peti-
tioner should previously purchase their right. This purchase the
assembly verified, by inquiries of the Indian proprietors; and
being satisfied of its reality and fairness, proceeded further tc
examine the reasonableness of the petition, and its consistence
with policy; and according to the result, either granted or re-
jected the petition. The company also sometimes, though very
rarely, granted lands, independently of the general assembly.
As the colony increased, and individual applications for land
multiplied, it was found to give too much occupation to the
general assembly to inquire into and execute the grant in every
special case. They therefore thought it better to establish
general rules, according to which all grants should be made,
and to leave to the governor the execution of them, under these
rules. This they did by what have been usually called the land
laws, amending them from time to time, as their defects were
developed. According to these laws, when an individual wished
a portion of unappropriated land, he was to locate and survey
it by a public officer, appointed for that purpose, its breadth
was to bear a certain proportion to its length: the grant was
to be executed by the governor; and the lands were to be im-
proved in a certain manner, within a given time. From these
regulations there resulted to the State a sole and exclusive
power of taking conveyances of the Indian right of soil; since,
according to them, an Indian conveyance alone could give no
right to an individual, which the laws would acknowledge. The
2S3
ON VIRGINIA
State, or the crown, thereafter, made general purchases of the
Indians from time to time, and the governor parcelled them
out by special grants, conformable to the rules before de-
scribed, which it was not in his power, or in that of the crown,
to dispense with. Grants, unaccompanied by their proper legal
circumstances, were set aside regularly by fieri facias, or by bill
in chancery. Since the establishment of our new Government,
this order of things is but little changed. An individual, wishing
to appropriate to himself lands still unappropriated by any
other, pays to the public treasurer a sum of money propor-
tioned to the quantity he wants. He carries the treasurer's
receipt to the auditors of public accounts, who thereupon debit
the treasurer with the sum, and order the register of the land-
office to give the party a warrant for his land. With this war-
rant from the register, he goes to the surveyor of the coUhty
where the land lies on which he has cast his eye. The surveyor
lays it off for him, gives him its exact description, in the form
of a certificate, which certificate he returns to the landoffice,
where a grant is made out, and is signed by the governor. This
vests in him a perfect dominion in his lands, transmissible to
whom he pleases by deed or will, or by descent to his heirs,
if he die intestate.
Many of the laws which were in force during the monarchy
b'eing relative merely to that form of government, or incul-
cating principles inconsistent with republicanism, the first
assembly which met atter the establishment of the common-
wealth appointed a committee to revise the whole code, to
reduce it into proper form and volume, and report it to the
assembly. This work has been executed by three gentlemen,
and reported; 1 but probably will not be taken up till a restora-
tion of peace shall leave to the legislature leisure to go through
such a work.
The plan of the revisal was this. The common law of Eng-
land, by which is meant, that part of the English law which
was anterior to the date of the oldest statutes extant, is made
i. This revisal was performed by Jefferson, Wythe, and Pendleton.
254'
THOMAS JSFfSRSON
the basis of the work. It was thought dangerous to attempt
to reduce it to a text; it was therefore left to be collected
from the usual monuments of it. Necessary alterations in that,
and so much of the whole body of the British statutes, and of
acts of assembly, as were thought proper to be retained, were
digested into one hundred and twenty-six new acts, in which
simplicity of style was aimed at, as far as was safe. The fol-
lowing are the most remarkable alterations proposed:
To change the rules of descent, so a? that the lands of any
person dying intestate shall be divisible equally among all his
children, or other representatives, in equal degree.
To make slaves distributable among the next of kin, as other
movables.
To have all public expenses, whether of the general treasury,
or of a parish or county, (as for the maintenance of the poor,
building bridges, courthouses, &c.,) supplied by assessment on
the citizens, in proportion to their property.
To hire undertakers for keeping the public roads in repair,
and indemnify individuals through whose lands new roads shall
be opened.
To define with precision the rules whereby aliens should be-
come citizens, and citizens make themselves aliens.
To establish religious freedom on the broadest bottom.
To emancipate all slaves born after the passing the act. The
bill reported by the revisers does not itself contain this proposi-
tion; but an amendment containing it was prepared, to be
offered to the legislature whenever the bill should be taken up,
and farther directing, that they should continue with their
parents to a certain age, then to be brought up, at the public
expense, to tillage, arts, or sciences, according to their geniuses,
till the females should be eighteen, and the males twenty-one
years of age, when they should be colonized to such place as
the circumstances of the time should render most proper,
sending them out with arms, implements of household and of
the handicraft arts, seeds, pairs of the useful domestic animals,
&c.j to declare them a free and independent people, and extend
255
ON VIRGINIA
to them our alliance and protection, till they have acquired
strength; and to send vessels at the same time to other parts
of the world for an equal number of white inhabitants; to
induce them to migrate hither proper encouragements were to
be proposed. It will probably be asked, Why not retain and
incorporate the blacks into the State, and thus save the expense
of supplying by importation of white settlers, the vacancies
they will leave? De'ep-rooted prejudices entertained by the
whites; ten thousand recollections, by the blacks, of the in-
juries they have sustained; new provocations; the real distinc-
tions which nature has made; and many other circumstances,
will divide us into parties, and produce convulsions, which will
probably never end but in the extermination of the one or the
other race. To these objections, which are political, may be
added others, which are physical and moral. The first difference
tvhich strikes us is that of color. Whether the black of the
negro resides in the reticular membrane between the skin and
scarf-skin, or in the scarf-skin itself; whether it proceeds from
the color of the blood, the color of the bile, or from that of
some other secretion, the difference is fixed in nature, and is as
real as if its seat and cause were better known to us. And is
this difference of no importance? Is it not the foundation of a
greater or less share of beauty in the two races? Are not the
fine mixtures of red and white, the expressions of every pas-
sion by greater or less suffusions of color in the one, preferable
to that eternal monotony, which reigns in the countenances,
that immovable veil of black which covers the emotions of the
other race? Add to these, flowing hair, a more elegant sym-
metry of form, their own judgment in favor of the whites, de-
clared by their preference of them, as uniformly as is the
preference of the Oran-utan for the black woman over those
of his own species. The circumstance of superior beauty, is
thought worthy attention in the propagation of our horses, dogs,
and other domestic animals; why not in that of man? Be-
sides those of color, figure, and hair, there are other physical
256
THOMAS jeFFSRSON
distinctions proving a difference of race. Thty have less hair
on the face and body. They secrete less by the kidneys, and
more by the glands of the skin, which gives them a very strong
and disagreeable odor. This greater degree of transpiration,
renders them more tolerant of heat, and less so of cold than
the whites. Perhaps, too,, a difference of structure in the pul-
monary apparatus, which a late ingenious experimentalist has
discovered to be the principal regulator of animal heat, may
have disabled them from extricating, in the act of inspiration,
so much of that fluid from the outer air, or obliged them in
expiration, to part with more of it. They seem to require less
sleep. A black after hard labor through the day, will be in-
duced by the slightest amusements to sit up till midnight, or
later, though knowing he must be out with first dawn of the
morning. They are at least as brave, and more adventuresome.
But this may perhaps proceed from a want of forethought,
which prevents their seeing a danger till it be present. When
present, they do not go through it with more coolness or steadi-
ness than the whites. They are more ardent after their female;
but love seems with them to be more an 'eager desire, than a
tender delicate mixture of sentiment and sensation. Their griefs
are transient. Those numberless afflictions, which render it
doubtful whether heaven has given life to us in mercy or in
wrath, are less felt, and sooner forgotten with them. In general,
their existence appears to participate more of sensation than
reflection. To this must be ascribed their disposition to sleep
when abstracted from their diversions, and unemployed in
labor. An animal whose body is at rest, and who does not re-
flect must be disposed to sleep of course. Comparing them by
their faculties of memory, reason, and imagination, it appears
to me that in memory they are equal to the whites; in reason
much inferior, as I think one could scarcely be found capable
of tracing and comprehending the investigations of Euclid ; and
that in imagination they are dull, tasteless, and anomalous. It
would be unfair to follow them to Africa for this investigation.
257
ON VIRGINIA
We will consider them here, on the same stage with the whites,
and where the facts are not apocryphal on which a judgment
is to be formed. It will be right to make great allowances for
the difference of condition, of education, of conversation, of the
sphere in which they move. Many millions of them have been
brought to, and born in America. Most of them, indeed, have
been confined to tillage, tr their own homes, and their own
society; yet many have been so situated, that they might have
availed themselves of the conversation of their masters; many
have been brought up to the handicraft arts, and from that
circumstance have always been associated with the whites.
Some have been liberally educated, and all have lived in coun-
tries where the arts and sciences are cultivated to a consider-
able degree, and all have had before their eyes samples of the
best works from abroad. The Indians, with no advantages of
this kind, will often carve figures on their pages not destitute
of design and merit. They will crayon out an. animal, a plant,
or a country, so as to prove the existence of a germ in their
minds which only wants cultivation. They astonish you with
strokes of the most sublime oratory; such as prove their reason
and sentiment strong, their imagination glowing and elevated.
But never yet could I find that a black had uttered a thought
above the level of plain narration; never saw even an elemen-
tary trait of painting or sculpture. In music they are more
generally gifted than the whites with accurate ears for tune
and time, and they have been found capable of imagining a
small catch.1 Whether they will be equal to the composition of
a more extensive run of melody, or of complicated harmony, is
yet to be proved. Misery is often the parent of the most
affecting touches in poetry. Among the blacks is misery enough,
God knows, but no poetry. Love is the peculiar oestrum of the
poet. Their love is ardent, but it kindles the senses only, not
i. The instrument proper to them is the Banjar, which they brought
hither from Africa, and which is the original of the guitar, its chords
being precisely the four lower chords of the guitar. [Jefferson's note.]
258
'THOMAS jeFFERSON
the imagination. Religion, indeed, has produced a Phyllis
Whately; x but it could not produce a poet. The compositions
published under her name are below the dignity of criticism,
The heroes of the Dunciad are to her, as Hercules to the authoi
of that poem. Ignatius Sancho 2 has approached nearer to merit
in composition; yet his letters do more honor to the heart than
the head. They breathe the purest effusions of friendship and
general philanthropy, and show how great a degree of the
latter may be compounded with strong religious zeal. He is
often happy in the turn of his compliments, and his style is
easy and familiar, except when he affects a Shandean fabrica-
tion of words. But his imagination is wild and extravagant, and
escapes incessantly from every restraint of reason and taste,
and, in the course of its vagaries, leaves a tract of thought as
incoherent and eccentric, as is the course of a meteor through
the sky. His subjects should often have led him to a process
of sober reasoning; yet we find him always substituting senti-
ment for demonstration. Upon the whole, though we admit
him to the first place among those of his own color who have
presented themselves to the public judgment, yet when we
compare him with the writers of the race among whom he lived
and particularly with the epistolary class in which he has taken
his own stand, we are compelled to enrol him at the bottom
of the column. This criticism supposes the letters published
under his- name to be genuine, and to have received amendment
from no other hand; points which would not be of easy in-
vestigation. The improvement of the blacks in body and mind,
in. the first instance of their mixture with the whites, has been
observed by every one, and proves that their inferiority is not
the effect merely of their condition of life. We know that
among the Romans, about the Augustan age especially, the
condition of their slaves was much more deplorable than that of
1. Phyllis Wheatley, (correct spelling) whose collected poems were
published in London in 1773.
2. Sancho, born in 1729 on a slaveship, was a longtime resident of
England; his Letters, with Memoirs of his Life appeared in 1782.
2S9
whores ON VIRGINIA
the blacks on the continent of America. The two sexes were
confined in separate apartments, because to raise a child cost
the master more than to buy one. Cato, for a very restricted
indulgence to his slaves in this particular,1 took from them a
certain price. But in this country the slaves multiply as fast
as the free inhabitants. Their situation and manners place the
commerce between the two sexes almost without restraint. The
same Cato, on a principle of economy, always sold his sick and
superannuated slaves. He gives it as a standing precept to a
master visiting his farm, to sell his old oxen, old wagons, old
tools, old and diseased servants, and (everything else become
useless. . . . The American slaves cannot enumerate this among
the injuries and insults they receive. It was the common prac-
tice to expose in the island Aesculapius, in the Tyber, diseased
slaves whose cure was like to become tedious. The emperor
Claudius by an edict, gave freedom to such of them as should
recover, and first declared that if any person chose to kill rather
than to expose them, it should not be deemed homicide. The
exposing them is a crime of which no instance has existed with
us; and were it to be followed by death, it would be punished
capitally. We are told of a certain Vedius Pollio, who, in the
presence of Augustus, would have given a slave as food to his
fish, for having broken a glass. With the Roman, the regular
method of taking the evidence of their slaves was under
torture. Here it has been thought better never to resort to their
evidence. When a master was murdered, all his slaves, in the
same house, or within hearing, were condemned to death. Here
punishment falls on the guilty only, and as precise proof is
required against him as against a freeman. Yet notwithstanding
these and other discouraging circumstances among the Romans,
their slaves were often their rarest artists. They excelled too
in science, insomuch as to be usually employed as tutors to
their master's children. Epictetus, Terence, and Phaedrus.
were slaves. But they were of the race of whites. It is not then
condition then, but nature, which has produced the distinction.
Whether further observation will or will not verify the coil-
i. Jefferson's footnote omitted.
->6o
THOMAS
jecture, that nature has been less bountiful to them in the en^
dowments of the head, I believe that in those of the heart
she will be found to have done them justice. That disposition
to theft with which they have been branded, must be ascribed
to their situation, and not to any depravity of the moral sense.
The man in whose favor no laws of property exist, probably
feels himself less bound to respect those made in favor of
others. When arguing for ourselves, we lay it down as a funda-
mental, that laws, to be just, must give a reciprocation oi
right; that, without this, they are mere arbitrary rules of con*
duct, founded in force, and not in conscience; and it is a prob-
lem which I give to the master to solve, whether the reli-
gious precepts against the violation of property were not framed
for him as well as his slave? And whether the slave may not
as justifiably take a little from one who has taken all from
him, as he may slay one who would slay him? That a change
in the relations in which a man is placed should change his
ideas of moral right or wrong, is neither new, nor peculiar to
the color of the blacks. Homer tells us it was so two thousand
six hundred years ago.
Jove fix'd it certain, take whatever day
Makes man a slave, takes half his worth away.
But the slaves of which Homer speaks were whites. Not-
withstanding these considerations which must weaken their re-
spect for the laws of property, we find among them numerous
instances of the most rigid integrity, and as many as among
their better instructed masters, of benevolence, gratitude, and
unshaken fidelity. The opinion that they are inferior in the
faculties of reason and imagination, must be hazarded with
great diffidence. To justify a general conclusion, requires many
observations, even where the subject may be submitted to the
anatomical knife, to optical glasses, to analysis by fire or by
solvents. How much more then where it is a faculty, not a
substance, we are examining; where it eludes the research of
all the senses; where the conditions of its existence are various
and variously combined; where the effects of those which are
261
ON VIRGINIA
present or absent bid defiance to calculation; let me add too,
as a circumstance of great tenderness, where our conclusion
would degrade a whole race of men from the rank in the scale
of beings which their Creator may perhaps have given them. To
our reproach it must be said, that though for a century and a
half we have had under our eyes the races of black and of red
men, they have never yet been viewed by us as subjects of
natural history. I advance it, therefore, as a suspicion only,
that the blacks, whether originally a distinct race, or made
distinct by time and circumstances, are inferior to the whites
in the endowments both of body and mind. It is not against
experience to suppose that different species of the same genus,
or varieties of the same species, may possess different qualifica-
tions. Will not a lover of natural history then, one who views
the gradations in all the races of animals with the eye of
philosophy, excuse an effort to keep those in the department of
man as distinct as nature has formed them? This unfortunate
difference of color, and perhaps of faculty, is a powerful
obstacle to the emancipation of these people. Many of their
advocates, while they wish to vindicate the liberty of human
nature, are anxious also to preserve its dignity and beauty.
Some of these, embarrassed by the question, "What further is
to be done with them?" join themselves in opposition with
those who are actuated by sordid avarice only. Among the
Romans emancipation required but one effort. The slave, when
made free, might mix with, without staining the blood of his
master. But with us a second is necessary, unknown to history.
When freed, he is to be removed beyond the reach of mix-
ture. . . .
Another object of the revisal is to diffuse knowledge more
generally through the mass of the people. This bill proposes
to lay off every county into small districts of five or six miles
square, called hundreds, and in each of them to establish a
school for teaching, reading, writing, and arithmetic. The tutor
to be supported by the hundred, and every person in it entitled
to send their children three years gratis, and as much longer
as they please, paying for it. These schools to be under a
262
THOMAS J8FF8RSON
visitor who is annually to choose the boy of best genius in the
school, of those whose parents are too poor to give them further
education, and to send him forward to one of the grammar
schools, of which twenty are proposed to be erected in different
parts of the country, for teaching Greek, Latin, Geography,
and the higher branches of numerical arithmetic. Of the boys
thus sent in one year, trial is to be made at the grammar
schools one or two years, and the best genius of the whole
selected, and continued six years, and the residue dismissed.
By this means twenty of the best geniuses will be raked from
the rubbish annually, and be instructed, at the public expense,
so far as the grammar schools go. At the end of six years'
instruction, one half are to be discontinued (from among whom
the grammar schools will probably be supplied with future
masters) ; and the other half, who are to be chosen for the
superiority of their parts and disposition, are to be sent and
continued three years in the study of such sciences as they
shall choose, at William and Mary College, the plan of which
is proposed to be enlarged, as will be hereafter explained, and
extended to all the useful sciences. The ultimate result of the
whole scheme of education would be the teaching all the chil-
dren of the State reading, writing, and common arithmetic;
turning out ten annually, of superior genius, well taught in
Greek, Latin, Geography, and the higher branches of arith-
metic; turning out ten others annually, of still superior parts,
who, to those branches of learning, shall have added such of
the sciences as their genius shall have led them to; the fur-
nishing to the wealthier part of the people convenient schools
at which their children may be educated at their own expense.
The general objects of this law are to provide an education
adapted to the years, to the capacity, and the condition of
every one, and directed to their freedom and happiness.
Specific details were not proper for the law. These must be the
business of the visitors entrusted with its execution. The first
stage of this education being the schools of the hundreds,
wherein the great mass of the people will receive their instruc-
tion, the principal foundations of future order will be laid here,
263
adores ON VIRGINIA
Instead, therefore, of putting the Bible and Testament into the
hands of the children at an age when their judgments are not
sufficiently matured for religious inquiries, their memories may
here be stored with the most useful facts from Grecian, Roman,
European and American history. The first elements of morality
too may be instilled into their minds; such as, when further
developed as their judgments advance in strength, may teach
them how to work out their own greatest happiness, by showing
them that it does not depend on the condition of life in which
chance has placed them, but is always the result of a good
conscience, good health, occupation, and freedom in all just
pursuits. Those whom either the wealth of their parents or the
adoption of the State shall destine to higher degrees of learning,
will go on to the grammar schools, which constitute the next
stage, there to be instructed in the languages. The learning
Greek and Latin, I am told, is going into disuse in Europe. I
know not what their manners and occupations may call for;
but it would be very ill-judged in us to follow their example in
this instance. There is a certain period of life, say from eight
to fifteen or sixteen years of age, when the mind like the body
is not yet firm enough for laborious and close operations. If
applied to such, it falls an early victim to premature exertion;
exhibiting, indeed, at first, in these young and tender subjects,
the flattering appearance of their being men while they are
yet children, but ending in reducing them to be children when
they should be men. The memory is then most susceptible and
tenacious of impressions; and the learning of languages being
chiefly a work of memory, it seems precisely fitted to the
powers of this period, which is long enough, too, for acquiring
the most useful languages, ancient and modern. I do not pre-
tend that language is science. It is only an instrument for the
attainment of science. But that time is not lost which is em-
ployed in providing tools for future operation; more especially
as in this case the books put into the hands of the youth for
this purpose may be such as will at the same time impress
their minds with useful facts and good principles. If this period
be suffered to pass in idleness, the mind becomes lethargic and
264
THOMAS jeFFSRSON
impotent, as would the body it inhabits if unexercised during
the same time. The sympathy between body and mind during
their rise, progress and decline, is too strict and obvious to en-
danger our being missed while we reason from the one to the
other. As soon as they are of sufficient age, it is supposed they
will be sent on from the grammar schools to the university,
which constitutes our third and last stage, there to study those
sciences which may be adapted to their views. By that part of
our plan which prescribes the selection of the youths of genius
from among the classes of the poor, we hope to avail the State
of those talents which nature has sown as liberally among the
poor as the rich, but which perish without use, if not sought
for and cultivated. But of the views of this law none is more
important, none more legitimate, than that of rendering the
people the safe, as they are the ultimate, guardians of their
own liberty. For this purpose the reading in the first stage,
where they will receive their whole education, is proposed, as
has been said, to be chiefly historical. History, by apprizing
them of the past, will enable them to judge of the future; it
will avail them of the experience of other times and other
nations; it will qualify them as judges of the actions and
designs of men; it will enable them to know ambition under
every disguise it may assume; and knowing it, to defeat its
views. In every government on earth is some trace of human
weakness, some germ of corruption and degeneracy, which
cunning will discover, and wickedness insensibly open, cul-
tivate and improve. Every government degenerates when
trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves
therefore are its only safe depositories. And to render even
them safe, their minds must be improved to a certain degree.
This indeed is not all that is necessary, though it be essentially
necessary. An amendment of our constitution must here come
in aid of the public education. The influence over government
must be shared among all the people. If every individual which
composes their mass participates of the ultimate authority, the
government will be safe; because the corrupting the whole mass
will exceed any private resources of wealth; and public ones
265
ON VIRGINIA
cannot be provided but by levies on the people. In this case
every man would have to pay his own price. The government
of Great Britain has been corrupted, because but one man in
ten has a right to vote for members of parliament. The sellers
of the government, therefore, get nine-tenths of their price
clear. It has been thought that corruption is restrained by con-
fining the right of suffrage to a few of the wealthier of the
people; but it would be more effectually restrained by an ex-
tension of that right to such members as would bid defiance to
the means of corruption.
Lastly, it is proposed, by a bill in this revisal, to begin a
public library and gallery, by laying out a certain sum annually
in books, paintings, and statues.
QUERY XV
The Colleges and Public Establishments, the Roads,
Buildings, &c.
The college of William and Mary is the only public seminary
of learning in this State. It was founded in the time of king
William and queen Mary, who granted to it twenty thousand
acres of land, and a penny a pound duty on certain tobaccoes
exported from Virginia and Maryland, which had been levied
by the statute of 25 Car. II. The assembly also gave it, by
temporary laws, a duty on liquors imported, and skins and
furs exported. From these resources it received upwards of
three thousand pounds communibus annis. The buildings are
of brick, sufficient for an indifferent accommodation of perhaps
an hundred students. By its charter it was to be under the
government of twenty visitors, who were to be its legislators,
and to hcive a president and six professors, who were incor-
porated. It was allowed a representative in the general as-
sembly. Under this charter, a professorship of the Greek and
Latin languages, a professorship of mathematics, one of moral
philosophy, and two of divinity, were established. To these
were annexed, for a sixth professorship, a considerable dona-
tion by Mr. Boyle, of England, for the instruction of the
266
THOMAS JSFF8RSON
Indians, and their conversion to Christianity. This was called
the professorship of Brafferton, from an estate of that name
in England, purchased with the monies given. The admission
of the learners of Latin and Greek filled the college with chil-
dren. This rendering it disagreeable and degrading to young
gentlemen already prepared for entering on the sciences, they
were discouraged from resorting to it, and thus the schools
for mathematics and moral philosophy, which might have been
of some service, became of very little. The revenues, too, were
exhausted in accommodating those who came only to acquire
the rudiments of science. After the present revolution, the
visitors, having no power to change those circumstances in the
constitution of the college which were fixed by the charter,
and being therefore confined in the number of the professor-
ships, undertook to change the objects of the professorships.
They excluded the two schools for divinity, and that for the
Greek and Latin languages, and substituted others; so that at
present they stand thus:
A Professorship for Law and Police;
Anatomy and Medicine;
A Natural Philosophy and Mathematics;
Moral Philosophy, the Law of Nature and Nations, the
Fine Arts;
Modern Languages;
For the B raff er ton.
And it is proposed, so soon as the legislature shall have
leisure to take up this subject, to desire authority from them to
increase the number of professorships, as well for the purpose
of subdividing those already instituted, as of adding others for
other branches of science. To the professorships usually estab-
lished in the universities of Europe, it would seem proper to
add one for the ancient languages and literature of the north,
on account of their connection with our own language, laws,
customs, and history. The purposes of the Brafferton institu-
tion would be better answered by maintaining a perpetual
mission among the Indian tribes, the object of which, besides
instructing them in the principles of Christianity, as the
267
ON VIRGINIA
founder requires, should be to collect their traditions, laws,
customs, languages, and other circumstances which might lead
to a discovery of their relation with one another, or descent
from other nations. When these objects are accomplished with
one tribe, the missionary might pass on to another.
The roads are under the government of the county courts,
subject to be controlled by the general court. They order new
roads to be opened wherever they think them necessary. The
inhabitants of the county are by them laid off into precincts,
to each of which they allot a convenient portion of the public
roads to be kept in repair. Such bridges as may be built without
the assistance of artificers, they are to build. If the stream be
such as to require a bridge of regular workmanship, the court
employs workmen to build it, at the expense of the whole
county. If it be too great for the county, application is made
to the general assembly, who authorize individuals to build it,
and to take a fixed toll from all passengers, or give sanction to
such other proposition as to them appears reasonable.
Ferries are admitted only at such places as are particularly
pointed out by law, and the rates of ferriage are fixed.
Taverns are licensed by the courts, who fix their rates from
time to time.
The private buildings are very rarely constructed of stone
or brick, much the greatest portion being of scantling and
boards, plastered with lime. It is impossible to devise things
more ugly, uncomfortable, and happily more perishable. There
are two or three plans, on one of which, according to its size,
most of the houses in the State are built. The poorest people
build huts of logs, laid horizontally in pens, stopping the inter-
stices with mud. These are warmer in winter, and cooler in
summer, than the more expensive construction of scantling and
plank. The wealthy are attentive to the raising of vegetables,
but very little so to fruits. The poorer people attend to neither,
living principally on milk and animal diet. This is the more
inexcusable, as the climate requires indispensably a free use
of vegetable food, for health as well as comfort, and is very
friendly to the raising of fruits. The only public buildings
268
THOMAS J8FF8RSON
worthy of mention are the capital, the palace, the college, and
the hospital for lunatics, all of them in Williamsburg, hereto-
fore the seat of our government. The capitol is a light and airy
structure, with a portico in front of two orders, the lower of
which, being Doric, is tolerably just in its proportions and
ornaments, save only that the intercolonations are too large.
The upper is Ionic, much too small for that on which it is
mounted, its ornaments not proper to the order, nor propor-
tioned within themselves. It is crowned with a pediment, which
is too high for its span. Yet, on the whole, it is the most pleasing
piece of architecture we have. The palace is not handsome with-
out, but it is spacious and commodious within, is prettily situ-
ated, and with the grounds annexed to it, is capable of being
made an elegant seat. The college and hospital are rude, mis-
shapen piles, which, but that they have roofs, would be taken
for brick-kilns. There are no other public buildings but churches
and courthouses, in which no attempts are made at elegance.
Indeed, it would not be easy to execute such an attempt, as a
workman could scarcely be found capable of drawing an order.
The genius of architecture seems to have shed its maledictions
over this land. Buildings are often erected, by individuals, of
considerable expense. To give these symmetry and taste, would
not increase their cost. It would only change the arrangement
of the materials, the form and combination of the members.
This would often cost less than the burthen of barbarous orna-
ments with which these buildings are sometimes charged. But
the first principles of the art are unknown, and there exists
scarcely a model among us sufficiently chaste to give an idea
of them. Architecture being one of the fine arts, and as such
within the department of a professor of the college, according
to the new arrangement, perhaps a spark may fall on some
young subjects of natural taste, kindle up their genius, and
produce a reformation in this elegant and useful art. But all we
shall do in this way will produce no permanent improvement
to our country, while the unhappy prejudice prevails that
houses of brick or stone are less wholesome than those of wood.
A dew is often observed on the walls of the former in rainy
269
ON VIRGINIA
weather, and the most obvious solution is, that the rain has
penetrated through these walls. The following facts, however,
are sufficient to prove the error of this solution: i. This dew
upon the walls appears when there is no rain, if the state of the
atmosphere be moist. 2. It appears upon the partition as well as
the exterior walls. 3. So, also, on pavements of brick or stone.
4. It is more copious in proportion as the walls are thicker; the
reverse of which ought to be the case, if this hypothesis were
just. If cold water be poured into a vessel of stone, or glass, a
dew forms instantly on the outside; but if it be poured into a
vessel of wood, there is no such appearance. It is not supposed,
in the first case, that the water has exuded through the glass,
but that it is precipitated from the circumambient air; as the
humid particles of vapor, passing from the boiler of an alembic
through its refrigerant, are precipitated from the air, in which
they are suspended, on the internal surface of the refrigerant.
Walls of brick and stone act as the refrigerant in this instance.
They are sufficiently cold to condense and precipitate the
moisture suspended in the air of the room, when it is heavily
charged therewith. But walls of wood are not so. The question
then is, whether the air in which this moisture is left floating, or
that which is deprived of it, be most wholesome? In both cases
the remedy is easy. A little fire kindled in the room, whenever
the air is damp, prevents the precipitation on the walls; and
this practice, found healthy in the warmest as well as coldest
seasons, is as necessary in a wooden as in a stone or brick house.
I do not mean to say that the rain never penetrates through
walls of brick. On the contrary, I have seen instances of it.
'But with us it is only through the northern and eastern walls of
the house, after a northeasterly storm, this being the only one
which continues long enough to force through the walls. This,
however, happens too rarely to give a just character of un-
wholesomeness to such houses. In a house, the walls of which
are of well-burnt brick and good mortar, I have seen the rain
penetrate through but twice in a dozen or fifteen years. The in-
habitants of Europe, who dwell chiefly in houses of stone or
brick, are surely as healthy as those of Virginia. These houses
270
THOMAS J8FF8RSON
have the advantage, too, of being warmer in winter and cooler
in summer than those of wood; of being cheaper in their first
construction, where lime is convenient, and infinitely more
durable. The latter consideration renders it of great importance
to eradicate this prejudice from the minds of our countrymen.
A country whose buildings are of wood, can never increase in
its improvements to any considerable degree. Their duration is
highly estimated at fifty years. Every half century then our
country becomes a tabula rasa, whereon we have to set out
anew, as in the first moment of seating it. Whereas when build-
ings are of durable materials, every new edifice is an actual and
permanent acquisition to the State, adding to its value as well
as to its ornament.
QUERY XVI
The measures taken with regard to the estates and possessions
of the Rebels, commonly called Tories?
A tory has been properly defined to be a traitor in thought
but not in deed. The only description, by which the laws have
endeavored to come at them, was that of non-jurors, or persons
refusing to take the oath of fidelity to the State. Persons of
this description were at one time subjected to double taxation,
at another to treble, and lastly were allowed retribution, and
placed on a level with good citizens. It may be mentioned as a
proof, both of the lenity of our government, and unanimity of
its inhabitants, that though this war has now raged near seven
years, not a single execution for treason has taken place.
Under this query I will state the measures which have been
adopted as to British property, the owners of which stand on a
much fairer footing than the tories. By our laws, the same as
the English as in this respect, no alien can hold lands, nor aLen
enemy maintain an action for money, or other movable thing.
Lands acquired or held by aliens become forfeited to the State;
and, on an action by an alien enemy to recover money, or other
movable property, the defendant may p!ead that he is an alien
enemy. This extinguishes his right in the hands of the debtor or
holder of his movable property. By our separation from Great
271
ON VIRGINIA
Britain, British subjects became aliens, and being at war, they
were alien enemies. Their lands were of course forfeited, and
their debts irrecoverable. The assembly, however, passed laws
at various times, for saving their property. They first seques-
tered their lands, slaves, and other property on their farms in
the hands of commissioners, who were mostly the confidential
friends or agents of the owners, and directed their clear profits
to be paid into the treasury; and they gave leave to all persons
owing debts to British subjects to pay them also into the treas-
ury. The monies so to be brought in were declared to remain
the property of the British subject, and if used by the State,
were to be repaid, unless an improper conduct in Great Britain
should render a detention of it reasonable. Depreciation had at
that time, though unacknowledged and unperceived by the
whigs, begun in some small degree. Great sums of money were
paid in by debtors. At a later period, the assembly, adhering to
the political principles which forbid an alien to hold lands in
the State, ordered all British property to be sold ; and, become
sensible of the real progress of depreciation, and of the losses
which would thence occur, if not guarded against, they ordered
that the proceeds of the sales should be converted into their
then worth in tobacco, subject to the future direction of the
legislature. This act has left the question of retribution more
problematical. In May, 1780, another act took away the per-
mission to pay into the public treasury debts due to British
subjects.
QUERY XVII
The different religions received into that State?
The first settlers in this country were emigrants from Eng-
land, of the English Church, just at a point of time when it
was flushed with complete victory over the religious of all other
persuasions. Possessed, as they became, of the powers of mak-
ing, administering, and executing the laws, they showed equal
intolerance in this country with .their Presbyterian brethren,
who had emigrated to the northern government. The poor
Quakers were flying from persecution in England. They cast
272
THOMAS
their eyes on these new countries as asylums of civil and re-
ligious freedom; but they found them free only for the reign-
ing sect. Several acts of the Virginia assembly of 1659, 1662,
and 1693, had made it penal in parents to refuse to have their
children baptized; had prohibited the unlawful assembling of
Quakers ; had made it penal for any master of a vessel to bring
a Quaker into the State; had ordered those already here, and
such as should come thereafter, to be imprisoned till they
should abjure the country; provided a milder punishment for
their first and second return, but death for their third; had in-
hibited all persons from suffering their meetings in or near
their houses, entertaining them individually, or disposing of
books which supported their tenets. If no execution took place
here, as did in New England, it was not owing to the modera-
tion of the church, or spirit of the legislature, as may be in-
ferred from the law itself ; but to historical circumstances which
have not been handed down to us. The Anglicans retained full
possession of the country about a century. Other opinions be-
gan then to creep in, and the great care of the government to
support their own church, having begotten an equal degree of
indolence in its clergy, two-thirds of the people had become dis-
senters at the commencement of the present revolution. The
laws, indeed, were still oppressive on them, but the spirit of the
one party had subsided into moderation, and of the other had
risen to a degree of determination which commanded respect,
The present state of our laws on the subject of religion is
this. The convention of May, 1776, in their declaration of
rights, declared it to be a truth, and a natural right, that the
exercise of religion should be free; but when they proceeded to
form on that declaration the ordinance of government, instead
of taking up every principle declared in the bill of rights, and
guarding it by legislative sanction, they passed over that which
asserted our religious rights, leaving them as they found them.
The same convention, however, when they met as a member
of the general assembly in October, 1776, repealed all acts of
Parliament which had rendered criminal the maintaining any
opinions in matters of religion, the forbearing to repair to
273
ON VIRGINIA
church, and the exercising any mode of worship; and suspended
the laws giving salaries to the clergy, which suspension was
made perpetual in October, 1779. Statutory oppressions in re-
ligion being thus wiped away, we remain at present under those
only imposed by the common law, or by our own acts of assem-
bly. At the common law, heresy was a capital offence, punish-
able by burning. Its definition was left to the ecclesiastical
judges, before whom the conviction was, till the statute of the
I El. c. I circumscribed it, by declaring, that nothing should
be deemed heresy, but what had been so determined by author-
ity of the canonical scriptures, or by one of the four first gen-
eral councils, or by other council, having for the grounds of
their declaration the express and plain words of the scriptures.
Heresy, thus circumscribed, being an offence against the com-
mon law, our act of assembly of October 1777, c. 17, gives cog-
nizance of it to the general court, by declaring that the juris-
diction of that court shall be general in all matters at the com-
mon law. The execution is by the writ De haeretico combur-
endo. By our own act of assembly of 1705, c. 30, if a person
brought up in the Christian religion denies the bein^ of a God,
or the Trinity, or asserts there are more gods than one, or
denies the Christian religion to be true, or the scriptures to be
of divine authority, he is punishable on the first offence by
incapacity to hold any office or employment ecclesiastical, civil,
or military; on the second by disability to sue, to take any gift
or legacy, to be guardian, executor, or administrator, and by
three years' imprisonment without bail. A father's right to the
custody of his own children being founded in law on his right
of guardianship, this being taken away, they may of course
be severed from him, and put by the authority of a court into
more orthodox hands. This is a summary view of that religious
slavery under which a people have been willing to remain,
who have lavished their lives and fortunes for the establish-
ment of their civil freedom. The error l seems not sufficiently
eradicated, that the operations of the mind, as well as the acts
of the body, are subject to the coercion of the iaws. But our
j. Jefferson's footnote omitted.
274
THOMAS jeFFSRSON
rulers can have no authority over such natural rights, only as
we have submitted to them. The rights of conscience we never
submitted, we could not submit. We are answerable for them to
our God. The legitimate powers of government extend to such
acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury
for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no God. It
neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg. If it be said, his
testimony in a court of justice cannot be relied on, reject it
then, and be the stigma on him. Constraint may make him
worse by making him a hypocrite, but it will never make him a
truer man. It may fix him obstinately in his errors, but will not
cure them. Reason and free inquiry are the only effectual
agents against error. Give a loose to them, they will support
the true religion by bringing every false one to their tribunal,
to the test of their investigation. They are the natural enemies
of error, and of error only. Had not the Roman government
permitted free inquiry, Christianity could never have been in-
troduced. Had not free inquiry been indulged at the era of the
Reformation, the corruptions of Christianity could not have
been purged away. If it be restrained now, the present corrup-
tions will be protected, and new ones encouraged. Was the gov-
ernment to prescribe to us our medicine and diet, our bodies
would be in such keeping as our souls are now. Thus in France
the emetic was once forbidden as a medicine, the potato as an
article of food. Government is just as infallible, too, when it
fixes systems in physics. Galileo was sent to the Inquisition for
affirming that the earth was a sphere; the government had de-
clared it to be as flat as a trencher, and Galileo was obliged to
abjure his error. This error, however, at length prevailed, the
earth became a globe, and Descartes declared it was whirled
round its axis by a vortex. The government in which he lived
was wise enough to see that this was no question of civil juris-
diction, or we should all have been involved by authority in
vortices. In fact, the vortices have been exploded, and the
Newtonian principle of gravitation is now more firmly estab-
lished, on the basis of reason, than it would be were the govern •
uient to step in, and to make it an article of necessary faith.
275
ON VIRGINIA
Reason and experiment have been indulged, and error has fled
before them. It is error alone which needs the support of gov-
ernment. Truth can stand by itself. Subject opinion to coer-
cion: whom will you make your inquisitors? Fallible men; men
governed by bad passions, by private as well as public rea-
sons. And why subject it to coercion? To produce uniformity.
But is uniformity of opinion desirable? No more than of face
and stature. Introduce the bed of Procrustes then, and as there
is danger that the large men may beat the small, make us all of
a size, by lopping the former and stretching the latter. Differ-
ence of opinion is advantageous in religion. The several sects
perform the office of a censor morum over such other. Is uni-
formity attainable? Millions of innocent men, women, and chil-
dren, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt,
tortured, fined, imprisoned; yet we have not advanced one inch
towards uniformity. What has been the effect of coercion? To
make one half the world fools, and the other half hypocrites.
To support roguery and error all over the earth. Let us reflect
that it is inhabited by a thousand millions of people. That
these profess probably a thousand different systems of religion.
That ours is but one of that thousand. That if there be but one
right, and ours that one, we should wish to see the nine hun-
dred and ninety-nine wandering sects gathered into the fold of
truth. But against such a majority we cannot effect this by
force. Reason and persuasion are the only practicable instru-
ments. To make way for these, free inquiry must be indulged;
and how can we wish others to indulge it while we refuse it our-
selves. But every State, says an inquisitor, has established some
religion. No two, say I, have established the same. Is this a
proof of the infallibility of establishments? Our sister States of
Pennsylvania and New York, however, have long subsisted
without any establishment at all. The experiment was new and
doubtful when they made it. It has answered beyond concep-
tion. They flourish infinitely. Religion is well supported; of
various kinds, indeed, but all good enough; all sufficient to
preserve peace and order ; or if a sect arises, whose tenets would
subvert morals, good sense has fair play, and reasons and
276
THOMAS J8FFSRSON
laughs it out of doors, without suffering the State to be troubled
with it. They do not hang more malefactors than we do. They
are not more disturbed with religious dissensions. On the con-
trary, their harmony is unparalleled, and can be ascribed to
nothing but their unbounded tolerance, because there is no
other circumstance in which they differ from every nation on
earth. They have made the happy discovery, that the way to
silence religious disputes, is to take no notice of them. Let us
too give this experiment fair play, and get rid, while we may,
of those tyrannical laws. It is true, we are as yet secured
against them by the spirit of the times. I doubt whether the
people of this country would suffer an execution for heresy, or a
three years' imprisonment for not comprehending the mysteries
of the Trinity. But is the spirit of the people an infallible, a
permanent reliance? Is it government? Is this the kind of pro-
tection we receive in return for the rights we give up? Besides,
the spirit of the times may alter, will alter. Our rulers will be-
come corrupt, our people careless. A single zealot may com-
mence persecutor, and better men be his victims. It can never
be too often repeated, that the time for fixing every essential
right on a legal basis is while our rulers are honest, and our-
selves united. From the conclusion of this war we shall be going
down hill. It will not then be necessary to resort every mo-
ment to the people for support. They will be forgotten, there-
fore, and their rights disregarded. They will forget themselves,
but in the sole faculty of making money, and will never think
of uniting to effect a due respect for their rights. The shackles,
therefore, which »hall not be knocked off at the conclusion of
this war, will remain on us long, will be made heavier and heav-
ier, till our rights shall revive or expire in a convulsion.
QUERY XVIII
The particular customs and manners that may happen to be
received in that State?
It is difficult to determine on the standard by which the man-
ners of a nation may be tried, whether catholic or particular. It
is more difficult for a native to bring to that standard the man-
277
ON VIRGINIA
tiers of his own nation, familiarized to him by habit. There
must doubtless be an unhappy influence on the manners of our
people produced by the existence of slavery among us. The
whole commerce between master and slave is a perpetual exer-
cise of the most boisterous passions, the most unremitting des-
potism on the one part, and degrading submissions on the
other. Our children see this, and learn to imitate it; for man is
an imitative animal. This quality is the germ of all education
in him. From his cradle to his grave he is learning to do what
he sees others do. If a parent could find no motive either in
his philanthropy or his self-love, for restraining the intemper-
ance of passion towards his slave, it should always be a suffi-
cient one that his child is present. But generally it is not suf-
ficient. The parent storms, the child looks on, catches the
lineaments of wrath, puts on the same airs in the circle of
smaller slaves, gives a loose to the worst of passions, and thus
nursed, educated, and daily exercised in tyranny, cannot but
be stamped by it with odious peculiarities. The man must be a
prodigy who can retain his manners and morals undepraved by
such circumstances. And with what execration should the
statesman be loaded, who, permitting one half the citizens thus
to trample on the rights of the other, transforms those into
despots, and these into enemies, destroys the morals of the
one part, and the amor patriae of the other. For if a slave can
have a country in this world, it must be any other in preference
to that in which he is born to live and labor for another; in
which he must lock up the faculties of his nature, contribute
as far as depends on his individual endeavors to the evanish-
ment of the human race, or entail his own miserable condition
on the endless generations proceeding from him. With the
morals of the people, their industry also is destroyed. For in
a warm climate, no man will labor for himself who can make
another labor for him. This is so true, that of the proprietors
of slaves a very small proportion indeed are ever seen to labor.
And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we
have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds
of the people that these liberties are of the gift of God? That
278
THOMAS JSFF6RSON
they are not to be violated but with His wrath? Indeed I trem-
ble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that his
justice cannot sleep forever; that considering numbers, nature
and natural means only, a revolution of the wheel of fortune;
an exchange of situation is among possible events; that it may
become probably by supernatural interference! The Almighty
has no attribute which can take side with us in such a contest.
But it is impossible to be temperate and to pursue this subject
through the various considerations of policy, of morals, of his-
tory natural and civil. We must be contented to hope they will
force their way into every one's mind. I think a change already
perceptible, since the origin of the present revolution. The
spirit of the master is abating, that of the slave rising from the
dust, his condition mollifying, the way I hope preparing, under
the auspices of heaven, for a total emancipation, and that this
is disposed, in the order of events, to be with the consent of
the masters, rather than by their extirpation.
QUERY XIX
The present state of manufactures, commerce, interior
and exterior trade?
We never had an interior trade of any importance. Our ex-
terior commerce has suffered very much from the beginning of
the present contest. During this time we have manufactured
within our families the most necessary articles of clothing.
Those of cotton will bear some comparison with the same kinds
of manufacture in Europe; but those of wool, flax and hemp
are very coarse, unsightly, and unpleasant; and such is our
attachment to agriculture, and such our preference for foreign
manufactures, that be it wise or unwise, our people will cer-
tainly return as soon as they can, to the raising raw materials,
and exchanging them for finer manufactures than they are able
to execute themselves.
The political economists of Europe have established it as a
principle, that every State should endeavor to manufacture for
itself; and this principle, like many others, we transfer to
America, without calculating the difference of circumstance
279
ON VIRGINIA
which should often produce a difference of result. In Europe the
lands are either cultivated, or locked up against the cultivator.
Manufacture must therefore be resorted to of necessity not of
choice, to support the surplus of their people. But we have an
immensity of land courting the industry of the husbandman.
Is it best then that all our citizens should be employed in its
improvement, or that one half should be called off from that to
exercise manufactures and handicraft arts for the other? Those
who labor in the earth are the chosen people of God, if ever
He had a chosen people, whose breasts He has made His
peculiar deposit for substantial and genuine virtue. It is the
focus in which he keeps alive that sacred fire, which otherwise
might escape from the face of the earth. Corruption of morals
in the masL of cultivators is a phenomenon of which no age nor
nation has furnished an example. It is the mark set on those,
who, not looking up to heaven, to their own soil and industry,
as does the husbandman, for their subsistence, depend for it on
casualties and caprice of customers. Dependence begets sub-
servience and venality, suffocates the germ of virtue, and pre-
pares fit tools for the designs of ambition. This, the natural
progress and consequence of the arts, has sometimes perhaps
been retarded by accidental circumstances; but, generally
speaking, the proportion which the aggregate of the other
classes of citizens bears in any State to that of its husbandmen,
is the proportion of its unsound to its healthy parts, and is a
good enough barometer whereby to measure its degree of cor-
ruption. While we have land to labor then, let us never wish to
see our citizens occupied at a workbench, or twirling a distaff.
Carpenters, masons, smiths, are wanting in husbandry; but,
for the general operations of manufacture, let our workshops re-
main in Europe. It is better to carry provisions and materials
to workmen there, than bring them to the provisions and mate-
rials, and with them their manners and principles. The loss by
the transportation of commodities across the Atlantic will be
made up in happiness and permanence of government. The
mobs of great cities add just so much to the support of pure
government, as sores do to the strength of the human body. It
280
THOMAS JSFFSRSON
is the manners and spirit of a people which preserve a republic
in vigor. A degeneracy in these is a canker which soon eats to
the heart of its laws and constitution.
QUERY XX
A notice of the commercial productions particular to the Statey
and of those objects which the inhabitants are obliged to get
from Europe and from other parts of the world?
In the year 1758 we exported seventy thousand hogsheads of
tobacco, which was the greatest quantity ever produced in this
country in one year. But its culture was fast declining at the
commencement of this war and that of wheat taken its place;
and it must continue to decline on the return of peace. I sus-
pect that the change in the temperature of our climate has be-
come sensible to that plant, which to be good, requires an ex-
traordinary degree of heat. But it requires still more indis-
pensably an uncommon fertility of soil; and the price which it
commands at market will not enable the planter to produce
this by manure. Was the supply still to depend on Virginia and
Maryland alone as its culture becomes more difficult, the price
would rise so as to enable the planter to surmount those diffi-
culties and to live. But the western country on the Mississippi,
and the midlands of Georgia, having fresh and fertile lands in
abundance, and a hotter sun, will be able to undersell these two
States, and will oblige them to abandon the raising of tobacco
altogether. And a happy obligation for them it will be. It is a
culture productive of infinite wretchedness. Those employed
in it are in a continual state of exertion beyond the power of
nature to support. Little food of any kind is raised by them;
so that the men and animals on these farms are badly fed, and
the earth is rapidly impoverished. The cultivation of wheat is
the reverse in every circumstance. Besides clothing the earth
with herbage, and preserving its fertility, its feeds the labor-
ers plentifully, requires from them only a moderate toil, ex-
cept in the season of harvest, raises great numbers of animals
for food and service, and diffuses plenty and happiness among
281
ON VIRGINIA
*he whole. We find it easier to make an hundred bushels of
wheat than a thousand weight of tobacco, and they are worth
more when made. The weavil indeed is a formidable obstacle
to the cultivation of this grain with us. But principles are al-
ready known which must lead to a remedy. Thus a certain de-
gree of heat, to wit, that of the common air in summer, is nec-
essary to hatch the eggs. If subterranean granaries, or others,
therefore, can be contrived below that temperature, the evil
will be cured by cold. A degree of heat beyond that which
hatches the egg we know will kill it. But in aiming at this we
easily run into that which produced putrefaction. To produce
putrefaction; however, three agents are requisite, heat, mois-
ture, and the external air. If the absence of any one of these be
secured, the other two may safely be admitted. Heat is the one
we want. Moisture then, or external air, must be excluded. The
former has been done by exposing the grain in kilns to the ac-
tion of fire, which produces heat, and extracts moisture at the
same time; the latter, by putting the grain into hogsheads,
covering it with a coating of lime, and heading it up. In this
situation its bulk produced a heat sufficient to kill the eggs;
the moisture is suffered to remain indeed, but the external air
is excluded. A nicer operation yet has been attempted; that is,
to produce an intermediate temperature of heat between that
which kills the egg, and that which produces putrefaction. The
threshing the grain as soon as it is cut, and laying it in its
chaff in large heaps, has been found very nearly to hit this
temperature, though not perfectly, nor always. The heap gen-
erates heat sufficient to kill most of the eggs, whilst the chaff
commonly restrains it from rising into putrefaction. But all
these methods abridge too much the quantity which the farmer
can manage, and enable other countries to undersell him, which
are not infested with this insect. There is still a desideratum
then to give with us decisive triumph to this branch of agri-
culture over that of tobacco. The culture of wheat by enlarging
our pasture, will render the Arabian horse an article of very
considerable profit. Experience has shown that ours is the par-
ticular climate of America where he may be raised without de-
282
THOMAS J8FF8RSON
generacy. Southwardly the heat of the sun occasions a de-
ficiency of pasture, and northwardly the winters are too cold
for the short and fine hair, the particular sensibility and con-
stitution of that race. Animals transplanted into unfriendly cli-
mates, either change their nature and acquire new senses against
the new difficulties in which they are placed, or they multiply
poorly and become extinct. A good foundation is laid for their
propagation here by our possessing already great numbers of
horses of that blood, and by a decided taste and preference for
them established among the people. Their patience of heat
without injury, their superior wind, fit them better in this and
the more southern climates even for the drudgeries of the
plough and wagon. Northwardly they will become an object
only to persons of taste and fortune, for the saddle and light
carriages. To those, and for these uses, their fleetness and
beauty will recommend them. Besides these there wil) be other
valuable substitutes when the cultivation of tobacco shall be
discontinued such as cotton in the eastern parts of the State,
and hemp and flax in the western.
It is not easy to say what are the articles either of necessity,
comfort, or luxury, which we cannot raise, and which we there*
fore shall be under a necessity of importing from abroad, as
everything hardier than the olive, and as hardy as the fig, may
be raised here in the open air. Sugar, coffee and tea, indeed,
are not between these limits; and habit having placed them
among the necessaries of life with the wealthy part of our citi-
zens, as long as these habits remain we must go for them to
those countries which are able to furnish them.
QUERY XXI
The weights, measures and the currency of the hard money?
Some details relating to exchange with Europe?
Our weights and measures are the same which are fixed by
acts of parliament in England. How it has happened that in
this as well as the other American States the nominal value of
coin was made to differ from what it was in the country we had
283
ON VIRGINIA
left, and to differ among ourselves too, I am not able to say
with certainty. ...
The first symptom of the depreciation of our present paper
money, was that of silver dollars selling at six shillings, which
had before been worth but five shillings and ninepence. The
assembly thereupon raised them by law to six shillings. As the
dollar is now likely to become the money-unit of America, as
it passes at this rate in some of our sister States, and as it
facilitates their computation in pounds and shillings, &c., con-
verso, this seems to be more convenient than its former de-
nomination. But as this particular coin now stands higher than
any other in the proportion of one hundred and thirty-three
and a half to on'e hundred and twenty-five, or sixteen to fifteen,
it will be necessary to raise the others in proportion.
QUERY XXII
The public Income and Expenses?
To this estimate of our [financial] abilities, let me add a
word as to the application of them. If, when cleared of the pres-
ent contest, and of the debts with which that will charge us,
we come to measure force hereafter with any European power,
such events are devoutly to be deprecated. Young as we are,
and with such a country before us to fill with people and with
happiness, we should point in that direction the whole genera-
tive force of nature, wasting none of it in efforts of mutual de-
struction. It should be our endeavor to cultivate the peace and
friendship of every nation, even of that which has injured us
most, when we shall have carried our point against her. Our in-
terest will be to throw open the doors of commerce, and to
knock off all its shackles, giving perfect freedom to all persons
for the vent of whatever they may choose to bring into our
ports, and asking the same in theirs. Never was so much false
arithmetic employed on any subject, as that which has been
employed to persuade nations that it is their interest to go to
war. Were the money which it has cost to gain, at the dose of
284
THOMAS jeFFSRSON
a long war, a little town, or a little territory, the right to cut
wood here, or to catch fish there, expended in improving what
they already possess, in making roads, opening rivers, building
ports, improving the arts, and finding employment for their
idle poor, it would render them much stronger, much wealthier
and happier. This I hope will be our wisdom. And, perhaps, to
remove as much as possible the occasions of making war, it
might be better for us to abandon the ocean altogether, that
being the element whereon we shall be principally exposed to
jostle with other nations; to leave to others to bring what we
shall want, and to carry what we can spare. This would make
us invulnerable to Europe, by offering none of our property to
their prize, and would turn all our citizens to the cultivation
of the earth; and, I repeat it again, cultivators of the earth are
the most virtuous and independent citizens. It might be time
enough to seek employment for them at sea, when the land no
longer offers it. But the actual habits of our countrymen attach
them to commerce. They will exercise it for themselves. Wars
then must sometimes be our lot; and all the wise can do, will
be to avoid that half of them which would be produced by our
own follies and our own acts of injustice; and to make for the
other half the best preparations we can. Of what nature should
these be? A land army would be useless for offence, and not the
best nor safest instrument of defence. For either of these pur-
poses, the sea is the field on which we should meet an Euro-
pean enemy. On that element it is necessary we should possess
some power. To aim at such a navy as the greater nations of
Europe possess, would be a foolish and wicked waste of the
energies of our countrymen. It would be to pull on our own
heads that load of military expense which makes the European
laborer go supperless to bed, and moistens his bread with the
sweat of his brows. It will be enough if we enable ourselves to
prevent insults from those nations of Europe which are weak
on the sea, because circumstances exist, which render even
the stronger ones weak as to us. Providence has placed their
richest and most defenceless possessions at our door; has
285
scores ON VIRGINIA
obliged their most precious commerce to pass, as it were, in re-
view before us. To protect this, or to assail, a small part only
of their naval force will ever be risked across the Atlantic. The
dangers to which the elements expose them here are too well
known, and the greater dangers to which they would be ex-
posed at home were any general calamity to involve their whole
fleet. They can attack us by detachment only; and it will suf-
fice to make ourselves equal to what they may detach. Even
a smaller force than they may detach will be rendered equal
or superior by the quickness with which any check may be re-
paired with us, while losses with them will be irreparable till
too late. A small naval force then is sufficient for us, and a
small one is necessary. What this should be, I will not under-
take to say. I will only say, it should by no means be so great
as we are able to make it. Suppose the million of dollars, or
three hundred thousand pounds, which Virginia could annually
spare without distress, to be applied to the creating a navy. A
single year's contribution would build, equip, man, and send
to sea a force which should carry three hundred guns. The rest
of the confederacy, exerting themselves in the same proportion,
would equip in the same time fifteen hundred guns more. So
that one year's contributions would set up a navy of eighteen
hundred guns. The British ships of the line average seventy-six
guns; their frigates thirty-eight. Eighteen hundred guns then
would form a fleet of thirty ships, eighteen of which might be
of the line, and twelve frigates. Allowing eight men, the British
average, for every gun, their annual expense, including sub-
sistence, clothing, pay, and ordinary repairs, would be about
$1,280 for every gun, or $2,304,000 for the whole. I state this
only as one year's possible exertion, without deciding whether
more or less than a year's exertion should be thus applied.
THOMAS JEFFERSON
QUERY XXIII
The histories of the State, the memorials published in its name
m the time of its being a colony, and the pamphlets relating to
its interior or exterior affairs present or ancient?
Captain Smith, who next to Sir Walter Raleigh may be con-
sidered as the founder of our colony, has written its history,
from the first adventures to it, till the year 1624. He was a
member of the council, and afterwards president of the colony;
and to his efforts principally may be ascribed its support against
the opposition of the natives. He was honest, sensible, and wall
informed; but his style is barbarous and uncouth. His history,
however, is almost the only source from which we derive any
knowledge of the infancy of our State.
The reverend William Stith, a native of Virginia, and presi-
dent of its college, has also written the history of the same
period, in a large octavo volume of small print. He was a man
of classical learning, and very exact, but of no taste in style. He
is inelegant, therefore, and his details often too minute to be tol-
erable, even to a native of the country, whose history he writes.
Beverley, a native also, has run into the other extreme; he
has comprised our history from the first propositions of Sir
Walter Raleigh to the year 1700, in the hundredth part of the
space which Stith employs for the fourth part of the period.
Sir Walter Keith has taken it up at its earliest period, and
continued it to the year 1725. He is agreeable enough in style,
and passes over events of little importance. Of course he is
short and would be preferred by a foreigner.
During the regal government, some contest arose on the exac-
tion of an illegal fee by Governor Dinwiddie, and doubtless
there were others on other occasions not at present recollected.
It is supposed that these are not sufficiently interesting to a for-
eigner to merit a detail.
The petition of the council and burgesses of Virginia to the
king, their memorials to the lords, and remonstrance to the
commons in the year 1764, began the present contest; and
287
ON VIRGINIA
these having proved ineffectual to prevent the passage of the
stamp-act, the resolutions of the house of burgesses of 1765
were passed declaring the independence of the people of Vir-
ginia of the parliament of Great Britain, in matters of taxation.
From that time till the Declaration of Independence by Con-
gress in 1776, their journals are rilled with assertions of the
public rights. The pamphlets published in this State on the con-
troverted question, were:
1766, An Inquiry into the rights of the British Colonies, by
Richard Bland.
1769, The Monitor's Letters, by Dr. Arthur Lee.
1774, A summary View of the rights of British America.1
1774, Considerations, &c., by Robert Carter Nicholas.
Since the Declaration of Independence this State has had
no controversy with any other, except with that of Pennsyl-
vania, on their common boundary. Some papers on this subject
passed between the executive and legislative bodies of the two
States, the result of which was a happy accommodation of their
rights.
To this account of our historians, memorials, and pamphlets,
it may not be unuseful to add a chronological catalogue of
American state-papers, as far as I have been able to collect
their titles.2 It is far from being either complete or correct.
Where the title alone, and not the paper itself, has come under
my observation, I cannot answer for the exactness of the date.
Sometimes I have not been able to find any date at all, and
sometimes have not been satisfied that such a paper exists. An
extensive collection of papers of this description has been for
some time in a course of preparation by a gentleman 3 fully
equal to the task, and from whom, therefore, we may hope ere
long to receive it. In the meantime accept this as the result of
my labors, and as closing the tedious detail which you have so
undesignedly drawn upon yourself.
1. By the author of these "Notes." [Jefferson's note.]
2. Jefferson was a pioneer in collecting and preserving early American
manuscripts and printed laws. The exhaustive bibliography he includes
at this point is omitted from the present edition.
3. Ebenezer Hazard. [Jefferson's note.]
288
PUBLIC TAPERS
INTRODUCTION
WHEN Jefferson came to Congress in the notable year 1775,
John Adams remarked he "brought with him a reputation for
literature, science and a happy talent of composition." Jeffer-
son's happy talent of composition seems to have \von him the
role of writing more bills, reports and official documents than
any of his contemporaries. It is generally conceded that his
talent as an organizer and writer of public papers was one of
the solid pillars of his statesmanship. Jefferson's official papers
range from those written as a member of the Virginia Assem-
bly, the Virginia Convention, and the Continental Congress, to
those prepared as Governor of Virginia, Minister to France,
Secretary of State, Vice-President, and, finally, President. How-
ever, when an enterprising publisher wanted to publish every
last one of these papers, Jefferson declined, saying many of
them "would be like old newspapers, materials for future his-
torians, but no longer interesting to the readers of the day."
Guided by Jefferson's criterion, the editors have selected
papers the extraordinary importance or interest of which is
not obscured by technical exposition. Jefferson's stylistic tri-
umph, The Declaration of Independence, is not included in this
section since it appears in his Autobiography. Another work,
far less known but almost as great a literary contribution
to the American Revolution, is here printed in full. This, A
Summary View of the Rights of British America, was pre-
pared as Jefferson's instructions for the delegates from Virginia
to the proposed first Congress of the Colonies. It is an uncom-
promising argument that the natural right of emigration and
conquest made the Am'erican colonies free of British Par-
liamentary jurisdiction, and that their only tie was that of vol-
290
THOMAS JSFFSRSON
untary submission to the "same common Sovereign," the Brit-
ing King. These resolutions were not adopted. "Tamer senti-
ments were preferred/7 Jefferson observed many years later.
However, admirers of the vibrant manifesto subscribed a sum
for its publication, gave it its present title, and published the
work (Williamsburg, 1774) as that of "a native of Virginia."
The Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom, introduced into
the Virginia Assembly June 13, 1779, by John Harvie, was
briskly attacked by the opposition. Jefferson regarded this bill
as one of his most genuine contributions to humanity. It pro-
claimed the religious independence of the individual, and for-
mulated Jefferson's belief in freedom of thought. When word
came to Jefferson in Paris in 1786 that the Assembly had finally
passed this bill, he hastened to order an edition printed there.
It was subsequently reprinted in America.
The First Inaugural Address, typically Jeffersonian in politi-
cal sentiment, is a lasting definition of democratic principles.
The Second Inaugural Address is the performance, as Jeffer-
son said, of which the First is the promise. The famous passage
on the Indians was included for its own sake, but also for the
more urgent purpose of combatting "the hue and cry raised
against philosophy and the rights of man." Jefferson was aim-
ing at the "anti-social doctrines" of the aroused Federalist op
position.
Additional papers, and excerpts from papers, are includec
291
PUBLIC PAPERS
A Summary View of the Rights of British America, 1774
RESOLVED, That it be an instruction to the said deputies,
when assembled in General Congress, with the deputies
from the other states of British America, to propose to the said
Congress, that an humble and dutiful address be presented tc
his Majesty, begging leave to lay before him, as Chief Magis-
trate of the British empire, the united complaints of his Maj-
esty's subjects in America; complaints which are excited by
many unwarrantable encroachments and usurpations, attempted
to be made by the legislature of one part of the empire, upon
the rights which God, and the laws, have given equally and
independently to all. To represent to his Majesty that these,
his States, have often individually made humble application
to his imperial Throne, to obtain, through its intervention,
some redress of their injured rights; to none of which, was
ever even an answer condescended. Humbly to hope that this,
their joint address, penned in the language of truth, and di-
vested of those expressions of servility, which would persuade
his Majesty that we are asking favors, and not rights, shall ob-
tain from his Majesty a more respectful acceptance; and this
his Majesty will think we have reason to expect, when he re-
flects that he is no more than the chief officer of the people,
appointed by the laws, and circumscribed with definite powers,
to assist in working the great machine of government, erected
for their use, and, consequently, subject to their superintend-
ence; and, in order that these, our rights, as well as the inva-
sions of them, may b'e laid more fully before his Majesty, to
take a view of them, from the origin and first settlement of
these countries.
To remind him that our ancestors, before their emigration
203
TUBLIC TAPSRS OF
TO America, were the free inhabitants of the British dominions
in Europe, and possessed a right, which nature has given to
all men, of departing irom the country in which chance, not
•choice, has placed them, of going in quest of new habitations,
and of there establishing new societies, under such laws and
regulations as, to them, shall seem most likely to promote pub-
lic happiness. That their Saxon ancestors had, under this uni-
versal law, in like manner, left their native wilds and woods in
the North of Europe, had possessed themselves of the Island
of Britain, then less charged with inhabitants, and had estab-
lished there that system of laws which has so long been the
glory and protection of that country. Nor was ever any claim
of superiority or dependence asserted over them, by that mother
country from which they had migrated: and were such a claim
made, it is believed his Majesty's subjects in Great Britain
have too firm a feeling of the rights derived to them from
their ancestors, to bow down the sovereignty of their state be-
fore such visionary pretensions. And it is thought that no cir-
cumstance has occurred to distinguish, materially, the British
from the Saxon emigration. America was conquered, and her
settlements made and firmly established, at the expense of in-
dividuals, and not of the British public. Their own blood was
spilt in acquiring lands for their settlement, their own for-
tunes expended in making that settlement effectual. For them-
selves they fought, for themselves they conquered, and for
themselves alone they have right to hold. No shilling was ever
issued from the public treasures of his Majesty, or his ances-
tors, for their assistance, till of very late times, after the col-
onies had become established on a firm and permanent footing.
That then, indeed, having become valuable to Great Britain
for her commercial purposes, his Parliament was pleased to
lend them assistance against an enemy who would fain have
drawn to herself the benefits of their commerce, to the great
aggrandisement of herself, and danger of Great Britain. Such
assistance, and in such circumstahces, they had often before
given to Portugal and other allied states, with whom they carry
294
THOMAS J8FF8RSON
on a commercial intercourse. Yet these states never supposed
that by calling in her aid, they thereby submitted themselves
to her sovereignty. Had such terms been proposed, they would
have rejected them with disdain, and trusted for better, to the
moderation of their enemies, or to a vigorous exertion of their
own force. We do not, however, mean to underrate those aids,
which, to us, were doubtless valuable, on whatever principles
granted: but we would shew that they cannot give a title to
that authority which the British Parliament would arrogate
over us; and that may amply be repaid by our giving to the
inhabitants of Great Britain such exclusive privileges ir trade
as may be advantageous to them, and, at the same time, not
too restrictive to ourselves. That settlement having been thus
effected in the wilds of America, the emigrants thought proper
to adopt that system of laws, under which they had hitherto
lived in the mother country, and to continue their union with
her, by submitting themselves to the same common sovereign,
who was thereby made the central link, connecting the several
parts of the empire thus newly multiplied.
But that not long were they permitted, however far they
thought themselves removed from the hand of oppression, tc
hold undisturbed the rights thus acquired at the hazard of their
lives and loss of their fortunes. A family of Princes was then
on the British throne, whose treasonable crimes against their
people, brought on them, afterwards, the exertion of those sa-
cred and sovereign rights of punishment, reserved in the hands
of the people for cases of extreme necessity, and judged by the
constitution unsafe to be delegated to any other judicature.
While every day brought forth some new and unjustifiable texer*
tion of power over their subjects on that side of the water, it
was not to be expected that those here, much less pile at that
time to oppose the designs of despotism, should be exempted
from injury. Accordingly, this country which had been acquired
by the lives, the labors, and fortunes of individual adventurers,
was by these Princes, several times, parted out and distributed
among the favorites and followers of their fortunes; and, by
295
TUELIC TAPSRS OF
an assumed right of the Crown alone, were erected into distinct
and independent governments; a measure, which it is believed,
his Majesty's prudence and understanding would prevent him
from imitating at this day; as no exercise of such power, of
dividing and dismembering a country, has ever occurred in his
Majesty's realm of England, though now of very ancient stand-
ing; nor could it be justified or acquiesced under there, or in
any part of his Majesty's empire.
That the exercise of a free trade with all parts of the world,
possessed by the American colonists, as of natural right, and
which no law of their own had taken away or abridged, was
next the object of unjust encroachment. Some of the colonies
having thought proper to continue the administration of their
government in the name and under the authority of his Maj-
esty, King Charles the first, whom, notwithstanding his late
deposition by the Commonwealth of England, they continued
in the sovereignty of their State, the Parliament, for the Com-
monwealth, took the same in high offence, and assumed upon
themselves the power of prohibiting their trade with all other
parts of the world, except the Island of Great Britain. This ar-
britrary act, however, they soon recalled, and by solemn treaty
entered into on the i2th day of March, 1651, between the said
Commonwealth, by their Commissioners, and the colony of Vir-
ginia by their House of Burgesses, it was expressly stipulated by
the eighth article of the said treaty, that they should have 'free
trade as the people of England do enjoy to all places and with
all nations, according to the laws of that Commonwealth/ But
that, upon the restoration of his Majesty, King Charles the sec-
ond, their rights of free commerce fell once more a victim to ar-
bitrary power; and by several acts of his reign, as well as of
some of his successors, the trade of the colonies was laid undei
such restrictions, as show what hopes they might form from the
justice of a British Parliament, were its uncontrolled power ad-
mitted over these States. History has* informed us, that bodies of
men as well as of individuals, are susceptible of the spirit of
tyranny. A view of these acts of Parliament for regulation, as it
296
THOMAS J8FF8RSON
has been affectedly called, of the American trade, if all other
evidences were removed out of the case, would undeniably evince
the truth of this observation. Besides the duties they impose on
our articles of export and import, they prohibit our going to any
markets Northward of Cape Finisterra, in the kingdom of
Spain, for the sale of commodities which Great Britain will
not take from us, and for the purchase of others, with which
she cannot supply us ; and that, for no other than the arbitrary
purpose of purchasing for themselves, by a sacrifice of our
rights and interests, certain privileges in their commerce with
an allied state, who, in confidence, that their exclusive trade
with America will be continued, while the principles and power
of the British Parliament be the same, have indulged them-
selves in every exorbitance which their avarice could dictate
or our necessity extort: have raised their commodities called
for in America, to the double and treble of what they sold
for, before such exclusive privileges were given them, and of
what better commodities of the same kind would cost us else-
where; and, at the same time, give us much less for what we
carry thither, than might be had at more convenient ports.
That these acts prohibit us from carrying, in quest of other
purchasers, the surplus of our tobaccos, remaining after the
consumption of Great Britain is supplied: so that we must
leave them with the British merchant, for whatever he will
please to allow us, to be by him re-shipped to foreign markets,
where he will reap the benefits -of making sale of them for full
value. That, to heighten still the idea of Parliamentary justice,
and to show with what moderation they are like to exercise
power, where themselves are to feel no part of its weight, we
take leave to mention to his Majesty, certain other acts of the
British Parliament, by which they would prohibit us from
manufacturing, for our own use, the articles we raise on our
own lands, with our own labor. By an act passed in the fifth
year of the reign of his late Majesty, King George the second,
an American subject is forbidden to make a hat for himself,
of the fur which he has taken, perhaps, on his own soil; an
297
TUBLIC TAPSRS OF
instance of despotism, to which no parallel can be produced in
the most arbitrary ages of British history. By one other act,
passed in the twenty-third year of the same reign, the iron
which we make, we are forbidden to manufacture; and, heavy
as that article is, and n'ecessary in every branch of husbandry,
besides commission and insurance, we are to pay freight for it
to Great Britain, and freight for it back again, for the purpose
of supporting, not men, but machines, in the island of Great
Britain. In the same spirit of equal and impartial legislation,
is to be viewed the act of Parliament, passed in the fifth year
of the same reign, by which American lands are made subject
to the demands of British creditors, while their own lands wer'e
still continued unanswerable for their debts; from which, one
of these conclusions must necessarily follow, either that justice
is not the same thing in America as in Britain, or else, that the
British Parliament pay less regard to it here than there. But,
that we do not point out to his Majesty the injustice of these
acts, with intent to rest on that principle the cause of their
nullity: but to show that 'experience confirms the propriety of
those political principles, which exempt us from the jurisdiction
of the British Parliament. The true ground on which we declare
these acts void, is, that the British Parliament has no right to
exercise authority over us.
That these exercises of usurped power have not been con-
fined to instances alone, in which themselves were interested;
but they have also intermeddled with the regulation of the in-
ternal affairs of the colonies. The act of the Qth of Anne for
establishing a post office in America, seems to have had little
connection with British convenience, except that of accommo-
dating his Majesty's ministers and favorites with the sale of a
lucrative and easy office.
That thus have we hastened through the reigns which pre-
ceded his Majesty's, during which the violation of our rights
were less alarming, because repeated at more distant intervals,
than that rapid and bold succession of injuries, which is likely
to distinguish the present from all other periods of American
298
THOMAS JEFFERSON
story. Scarcely have our minds been able to emerge from the
astonishment into which one stroke of Parliamentary thundet
has involved us, before another more heavy and more alarm-
ing is fallen on us. Single acts of tyranny may be ascribed tor
the accidental opinion of a day; but a series of oppressions, be'
gun at a distinguished period, and pursued unalterably through
every change of ministers, too plainly prove a deliberate, sys-
tematical plan of reducing us to slavery.1
That the act, passed in the 4th year of his majesty's reign,
entitled "An act for granting certain duties in the British col-
onies and plantations in America, &c."
One other act, passed in the 5th year of his reign, entitled
"An act for granting and applying certain stamp duties and
other duties in the British colonies and plantations in Amer-
ica, &c."
One other act, passed in the 6th year of his reign, entitled
"An act for the better securing the dependency of his majesty's
dominions in America upon the crown and parliament of Great
Britain;" and one other act, passed in the yth year of his reign,
entitled "An act for granting duties on paper, tea, &c." form
that connected chain of parliamentary usurpation, which has
already been the subject of frequent applications to his maj-
esty, and the houses of lords and commons of Great Britain;
and no answers having yet been condescended to any of these,
we shall not trouble his majesty with a repetition of the mat-
ters they contained.
But that one other act, passed in the same yth year of the
reign, having been a peculiar attempt, must ever require pecul-
iar mention; it is entitled "An act for suspending the legisla-
ture of New York." 2
One free and independent legislature, hereby takes upon it-
self to suspend the powers of another, free and independent as
1. The following passage, naming the acts of tyranny, is taken from
Ford. [Paul Leicester Ford, ed., The Works of Thomas Jefferson, Fed-
eral Edition, 12 vols., G. P. Putnam's Sons: New York and London,
1904-05.! The version given in the Memorial Edition is not intelligible.
2. This ends the inserted material from Ford.
299
TUBLIC TAPBRS OF
itself. Thus exhibiting a phenomenon unknown in nature, the
creator, and creature of its own power. Not only the principles
of common sense, but the common feelings of human nature
must be surrendered up, before his Majesty's subjects here,
can be persuaded to believe, that they hold their political
existence at the will of a British Parliament. Shall these gov-
ernments be dissolved, their property annihilated, and their
people reduced to a state of nature, at the imperious breath
of a body of men whom they never saw, in whom they never
confided, and over whom they have no powers of punishment
or removal, let their crimes against the American public be ever
so great? Can any one reason be assigned, why one hundred
and sixty thousand electors in the island of Great Britain,
should give law to four millions in the States of America, every
individual of whom is equal to every individual of them in
virtue, in understanding, and in bodily strength? Were this to
be admitted, instead of being a free people, as we have hitherto
supposed, and mean to continue ourselves, we should suddenly
be found the slaves, not of one, but of one hundred and sixty
thousand tyrants; distinguished, too, from all others, by this
singular circumstance, that they are removed from the reach
of fear, the only restraining motive which may hold the hand
of a tyrant.
That, by 'an act to discontinue in such manner, and for such
time as are therein mentioned, the landing and discharging,
lading or shipping of goods, wares and merchandize, at the
town and within the harbor of Boston, in the province of
Massachusetts bay, in North America/ which was passed at
the last session of the British Parliament, 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, sup-
pose 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
300
THOMAS JSFFSRSON
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 mas-
ters of their several vessels, however, on their arrival in Amer-
ica, wisely attended to admonition, and returned with their
cargoes. In the province of New-England alone, the remon-
strances 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 extraor-
dinary 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 di-
verted from the regular course, in favor of popular offenders.
They should, therefore, not have been distrusted on. this oc-
casion. But that ill-fated colony had formerly been bold in
their enmities against the House of Stuart, and were now de-
voted to ruin, by that unseen hand which governs the momen-
tous affairs of this great empire. On the partial representations
of a few worthless ministerial dependants, whose constant
office it has been to keep that government embroiled, and
who, by their treacheries, hope to obtain the dignity of British
knighthood, without calling for a party accused, without ask-
ing a proof, without attempting a distinction between the guilty
and the innocent, the whole of that ancient and wealthy town,
is in a moment reduced from opulence to beggary. Men whc
had spent their lives in extending the British commerce, whc
had invested, in that place, the wealth their honest endeavor^
had merited, found themselves and their families, thrown at
once on the world, for subsistence by its charities. Not the
hundredth part of the inhabitants of that town, had been con*
301
TUBLIC TAP8RS OF
cerned in the act complained of; many of them were in Great
Britain, and in other parts beyond the sea; yet all were in
volved in one indiscriminate ruin, by a new executive power,
unheard of till then, that of a British Parliament. A property
of the value of many millions of money, was sacrificed to re-
venge, not repay, the loss of a few thousands. This is adminis-
tering justice with a heavy hand indeed ! And when is this tem-
pest to be arrested in its course? Two wharves are to be opened
again when his Majesty shall think proper: the residue, which
lined the extensive shores of the bay of Boston, are forever
interdicted the exercise of commerce. This little exception
seems to have been thrown in for no other purpose, than that
of setting a precedent for investing his Majesty with legislative
powers. If the pulse of his people shall beat calmly under this
experiment, another and another will be tried, till the measure
of despotism be filled up. It would be an insult on common
sense, to pretend that this exception was made, in order to re-
store its commerce to that great town. The trade, which can-
not be received at two wharves alone, must of necessity be
transferred to some other place; to which it will soon be fol-
lowed by that of the two wharves. Considered in this light, it
would be an insolent and cruel mockery at the annihilation of
the town of Boston. By the act for the suppression of riots and
tumults in the town of Boston, passed also in the last session
of Parliament, a murder committed there, is, if the Governor
pleases, to be tried in the court of King's bench, in the island
of Great Britain, by a jury of Middlesex. The witnesses, too,
on receipt of such a sum as the Governor shall think it reason-
able for them to expend, are to enter into recognizance to ap-
pear at the trial. This is, in other words, taxing them to the
amount of their recognizance; and that amount may be what-
ever a Governor pleases. For who does his Majesty think can
be prevailed on to cross the Atlantic for the sole purpose of
bearing evidence to a fact? His expenses are to be borne, in-
deed, as they shall be estimated by a Governor; but who are
to feed the wife and children whom he leaves behind, and who
302
TFIOMAS J8FF8RSON
have had no other subsistence but his daily labor? Those epi-
demical disorders, too, so terrible in a foreign climate, is the
cure of them to be estimated among the articles of expense, and
their danger to be warded off by the Almighty power of a Par-
liament? And the wretched criminal, if he happen to have of-
fended on the American side, stripped of his privilege of trial
by peers of his vicinage, removed from the place where alone
full evidence could be obtained, without money, without coun-
sel, without friends, without exculpatory proof, is tried before
Judges predetermined to condemn. The cowards who would
suffer a countryman to be torn from the bowels of their so-
ciety, in order to be thus offered a sacrifice to Parliamentary
tyranny, would merit that everlasting infamy now fixed on the
authors of the act! A clause, for a similar purpose, had been
introduced into an act passed in the twelfth year of his Maj-
esty's reign, entitled, can act for the better securing and pre-
serving his Majesty's Dock-yards, Magazines, Ships, Ammuni-
tion and Stores;' against which, as meriting the same censures,
the several colonies have already protested.
That these are the acts of power, assumed by a body of
men foreign to our constitutions, and unacknowledged by our
laws; against which we do, on behalf of the inhabitants of
British America, enter this, our solemn and determined pro-
test. And we do earnestly intreat his Majesty, as yet the only
mediatory power between the several States of the British em-
pire, to recommend to his Parliament of Great Britain, the total
revocation of these acts, which, however nugatory they may be,
may yet prove the cause of further discontents and jealousies
among us.
That we next proceed to consider the conduct of his Maj-
esty, as holding the Executive powers of the laws of these
States, and mark out his deviations from the line of duty. By
the Constitution of Great Britain, as well as of the several
American States, his Majesty possesses the power of refusing
to pass into a law, any bill which has already passed the other
two branches of the legislature. His Majesty, however, and his
303
TUBLIC TAPSRS OF
ancestors^ conscious of the impropriety of opposing their single
opinion to the united wisdom of two Houses of Parliament,
while their proceedings were unbiassed by interested principles,
for several ages past, have modestly declined the exercise of
this power, in that part of his. empire called Great Britain. But,
by change of circumstances, other principles than those of jus-
tice simply, have obtained an influence on their determinations.
The addition of new States to the British empire has produced
an addition of new, and, sometimes, opposite interests. It is
now, therefore, the great office of his Majesty to resume the
exercise of his negative power, and to prevent the passage of
laws by any one legislature of the empire, which might bear
injuriously on the rights and interests of another. Yet this will
not excuse the wanton exercise of this power, which we have
seen his Majesty practice on the laws of the American legisla-
ture. For the most trifling reasons, and, sometimes for no con-
ceivable reason at all, his Majesty has rejected laws of the most
salutary tendency. The abolition of domestic slavery is the
great object of desire in those colonies, where it was, unhap-
pily, introduced in their infant state. But previous to the en-
franchisement of the slaves we have, it is necessary to exclude
all further importations from Africa. Yet our repeated attempts
to effect this, by prohibitions, and by imposing duties which
might amount to a prohibition, having been hitherto defeated
by his Majesty's negative: thus preferring the immediate ad-
vantages of a few British corsairs, to the lasting interests of the
American States, and to the rights of human nature, deeply
wounded by this infamous practice. Nay, the single interposi-
tion of an interested individual against a law was scarcely ever
known to fail of success, though, in the opposite scale, were
placed the interests of a whole country. That this is so shame-
ful an abuse of a power, trusted with his Majesty for other pur-
poses, as if, not reformed, would call for some legal restrictions.
With equal inattention to the necessities of his people here,
has his Majesty permitted our laws to lie neglected, in Eng-
land, for years, neither confirming them by his assent, nor an-
304
THOMAS JEFFERSON
nulling them by his negative: so, that such of them as have no
suspending clause, we hold on the most precarious of all ten-
ures, his Majesty's will; and such of them as suspend them-
selves till his Majesty's assent be obtained, we have feared
might be called into existence at some future and distant period,
when time and change of circumstances shall have rendered
them destructive to his people here. And, to render this griev-
ance still more oppressive, his Majesty, by his instructions, has
laid his Governors under such restrictions, that they can pass
no law, of any moment, unless it have such suspending clause:
so that, however immediate may be the call for legislative in-
terposition, the law cannot be executed, till it has twice crossed
the Atlantic, by which time the evil may have spent its whole
force.
But in what terms reconcilable to Majesty, and at the same
time to truth, shall we speak of a late instruction to his Maj-
esty's Governor of the colony of Virginia, by which he is for-
bidden to assent to any law for the division of a county, unless
the new county will consent to have no representative in As-
sembly? That colony has as yet affixed no boundary to the
Westward. Their Western counties, therefore, are of an indefi-
nite extent. Some of them are actually seated many hundred
miles from their Eastern limits. Is it possible, then, that his
Majesty can have bestowed a single thought on the situation of
those people, who, in order to obtain justice for injuries, how-
ever great or small, must, by the laws of that colony, attend
their county court at such a distance, with all their witnesses,
monthly, till their litigation be determined? Or does his Maj-
esty seriously wish, and publish it to the world, that his sub-
jects should give up the glorious right of representation, with
all the benefits derived from that, and submit themselves the
absolute slaves of his sovereign will? Or is it rather meant to
confine the legislative body to their present numbers, that they
may be the cheaper bargain, whenever they shall become worth
a purchase?
One of the articles of impeachment against Tresilian, ivnd
305
TUBLIC TAPSRS OF
the other Judges of Westminster Hall, in the reign of Richard
the Second, for which they suffered death, as traitors to their
country, was, that they had advised the King, that he might
dissolve his Parliament at any time ; and succeeding kings have
adopted the opinion of these unjust Judges, Since the establish-
ment, however, of the British constitution, at the glorious Rev-
olution, on its free and ancient principles, neither his Majesty,
nor his ancestors, have exercised such a power of dissolution
in the island of Great Britain; x and when his Majesty was
petitioned, by the united voice of his people there, to dissolve
the present Parliament, who had become obnoxious to them,
his Ministers were heard to declare, in open Parliament, that
his Majesty possessed no such power by the constitution. But
how different their language, and his practice, here! To declare,
as their duty required, the known rights of their country, to
oppose the usurpation of every foreign judicature, to disregard
the imperious mandates of a Minister or Governor, have been
the avowed causes of dissolving Houses of Representatives in
America. But if such powers be really vested in his Majesty,
can he suppose they are there placed to awe the members from
such purposes as these? When the representative body have
lost the confidence of their constituents, when they have no-
toriously made sale of their most valuable rights, when they
have assumed to themselves powers which the people never
put into their hands, then, indeed, their continuing in office be-
comes dangerous to the State, and calls for an exercise of the
power of dissolution. Such being the cause for which the repre-
sentative body should, and should not, be dissolved, will it not
appear strange, to an unbiassed observer, that that of Great
Britain was not dissolved, while those of the colonies have re-
peatedly incurred that sentence?
i. On further inquiry, I find two instances of dissolutions before the
Parliament would, of itself, have been at an end: viz., the Parliament
called to meet August 24, 1698, was dissolved by King William, Decem-
ber 19, 1700, and a new one called, to meet February 6, 1701, which was
also dissolved, November n, 1701, and a new one met December 30, 1701.
[Jefferson's note.]
306
THOMAS J8FF8RSON
But your Majesty, or your Governors, have carried this
power beyond every limit known or provided for by the laws,
After dissolving one House of Representatives, they have re-
fused to call another, so that, for a great length of time, the
legislature provided by the laws, has been out of existence.
From the nature of things, every society must, at all times, pos-
sess within itself the sovereign powers of legislation. The feel-
ings of human nature revolt against the supposition of a State
so situated, as that it may not, in any emergency, provide
against dangers which, perhaps, threaten immediate ruin. While
those bodies are in existence to whom the people have dele-
gated the powers of legislation, they alone possess, and may
exercise, those powers. But when they are dissolved, by the
lopping off one or more of their branches, the power reverts to
the people, who may use it to unlimited extent, either assembling
together in person, sending deputies, or in any other way they
may think proper. We forbear to trace consequences further;
the dangers are conspicuous with which this practice is replete.
That we shall, at this time also, take notice of an error in the
nature of our land holdings, which crept in at a very early pe-
riod of our settlement. The introduction of the Feudal tenures
into the kingdom of England, though ancient, is well enough
understood to set this matter in a proper light. In the ear-
lier ages of the Saxon settlement, feudal holdings were cer-
tainly altogether unknown, and very few, if any, had been
introduced at the time of the Norman conquest. Our Saxon
ancestors held their lands, as they did their personal property,
in absolute dominion, disincumbered with any superior, answer-
ing nearly to the nature of those possessions which the Feudal-
ist term Allodial. William the Norman, first introduced that
system generally. The lands which had belonged to those who
fell in the battle of Hastings, and in the subsequent insur-
rections of his reign, formed a considerable proportion of the
lands of the whole kingdom. These he granted out, subject to
feudal duties, as did he also those of a great number of his
new subjects, who, by persuasions or threats, were induced
307
TUBLIC TAP6RS OF
l& surrender them for that purpose. But still, much was left
in the hands of his Saxon subjects, held of no superior, and not
subject to feudal conditions. These, therefore, by express laws,
enacted to render uniform the system of military defence,
were made liable to the same military duties as if they had
been feuds; and the Norman lawyers soon found means to
saddle them, also, with the other feudal burthens. But still
they had not been surrendered to the King, they were not
derived from his grant, and therefore they were not holden of
him. A general principle was introduced, that "all lands in
England were held either mediately or immediately of the
Crown;'7 but this was borrowed from those holdings which
were truly feudal, and only applied to others for the purposes
of illustration. Feudal holdings were, therefore, but excep-
tions out of the Saxon laws of possession, under which all lands
were held in absolute right. These, therefore, still form the
basis or groundwork of the Common law, to prevail where-
soever the exceptions have not taken place. America was not
conquered by William the Norman, nor its lands surrendered
to him or any of his successors. Possessions there are, un-
doubtedly, of the Allodial nature. Our ancestors, however, who
migrated hither, were laborers, not lawyers. The fictitious
principle, that all lands belong originally to the King, they
were early persuaded to believe real, and accordingly took
grants of their own lands from the Crown. And while the
Crown continued to grant for small sums and on reasonable
rents, there was no inducement to arrest the error, and lay it
open to public view. But his Majesty has lately taken on him
to advance the terms of purchase and of holding, to the double
of what they were; by which means, the acquisition of lands
being rendered difficult, the population of our country is likely
to be checked. It is time, therefore, for us to lay this matter
before his Majesty, and to declare, that he has no right to
grant lands of himself. From the nature and purpose of civil
institutions, all the lands within , the limits, which any par-
ticular party has circumscribed around itself, are assumed by
jo*
THOMAS JSFFSRSON
that society, and subject to their allotment; this may be done
by themselves assembled collectively, or by their legislature,
to whom they may have delegated sovereign authority; and,
if they are allotted in neither of these ways, each individual of
the society, may appropriate to himself such lands as he finds
vacant, and occupancy will give him title.
That, in order to enforce the arbitrary measures before com-
plained of, his Majesty has, from time to time, sent among
us large bodies of armed forces, not made up of the people
here, nor raised by the authority of our laws. Did his Majesty
possess such a right as this, it might swallow up all our other
rights, whenever he should think proper. But his Majesty has
no right to land a single armed man on our shores; and those
whom he sends here are liable to our laws, for the suppression
and punishment of riots, routs, and unlawful assemblies, or
are hostile bodies invading us in defiance of law. When, in the
course of the late war, it became expedient that a body of
Hanoverian troops should be brought over for the defence of
Great Britain, his Majesty's grandfather, our /ate sovereign,
did not pretend to introduce them under any authority he
possessed. Such a measure would have given just alarm to his
subjects of Great Britain, whose liberties would not be safe
if armed men of another country, and of another spirit, might
be brought into the realm at any time, without the consent of
their legislature. He, therefore, applied to Parliament, who
passed an act for that purpose, limiting the number to be
brought in, and the time they were to continue. In like man-
ner is his Majesty restrained in every part of the empire. He
possesses indeed the executive power of the laws in every
State; but they are the laws of the particular State, which he
is to administer within that State, and not those of any one
within the limits of another. Every State must judge for itself,
the number of armed men which they may safely trust among
them, of whom they are to consist, and under what restrictions
they are to be laid. To render these proceedings still more
criminal against our laws, instead of subjecting the military to
30.0
TUBLIC TAPBRS OF
the civil power, his majesty has expressly made the civil sub-
ordinate to the military. But can his Majesty thus put down
all law under his feet? Can he erect a power superior to that
which erected himself? He has done it indeed by force; but
let him remember that force cannot give right.
That these are our grievances, which we have thus laid
before his Majesty, with that freedom of language and senti-
ment which becomes a free people claiming their rights as
derived from the laws of nature, and not as the gift of their
Chief Magistrate. Let those flatter, who fear: it is not an
American art. To give praise where it is not due might be well
from the venal, but would ill beseem those who are asserting
the rights of human nature. They know, and will, therefore,
say, that Kings are the servants, not the proprietors of the
people. Open your breast, Sire; to liberal and expanded
thought. Let not the name of George the Third, be a blot on
the page of history. You are surrounded by British counsellors,
but remember that they are parties. You have no ministers for
American affairs, because you have none taken from among us,
nor amenable to the laws on which they are to give you advice.
It behooves you, therefore, to think and to act for yourself
and your people. The great principles of right and wrong are
legible to every reader; to pursue them, requires not the aid
of many counsellors. The whole art of government consists in
the art cf being honest. Only aim to do your duty, and man-
kind will give you credit where you fail. No longer persevere in
sacrificing the rights of one part of the empire to the inordinate
desires of another; but deal out to all, equal and impartial
right. Let no act be passed by any one legislature, which may
infringe on the rights and liberties of another. This is the im-
portant post in which fortune has placed you, holding the
balance of a great, if a well-poised empire. This, Sire, is the
advice of your great American council, on the observance of
which may perhaps depend your felicity and future fame, and
the preservation of that harmony which alone can continue,
both to Great Britain and America, the reciprocal advantages
310
THOMAS J8FF8RSON
of their connection. It is neither our wish nor our interest to
separate from her. We are willing, on our part, to sacrifice
everything which reason can ask, to the restoration of that
tranquillity for which all must wish. On their part, let them Vr
ready to establish union on a generous plan. Let them name
their terms, but let them be just. Accept of every commercial
preference it is in our power to give, for such things as we can
raise for their use. or they make for ours. But let them not
think to exclude us from going to other markets to dispose of
those commodities which they cannot use, nor to supply those
wants which they cannot supply. Still less, let it be proposed,
that our properties, within our own territories, shall be taxed
or regulated by any power on earth, but our own. The God who
gave us life, gave us liberty at the same time: the hand of force
may destroy, but cannot disjoin them. This, Sire, is our last,
our determined resolution. And that you will be pleased to
interpose, with thai efficacy which your earnest endeavors may
insure, to procure redress of these our great grievances, to
quiet the minds of your subjects in British America against
any apprehensions of future encroachment, to establish fra-
ternal love and harmony through the whole empire, and that
that may continue to the latest ages of time, is the fervent
prayer of all British America.
An Act for establishing Religious Freedom [1779], passed
in the Assembly of Virginia in the beginning of the year
1786
Well aware that Almighty God hath created the mind free;
that all attempts to influence it by temporal punishments or
burdens, or by civil incapacitations, tend only to beget habits
of hypocrisy and meanness, and are a departure from the plan
of the Holy Author of our religion, who being Lord both of
body and mind, yet chose not to propagate it by coercions on
either, as was in his Almighty power to do; that the impious
presumption of legislators and rulers, civil as well as ecclesias-
TUBLIC TAPSRS OF
tical, who, being themselves but fallible and uninspired men
have assumed dominion over the faith of others, setting up
their own opinions and modes of thinking as the only true and
infallible, and as such endeavoring to impose them on others,
hath established and maintained false religions over the great-
est part of the world, and through all time; that to compel a
man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of
opinions which he disbelieves, is sinful and tyrannical; that
even the forcing him to support this or that teacher of his own
religious persuasion, is depriving him of the comfortable liberty
of piving his contributions to the particular pastor whose
morals he would make his pattern, and whose powers he feels
most persuasive to righteousness, and is withdrawing from the
ministry those temporal rewards, which proceeding from an
approbation of their personal conduct, are an additional incite-
ment to earnest and unremitting labors for the instruction of
mankind; that our civil rights have no dependence on our
religious opinions, more than our opinions in physics or geom-
etry; that, therefore, the proscribing any citizen as unworthy
the public confidence by laying upon him an incapacity of
being called to the offices of trust and emolument, unless he
profess or renounce this or that religious opinion, is depriving
him injuriously of those privileges and advantages to which in
common with his fellow citizens he has a natural right ; that it
tends also to corrupt the principles of that very religion it is
meant to encourage, by bribing, with a monopoly of wordly
honors and emoluments, those who will externally profess and
conform to it; that though indeed these are criminal who do
not withstand such temptation, yet neither are those innocent
who lay the bait in their way; that to suffer the civil magistrate
to intrude his powers into the field of opinion and to restrain
the profession or propagation of principles, on the supposition
of their ill tendency, is a dangerous fallacy, which at once
destroys all religious liberty, because he being of course judge
of that tendency, will make his opinions the rule of judgment,
and approve or condemn the sentiments of others only as they
312
rHOMAS JSFFSRSON
shall square with or differ from his own; that it is time enough
for the rightful purposes of civil government, for its offices to
interfere when principles break out into overt acts against
peace and good order; and finally, that truth is great and will
prevail if left to herself, that she is the proper and sufficient
antagonist to error, and has nothing to fear from the conflict,
unless by human interposition disarmed of her natural
weapons, free argument and debate, errors ceasing to be dan-
gerous when it is permitted freely to contradict them.
Be it therefore enacted by the General Assembly, That no
man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious
worship, place or ministry whatsoever, nor shall be enforced,
restrained, molested, or burthened in his body or goods, nor
shall otherwise suffer on account of his religious opinions of
belief; but that all men shall be free to profess, and by argu-
ment to maintain, their opinions in matters of religion, and that
the same shall in nowise diminish, enlarge, or affect their civil
capacities.
And though we well know this Assembly, elected by the
people for the ordinary purposes of legislation only, have no
power to restrain the acts of succeeding assemblies, constituted
with the powers equal to our own, and that therefore to declare
this act irrevocable, would be of no effect in law, yet we are
free to declare, and do declare, that the rights hereby asserted
are of the natural rights of mankind, and that if any act shall
be hereafter passed to repeal the present or to narrow its
operation, such act will be an infringement of natural right.
Report of Government for the Western Territory.1 March
22, 1784
The Committee to whom was re-committed the report of a
plan for a temporary government of the Western territory have
agreed to the following resolutions.
i. This document has been included because of its important proposal
to limit the spread of slavery in the entire western territory of the
United States. [The text is taken from Ford.]
313
TUBLIC TAP8RS OF
Resolved, that so much of the territory ceded or to be ceded
by individual states to the United States as is already pur-
chased or shall be purchased of the Indian inhabitants & offered
for sale by Congress, shall be divided into distinct states, ....
That the settlers on any territory so purchased & offered for
sale shall, either on their own petition, or on the order of Con-
gress, receive authority from them with appointments of time
& place for their free males of full age, within the limits of their
state to meet together for the purpose of establishing a tem-
porary government, to adopt the constitution and laws of any
one of the original states, so that such laws nevertheless shall
be subject to alteration by th^ir ordinary legislature; & to erect,
subject to a like alteration, counties or townships for the elec-
tion of members for their legislature.
That such temporary government shall only continue in
force in any state until it shall have acquired 20,000 free in-
habitants, when giving due proof thereof to Congress, they
shall receive from them authority with appointment of time &
place to call a convention of representatives to establish a per-
manent Constitution & Government for themselves. Provided
that both the temporary and permanent governments be estab-
lished on these principles as their basis, i. That they shall
forever remain a part of this confederacy of the United States
of America. 2. That in their persons, property and territory
they shall be subject to the Government of the United States
in Congress assembled, & to the articles of Confederation in all
those cases in which the original states shall be so subject.
3. That they shall be subject to pay a part of the federal debts
contracted or to be contracted, to be apportioned on them by
Congress, according to the same common rule & measure, by
which apportionments thereof shall be made on the other
states. 4. That their respective Governments shall be in repub-
lican forms and shall admit no person to be a citizen who holds
any hereditary title. 5. That after the year 1800 of the Chris-
tian era, there shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servi-
THOMAS JSFFSRSON
tude in any of the sd states, otherwise than in punishment of
crimes whereof the party shall have been convicted to have
been personally guilty.
That whensoever any of ths sd states shall have, of free
inhabitants, as many as shall then be in any one the least
numerous, of the thirteen original states, such state shall be
admitted by it's delegates into the Congress of the United
States on an equal footing with the said original states: pro-
vided nine States agree to such admission according to the
reservation of the nth of the articles of Confederation, and
in order to adopt the sd articles of Confederation, to the state
of Congress when it's numbers shall be thus increased, it shall
be proposed to the legislatures of states originally parties
thereto, to require the assent of two thirds of the United States
in Congress assembled in all those cases wherein by the said
articles the assent of nine states is now required; which being
agreed to by them shall be binding on the new states. Until
such admission by their delegates into Congress, any of the said
states after the establishment of their temporary government
shall have authority to keep a sitting member in Congress, with
a right of debating, but not of voting.
That the preceding articles shall be formed into a charter of
compact, shall be duly executed by the president of the United
States in Congress assembled, under his hand & the seal of the
United States, shall be promulgated & shall stand as funda-
mental constitutions between the thirteen original states and
each of the several states now newly described, unalterable but
by the joint consent of the United States in Congress as-
sembled, & of the particular state within which such alteration
is proposed to be made.
That measures rjot inconsistent with the principles of the
Confedn. & necessary for the preservation of peace & good
order among the settlers in any of the said new states until
they shall assume a temporary Government as aforesaid, may
from time to time be taken by the U S in C. assembled.
TVBLIC TAP6RS OF
Opinion upon the question whether the President should
veto the Bill, declaring that the seat of government shall
be transferred to the Potomac, in the year 1790. July
*5> 1790
Every man, and every body of men on earth, posseses the
right of self-government. They receive it with their being from
the hand of nature. Individuals exercise it by their single will;
collections of men by that of their majority; for the law of the
majority is the natural law of every society of men. When a
certain description of men are to transact together a particular
business, the times and places of their meeting and separating,
depend on their own will; they make a part of the natural right
of self-government. This, like all other natural rights, may be
abridged or modified in its exercise by their own consent, or
by the law of those who depute them, if they meet in the right
of others; but as far as it is not abridged or modified, they
retain it as a natural right and may exercise them in what
form they please, either exclusively by themselves, or in as-
sociation with others, or by others altogether, as they shall
agree.
March 18, 1792. Paper on the rights to navigate the Mis-
sissippi
But our right is built on ground still broader and more un-
questionable, to wit:
On the law of nature and nations.
If we appeal to this, as we feel it written on the heart of
man, what sentiment is written in deeper characters than that
the ocean is free to all men, and their rivers to all their in-
habitants? Is there a man, savage or civilized, unbiased by
habit, who does not feel and attest this truth? Accordingly, in
all tracts of country united under the same political society,
we find this natural right universally acknowledged and pro-
tected by laying the navigable rivers open to all their in-
316
THOMAS J8FF8RSON
habitants. When their rivers enter the limits of another society,
if the right of the upper inhabitants to descend the stream is in
any case obstructed, it is an act of force by a stronger society
against a weaker, condemned by the judgment of mankind.
The late case of Antwerp and the Scheldt was a striking proof
of a general union of sentiment on this point; as it is believed
that Amsterdam had scarcely an advocate out of Holland, and
even there its pretensions were advocated on the ground of
treaties, and not of natural right. . . . The United States hold
600,000 square miles of habitable territory on the Mississippi
and its branches, and this river and its branches afford many
thousands of miles of navigable waters penetrating this terri-
tory in all its parts. The inhabitable grounds of Spain below our
boundary and bordering on the river, which alone can pretend
any fear of being incommoded by our use of the river, are not
the thousandth part of that extent. This vast portion of the
territory of the United States has no other outlet for its pro-
ductions, and these productions are of the bulkiest kind. And
in truth, their passage down the river may not only be innocent,
as to the Spanish subjects on the river, but cannot fail to enrich
them far beyond their present condition. The real interest then
of all the inhabitants, upper and lower, concur in fact with
their rights.
Opinion on the question whether the United States have
a right to renounce their treaties with France, or to hold
them suspended till the government of that country shall
be established. April 28,
I consider the people who constitute a society or nation as
the source of all authority in that nation; as free to transact
their common concerns by any agents they think proper; to
change these agents individually, or the organization of them
in form or function whenever they please; that all the acts
done by these agents under the authority of the nation, are the
acts of the nation, are obligatory to them and enure to their
317
TUBL1C TAPBRS OF
use, and can in no wise be annulled or affected by any change
in the form of the government, or of the persons administering
it, consequently the treaties between the United States and
France, were not treaties between the United States and Louis
Capet, but between the two nations of America and France;
and the nations remaining in existence, though both of them
have since changed their forms of government, the treaties are
not annulled by these changes. The law of nations, by which
this question is to be determined, is composed of three
branches, i. The moral law of our nature. 2. The usages of
nations. 3, Their special conventions. The first of these only
concerns this question, that is to say the moral law to which
man has been subjected by his creator, and of which his feelings
or conscience, as it is sometimes called, are the evidence with
which his creator has furnished him. The moral duties which
exist between individual and individual in a state of nature,
accompany them into a state of society, and the aggregate of
the duties of all the individuals composing the society con-
stitutes the dutie" of that society towards any other; so that
between society and society the same moral duties exist as did
between the individuals composing them, while in an unas-
sociated state, and their maker not having released them from
those duties on their forming themselves into a nation. Com-
pacts then, between nation and nation, are obligatory on them
by the same moral law which obliges individuals to observe
their compacts. There are circumstances, however, which some-
times excuse the non-performance of contracts between man
and man; so are there also between nation and nation. When
performance, for instance, becomes impossible, non-perform-
ance is not immoral; so if performance becomes self-destructive
to the party, the law of self-preservation overrules the laws of
obligation in others. For the reality of these principles I appeal
to the true fountains of evidence, the head and heart of every
rational and honest man. It is there nature has written her
moral laws, and where every man may read them for himself.
He will never read there the permission to annul his obliga-
318
THOMAS J8FF8RSON
tions for a time, or forever, whenever they become dangerous,
useless, or disagreeable; certainly not when merely useless or
disagreeable. . . . and though he may, under certain degrees of
danger, yet the danger must be imminent, and the degree great,
Of these, it is true, that nations are to be judges for themselves;
since no one nation has a right to sit in judgment over another,
but the tribunal of our conscience remains, and that also of
the opinion of the world. These will revise the sentence we pass
in OMr own case, and as we respect these, we must see that in
judging ourselves we have honestly done the part of impartial
and rigorous judges.
.... Questions of natural right are triable by their con-
formity with the moral sense and reason of man. Those who
write treatises of natural law, can only declare what their own
moral sense and reason dictate in the several cases they state.
Such of them as happen to have feelings and a reason coin-
cident with those of the wise and honest part of mankind, are
respected and quoted as witnesses of what is morally right or
wrong in particular cases. Grotius, Puffendorf, Wolf, and
Vattel are of this number. Where they agree their authority is
strong; but where they differ (and they often differ), we must
appeal to our own feelings and reason to decide between
them. . . .
Report on the privileges and restrictions on the commerce
oj the United States in foreign countries. December i6t
* '793
.... As to commerce, two methods occur, i. By friendly ar<
rangements with the several nations with whom these re-
strictions exist: Or, 2. By the separate act of our own legisla-
tures for countervailing their effects.
There can be no doubt but that of these two, friendly ar-
rangement is the most eligible. Instead of embarrassing com-
merce under piles of regulating laws, duties and prohibitions,
could it be relieved from all its shackles in all parts of the
world, could every country be employed in producing that
319
TUBLIC TAPBRS OF
which nature has best fitted it to produce, and each be free
to exchange with others mutual surplusses for mutual wants,
the greatest mass possible would then be produced of those
things which contribute to human life and human happiness;
the numbers of mankind would be increased, and their con-
dition bettered. . . .
But should any nation, contrary to our wishes, suppose it
may better find its advantage by continuing its system of pro-
hibitions, duties and regulations, it behooves us to protect our
citizens, their commerce and navigation, by counter prohibi-
tions, duties and regulations, also. Free commerce and naviga-
tion are not to be given in exchange for restrictions and
vexations; nor are they likely to produce a relaxation of
them. . . .
Where a nation imposes high duties on our productions, or
prohibits them altogether, it may be proper for us to do the
same by theirs; first burdening or excluding those productions
which they bring here, in competition with our own of the same
kind; selecting next, such manufactures as we take from them
in greatest quantity, and which, at the same time, we could the
soonest furnish to ourselves, or obtain from other countries;
imposing on them duties lighter at first, but heavier and
heavier afterwards as other channels of supply open. Such
duties having the effect of indirect encouragement to domestic
manufactures of the same kind, may induce the manufacturer
to come himself into these States, where cheaper subsistence,
equal laws, and a vent of his wares, free of duty, may ensure
him the highest profits from his skill and industry. And here,
it would be in the power of the State governments to co-operate
essentially, by opening the resources of encouragement which
are under their control, extending them liberally to artists in
those particular branches of manufacture for which their soil,
climate, population and other circumstances have matured
them, and fostering the precious jefforts and progress of house-
hold manufacture, by some patronage suited to the nature of
its objects, guided by the local informations they possess, and
320
THOMAS JSFFSRSON
guarded against abuse by their presence and attentions. The
oppressions on our agriculture, in foreign ports, would thus be
made the occasion of relieving it from a dependence on the
councils and conduct of others, and of promoting arts, manu-
factures and population at home. . . ,
Inauguration Address. —March 4, 1801
Friends and Fellow Citizens: —
Called upon to undertake the duties of the first executive
office of our country, T avail myself of the presence of that por-
tion of my fellow citizens which is here assembled, to express
my grateful thanks for the favor with which they have been
pleased to look toward me, to declare a sincere consciousness
that the task is above my talents, and that I approach it with
those anxious and awful presentiments which the greatness
of the charge and the weakness of my powers so justly inspire.
A rising nation, spread over a wise and fruitful land, traversing
all the seas with the rich productions of their industry, engaged
in commerce with nations who feel power and forget right,
advancing rapidly to destinies beyond the reach of mortal eye
—when I contemplate these transcendent objects, and see the
honor, the happiness, and the hopes of this beloved country
committed to the issue and the auspices of this day, I shrink
from the contemplation, and humble myself before the magni-
tude of the undertaking. Utterly indeed, should I despair, did
not the presence of many whom I here see remind me, that in
the other high authorities provided by our constitution, I shall
find resources of wisdom, of virtue, and of zeal, on which to
rely under all difficulties. To you, then, gentlemen, who are
charged with the sovereign functions of legislation, and to those
associated with you, I look with encouragement for that guid-
ance and support which may enable us to steer with safety the
vessel in which we are all embarked amid the conflicting ele-
ments of a troubled world.
During the contest of opinion through which we have passed,
the animation of discussion and of exertions has sometimes
321
TUBLIC TAPSRS OF
worn an aspect which might impose on strangers unused to
think freely and to speak and to write what they think; but
this being now decided by the voice of the nation, announced
according to the rules of the constitution, all will, of course,
arrange themselves under the will of the law, and unite in
common efforts for the common good. All, too, will bear in
mind this sacred principle, that though the will of the majority
is in all cases to prevail, that will, to be rightful, must be rea-
sonable; that the minority possess their equal rights, which
equal laws must protect, and to violate which would be op-
pression. Let us, then, fellow citizens, unite with one heart and
one mind. Let us restore to social intercourse that harmony and
affection without which liberty and even life itself are but
dreary things. And let us reflect that having banished from
our land that religious intolerance under which mankind so
long bled and suffered, we have yet gained little if we coun-
tenance a political intolerance as despotic, as wicked, and
capable of as bitter and bloody persecutions. During the throes
and convulsions of the ancient world, during the agonizing
spasms of infuriated man, seeking through blood and slaughter
his long-lost liberty, it was not wonderful that the agitations
of the billows should reach even this distant and peaceful
shore; that this should be more felt and feared by some and
less by others; that this should divide opinions as to measures
of safety. But every difference of opinion is not a difference of
principle. We have called by different names brethren of the
same principle. We are all republicans— we are federalists. If
there be any among us who would wish to dissolve this Union
or to change its republican form, let them stand undisturbed as
monuments of the safety with which error of opinion may be
tolerated where reason is left free to combat it. I know, indeed,
that some honest men fear that a republican government can-
not be strong; that this government is not strong enough. But
would the honest patriot, in the full tide of successful experi-
ment, abandon a government which has so far kept us free
and f rm, on the theoretic and visionary fear that this gov-
322
THOMAS J8FF8RSON
ernment, the world's best hope, may by possibility want energy
to preserve itself? I trust not. I believe this, on the contrary,
the strongest government on earth. I believe it is the only one
where every man, at the call of the laws, would fly to the
standard of the law, and would meet invasions of the public
order as his own personal concern. Sometimes it is said that
man cannot be trusted with the government of himself. Can
he, then, be trusted with the government of others? Or have
we found angels in the forms of kings to govern him? Let
history answer this question.
Let us, then, with courage and confidence pursue our own
federal and republican principles, our attachment to our union
and representative government. Kindly separated by nature
and a wide ocean from the exterminating havoc of one quarter
of the globe; too high-minded to endure the degradations of
the others; possessing a chosen country, with room enough for
our descendants to the hundredth and thousandth generation;
entertaining a due sense of our equal right to the use of our
own faculties, to the acquisitions of our industry, to honor and
confidence from our fellow citizens, resulting not from birth
but from our actions and their sense of them; enlightened by
a benign religion, professed, indeed, and practiced in various
forms, yet all of them including honesty, truth, temperance,
gratitude, and the love of man; acknowledging and adoring an
overruling Providence, which by all its dispensations proves
that it delights in the happiness of man here and his greater
happiness hereafter; with all these blessings, what more is
necessary to make us a happy and prosperous people? Still one
thing more, fellow citizens— a wise and frugal government,
which shall restrain men from injuring one another, which shall
leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of
industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth
of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good gov-
ernment, and this is necessary to close the circle of our
felicities.
About to enter, fellow citizens, on the exercise of duties
TUBLIC TAPERS OF
which comprehend everything dear and valuable to you, it is
proper that you should understand what I deem the essential
principles of our government, and consequently those which
ought to shape its administration. I will compress them within
the narrowest compass they will bear, stating the general prin-
ciple, but not all its limitations. Equal and exact justice to all
men, of whatever state or persuasion, religious or political;
peace, commerce, and honest friendship, with all nations— en-
tangling alliances with none; the support of the state govern-
ments in all their rights, as the most competent administrations
for our domestic concerns and the surest bulwarks against anti-
republican tendencies; the preservation of the general govern-
ment in its whole constitutional vigor, as the sheet anchor of
our peace at home and safety abroad; a jealous care of the
right of election by the people— a mild and safe corrective of
abuses which are lopped by the sword of the revolution where
peaceable remedies are unprovided; absolute acquiescence in
the decisions of the majority— the vital principle of republics,
from which there is no appeal but to force, the vital principle
and immediate parent of despotism; a well-disciplined militia—
our best reliance in peace and for the first moments of war,
til] regulars may relieve them; the supremacy of the civil
over the military authority; economy in the public expense,
that labor may be lightly burdened ; the honest payment of our
debts and sacred preservation of the public faith; encourage-
ment of agriculture, and of commerce as its handmaid; the
diffusion of information and the arraignment of all abuses at
the bar of public reason; freedom of religion; freedom of the
press; freedom of person under the protection of the habeas
corpus; and trial by juries impartially selected —these prin-
ciples form the bright constellation which has gone before
us, and guided our steps through an age of revolution and re-
formation. The wisdom of our sages and the blood of our
heroes have been devoted to their attainment. They should be
the creed of our political faith— the text of civil instruction—
the touchstone by which to try the services of those we trust;
324
THOMAS J8FFSRSON
and should we wander from them in moments of error or alarm,
let us hasten to retrace our steps and to regain the road which
alone leads to peace, liberty, and safety.
I repair, then, fellow citizens, to the post you have assigned
me. With experience enough in subordinate offices to have seen
the difficulties of this, the greatest of all, I have learned to
expect that it will rarely fall to the lot of imperfect man to
retire from this station with the reputation and the favor which
bring him into it. Without pretensions to that high confidence
reposed in our first and great revolutionary character, whose
preeminent services had entitled him to the first place in his
country's love, and destined for him the fairest page in the
volume of faithful history, I ask so much confidence only as
may give firmness and effect to the legal administration of your
affairs. I shall often go wrong through defect of judgment.
When right, I shall often be thought wrong by those whose
positions will not command a view of the whole ground. I ask
your indulgence for my own errors, which will never be inten-
tional; and your support against the errors of others, who may
condemn what they would not if seen in all its parts. The ap-
probation implied by your suffrage is a consolation to me for
the past; and my future solicitude will be to retain the good
opinion of those who have bestowed it in advance, to conciliate
that of others by doing them all the good in my power, and to
be instrumental to the happiness and freedom of all.
Relying, then, on the patronage of your good will, I advance
with obedience to the work, ready to retire from it whenever
you become sensible how much better choice it is in your
power to make. And may that Infinite Power which rules the
destinies of the universe, lead our councils to what is best, and
give them a favorable issue for your peace and prosperity.
First Annual Message.— December 8, i8or
Fellow citizens of the Senate and House of Representatives:
It is a circumstance of sincere gratification to me that on
meeting the great council of our nation, I am able to announce
325
TUBLIC TAP8RS OF
to them, on the grounds of reasonable certainty, that the wars
and troubles which have for so many years afflicted our sister
nations have at length come to an end, and that the com-
munications of peace and commerce are once more opening
among them. While we devoutly return thanks to the beneficent
Being who has been pleased to breathe into them the spirit of
conciliation and forgiveness, we are bound with peculiar grati-
tude to be thankful to him that our own peace has been pre-
served through so perilous a season, and ourselves permitted
quietly to cultivate the earth and to practice and improve those
arts which tend to increase our comforts. The assurances,
indeed, of friendly disposition, received from all the powers
with whom we have principal relations, had inspired a con-
fidence that our peace with them would not have been dis-
turbed. But a cessation of the irregularities which had affected
the commerce of neutral nations, and of the irritations and
injuries produced by them, cannot but add to this confidence;
and strengthens, at the same time, the hope, that wrongs com-
mitted on unoffending friends, under a pressure of circum-
stances, will now be reviewed with candor, and will be
considered as founding just claims of retribution for the past
and new assurance for the future.
Among our Indian neighbors, also, a spirit of peace and
friendship generally prevails; and I am happy to inform you
that the continued efforts to introduce among them the imple-
ments and the practice of husbandry, and of the household
arts, have not been without success; that they are becoming
more and more sensible of the superiority of this dependence
for clothing and subsistence over the precarious resources of
hunting and fishing; and already we are able to announce, that
instead of that constant diminution of their numbers, produced
by their wars and their wants, some of them begin to experience
an increase of population.
To this state of general peace with which we have been
blessed, one only exception exists. Tripoli, the least considerable
of the Barbary States, had come forward with demands un-
326
THOMAS JBFFSRSON
founded either in right or in compact, and had permitted itself
to denounce war, on our failure to comply before a given day.
The style of the demand admitted but one answer. I sent a
small squadron of frigates into the Mediterranean, with as-
surances to that power of our sincere desire to remain in peace,
but with orders to protect our commerce against the threatened
attack. The measure was seasonable and salutary. The bey had
already declared war in form. His cruisers were out. Two had
arrived at Gibraltar. Our commerce in the Mediterranean was
blockaded, and that of the Atlantic in peril. The arrival of our
squadron dispelled the danger. One of the Tripolitan cruisers
having fallen in with, and engaged the small schooner Enter-
prise, commanded by Lieutenant Sterret, which had gone as a
tender to our larger vessels, was captured, after a heavy
slaughter of her men, without the loss of a single one on our
part. The bravery exhibited by our citizens on that element,
will, I trust, be a testimony to the world that it is not the want
of that virtue which makes us seek their peace, but a con-
scientious desire to direct the energies of our nation to the
multiplication of the human race, and not to its destruction.
Unauthorized by the constitution, without the sanction of
Congress, to go beyond the line of defence, the vessel being
disabled from committing further hostilities, was liberated with
its crew. The legislature will doubtless consider whether, by
authorizing measures of offence, also, they will place our force
on an equal footing with that of its adversaries. I communicate
all material information on this subject, that in the exercise
of the important function confided by the constitution to the
legislature exclusively, their judgment may form itself on a
knowledge and consideration of every circumstance of weight.
I lay before you the result of the census lately taken of out
inhabitants, to a conformity with which we are to reduce the
ensuing rates of representation and taxation. You will perceive
that the increase of numbers during the last ten years, pro-
ceeding in geometrical ratio, promises a duplication in little
327
TUBLIC TAPSRS OF
more than twenty-two years. We contemplate this rapid
growth, and the prospect it holds up to us, not with a view to
the injuries it may enable us to do to others in some future
day, but to the settlement of the extensive country still re-
maining vacant within our limits, to the multiplications of
men susceptible of happiness, educated in the love of order,
habituated to self-government, and valuing its blessings above
all price.
Other circumstances, combined with the increase of numbers,
have produced an augmentation of revenue arising from con-
sumption, in a ratio far beyond that of population alone, and
though the changes of foreign relations now taking place so
desirably for the world, may for a season affect this branch
of revenue, yet, weighing all probabilities of expense, as well
as of income, there is reasonable ground of confidence that we
may now safely dispense with all the internal taxes, compre-
hending excises, stamps, auctions, licenses, carriages, and re-
fined sugars, to which the postage on newspapers may be
added, to facilitate the progress of information, and that the
remaining sources of revenue will be sufficient to provide for
the support of government, to pay the interest on the public
debts, and to discharge the principals in shorter periods than
the laws or the general expectations had contemplated. War,
indeed, and untoward events, may change this prospect of
things, and call for expenses which the imposts could not meet;
but sound principles will not justify our taxing the industry of
our fellow citizens to accumulate treasure for wars to happen
we know not when, and which might not perhaps happen but
from the temptations offered by that treasure.
These views, however, of reducing our burdens, are formed
on the expectation that a sensible, and at the same time a
salutary reduction, may take place in our habitual expendi-
tures. For this purpose those of the civil government, the army,
and navy, will need revisal.
When we consider that this government is charged with the
external and mutual relations only of these states; that the
328
THOMAS JSFFeRSON
states themselves have principal care of our persons, our prop*
erty, and our reputation, constituting the great field of human
concerns, we may well doubt whether our organization is not
too complicated, too expensive; whether offices and officers
have not been multiplied unnecessarily, and sometimes injur-
iously to the service they were meant to promote. . . .
A statement has been formed by the secretary of war, on
mature consideration, of all the posts and stations where gan
risons will be expedient, and of the number of men requisite
for each garrison. The whole amount is considerably short of
the present military establishment. For the surplus no par-
ticular use can be pointed out. For defence against invasion,
their number is as nothing; nor is it conceived needful or safe
that a standing army should be kept up in time of peace for that
purpose. Uncertain as we must ever be of the particular point
in our circumference where an enemy may choose to invade
us, the only force which can be ready at every point and com-
petent to oppose them, is the body of neighboring citizens as
formed into a militia. On these, collected from the parts most
convenient, in numbers proportioned to the invading foe, it is
best to rely, not only to meet the first attack, but if it threatens
to be permanent, to maintain the defence until regulars may be
engaged to relieve them. These considerations render it Im-
portant that we should at every session continue to amend the
defects which from time to time show themselves in the laws
for regulating the militia, until they are sufficiently perfect.
Nor should we now or at any time separate, until we can say
we have done everything for the militia which we could do were
an enemy at our door.
The provisions of military stores on hands will be laid before
you, that you may judge of the additions still requisite.
With respect to the extent to which our naval preparations
should be carried, some difference of opinion may be expected
to appear; but just attention to the circumstances of every part
of the Union will doubtless reconcile all. A small force will
probably continue to be wanted for actual service in the
329
TUBLIC TAPSRS OF
Mediterranean. Whatever annual sum beyond that you may
think proper to appropriate to naval preparations, would per-
haps be better employed in providing those articles which may
be kept without waste or consumption, and be in readiness
when any exigence calls them into use. Progress has been
made, as will appear by papers now communicated, in pro-
viding materials for seventy-four gun ships as directed by
law. . . .
Agriculture, manufacture, commerce, and navigation, the
four pillars of our prosperity, are the most thriving when left
most free to individual enterprise. Protection from casual em-
barrassments, however, may sometimes be seasonably inter-
posed. If in the course of your observations or inquiries they
should appear to need any aid within the limits of our con-
stitutional powers, your sense of their importance is a sufficient
assurance they will occupy your attention. We cannot, indeed,
but all feel an anxious solicitude for the difficulties under which
our carrying trade will soon be placed. How far it can be re-
lieved, otherwise than by time, is a subject of important con-
sideration.
The judiciary system of the United States, and especially
that portion of it recently erected, will of course present itself
to the contemplation of Congress; and that they may be able
to judge of the proportion which the institution bears to the
business it has to perform, I have caused to be procured from
the several States, and now lay before Congress, an exact
statement of all the causes decided since the first establishment
of the courts, and of those which were depending when addi-
tional courts and judges were brought into their aid.
And while on the judiciary organization, it will be worthy
your consideration, whether the protection of the inestimable
institution of juries has been extended to all the cases involving
the security of our persons and property. Their impartial selec-
tion also being essential to their value, we ought further to con-
sider whether that is sufficiently secured in those States where
they are named by a marshal depending on executive will,
330
THOMAS
or designated by the court or by officers dependent on them.
I cannot omit recommending a revisal of the laws on the
subject of naturalization. Considering the ordinary chances of
human life, a denial of citizenship under a residence of four-
teen years is a denial to a great proportion of those who ask it,
and controls a policy pursued from their first settlement by
many of these States, and still believed of consequence to their
prosperity. And shall we refuse the unhappy fugitives from
distress that hospitality which the savages of the wilderness
extended to our fathers arriving in this land? Shall oppressed
humanity find no asylum on this globe? The constitution, in-
deed, has wisely provided that, for admission to certain offices
of important trust, a residence shall be required sufficient to
develop character and design. But might not the general char-
acter and capabilities of a citizen be safely communicated to
every one manifesting a bona fide purpose of embarking his
life and fortunes permanently with us? with restrictions, per-
haps, to guard against the fraudulent usurpation of our flag;
an abuse which brings so much embarrassment and loss on
the genuine citizen, and so much danger to the nation of being
involved in war, that no endeavor should be spared to detect
and suppress it.
These, fellow citizens, are the matters respecting the staU
of the nation, which I have thought of importance to be sub^
mitted to your consideration at this time. Some others of less
moment, or not yet ready for communication, will be the sub-
ject of separate messages. I am happy in this opportunity of
committing the arduous affairs of our government to the
collected wisdom of the Union. Nothing shall be wanting on
my part to inform, as far as in my power, the legislative judg-
ment, nor to carry that judgment into faithful execution. The
prudence and temperance of your discussions will promote,
within your own walls, that conciliation which so much be-
friends rational conclusion; and by its example will encourage
among our constituents that progress of opinion which is tend-
ing to unite them in object and in will. That all should be
331
TUBLIC TAPSRS OF
satisfied with any one order of things is r.ot to be expected, but
I indulge the pleasing persuasion that the great body of our
citizens will cordially concur in honest and disinterested efforts,
which have for their object to preserve the general and State
governments in their constitutional form and equilibrium; to
maintain peace abroad, and order and obedience to the laws at
home; to establish principles and practices of administration
favorable to the security of liberty and property, and to reduce
expenses to what is necessary for the useful purposes of
government.
Messrs. Nehemiah Dodge, Ephraim Robbins, and' Stephen
S. Nelson, A Committee of the Danbury Baptist Associa-
tion, in the State of Connecticut. Washington, January i,
1802
Gentlemen:— The affectionate sentiments of esteem and ap-
probation which you are so good as to express towards me, on
behalf of the Danbury Baptist Association, give me the highest
satisfaction. My duties dictate a faithful and zealous pursuit of
the interests of my constituents, and in proportion as they are
persuaded of my fidelity to those duties, the discharge of them
becomes more and more pleasing.
Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely
between man and his God, that he owes account to none other
for his faith or his worship, that the legislative powers of gov-
ernment reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate
with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people
which declared that their legislature should "make no law re-
specting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free
exercise thereof," thus building a wall of separation between
Church and State. Adhering to this expression of the supreme
will of the nation in behalf of the rights of conscience, I shal"
see with sincere satisfaction the progress of those sentiments
which tend to restore to man all his natural rights, convinced
he has no natural right in opposition to his social duties.
THOMAS JEFFERSON
I reciprocate your kind prayers for the protection and bless-
ing of the common Father and Creator of man, and tender you
for yourselves and your religious association, assurances of
my high respect and esteem.
Washington, January 7, 1802
Brothers and friends of the Miamis, Powtewatamies, and
Weeauks : —
I receive with great satisfaction the visit you have been so
kind as to make us at this place, and I thank the Great Spirit
who has conducted you to us in health and safety. It is well
that friends should sometimes meet, open their minds mutually,
and renew the chain of affection. Made by the same Great
Spirit, and living in the same land with our brothers, the red
men, we consider ourselves as of the same family; we wish to
live with them as one people, and to cherish their interests as
our own. The evils which of necessity encompass the life of
man are sufficiently numerous. Why should we add to them by
voluntarily distressing and destroying one another? Peace,
brothers, is better than war. Tn a long and bloody war, we lose
many friends, and gain nothing. Let us then live in peace and
friendship together, doing to each other all the good we can.
The wise and good on both sides desire this, and we must take
care that the foolish and wicked among us shall not prevent it.
On our part, we shall endeavor in all things to be just and gen-
erous towards you, and to aid you in meeting those difficulties
which a change of circumstances is bringing on. We shall, with
great pleasure, see your people become disposed to cultivate
the earth, to raise herds of the useful animals, and to spin and
weave, for their food and clothing. These resources are certain;
they will never disappoint you: while those of hunting may
fail, and expose your women and children to the miseries of
hunger and cold. We will with pleasure furnish you with imple-
ments for the most necessary arts, and with persons who may
instruct you how to make and use them.
333
TUBLIC TAPSRS OF
Second Annual Message.— December 15, 1802
To cultivate peace and maintain commerce and navigation in
all their lawful enterprises; to foster our fisheries and nurseries
of navigation and for the nurture of man, and protect the
manufactures adapted to our circumstances; to preserve the
faith of the nation by an exact discharge of its debts and con-
tracts, expend the public money with the same care and econ-
omy we would practise with our own, and impose on our citi-
zens no unnecessary burden; to keep in all things within the
pale of our constitutional powers, and cherish the federal union
as the only rock of safety— these, fellow citizens, are the land-
marks by which we are to guide ourselves in all our proceed-
ings. By continuing to make these our rule of action, we shall
endear to our countrymen the true principles of their constitu-
tion, and promote a union of sentiment and of action equally
auspicious to their happiness and safety. On my part, you may
count on a cordial concurrence in every measure for the public
good, and on all the information I possess which may enable
you to discharge to advantage the high functions with which
you are invested by your country.
Third Annual Message.— October //, 1803
To the Senate and House of Representatives of the United
States: —
In calling you together, fellow citizens, at an earlier day than
was contemplated b) the act of the last session of Congress, I
have not been insensible to the personal inconveniences neces-
sarily resulting from an unexpected change in your arrange-
ments. But matters of great public concernment have rendered
this call necessary, and the interest you feel in these will super-
sede in your minds all private considerations.
Congress witnessed, at their last session, the extraordinary
agitation produced in the public mind by the suspension of our
right of deposit at the port of New Orleans, no assignment of
another place having been made according to treaty. They were
334
3 J8FFSRSON
sensible that the continuance of that privation would be more
injurious to our nation than any consequences which could
flow from any mode of redress, but reposing just confidence in
the good faith of the government whose officer had committed
the wrong, friendly and reasonable representations were re-
sorted to, and the right of deposit was restored.
Previous, however, to this period, we had not been unaware
of the danger to which our peace would be perpetually exposed
while so important a key to the commerce of the western
county remained under foreign power. Difficulties, too, were
presenting themselves as to the navigation of other streams,
which, arising within our territories, pass through those ad-
jacent. Propositions had, therefore, been authorized for ob-
taining, on fair conditions, the sovereignty of New Orleans, and
of other possessions in that quarter interesting to our quiet,
to such extent as was deemed practicable; and the provisional
appropriation of two millions of dollars, to be applied and
accounted for by the president of the United States, intended
as part of the price, was considered as conveying the sanction
of Congress to the acquisition proposed. The enlightened Gov-
ernment of France saw, with just discernment, the importance
to both nations of such liberal arrangements as might best and
permanently promote the peace, friendship, and interests of
both; and the property and sovereignty of all Louisiana, which
had been restored to them, have on certain conditions been
transferred to the United States by instruments bearing date
the 30th of April last. When these shall have received the con-
stitutional sanction of the senate, they will without delay be
communicated to the representatives also, for the exercise of
their functions, as to those conditions which are within the
powers vested by the constitution in Congress. While the
property and sovereignty of the Mississippi and its waters se-
cure an independent outlet for the produce of the western
States, and an uncontrolled navigation through their whole
course, free from collision with other powers and the dangers
to our peace from that source, the fertility of the country, its
335
TUBLIC TAPBRS OF
climate and extent, promise in due season important aids to our
treasury, an ample provision for our posterity, and a wide-
spread field for the blessings of freedom and equal laws.
With the wisdom of Congress it will rest to take those ulte-
rior measures which may be necessary for the immediate occu-
pation and temporary government of the country; for its in-
corporation into our Union; for rendering the change of gov-
ernment a blessing to our newly-adopted brethren ; for securing
to them the rights of conscience and of property; for confirm-
ing to the Indian inhabitants their occupancy and self-govern-
ment, establishing friendly and commercial relations with them,
and for ascertaining the geography of the country acquired.
Such materials for your information, relative to its affairs in
general, as the short space of time has permitted me to collect,
will be laid before you when the subject shall be in a state for
your consideration.
Another important acquisition of territory has also been
made since the last session of Congress. The friendly tribe of
Kaskaskia Indians with which we have never had a difference,
reduced by the wars and wants of savage life to a few individ-
uals unable to defend themselves against the neighboring
tribes, has transferred its country to the United States, re-
serving only for its members what is sufficient to maintain
them in an agricultural way. The considerations stipulated are,
that we shall extend to them our patronage and protection, and
give them certain annual aids in money, in implements of
agriculture, and other articles of their choice. This country,
among the most fertile within our limits, extending along the
Mississippi from the mouth of the Illinois to and up the Ohio,
though not so necessary as a barrier since the acquisition of the
other bank, may yet be well worthy of being laid open to imme-
diate settlement, as its inhabitants may descend with rapidity
in support of the lower* country should future circumstances
expose that to foreign enterprize. As the stipulations in this
treaty also involve matters within the competence of both
houses only, it will be laid before Congress as soon as the senate
shall have advised its ratification.
336
THOMAS J8FF8RSON
With many other Indian tribes, improvements in agricul-
ture and household manufacture are advancing, and with all
our peace and friendship are established on grounds much
firmer than heretofore. The measure adopted of establishing
trading houses among them, and of furnishing them necessaries
in exchange for their commodities, at such moderated prices
as leave no gain, but cover us from loss, has the most concilia-
tory and useful effect upon them, and is that which will best
secure their peace and good will. . . .
Should the acquisition of Louisiana be constitutionally con-
firmed and carried into effect, a sum of nearly thirteen millions
of dollars will then be added to our public debt, most of which
is payable after fifteen years; before which term the present
existing debts will all be discharged by the established opera-
tion of the sinking fund. When we contemplate the ordinary
annual augmentation of imposts from increasing population
and wealth, the augmentation of the same revenue by its ex-
tension to the new acquisition, and the economies which may
still be introduced into our public expenditures, I cannot but
hope that Congress in reviewing their resources will find means
to meet the intermediate interests of this additional debt with-
out recurring to new taxes, and applying to this object only the
ordinary progression of our revenue. Its extraordinary increase
in times of foreign war will be the proper and sufficient fund
for any measures of safety or precaution which that state jf
things may render necessary in our neutral position. . . .
We have seen with sincere concern the flames of war lighted
up again in Europe, and nations with which we have the most
friendly and useful relations engaged in mutual destruction.
While we regret the miseries in which we see others involved,
let us bow with gratitude to that kind Providence which, in-
spiring with wisdom and moderation our late legislative coun-
cils while placed under the urgency of the greatest wrongs,
guarded us from hastily entering into the sanguinary contest,
and left us only to look on and to pity its ravages. These will
be heaviest on those immediately engaged. Yet the nations pur-
337
"PUBLIC TAPBRS OF
suing peace will not be exempt from all evil. In the course of
this conflict, let it be our endeavor, as it is our interest and
desire, to cultivate the friendship of the belligerent nations by
every act of justice and of incessant kindness; to receive their
armed vessels with hospitality from the distresses of the sea,
but to administer the means of annoyance to none; to establish
in our harbors such a police as may maintain law and order;
to restrain our citizens from embarking individually in a
war in which their country takes no part; to punish severely
those persons, citizen or alien, who shall usurp the cover of
our flag for vessels not entitled to it, infecting thereby with sus-
picion those of real Americans, and committing us into contro-
versies for the redress of wrongs not our own; to exact from
every nation the observance, toward our vessels and citizens,
of those principles and practices which all civilized people ac-
knowledge; to merit the character of a just nation, and main-
tain that of an independent one, preferring every consequence
to insult and habitual wrong. . . . Separated by a wide ocean
from the nations of Europe, and from the political interests
which entangle them together, with productions and wants
which render our commerce and friendship useful to them and
theirs to us, it cannot be the interest of any to assail us, nor
ours to disturb them. We should be most unwise, indeed, were
we to cast away the singular blessings of the position in which
nature has placed us, the opportunity she has endowed us with
of pursuing, at a distance from foreign contentions, the paths
of industry, peace, and happiness; of cultivating general friend-
ship, and of bringing collisions of interest to the umpirage of
reason rather than of force. . . .
Fourth Annual Message.— November 8, 1804
While noticing the irregularities committed on the ocean by
others, those on our own part should not be omitted nor left
unprovided for. Complaints have, been received that persons
residing within the United States have taken on themselves to
338
THOMAS JSFF8RSON
arm merchant vessels, and to force a commerce into certain
ports and countries in defiance of the laws of those countries.
That individuals should undertake to wage private war, inde-
pendently of the authority of their country, cannot be permitted
in a well-ordered society. Its tendency to produce aggression
on the laws and rights of other nations, and to endanger the
peace of our own is so obvious, that I doubt not you will adopt
measures for restraining it effectually in future. . . .
Second Inaugural Address.— March 4, 1805
Proceeding, fellow citizens, to that qualification which the
constitution requires, before my entrance on the charge again
conferred upon me, it is my duty to express the deep sense I
entertain of this new proof of confidence from my fellow citi-
zens at large, and the zeal with which it inspires me, so to
conduct myself as may best satisfy their just expectations.
On taking this station on a former occasion, I declared the
principles on which I believed it my duty to administer the af-
fairs of our commonwealth. My conscience tells me that I have,
on every occasion, acted up to that declaration, according to
its obvious import, and to the understanding of every candid
mind.
In the transaction of your foreign affairs, we have endeavored
to cultivate the friendship of all nations, and especially of those
with which we have the most important relations. We have done
them justice on all occasions, favored where favor was lawful
and cherished mutual interests and intercourse on fair and
equal terms. We are firmly convinced, and we act on that con-
viction, that with nations as with individuals, our interests
soundly calculated, will ever be found inseparable from our
moral duties; and history bears witness to the fact, that a just
nation is taken on its word, when recourse is had to armaments
and wars to bridle others.
At home, fellow citizens, you best know whether we have
done well or ill. The suppression of unnecessary offices, of use-
less establishments and expenses, enabled us to discontinue
339
TUBLIC TAPSRS OF
our internal taxes. These covering our land with officers, and
opening our doors to their intrusions, had already begun that
process of domiciliary vexation which, once entered, is scarcely
to be restrained from reaching successively every article of
produce and property. If among these taxes some minor ones fell
which had not been inconvenient, it was because their amount
would not have paid the officers who collected them, and be-
cause, if they had any merit, the state authorities might adopt
them, instead of others less approved.
The remaining revenue on the consumption of foreign ar-
ticles, is paid cheerfully by those who can afford to add foreign
luxuries to domestic comforts, being collected on our seaboards
and frontiers only, and incorporated with the transactions of
our mercantile citizens, it may be the pleasure and pride of an
American to ask, what farmer, what mechanic, what laborer,
ever sees a taxgatherer of the United States? These contribu-
tions enable us to support the current expenses of the govern-
ment, to fulfill contracts with foreign nations, to extinguish
the native right of soil within our limits, to extend those limits,
and to apply such a surplus to our public debts, as places at a
short day their final redemption, and that redemption once
effected, the revenue thereby liberated may, by a just reparti-
tion among the states, and a corresponding amendment of the
constitution, be applied, in time of peacey to rivers, canals,
roads, arts, manufactures, education, and other great objects
within each state. In time of war, if injustice, by ourselves or
others, must sometimes produce war, increased as the same
revenue will be increased by population and consumption, and
aided by other resources reserved for that crisis, it may meet
within the year all the expenses of the year, without encroach-
ing on the rights of future generations, by burdening them with
the debts of the past. War will then be but a suspension of use-
ful works, and a return to a state of peace, a return to the prog-
ress of improvement.
I have said, fellow citizens, that {he income reserved had en-
*Hed us to extend our limits; but that extension may possibly
340
THOMAS J8FFSRSON
pay for itself before we are called on, and in the meantime, may
keep down the accruing interest; in all events, it will repay the
advances we ha\ e made. I know that the acquisition of Louisi-
ana has been disapproved by some, from a candid apprehen-
sion that the enlargement of our territory would endanger its
union. But who can limit the extent to which the federative
principle may operate effectively? The larger our association,
the less will it be shaken by local passions; and in any view, is
it not bettei that the opposite bank of the Mississippi should
be settled by our own brethren and children, than by strangers
of another family? With which shall we be most likely to live
in harmony and friendly intercourse?
In matters of religion, I have considered that its free exercise
is placed by the constitution independent of the powers of the
general government. I have therefore undertaken, on no occa-
sion, to prescribe the religious exercises suited to it; but have
left them, as the constitution found them, under the direction
and discipline of State or Church authorities acknowledged by
the several religious societies.
The aboriginal inhabitants of these countries I have regarded
with the commiseration their history inspires. Endowed with
the faculties and the rights of men, breathing an ardent love of
liberty and independence, and occupying a country which left
them no desire but to be undisturbed, the stream of overflowing
population from other regions directed itself on these shores;
without power to divert, or habits to contend against, they
have been overwhelmed by the current, or driven before it;
now reduced within limits too narrow for the hunter's state;
humanity enjoins us to teach them agriculture and the domestic
arts; to encourage them to that industry which alone can en-
able them to maintain their place in existence, and to prepare
them in time for that state of society, which to bodily com-
forts adds the improvement of the mind ana morals. We have
therefore liberally furnished them with the implements of hus-
bandry and household use; we have placed among them in-
structors in the arts of first necessity; and they are covered
TUBLIC TAPSRS OF
with the aegis of the law against aggressors from among our-
selves.
But the endeavors to enlighten them on the fate which
awaits their present course of life, to induce them to exercise
their reason, follow its dictates, and change their pursuits with
the change of circumstances, have powerful obstacles to en-
counter; they are combated by the habits of their bodies, prej-
udice of their minds, ignorance, pride, and the influence of
interested and crafty individuals among them, who feel them-
selves something in the present order of things, and fear to be-
come nothing in any other. These persons inculcate a sancti-
monious reverence for the customs of their ancestors; that
whatsoever they did, must be done through all time; that rea-
son is a false guide, and to advance under its counsel, in their
physical, moral or political condition, is perilous innovation;
that their duty is to remain as their Creator made them, ig-
norance being safety, and knowledge full of danger; in short,
my friends, among them is seen the action and counteraction of
good sense and bigotry; they, too, have their anti-philosophers,
who find an interest in keeping things in their present state,
who dread reformation, and exert all their faculties to main-
tain the ascendency of habit over the duty of improving our
reason, and obeying its mandates.
In giving these outlines, I do not mean, fellow citizens, to
arrogate to myself the merit of the measures; that is due, in
the first place, to the reflecting character of our citizens at
large, who, by the weight of public opinion, influence and
strengthen the public measures; it is due to the sound discre-
tion with which they select from among themselves those to
whom they confide the legislative duties; it is due to the zeal
and wisdom of the characters thus selected, who lay the founda-
tions of public happiness in wholesome laws, the execution of
which alone remains for others; and it is due to the able and
faithful auxiliaries, whose patriotism has associated with me in
the executive functions.
During this course of administration, and in order to dis-
342
THOMAS
turb it, the artillery of the press has been levelled against us,
charged with whatsoever its licentiousness could devise or dare,
These abuses of an institution so important to freedom and
science, are deeply to be regretted, inasmuch as they tend to
lessen its usefulness, and to sap its safety; they might, indeed,
have been corrected by the wholesome punishments reserved
and provided by the laws of the several States against false-
hood and defamation; but public duties more urgent press on
the time of public servants, and the offenders have therefore
been left to find their punishment in the public indignation.
Nor was it uninteresting to the world, that an experiment
should be^ fairly and fully made, whether freedom of discussion,
unaided by power, is not sufficient for the propagation and pro-
tection of truth— whether a government, conducting itself in
the true spirit of its constitution, with zeal and purity, and do-
ing no act which it would be unwilling the whole world should
witness, can be written down by falsehood and defamation. The
experiment has been tried; you have witnessed the scene; our
fellow citizens have looked on, cool and collected; they saw the
latent source from which these outrages proceeded; they gath-
ered around their public functionaries, and when the constitu-
tion called them to the decision by suffrage, they pronounced
their verdict, honorable to those who had served them, and
consolatory to the friend of man, who believes he may be in-
trusted with his own affairs.
No inference is here intended, that the laws, provided by
the State against false and defamatory publications, should not
be enforced; he who has time, renders a service to public
morals and public tranquillity, in reforming these abuses by
the salutary coercions of the law; but the experiment is noted,
to prove that, since truth and reason have maintained their
ground against false opinions in league with false facts, the
press, confined to truth, needs no other legal restraint; the
public judgment will correct false reasonings and opinions, on
a full hearing of all parties; and no other definite line can be
drawn between the inestimable liberty of the press and its de-
343
TUBLIC TAP8RS OF
moralizing licentiousness. If there be still improprieties which
this rule would not restrain, its supplement must be sought in
the censorship of public opinion.
Contemplating the union of sentiment now manifested so
generally, as auguring harmony and happiness to our future
course, I offer to our country sincere congratulations. With
those, too, not yet rallied to the same point, the disposition to
do so is gaining strength; facts are piercing through the veil
drawn over them; and our doubting brethren will at length see,
that the mass of their fellow citizens, with whom they cannot
yet resolve to act, as to principles and measures, think as they
think, and desire what they desire; that our wish, as well as
theirs, is, that the public efforts may be directed honestly to
the public good, that peace be cultivated, civil and religious
liberty unassailed, law and order preserved, equality of rights
maintained, and that state of property, equal or unequal, which
results to every man from his own industry, or that of his fa-
thers. When satisfied of these views, it is not in human nature
that they should not approve and support them; in the mean-
time, let us cherish them with patient affection; let us do them
justice, and more than justice, in all competitions of interest;
and we need not doubt that truth, reason, and their own inter-
ests, will at length prevail, will gather them into the fold of
their country, and will complete their entire union of opinion,
which gives to a nation the blessing of harmony, and the bene-
fit of all its strength.
I shall now enter on the duties to which my fellow citizens
have again called me, and shall proceed in the spirit of those
principles which they have approved. I fear not that any mo-
tives of interest may lead me astray; I am sensible of no pas-
sion which could seduce me knowingly from the path of justice;
but the weakness of human nature, and the limits of my own
understanding, will produce errors of judgment sometimes in-
jurious to your interests. I shall need, therefore, all the indul-
gence I have heretofore experienced —the want of it will cer-
tainly not lessen with increasing years. I shall need, too, the
344
THOMAS JEFFERSON
favor of that Being in whose hands we are, who led our fore-
fathers, as Israel of old, from their native land, and planted
them in a country flowing with all the necessaries and com-
forts of life; who has covered our infancy with his providence,
and our riper years with his wisdom and power; and to whose
goodness I ask you to join with me in supplications, that he
will so enlighten the minds of your servants, guide their coun-
cils, and prosper their measures, that whatsoever they do, shall
result in your good, and shall secure to you the peace, friend-
ship, and approbation of all nations.
To the General Assembly of North Carolina. Washington,
January 10, 1808
The wrongs our country has suffered, fellow citizens, by vio-
lations of those moral rules which the Author of our nature has
implanted in man as the law of his nature, to govern him in his
associated, as well as individual character, have been such as
justly to excite the sensibilities you express, and a deep abhor-
rence at indications threatening a substitution of power for
right in the intercourse between nations. Not less worthy of
your indignation have been the machinations of parricides
who have endeavored to bring into danger the union of these
States, and to subvert, for the purposes of inordinate ambition,
a government founded in the will of its citizens, and directed
to no object but their happiness.
I learn, with the liveliest sentiments of gratitude and re-
spect, your approbation of my conduct, in the various charges
which my country has been pleased to confide to me at differ-
ent times; and especially that the administration of our public
affairs, since my accession to the chief magistracy, has been so
far satisfactory, that my continuance in that office after its
present term, would be acceptable to you. But, that I should
lay down my charge at a proper period, is as much a duty as
to have borne it faithfully. If some termination to the services
of the chief magistrate be not fixed by the Constitution, or
supplied by practice, his office, nominally for years, will in
345
TUBL1C TAP8RS OF
fact become for life ; and history shows how easily that degen-
erates into an inheritance. Believing that a representative gov-
ernment, responsible at short periods of election, is that which
produces the greatest sum of happiness to mankind, I feel it a
duty to do no act which shall essentially impair that principle;
and I should unwillingly be the person who, disregarding the
sound precedent set by an illustrious predecessor, should fur-
nish the first example of prolongation beyond the second term
of office.
Truth also obliges me to add, that I am sensible of that de-
cline which advancing years bring on; and feeling their physi-
cal, I ought not to doubt their mental effect. Happy if I am the
first to perceive and obey this admonition of nature, and to
solicit a retreat from cares too great for the wearied faculties
of age.
Declining a re-election on grounds which cannot but be ap-
proved, it will be the great comfort of my future days, and the
satisfactory reward of a service of forty years, to carry into
retirement such testimonies as you have been pleased to give,
of the approbation and good will of my fellow citizens gen-
erally. And I supplicate the Being in whose hands we all are, to
preserve our county in freedom and independence, and to be-
stow on yourselves the blessings of His favor.
To the Society of Tammany, or Columbian Order, No. i,
of the City of New York. Washington, February 29, 1808
I have received your address, fellow citizens, and, thankful
for the expressions so personally gratifying to myself, I con-
template with high satisfaction the ardent spirit it breathes of
love to our country, and of devotion to its liberty and inde-
pendence. The crisis in which it is placed, cannot but be unwel-
come to those who love peace, yet spurn at a tame submission
to wrong. So fortunately remote from the theatre of European
contests, and carefully avoiding to implicate ourselves in them,
we had a right to hope for an exemption from the calamities
346
THOMAS JEFFERSON
which have afflicted the contending nations, and to be per-
mitted unoffendingly to pursue paths of industry and peace.
But the ocean, which, like the air, is the common birthright
of mankind, is arbitrarily wrested from us, and maxims con-
secrated by time, by usage, ana by an universal sense of right^
are trampled on by superior force. To give time for this de-
moralizing tempest to pass over, one measure only remained
which might cover our beloved country from its overwhelming
fury: an appeal to the deliberate understanding of our fellow
citizens in a cessation of all intercourse with the belligerent
nations, until it can be resumed under the protection of a re-
turning sense of the moral obligations which constitute a law
for nations as well as individuals. There can be no question, in
a mind truly American, whether it is best to send our citizens
and property into certain captivity, and then wage war for
their recovery, or to keep them at home, and to turn seriously
to that policy which plants the manufacturer and the husband-
man side by side, and establishes at the door of every one that
exchange of mutual labors and comforts, which we have hith-
erto sought in distant regions, and under perpetual risks of
broils with them.
Eighth Annual Message.— November 8, 1808
Considering the extraordinary character of the times in
which we live, our attention should unremittingly be fixed on
the safety of our country. For a people who are free, and who
mean to remain so, a well-organized and armed militia is their
best security. It is, therefore, incumbent on us, at every meet-
ing, to revise the condition of the militia, and to ask ourselves
if it is prepared to repel a powerful enemy at every point of our
territories exposed to invasion. Some of the States have paid a
laudable attention to this object; but every degree of neglect
is to be found among others. Congress alone have power to
produce a uniform state of preparation in this great organ of
347
TUBLIC TAPSRS
defence; the interests which they so deeply feel in their own
and their country's security will present this as among the most
important objects of their deliberation. . . .
The suspension of our foreign commerce, produced by the
injustice of the belligerent powers, and the consequent losses
and sacrifices of our citizens, are subjects of just concern. The
situation into which we have thus been forced, has impelled us
to apply a portion of our industry and capital to internal manu-
factures and improvements. The extent of this conversion is
daily increasing, and little doubt remains that the establish-
ments formed and forming will— under the auspices of cheaper
materials and subsistence, the freedom of labor from taxation
with us, and of protecting duties and prohibitions— become per-
manent. . . .
Availing myself of this the last occasion which will occur of
addressing the two houses of the legislature at their meeting, I
cannot omit the expression of my sincere gratitude for the re-
peated proofs of confidence manifested to me by themselves
and their predecessors since my call to the administration,
and the many indulgences experienced at their hands. The same
grateful acknowledgments are due to my fellow citizens gen-
erally, whose support has been my great encouragement under
all embarrassments. In the transaction of their business I can-
not have escaped error. It is incident to our imperfect nature.
But I may say with truth, my errors have been of the un-
derstanding, not of intention; and that the advancement of
their rights and interests has been the constant motive for
every measure. On these considerations I solicit their indulgence.
Looking forward with anxiety to their future destinies, I trust
that, in their steady character unshaken by difficulties, in their
love of liberty, obedience to law, and support of the public au-
thorities, I see a sure guaranty of the permanence of our repub-
lic; and retiring from the charge of their affairs, I carry with
me the consolation of a firm persuasion that Heaven has in
store for our beloved country long ages to come of prosperity
and happiness.
LETTERS
INTRODUCTION
REFLECTING upon bis long and active life, Jefferson ob-
served "the letters of a person .... form the only full and
genuine journal of his life." This statement is particularly true
of Jefferson himself, who wrote a staggering number of letters,
probably between fifty and seventy-five thousand. Although
many of these have been published, many unpublished ones are
in public or private collections. These letters, with their phe-
nomenal range of interest, not only re-create the most versa-
Ole American of his time, but the age in which he lived.
The majority of these letters are taken from the twenty-
volume Memorial Edition, which modernizes spelling and punc-
tuation. Letters from manuscript collections, published here
for the first time, or from other printed sources, retain, in
most cases, Jefferson's spelling and punctuation. The Memorial
Edition contains frequent textual inaccuracies. Only such in-
accuracies as impede the reader's understanding have been
cited and corrected in the following selections.
LETTERS
TO JOHN HARVIE l
ShadweU, Jan. 14, i?6o>
SIR,— I was at Colo. Peter Randolph's about a Fort-
night ago, & my Schooling falling into Discourse, he said he
thought it would be to my Advantage to go to the College,2
& was desirous I should go, as indeed I am myself for several
Reasons. In the first place as long as I stay at the Mountains
the loss of one fourth of my Time is inevitable, by Company's
coming here & detaining me from School. And likewise my Ab-
sence will in a great measure put a Stop to so much Company,
& by that Means lessen the Expences of the Estate in Hous'e-
Keeping. And on the other Hand by going to the College I
shall get a more universal Acquaintance, which may hereafter
be serviceable to me; & I suppose I can pursue my studies in
the Greek & Latin as well there as here, & likewise learn some-
thing of the Mathematics. I shall be glad of your opinion.
TO JOHN PAGE 8
Fair field, December 25, 1762
DEAR PAGE,— This very day, to others the day of great-
est mirth and jollity, sees me overwhelmed with more and
greater misfortunes than have befallen a descendant of Adam
for these thousand years past, I am sure; and perhaps, after
1. John Harvie, after Peter Jefferson's death, was one of Thomas
Jefferson's guardians.
2. William and Mary, Williamsburg, Virginia.
3. John Page, later to become governor of Virginia, was Jefferson's
closest friend at William and Mary.
351
OF
excepting Job, since the creation of the world. I think his mis-
fortunes were somewhat greater than mine; for, although we
may be pretty nearly on a level in other respects, yet, I thank
my God, I have the advantage of brother Job in this, that
Satan has not as yet put forth his hand to load me with bodily
afflictions. You must know, dear Page, that I am now in a
house surrounded with enemies, who take counsel together
against my soul; and when I lay me down to rest, they say
among themselves, come let us destroy him. I am sure if there
is such a thing as a Devil in this world, he must have been here
last night, and have had some hand in contriving what hap-
pened to me. Do you think the cursed rats (at his instigation,
I suppose) did not eat up my pocket-book, which was in my
pocket, within a foot of my head? And not contented with
plenty for the present, they carried away my jemmy-worked
silk garters, and half a dozen new minuets I had just got, to
serve, I suppose, as provision for the winter. But of this I
should not have accused the Devil (because, you know rats
will be rats, and hunger, without the addition of his instiga-
tions, might have urged them to do this), if something worse,
and from a different quarter, had not happened. You know it
rained last night, or if you do not know it, I am sure I do.
When I went to bed, I laid my watch in the usual place, and
going to take her up after I arose this morning, I found her in
the same place, it's true, but Quantum mutatus ab illo! a all
afloat in water, let in at a leak in the roof of the house, and as
silent and still as the rats that had eaten my pocket-book. Now,
you know, if chance had had anything to do in this matter,
there were a thousand other spots where it might have chanced
to leak as well as at this one, which was perpendicularly over
my watch. But I'll tell you, it's my opinion that the Devil came
and bored the hole over it on purpose. Well, as I was saying,
my poor watch had lost her speech. I should not have cared
much for this, but something worse attended it; the subtle par-
ticles of the water with which the fcase was filled, had, by their
i. "How changed from what it was!"
352
THOMAS J8FF8RSON
penetration, so overcome the cohesion of the particles of the
paper, of which my dear picture and watch-paper were com-
posed,1 that, in attempting to take them out to dry them, good
God! Mem horret rejerre! 2 My cursed fingers gave them such
a rent, as I fear I never shall get over. This, cried I, was the
last stroke Satan had in reserve for me; he knew I cared not for
anything else he could do to me, and was determined to try his
last most fatal expedient. "Multis fortunce vulneribus percussus,
huic uni me imparem scnsi, ct pcnitus succubui!" 3 I would
have cried bitterly, but I thought it beneath the dignity of a
man. . . . However, whatever misfortunes may attend the
picture or lover, my hearty prayers shall be, that all the health
and happiness which Heaven can send may be the portion
of the original, and that so much goodness may ever meet
with what may be most agreeable in this world, as I am sure
it must be in the next. And now, although the picture be de-
faced, there is so lively an image of her imprinted in my mind,
that I shall think of her too often, I fear, for my peace of
mind; and too often, I am sure, to get through old Coke this
winter; for God knows I have not seen him since I packed him
up in my trunk in Williamsburg. Well, Page, I do wish the
Devil had old Coke, for 1 am sure I never was so tired of an
old dull scoundrel in my life. What! are there so few inquie-
tudes tacked to this momentary life of ours, that we must need
be loading ourselves with a thousand more? Or, as brother Job
says (who, by-the-bye, I think began to whine a little under
his afflictions), "Are not my days few? Cease then, that I may
take comfort a little before I go whence I shall not return, even
to the land of darkness, and the shadow of death." But the
old fellows say we must read to gain knowledge, and gain
knowledge to make us happy and admired. Mere jargon! Is
there any such thing as happiness in this world? No. And as
1. This refers to a portrait of Rebecca Burwell whose brother was a
classmate of Jefferson at William and Mary.
2. "The mind shudders to recall it."
3. "Pierced through by the many wounds of fate, I fek myself un-
equal to' this one and succumbed utterly!"
353
OF
for admiration, I am sure the man who powders most, perfumes
most, embroiders most, and talks most nonsense, is most ad-
mired. Though to be candid, there are some who have too much
good sense to esteem such monkey-like animals as these, in
whose formation, as the saying is, the tailors and barbers go
halves with God Almighty; and since these are the only per-
sons whose esteem is worth a wish, I do not know but that,
upon the whole, the advice of these old fellows may be worth
following.
You cannot conceive the satisfaction it would give me to
have a letter from you. Write me very circumstantially every-
thing which happened at the wedding. Was she there? because,
if she was, I ought to have been at the Devil for not being
there too. If there is any news stirring in town or country, such
as deaths, courtships, or marriages, in the circle of my ac-
quaintance, let me know it. Remember me affectionately to all
the young ladies of my acquaintance, particularly the Miss
Burwells, and Miss Potters, and tell them that though that
heavy earthly part of me, my body, be absent, the better half
of me, my soul, is ever with them, and that my best wishes
shall ever attend them. Tell Miss Alice Corbin that I verily
believe the rats knew I was to win a pair of garters from her,
or they never would have been so cruel as to carry mine away.
This very consideration makes me so sure of the bet, that I
shall ask everybody I see from that part of the world what
pretty gentleman is making his addresses to her. I would fain
ask the favor of Miss Becca Burwell to give me another watch-
paper of her own cutting, which I should esteem much more,
though it were a plain round one, than the nicest in the world
cut by other hands; however, I am afraid she would think this
presumption, after my suffering the other to get spoiled. If you
think you can excuse me to her for this, I should be glad if you
would ask her. Tell Miss Sukey Potter that I heard, just be-
fore I came out of town, that she was offended with me about
something, what it is I do not know; but this I know, that I
never was guilty of the least disrespect to her in my life, either
354
THOMAS
in word or deed; as far from it as it has been possible for one
to be. I suppose when we meet next, she will be endeavoring
to repay an imaginary affront with a real one ; but she may save
herself the trouble, for nothing that she can say or do to me
shall ever lessen her in my esteem, and I am determined al-
ways to look upon her as the same honest-hearted, good-
humored, agreeable lady I ever did. Tell— tell— in short, tell
them all ten thousand things more than either you or I can now
or ever shall think of as long as we live.
My mind has been so taken up with thinking of my ac-
quaintances, that, till this moment, I almost imagined myself
in Williamsburg, talking to you in our old unreserved way;
and never observed, till I turned over the leaf, to what an im-
moderate size I had swelled my letter; however, that I may not
tire your patience by further additions, I will make but this
one more, that I am sincerely and affectionately,
Dear Page, your friend and servant.
P. S. I am now within an easy day's ride of Shadwell, whither
I shall proceed in two or three days.
TO JOHN PAGE
Shadwell, July isth, 1763
.... The most fortunate of us, in our journey through
life, frequently meet with calamities and misfortunes which may
greatly afflict us; and, to fortify our minds against the attacks
of these calamities and misfortunes, should be one of the prin-
cipal studies and endeavors of our lives. The only method of
doing this is to assume a perfect resignation to the Divine will,
to consider that whatever does happen, must happen; and that,
by our uneasiness, we cannot prevent the blow before it does
fall, but we may add to its force after it has fallen. These con-
siderations, and others such as these, may enable us in some
measure to surmount the difficulties thrown in our way; to bear
up with a tolerable degree of patience under this burthen of
355
OF
life; and to proceed with a pious and unshaken resignation, till
we arrive at our journey's end, when we may deliver up our
trust into the hands of him who gave it, and receive such re-
ward as to him shall seem proportioned to our merit. Such, dear
Page, will be the language of the man who considers his situa-
tion in this life, and such should be the language of every man
who would wish to render that situation as easy as the nature
of it will admit. Few things will disturb him at all: nothing
will disturb him much. . . .
TO JOHN PAGE
Williams burg, October 7, 1763
DEAR PAGE,— In the most melancholy fit that ever any
poor soul was, I sit down to write to you. Last night, as merry
as agreeable company and dancing with Belinda in the Apollo
could make me, I never could have thought the succeeding
sun would have seen me so wretched as I now am! I was pre-
pared to say a great deal: I had dressed up, in my own mind,
such thoughts as occurred to me, in as moving a language as 1
knew how, and expected to have performed in a tolerably cred-
itable manner. But, good God! When I had an opportunity of
venting them, a few broken sentences, uttered in great disorder,
and interrupted with pauses of uncommon length, were the toe
visible marks of my strange confusion! The whole confab I will
tell you, word for word, if I can, when I see you, which God
send may be soon. Affairs at W. and M. are in the greatest
confusion. Walker, M'Clurg and Wat Jones are expelled pro
tempore, or, as Horrox softens it, rusticated for a month. Lewis
Burwell, Warner Lewis, and one Thompson, have fled to escape
flagellation. I should have excepted Warner Lewis, who came
off of his own accord. Jack Walker leaves town on Monday.
The court is now at hand, which I must attend constantly, so
that unless you come to town, there is little probability of my
meeting with you anywhere else. For God sake come. I am, dear
Page, your sincere friend.
356
THOMAS jeFFSRSON
TO ROBERT SKIPWITH l
Monticello, Aug, 3, 1777
.... A little attention however to the nature of the
human mind evinces that the entertainments of fiction are use-
ful as well as pleasant. That they are pleasant when well written
every person feels who reads. But wherein is its utility asks the
reverend sage, big with the notion that nothing can be useful
but the learned lumber of Greek and Roman reading with
which his head is stored?
I answer, everything is useful which contributes to fix in the
principles and practices of virtue. When any original act ot
charity or of gratitude, for instance, is presented either to oui
sight or imagination, we are deeply impressed with its beauty
and feel a strong desire in ourselves of doing charitable and
grateful acts also. On the contrary when we see or read of any
atrocious deed, we are disgusted with its deformity, and con-
ceive an abhorrence of vice. Now every emotion of this kind is
an exercise of our virtuous dispositions, and dispositions of the
mind, like limbs of the body acquire strength by exercise. But
exercise produces habit, and in the instance of which we speafc
the exercise being of the moral feelings produces a habit of
thinking and acting virtuously. We never reflect whether the
story we read be truth or fiction. If the painting be lively, ana
a tolerable picture of nature, we are thrown into a reverie, from
which if we awaken it is the fault of the writer. I appeal to
every reader of feeling and sentiment whether the fictitious
murder of Duncan by Macbeth in Shakespeare does not excite
in him as great a horror of villainy, as the real one of Henry IV,
by Ravaillac as related by Davila? And whether the fidelity
of Nelson and generosity of Blandford in Marmontel do not
dilate his breast and elevate his sentiments as much as any
similar incident which real history can furnish? Does he not in
i. Robert Skipwith was a member of a well-to-do Virginia family
and an in-law of Jefferson.
357
L8TT8RS OF
fact feel himself a better man while reading them, and privately
covenant to copy the fair example? We neither know nor care
whether Lawrence Sterne really went to France, whether he
was there accosted by the Franciscan, at first rebuked him un-
kindly, and then gave him a peace offering: or whether the
whole be not fiction. In either case we equally are sorrowful at
the rebuke, and secretly resolve we will never do so: we are
pleased with the subsequent atonement, and view with emula-
tion a soul candidly acknowledging its fault and making a just
reparation. Considering history as a moral exercise, her lessons
would be too infrequent if confined to real life. Of those re-
corded by historians few incidents have been attended with
such circumstances as to excite in any high degree this sym-
pathetic emotion of virtue. We are, therefore, wisely framed to
be as warmly interested for a fictitious as for a real personage.
The field of imagination is thus laid open to our use and lessons
may be formed to illustrate and carry home to the heart every
moral rule of life. Thus a lively and lasting sense of filial duty
is more effectually impressed on the mind of a son or daughter
by reading King Lear, than by all the dry volumes of ethics,
and divinity that ever were written. This is my idea of well-
written Romance, of Tragedy, Comedy and f^pic poetry. . . .
TO DR. WILLIAM SMALL 1
May 7, 7775
DEAR SIR, —Within this week we have received the un-
happy news of an action of considerable magnitude, between
the King's troops and our brethren of Boston, in which it is
said five hundred of the former, with the Earl of Percy, are
slain. That such an action has occurred, is undoubted, though
perhaps the circumstances may not have reached us with truth.
This accident has cut off our last hope of reconciliation, and
a phrensy of revenge seems to have seized all ranks of people.
i. Dr. William Small, Scottish professor at William and Mary, was
the greatest intellectual influence on Jefferson during his college days.
358
THOMAS JEFFERSON
It is a lamentable circumstance, that the only mediatory power,
acknowledged by both parties, instead of leading to a recon-
ciliation his divided people, should pursue the incendiary pur-
pose of still blowing up the flames, as we find him constantly
doing, in every speech and public declaration. This may, per-
haps, be intended to intimidate into acquiescence, but the effect
has been most unfortunately otherwise. A little knowledge of
human nature, and attention to its ordinary workings, might
have foreseen that the spirits of the people here were in a state,
in which they were more likely to be provoked, than frightened,
by haughty deportment. And to fill up the measure of irritation,
a proscription of individuals has been substituted in the room
of just trial. Can it be believed, that a grateful people will suf-
fer those to be consigned to execution, whose sole crime has
been the developing and asserting their rights? Had the Parlia-
ment possessed the power of reflection, they would have avoided
a measure as impotent, as it was inflammatory. When I saw
Lord Chatham's bill, I entertained high hope that a reconcilia-
tion could have been brought about. The difference between his
terms, and those offered by our Congress, might have been ac-
commodated, if entered on, by both parties, with a disposition
to accommodate. But the dignity of Parliament, it seems, can
brook no opposition to its power. Strange, that a set of men,
who have made sale of their virtue to the Minister, should yet
talk of retaining dignity! But I am getting into politics, though
I sat down only to ask your acceptance of the wine, and ex-
press my constant wishes for your happiness.
TO JOHN RANDOLPH, ESQ. 1
Philadelphia, November 29, 1775
.... This day, certain intelligence has reached us, that
our General, Montgomery, is received into Montreal; and we
i. At the beginning of hostilities between the Colonies and England,
this friend and kinsman of Thomas Jefferson sided with the Crown and
forsook Virginia to live in England. (Not to be confused with John
Randolph of Roanoke.)
359
LSTTSRS OF
expect, every hour, to be informed that Quebec has opened its
arms to Colonel Arnold, who, with eleven hundred men, was
sent from Boston up the Kennebec, and down the Chaudiere
river to that place. He expected to be there early this month.
Montreal acceded to us on the i3th, and Carleton set out, with
the shattered remains of his little army, for Quebec, where we
hope he will be taken up by Arnold. In a short time, we have
reason to hope, the delegates of Canada will join us in Con-
gress, and complete the American union, as far as we wish to
have it completed. We hear that one of the British transports
has arrived at Boston; the rest are beating off the coast, in
very bad weather. You will have heard, before this reaches you,
that Lord Dunmore has commenced hostilities in Virginia. That
people bore with everything, till he attempted to burn the
town of Hampton. They opposed and repelled him, with con-
siderable loss on his side, and none on ours. It has raised our
countrymen into a perfect phrensy. It is an immense misfor-
tune, to the whole empire, to have a King of such a disposition
at such a time. We are told, and everything proves it true, that
he is the bitterest enemy we have. His Minister is able, and
that satisfies me that ignorance or wickedness, somewhere, con-
trols him. In an earlier part of this contest, our petitions told
him, that from our King there was but one appeal. The ad-
monition was despised, and that appeal forced on us. To undo
his empire, he has but one truth more to learn; that, after
colonies have drawn the sword, there is but one step more they
can take. That step is now pressed upon us, by the measures
adopted; as if they were afraid we would not take it. Believe
me, dear Sir, there is not in the British empire a man who more
cordially loves a union with Great Britain than I do. But by
the God that made me, I will cease to exist before I yield to a
connection on such terms as the British Parliament propose;
and in this, I think I speak the sentiments of America. We want
neither inducement nor power, to declare and assert a separa-
tion. It is will, alone, which is wanting, and that is growing
apace under the fostering hand of our King. One bloody cam-
360
THOMAS JSFFSRSON
paign will probably decide, everlastingly, our future course;
and I am sorry to find a bloody campaign is decided on. If our
winds and waters should not combine to rescue their shores
from slavery, and General Howe's reinforcements should ar-
rive in safety, we have hopes he will be inspirited to come out
of Boston and take another drubbing; and we must drub him
soundly, before the sceptred tyrant will know we are not mere
brutes, to crouch under his hand, and kiss the rod with which
he designs to scourge us.
TO FRANCIS EPPES a
Philadelphia, July i$th, 1776
.... Admiral Howe is himself arrived at New York, and
two or three vessels, supposed to be of his fleet, were coming in.
The whole is expected daily.
Washington's numbers are greatly increased, but we do not
know them exactly. I imagine he must have from 30 to 35,000
by this time. The enemy the other day ordered two of their
men-of-war to hoist anchor and push by our batteries up the
Hudson River. Both wind and tide were very fair. They passed
all the batteries with ease, and, as far as is known, without re-
ceiving material damage; though there was an incessant fire
kept up on them. This experiment of theirs, I suppose, is a
prelude to the passage of their whole fleet, and seems to indi-
cate an intention of landing above New York. I imagine Gen-
eral Washington, finding he cannot prevent their going up the
river, will prepare to amuse them wherever they shall go. Our
army from Canada is now at Crown Point, but still one half
down with the small pox. You ask about Arnold's behavior at
the Cedars. It was this. The scoundrel, Major Butterfield, hav-
ing surrendered three hundred and ninety men, in a fort with
twenty or thirty days' provision, and ammunition enough, to
i. Francis Eppcs, member of a distinguished Virginia family, had
married one of the sisters of Jefferson's wife, Martha [Wayles] Skeltoiv
361
OF
about forty regulars, one hundred Canadians, and five hundred
Indians, before he had lost a single man—and Major Sher-
burne, who was coming to the relief of the fort with one hun
dred men, having, after bravely engaging the enemy an ho~?
and forty minutes, killing twenty of them and losing twelve of
his own, been surrounded by them, and taken prisoners also—
General Arnold appeared on the opposite side of the river and
prepared to attack them. His numbers I know not, but believe
they were about equal to the enemy. Captain Foster, com-
mander of the king's troops, sent over a flag to him, proposing
an exchange of prisoners for as many of the king's in our pos-
session, and, moreover, informed Arnold that if he should at-
tack, the Indians would put every man of the prisoners to
death. Arnold refused, called a council of war, and, it being now
in the night, it was determined to attack next morning. A sec-
ond flag came over; he again refused, though in an excruciat-
ing situation, as he saw the enemy were in earnest about killing
the prisoners. His men, too, began to be importunate for the
recovery of their fellow-soldiers. A third flag came, the men
grew more clamorous and Arnold, now almost raving with rage
and compassion, was obliged to consent to the exchange and
six da^s suspension of hostilities, Foster declaring he had not
boats to deliver them in less time. However, he did deliver them
so much sooner as that before the six days were expired, himself
and party had fled out of all reach. Arnold then retired to Mont-
real. You have long before this heard of General Thompson's
defeat. The truth of that matter has never appeared till lately.
You will see it in the public papers. No men on earth ever be-
haved better than ours did. The enemy behaved dastardly.
Colonel Allen (who was in the engagement) assured me this
day, that such was the situation of our men, half way up to the
thighs in mud for several hours, that five hundred men of spirit
must have taken the whole; yet the enemy were repulsed sev-
eral times, and our people had time to extricate themselves and
come off. It is believed the enemy suffered considerably. The
above account of Arnold's affair you may rely on, as I was one
362
THOMAS J8FF8RSON
of a committee appointed to inquire into the whole of that
matter, and have it from those who were in the whole trans-
action, and were taken prisoners.
My sincere affections to Mrs. Eppes, and adieu.
TO [JOHN FABRONl]1
Williamsburg, Virginia, June 8tk, 1778
.... If there is a gratification, which I envy any people
in this world, it is to your country its music. This is the favorite
passion of my soul, and fortune has cast my lot in a country
where it is in a state of deplorable barbarism. From the line of
life in which we conjecture you to be, I have for some time
lost the hope of seeing you here. Should the event prove so, I
shall ask your assistance in procuring a substitute, v/ho may
be a proficient in singing, &, on the Harpsichord. I should be
contented to receive such an one two or three years hence;
when it is hoped he may come more safely and find here a
greater plenty of those useful things which commerce alone can
furnish.
The bounds of an American fortune will not admit the in-
dulgence of a domestic band of musicians, yet I have thought
that a passion for music might be reconciled with that economy
which] we are obliged to observe. I retain among my domestic
servants a gardener, a weaver, a cabinet-maker, and a stone-
cutter, to which I would add a vigneron^ In a country where,
like yours, music is cultivated and practiced by every class of
men, I suppose there might be found persons of these trades
who could perform on the French horn, clarinet, or hautboy,
and bassoon, so that one might have a band of two French
1. John Fabroni, an Italian musician, had instructed both Jefferson
and Mrs. Jefferson in music.
2. The complete text, as it appears in Ford, is: "I retain for instance
among my domestic servants a gardener (Ortolans), a weaver (Tessitore
di lino e lin), a cabinet-maker (Stipeltaro) and a stone-cutter (Scalpel-
lino laborante in piano) to- which I would add a vigneron.
363
OF
horns, two clarinets, two hautboys, and a bassoon, without en-
larging their domestic expenses. A certainty of employment
for a half dozen years, and at the end of that time, to find
them, if they chose, a conveyance to their own country, might
induce them to come here on reasonable wages. Without mean-
ing to give you trouble, perhaps it might be practicable for
you, in your ordinary intercourse with your people, to find out
such men disposed to come to America. Sobriety and good na-
ture would be desirable parts of their characters. If you think
such a plan practicable, and will be so kind as to inform me
what will be necessary to be done on my part, I will take care
that it shall be done. The necessary expenses, when informed
of them, I can remit before they are wanting, to any port in
France, with which country alone we have safe correspond-
ence I am, Sir, with much esteem, your humble servant.
TO COLONEL JAMES MONROE 1
Monticello, May 20th, 1782
.... If we are made in some degree for others, yet, in a
greater, are we made for ourselves. It were contrary to feeling,
r,nd indeed ridiculous to suppose that a man had less rights in
himself than one of his neighbors, or indeed all of them put
together. This would be slavery, and not that liberty which the
bill of rights has made inviolable, and for the preservation of
which our government has been charged. Nothing could so com-
pletely divest us of that liberty as the establishment of the
opinion, that the State has a perpetual right to the services of
all its members. This, to men of certain ways of thinking, would
be to annihilate the blessings of existence, and to contradict
the Giver of life, who gave it for happiness and not for wretch-
edness. And certainly, to .such it were better that they had
never been born. However, with these, I may think public
service and private misery inseparably linked together. I have
i. James Monroe, later fifth President of the United States, was a
cl*se friend and follower of Jefferson until the latter's death.
364
THOMAS JBFFBRSON
not the vanity to count myself among those whom the Statr
would think worth oppressing with perpetual service. I have
received a sufficient memento to the contrary. I am persuaded
that, having hitherto dedicated to them the whole of the active
and useful part of my life, I shall be permitted to pass the rest
in mental quiet. I hope, too, that I did not mistake modes any
more than the matter of right when I preferred a simple act of
renunciation, to the taking sanctuary under those disqualifica-
tions (provided by the law for other purposes indeed but) af-
fording asylum also for rest to the wearied. I dare say you did
not expect by the few words you dropped on the right of re-
nunciation to expose yourself to the fatigue of so long a letter,
but I wished you to see that, if I had done wrong, I had been
betrayed by a semblance of right at least. . . .
TO FRANQOIS JEAN, CHEVALIER DE CHASTELLUX 1
Am pt hill Nov. 26, 1782
.... It [your letter] found me a little emerging from
the stupor of mind which had rendered me as dead to the world
as she whose loss occasioned it.2 Your letter recalled to my
memory that there were persons still living of much value to
me. If you should have thought me remiss in not testifying to
you sooner how deeply I had been impressed with your worth
in the little time I had the happiness of being with you, you will
I am sure ascribe it to it's true cause, the state of the dreadful
suspense in which I had been kept all the summer & the catas-
trophe which closed it. Before that event my scheme of life
had been determined. I had folded myself in the arms of re-
tirement,, and rested all prospects of future happiness on do-
mestic & literary objects. A single event wiped away all my
plans and left me a blank which I had not the spirits to fill up.
1. The Marquis de Chastellux, celebrated French soldier and writer,
had visited Jefferson at Monticello in the spring of 1782. His impressions
are recorded in his book, Travels in North America. [Ford.]
2. Jefferson refers to the death of his wife. After this event, Jefferson
virtually ceased writing letters for almost a year.
305
OF
In this state of mind an appointment from Congress found me,
requiring me to cross the Atlantic. . . .
TO MARTHA JEFFERSON *
Annapolis, Dec. 22, 1783
.... I omitted ... to advise you on the subject of dress,
which I know you are a little apt to neglect. I do not wish you
to be gaily clothed at this time of life, but what you wear
should be fine of its kind. But above all things and at all times
let your clothes be clean, whole, and properly put on. Do not
fancy you must wear them till the dirt is visible to the eye. You
will be the last who is sensible of this. Some ladies think
they may, under the privileges of the dishabille, be loose and
negligent of their dress in the morning. But be you, from the
moment you rise till you go to bed, as cleanly and properly
dressed as at the hours of dinner or tea. A lady who has been
seen as a sloven or a shu in the morning, will never efface the
impression she has made, with all the dress and pageantry she
can afterwards involve herself in. Nothing is so disgusting to
our sex as a want of cleanliness and delicacy in yours. I hope,
therefore, the moment you rise from bed, your first work will
be to dress yourself in such style, as that you may be seen by
any gentleman without his being able to discover a pin amiss,
or any other circumstance of neatness wanting. . . .
TO COLONEL MONROE
Paris, June 17, 1785
.... I sincerely wish you may find it convenient to
come here; the pleasure of the trip will be less than you expect,
but the utility greater. It will make you adore your own coun-
i. Martha Jefferson was Jefferson's oldest daughter. [Henry S. Ran-
dall, The Life of Thomas Jefferson, 3 vols., Derby and Jackson: New
York, 1858. Hereafter referred to as Randall.]
366
THOMAS JEFFERSON
try, its soil, its climate, its equality, liberty, la#s, people, and
manners. My God! how little do my countrymen know what
precious blessings they are in possession of, and which no other
people on earth enjoy. I confess I had no idea of it myseli.
While we shall see multiplied instances of Europeans going to
live in America, I will venture to say, no man now living will
ever see an instance of an American removing to settle in
Europe, and continuing there. Come, then, and see the proofs
of this, and on your return add your testimony to that of
every thinking American, in order to satisfy our countrymen
how much it is their interest to preserve, uninfected by con-
tagion, those peculiarities in their governments and manners,
to which they are indebted for those blessings. . . .
TO DR. PRICE1
Paris y August 7,
SIR,— Your favor of July the 2d came duly to hand. The
concern you therein express as to the effect of your pamphlet
in America, induces me to trouble you with some observations
on that subject.
From my acquaintance with that country, I think I am able
to judge, with some degree of certainty, of the manner in which
it will have been received. Southward of the Chesapeake, it will
find but few readers concurring with it in sentiment, on the
subject of slavery. From the mouth to the head of the Chesa-
peake, the bulk of the people will approve it in theory, and it
will find a respectable minority ready to adopt it in practice; a
minority, which for weight and worth of character, prepon-
derates against the greater number, who have not the courage
to divest their families of a property, which, however, keeps
their conscience unquiet. Northward of the Chesapeake, you
may find, here and there, an opponent to your doctrine, as you
i. Richard Price, the English moral and political philosopher, de-
fended the cause of American independence in Great Britain.
367
OF
find, here and there, a robber and murderer- but in no
greater number. In that part of America, there being but few
slaves, they can easily disencumber themselves of them; and
emancipation is put into such a train, that in a few years there
will be no slaves northward of Maryland. In Maryland, I do
not find such a disposition to begin the redress of this enormity,
as in Virginia. This is the next State to which we may turn
our eyes for the interesting spectacle of justice, in conflict with
avarice and oppression; a conflict wherein the sacred side is
gaining daily recruits, from the influx into office of young men
grown, and growing up. These have sucked in the principles of
liberty, as it were, with their mother's milk; and it is to them I
look with anxiety to turn the fate of this question. Be not there-
fore discouraged. What you have written will do a great deal
of good; and could you still trouble yourself with our welfare,
no man is more able to give aid to the laboring side. The Col-
lege of William and Mary, in Williamsburg, since the remodel-
ling of its plan, is the place where are collected together all the
young men of Virginia, under preparation for public life. They
are there under the direction (most of them) of a Mr. Wythe,
one of the most virtuous of characters, and whose sentiments
on the subject of slavery are unequivocal. I am satisfied, if you
could resolve to address an exhortation to those young men,
with all that eloquence of which you are master, that its influ-
ence en the future decision of this important question would
be great, perhaps decisive. Thus you see, that, so far from
thinking you have cause to repent of what you have done, I
wish you to do more, and wish it, on an assurance of its effect.
The information I have received from America, of the recep-
tion of your pamphlet in the different States, agrees with the
expectations I had formed.
Our country is getting into a ferment against yours, or rather
has caught it from yours. God knows how this will fend; but
assuredly in one extreme or the other. There can be no medium
between those who have loved so much. I think the decision is
in your power as yet, but will not be so long.
368
THOMAS JSFFSRSON
I pray you to be assured of the sincerity of the esteem and
respect with which I have the honor to be. Sir. your most
obedient Viumble servant.
TO THE COUNT DE VERGENNES 1
Paris, August 15, 1785
.... The monopoly of the purchase of tobacco in France
discourages both the French and American merchant from
bringing it here, and from taking in exchange the manufactures'
and productions of France. It is contrary to the spirit of tradej,
and to the dispositions of merchants, to carry a commodity to
any market where but one person is allowed to buy it, and
where, of course, that person fixes its price, which the seller
must receive, or re-export his commodity, at the loss of his
voyage thither. Experience accordingly shows, that they carry
it to other markets, and that they take in exchange the mer-
chandise of the place where they deliver it. I am misinformed,
if France has not been furnished from a neighboring nation
with considerable quantities of tobacco since the peace, and
been obliged to pay there in coin, what might have been paid
here in manufactures, had the French and American mer-
chants brought the tobacco originally here. I suppose, too,
that the purchases made by the Farmers General, in America,
are paid for chiefly in coin, which coin is also remitted directly
hence to England, and makes an important part of the bal-
ance supposed to be in favor of that nation against this. Should
the Farmers General, by themselves, or by the company to
whom they may commit the procuring these tobaccos from
America, require, for the satisfaction of government on this
head, the exportation of a proportion of merchandise in ex-
change for them, it would be an unpromising "expedient. It
would only commit the exports, as well as imports, between
i. The Count de Vergennes was Secretary of Foreign Affairs undei
Louis XVI, and chief of the royal council of finances.
OF
France and America, to a monopoly, which, being secure against
rivals in the sale of the merchandise of France, would not be
likely to sell at such moderate prices as might encourage its con-
sumption there, and enable it to bear a competition with similar
articles from other countries. I am persuaded this exporta-
tion ot coin may be prevented, and that of commodities ef-
fected, by leaving both operations to the French and Amer-
ican merchants, instead of the Farmers General. They will
import a sufficient quantity of tobacco, if they are allowed a per-
fect freedom in the sale; and they will receive in payment, wines,
oils, brandies, and manufactures, instead of coin; forcing
each other, by their competition, to bring tobaccos of the best
quality; to give to the French manufacturer the full worth
of his merchandise, and to sell to the American consumer at
the lowest price they can afford; thus encouraging him to use,
in preference, the merchandise of this country. . . .
While the advantages of an increase of revenue to the crown,
a diminution of impost on the people, and a payment in mer-
chandise, instead of money, are conjectured as likely to re-
sult to France from a suppression of the monopoly on tobac-
co, we have also reason to hope some advantages on our part;
and this hope alone could justify my entering into the present
details. I do not expect this advantage will be by any aug-
mentation of price. The other markets of Europe have too
much influence on this article to admit any sensible augmenta-
tion of price to take place. But the advantage I principally
expect is an increase of consumption. This will give us a vent
for so much more, and, of consequence, find employment for
so many more cultivators of the earth; and in whatever pro-
portion it increases this production for us, in the same pro-
portion will it procure additional vent for the merchandise
of France, and employment for the hands which produce it. I
expect, too, that by bringing our merchants here, they would
procure a number of commodities in exchange, better in kind,
•dnd cheaper in price. It is with .sincerity I add, that warm
THOMAS JBFFBRSON
feelings are indulged in my breast by the further hope, that
it would bind the two nations still closer in friendship, by
binding them in interest. In truth, no two countries are better
calculated for the exchanges of commerce. France wants rice,
tobacco, potash, furs, and ship-timber. We want wines, bran-
dies, oils, and manufactures. There is an affection, too, be-
tween the two people, which disposes them to favor one an-
other. If they do not come together, then, to make the ex-
changes in their own ports, it shows there is some substantial
obstructions in the way. We have had the benefit of too many
proofs of his Majesty's friendly disposition towards the United
States, and know too well his affectionate care of his own sub-
jects, to doubt his willingness to remove these obstructions,
if they can be unequivocally pointed out. It is for his wis-
dom to decide, whether the monopoly, which is the subject
of this letter, be deservedly classed with the principal of these.
It is a great comfort to me, too, that, in presenting this to the
mind of his Majesty, your Excellency will correct my ideas
where an insufficient knowledge of facts may have led me into
error; and that, while the interests of the King and of his
people are the first objects of your attention, an additional
one will be presented by those dispositions toward us, which
have heretofore so often befriended our nation.
I avail myself of this occasion to repeat the assurance of
that high respect and esteem, with which I have the honor
to be your Excellency's most obedient, and most humble serv-
ant.
TO MRS. TRIST *
Paris, August 18, 1785
DEAR MADAM,—
I am much pleased with the people of this country. The
roughness of the human mind is so thoroughly rubbed off with
i. Mrs. Trist had taken care of Jefferson's oldest daughter Martha
during her stay in Philadelphia. Her grandson Nicholas P. Trist married
one of Jefferson's grand-daughters, Virginia Jefferson Randolph.
371
OF
them, *>hat it seems as if one might glide through a whole life
among them without a jostle. Perhaps, too, their manners may
be the best calculated for happiness to a people in their situa-
tion, but I am convinced they fall far short of effecting a
happiness so temperate, so uniform, and so lasting as is gen-
erally enjoyed with us. The domestic bonds here are abso-
lutely done away, and where can their compensation be found?
Perhaps they may catch some moments of transport above
the level of the ordinary tranquil joy we experience, but they
are separated by long intervals, during which all the passions
are at sea without rudder or compass. Yet, fallacious as the
pursuits of happiness are, they seem on the whole to furnish
the most effectual abstraction from a contemplation of the
hardness of their government. Indeed, it is difficult to conceive
how so good a people, with so good a King, so well-disposed
rulers in general, so genial a climate, so fertile a soil, should
be rendered so ineffectual for producing human happiness by
one single curse— that of a bad form of government. But
it is a fact, in spite of the mildness of their governors, the
people are ground to powder by the vices of the form of govern-
ment. Of twenty millions of people supposed to be in France,
I am of opinion there are nineteen millions more wretched,
more accursed in every circumstance of human existence than
the most conspicuously wretched individual of the whole
United States. I beg your pardon for getting into politics. I
will add only one sentiment more of that character, that is,
nourish peace with their persons, but war against their man-
ners. Every step we take towards the adoption of their man-
ners is a step to perfect misery. I pray you to write to me often.
Do not you turn politician too; but write me all the small
news— the news about persons and about states; tell me who
dies, that I may meet these disagreeable events in detail, and
not all at once when I return; who marry, who hang them-
selves because they cannot marry, &c. . . .
372
THOMAS JSFF8RSON
TO PETER CARR1
Paris, August 19,
DEAR PETER,— I received, by Mr. Mazzei, your letter
of April the 2oth. I am much mortified to hear that you have
lost so much time; and that, when you arrived in Williams-
burg, you were not at all advanced from what you were when
you left Monticello. Time now begins to be precious to you.
Every day you lose will retard a day your entrance on that
public stage whereon you may begin to be useful to yourself.
However, the way to repair the loss is to improve the future
time. I trust, that with your dispositions, even the acquisition
of science is a pleasing employment. I can assure you, that
the possession of it is, what (next to an honest heart) will
above all things render you dear to your friends, and give you
fame and promotion in your own country. When your mind
shall be well improved with science, nothing will be necessary
to place you in the highest points of view, but to pursue the
interests of your country, the interests of your friends, and
your own interests also, with the purest integrity, the most
chaste honor. The defect of these virtues can never be made
up by all the other acquirements of body and mind. Make
these, then, your first object. Give up money, give up fame, give
up science, give up the earth itself and all it contains, rather
than do an immoral act. And never suppose, that in any pos-
sible situation, or under any circumstances, it is best for you
to do a dishonorable thing, however slightly so it may appear
to you. Whenever you are to do a thing, though it can never
be known but to yourself, ask yourself how you would act
were all the world looking at you, and act accordingly. En-
courage all your virtuous dispositions, and exercise them when-
ever an opportunity arises; being assured that they will gain
strength by exercise, as a limb of the body does, and that
i. Peter Carr was one of Jefferson's favorite nephews, the son of
Jefferson's school-boy friend Dabney Carr and Martha Jefferson, his
fourth sister.
373
OF
exercise will make them habitual. From the practice of the
purest virtue, you may be assured you will derive the most
sublime comforts in every moment of life, and in the moment
of death. If ever you find yourself environed with difficulties
and perplexing circumstances, out of which you are at a loss
how to extricate yourself, do what is right, and be assured that
that will extricate you the best out of the worst situations.
Though you cannot see, when you take one step, what will be
the next, yet follow truth, justice, and plain dealing, and never
fear their leading you out of the labyrinth, in the easiest man-
ner possible. The knot which you thought a Gordian one, will
untie itself before you. Nothing is so mistaken as the supposi-
tion, that a person is to extricate himself from a difficulty, by
intrigue, by chicanery, by dissimulation, by trimming, by an
untruth, by an injustice. This increases the difficulties tenfold;
and those, who pursue these methods, get themselves so in-
volved at length, that they can turn no way but their infamy
becomes more exposed. It is of great importance to set a resolu-
tion, not to be shaken, never to tell an untruth. There is no
vice so mean, so pitiful, so contemptible; and he who permits
himself to tell a lie once, finds it much easier to do it a second
and third time, till at length it becomes habitual ; he tells lies
without attending to it, and truths without the world's believ-
ing him. This falsehood of the tongue leads to that of the
heart, and in time depraves all its good dispositions.
An honest heart being the first blessing, a knowing head is
the second. It is time for you now to begin to be choice in your
reading; to begin to pursue a regular course in it; and not to
suffer yourself to be turned to the right or left by reading any-
thing out of that course. I have long ago digested a plan for
you, suited to the circumstances in which you will be placed.
This I will detail to you, from time to time, as you advance.
For the present, I advise you to begin a course of ancient
history, reading everything in the original and not in transla-
tions. First read Goldsmith's history of Greece. This will give
you a digested view of that field. Then take up ancient his-
37*
THOMAS 38FFSRSON
tory in the detail, reading the following books, in the follow-
ing order: Herodotus, Thucydides, Xenophontis Anabasis, Ar-
rian; Quintus Curtius, Diodorus Siculus, Justin. This shall form
the first stage of your historical reading, and is all I need
mention to you now. The next will be of Roman history.1 From
that, we will come down to modern history. In Greek and Latin
poetry, you have read or will read at school, Virgil, Terence,
Horace, Anacreon, Theocritus, Homer, Euripides, Sophocles.
Read also Milton's "Paradise Lost," Shakspeare, Ossian, Pope's
and Swift's works, in order to form your style in your own
language. In morality, read Epictetus, Xenophontis Memora-
bilia, Plato's Socratic dialogues, Cicero's philosophies, Anto-
ninus, and Seneca. In order to assure a certain progress in this
reading, consider what hours you have free from the school
and the exercises of the school. Give about two of them, every
day, to exercise; for health must not be sacrificed to learning.
A strong body makes the mind strong. As to the species of
exercise, I advise the gun. While this gives a moderate exer-
cise to the body, it gives boldness, enterprise, and independence
to the mind. Games played with the ball, and others of that
nature, are too violent for the body, and stamp no character on
the mind. Let your gun, therefore, be the constant companion
of your walks. Never think of taking a book with you. The
object of walking is to relax the mind. You should therefore
not permit yourself even to think while you walk; but divert
yourself by the objects surrounding you. Walking is the best
possible exercise. Habituate yourself to walk very far. The
Europeans value themselves on having subdued the horse to
the uses of man; but I doubt whether we have not lost more
than we have gained, by the use of this animal. No one has
occasioned so much the degeneracy of the human body. An
Indian goes on foot nearly as far in a day, for a long journey,
as an enfeebled white does on his horse; and he will tire the
best horses. There is no habit you will value so much as that of
i. Livy, Sallust, Caesar, Cicero's epistles, Suetonius, Tacitus, Gibbon.
[Jefferson's footnote.]
375
OF
walking far without fatigue. I would advise you to take your
exercise in the afternoon: not because it is the best time for
exercise, for certainly it is not; but because it is the best time
to spare from your studies; and habit will soon reconcile it to
health, and render it nearly as useful as if you gave to that the
more precious hours of the day. A little walk of half an hour, in
the morning, when you first rise, is advisable also. It shakes
off sleep, and produces other good effects in the animal econ-
omy. Rise at a fixed and an early hour, and go to bed at a
fixed and early hour also. Sitting up late at night is injurious
to the health, and not useful to the mind. Having ascribed
proper hours to exercise, divide what remain (I mean of your
vacant hours) into three portions. Give the principal to His-
tory, the other two, which should be shorter, to Philosophy and
Poetry. Write to me once every month or two, and let me know
the progress you make. Tell me in what manner you employ
every hour in the day. The plan I have proposed for you is
adapted to your present situation only. When that is changed,
I shall propose a corresponding change of plan. I hawe ordered
the following books to be sent to you from London, to the care
of Mr. Madison: Herodotus, Thucydides, Xenophon's Hel-
lenics, Anabasis and Memorabilia, Cicero's works, Baretti's
Spanish and English Dictionary, Martin's Philosophical Gram-
mar, and Martin's Philosophia Britannica. I will send you the
following from hence: Bezout's Mathematics, De la Lande's As-
tronomy, Muschenbrock's Physics, Quintus Curtius, Justin, a
Spanish Grammar, and some Spanish books. You will observe
that Martin, Bezout, De la Lande, and Muschenbrock, are not
in the preceding plan. They are not to be opened till you go
to the University. You are now, I expect, learning French. You
must push this; because the books which will be put into your
hands when you advance into Mathematics, Natural philoso-
phy, Natural history, &c., will be mostly French, these sciences
being better treated by the French than the English writers.
Our future connection with Spain renders that the most neces-
sary of the modern languages, after the French. When you be-
376
THOMAS JBFFSRSON
come a public man, you may have occasion for it, and the
circumstance of your possessing that language, may give you
a preference over other candidates. I have nothing further +o
add for the present, but husband well your time, cherish your
instructors, strive to make everybody your friend; and be as-
sured that nothing will be so pleasing as your success to, Deaf
Peter,
Yours affectionately.
TO JOHN JAY l
(Private)
Paris, August 23, 1785
.... We have now lands enough to employ an infinite
number of people in their cultivation. Cultivators of the earth
are the most valuable citizens. They are the most vigorous,
the most independent, the most virtuous, and they are tied
to their country, and wedded to its liberty and interests, by
the most lasting bonds. As long, therefore, as they can find
employment in this line, I would not convert them into mari-
ners, artisans, or anything else. But our citizens will find em-
ployment in this line, till their numbers, and of course their
productions, become too great for the demand, both internal
and foreign. This is not the case as yet, and probably will not
be for a considerable time. As soon as it is, the surplus of
hands must be turned to something else. I should then, per-
haps, wish to turn them to the sea in preference to manu-
factures; because, comparing the characters of the two classes,
I find the former the most valuable citizens. I consider the
class of artificers as the panders of vice, and the instruments
by which the liberties of a country are generally overturned.
However, we are not free to decide this question on principles
of theory only. Our people are decided in the opinion, that it
i. John Jay, American statesman and diplomat, was later Chief
Justice of the Supreme Court.
377
LSTTSRS OF
is necessary for us to take a share in the occupation of the
ocean, and their established habits induce them to require that
the sea be kept open to them, and that that line of policy be
pursued, which will render the use of that element to them as
great as possible. I think it a duty in those entrusted with the
administration of their affairs, to conform themselves to the
decided choice of their constituents; and that therefore, we
should, in every instance, preserve an equality of right to them
in the transportation of commodities, in the right of fishing,
and in the other uses of the sea.
But what will be the consequence? Frequent wars without
a doubt. Their property will be violated on the sea, and in
foreign ports, their persons will be insulted, imprisoned, &c.,
for pretended debts, contracts, crimes, contraband, &c., &c.
These insults must be resented, even if we had no feelings, yet
to prevent their eternai repetition; or, in other words, our com-
merce on the ocean and in other countries, must be paid for by
frequent war. The justest dispositions possible in ourselves, will
not secure us against it. It would be necessary that all other
nations were just also. Justice indeed, on our part, will save us
from those wars which would have been produced by a con-
trary disposition. But how can we prevent those produced by
the wrongs of other nations? By putting ourselves in a condi-
tion to punish them. Weakness provokes insult and injury,
while a condition to punish, often prevents them. This reason-
ing leads to the necessity of some naval force; that being the
only weapon by which we can reach an enemy. I think it to
our interest to punish the first insult; because an insult un-
punished is the parent of many others. We are not, at this
moment, in a condition to do it, but we should put ourselves
into it, as soon as possible. . . .
378
THOMAS JBFFSRSON
TO BARON GEISMER*
Paris, September 6y 1785
DEAR SIR,— Your letter of March the 28th, which I re-
ceived about a month after its date, gave me a very real pleas-
ure, as it assured me of an existence which I valued, and of
which I had been led to doubt. You are now too distant from
America, to be much interested in what passes there. From the
London gazettes, and the papers copying them, you are led
to suppose that all there is anarchy, discontent and civil war.
Nothing, however, is less true. There are not, on the face of
the earth, more tranquil governments than ours, nor a happier
and more contented people. Their commerce has not as yet
found the channels, which their new relations with the world
will offer to best advantage, and the old ones remain as yet
unopened by new conventions. This occasions a stagnation in
the sale of their produce, the only truth among all the cir-
cumstances published about them. Their hatred against Great
Britain, having lately received from that nation new cause and
new aliment, has taken a new spring. . . . The character in
which I am here at present, confines me to this place, and will
confine me as long as I continue in Europe. How long this will
be, I cannot tell. I am now of an age which does not easily
accommodate itself to new manners and new modes of living;
and I am savage enough to prefer the woods, the wilds, and
the independence of Monticello, to all the brilliant pleasures
of this gay Capital. I shall, therefore, rejoin myself to my na-
tive country, with new attachments, and with exaggerated es-
teem for its advantages; for though there is less wealth there,
there is more freedom, more ease, and less misery. I should
like it better, however, if it could tempt you once more to
visit it; but that is not to be expected. Be this as it may, and
whether fortune means to allow or deny me the pleasure of
i. German brigade major in the American Revolutionary war, Baron
Geismer was made prisoner in Virginia.
379
OF
ever seeing you again, be assured that the worth which gave
birth to my attachment, and which still animates it, will con-
tinue to keep it up while we both live, and that it is with sin-
cerity I subscribe myself, dear Sir, your friend and servant.
TO JAMES MADISON *
Paris, September 20,
.... I received this summer a letter from Messrs. Bu-
chanan and Hay, as Directors of the public buildings, desir-
ing I would have drawn for them, plans of sundry buildings,
and, in the first place, of a capitol.2 They fixed, for their receiv-
ing this plan, a day which was within about six weeks of that
on which their letter came to my hand. I engaged an architect
of capital abilities in this business. Much time was requisite,
after the external form was agreed on, to make the internal
distribution convenient for the three branches of government.
This time was much lengthened by my avocations to other
objects, which I had no right to neglect. The plan, however,
was settled. The gentlemen had sent me one which they had
thought of. The one agreed on here, is more convenient, more
beautiful, gives more room, and will not cost more than two-
thirds of what that would. We took for our model what is
called the Maison Quarrce of Nismes, one of the most beauti-
ful, if not the most beautiful and precious morsel of architec-
ture left us by antiquity. It was built by Caius and Lucius
Caesar, and repaired by Louis XIV., and has the suffrage of
all the judges of architecture who have seen it, as yielding to
no one of the beautiful monuments of Greece, Rome, Palmyra,
and Balbec, which late travellers have communicated to us.
It is very simple, but it is noble beyond expression, and would
have done honor to our country, as presenting to travellers a
1. James Madison, fourth President of the United States, was, until
Jefferson's death, one of his closest ' friends and staunchest followers.
2. For Richmond, Virginia.
380
THOMAS JEFFERSON
specimen of taste in our infancy, promising much for our ma-
turer age. I have been much mortified with information, which
I received two days ago from Virginia, that the first brick of
the capitol would be laid within a few days. But surely, the
delay of this piece of a summer would have been repaired by
the savings in the plan preparing here, were we to value its
other superiorities as nothing. But how is a taste in this beau-
tiful art to be formed in our countrymen unless we avail our-
selves of every occasion when public buildings are to be erected,
of presenting to them models for their study and imitation?
Pray try if you can effect the stopping of this work. . . .
The loss will be only of the laying the bricks already laid,
or a part of them. The bricks themselves will do again for
the interior walls, and one side wall and one end wall may
remain, as they will answer equally well for our plan. This loss
is not to be weighed against the saving of money which will
arise, against the comfort of laying out the public money for
something honorable, the satisfaction of seeing an object and
proof of national good taste, and the regret and mortification
of erecting a monument of our barbarism, which will be loaded
with execrations as long as it shall endure. The plans are in
good forwardness, and I hope will be ready within three or
four weeks. They could not be stopped now, but on paying
their whole price, which will be considerable. If the under-
takers are afraid to undo what they have done, encourage
them to it by a recommendation from the Assembly. You
see I am an enthusiast on the subject of the arts. But it is an
enthusiasm of which I am not ashamed, as its object is to
improve the taste of my countrymen, to inaease their reputa-
tion, to reconcile to them the respect of the world, and pro-
cure them its praise. . . .
381
OF
TO MR. BELLINI 1
Paris, September jo,
.... Behold me at length on the vaunted scene of
Europe! It is not necessary for your information, that I should
enter into details concerning it. But you are, perhaps, curious
to know how this new scene has struck a savage of the moun-
tains of America. Not advantageously, I assure you. I find the
general fate of humanity here most deplorable. The truth of
Voltaire's observation, offers itself perpetually, that every man
here must be either the hammer or the anvil. It is a true pic-
ture of that country to which they say we shall pass hereafter,
and where we are to see God and his angels in splendor, and
crowds of the damned trampled under their feet. While the
great mass of the people are thus suffering under physical and
moral oppression, I have endeavored to examine more nearly
the condition of the great, to appreciate the true value of the
circumstances in their situation, which dazzle the bulk of spec-
tators, and, especially, to compare it with that degree of happi-
ness which is enjoyed in America, by every class of people.
Intrigues of love occupy the younger, and those of ambition,
the elder part of the great. Conjugal love having no Existence
among them, domestic happiness, of which that is the basis,
is utterly unknown. In lieu of this, are substituted pursuits
which nourish and invigorate all our bad passions, and which
offer only moments of ecstasy, amidst days and months of rest-
lessness and torment. Much, very much inferior, this, to the
tranquil, permanent felicity with which domestic society in
America blesses most of its inhabitants; leaving them to fol-
low steadily those pursuits which health and reason approve,
and rendering truly delicious the intervals of those pursuits.
In science, the mass of the people are two centuries behind
ours; their literati, half a dozen years before us. Books, really
good, acquire just reputation in that time, and so become
i. Charles Bellini, an imigri resident of Virginia, became the first
nrofessor of modern languages at William and Mary.
382
THOMAS JSFFSRSON
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 al-
most in issuing? With respect to what are termed polite man-
ners, without sacrificing too much the sincerity of language, 1
would wish my countrymen to adopt just so much of Euro-
pean politeness, as to be ready to make all those little sacri-
fices of self, which really render European manners amiable, and
relieve society from the disagreeable scenes to which rudeness
often subjects it. Here, it seems that a man might pass a life
without encountering a single rudeness. In the pleasures of the
table, they are far before us, because, with good taste they
unite temperance. They do not terminate the most sociable
meals by transforming themselves into brutes. I have never
yet seen a man drunk in France, even among the lowest of
the people. Were I to proceed to tell you how much I en-
joy their architecture, sculpture, painting, music, I should
want words. It is in these arts they shine. The last of them,
particularly, is an enjoyment, the deprivation of which with
us, cannot be calculated. I am almost ready to say, it is the
only thing which from my heart I envy them, and which, in
spite of all the authority of the Decalogue, I do covet. But I
am running on in an estimate of things infinitely better known
to you than to me, and which will only serve to convince you,
that I have brought with me all the prejudices of country,
habit, and age. But whatever I may allow to be charged to
me as prejudice, in every other instance, I have one sentiment
at least, founded on reality: it is that of the perfect esteem
which your merit and that of Mrs. Bellini have produced, and
which will forever enable m'e to assure you of the sincere regard
with which I am, dear Sir, your friend and servant.
383
OF
TO HOGENDORP l
Paris, October 13,
.... You ask what I think on the expediency of en-
couraging our States to be commercial? Were I to indulge my
own theory, I should wish them to practise neither commerce
nor navigation, but to stand, with respect to Europe, precisely
on the footing of China. We should thus avoid wars, and all our
citizens would be husbandmen. Whenever, indeed, our num-
bers should so increase as that our produce would over-
stock the markets of those nations who should come to seek
it, the farmers must either employ the surplus of their time in
manufactures, or the surplus of our hands must be employed
in manufactures or in navigation. But that day would, I think,
be distant, and we should long keep our workmen in Europe,
while Europe should be drawing rough materials, and even
subsistence from America. But this is theory only, and a the-
ory which the servants of America are not at liberty to fol-
low. Our people have a decided taste for navigation and com-
merce. They take this from their mother country; and their
servants are in duty bound to calculate all their measures on
this datum: we wish to do it by throwing open all the doors of
commerce, and knocking off its shackles. But as this cannot be
done for others, unless they will do it for us, and there is no
great probability that Europe will do this, I suppose we shall
be obliged to adopt a system which may shackle them in our
ports, as they do us in theirs.
With respect to the sale of our lands, that cannot begin till
a considerable portion shall have been surveyed. They cannot
begin to survey till the fall of the leaf of this year, nor to
sell probably till the ensuing spring. So that it will be yet a
twelvemonth before we shall be able to judge of the efficacy
of our land office to sink our national debt. It is made a fun-
T. Charles Van Hogendorp was a Dutch business man.
384 '
THOMAS JEFFERSON
damental, that the proceeds shall be solely and sacredly ap-
plied as a sinking fund to discharge the capital only of the debt.
It is true that the tobaccos of Virginia go almost entirely
to England. The reason is, the people of that State owe a great
debt there, which they are paying as fast as they can. I think I
have now answered your several queries, and shall be happy
to receive your reflections on the same subjects, and at all
times to hear of your welfare, and to give you assurances of
the esteem, with which I have the honor to be, dear bir, your
most obedient, and most humble servant.
TO J. BANISTER, JUNIOR 1
Paris, October i$y 1785
DEAR SIR,— I should sooner have answered the para-
graph in your letter, of September the igth, respecting the best
seminary for the education of youth in Europe, but that it was
necessary for me to make inquiries on the subject. The result
of these has been, to consider the competition as resting be-
tween Geneva and Rome. They are equally cheap, and prob-
ably are equal in the course of education pursued. The advan-
tage of Geneva is, that students acquire there the habit of
speaking French. The advantages of Rome are, the acquiring a
local knowledge of a spot so classical and so celebrated; the
acquiring the true pronunciation of the Latin language; a just
taste in the fine arts, more particularly those of painting, sculp-
ture, architecture, and music; a familiarity with those objects
and processes of agriculture which experience has shown best
adapted to a climate like ours; and lastly, the advantage of a
fine climate for health. It is probable, too, that by being
boarded in a French family, the habit of speaking that lan-
guage may be obtained. I do not count on any advantage to be
i. This young man, sent abroad because of ill health, was being edu-
cated in France, where he was recommended to Jefferson's care.
385
OF
derived, in Geneva, from a familiar acquaintance with the prin-
ciples of that government. The late revolution has rendered it
a tyrannical aristocracy, more likely to give ill than good* ideas
to an American. I think the balance in favor of Rome. Pisa
is sometimes spoken of as a place of education. But it does not
offer the first and third of the advantages of Rome. But why
send an American youth to Europe for education? What are the
objects of an useful American education? Classical knowledge,
modern languages, chiefly French, Spanish, and Italian;
Mathematics, Natural philosophy, Natural history, Civil his-
tory, and Ethics. In Natural philosophy, I m'ean to include
Chemistry and Agriculture, and in Natural history, to include
Botany, as well as the other branches of those departments. It
is true that the habit of speaking the modern languages cannot
be so well acquired in America; but every other article can be
as well acquired at William and Mary college, as at any
place in Europe. When college education is done with, and
a young man is to prepare himself for public life, he must cast
his 'eyes (for America) either on Law or Physics. For the for-
mer, where can he apply so advantageously as to Mr. Wythe?
For the latter, he must come to Europe: the medical class of
students, therefore, is the only on'e which need come to Europe.
Let us view the disadvantages of sending a youth to Europe.
To enumerate them all, would require a volume. I will s'elect a
few. If he goes to England, he learns drinking, horse racing,
and boxing. These are the peculiarities of English education.
The following circumstances are common to education in that,
and the other countries of Europe. He acquires a fondness for
European luxury and dissipation, and a contempt for the sim-
plicity of his own country; he is fascinated with the privileges
of the European aristocrats, and sees, with abhorrence, the
lovely equality which the poor enjoy with the rich, in his own
country; he contracts a partiality for aristocracy or monarchy;
he forms foreign friendships which will never be useful to him,
and loses the seasons of life for forming, in his own country,
those friendships which, of all others, are the most faithful
386
THOMAS JSFFSRSON
and permanent; he is led, by the strongest of all the human
passions, into a spirit for female intrigue, destructive of his
own and others' happiness, or a passion for whores, destructive
of his health, and, in both cases, learns to consider fidelity
to the marriage bed as an ungentlemanly practice, and incon-
sistent with happiness; he recollects the voluptuary dress and
arts of the European women, and pities and despises the chaste
affections and simplicity of those of his own country; he re-
tains, through life, a fond recollection, and a hankering after
those places, which were the scenes of his first pleasures and
of his first connections; he returns to his own country, a for*
eigner, unacquainted with the practices of domestic economy
necessary to preserve him from ruin, speaking and writing his
native tongue as a foreigner, and therefore unqualified to ob-
tain those distinctions, which eloquence of the pen and tongue-
ensures in a free country; for I would observe to you, that what
is called style in writing or speaking is formed very early in
life, while the imagination is warm, and impressions are per-
manent. I am of opinion, that there never was an instance of a
man's writing or speaking his native tongue with elegance, who
passed from fifteen to twenty years of age out of the country
wher'e it was spoken. Thus, no instance exists of a person's
writing two languages perfectly. That will always appear to be
his native language, which was most familiar to him in his
youth. It appears to me, then, that an American, coming to
Europe for education, loses in his knowledge, in his morals, in
his health, in his habits, and in his happin'ess. I had entertained
only doubts on this head before I came to Europe: what I see
md hear, since I came here, proves more than I had even sus-
pected. Cast your eye over America: who are the men of most
learning, of most eloquence, most beloved by their country-
men and most trusted and promoted by them? They are those
who have been Educated among them, and whose manners,
morals, and habits, are perfectly homogeneous with those of the
country.
Did you expect by so short a question, to draw such a ser-
387
OF
mon on yourself? I dare say ym did not. But the consequences
of foreign education are alarming to me, as an American. I
sin, therefore, through zeal, whenever I enter on the subject.
You are sufficiently American to pardon me for it. Let me hear
of your health, and be assured of the esteem with which I am,
dear Sir, your friend and servant.
TO REVEREND JAMES MADISON 1
Fontainebleau, Oct. 28, 1785
DEAR SIR,— Seven o'clock, and retired to my fireside, 1
have determined to enter into conversation with you. This is a
village of about 15,000 inhabitants when the court is not here,
and 20,000 when they are, occupying a valley through which
runs a brook and on each side of it a ridge of small mountains,
most of which are naked rock. The King comes here, in the fall
always, to hunt. His court attends him, as do also the foreign
diplomatic corps; but as this is not indispensably required and
my finances do not admit the expense of a continued residence
here, I propose to come occasionally to attend the King's
levees, returning again to Paris, distant forty miles,. This be-
ing the first trip I set out yesterday morning to take a view
of the place. For this purpose I shaped my course towards the
highest of the mountains in sight, to the top of which was about
a league.
As soon as I had got clear of the town I fell in with a poor
woman walking at the same rate with myself and going the
same course. Wishing to know the condition of the laboring
poor I entered into conversation with her, which I began by
enquiries for the path which would lead me to the mountain:
and th'ence proceeded to enquiries into her vocation, condition
and circumstances. She told me she was a day laborer at 8 sous
i. Bishoo Madison, not to be confused with his statesman cousin of
the same name, was The President of William and Mary, and first Bishop
of the Protestant-Episcopal-Church in Virginia.
388
THOMAS JSFFSRSON
or 4d. sterling the day: that she had two children to main*
tain, and to pay a rent of 30 livres for her house (which would
consume the hire of 75 days), that often she could get no em-
ployment and of course was without bread. As we had walked
together near a mile and she had so far served me as a guide, I
gave her, on parting, 24 sous. She burst into tears of a gratitude
which I could perceive was unfeigned because she was unable
to utter a word. She had probably never bfefore received so
great an aid. This little attendrissement, with the solitude of
my walk, led me into a train of reflections on that unequal divi-
sion of property which occasions the numberless instances of
wretchedness which I had observed in this country and is to be
observed all over Europe.
The property of this country is absolutely concentrated in
a very few hands, having revenues of from half a million of
guirieas a year downwards. These employ the flower of the
country as servants, some of them having as many as 200 do-
mestics, not laboring. They employ also a great number of
manufacturers and tradesmen, and lastly the class of laboring
husbandmen. But after all these comes the most numerous of
all classes, that is, the poor who cannot find work. I asked
myself what could be the reason so many should be permitted
to beg who are willing to work, in a country where there is a
very considerable proportion of uncultivated lands? These
lands are undisturbed only for the sake of game. It should
seem then that it must be becaus'e of the enormous wealth of
the proprietors which places them above attention to the in-
crease of their revenues by permitting these lands to be labored.
I am conscious that an equal division of property is imprac-
ticable, but the consequences of this enormous inequality pro-
ducing so much misery to the bulk of mankind, legislators can-
not invent too many devices for subdividing property, only tak-
ing care to let their subdivisions go hand in hand with the nat-
ural affections of the human mind. The descent of property of
every kind therefore to all the children, or to all the brothers
and sisters, or other relations in equal degree, is a politic meas**
389
OF
Jive and a practicable on'e. Another means of silently lessening
the inequality of property is to exempt all from taxation below
a certain point, and to tax the higher portions or property in
geometrical progression as they rise. Whenever there are in any
country uncultivated lands and unemployed poor, it is clear
that the laws of property have been so far extended as to vio-
late natural right. The earth is given as a common stock for
man to labor; and live on. If for the encouragement of indus-
try we allow it to be appropriated, we must take care that
other employment be provided to those excluded from the ap-
propriation. If we do not, the fundamental right to labor the
earth returns to the unemployed. It is too soon yet in our coun-
try to say that every man who cannot find employment, but
who can find uncultivated land, shall be at liberty to cultivate
it, paying a moderate rent. But it is not too soon to provide by
every possible means that as few as possible shall be without
a little portion of land. The small landholders are the most
precious part of a state. . . .
TO A. STUART, Esq.1
Paris, January 25,
.... The quiet of Europe, at this moment, furnishes
little which can attract your notice. Nor will that quiet be soon
disturbed, at least for the current year. Perhaps it hangs on
the life of the King of Prussia, and that hangs by a very slen-
der thread. American reputation in Europe is not such as to be
flattering to its citizens. Two circumstances are particularly ob-
jected to us: the non-payment of our debts, and the want of
energy in our government. These discourage a connection with
us. I own it to be my opinion, that good will arise from the
destruction of our credit. I see nothing else which can restrain
i. After a distinguished career as a soldier during the Revolution,
Stuart became a legislator and jurist, for years leading the conservative
Wing of Jeffersonian democrats in Virginia.
390
THOMAS JEFFERSON
our disposition to luxury, and to the change of those manners
which alone can preserve republican government. As it is im-
possible to prevent credit, the best way would be to cure its ill
effects, by giving an instantaneous recovery to the creditor. This
would be reducing purchases on credit to purchases for ready
money. A man would then see a prison painted on everything
he wished, but had not ready money to pay for.
I fear from an expression in your letter, that the people
of Kentucky think of separating, not only from Virginia (in
which they are right), but also from the confederacy. I own, I
should think this a most calamitous event, and such a one as
every good citizen should set himself against. Our present fed-
eral limits are not too large for good government, nor will the
increase of votes in Congress produce any ill effect. On the
contrary, it will drown the little divisions at present existing
there. Our confederacy must be viewed as the nest, from which
all America, North and South, is to be peopled. We should
take care, too, not to think it for the interest of that great
Continent to press too soon on the Spaniards. Those coun-
tries cannot be in better hands. My fear is, that they are too
feeble to hold them till our population can be sufficiently ad-
vanced to gain it from them, piece by piece. The navigation of
the Mississippi we must have. This is all we are, as yet, ready
to receive. I have made acquaintance with a very sensible, can-
did gentleman here, who was in South America during the
revolt which took place there, while our Revolution was going
on. He says, that those disturbances (of which we scarcely
heard anything) cost, on both sides, an hundred thousand lives.
I have made a particular acquaintance here, with Monsieur
de Buffon, and have a great desire to give him the best idea I
can of our elk. Perhaps your situation may enable you to aid
m'e in this. You could not oblige me more than by sending me
the horns, skeleton, and skin of an elk, were it possible to pro-
cure them. The most desirable form of receiving them would
be, to have the skin slit from the under jaw along the belly to
the tail, and down the thighs to the knee, to take the anima/
OF
out, leaving the legs and hoofs, the bones of the head, and the
horns attached to the skin. By sewing up the belly, &c., and
stuffing the skin, it would present the form of the animal. How-
ever, as an opportunity of doing this is scarcely to be expected,
I shall be glad to receive them detached, packed in a box, and
sent to Richmond, to the care of Dr. Currie. Everything of
this kind is precious here. . . .
TO JAMES MADISON
Paris, February 8, 1786
.... I am persuaded, that a gift of lands by the State
of Virginia to the Marquis de La Fayette would give a good
opinion here of our character, and would reflect honor on the
Marquis. Nor, am I sure that the day will not come when it
might be an useful asylum to him. The time of life at which
he visited America was too well adapted to receive good and
lasting impressions to permit him ever to accommodate himself
to the principles of monarchical government; and it will need
all his own prudence, and that of his friends, to make this coun-
try a safe residence for him. How glorious, how comfortable in
deflection, will it be, to have prepared a refuge for him in
case of a reverse. In the meantime, he could settle it with ten-
ants from the freest part of this country, Bretaigne. I have
neVer suggested the smallest idea of this kind to him ; because
the execution of it should convey the first notice. If the State
has not a right to give him lands with their own officers, they
could buy up, at cheap prices, the shares of others. . , .
TO JOHN PAGE
Paris, May 4, 1786
.... I returned but three or four days ago from a two
months' trip to England. I traversed' that country much, and
392
THOMAS J8FF8RSON
own both town and country fell short of my expectations. Com-
paring it with this, I found a much greater proportion of bar-
rens, a soil, in other parts, not naturally so good as this, not
better cultivated, but better manured, and, therefore, more
productive. This proceeds from the practice of long leases
there, and short ones here. The laboring people here are poorer
than in England. They pay about one half their produce in
rent; the English, in general, about a third. The gardening, in
that country, is the article in which it surpasses all the earth.
I mean their pleasure gardening. This, indeed, went far be-
yond my ideas. The city of London, though handsomer than
Paris, is not so handsome as Philadelphia. Their architecture
is in the most wretched style I ever saw, not meaning to ex-
cept Am'erica, where it is bad, nor even Virginia, where it is
worse than in any other part of America which I have seen.
The mechanical arts in London are carried to a wonderful
perfection. But of these I need not sp'eak, because of them my
countrymen have unfortunately too many samples before their
eyes. I consider the extravaganc'e, which has seized them, as a
more baneful evil than toryism was during the war. It is the
more so, as the example is set by the best and most amiable
characters among us. Would a missionary appear, who would
make frugality the basis of his religious system, and go through
the land, preaching it up as the only road to salvation, I would
join his school, though not generally disposed to seek my re-
ligion out of the dictates of my own reason, and feelings of my
own heart. These things have been more deeply impressed on
my mind, by what I have heard and seen in England. That
nation hate us, their ministers hate us, and their King, more
than all other men. They have the impudence to avow this,
though they acknowledge our trade important to them. But
they think, we cannot prevent our countrymen from bringing
that into their laps. A conviction of this determines them to
make no terms of commerce with us. They say, they will pockfet
our carrying trade as well as their own. Our overtures of com-
mercial arrangements have been treated with a derision, which
393
OF
shows their firm persuasion, that we shall never unite to sup-
press their commerce, or even to impede it. I think their hostility
towards us is much more deeply rooted at present, than during
the war. In the arts, the most striking thing I saw there, new,
was the application of the principle of the steam-engine to grist
mills. I saw eight pair of stones which are worked by steam,
and there are to be set up thirty pair in the same house. An hun-
dred bushels of coal a day, are consumed at pres'ent. I do not
know in what proportion the consumption will be increased by
the additional geer. . . .
TO MR. WYTHE *
Paris, August 13, 1786
.... If all the sovereigns of Europe were to set them-
selves to work, to emancipate the minds of their subjects from
tfieir present ignorance and prejudices, and that, as zealously
as they now endeavor the contrary, a thousand years would not
place them on that high ground, on which our common people
are now setting out. Ours could not have be'en so fairly placed
under the control of the common sense of the people, had they
not been separated from their par'ent stock, and kept from
contamination, either from them, or the other people of the
old world, by the intervention of so wide an ocean. To know
the worth of this, one must see the want of it here. I think by
far the most important bill in our whole code, is that for the
diffusion of knowledge among the people. No other sure founda-
tion can be devised, for the preservation of freedom and happi-
ness. If anybody thinks that kings, nobles, or priests are good
conservators of the public happiness, send him here. It is the
best school in the universe to cure him of that folly. He will see
here, with his own eyes, that these descriptions of men are an
i. After graduating from William and Mary, Jefferson studied law
under George Wythe, one of the most celebrated jurists of his day, who
later became Jefferson's warm friend.
394
VHOMAS J8FF8RSON
abandoned confederacy against the happiness of the mass of
the people. The omnipotence of their effect cannot be better
proved, than in this country particularly, where, notwithstand-
ing the finest soil upca earth, the finest climate under heaven,
and a people of the most benevolent, the most gay and amiable?
character of which the human form is susceptible; where such
a people, I say, surrounded by so many blessings from nature,
are loaded with misery, by kings, nobles, and priests, and by
them alone. Preach, my dear Sir, a crusade against ignorance;
establish and improve the law for educating the common pea
pie. Let our countryrrien know, that the people alone can pro
tect us against these evils, and that the tax which will be paid
for this purpose, is not more than the thousandth part of what
will be paid to kings, priests and nobles, who will rise up among
us if We leave the people in ignorance. The people of England,
I think, are less oppressed than here. But it needs but half an
eye to see, when among them, that the foundation is laid in
their dispositions for the establishment of a despotism. No-
bility, wealth, and pomp are the objects of their admiration.
They are by no means the free-minded people we suppose them
in America. Their learned men, too, are few in number, and arte
less learned, and infinitely less emancipated from prejudice,
than those of this country. . . .
TO MRS. COSWAY 1
Paris, October 12, 1786
MY DEAR MADAM,— Having performed the last sad
office of handing you into your carriage, at the pavilion de St.
Denis, and seen the wheels get actually into motion, I turned
on my heel and walked, more dead than alive, to the opposite
door, where my own was awaiting me. Mr. Danquerville was
T. Maria Cosway, a famous Italian-English beauty and accomplished
painter, captivated Jefferson during his stay in Paris.
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missing. He was sought for, found, and dragged down stairs.
We were crammed into the carriage, like recruits for the Bas-
tille, and not having soul enough to give orders to the coach-
man, he presumed Paris our destination, and drove off. After
a considerable interval, silence was broke, with a "Je suis
vraiment afjlige du depart de ces bons gens." This was a sig-
nal for a mutual confession of distress. Wfe began immediately
to talk of Mr. and Mrs. Cosway, of their goodness, their tal-
ents, their amiability; and, though we spoke of nothing else,
we seemed hardly to have entered into the matter, when the
•coachman announced the rue St. Denis, and that we were oppo-
site Mr. Danquerville's. He insisted on descending there, and
traversing a short passage to his lodgings. I was carried home.
Seated by my fireside, solitary and sad, the following dialogue
,took place between my Head and my Heart.
Head. Well, friend, you seem to be in a pretty trim.
Heart. I am indeed the most wretched of all earthly beings.
Overwhelmed with grief, every fibre of my frame distended be-
yond its natural powers to bear, I would willingly meet what-
ever catastrophe should leave me no more to feel, or to fear.
Head. These are the eternal consequences of your warmth
and precipitation. This is one of the scrapes into which you
are ever leading us. You confess your follies, indeed; but still
you hug and cherish them; and no reformation can be hoped
where there is no repentance.
Heart. Oh, my friend! this is no moment to upbraid my
foibles. I am rent into fragments by the force of my grief! If
you have any balm, pour it into my wounds; if none, do not
harrow them by new torments. Spare me in this awful moment!
At any other, I will attend with patience to your admonitions.
Head. On the contrary, I never found that the moment of
triumph, with you, was the moment of attention to my ad-
monitions. While suffering under your follies, you may per-
haps be made sensible of them, but the paroxysm over, you
fancy it can never return. Harsh, therefore, as the medicine
may be, it is my office to administer it. You will be pleased tc
396
THOMAS 38FFSRSON
remember, that when our friend Trumbull used to be telling
us of the merits and talents of these good p'eople, I never
ceased whispering to you that we had no occasion for new
acquaintances; that the greater their merits and talents, the
more dangerous their friendship to our tranquillity, because the
regret at parting would be greater.
Heart. Accordingly, Sir, this acquaintance was not the conse-
quence of my doings. It was one of your projects, which threw
us in the way of it. It was you, remember, and not I, who de-
sired the meeting at Legrand and Molinos. I never trouble myself
with domes nor arches. The Halle aux Bleds might have rotted
down, before I should have gone to see it. But you, forsooth,
who are eternally getting us to sleep with your diagrams and
crotchets, must go and examine this wonderful piece of archi-
tecture; and when you had seen it, oh! it was the most superb
thing on earth! What you had seen there was worth all you
had yet seen in Paris! I thought so, too. But I meant it of the
lady and gentleman to whom we had been presented; and not
of a parcel of sticks and chips put together in pens. You, tfien,
Sir, and not I, have been the cause of the present distress.
Head. It would have been happy for you if my diagrams and
crotchets had gotten you to sleep on that day, as you are pleased
to say they eternally do. My visit to Legrand and Molinos had
public utility for its object. A market is to be built in Rich-
mond. What a commodious plan is that of Legrand and Moli-
nos; especially, if we put on it the noble dome of the Halle aux
Bleds. If such a bridge as they showed us can be thrown across
the Schuylkill, at Philadelphia, the floating bridges taken up,
and the navigation of that river opened, what a copious re*
source will be added, of wood and provisions, to warm and feed
the poor of that city? While I was occupied with thes'e objects,
you were dilating with your new acquaintances, and contriving
how to prevent a separation from them. Every soul of you had
an engagement for the day. Yet all these wer'e to be sacrificed,
that you might dine together. Lying messengers were to be
despatched into every quarter of the city, with apologies for
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OF
your breach of engagement. You, particularly, had the effron-
tery to send word to the Duchess Danville, that on the mo-
ment we were setting out to dine with her, despatches came to
hand, which required immediate attention. You wanted me to
invent a more ingenious excuse; but I knew you were getting
into a scrap'e, and I would have nothing to do with it. Well;
after dinner to St. Cloud, from St. Cloud to Ruggieri's, from
Ruggieri's to Krumfoltz; and if the day had been as long as
a J .apland summer day, you would still have contrived means
among you to have filled it.
Heart. Oh! my dear friend, how you have revived me by re-
calling to my mind the transactions of that day! How well I re-
member them all, and that, when I came home at night, and
looked back to the morning, it seemed to have been a month
agone. Go on, then, like a kind comforter, and paint to me the
day We went to St. Germains. How beautiful was every object!
the Port de Neuilly, the hills along the Seine, the rainbows of
the machine of Marly, the terrace of St. Germains, the cha-
teaux, the gardens, the statues of Marly, the pavilion of Lu-
cienne. Recollect, too, Madrid, Bagatelle, the King's garden,
the Dessert. How grand the idea excited by the remains of such
a column. The spiral staircase, too, was beautiful. Every mo-
ment was filled with something agreeable. The wheels of time
moved on with a rapidity, of which those of our carriage gave
but a faint idea. And yet, in the evening, when one took a retro-
spect of the day, what a mass of happiness had we travelled
over! Retrace all those scenes to me, my good companion, and
I will forgive the unkindness with which you were chiding
me. Ihe day we went to St. Germains was a little too warm,
I think; was it not?
Head. Thou art the most incorrigible of all the beings that
ever sinned! I reminded you of the follies of the first day, in-
tending to deduce from thence some useful lessons for you ; but
instead of listening to them, you kindle at the recollection,
you retrace the whole series with a fondness, which shows you
nothing, but the opportunity, to act it over again. I often
398
THOMAS JEFFERSON
told you, during its course, that you were imprudently engaging
your affections, under circumstances that must have cost you a
great deal of pain; that the persons, indeed, were of the great-
est merit, possessing good sense, good humor, honest hearts,
honest manners, and eminence in a lovely art; that the lady
had, moreover, qualities and accomplishments belonging to her
sex, which might form a chapter apart for her; such as music,
modesty, beauty, and that softness of disposition, which is the
ornament of hei sex and charm of ours; but that all these con-
siderations would increase the pang of separation; that their
stay here was to be short; that you rack our whole system
when you are parted from those you love, complaining that
such a separation is worse than death, inasmuch as this ends
our sufferings, whereas that only begins them; and that the
separation would, in this instance, be the more severe, as you
would probably never see them again.
Heart. But they told me they would come back again, the
next year.
Head. But, in the meantime, see what you suffer; and their
return, too, depends on so many circumstances, that if you had
a grain of prudence, you would not count upon it. Upon the
whole, it is improbable, and therefore you should abandon the
idea of ever seeing them again.
Heart. May heaven abandon me if I do!
Head. Very well. Suppose, then, they come back. They are
to stay two months, and, when these are expired, what is to fol-
low? Perhaps you flatter yourself they may come to America?
Heart. God only knows what is to happen. I see nothing im-
possible in that supposition ; and I see things wonderfully con-
trived sometimes, to make us happy. Where could they find
such objects as in America, for the exercise of their enchanting;
art? especially the lady, who paints landscapes so inimitably.
She wants only subjects worthy of immortality, to render her
pencil immortal. The Falling Spring, the Cascad'e of Niagara,
the passage of the Potomac through the Blue Mountains, the
Natural Bridge; it is worth a voyage across the Atlantic t<j
399
OF
rfet these objects; much more to paint, and make them, and
thereby ourselves, known to all ages. And our own dear Monti-
cello; where has nature spread so rich a mantle under the eye?
mountains, forest, rocks, rivers. With what majesty do we there
ride above the storms! How sublime to look down into the
workhouse of nature, to see her clouds, hail, snow, rain, thun-
der, all fabricated at our feet! and the glorious sun, when rising
as if out of a distant water, just gilding the tops of the moun-
tains, and giving life to all nature! I hope in God, no circum-
stancfe may ever make either seek an asylum from grief! With
what sincere sympathy I would open every cell of my com-
position, to receive the effusion of their woes! I would pour
my tears into their wounds; and if a drop of balm could be
found on the top of the Cordilleras, or at the remotest sources
of the Missouri, I would go thither myself to seek and to bring
it. Deeply practised in the school of affliction, the human heart
knows no joy which I have not lost, no sorrow of which I have
not drunk! Fortune ran present no grief of unknown form to
me! Who, then, can so softly bind up the wound of another, as
he who has felt the same wound himself? But heaven forbid
they should ever know a sorrow! Let us turn over another leaf,
for this has distracted me.
Head. Well. Let us put this possibility to trial then, on an-
other point. When you consider the character which is given
of our country, by the lying newspapers of London, and their
credulous copiers in other countries; when you reflect that all
Europe is made to believe we are a lawless banditti, in a state
of absolute anarchy, cutting one another's throats, and plun-
dering without distinction, how could you expect that any rea-
sonable creature would venture among us?
Heart. But you and I know that all this is false: that there is
not a country on earth, where there is greater tranquillity;
where the laws are milder, or better obeyed; where every one
is more attentive to his own business, or meddles less with that
of others; where strangers are better received, more hospitably
treated, and with a more sacred respect.
40O
THOMAS JSFFSRSON
Head. True, you and I know this, but your friends do not
know it.
Heart. But they are sensible people, who think for them-
selves. They will ask of impartial foreigners, who have been
among us, whether they saw or heard on the spot, any instance
of anarchy. They will judge, too, that a people, occupied as
we are, in opening rivers, digging navigable canals, making
roads, building public schools, establishing academies, erect-
ing busts and statues to our great men, protecting religious
freedom, abolishing sanguinary punishments, reforming and im-
proving our laws in general; they will judge, I say, for them-
selves, whether these are not the occupations of a people at
their ease; whether this is not better evidence of our true state,
than a London newspaper, hired to lie, and from which no truth
can ever be extracted but by reversing everything it says.
Head. I did not begin this lecture, my friend, with a view
to learn from you what America is doing. Let us return, then,
to our point. I wish to make you sensible how imprudent it is
to place your affections, without reserve, on objects you must so
soon lose, and whose loss, when it comes, must cost you such
s'evere pangs. Remember the last night. You knew your friends
were to leave Paris to-day. This was enough to throw you into
agonies. All night you tossed us from one side of the bed to
the other; no sleep, no rest. The poor crippled wrist, too, never
left orie moment in the same position; now up, now down, now
here, now there; was it to be wondered at, if its pains re-
turned? The surgeon then was to be called, and to be rated
as an ignoramus, because he could not divine the cause of this
extraordinary change. In fine, my friend, you must mend your
manners. This is not a world to live at random in, as you do. To
avoid those eternal distresses, to which you are forever expos-
ing us, you must learn to look forward, before you take a step
which may interest our peace. Everything in this world is a
matter of calculation. Advance then with caution, the balance
in your hand. Put into one scale the pleasures which any ob-
ject may offer; but put fairly into the other, the pains which
401
t OF
are to follow, and s'ee which preponderates. The making an ac-
quaintance, is not a matter fji indifference. When a new one is
proposed to you, view it all round. Consider what advantages
it presents, and to wli?/t inconveniences it may expose you. Do
not bite at the bait of pleasure, till you know there is no hook
beneath it. The art of life is the art of avoiding pain; and he is
the best pilot, who steers clearest of the rocks and shoals with
which it is beset. Pleasure is always before us; but misfortune
is at our side: while running after that, this arrests us. The
most effectual means of being secure against pain, is to retire
within ourselves, and to suffice for our own happiness. Those
which depend on ourselves, are the only pleasures a wise man
will count on: for nothing is ours, which another may deprive
us of. Hence the inestimable value of intellectual pleasures.
Ever in our power, always leading us to something new, never
cloying, we ride serene and sublime above the concerns of this
mortal world, contemplating truth and nature, matter and mo-
tion, the laws which bind up their existence, and that Eternal
Being who made and bound them up by those laws. Let this be
our employ. Leave the bustle and tumult of society to those
who have not talents to occupy themselves without them.
Friendship is but another name for an alliance with the fol-
lies and the misfortunes of others. Our own share of miseries
is sufficient: why cuter then as volunteers into those of an
other? Is there so lil tie gall poured into our cup, that we must
need help to drink fiat of our neighbor? A friend dies, or leaves
us: we feel as if a )imb were cut off. He is sick: we must watch
over him, and participate of his pains. His fortune is ship-
wrecked: ours must be laid under contribution. He loses a
child, a parent, or a partner: we must mourn the loss as if it
were our own.
Heart. And what more sublime delight than to mingle tears
with one whom the hand of heaven hath smitten! to watch over
the bed of sickness, and to beguile its tedious and its painful
moments 1 to share our bread with one to whom misfortune has
left uon^,' This world abounds indeed with misery; to lighten
402
THOMAS J8FF8RSON
its burthen, we must divide it with one another. But let u& now
try the virtue of your mathematical balance, and 0j you have
put into one scale the burthens of friendship, let me put its
comforts into the other. When languishing then under disease,
how grateful is the solace of our friends! how are we penetrated
with their assiduities and attentions! how much are we sup-
ported by their encouragements and kind offices! When heaven
has taken from us some object of our love, how sweet is it to
have a bosom whereon to recline our heads, and into which we
may pour the torrent of our tears! Grief, with such a comfort,
is almost a luxury! In a life, where we are perpetually exposed
to want and accident, yours is a wonderful proposition, to in-
sulate ourselves, to retire from all aid, and to wrap ourselves in
the mantle of self-sufficiency! For, assuredly, nobody will care
for him who cares for nobody. But friendship is precious, not
only in the shade, but in the sunshine of life; and thanks to a
benevolent arrangement of things, the greater part of life is
sunshine. I will recur for proof to the days we have lately
passed. On these, indeed, the sun shone brightly. How gay did
the face of nature appear! Hills, valleys, chateaux, gardens,
rivers, every object wore its liveliest hue! Whence did they
borrow it? From the presence of our charming companion,,
They were pleasing, because she seemed pleased. Alone, the
scene would have been dull and insipid: the participation of it
with her gave it relish. Let the gloomy monk, sequestered from
the world, seek unsocial pleasures in the bottom of his cell!
Let the sublimated philosopher grasp visionary happiness, wiiile
pursuing phantoms dressed in the garb of truth! Their su-
preme wisdom is supreme folly; and they mistake for happi-
ness the mere absence of pain. Had they ever felt the solid
pleasure of one generous spasm of the heart, they would ex-
change for it all the frigid speculations of their lives, which you
have been vaunting in such elevated terms. Believe me, then,
my friend, that that is a miserable arithmetic which could esti-
mate friendship at nothing, or at less than nothing. Respect for
you has induced me to enter into this discussion, and to hear
403
OF
principles uttered which I detest and abjure. Respect for my-
self now obliges me to recall you into the proper limits of your
office. When natufe assigned us the same habitation, she gave
us over it a divided empire. To you, she allotted the field of
science; to me, that of morals. When the circle is to be squared,
or the orbit of a comet to be traced; when the arch of greatest
strength, or the solid of least resistance, is to be investigated,
take up the problem; it is yours; nature has given me no
cognizance of it. In like manner, in denying to you the feelings
of sympathy, of benevolence, of gratitude, of justice, of love, of
friendship, she has excluded you from their control. To these,
she has adapted the mechanism of the heart. Morals were too
essential to the happiness of man, to be risked on the uncertain
combinations of the head. She laid their foundation, therefore,
in sentiment, not in science. That she gave to all, as necessary
to all; this to a few only, as sufficing with a few. I know, in-
deed, that you pretend authority to the sovereign control of our
conduct, in all its parts; and a respect for your grave saws and
maxims, a desire to do what is right, has sometimes induced m'e
to conform to your counsels. A few facts, however, which I
can readily recall to your memory, will suffice to prove to you,
that nature has not organized you for our moral direction.
When the poor, wearied soldier whom we overtook at Chicka-
hominy, with his pack on his back, begged us to let him get
up behind our chariot, you began to calculate that the road was
full of soldiers, and that if all should be taken up, our horses
would fail in their journey. We drove on therefore. But, soon
becoming sensible you had made me do wrong, that, though
we cannot relieve all the distressed, we should relieve as many
as we can, I turned about to take up the soldier; but he had
entered a bye-path, and was no more to be found; and from
that moment to this, I could never find him out, to ask his
forgiveness. Again, when the poor woman came to ask a char-
ity in Philadelphia, you whispered that she looked like a drunk-
ard, and that half a dollar was enough to give her for the ale-
house. Those who want the dispositions to give, easily find rea-
404
THOMAS J8FFSRSON
sons why they ought not to give. When I sought her out after-
wards, and did what I should have done at first, you know that
she employed the money immediately towards placing her child
at school. If our country, when pressed with wrongs at the
point of the bayonet, had been governed by its heads instead
of its hearts, where should we have been now? Hanging on a
gallows as high as Hainan's. You began to calculate, and to
compare wealth and numbers: we threw up a few pulsations of
our blood; we supplied enthusiasm against wealth and num-
bers; we put our existence to the hazard, when the hazard
seemed against us, and We saved our country: justifying, at the
same time, the ways of Providence, whose precept is, to do al-
ways what is right, and leave the issue to Him. In short, my
friend, as far as my recollection serves me, I do not know that
I fever did a good thing on your suggestion, or a dirty one with-
out it. I do forever, then, disclaim your interference in my
province. Fill paper as you please with triangles and squares:
try how many ways you can hang and combine them together.
1 shall never envy nor control your sublime delights. But leave
me to decide, when and where friendships are to be contracted,
You say, I contract them at random. So you said the woman
at Philadelphia was a drunkard. I receive none into my es-
teem, till I know they are worthy of it. Wealth, title, office,
are no recommendations to my friendship. On the contrary,
great good qualities are requisite to make amends for their hav-
ing wealth, title, and office. You confess, that, in the present
case, I could not have made a worthier choice. You only object,
that I was so soon to lose them. We are not immortal ourselves,
my friend; how can we expect our enjoyments to be so? We
have no rose without its thorn; no pleasure without alloy. It is
the law of our existence; and we must acquiesce. It is the condi-
tion annexed to all our pleasures, not by us who receive, but
by him who gives them. True, this condition is pressing cruelly
on me at this moment. I feel more fit for death than life. But,
when I look back on the pleasures of which it is the conse-
quence, I am conscious they were worth the price I am pay-
40S
OF
ing. Notwithstanding your endeavors, too, to damp my hop'es,
I comfort myself with expectations of their promised return.
Hope is sweeter than despair; and they were too good to mean
to deceive me. "In the summer," said the gentleman; but "in
the spring," said the lady; and I should love her forever, were
it only for that! Know, then, my friend, that I have taken
these good people into my bosom; that I have lodged them in
the warmest cell I could find; that I love them, and will con-
tinue to love them through life; that if fortune should dispose
them on one side the globe, and me on the other, my affections
shall pervade its whole mass to reach them. Knowing then my
determination, attempt not to disturb it. If you can, at any
time, furnish matter for their amusement, it will be the office
of a good neighbor to do it. I will, in like manner, seize any
occasion which may offer, to do the like good turn for you with
Condorcet, Rittenhouse, Madison, La Cretelle, or any other of
those worthy sons of science, whom you so justly prize.
I thought this a favorable proposition whereon to rest the
issue of the dialogue. So I put an end to it by calling for my
nightcap. Methinks, I hear you wish to heaven I had called
a little sooner, and so spared you the ennui of such a sermon.
I did not interrupt them sooner, because I was in a mood
for hearing sermons. You too were the subject; and on such
a thesis, I never think the theme long; not even if I am to
write it, and that slowly and awkwardly, as now, with the
left hand. But, that you may not be discouraged from a cor-
respondence which begins so formidably, I will promise you,
on my honor, that my future letters shall be of a reasonable
length. I will even agree to express but half my esteem for
you, for fear of cloying you with too full a dose. But, on your
part, no curtailing. If your letters are as long as the Bible, they
will appear short to me. Only let them be brimful of affec-
tion. I shall read them with the dispositions with which Arle-
quin, in Les deux billets, spelt the words "je t'aime," and
wished that the whole alphabet had entered into their composi-
tion.
406
THOMAS JSFFSRSON
We have had incessant rains since your departure. These
make me fear for your health, as well as that you had an un-
comfortable journey. The same cause has prevented me from
being able to give you any account of your friends here. This
voyage to Fontainebleau will probably send the Count de
Moustier and the Marquise de Brehan, to America. Danquer-
ville promised to visit me, but has not done it as yet. De la
Tude comes sometimes to take family soup with me, and en-
tertains me with anecdotes of his five and thirty years' im-
prisonment. How fertile is the mind of man, which can make
the Bastile and dungeon of Vincennes yield interesting anec-
dotes! You know this was for making four verses on Madame
de Pompadour. But I think you told me you did not know the
verses. They were these: "Sans esprit, sans sentiments, Sans etrc
bvlle, ni neuvc, En France on peut avoir le premier amant:
Pompadour en est I'eprcuvc" * I have read the memoir of his
three escapes. As to myself, my health is good, except my wrist
which mends slowly, and my mind which mends not at all, but
broods constantly over your departure. The lateness of the sea-
son obliges me to decline my journey into the south of France.
Present me in the most friendly terms to Mr. Cosway, and re-
ceive me into your own recollection with a partiality and
warmth, proportioned not to my own poor m'erit, but to the
sentiments of sincere affection and esteem, with which I have
the honor to be, my dear Madam, your most obedient humble
servant.
TO JAMES MADISON
Paris, December 16, 1786
.... To make us one nation as to foreign concerns, and
keep us distinct in domestic ones, gives the outline of the
proper division of powers between the general and particular
i. "Without brains or feeling, | Without beauty or youth, | In France;
one may have the first of lovers: | There's Pompadour for proof."
407
OF
governments. But, to enable the federal head to exercise the
powers given it to best advantage, it should be organized as
the particular ones are, into legislative, executive, and judici-
ary. The first and last are already separated. The second
should be. When last with Congress, I often proposed to mem-
bers to do this, by making of the committee of the States, an
executive committee during the recess of Congress, and, dur-
ing its sessions, to appoint a committee to receive and despatch
all executive business, so that Congress itself should meddle
only with what should be legislative. But I question if any Con-
gress (much less all successively) can have self-denial enough
to go through with this distribution. The distribution, then,
should be imposed on them. I find Congress have reversed their
division of the western States, and proposed to make them
fewer and larger. This is reversing the natural order of things.
A tractable people may be governed in large bodies; but, in
proportion as they depart from this character, the extent of
their government must be less. We see into what small divi-
sions the Indians are obliged to reduce their societies. This
measure, with the disposition to shut up the Mississippi, gives
me serious apprehensions of the severance of the eastern and
western parts of our confederacy. It might have been made the
interest of the western States to remain united with us, by
managing their interests honestly, and for their own good. But,
the moment we sacrifice their interest to our own, they will see
it better to govern themselves. The moment they resolve to do
this, the point is settled. A forced connection is neither our
interest, nor within our power.
The Virginia act for religious freedom has been received
with infinite approbation in Europe, and propagated with en-
thusiasm. I do not mean by the governments, but by the in-
dividuals who compose them. It has been translated into French
and Italian, has been sent to most of the courts of Europe,
and has been the best evidence of the falsehood of those re-
ports which stated us to be in anarchy. It is inserted in the new
"Encyclopedic," and is appearing in most of the publications
408
THOMAS J8FF6RSON
respecting America. In fact, it is comfortable to see the stand-
ard of reason at length erected, after so many ages, during
which the human mind has been held in vassalage by kings,
priests, and nobles; and it is honorable for us, to have produced
the first legislature who had the courage to declare, that the
reason of man may be trusted with the formation of his own
opinions. . . .
TO JOHN JAY
Paris, January g, 1787
.... You will have seen in the public papers, that the
King has called an assembly of the Notables of this country.
This has not been done for one hundred and sixty years
past. Of course, it calls up all the attention of the people.
The objects of this assembly are not named: several are con-
jectured. The tolerating the Protestant religion; removing all
the internal Custom houses to the frontier; equalizing the
gabelles on salt through the kingdom; the sale of the King's
domains, to raiste money; or, finally, the effecting this neces-
sary end by some other means, are talked of. But in truth,
nothing is known about it. This government practises secrecy
so systematically, that it never publishes its purposes or its
proceedings, sooner or more extensively than necessary. I
send you a pamphlet, which, giving an account of the last
Assemblee des Notables, may give an idea of what the
present will be. . . .
TO MONSIEUR DE CREVE-COEUR 1
Paris y January 15, 1787
Dear Sir,— I see by the Journal of this morning, that
they are robbing us of another of our inventions to give it to
the English. The writer, indeed, only admits them to have
i. This distinguished French emigre- and acquaintance of Jefferson
was the author of Letters of art American Farmer.
409
OF
revived what he thinks was known to the Greeks, that is, the
making the circumference of a wheel of one single piece. The
farmers in New Jersey Were the first who practised it, and
they practised it commonly. Dr. Franklin, in one of his
trips to London, mentioned this practice to the man now in
London, who has the patent for making those wheels. The
idea struck him. The Doctor promised to go to his shop, and
assist him in trying to make the wheel of one piece. The
Jersey farmers do it by cutting a young sapling, and bending
it, while green and juicy, into a circle; and leaving it so until
it becomes perfectly seasoned. But in London there are no
saplings. The difficulty was, then, to give to old wood the
pliancy of young. The Doctor and the workman labored to-
gether some weeks, arid succeeded; and the man obtained a
patent for it, which has made his fortune. I was in his shop
in London, he told me the whole story himself, and acknowl-
edged, not only the origin of the idea, but how much the
assistance of Dr. Franklin had contributed to perform the
operation on dry wood. He spoke of him with love and
gratitude. I think I have had a similar account from Dr.
Franklin, but cannot be quite c'ertain. I know, that being in
Philadelphia when the first set of patent wheels arrived from
London, and were spoken of by the gentleman (an English-
man) who brought them, as a wonderful discovery, the idea
of its being a new discovery was laughed at by the Philadel-
phians, who, in their Sunday parties across the Delaware,
had seen every farmer's cart mounted on such wheels. The
writer in the paper, supposes the English workman got his
idea from Homer. But it is more likely the Jersey farmer got
his idea from thence, because ours are the only farmers who
can read Homer; because, too, the Jersey practice is precisely
that stated by Homer: the English practice very different.
Homer's words are (comparing a young hero killed by Ajax to
\ poplar felled by a workman) literally thus: "He fell on the
ground, like a poplar, which has grpwn smooth, in the west
part of a great meadow; with its branches shooting from its
410
THOMAS JEFFERSON
summit. But the chariot maker, with the sharp axe, has felled
it, that he may bend a wheel for a beautiful chariot. It lies
drying on the banks of the river." Observe the circumstances
which coincide with the Jersey practice, i. It is a tree growing
in a moist place, full of juices and easily bent. 2. It is cut
while green. 3. It is bent into the circumference of a wheel.
4. It is left to dry in that form. You, who write French wfell
and readily, should write a line for the Journal, to reclaim
the honor of our farmers. Adieu. Yours affectionately.
TO COLONEL EDWARD CARRINGTON 1
Paris, January ib,
.... The tumults in America I expected would have
produced in Europe an unfavorable opinion of our political
state. But it has not. On the contrary, the small effect of these
tumults seems to have given more confidence in the firmness
of our governments. The interposition of the people themselves
on the side of government has had a great effect on the opinion
here. I am persuaded myself that the good sense of the people
will always be found to be the best army. They may be led
astray for a moment, but will soon correct themselves. The
people are the only censors of their governors; and even
their errors will tend to keep these to the true principles of
their institution. To punish these errors too severely would be
to suppress the only safeguard of the public liberty. The way
to prevent these irregular interpositions of the people, is to
give them full information of their affairs through the channel
of the public papers, and to contrive that those papers should
penetrate the whole mass of the people. The basis of our
governments being the opinion of the people, the very first
object should be to keep that right; and were it left to me to
decide whether we should have a government without news-
i. Carrington was a member of a prominent Virginia family who
served in the Revolution and was a member of the Continental Congress.
411
OF
papers, or newspapers without a government, I should not
hesitate a moment to prefer the latter. But I should mean that
every man should receive those papers, and be capable of
reading them. I am convinced that those societies (as the
Indians) which live without government, enjoy in their gen-
eral mass an infinitely greater degree of happiness than those
who live under the European governments. Among the former,
public opinion is in the place of law, and restrains morals as
powerfully as laws ever did anywhere. Among the latter, under
pretence of governing, they have divided their nations into
two classes, wolves and sheep. I do not exaggerate. This is a
true picture of Europe. Cherish, therefore, the spirit of our
people, and keep alive their attention. Do not be too severe
upon their errors, but reclaim them by enlightening them.
If once they become inattentive to the public affairs, you and
I, and Congress and Assemblies, Judges and Governors, shall
all become wolves. It seems to be the law of our general
natufe, in spite of individual exceptions; and experience de-
clares that man is the only animal which devours his own
kind; for I can apply no milder term to the governments of
Europe, and to the general prey of the rich on th<e poor. . . ,
TO JAMES MADISON
Paris, January 30,
. . : . I am impatient to learn your sentiments on the
late troubles in the Eastern States. So far as I have yet seen,
they do not appear to threaten serious consequences. Those
States have suffered by the stoppage of the channels of their
commerce, which have not yet found other issues. This must
render money scarce, and make the people uneasy. This uneasi-
ness has produced acts absolutely unjustifiable; but I hope
they will provoke no severities from their governments. A
consciousness of those in power that their administration of the
public affairs has been honest, may, perhaps, produce too
412
THOMAS J8FF8RSON
great a degree of indignation; and those characters, wherein
fear predominates over hope, may apprehend too much from
these instances of irregularity. They may conclude too hastily,
that nature has formed man insusceptible of any other gov-
ernment than that of force, a conclusion not founded in truth
nor experience. Societies exist under three forms, sufficiently
distinguishable, i. Without government, as among our Indians.
2. Under governments, wherein the will of every one has a
just influence; as is the case in England, in a slight degree,
and in our States, in a great one. 3. Under governments of
force; as is the case in all other monarchies, and in most of
the other republics. To have an idea of the curse of existence
under these last, they must be seen. It is a government of
wolves over sheep. It is a problem, not clear in my mind,
that the first condition is not the best. But I believe it to be
inconsistent with any great degree of population. The second
state has a great deal of good in it. The mass of mankind under
that, enjoys a precious degree of liberty and happiness. It has
its evils, too; the principal of which is the turbulence to which
it is subject. But weigh this against the oppressions of mon-
archy, and it becomes nothing. Malo perlculosam libertatcm
quam quictam servitutem. * Even this evil is productive of
good. It prevents the degeneracy of government, and nourishes
a general attention to the public affairs. I hold it, that a
little rebellion, now and then, is a good thing, and as necessary
in the political world as storms in the physical. Unsuccessful
rebellions, indeed, generally establish the encroachments on
the rights of the people, which have produced them. An ob-
servation of this truth should render honest republican gov-
ernors so mild in their punishment of rebellions, as not to
discourage them too much. It is a medicine necessary for the
sound health of government.
.... The Marquis d'e La Fayette is a most valuable auxil-
iary to me. His zeal is unbounded, and his weight with those
in power, great. His education having been merely military,
i. I prefer freedom with danger to slavery with ease.
413
OF
commerce was an unknown field to him. But his good sense
enabling him to comprehend perfectly whatever is explained
to him, his agency has been very efficacious. He has a great
deal of sound genius, is well remarked by the King, and rising
in popularity. He has nothing against him, but the suspicion
of republican principles. I think he will one day be of the
ministry. His foible is, a canine appetite for popularity and
fame; but he will get above this. The Count de Vergennes
is ill. The possibility of his recovery, renders it dangerous for
us to express a doubt of it; but he is in danger. He is a
great minister in European affairs, but has very imperfect
ideas of our institutions, and no confidence in them. His de-
votion to the principles of pure despotism, renders him un-
affectionate to our governments. But his fear of England
makes him value us as a make weight. He is cool, reserved in
political conversations, but free and familiar on other sub-
jects, and a very attentive, agreeable person to do business
with. It is impossible to have a clearer, better organized head;
but age has chilled his heart. . . .
TO MADAME LA COMTESSE DE TESSE *
Nismes, March 20,
Here I am, Madam, gazing whole hours at the Maison
Quarree, like a lover at his mistress. The stocking weavers
and silk spinners around it consider me a hypochondriac
Englishman, about to write with a pistol the last chapter
of his history. This is the second time I have been in love
since I left Paris. The first was with a Diana at the Chateau
de Laye-Epinaye in Beaujolois, a delicious morsel of sculpture,
by M. A. Slodtz. This, you will say, was in rule, to fall in
love with a female beauty; but with a house! it is out of all
precedent. No, Madam, it is not without a precedent in my
i. Madame de Tesse was Lafayette's ol'der cousin whom Jefferson
greatly admired and frequently visited while he was in Paris.
414
THOMAS J8FFSRSON
own history. While in Paris, T was violently smitten with
the Hotel de Salm, and used to go to the Tuileries almost
daily, to look at it. ...
From Lyons to Nismes I have been nourished with the
remains of Roman grandeur. They have always brought you
to my mind, because I know your affection for whatever is
Roman and noble. At Vienna I thought of you. But I am
glad you were not there; for you would have seen me more
angry than, I hope, you will ever see me. The Praetorian Palace,
as it is called, comparable, for its fine proportions, to the
Maison Quarree, defaced by the barbarians who have con-
verted it to its present purpose, its beautiful fluted Corinthian
columns cut out, in part, to make space for Gothic windows,
and hewed down, in the residue, to the plane of the building,
was enough, you must admit, to disturb my composure. At
Orange, too, I thought of you. I was sure you had seen with
pleasure the sublime triumphal arch of Marius at the entrance
of the city. I went then to the Arenae. Would you believe,
Madam, that in this eighteenth century, in France, under the
reign of Louis XVI., they are at this moment pulling down
the circular wall of this superb remain, to pave a road? . . .
A pro pas of Paris. I have now been three weeks from there,
without knowing anything of what has passed. I suppose 1
shall meet it all at Aix, where I have directed my letters to
be lodged, paste restante. My journey has given me leisure to
reflect on this Assemblee des Notables. Under a good and
a young King, as the pres'ent, I think good may be made of it,
I would have the deputies then, by all means, so conduct
themselves as to encourage him to repeat the calls of this
Assembly. Their first steps should be, to get themselves divided
into two chambers instead of s'even; the Noblesse and the
Commons separately. The second, to persuade the King,
instead of choosing the deputies of the Commons himself, to
summon those chosen by the people for the Provincial ad-
ministrations. The third, as the Noblesse is too numerous to be
all of the Assemblee, to obtain permission for that body to
415
OF
choose its own deputies. Two Houses, so elected, would contain
a maaS of wisdom which would make the people happy, and
the King great; would place him in history where no other
act can possibly place him. They would thus put themselves
in the track of the best guide they can follow; they would
soon overtake it, become its guide in turn, and lead to the
wholesome modifications wanting in that model, and necessary
to constitute a rational government. Should they attempt more
than the established habits of the people are ripe for, they
may lose all, and retard indefinitely the ultimate object of
their aim. Thes'e, Madam, are my opinions; but I wish to
know yours, which, I am sure, will be better.
From a correspondent at Nismes, you will not expect news.
Were I to attempt to give you news, I should tell you stories
one thousand years old. I should detail to you the intrigues of
the courts of the Caesars, how they affect us here, the oppres-
sions of their praetors, prefects, &c. I am immersed in antiqui-
ties from morning to night. For me, the city of Rome is
actually existing in all the splendor of its empire. I am filled
with alarms for the event of the irruptions daily making on us,
by the Goths, the Visigoths, Ostrogoths, and Vandals, lest they
should re-conquer us to our original barbarism. If I am some-
times induced to look forward to the eighteenth century, it
is only when Recalled to it by the recollection of your good-
ness and friendship, and by those sentiments of sincere esteem
and respect with which I have the honor to be Madam, your
most obedient, and most humble servant.
TO MARTHA JEFFERSON 1
Aix-en Provence, March 28, 1787
I was happy, my dear Patsy, to receive, on my arrival
h^re, your letter, informing me of your good health and occupa-
i. Martha, Jefferson's oldest daughter, ' had accompanied her father
on his mission to France. She was fifteen years old when this letter was
written. [Randall.]
416
THOMAS JSFFSRSON
tiotis. I have not written you soon'er because I have been almost
constantly on the road. My journey hitherto has been a very
pleasing one. It was undertaken with the hope that the mineral
waters of this place might restore strength to my wrist. Other
considerations also concurred, instruction, amusement, and
abstraction from business, of which I had too much at Paris.
I am glad to learn that you are employed in things new and
good, in your music and drawing. You know what have been
my fears for some time past— that you do not employ yourself
so closely as I could wish. You have promised me a more
assiduous attention, and I have great confidence in what you
promise. It is your future happiness which interests me, and
nothing can contribute more to it (moral rectitude always ex-
cepted) than the contracting a habit of industry and activity.
Of all the cankers of human happiness none corrodes with so
silent, yet so baneful a tooth, as indolence. Body and mind
both unemployed, our being becomes a burthen, and tevery
object about us loathsome, even the dearest. Idleness begets
ennui, ennui the hypochondria, and that a diseased body. No
laborious person was ever yet hysterical. Exercise and applica-
tion produce order in our affairs, health of body, cheerfulness
of mind, and these make us precious to our friends. It is while
we are young that the habit of industry is formed. If not then,
it never is afterwards. The fortune of our lives, therefore, de-
pends on employing well the short period of youth. If at any
moment, my dear, you catch yourself in idleness, start from it
as you would from the precipice of a gulf. You are not, how-
ever, to consider yourself as unemployed while taking exercise.
That is n'ecessary for your health, and health is the first of all
objects. For this reason, if you leave your dancing-master for
the summer, you must increase your other exercise.
I do not like your saying that you are unable to read the
ancient print of your Livy, but with the aid of your master.
W'e are always equal to what we undertake with resolution. A
little degree of this will enable you to decipher your Livy. If
you always lean on your master, you will never be able to
417
OF
proceed without him. It is a part of the American character
to consider nothing as d'esperate— to surmount every difficulty
by resolution and contrivance. In Europe there are shops for
every want: its inhabitants therefore have no idea that their
wants can be furnished otherwise. Remote from all other aid,
we are obliged to invent and to execute; to find means within
ourselves, and not to lean on others. Consider, therefore, the
conquering your Livy as an exercise in the habit of surmount-
ing difficulties; a habit which will be necessary to you in the
country where you are to live, and without which you will be
thought a very helpless animal, and less esteemed. Music,
drawing, books, invention, and exercise, will be so many re-
sources to you against ennui. But there are others which, to this
object, add that of utility. These are the needle and domestic
economy. The latter you cannot learn here, but the former you
may. In the country life of America there are many moments
when a woman can have recourse to nothing but her needle for
employment. In a dull company and in dull weather, for in-
stance, it is ill manners to read; it is ill manners to leave them;
no card-playing there among genteel people— that is aban-
doned to blackguards. The needle is then a valuable resource.
Besides, without knowing how to use it herself, how can the
mistress of a family direct the works of her servants?
You ask me to \\rite you long letters. I will do it, my dear,
on condition you will read them from time to time, and practice
what they will inculcate. Their precepts will be dictated by
experience, by a perfect knowledge of the situation in which
you will be placed, and by the fondest love for you. This it is
which makes me wish to see you more qualified than common.
My expectations from you are high— yet not higher than you
may attain. Industry and resolution are all that are wanting.
Nobody in this world can make me so happy, or so miserable,
as you. Retirement from public life will ere long become
necessary for me. To your sister and yourself I look to render
the evening of my life serene and contented. Its morning has
been clouded by loss after loss, till I have nothing left but you.
418
THOMAS J8FF8RSON
I do not doubt either your affection or dispositions. But great
exertions are necessary, and you have little time left to make
them. Be industrious, then, my dear child. Think nothing
unsurmountable by resolution and application and you will be
all that I wish you to be.
.... Continue to love me with all the warmth with which
you are beloved my dear Patsy. . . .
TO MARTHA JEFFERSON
Toulon, April 7, 1787 *
MY DEAR PATSY:
I received yesterday at Marseilles your letter of March
25th; and I received it with pleasure, because it announced
to me that you were well. Experience learns us to be always
anxious about the health of those whom we love. I have
not been able to write to you as often as I expected, because
I am generally on the road; and when I stop anywhere, I am
occupied in seeing what is to be seen. It will be some time
now, perhaps three weeks, before I shall be able to write you
again. But this need not slacken your writing to me, because
you have leisure, and your letters come regularly to me. I have
received letters which inform me that our dear Polly 2 will
certainly come to us this summer. By the time I return, it will
be time to exp'ect her. When she arrives, she will become a
precious charge on your hands. The difference of your age.,
and your common loss of a mother, will put that office on you.
Teach her to be always true; no vice is so mean as the want of
truth, and at the sam'e time so useless. Teach her never to be
angry: anger only serves to torment ourselves, to divert
others, and alienate their esteem. And teach her industry and
application to useful pursuits. I will venture to assufe you, that
if you inculcate this in her mind, you will make her a happ>
1. [Fordl
2. Maria Jefferson, Martha's younger sister.
419
OF
being herself, a most inestimable friend to you, and precious
to all the world. In teaching her these dispositions of mind,
you will be more fixed in them yourself, and render yourself
dear to all your acquaintances. Practice them, then, my dear,
without ceasing. If ever you find yourself in difficulty, and
doubt how to extricate yourself, do what is right, and you will
find it the easiest way of getting out of the difficulty. Do it
for the additional incitement of increasing the happiness of him
who loves you infinitely, ....
TO THE MARQUIS DE LAFAYETTE l
Nice, April u,
Your head, my dear friend, is full of notable things;
and being better employed, therefore, I do not expect letters
from you. I am constantly roving about, to see what I have
never seen before, and shall never see again. In the great
cities, I go to see what travellers think alone worthy of being
seen; but I make a job of it, and generally gulp it all down in
a day. On the other hand, I am never satiated with rambling
through the fields and farms, examining the culture and cul-
tivators, with a degree of curiosity which makes some take
me to be a fool, and others to be much wiser than I am. I
have been pleased to find among the people a less degree of
physical misery than I had expected. They are generally well
clothed, and have a plenty of food, not animal indeed, but
vegetable, which is as wholesome. Perhaps they are over-
worked, the excess of the rent required by the landlord obliging
them to too many hours of labor in order to produce that, and
wherewith to feed and clothe themselves. The soil of Cham-
pagne and Burgundy I have found more universally good than
I had expected, and as I could not help making a comparison
i. Lafayette, brilliant volunteer fighter for American freedom and one
of Jefferson's dearest friends for half a century, was political contact,
man for him while he was Minister to France.
420
THOMAS .JSFFSRSON
with England, I found that comparison mote unfavorable to the
latter than is generally admitted. The soil, the climate, and
the productions are superior to those of England, and the
husbandry as good, except in one point; that of manure. In
England, long leases for twenty-one years, or three lives, to
wit, that of the farmer, his wife, and son, renewed by the
son as soon as he comes to the possession, for his own life,
his wife's and eldest child's, and so on, render the farms
there almost hereditary, make it worth the farmer's while to
manure the lands highly, and give the landlord an opportunity
of occasionally making his rent keep pace with the improved
state of the lands. Here the leases are either during pleasure,
or for three, six, or nine years, which does not give the
farmer time to repay himself for the expensive operation of
well manuring, and, therefore, he manures ill, or not at all.
I suppose, that could the practice of leasing for three lives be
introduced in the whole kingdom, it would, within the term
of your life, increase agricultural productions fifty per cent.;
or were any one proprietor to do it with his own lands, it
would increase his rents fifty per cent., in the course of
twenty-five years. But I am told the laws do not permit it.
The laws then, in this particular, are unwise and unjust, and
ought to give that permission. In the southern provinces, where
the soil is poor, the climate hot and dry, and there are few
animals, they would learn the art, found so precious in Eng-
land, of making vegetable manure, and thus improving these
provinces in the article in which nature has been least kind
to them. Indeed, thes'e provinces afford a singular spectacle.
Calculating on the poverty of their soil, and their climate
by its latitude only, they should have been the poorest in
France. On the contrary, they are the richest, from one
fortuitous circumstance. Spurs or ramifications of high moun-
tains, making down from the Alps, and, as it were, reticulating
these provinces, give to the valleys the protection of a par-
ticular inclosure to each, and the benefit of a general stagnation
of the northern winds produced by the whole of them, and thus
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OF
jountervail the advantage of several degrees of latitude.
From the first olive fields of Pierrelatte, to the orangeries of
Hieres, has been continued rapture to me. I have often wished
for you. I think you have not made this journey. It is a pleasure
you have to come, and an improvement to be added to the
many you have already made. It will be a great comfort to
you, to know, from your own inspection, the condition of all
the provinces of your own country, and it will be interesting
to them at some future day, to be known to you. This is,
perhaps, the only mom'ent of your life in which you can
acquire that knowledge. And to do it most effectually, you
must be absolutely incognito, you must ferret the people out
of their hovels as I have done, look into their kettles, feat their
bread, loll on their beds under pretence of resting yourself,
but in fact, to find if they are soft. You will feel a sublime
pleasure in the course of this investigation, and a sublimer
i>ne hereafter, when you shall be able to apply your knowledge
to the softening of their beds, or the throwing a morsel of
meat into their kettle of vegetables.
You will not wonder at the subjects of my letters; they are
the only ones which have been presented to my mind for some
time past; and the waters must always be what are the foun-
tains from which they flow. According to this, indeed, I should
have intermixed, from beginning to "end, warm expressions of
friendship to you. But according to the ideas of our country,
we do not permit ourselves to speak even truths, when they
may have the air of flattery. I content myself, therefore, with
saying once for all, that I love you, your wife and children.
Tell them so, and adieu. Yours affectionately.
TO JAMES MADISON
Paris, June 20, 1787
.... The idea of separating the executive business of
the confederacy from Congress, as the judiciary is already, in
422
THOMAS
some degree, is just and necessary. I had frequently pressed
on the members individually, while in Congress, the doing
this by a resolution of Congress for appointing an executive
committee, to act during the sessions of Congress, as the com-
mittee of the States was to act during their vacations. But the
referring to this committee all executive business, as it should
present itself, would require a more p'ersevering self-denial
than I suppose Congress to possess. It will be much better to
make that separation by a federal act. The negative, proposed
to be given them on all the acts of the several legislatures, is
now, for the first time, suggested to my mind. Prima jade,
I do not like it. It fails in an essential character; that the hole
and the patch should be commensurate. But this proposes to
mend a snail hole by covering the whole garment. Not more
than one out of one hundred State acts concern the confed-
eracy. This proposition, then, in order to give them one degree
of power, which they ought to have, gives them ninety-nine
more, which they ought not to have, upon a presumption
that the}r will not exercise the ninety-nine. But upon every
act, there will be a preliminary question, Does this act concerr
the confederacy? And was there ever a proposition so plain,
as to pass Congress without a debate? Their decisions are
almost always wise; they are like pure metal. But you know
of how much dross this is the result. Would not an appeal from
the State judicature to a federal court, in all cases where
the act of Confederation controlled the question, be as ef
fectual a remedy, and exactly commensurate to the defect?
A British creditor, for example, sues for his debt in Virginia;
the defendant pleads an act of the State, excluding him from
their courts; the plaintiff urges the Confederation, and the
treaty made under that, as controlling the State law; the
judges are weak enough to decide according to the views of
their legislature. An appeal to a federal court sets all to rights.
It will be said, that this court may encroach on the juris-
diction of the State courts. It may. But there will be a power,
to wit, Congress, to watch and restrain them. But place the
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OF
same authority in Congress its'elf, and there will be no power
above them, to perform the same office. They will restrain
within due bounds, a jurisdiction exercised by others, much
more rigorously than if exercised by themselves. . . .
The late changes in the ministry here excite considerable
hopes. I think we gain in them all. I am particularly happy at
the re-'entry of Malesherbes into the Council. His knowledge
and integrity render his value inappreciable, and the greater
to me, because, while he had no views of office, we had estab-
lished together the moGt unreserved intimacy. So far, too, I am
pleased with Montmorin. His honesty proceeds from the heart
as well as the head, and therefore may be more surely counted
on. The King loves business, 'economy, order, and justice,
and wishes sincerely the good of his people; but he is irascible,
rude, very limited in his understanding, and religious, border-
ing on bigotry. He has no mistress, loves his que'en, and is
too much governed by her. She is capricious like her brother,
and governed by him; devoted to pleasure and expense; and
not remarkable for any other vices or virtues. Unhappily the
King shows a propensity for the pleasures of the table. That
for drink has increased lately, or, at least, it has become more
known. . . .
TO T. M. RANDOLPH, JUNIOR 1
Paris, July 6, 1787
.... I am glad to find, that among the various branches
of science presenting themselves to your mind, you have fixed
on that of politics as your principal pursuit. Your country will
derive from this a more immediate and sensible benefit. She
has much for you to do. For, though we may say with con-
fidence, that the worst of the American constitutions is
better than the best which ever existed before, in any other
country, and that they are wonderfully perfect for a first
i. Randolph was Jefferson's nephew who later married Martha Jeffer-
son, his second cousin and Thomas Jefferson's older daughter.
424
THOMAS
essay, yet every human essay must have defects. It will re-
main, therefore, to those now coming on the stage of public
affairs, to perfect what has been so well begun by those going
off it. Mathematics, Natural Philosophy, Natural History,
Anatomy, Chemistry, Botany, will become amusements for
your hours of relaxation, and auxiliaries to your principal
studies. Precious and delightful ones they will be. As soon as
such a foundation is laid in them, as you may build on as you
please, hereafter, I suppose you will proceed to your main
objects, Politics^ Law, Rhetoric, and History. As to these,
the place where you study them is absolutely indifferent. I
should except Rhetoric, a very Essential member of them, and
which I suppose must be taught to advantage where you are.
You would do well, therefore, to attend the public exercises
in this branch also, and to do it with very particular diligence.
This being done, the question arises, where you shall fix your-
self for studying Politics, Law, and History? I should not
hesitate to decide in favor of France, because you will, at
the same time, be learning to speak the language of that
country, become absolutely essential under our present cir-
cumstances. The best method of doing this, would be to fix
yourself in some family where there are women and children,
in Passy, Auteuil, or some other of the little towns in reach of
Paris. The principal hours of the day, you will attend to your
studies, and in those of relaxation, associate with the family.
You will learn to speak better from women and children in
three months, than from men in a year. Such a situation, too,
will render more easy a due attention to economy of time and
money- Having pursued your main studies here, about two
years, and acquired a facility in speaking French, take a tout
of four or five months through this country and Italy, return
then to Virginia, and pass a year in Williamsburg, under the
care of Mr. Wythe; and you will be ready to enter on the
public stage, with superior advantages. I have proposed to you,
to carry on the study of the law with that of politics and
history. Every political measure will, forever, have an intimate
LSTT8RS OF
connection with the laws of the land; and he, who knows
nothing of these, will always be perplexed, and often foiled by
adversaries having the advantage of that knowledge over him.
Besides, it is a source of infinite comfort to reflect, that
under every chance of fortune, we have a resource in our^
selves from which we may be able to derive an honorable
subsistence. I would, therefore, propose not only the study, but
Ihe practice of the law for some time, to possess yourself of
the habit of public speaking. With respect to modern lan-
guages, French, as I have before observed, is indispensable.
Next to this, the Spanish is most important to an American.
Our connection with Spain is already important, and will
become daily more so. Besides this, the ancient part of Ameri-
can history is written chiefly in Spanish. To a person who
would make a point of reading and speaking French and
Spanish, I should doubt the utility of learning Italian. These
three languages, being all degeneracies from the Latin, re-
semble one another so much, that I doubt the probability of
keeping in the head a distinct knowledge of them all. I suppose
that he who learns them all, will speak a compound of the
three, and neither perfectly. The journey which I propose to
you need not be expensive, and would be very useful. With
your talents and industry, with science, and that steadfast
honesty which eternally pursues right, regardless of con-
sequences, you may promise yourself everything— but health,
without which there is no happiness. An attention to health,
then, should take place of every other object. The time neces-
sary to secure this by active exercises, should be devoted to it,
in preference to every other pursuit. I know the difficulty with
which a studious man tears himself from his studies, at any
given moment of the day. But his happiness, and that of his
family, depend on it. The most uninformed mind, with a
healthy body, is happier than the wisest valetudinarian. I need
not tell you, that if I can be useful to you in any part of this,
or any other plan you shall adopt, you will make me happy
by commanding my services. . . *
426
THOMAS JSFFSRSON
TO EDWARD CARRINGTON
Paris, August 4, 1787
DEAR SIR,— Since mine of the i6th of January, I have
been honored by your favors of April the 24th and June the
9th. I am happy to find that the States have come so generally
into the schemes of the federal convention, from which, I am
sure, we shall see wise- propositions. I confess, I do not go as far
in the reforms thought necessary, as some of my correspondents
in America; but if the convention should adopt such proposi-
tions, I shall suppose them necessary. My general plan would
be, to make the States one as to everything connected with for-
eign nations, and several as to everything purely domestic.
But with all the imperfections of our present government, it
is without comparison the best existing, or that ever did exist.
Its greatest defect is the imperfect manner in which matters
of commerce have been provided for. It has be'en so often
said, as to be generally believed, that Congress have no power
by the Confederation to enforc'e anything; for example, con-
tributions of money. It was not necessary to give them that
power expressly ; they have it by the law of nature. When two
parties make a compact, there results to each a power of com-
pelling the other to execute it. Compulsion was never so easy
as in our case, where a single frigate would soon levy on the
commerce of any State the deficiency of its contributions; nor
more safe than in the hands of Congress, which has always
shown that it would wait, as it ought to do, to the last ex-
tremities, before it would execute any of its powers which are
disagreeable. I think it Very material, to separate, in the
hands of Congress, the executive and legislative powers, as the
judiciary already are, in some degree. This, I hope, will be
done. The want of it has been the source of more evil than we
have experienced from any other cause. Nothing is so em-
barrassing nor so mischievous, in a great assembly, as the
details of execution. The smallest trifle of that kind occupies
427
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as long as the most important act of legislation, and takes place
of everything else. Let any man recollect, or look over, the
tiles of Congress; he will observe the most important proposi-
tions hanging over, from week to we'ek, and month to month,
till the occasions have passed them, and the things never done.
I have ever viewed the executive details as the greatest cause
of evil to us, because they in fact place us as if we had no
federal head, by diverting the attention of that head from
great to small subjects; and should this division of power not
be recommended by the convention, it is my opinion Congress
should make it itself, by establishing an executive com-
mittee. . ., .
TO COLONEL MONROE
Paris, August 5, 1787
DEAR SIR,— A journey of between three and four
months, into the southern parts of France and northern of
Italy, has prevented my writing to you. In the meantime, you
have changed your ground, and engaged in different occupa-
tions, so that I know not whether the news of this side the
water will even amuse you. However, it is all I have for you.
The storm which seemed to be raised suddenly in Brabant,
will probably blow over. The Emperor, on his return to Vienna,
pretended to revoke all the concessions which had been made
by his Governors General, to his Brabantine subjects; but he,
at the same time, called for deputies from among them to
consult with. He will use their agency to draw himself out of
the scrape, and all there, I think, will be quieted. Hostilities go
on occasionally in Holland. France espouses the cause of the
Patriots, as you know, and England and Prussia that of the
Stadtholder. France and England are both unwilling to bring
on war, but a hasty move of the King of Prussia will perplex
them. He has thought the stopping his sister sufficient cause
for sacrificing a hundred or two thousand of his subjects, and
428
THOMAS JSFFSRSON
as many Hollanders and French. He has therefore ordered
twenty thousand men to march, without consulting England,
or even his own ministers. He may thus drag England into a
war, and of course this country, against their will. But it is
certain they will do everything they can to prevent it; .and that
in this at least they .agree. Though such a war might be gainful
to us, yet it is much to be deprecated by us at this time. In all
probability, France would be unequal to such a war by sea and
by land, and it is not our interest, or even safe for us, that she
should be weakened. The great improvements in their con-
stitution, effected by the Assemblee des Notables, you are ap-
prized of. That of partitioning the country into a number of
subordinate governments, under the administration of Provin-
cial Assemblies, chosen by the people, is a capital one. But
to the delirium of joy which these improvements gave the
nation, a strange reverse of temper has suddenly succeeded.
The deficiencies of their revenue were exposed, and they were
frightful. Yet there was an appearance of intention to econo-
mise, and reduce the expenses of government. But expenses are
still very inconsiderately incurred, and all reformation in that
point despaired of. The public credit is affected; and such a
spirit of discontent has arisen, as has never been seen. The
parliament refused to register the edict for a stamp tax, or
any other tax, and call for the States General, who alone,
they say, can impose a new tax. They speak with a boldness
unexampled. The King has called them to Versailles to-
morrow, where he will hold a lit de justice, and compel them
to register the tax. How the chapter will finish, we must wait
to see. . . .
TO PETER CARR
Paris, August 10, 1787
DEAR PETER,— I have received your two letters of
December the 3Oth and April the i8th, and am very happy to
find by them, as well as by letters from Mr. Wythe, that you
OF
have been so fortunate as to attract his notice and good will;
I am sure you will find this to have been one of the most
fortunate events of your life, as I have ever been sensible it
was of mine. I enclose you a sketch of the sciences to which I
would wish you to apply, in such order as Mr. Wythe shall
advise; I mention, also, the books in them worth your reading,
which submit to his correction. Many of these are among your
father's books, which you should have brought to you. As I do
not recollect those of them not in his library, you must write to
me for them, making out a catalogue of such as you think you
shall have occasion for, in eighteen months from the date of
your letter, and consulting Mr. Wythe on the subject. To this
sketch, I will add a few particular observations:
1. Italian. I fear the learning this language will confound
your French and Spanish. Being all of them degenerated dia-
lects of the* Latin, they are apt to mix in conversation. I have
never se'en a person speaking the three languages, who did not
ffiix them. It is a delightful language, but late events having
Tendered the Spanish more useful, lay it aside to prosecute that.
2. Spanish. Bestow great attention on this, and tendeavor to
acquire an accurate knowledge of it. Our future connections
with Spain and Spanish America, will render that language a
valuable acquisition. The ancient history of that part of Amer-
ica, too, is written in that language. I send you a dictionary.
3. Moral Philosophy. I think it lost time to attend lectures
on this branch. He who made us would have been a pitiful
bungler, if he had made the rules of our moral conduct a matter
of science. For one man of science, there are thousands who
are not. What would have become of them? Man was destined
for society. His morality, therefore, was to be formed to this
object. He was endowed with a sense of right and wrong,
merely relative to this. This sense is as much a part of his na-
ture, as the s'ense of hearing, seeing, feeling; it is the true
foundation of morality, and not the TO KaXov,1 truth, &c., as
fanciful writers have imagined. The moral sense, or conscience..
i. The beautiful.
430
THOMAS jeFFSRSON
is as much a part of man as his leg or arm. It is given to all
human beings in a stronger or weaker degree, as force of mem-
bers is given them in a greater or less degree. It may be
strengthened by exercise, as may any particular limb of the
body. This sense is submitted, indeed, in some degree, to the
guidance of reason; but it is a small stock which is required
for this: even a less one than what we call common sense. State
a moral case to a ploughman and a professor. The former will
decide it as well, and often better than the latter, because he
has not been led astray by artificial rules. In this branch, there-
fore, read good books, because they will encourage, as well as
direct your feelings. The writings of Sterne, particularly, form
the best course of morality that ever was written. Besides these,
read the books mentioned in the enclosed paper; and, above all
things, lose no occasion of exercising your dispositions to be
grateful, to be generous, to be charitable, to be humane, to be
true, just, firm, orderly, courageous, &c. Consider every act of
this kind, as an exercise which will strengthen your moral facul-
ties and increase your worth.
4. Religion. Your reason is now mature enough to examine
this object. In the first place, divest yourself of all bias in favor
of novelty and singularity of opinion. Indulge them in any other
subject rather than that of religion. It is too important, and the
consequences of error may be too serious. On the other hand,
shake off all the fears and servile prejudices, under which weak
minds are servilely crouched. Fix reason firmly in her seat, and
call to her tribunal 'every fact, every opinion. Question with
boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one,
he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of
blindfolded fear. You will naturally examine first, the religion
of your own country. Read the Bible, then, as you would read
Livy or Tacitus. The facts which are within the ordinary course
of nature, you will believe on the authority of the writer, as you
do those of the same kind in Livy and Tacitus. The testimony
of the writer weighs in their favor, in one scale, and their not
being against the laws of nature, does not weigh against them.
OF
But those facts in the Bible which contradict the laws of natur'e,
must be examined with more care, and under a variety of faces.
Here you must recur to the pretensions of the writer to inspira-
tion from God. Examine upon what Evidence his pretensions
are founded, and whether that evidence is so strong, as that its
falsehood would be more improbable than a change in the laws
of nature, in the case he relates. For example, in the book of
Joshua, we are told, the sun stood still several hours. Were we
to read that fact in Livy or Tacitus, we should class it with
their showers of blood, speaking of statues, beasts, etc. But it
is said, that the writer of that book was inspired. Examine,
therefore, candidly, what evidence there is of his having been
inspired. The pretension is entitled to your inquiry, because
millions believe it. On the other hand, you are astronomer
enough to know how contrary it is to the law of nature that a
body revolving on its axis, as the earth does, should have
stopped, should not, by that sudden stoppage, have prostrated
animals, trees, buildings, and should after a certain time have
resumed its revolution, and that without a second general pros-
tration. Is this arrest of the earth's motion, or the evidence
which affirms it, most within the law of probabilities? You
will next read the New Testament. It is the history of a per-
sonage called Jesus. Keep in your eye the opposite pretensions:
i, of those who say he was begotten by God, born of a virgin,
suspended and reversed the laws of nature at will, and as-
cended bodily into heaven; and 2, of those who say he was a
man of illegitimate birth, of a benevolent heart, enthusiastic
mind, who set out without pr'etensions to divinity, ended in be-
lieving them, and was punished capitally for sedition, by be-
ing gibbeted, according to the Roman law, which punished the
first commission of that offence by whipping, and the second by
exile, or death in furea
Do not be frightened from this inquiry by any fear of its con-
sequences. If it ends in a belief that there is no God, you will
find incitements to virtue in the comfort and pleasantness you
feel in its exercise, and the love of others which it will procure
432
THOMAS J8FF8RSON
you. If you find reason to believe there is a God, a conscious-
ness that you are acting under his eye, and that he approves
you, will be a vast additional incitement; if that there be a
future state, the hope of a happy existence in that increases
the appetite to deserve it; if that Jesus was also a God, you
will be comforted by a belief of his aid and love. In fine, I re-
peat, you must lay aside all prejudice on both sides, and neither
believe nor reject anything, because any other persons, or de-
scription of persons, have rejected or believed it. Your own rea-
son is the only oracle given you by heaven, and you are an-
swerable, not for the Tightness, but uprightness of the decision.
I forgot to observe, when speaking of the New Testament, that
you should read all the histories of Christ, as well of those
whom a council of ecclesiastics have decided for us, to be
Pseudo-evangelists, as those they named Evangelists. Because
these Pseudo-evangelists pretended to inspiration, as much as
the others, and you are to judge their pretensions by your own
reason, and not by the r'eason of those ecclesiastics. Most of
these are lost. There are some, however, still extant, collected
by Fabricius, which I will endeavor to get and send you.
5. Travelling. This makes men wiser, but less happy. When
men of sober age travel, they gather knowledge, which they
may apply usefully for their country; but they are subject ever
after to recollections mixed with regret; their affections are
weakened by being extended over more objects; and they
learn new habits which cannot be gratified when they return
hom'e. Young men, who travel, are exposed to all these incon-
veniences in a higher degree, to others still more serious, and
do not acquire that wisdom for which a previous foundation
is requisite, by repeated and just observations at home. Thfe
glare of pomp and pleasure is analogous to the motion of the
blood; it absorbs all their affection and attention, they are
torn from it as from the only good in this world, and return
to their home as to a place of exile and condemnation. Their
eyes are forever turned back to the object they have lost, and
its recollection poisons the residue of their lives. Their first
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OF
and most delicate passions are hackneyed on unworthy objects
here, and they carry home the dregs, insufficient to make them-
selves or anybody else happy. Add to this, that a habit of idle-
ness, an inability to apply themselves to business is acquired,
and renders them useless to themselves and their country.
These observations are founded in experience. There is no
place where your pursuit of knowledge will be so little ob-
structed by foreign objects, as in your own country, nor any,
wherein the virtu'es of the heart will be less exposed to be
weakened. Be good, be learned, and be industrious, and you
will not want the aid of travelling, to render you precious to
your country, dear to your friends, happy within yourself. I
fepeat my advice, to take a great deal of exercise, and on
foot. Health is the first requisite after morality. Write to me
often, and be assured of the interest I take in your success, as
well as the warmth of those sentiments of attachment with
tvhich I am, dear Peter, your affectionate friend v
TO JOHN ADAMS 1
Paris, August 30,
. . . , all tongues in Paris (and in France as it is said)
have been let loose, and never was a license of speaking against
the government exercised in London more freely or more uni-
versally. Caricatures, placards, bons mots, have been indulged in
by all ranks of people, and I know of no well-attested instance
of a single punishment. For some time mobs of ten, twenty and
thirty thousand people collected daily, surrounded the par-
liament house, huzzaed the members, even entered the doors
and examined into their conduct, took the horses out of the car-
riages of those who did well, and drew them home. The govern-
ment thought it prudent to prevent these, drew some regiments
i. Jefferson and Adam's mutual friendship and respect, interrupted
for some years because of political differences and personal misunder-
standings, was particularly strong in the later years of their lives. Their
correspondence is notable for its philosophic and spirited character.
434
THOMAS JSFFSRSON
into the neighborhood, multiplied the guards, had the streets
constantly patrolled by strong parties, suspended privileged
places, forbade all clubs, etc. The mobs have ceased; perhap?
this may be partly owing to the absence of parliament. The
Count d'Artois, sent to hold a bed of justice in the Cour des
Aides, was hissed and hooted without reserve, by the popu-
lace; the carriage of Madame de (I forget the name) in the
Quefen's livery was stopped by the populace, under a belief that
it was Madame de Polignac, whom they would have insulted;
the Queen, going to the theatre at Versailles with Madame de
Polignac, was received with a general hiss. The King, long in
the habit of drowning his cares in wine, plunges deeper and
deeper. The Queen cries, but sins on. The Count d'Artois is
detested, and Monsieur, the general favorite. . . .
TO JOHN ADAMS
Paris, November 13,
.... How do you like our new constitution? I confess
there are things in it which stagger all my disposition to sub-
scribe to what such an Assembly has proposed. The house of
federal representatives will not be adequate to the manage-
ment of affairs, either foreign or federal. Their President seems
a bad edition of a Polish King. He may be elected from four
years to four years, for life. Reason and experience prove to
us, that a chief magistrate, so continuable, is an office for life.
When on'e or two generations shall have proved that this is an
office for life, it becomes, on every occasion, worthy of intriguer
of bribery, of force, and even of foreign interference. It will
be of great consequence to France and England, to have Amer-
ica governed by a Galloman or Angloman. Once in office, and
possessing the military force of the Union, without the aid 01
check of a council, he would not be easily dethroned, even ii
the people could be induced to withdraw their votes from hinv
I wish that at the end of the four years, they had made him
435
OF
forever ineligible a second time. Indeed, I think all the good
of this new constitution might have been couched in three or
four new articles, to be added to the good, old and venerable
fabric, which should have been preserved even as a religious
relique. . . .
TO COLONEL SMITH 1
Paris, November 13, 1787
.... can history produce an instance of rebellion ? so
honorably conducted? I say nothing of its motives. They were
founded in ignorance, not wickedness. God forbid we should
ever be twenty years without such a rebellion. The people can-
not be all, and always, well informed. The part which is wrong
will be discontented, in proportion to the importance of the
facts they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such mis-
conceptions, it is a lethargy, the forerunner of death to the pub-
lic liberty. We have had thirteen States independent for eleven
years. There has been one rebellion. That comes to one rebel-
lion in a century and a half, for each State. What country
before, ever existed a century and a half without a rebellion?
And what country can preserve its liberties, if its rulers ai"e
not warned from time to time, that this people preserve the
spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to sec
them right as to facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify
a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must
be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and
tyrants. It is its natural manure. . . .
TO JAMES MADISON
Paris, December 20, 1787
.... I like much the general idea of framing a govern-
ment, which should go on of itself, peaceably, without needing
1. Colonel William Stephens Smith was an American diplomat and
son-in-law of John Adams.
2. Jefferson has been discussing Shays's insurrection in Massachusetts,
436
THOMAS J8FF8RSON
continual recurrence to the State legislatures. I like the organi-
zation of the government into legislative, judiciary and execu-
tive. I like the power given the legislature to levy taxes, and
for that reason solely, I approve of the greater House being
chosen by the people directly. For though I think a House so
chosen, will be very far inferior to the present Congress, will be
very illy qualified to legislate for the Union, for foreign na-
tions, etc., yet this evil does not weigh against the good, of
preserving inviolate the fundamental principle, that the people
are not to be taxed but by representatives chosen immediately
by themselves. I am captivated by the compromise of the op-
posite claims of the great and little States, of the latter to
equal, and the former to proportional influence. I am much
pleased, too, with the substitution of the method of voting by
person, instead of that of voting by States; and I like the
negative given to the Executive, conjointly with a third of
either House; though I should have liked it better, had the
judiciary been associated for that purpose, or invested sep-
arately with a similar power. There are other good things of
less moment. I will now tell you what I do not like. First, the
omission of a bill of rights, providing clearly, and without the
aid of sophism, for freedom of religion, freedom of the press,
protection against standing armies, restriction of 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 laws of nations. To say, as Mr. Wil-
son 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 which it was addressed;
but it is surely a gratis dictum, the reverse of which might just
as well be said; and it is opposed by strong inferences from
the body of the instrument, as well as from the omission of the
cause of our present Confederation, which had made the res-
ervation in express terms. It was hard to conclude, because
there has been a want of uniformity among the States as to the
437
OF
cases triable by jury, because some have been so incautious as
to dispense with this mode of trial in certain cases, 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 pre-
served with jealousy this sacred palladium of liberty, those
who had wandered, should be brought back to it; and to have
established general right rather than general wrong. For I
consider all the ill as established, which may be established.
I have a right to nothing, which another has a right to take
away; and Congress will have a right to take away trials by
jury in all civil cases. 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 re-
fuse, or rest on inference.
The second feature I dislike, and strongly dislike, is th'e
abandonment, in every instance, of the principle of rotation in
office, and most particularly in the case of the President. Rea-
son and experience tell us, that the first magistrate will always
be re-elected if he may be re-elected. He is then an officer for
life. This once observed, it becomes of so much consequence to
certain nations to have a friend or a foe at the head of our
affairs, that they will interfere with money and with arms.
A Galloman, or an Angloman, will be supported by the nation
he befriends. If once elected, and at a second or third election
outvoted by one or two votes, he will pretend false votes, foul
play, hold possession of the reins of government, be supported
by the States voting for him, especially if they be the central
ones, lying in a compact body themselves, and separating their
opponents; and they will be aided by one nation in Europe,
while the majority are aided by another. The election of a
President of America, some years hence, will be much more in-
teresting to certain nations of Europe, than ever the election
of a King of Poland was. Reflect on all the instances in history,
ancient and modern, of elective monarchies, and say if they
do not give foundation for my fears; the Roman Emperors,
438
THOMAS J8FF8RSON
the Popes while they were of any importance, the German Em-
perors till they became hereditary in practice, the Kings of
Poland, the Deys of the Ottoman dependencies. It may be said,
that if elections are to be attended with these disorders, the less
frequently they are repeated the better. But experience says,
that to free them from disorder, they must be rendered less
interesting by a necessity of change. No foreign power, nor
domestic party, will waste their blood and money to elect a
person, who must go out at the end of a short period. The
power of removing every fourth year by the vote of the people,
is a power which they will not exercise, and if they were dis-
posed to exercise it, they would not be permitted. The King 01
Poland is removable every day by the diet. But they never re-
move him. Nor would Russia, the Emperor, etc., permit them
to do it. Smaller objections are, the appeals on. matters of fact
as well as laws; and the binding all persons, legislative, execu-
tive, and judiciary by oath, to maintain that constitution. I do
not pretend to decide, what would be the best method of pro-
curing the establishment of the manifold good things in this
constitution, and of getting rid of the bad. Whether by adopt-
ing it, in hopes of future amendment; or after it shall have
been duly weighed and canvassed by the people, after seeing
the parts they generally dislike, and those they generally ap-
prove, to say to them, "We se'e now what you wish. You are
willing to give to your federal government such and such pow-
ers; but you wish, at the same time, to have such and such
fundamental rights secured to you, and certain sources of con-
vulsion taken away. Be it so. Send together deputies again. Let
them establish your fundamental rights by a sacrosanct dec-
laration, and let them pass the parts of the Constitution you
have approved. These will give powers to your federal govern-
ment sufficient for your happiness."
This is what might be said, and would probably produce a
speedy, more perfect and more permanent form of government.
At all events, I hope you will not be discouraged from making
other trials, if the present one should fail. We are never per-
439
OF
mitted to despair of the commonwealth. I have thus told you
freely what I like, and what I dislike, merely as a matter of
curiosity; for I know it is not in my power to offer matter of
information to your judgment, which has been formed after
hearing and weighing everything which the wisdom of man
could offer on these subjects. I own, I am not a friend to a very
energetic government. It is always oppressive. It places the
governors indeed more at their ease, at the expense of the peo-
ple. The late rebellion in Massachusetts has given more alarm,
than I think it should have done. Calculate that one rebellion
in thirteen States in the course of eleven years, is but one for
-each State in a century and a half. No country should be so
long without one. Nor will any degree of power in the hands of
government, prevent insurrections. In England, where the hand
of power is heavier than with us, there are seldom half a dozen
years without an insurrection. In France, where it is still heav-
ier, but less despotic, as Montesquieu supposes, than in some
other countries, and where there are always two or three hun-
dred thousand men ready to crush insurrections, there have
been three in the course of the three years I have been here, in
every one of which greater numbers were engaged than in
Massachusetts, and a great deal more blood was spilt. In Tur-
key, where the sole nod of the despot is death, insurrections are
the events of every day. Compare again the ferocious depreda-
tions of their insurgents, with the order, the moderation and
the almost self-extinguishment of ours. And say, finally, whether
peace is best preserved by giving energy to the government, or
information to the people. This last is the most Certain, and the
most legitimate engine of government. Educate and inform the
whole mass of the people. Enable them to see that it is their in-
terest to preserve peace and order, and they will preserve them.
And it requires no very high degree of education to convince
them of this. They are the only sure reliance for the preserva-
tion of our liberty. After all, it is my 'principle that the will of
the majority should prevail. If they approve the proposed con-
stitution in all its parts, I shall concur in it cheerfully, in
440
THOMAS JEFFERSON
hopes they will amend it, whenever they shall find it works
wrong. This reliance cannot deceive us, as long as we remain
virtuous; and I think we shall be so, as long as agriculture is
our principal object, which will be the case, while there remains
vacant lands in any part of America. When we get piled upon
one another in large cities, as in Europe, we shall become cor-
rupt as in Europe, and go to eating one another as they do
there. I have tired you by this time with disquisitions which
you have already heard repeated by others a thousand and a
thousand times; and therefore, shall only add assurances of the
esteem and attachmem with which I have the honor to be,
dear Sir, your affectionate friend and servant.
P. S. The instability of our laws is really an immense evil.
I think it would be well to provide in our constitutions, that
there shall always be a twelvemonth between the engrossing a
bill and passing it; that it should then be offered to its passage
without changing a word; and that if circumstances should be
thought to require a sp'eedier passage, it should take two-thirds
of both Houses, instead of a bare majority.
TO E. CARRINGTON
Paris, Dec. 21, 1787
.... I often doubt whether I should trouble Congress
or my friends with . . . details of European politics. I know
they do not excite that interest in America, of which it is im-
possible for orie to divest himself here. I know, too, that it is a
maxim with us, and I think it a wise one, not to entangle our-
selves with the affairs of Europe. Still, I think, we should know
them. The Turks have practiced the same maxim of not med-
dling in the complicated wrangles of this continent. But thfey
have unwisely chosen to be ignorant of them also, and it is
this total ignorance of Europe, its combinations and its move-
ments, which exposes them to that annihilation possibly about
taking place. While there are pow'ers in Europe which fear our
views, or have views on us, we should keep an eye on them,
441
OF
their connections and oppositions, that in a moment of need,
we may avail ourselves of their weakness with respect to others
as well as ourselves, and calculate their designs and movements,
on all the circumstances under which they exist. Though I am
persuaded, therefore, that thes'e details are read by many with
great indifference, yet I think it my duty to enter into them,
and to run the risk of giving too much, rather than too little
information. . . .
TO MR. A. DONALD *
Paris, February 7, 1788
.... I wish with all my soul, that the nine first conven-
tions may accept the new constitution, because this will secure
to us the good it contains, which I think great and important.
But I equally wish, that the four latest conventions, which-
ever they be, may refuse to accede to it, till a declaration of
rights be annexed. This would probably command the offer of
such a declaration, and thus give to the whole fabric, perhaps,
as much perfection as any one of that kind ever had. 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. There
is another strong feature in the new Constitution, which I as
strongly dislike. That is, the perpetual re-eligibility of the
President. Of this I expect no amendment at present, because I
do not see that anybody has objected to it on your side the
water. But it will be productive of cruel distress to our coun-
try, even in your day and mine. The importance to France
and England, to have our government in the hands of a friend
or a foe, will occasion their interference by mon'ey, and even
by arms. Our President will be of much more consequence to
i. Alexander Donald, a friend of Jefferson, was engaged in the tobacco
trade in Richmond, Virginia.
442
THOMAS J8FFSRSON
them than a King of Poland. We must take care, however, that
neither this, nor any other objection to the new form, produces
a schism in our Union. That would be an incurable evil, be-
cause near friends falling out, never re-unite cordially ; whereas,
all of us going together, we shall be sure to cure the evils of
our new Constitution, before they do great harm. ... I do not
see, at present, any symptoms strongly indicating war. It is
true, that the distrust existing between the two courts of Ver-
sailles and London, is so great, that they can scarcely do busi-
ness together. However, the difficulty and doubt of obtaining
money make both afraid to enter into war. The little prepara-
tions for war, which we see, are the effect of distrust, rather
than of a design to commence hostilities. And in such a state of
mind, you know, small things may produce a rupture; so that
though peace is rather probable, war is very possible.
Your letter has kindled all the fond recollections of ancient
times; recollections much dearer to me than anything I have
known since. There are minds which can be pleas'ed by honors
and preferments; but I see nothing in them but envy and en-
mity. It is only necessary to possess them, to know how littlo
they contribute to happiriess, or rather how hostile they are to
it. No attachments soothe the mind so much as those contracted
in early life; nor do I recollect any societies which have given
me more pleasure, than those of which you have partaken with
me. I had rather be shut up in a very modest cottage, with my
books, my family and a few old friends, dining on simple
bacon, and letting the world roll on as it liked, than to occupy
the most splendid post, which any human power can give. . . .
TO THE COUNT DE MOUSTIER 1
Paris, May 27, 1788
DEAR SIR,— I have at length an opportunity of ac-
knowledging the receipt of your favors of February, and March
i. General and diplomat, Moustier was French Minister to the United
States in 1787.
443
OF
the 1 4th, and congratulating you on your resurrection from the
dead, among whom you had been confidently entombed by the
n'ewsdealers of Paris. I am sorry that your first impressions
have been disturbed by matters of etiquette, where surely they
should least have been expected to occur. These disputes are
the most insusceptible of determination, because they have no
foundation in reason. Arbitrary and senseless in their nature,
they are arbitrarily decided by every nation for itself. These
decisions are meant to prevent disputes, but they produce ten
where they prevent one. It would have been better, therefore,
in a new country, to have excluded etiquette altogether; or if
it must be admitted in some form or other, to have made it
depend on some circumstance founded in nature, such as thfe
age or station of the parties. However, you have got over all
this, and, I am in hopes, have been able to make up a society
suited to your own dispositions. Your situation will doubtless
be improved by the adoption of the new constitution, which
I hope will have taken place before you receive this. I see in
this instrument, a great deal of good. The consolidation of our
government, a just representation, an administration of some
permanence, and other features of great value, will be gained
by it. There are, indeed, some faults, which revolted me a
good deal in the first mom'ent; but we must be contented to
travel on towards perfection, step by step. We must be con-
tented with the ground which this constitution will gain for
us, and hope that a favorable moment will come for correcting
what is amiss in it. I view in the same light, the innovations
making here. The new organization of the judiciary depart-
ment is undoubtedly for the better. The reformation of the
criminal code, is an immense step taken towards good. The
composition of the Plenary court is, indeed, vicious in the ex-
treme; but the basis of that court may be retained, and its
composition changed. Make of it a representative of the peo-
ple, by composing it of members sent from the Provincial As-
semblies, and it becomes a valuable member of the constitution.
But it is said, the court will not consent to do this; the court,
444
1HOMAS
however, has consented to call the States General, who will
consider the Plenary court but as a canvas for them to work
on. The public mind is manifestly advancing on the abusive
prerogatives of their governors, and bearing them down. No
force in the government can withstand this, in the long run.
Courtiers had rather give up power than pleasures; they will
barter, therefore, the usurped prerogatives of the King, for
the money of the people. This is the agent by which modern na-
tions will recover their rights. I sincerely wish that in this
country, they may be contented with a peaceable and passive
opposition. At this moment, we are not sure of this, though as
yet it is difficult to say what form the opposition will take. It
is a comfortable circumstance, that their neighboring enemy is
under the administration of a minister disposed to keep the
peace. Engage in war who will, may my country long continue
your peaceful residence, and merit your good offices with that
nation, whose affections it is their duty and interest to culti-
vate.
TO WILLIAM CARMICHAEL *
Paris, May 27, 1788
.... A riot has taken place in New York, which I will
state to you from an eye witness. It has long been a practice
with the surgeons of that city, to steal from the grave bodies
recently buried. A citizen had lost his wife: he went the first
or s'econd evening after her burial, to pay a visit to her grave.
He found that it had been disturbed, and suspected from what
quarter. He found means to be admitted to the anatomical
lecture of that day, and on his entering the room, saw the
body of his wife, naked and under dissection. He raised the
people immediately. The body, in the meantime, was secreted.
They entered into, and searched the hous'es of the physicians
i. Carmichael was an American diplomat, at this time charge* d'affaires
at the Court of Spain.
445
OF
whom they most suspected, but found nothing. One of them,
however, more guilty or more timid than the rest, took asylum
in the prison. The mob considered this an acknowledgment of
guilt. They attacked the prison. The Governor ordered militia
to protect the culprit, and suppress the mob. The militia, think-
ing the mob had just provocation, refused to turn out. Here-
upon the p'eople of more reflection, thinking it more dangerous
that even a guilty person should be punished without the forms
of law, than that he should escape, armed themselves, and went
to protect the physican. They were received by the mob with
a volley of stones, which wounded several of them. They here-
upon fired on the mob, and killed four. By this time, they re-
ceived a reinforcement of other citizens of the militia horse, the
appearance of which, in the critical moment, dispersed the
mob. So ended this chapter of history, which I have detailed to
you, because it may be represented as a political riot, when
politics had nothing to do with it. Mr. Jay and Baron Steuben
were both grievously wounded in the head by stones. The for-
mer still kept his bed, and the latter his room, when the packet
sailed, which was the 24th of April. . . .
TO COLONEL CARRINGTON
Paris, May 27, 1788
I learn with great pleasure the progress of the new Con-
stitution. Indeed I have presumed it would gain on the public
mind, as I confess it has on my own. At first, though I saw that
the great mass and groundwork was good, I disliked many ap-
pendages. Reflection and discussion have cleared off most of
thes'e. You have satisfied me as to the query I had put to you
about the right of direct taxation. My first wish was that nine
States would adopt it in order to ensyre what was good in it,
and that the others might, by holding off, produce the neces-
sary amendments. But the plan of Massachusetts is far prefer -
446
THOMAS JSFFSRSON
able, and will, I hop'e, be followed by those who are yet to
decide. There are two amendments only which I am anxious
for: i. A bill of rights, which it is so much the interest of all
to have, that I conceive it must be yielded. The ist amendment
proposed by Massachusetts will in some degree answer this end,
but not so well. It will do too much in some instances, and too
little in others. It will cripple the Federal Government in some
cases where it ought to be free, and not restrain in some others
where restraint would be right. The 2d amendment which ap-
pears to me essential is the restoring the principle of necessary
rotation, particularly to the Senate and Presidency: but most
of all to the last. Re-eligibility makes him an officer for life,
and the disasters inseparable from an Elective monarchy, ren-
der it preferable if we cannot tread back that step, that we
should go forward and take refuge in an hereditary one. Of the
correction of this article, however, I entertain no present hope,
because 1 find it has scarcely excited an objection in America.
And if it does not take place erelong, it assuredly never will.
The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and gov-
'ernment to gain ground. As yet our spirits are free. Our jeal-
ousy is only put to sleep by the unlimited confidence we all
repose in the person to whom we all look as our president. After
him inferior characters may perhaps succeed, and awaken us to
the danger which his merit has led us into. For the present,
however, the general adoption is to be prayed for, and I wait
with great anxiety for the news from Maryland and South
Carolina, which have decided before this, and with that Vir-
ginia, now in session, may give the ninth vote of approbation.
Ther'e could then be no doubt of North Carolina, New York,
and New Hampshire. But what do you propose to do with
Rhode Island? As long as there is hope we should give her time.
I cannot conceive but that she will come to rights in the long
run. Force, in whatever form, would be a dangerous prece-
dent. . . .
447
OF
TO MR. IZARD *
Paris, July 17, 1788
. , . . The war in Europe threatens to spread. Sweden,
we suppose, has commenced hostilities against Russia, though
we do not yef certainly know it. I have hop'ed this country
would settle her internal disputes advantageously and without
bloodshed. As yet none has been spilt, though the British news-
papers give the idea of a general civil war. Hitherto, I had sup-
posed both the King and parliament would lose authority, and
the nation gain it, through the medium of its States General
and provincial Assemblies, but the arrest of the deputies of
Brfetagne two days ago, may kindle a civil war. Its issue will
depend on two questions, i. Will other provinces rise? 2. How
will the army conduct itself? A stranger cannot predetermine
these questions. Happy for us that abuses have not yet become
patrimonies, and that every description of interest is in favor
of national and moderate government. That we are yet able to
send our v;ise and good men together to talk over our form of
government, discuss its weaknesses and establish its rem'edies
with the same sang-froid as they would a subject of agriculture.
The example we have given to the world is single, that of
changing our form of government under the authority of rea-
son only, without bloodshed. . . .
TO E. KUTLEDGE2
Paris, July 18, 1788
.... We can surely boast of having set the world a
beautiful example of a government reformed by reason alone,
without bloodshed. But the world is too far oppressed, to profit
by the example. On this side of the Atlantic, the blood of the
1. Ralph Izard was a South Carolinian, 'pat riot, and diplomat.
2. Edward Rutledge, South Carolina lawyer and statesman, had been,
with Jefferson, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence.
448
THOMAS jeFFSRSON
people is become an inheritance, and those who fatten on it,
will not relinquish it easily. The struggle in this country is, as
yet, of doubtful issue. It is, in fact, between the monarchy and
the parliaments. The nation is no otherwise concerned, but as
both parties may be induced to let go some of its abuses, to
court the public favor. The danger, is that the people, deceived
by a false cry of liberty, may be led to take side with one party,
and thus give the other a pretext for crushing them still more.
If they can avoid the appeal to arms, the nation will be sure
to gain much by this controversy. But if that appeal is made,
it will depend entirely on the disposition of the army, whether
it issue in liberty or despotism. Those dispositions are not as
yet known. In the meantime, there is great probability that
the war kindled in the east, will spread from nation to nation,
and in the long run, become general. . . .
TO MR. CUTTING 1
Paris, July 24, 1788
.... The internal affairs here do not yet clear up. Most
of the late innovations have been much for the better. Two
only must be fundamentally condemned; the abolishing, in so
great a degree, of the parliaments, and the substitution of so
ill-composed a body as the cour plcnihc. If the King has power
to do this, the government of this country is a pure despotism.
I think it a pure despotism in theory, but moderated in prac-
tice by the respect which the public opinion commands. But
the nation repeats, after Montesquieu, that the different bodies
of magistracy, of priests, and nobles, are barriers between the
King and the people. It would be easy to prove that these bar-
riers can only appeal to public opinion, and that neither these
bodies, nor the people, can oppose any legal check to the will
i. Mr. John B. Cutting later earned Jefferson's appreciation for his
efforts in liberating American seamen who had been impressed in British
ports.
449
OF
of the monarch. But they are manifestly advancing fast to a
constitution. Great progress is already made. The provincial
assemblies, which will be a very perfect representative of the
people, will secure them a great deal against the power of the
crown. The confession lately made by the government, that it
cannot impose a new tax, is a great thing: the convocation of
the States General, which cannot be avoided, will produc'e a
national assembly, meeting at certain epochs, possessing at
first probably only a negative on the laws, but which will grow
into the right of original legislation, and prescribing limits to
the expens'es of the King. These are improvements which will
assuredly take place, and which will give an energy to this coun-
try they have never yet had. Much may be hoped from the
States General, becaus'e the King's dispositions are solidly
good; he is capable of great sacrifices; all he wants to induce
him to do a thing, is to be assured it will be for the good of the
nation. He will probably believe what the States General shall
tell him, and will do it. It is supposed they will reduce the par-
liament to a mere judiciary. I am in hopes all this will be ef-
fected without convulsions. . . .
TO JAMES MADISON
Paris, July 51, 1788
I sincertely rejoice at the acceptance of our new constitu-
tion 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, print-
ing, 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
450
THOMAS JSFFSRSON
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 linguce, in civil as well as criminal
cases. Why suspend the habeas corpus in insurrections and re-
bellions? The parties who may be arrested, may be charged in-
stantly 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
those than in other emergencies, let him be taken and tried, re-
taken and retried, while the necessity continues, only giving
him 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
minds 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 unpun-
ished, does not give impunity to criminal acts, dictated by re-
ligious 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 op-
posed 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
OF
magazines with them. More than magazine guards will be use-
less, if few, and dangerous, if many. No European nation can
ever send against us such a regular army as 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 ai^e 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. The abandoning the prin-
ciple of necessary rotation in the Senate, has, I see, been dis-
approved by many; in the case of the President, by none. I
readily, therefore, suppose my opinion wrong, when opposed
by the majority, as in the former instance, and the totality, as
in the latter. In this, however, I should have done it with more
complete satisfaction, had we all judged from the sam'e posi-
tion. . . .
TO JAMES MADISON
Paris, November 18, 1788
.... With respect to the Federalist, the three authors
had been named to me. I read it with care, pleasure and im-
provement, and was satisfied there was nothing in it by one of
those hands, and not a great deal by a second. It does the
highest honor to the third, as being, in my opinion, the best
commentary on the principles of government, which ever was
written. In some parts, it is discoverable that the author means
only to say what may be best said in defence of opinions, in
which he did not concur. But in general, it establishes firmly
the plan of government. I confess, it has rectified me on sev-
eral points. As to the bill of rights, however, I still think it
should be added; and I am glad to see, that three States have
at length considered the perpetual re-eligibility of the Presi-
dent, as an article which should be amended. . . .
452
THOMAS J8FF8RSON
TO DR. PRICE
Paris, January 8, 1789
DEAR SIR,— I was favored with your letter of October
26th, and far from finding any of its subjects uninteresting as
you apprehend, they were to me, as everything which comes
from you, pleasing and instructive. I concur with you strictly
in your opinion of the comparative merits of atheism and de-
monism, and really see nothing but the latter in the Being
worshipped by many who think themselves Christians. Your
opinions ar/1 writings will have effect in bringing others to rea-
son on thirj subject. Our new Constitution, of which you speak
also, has ^-dcceeded beyond what I apprehended it would have
done. I <Jid not at first believe that eleven States out of thir-
teen weald have consented to a plan consolidating them as
much ir/to one. A change in their dispositions, which had taken
place since I left them, had rendered this consolidation neces-
sary, that is to say, had called for a federal government which
could walk upon its own legs, without leaning for support on
the State legislatures. A s'ense of necessity, and a submission
to it, is to me a new and consolatory proof that, whenever the
people are well-informed, they can be trusted with their own
government; that, whenever things get so far wrong as to at-
tract their notice, they may be relied on to set them to rights.
You say you are not sufficiently informed about the nature
and circumstances of the present struggle hefe. Having been on
the spot from its first origin, and watched its movements as
an uninterested spectator, with no other bias than a love of
mankind, I will give you my ideas of it. Though celebrated
writers of this and other countries had already sketched good
principles on the subject of government, yet the American war
seems first to have awakened the thinking part of this nation
in general from the sleep of despotism in which they wfere
sunk. The officers too who had been to America, were mostly
young men, less shackled by habit and prejudice, and more
453
OF
ready to ass'ent to the dictates of common sense and common
right. They came back impressed with these. The press, not-
withstanding its shackles, began to disseminate them; conver-
sation, too, assumed new freedom; politics became the thfeme
of all societies, male and female, and a very extensive and zeal-
ous party was formed, which may be called the Patriotic
party, who, s'ensible of the abusive government under which
they lived, longed for occasions of reforming it. This party
comprehended all the honesty of the kingdom, sufficiently at
its leisure to think; the men of letters, the easy bourgeois, the
young nobility, partly from Reflection, partly from mode; for
those sentiments became a matter of mode, and as such united
most of the young women to the party. Happily for the na-
tion, it happened that, at the same moment, the dissipations of
the court had exhausted the money and credit of the State, and
M. de Calonnes found himself obliged to appeal to the nation,
and to develop to it the ruin of their finances. He had no idea
of supplying the deficit by economies, he saw no m'eans but
new taxes. To tempt the nation to consent to these some
douceurs were necessary. The Notables were called in 1787.
The leading vices of the constitution and administration were
ably sketched out, good remedies proposed, and under thfe
splendor of the proposition, a demand for nore money was
couched. The Notables concurred with the n.inister in the ne-
cessity of reformation, adroitly avoided the demand of money,
got him displaced, and one of their leading men placed in his
room. The archbishop of Thoulouse, by the aid of the hopes
formed of him, was able to borrow some money, and he re-
formed considerably the expenses of the court. Notwithstanding
the prejudices since formed against him, he appeared to me
to pursue the reformation of the laws and constitution as stead-
ily as a man could do who had to drag the court after him, and
even to conceal from them the consequences of the measures
he was leading them into. In his time the criminal laws were
reformed, provincial assemblies and States established in most
of the provinces, the States General promised, and a solemn
454
THOMAS J8FFSRSON
acknowledgment made by the King that he could not impose
a new tax without the consent of the nation. It is true he was
continually goaded forward by the public clamors, excited by
the writings and workings of the Patriots, who were able to
keep up the public fermentation at the exact point which bor-
ders on resistance, without entering on it. They had taken into
their alliance the Parliaments also, who were led, by Very
singular circumstances, to espouse, for the first time, the rights
of the nation. They had from old causes had personal hostility
against M. de Calonnes. They refus'ed to register his laws or
his taxes, and went so far as to acknowledge they had no power
to do it. They persisted in this with his successor, who there-
fore exiled them. Seeing that the nation did not interest them-
selves much for their recall, they began to fear that the new
judicatures proposed in their place would be established and
that their own suppression would be perpetual. In short, they
found their own strength insufficient to oppose that of the
King. They, therefore, insisted that the States General should
be called. Here they became united with and supported by the
Patriots, and their joint influence was sufficient to produce the
promise of that assembly. I always suspected that the arch-
bishops had no objections to this force under which they laid
him. But the Patriots and Parliament insisted it was their ef-
forts which extorted the promise against his will. The re-fes-
tablishment of the Parliament was the effect of the same
coalition between the Patriots and Parliament; but, once re-
established, the latter began to see danger in that very power,
the States General, which they had called for in a moment of
despair, but which they now foresaw might very possibly
abridge their powers. They began to prepare grounds for ques-
tioning their legality, as a rod oVer the head of the States, and
as a refuge if they should really extend their reformations to
them. Mr. Neckar came in at this period and very dexterously
disembarrassed the administration of these disputes by calling
the Notables to advise the form of calling and constituting the
States. The court was well disposed towards the people, not
455
OF
from principles of justice or love to them; but they want
money. No more can be had from the people. They are squeezed
to the last drop. The clergy and nobles, by their privileges and
influence, have kept their property in a great measure untaxed
hitherto. They then remain to be squeezed, and no agent is
powerful "enough for this but the people. The court therefore
must ally itself with the people. But the Notables, consisting
mostly of privileged characters, had proposed a method of
composing the States, which would have rendered the voice of
the people, or Tiers fitats, in the States General, inefficient for
the purpose of the court. It concurred then with the Patriots
in intriguing with the Parliament to get them to pass a vote in
favor of the rights of the people. This vote, balancing that of
the Notables, has placed the court at liberty to follow its own
views, and they have determined that the Tiers fitat shall have
in the States General as many votes as the clergy and nobles
put together. Still a great question remains to be decided, that
is, shall the States General vote by orders, or by persons? prece-
dents are both ways. The clergy will mov'e heaven and earth to
obtain the suffrage by orders, because that parries the effect of
all hitherto done for the people. The people will probably s'end
their deputies expressly instructed to consent to no tax, to no
adoption of the public debts, unless the unprivileged part of thfe
nation has a voice equal to that of the privileged; that is to
say, unless the voice of the Tiers fitat be equalled to that of
the clergy and nobles. They will have the young noblesse in
general on their side, and the King and court. Against them
will be the ancient nobles and the clergy. So that I hope, upon
the whole, that by the time they me'et, there will be a majority
of the nobles themselves in favor of the Tiers fitat. So far his-
tory. We are now to come to prophecy; for you will ask, to
what will all this lead? I answer, if the States General do not
stumble at the threshold on the question before stated, and
which must be decided before they can proceed to business,
then they will in their first session easily obtain, i. Their fu-
ture periodical convocation of the States. 2. Their exclusive
456
THOMAS
right to raise and appropriate money which includes that of es-
tablishing a civil list. 3. A participation in legislation; probably
at first, it will only be a transfer to them of the portion of it
now exercised by parliament, that is to say, a right to propose
amendments and a negative. But it must infallibly end in a
right of origination. 4. Perhaps they may make a declaration
of rights. It will be attempted at least. Two other objects will
be attempted, viz., a habeas corpus law and a free press. But
probably they may not obtain these in the first session, or with
modifications only, and the nation must be left to ripen itself
more for their unlimited adoption. Upon the whole, it has ap-
peared to me that the basis of the present struggle is an il-
lumination of the public mind as to the rights of the nation,
aided by fortunate incidents; that they can never retrograde,
but from the natural progress of things, must press forward to
the establishment of a constitution which shall assume to them
a good degree of liberty. They flatter themselves they shall
form a better constitution than the English. I think it will be
better in some points— worse in others. It will be better in the
article of representation, which will be more equal. It will be
worse, as their situation obliges them to keep up the danger-
ous machine of a standing army. I doubt, too, whether they
will obtain the trial by jury, because they are not sensible of
its value.
I am sure I have by this time heartily tired you with this
long epistle, and that you will be glad to see it brought to an
end, with assurances of the sentiments of esteem and respect
with which I have the honor to be, dear Sir, your most obe-
dient, and most humble servant.
TO JOHN JAY
Paris, January n, 1789
.... As the character of the Prince of Wales is becom-
ing interesting, I have endeavored to learn what it truly is,
457
OF
This is less difficult in his case, than in that of other persons
of his rank, because he has taken no pains to hide himself from
the world. The information I most rely on, is from a person
here with whom I am intimate, who divides his time between
Paris and London, an Englishman by birth, of truth, sagacity
and science. He is of a circle, when in London, which has had
good opportunities of knowing the Prince; but he has also, him-
self, had special occasions of verifying their information, by
his own personal observation. He happened, when last in Lon-
don, to be invited to a dinner of three persons. The Prince
came by chance, and made the fourth. He ate half a leg of
mutton; did not taste of small dishes, because small; drank
Champagne and Burgundy, as small beer during dinner, and
Bordeaux after dinner, as the rest of the company. Upon thie
whole, he ate as much as the other three, and drank about two
bottles of wine without seeming to feel it. My informant sat
next him, and being till then unknown to the Prince, person-
ally (though not by character), and lately from France, the
Prince confined his conversation almost entirely to him. Ob-
serving to the Prince that he spoke French without the least
foreign accent, the Prince told him, that when very young, his
father had put only French servants about him, and that it
was to that circumstance he owed his pronunciation. He led
him from this to give an account of his education, the total of
which was the learning a little Latin. He has not a single ele-
ment of Mathematics, of Natural or Moral Philosophy, or of
any other science on earth, nor has the society he has kept
been such as to supply the void of education. It has been that
of the lowest, the most illiterate and profligate persons of the
kingdom, without choice of rank or mind, and with whom the
subjects of conversation are only horses, drinking-matches,
bawdy houses, and in terms the most vulgar. The young no-
bility, who begin by associating with him, soon leave him, dis-
gusted with the insupportable profligacy of his society; and
Mr. Fox, who has been supposed his favorite, and not over-nice
in the choice of company, would never keep his company habit-
458
THOMAS JSFFSRSON
ually. In fact, he never associated with a man of sense. He has
not a single idea of justice, morality, religion, or of the rights
of men, or any anxiety for the opinion of the world. He carrie?
that indifference for fame so far, that he would probably not
be hurt were he to lose his throne, provided he could be assured
of having always meat, drink, horses, and women. In the ar-
ticle of women, nevertheless, he is become more correct, since
his connection with Mrs. Fitzherbert, who is an honest and
worthy woman: he is even less crapulous than he was. He had
a fine person, but it is becoming coarse. He possesses good na •
tive common sense; is affable, polite, and very good humored.
Saying to my informant, on another occasion, "your friend,
such a one, dined with me yesterday, and I made him damned
drunk;" he replied, "I am sorry for it; I had heard that your
royal highness had left off drinking:" the Prince laughed,
tapped him on the shoulder very good naturedly, without say-
ing a word, or ever after showing any displeasure. . . .
TO FRANCIS HOPKINSON 3
Paris, March 13, 1789
DEAR SIR,— Since my last, which was of December the
2ist, yours of December the gth and 2ist are received. Accept
my thanks for the papers and pamphlets which accompanied
them, and mine and my daughter's, for the book of songs. I
will not tell you how much they have pleased us, nor how well
the last of them merits praise for its pathos, but relate a fact,
only, which is, that while my elder daughter was playing it on
the harpsichord, I happened to look towards the fire, and saw
the younger one all in tears. I asked her if she was sick? She
said "no; but the tune was so mournful."
The Editor of the Encyclopedic has published something as
to an advanced price on his future volumes, which, I under-
i. Francis Hopkinson, accomplished statesman, musician, and author?
frequently corresponded with Jefferson.
459
LETTERS OF
stand, alarms the subscribers. It was in a paper which I do not
take, and therefore I have not yet seen it, nor can T say what
it is. I hope that by this time you haVe ceased to make wry
faces about your vinegar, and that you have received it safe
and good. You say that I have been dished up to you as an
anti-federalist, and ask me if it be just. My opinion was never
worthy enough of notice to m'erit citing; but since you ask it, I
will tell it to you. I am not a federalist, because I never sub-
mitted the whole system of my opinions to the creed of any
party of men whatever, in religion, in philosophy, in politics
or in anything else, where I was capable of thinking for my-
self. Such an addiction, is the last degradation of a free and
moral agent. If I could not go to heaven but with a party, I
would not go there at all. Therefore, I am not of the party of
federalists. But I am much farther from that of the anti-fed-
ralists. I approved, from the first moment, of the great mass
of what is in the new Constitution; the consolidation of the
government; the organization into executive, legislative, and
judiciary; the subdivision of the legislative; the happy com-
promise of interests between the great and little States, by the
different manner of voting in the different Houses; the voting
by persons instead of States; the qualified negative on laws
given to the executive, which, however, I should have liked
better if associated with the judiciary also, as in New York;
and the power of taxation. I thought at first that the latter
might have been limited. A little reflection soon convinced
me it ought not to be. What I disapproved from the first mo-
ment also, was 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, free-
dom of the press, freedom from monopolies, freedom from un-
lawful imprisonment, freedom from a permanent military, and
a trial by jury, in all cases determinable by the laws of the
land. I disapproved, also, the perpetual re-eligibility of the
President. To these points of disapprobation I adhere. My first
wish was, that the nine first conventions might accept the con-
460
fHOMAS JEFFERSON
stitution, as the means of securing to us the great mass of good
it contained, and that the four last might reject it, as the means
of obtaining amendments. But I was corrected in this wish, the
moment I saw the much better plan of Massachusetts, and
which had never occurred to me. With respect to the declara-
tion of rights, I suppose the majority of the United States are
of my opinion; for I apprehend, all the anti-federalists and a
very respectable proportion of the federalists, think that such
a declaration should now be annexed. The enlightened part of
Europe have given us the greatest credit for inventing the in-
strument of security for the rights of the people, and have been
not a little surprised to see us so soon give it up. With respect
to the re-eligibility of the President, I find myself differing
from the majority of my countrymen; for I think there are but
three States out of the eleven which have desired an alteration
of this. And indeed, since the thing is established, I would wish
it not to be altered during the life of our great leader, whose
executive talents are superior to those, I believe, of any man
in the world, and who, alone, by the authority of his name and
the confidence reposed in his perfect integrity, is fully quali-
fied to put the new government so under way, as to secure it
against the efforts of opposition. But, having derived from our
error all the good there was in it, I hope we shall correct it, thfe
moment we can no longer have the same name at the helm.
These, my dear friend, are my s'entirnents, by which you will
see I was right in saying I am neither federalist nor anti-fed-
eralist; that I am of neither party, nor yet a trimmer between
parties. These, my opinions, I wrote within a few hours after
I had read the Constitution, to one or two friends in America,
t had not then read one single word printed on the subject. I
never had an opinion in politics or religion, which I was afraid
to own. A costive reserve on thes'e subjects might have pro-
cured me more esteem from some people, but less from myself.
My great wish is, to go on in a strict but silent performance of
my duty; to avoid attracting notice, and to keep my name out
of newspapers, because I find the pain of a little censure, even
461
OF
when it is unfounded, is more acute than the pleasure of much
praise. The attaching circumstance of my present office, is, that
I can do its duties unseen by those for whom they are done.
You did not think, by so short a phrase in your letter, to have
drawn on yourself such an egotistical dissertation. I beg your
pardon for it, and will endeavor to merit that pardon by thfe
constant sentiments of esteem and attachment with which I
am, dear Sir, your sincere friend and servant.
TO JAMES MADISON
Paris, March 15, 1789
.... Your thoughts on the subject of the declaration
of rights, in the letter of October the iyth, I have weighed with
great satisfaction. Some of them had not occurred to me before,
but were acknowledged just in the moment they were presented
to my mind. In the arguments in favor of a 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 ob-
ject. But the good in this instance, vastly overweighs the evil.
I cannot refrain from making short answers to the objections
which your letter states to have been raised, i. 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 it-
i. "The wayward zeal of the ruling citizens."
462
THOMAS J8FF8RSON
self 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
draught of a constitution which I had once a thought of pro-
posing in Virginia, and printed afterwards, 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 im-
perfectly executed; but the deficiencies would have been sup-
plied by others, in the course of discussion. But in a constitu-
tive act which leaves some precious articles unnoticed, and
raises implications against others, a declaration of rights be-
comes 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 execu-
tive body for these objects. It should, therefore, guard us
against their abuses of power, within the fielu 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, af-
ford a security which exists in no other instanc'e. 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 those governments are
only agents. They must have principles furnished them,
whereon to found their opposition. The declaration of rights
will be the text, whereby they will try all the acts of the fed-
eral government. In this view, it is necessary to the federal
government also; as by the same text, they may try the op-
position of the subordinate governments. 4. Experience proves
the inefficacy of a bill of rights. True. But though it is not ab-
solutely efficacious under all circumstances, it is of great po-
tency always, and rarely inefficacious. A brace the more will
often keep up the building which would have fallen, with that
brace the less. There is a remarkable difference between the
characters of the inconveniences which attend a declaration of
463
OF
rights, and those which attend the want of it. The inconven-
iences of the declaration are, that it may cramp government in
its useful exertions. But the evil of this is short-lived, mod-
erate and reparable. The inconveniences of the want of a dec-
laration are permanent, afflicting and irreparable. They are in
constant progression from bad to worse. The Executive, in our
governments, is not the sole, it is scarcely the principal object
of my jealousy. The tyranny of the legislatures is the most
formidable dread at present, and will be for many years. That
of the executive will come in its turn; but it will be at a remote
period. I know there are some among us, who would now es-
tablish a monarchy. But they are inconsiderable in number
and weight of character. The rising race are all republicans.
We were educated in royalism; no wonder, if some of us re-
tain that idolatry still. Our young people are educated in re-
publicanism; an apostasy from that to royalism, is unprece-
dented and impossible. I am much pleased with the prospect
that a declaration of rights will be added; and I hope it will
be done in that way, which will not endanger the whole frame
of government, or any essential part of it. ...
TO COLONEL HUMPHREYS ]
Paris, March 18, 1789
The change in this country since you left it, is such as
you can form no idea of. The frivolities of conversation have
given way entirely to politics. Men, women and children talk
nothing else; and all, you know, talk a great deal. The press
groans with daily productions, which, in point of boldness,
makes an Englishman stare, who hitherto has thought himself
the boldest of men. A complete revolution in this government
has, within the space of two years (for it began with the No-
i. David Humphreys, distinguished Revolutionary soldier, statesman,
and verse writer, had served as an American diplomat in Paris during
Jefferson's first years in that capital.
464
THOMAS
tables of 1787), been effected merely by the force of public
opinion, aided, indeed, by the want of money, which the dis-
sipations of the court had brought on. And this revolution has
not cost a single life, unless we charge to it a little riot lately
in Bretagne, which began about the price of bread, became
afterwards political, and ended in the loss of four or five lives.
The assembly of the States General begins the 2yth of April.
The representation of the people will be perfect. But they will
be alloyed by an equal number of nobility and clergy. The first
great question they will have to decide will be, whether they
shall vote by orders or persons. And I have hopes that the
majority of the Nobles are already disposed to join the Tiers
]§tat, in deciding that the vote shall be by persons. This is the
opinion & la mode at present, and mode has acted a wonderful
part in the present instance. All the handsome young women,
for example, are for the Tiers fitat, and this is an army more
powerful in France, than the two hundred thousand men of
the King. Add to this, that the court itself is for the Tiers fitat,
as the only agent which can relieve their wants; not by giving
money themselves (they are squeezed to the last drop), but
by pressing it from the non-contributing orders. The King
stands engaged to pretend no more to the power of laying, con-
tinuing or appropriating taxes; to call the States General peri-
odically; to submit lettres de cachet to legal restrictions; to
consent to freedom of the press; and that all this shall be
fixed by a fundamental constitution, which shall bind his suc-
cessors. He has not offered a participation in the legislature,
but it will surely be insisted on. The public mind is so ripened
on all these subjects, that there seems to be now but one opin-
ion. The clergy, indeed, think separately, and the old men
among the Nobles; but their voice is suppressed by the general
one of the nation. The writings published on this occasion are,
some of them, very valuable; because, unfettered by the preju-
dices under which the English labor, they give a full scope to
reason, and strike out truths, as yet unperceived and unac-
knowledged orr the other side the channel. An Englishman, dos-
465
OF
ing under a kind of half reformation, is not excited to think
by such gross absurdities as stare a Frenchman in the face,
wherever he looks, whether it be towards the throne or the
altar. In fine, I believe this nation will, in the course of the
present year, have as full a portion of liberty dealt out to them,
as the nation can bear at present, considering how uninformed
the mass of their people is. ...
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 publish-
ing our thoughts by speaking or writing; the right of free com-
merce; the right of personal freedom. There are instruments for
administering the government, so peculiarly trust-worthy, that
we should never leave the legislature at liberty to change them.
The new Constitution has secured these in the executive and
legislative department; 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 execu-
tive, should be restrained from keeping such instruments on
foot, but in well-defined cases. Such an instrument is a stand-
ing 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. It has not, however, authorized me
to consider as a real defect, what I thought and still think one,
the perpetual re-eligibility of the President. But three States
out of eleven, having declared against this, we must suppose we
are wrong, according to the fundamental law of every society,
the lex majoris partis, to which we are bound to submit. And
should the majority change their opinion, and become sensible
that this trait in their Constitution is wrong, I would wish it to
remain unconnected, as long as we can avail ourselves of the
services of our great leader, whose talents and whose weight of
character, I consider as peculiarly necessary to get the govern*
466
THOMAS JEFF8RSON
ment so under way, as that it may afterwards be carried on by
subordinate characters. . . .
TO DOCTOR WlLLARD1
Paris, March 24, 1789
... In the arts, I think two of our countrymen have
presented the most important inventions. Mr. Paine, the au-
thor of "Common Sense," has invented an iron bridge, which
promises to be cheaper by a great deal than stone, and to ad-
mit of a much greater arch. He supposes it may be ventured
for an arch of five hundred feet. He has obtained a patent for
it in England, and is now executing the first experiment with
an arch of between ninety and one hundred feet. Mr. Rumsey
has also obtained a patent for his navigation by the force of
steam, in England, and is soliciting a similar one here. His prin-
cipal merit is in the improvement of the boiler, and, instead of
the complicated machinery of oars and paddles, proposed by
others, the substitution of so simple a thing as the reaction of
a stream of water on his vessel. He is building a sea vessel at
this time in England, and she will be ready for an experiment
in May. He has suggested a great number of mechanical im-
provements in a variety of branches; and upon the whole, is
the most original and the greatest mechanical genius I have
ever seen. The return of La Peyrouse (whenever that shall hap-
pen) will probably add to our knowledge in Geography, Botany,
and Natural History. What a field have we at our doors to
signalize ourselves in! The Botany of America is far from be-
ing exhausted, its Mineralogy is untouched, and its Natural
History or Zoology, totally mistaken and misrepresented. As
far as I have seen, there is not one single species of terrestrial
birds common to Europe and America, and I question if there
be a single species of quadrup'eds. (Domestic animals are to be
i. Dr. Joseph Willard at this time was President of Harvard "Uni-
versity.
467
LETTERS OF
*xcepted.) It is for such institutions as that over which you
preside so worthily. Sir, to do justice to our country, its produc-
tions and its genius. It is the work to which the young men,
whom you are forming, should lay their hands. We have spent
the prim'e of our lives in procuring them the precious blessing
of liberty. Let them spend theirs in showing that it is the great
parent of science and of virtue; and that a nation will be great
in both, always in proportion as it is free. Nobody wishes more
warmly for the success of your good exhortations on this sub-
j'ect, than he who has the honor to be, with sentiments of great
esteem and respect, Sir, your most obedient humble servant.
TO GENERAL WASHINGTON 1
Paris, May 10, 1789
... I am in great pain for the Marquis de La Fayette.
His principles, you know, are clearly with the people; but hav-
ing be'en elected for the Noblesse of Auvergne, they have laid
him under express instructions, to vote for the decision by or-
ders and not persons. This would ruin him with the Tiers fitat,
and it is not possible he could continue long to give satisfaction
to the Noblesse. I have not hesitated to press on him to burn
his instructions, and follow his conscience as the only sure clue,
which will eternally guide a man clear of all doubts and incon-
sistencies. If he cannot effect a conciliatory plan, he will surfely
take his stand manfully at once, with the Tiers fitat. He will
in that case be what he pleases with them, and I am in hopes
that base is now too solid to render it dangerous to be mounted
on it. ...
i. Jefferson abandoned his career as Minister to Paris to accept, at
Washington's personal request, the office of first Secretary of State.
Despite occasional political differences arising from the Federalist-
Republican struggle, Washington and Jefferson maintained cordial and
sympathetic relations until Washington's death.
468
THOMAS J8FF8RSON
TO MONSIEUR DE ST. ETIENNB*
Paris, June 3, 1789
SIR,— After you quitted us yesterday evening, we con-
tinued our conversation (Monsieur de La Fayette, 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 Monsieur de La Fayette, 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 stance 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 char-
ter to contain the five great points which the Resultat of De-
cember offered, on the part of the King, the abolition of pecuni-
ary 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 preced-
ing articles; and let the same act declare your immediate sepa-
ration 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 sup-
port may be prepared with the people themselves, and ex-
pedients 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 La Fayette a
sketch of my ideas of what this act might contain, without en-
dangering any dispute. But it is offered merely as a canvas for
you to work on, if it be fit to work on at all. I know too little
of the subject, and you know too much of it, to justify me in
offering anything but a hint. I have done it, too, in a hurry;
i. Rabaud de Saint Etienne was a well-known advocate of the Prot-
estant cause.
469
OF
insomuch, that since committing it to writing, it occurs to m'e
that the fifth article may give alarm; that it is in a good de-
gree included in the fourth, and is, therefore, useless. But after
all, what excuse can I make, Sir, for this presumption. I have
none but an unm'easurable love for your nation, and a painful
anxiety lest despotism, after an unaccepted offer to bind its own
hands, should seize you again with tenfold fury. Permit me to
add to these, very sincere assurances of the sentim'ents of
esteem and respect, with which I have the honor to be, Sir,
your most obedient, and most humble servant.
[The ann'exed is the Charter accompanying the two preced-
ing letters.]
A Charter of Rights, solemnly established by the King
and Nation
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 na-
fc'on, 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 regu-
lar 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 prisorier immediately brought before him, and
shall discharge him, if his imprisonment be unlawful. The offi-
cer in whose custody the prisoner is, shall obey the orders of the
judge; and both judge and officer shall be responsible, civilly
jmd criminally, for a failure of duty herein.
470
THOMAS jeFFSRSON
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 und'er 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 fa;th thereof is pledged
for their payment in due time.
9. Eighty millions 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 ist day of November next.
Done, on behalf of the whole nation, by the King and their
representatives in the States General, at Versailler, this
day of June, 1789.
Signed by the King, and by every member individually, And
in his presence.
TO JOHN JAY
Paris, June 24, 1789
SIR, —My letter of the i7th and iSth instant, gave you
the progress of the States General to the i7th, when the Tiers
had declared the illegality of all the existing taxes> and their
discontinuance from the end of their present session. The next
day being a jour de fete, could furnish no indication of the im-
pression that vote was likely to make on the government. On
the i9th, a Council was held at Marly, in the afternoon. It was
there proposed, that the King should interpose by a declaration
of his sentiments in a stance royale. The declaration prepared
by Mr. Neckar, while it censured in general the proceedings
47i
OF
both of the Nobles and Commons, announced the King's views,
such as substantially to coincide with the Commons. It was
agreed to in Council, as also that the seance royale should be
held on the 22d, and the meetings till then be suspended. While
the Council was engaged in this deliberation at Marly, the
Chamber of the Clergy was in debate, whether they should ac-
cept the invitation of the Tiers to unite with them in the com-
mon chamber. On the first question, to unite simply and un-
conditionally, it was decided in the negative by a very small
majority. As it was known, however, that some members who
had voted in the negative, would be for the affirmative with
some modifications, the question was put with thes'e modifica-
tions, and it was determined by a majority of eleven members,
that their body should join the Tiers. These proceedings of the
Clergy were unknown to the Council at Marly, and those of
the Council were kept secret from everybody. The next morn-
ing (the 20th), the members repaired to the House as usual,
found the doors shut and guarded, and a proclamation posted
up for holding a seance royale on the 22d, and a suspension of
their meetings till then. They presumed, in the first moment,
that their dissolution was decided, and repaired to another
place, where they proceeded to business. They there bound
themselves to each other by an oath, never to separate of their
own accord, till they had settled a constitution for the ration
on a solid basis, and if separated by force, that they would re-
assemble in some other place. It was intimated to them, how-
ever, that day, privately, that the proceedings of the seance
royale would be favorable to them. The next day they met in a
church, and were joined by a majority of the Clergy. The
heads of the aristocracy saw that all was lost without some
violent exertion. The King was still at Marly. Nobody was
permitted to approach him but their friends. He was assailed
by lies in all shapes. He was made to believe that the Commons
were going to absolve the army from' their oath of fidelity to
him, and to raise their pay. . . . They procured a committee to
be held, consisting of the King and his ministers, to which
472
THOMAS JBFFBRSON
Monsieur and the Count d'Artois should be admitted. At this
committee, the latter attacked Mr. Neckar personally, ar-
raigned his plans, and proposed one which some of his engines
had put into his hands. Mr. Neckar, whose characteristic is the
want of firmness, was browbeaten and intimidated, and the
King shaken. He determined that the two plans should be de-
liberated on the next day, and the seance royale put off a day
longer. This encouraged a fiercer attack on Mr. Neckar the
next day; his plan was totally dislocated, and that of the
Count d'Artois inserted into it. Himself and Monsieur de Mont-
morin offered their resignation, which was refused; the Count
d'Artois saying to Mr. Neckar, "No, Sir, you must be kept
as the hostage; we hold you responsible for all the ill which
shall happen." This change of plan was immediately whispered
without doors. The nobility were in triumph, the people in con-
sternation. When the King passed the next day through the
lane they form'ed from the Chateau to the Hotel des fitats
(about half a mile), there was a dead silence. He was about an
hour in the House, delivering his speech and declaration,
copies of which I enclose you. On his coming out, a feeble
cry of "vive le roy" was raised by some children, but the
people remained silent and sullen. When the Duke d'Orleans
followed, however, their applauses were excessive. This must
have been sensible to the King. He had ordered, in the close
of his speech, that the members should follow him, and resume
their deliberations the next day. The Noblesse followed him,
and so did the Clergy, except about thirty, who, with the Tiers,
remained in the room, and entered into deliberation. They pro-
tested against what the King had done, adhered to all their
former proceedings, and resolved the inviolability of their own
persons. An officer came twice to order them out of the roomr
in the King's name, but they refus'ed to obey. In the afternoon,
the people, uneasy, began to assemble in great numbers in the
courts and vicinities of the palace. The Queen was alarmed,
and sent for Mr. Neckar. He was conducted amidst the shouts
and acclamations of the multitude, who filled all the apartments
473
OF
of the palace. He was a few minutes only with the Queen, and
about three-quarters of an hour with the King. Not a word has
transpired of what passed at these interviews. The King was
just going to ride out. He passed through the crowd to his
carriage, and into it, without being in the least noticed. As
Mr. Neckar followed him, universal acclamations were raised of
"Vive Monsieur N'eckar, vive le sauveur de la France op-
primee." He was conducted back to his house with the same
demonstration of affection and anxiety. About two hundred
deputies of the Tiers, catching the enthusiasm of the moment,
went to his hous'e, and extorted from him a promise that he
would not resign. These circumstances must wound the heart of
the King, desirous as he is, to possess the affections of his sub-
jects. As soon as the proceedings at Versailles were known at
Paris, a run began on the caisse d'escompte, which is the first
symptom always of the public diffidence and alarm. It is the
less in condition to meet the run, as Mr. Neckar has been
forced to make free with its funds, for the daily support of the
government. This is the state of things, as late as I am able to
give them with certainty, at this moment. My letter not being
to go off till to-morrow evening, I shall go to Versailles to-
morrow, and be able to add the transactions of this day and to-
morrow.
June 25. Just returned from Versailles, I am enabled to con-
tinue my narration. On the 24th, nothing remarkable passed,
except an attack by the mob of Versailles on the Archbishop of
Paris, who had been one of the instigators of the court, to the
proceedings of the seance royale. They threw mud and stones at
his carriage, broke the windows of it, and he in a fright prom-
ised to join the Tiers.
This day (the 25th) forty-eight of the Nobles have joined
the Tiers. Among these, is the Duke d'Orleans. The Marquis
de La Fayette could not be of the number, being restrained by
his instructions. He is writing to his1 constituents, to change
.viis instructions or to accept his resignation. There are with
the Tiers now, one hundred and sixty-four members of the
474
THOMAS JSFFSRSON
Clergy, so that the common chamber consists of upwards of
eight hundred members. The minority of the Clergy, how-
ever, call themselves the chamber of the Clergy, and pretend
to go on with business. I found the streets of Versailles much
embarassed with soldiers. There was a body of about one
hundred horse drawn up in front of the Hotel of the States, and
all the avenues and doors guarded by soldiers. Nobody was
permitted to enter but the members, and this was by order of
the King; for till now, the doors of the common room have
been open, and at least two thousand spectators attending their
debates constantly. They have named a deputation to wait on
the King, and desire a removal of the soldiery from their doors,
and seem determined, if this is not complied with, to remove
themselves elsewhere.
Instead of being dismayed with what has passed, they se'em
to rise in their demands, and some of them to consider the
erasing every vestige of a difference of order as indispensable
to the establishment and preservation of a good constitution.
I apprehend there is more courage than calculation in this
project. I did imagine, that s'eeing that Mr. Neckar and them-
selves were involved as common enemies in the hatred of the
aristocrats, they would have been willing to make common
cause with him, and to wish his continuance in office; and
that Mr. Neckar, seeing that all the trimmings he has used
towards the court and Nobles, has availed him nothing, would
engage himself heartily and solely on the popular side, and
view his own salvation in that alone. The confidence which
the people place in him, seems to m'erit some attention. How-
ever, the mass of the common chamber are absolutely indiffer-
ent to his remaining in office. They consider his head as unequal
to the planning a good constitution, and his fortitude to a
co-operation in the effecting it. His dismission is more credited
to-day than it was yesterday. If it takes place, he will retain
his popularity with the nation, as the members of the States
will not think it important to set thems'elves against it, but
on the contrary, will be willing that he should continue on
475
OF
their side, on his retirement. The run on the caisse d'escompte
continues. The members of the States admit, that Mr. Neckar's
departure out of office will occasion a stoppage of public pay-
ments. But they expect to prevent any very ill effect, by as-
suring the public against any loss, and by taking immediate
measures for continuing payment. They may, perhaps, con-
nect these measures with their own existence, so as to interest
the public in whatever catastrophe may be aimed at them. The
gazettes of France and Leyden accompany this. During the
continuance of this crisis and my own stay, I shall avail myself
of every private conveyance to keep you informed of what
passes. I have the honor to be, with the most perfect esteem
and respect, Sir, your most obedient, and most humble servant.
TO JOHN JAY
Paris, June 29, i?8p
SIR— My letter of the 25th gave you the transactions
of the States General to the afternoon of that day. On the
next, the Archbishop of Paris joined the Tiers, as did some
others of the Clergy and Noblesse. On the 27th, the question
of the St. Domingo deputation came on, and it was decided
that it should be received. I have before mentioned to you
the ferment into which the proceedings at the seance royale
of the 23d, had thrown the people. The soldiery also were
affected by it. It began in the French guards, extended to those
of every other denomination, (except the Swiss) and even to
the bodyguards of the King. They began to quit their bar-
racks, to assemble in squads, to declare they would defend the
life of the King, but would not cut the throats of their fellow-
citizens. They were treated and caressed by the people, carried
in triumph through the streets, called themselves the soldiers
of the nation, and left no doubt on which side they would be,
in case of a rupture. Similar accounts came in from the troops
476
THOMAS JSFFSRSON
in other parts of the kingdom, as well those which had not heard
of the seance royale, as those which had, and gave good reason
to apprehend that the soldiery, in general, would side with
their fathers and brothers, rather than with their officers. The
operation of this medicine, at Versailles, was as sudden as it
was powerful. The alarm there was so complete, that in the
afternoon of the 2yth, the King wrote a letter to the President
of the Clergy, the Cardinal de La Rochefoucault, in these
words:1
"My COUSIN,— Wholly engaged in promoting the general good of
my kingdom, and desirous, above all things, that the Assembly of
the States General should apply themselves to objects of general
interest, after the voluntary acceptance by your order of my decla-
ration of the 23d of the present month; I pass my word that my
faithful Clergy will, without delay, unite themselves with the other
two orders, to hasten the accomplishment of my paternal views.
Those, whose powers are too limited, may decline voting until new
powers are procured. This will be a new mark of attachment which
my Clergy will give me. I pray God, my Cousin, to have you in his
holy keeping. Louis."
A like letter was written to the Duke de Luxemburg?!, Presi-
dent of the Noblesse. The two chambers entered into*debate on
che question, whether they should obey the letter of the King.
There was a considerable opposition; when notes written by
the Count d'Artois to sundry members, and handed about
among the rest, decided the matter, and they went in a body
and took their seats with the Tiers, and thus rendered the
union of the orders in one chamber complete. As soon as this
was known to the people of Versailles, they assembled about
the palace, demanded the King and Queen, who cam'e and
showed themselves in a balcony. They rent the skies with cries
of "vive le roy" "vive la reine" They called for the Dauphin,
who was also produced, and was the subject of new acclama-
tions. After feasting themselves and the royal family with this
i. The following is a literal translation of the King's letter. [Editors'
footnote, Memorial Edition.]
477
OF
tumultuary reconciliation, they went to the house of Mr.
Neckar and M. de Montmorin, with shouts of thankfulness
and affection. Similar emotions of joy took place in Paris, anc
at this moment, the triumph of the Tiers is considered as
complete. To-morrow they will recommence business, voting
by persons on all questions; and whatever difficulties may be
opposed in debate by the malcontents of the Clergy and
Nobility, everything must be finally settled at the will of the
Tiers. It remains to see whether they will leave to the Nobility
anything but their titulary appellations. I suppose they will
not. Mr. Neckar will probably remain in office. It would seem
natural that he should endeavor to have the hostile part of the
Council removed, but I qu'estion if he finds himself firm enough
for that. A perfect co-operation with the Tiers will be his wisest
«;ame. This great crisis being now over, I shall not have
matter interesting enough to trouble you with, as often as I
have dorie lately. There has nothing remarkable taken place
in any other part of Europe. I have the honor to be, with the
most perfect esteem and respect, Sir, your most obedient, and
most humble servant.
TO THOMAS PAINE *
Paris, July n, 1789
.... The National Assembly then (for this is the name
they take), having shown through every stage of these trans-
actions a coolness, wisdom, and resolution to set fire to the
four corners of the kingdom and to perish with it themselves,
rather than to relinquish an iota from their plan of a total
change of government, are now in complete and undisputed
possession of the sovereignty. The executive and aristocracy
are at their feet; the miss of the, nation, the mass of the
i. Jefferson's admiration for Paine's revolutionary political writings,
is well as for his inventive genius, led him to sponsor Paine in the tryin
years after Paine's expulsion from England.
478
THOMAS JEFFERSON
clergy, and the army are with them; they have prostrated the
old government, and are now beginning to build one from the
foundation. A committee, charged with the arrangement of
their business, gave in, two days ago, the following order of
proceedings.
"i. Every government should have for its only end, the
preservation of the rights of man; whence it follows, that to
recall constantly the government to the end proposed, the
constitution should begin by a declaration of the natural and
imprescriptable rights -of man.
"2. Monarchical government being proper to maintain those
rights, it has been chosen by the French nation. It suits espe-
cially a great society; it is n'ecessary for the happiness of
France. The declaration of the principles of this government,
then, should follow immediately the declaration of the rights
of man.
"3. It results from the principles of monarchy, that the na-
tion, to assure its own rights, has yielded particular rights to
the monarch; the constitution, then, should declare, in a
precise manner, the rights of both. It should begin by declaring
the rights of the French nation, and then it should declare the
rights of the King.
"4. The rights of the King and nation not existing but for
the happiness of the individuals who compose it, they lead to
an examination of the rights of citizens.
"5. The French nation not being capable of assembling in-
dividually, to exercise all its rights, it ought to be represented.
It is necessary, then, to declare the form of its representation
and the rights of its representatives.
"6. From the union of the powers of the nation and King,
should result the enacting and execution of the laws; thus,
then, it should first be determined how the laws shall be
established, afterwards should be considered, how they shall
be 'executed.
"7. Laws have for their object the general administration of
the kingdom, the property and the actions of the citizens. The
479
OF
execution of the laws which concern the general administration,
requires Provincial and Municipal Assemblies. It is necessary
to examine, therefore, what should be the organization of the
Provincial Assemblies, and what of the Municipal.
"8. The execution of the laws which concern the property
and actions of the citizens, call for the judiciary power. It
should be determined how that should be confided, and then
its duties and limits.
"9. For the execution of the laws and the defence of the
kingdom, there exists a public force. It is necessary, then, to
determine the principles which should direct it, and how it
should be employed.
"Recapitulation
"Declaration of the rights of man. Principles of the mon-
archy. Rights of the nation. Rights of the King. Rights of the
citizens.
"Organization and rights of the National Assembly. Forms
n'ecessary for the enaction of laws. Organization and func-
tions of the Provincial and Municipal Assemblies. Duties and
limits of the judiciary power. Functions and duties of the
military power."
You see that these are the materials of a superb edifice, and
the hands which have prepared them, are perfectly capable
of putting them together, and of filling up the work of which
these are only the outlines. While there are some men among
them of very superior abilities, the mass possess such a degree
of good sense, as enables them to decide well. I have always
been afraid their numbers might lead to confusion. Twelve
hundred rrien in one room are too many. I have still that fear.
Another apprehension is, that a majority cannot be induced to
adopt the trial by jury; and I consider that as the only anchor
ever yet imagined by man, by which a government can be
held to the principles of its constitution. . . .
480
THOMAS jeFFSRSON
TO JOHN JAY
Paris, July IQ, 1789
.... My letter of the 2Qth of June, brought down the
proceedings of the States and government to the re-union of
the orders, which took place on the 27th. Within the Assem-
bly, matters went on well. But it was soon observed, that
troops, and particularly the foreign troops, were on their
march towards Paris from various quarters, and that this was
against the opinion of Mr. Neckar. The King was probably
advised to this, under pretext of preserving peace in Paris and
Versailles, and saw nothing else in the measure. That his ad-
visers are supposed to have had in view, when he should br,
secured and inspirited by the presence of the troops, to take
advantage of some favorable moment, and surprise him into
an act of authority for establishing the declaration of the 23d
of June, and perhaps dispersing the States General, is probable.
The Marshal de Broglio was appointed to command all the
troops within the isle of France, a high flying aristocrat, cool
and capable of everything. Some of the French guards were
soon arrested under other pretexts, but in reality, on account
of their dispositions in favor of the national cause. The people
of Paris forced the prison, released them, and sent a deputa-
tion to the States General, to solicit a pardon. The States, by
a most moderate and prudent Arrete, recommended these
prisoners to the King, and peace to the people of Paris. Ad-
dresses came in to them from several of the great cities, ex-
pressing sincere allegiance to the King, but a determined
resolution to support the States General. On the 8th of July,
they voted an address to the King to remove the troops. This
piece of masculine eloquence, written by Monsieur de Mira-
beau, is worth attention on account of the bold matter it
expresses and discovers through the whole. The King refused
to remove the troops, and said they might remove themselves,
if they pleased, to Noyons or Soissons. They proceeded to fix
481
OF
he order in which they will take up the several branches of
Jieir future constitution, from which it appears, they mean
to build it from the bottom, confining themselves to nothing
in their ancient form, but a King. A declaration of rights,
which forms the first chapter of their work, was then proposed
by the Marquis de La Fayette. This was on the nth. In the
meantime, troops, to the number of about twenty-five or
thirty thousand, had arrived, and were posted in and between
Paris and Versailles. The bridges and pass'es were guarded. At
three o'clock in the afternoon, the Count de La Luzerne was
sent to notify Mr. Neckar of his dismission, and to enjoin him
to retire instantly, without saying a word of it to anybody. He
went home, dined, proposed to his wife a visit to a friend, but
went in fact to his country-house at St. Ouen, and at midnight,
set out from thence, as is supposed, for Brussels. This was not
known till the next day, when the whole ministry was changed,
except Villedeuil, of the domestic department, and Barentin,
Garde des Sceaux. These changes were as follows: the Baron
de Breteuil, President of the Council of Finance; and de La
Galaisiere, Comptroller General in the room of Mr. Neckar;
the Marshal de Broglio, minister of war, and Foulon under
him, in the room of Puy-Segur; Monsieur de La Vauguyon,
minister of foreign affairs, instead of Monsieur de Montmorin;
de La Porte, minister of marine, in place of the Count de La
Luzerrie; St. Priest was also removed from the Council. It is
to be observed, that Luzerne and Puy-Segur had been strongly
of the aristocratical party in Council; but they were not con-
sidered as equal to bear their shares in the work now to be
don'e. For this change, however sudden it may have been in
the mind of the King, was, in that of his advisers, only one
chapter of a great plan, of which the bringing together the
foreign troops had been the first. He was now completely in the
hands of men, the principal among whom, had be'en noted
through their lives, for the Turkish despotism of their char-
acters, and who were associated about the King, as proper
Instruments for what was to be executed. The news of this
482
THOMAS JSFF8RSON
change began to be known in Paris about one or two o'clock.
In the afternoon, a body of about one hundred German cavalrj
were advanced and drawn up in the Place Louis XV. and about
two hundred Swiss posted at a little distance in their rear.
This drew the people to that spot, who naturally formed
themselves in front of the troops, at first merely to look at
them. But as their numbers increased their indignation arose;
they retired a few steps, posted themselves on and behind
large piles of loose stone, collected in that place for a bridge
adjacent to it, and attacked the horse with stones. The horse
charged, but the advantageous position of the people, and the
showers of stones, obliged them to retire, and even to quit the
field altogether, leaving one of their number on the ground.
The Swiss in their rear were observed never to stir. This was
the signal for universal insurrection, and this body of cavalry,
to avoid being massacred, retired towards Versailles. The
people now armed themselves with such weapons as they
could find in armorers' shops and private houses, and with
bludgeons, and were roaming all night through all parts of
the city, without any decided practicable object. The next
day, the States pressed on the King to send away the troops, to
permit the Bourgeoise of Paris to arm for the preservation
of order in the city, and offered to send a deputation from their
body to tranquillize them. He refused all the propositions. A
committee of magistrates and electors of the city were ap-
pointed by their bodies, to take upon them its government.
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 committed determined to raise forty-
eight thousand Bourgeoise, or rather to restrain their numbers
to forty-eight thousand. On the i4th, they sent one of their
members (Monsieur de Corny, whom we knfew in America)
to the Hotel des Invalides, to ask arms for their Garde
Bourgeoise. He was followed by, or he found there, a great
483
OF
mob. The Governor of trie Invalides came out, and repre-
sented the impossibility of his delivering arms, without the
orders of those from whom he received them. De Corny advised
the people then to r'etire, 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 Launai, 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 depu-
tation 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 people of
those nearest to the deputies. The deputies retired; the people
rushed against the place, and almost in an instant were in pos-
session of a fortification, defended by one hundred men, of
infinite strength, which in other times had stood several regu-
lar 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 wefe not killed in the
first moment of fury, carried the Governor and Lieutenant
Governor to the Greve (the place of public execution), cut
off their heads, and sent them through the city in triumph to
the Palais Royal. About the same instant, a treacherous cor-
respondence having been discovered in Monsieur de Flesselles,
Prevost des Marchands, they seized him in the Hotel de Ville,
where he was in the exercise of his office, and cut off his head.
These events, carried imperfectly to Versailles, were the sub-
ject of two successive deputations from the States to the
King, to both of which he gave dry and hard answers; for it
has transpired, that it had been proposed and agitated in
Council, to seize on the principal members of the States Gen-
484
THOMAS JSFFSRSON
eral, to march the whole army down upon Paris, and to
suppress its tumults by the sword. But at night, the Duk'e de
Liancourt forced his way into the King's bed chamber, and
obliged him to hear a full and animated detail of the disasters
of the day in Paris. He went to bed deeply impressed. The de-
capitation of de Launai worked powerfully through the night
on the whole aristocratical party, insomuch, that in the morn-
ing, those of the greatest influence on the Count d'Artois,
represented to him the absolute necessity that the King should
give up everything to the States. This according well fenough
with the dispositions of the King, he went about eleven o'clock,
accompanied only by his brothers, to the States General, and
there read to them a speech, in which he asked their inter-
position to re-establish order. Though this be couched in terms
of some caution, yet the manner in which it was delivered,
made it evident that it was meant as a surrender at discretion,
He returned to the chateau a foot, accompanied by the States.
They sent off a deputation, the Marquis de La Fayette at their
head, to quiet Paris. He had, the same morning, been named
Commandant-in-Chief of the Milice Bourgeoise, and Monsieur
Bailly, former President of the States General, was called for
as Prevost des Marchands. The demolition of the Bastile was
now ordered, and begun. A body of the Swiss guards of the
regiment of Ventimille, and the city horse guards, joined the
people. The alarm at Versailles increased instead of abating.
They believed that the aristocrats of Paris were under pillage
and carnage, that one hundred and fifty thousand men were
in arms, coming to Versailles to massacre the royal family,
the court, the ministers, and all connected with them, their
practices and principles. The aristocrats of the Nobles and
Clergy in the States General, vied with each other in declaring
how sincerely they were .converted to the justice of voting
by persons, and how determined to go with the nation all its
lengths. The foreign troops were ordered off instantly. Every
minister resign'ed. The King confirmed Bailly as Prevost des
Marchands, wrote to Mr. Neckar to recall him, sent his letter
485
OF
open to the States General, to be forwarded by them, and
invited them to go with him to Paris the next day, to satisfy
the city of his dispositions; and that night and the next morn-
ing, the Count d'Artois and Monsieur de Montisson (a deputy
connected with him), Madame de Polignac, Madame de
Guiche, and the Count de Vaudreuil, favorites of the Queen,
the Abbe de Vermont, her confessor, the Prince of Conde and
Duke de Bourbon, all fled; we know not whither. The King
came to Paris, leaving the Queen in consternation for his re-
turn. Omitting the less important figures of the procession, I
will only observe, that the King's carriage was in the centre,
on each side of it the States General, in two ranks, a foot, and
at their head the Marquis de La Fayette, as Commander-in-
Chief, on horseback, and Bourgeoise guards before and behind.
About sixty thousand citizens of all forms and colors, armed
with the muskets of the Bastile and Invalides, as far as they
would go, the rest with pistols, swords, pikes, pruning hooks,
scythes, etc., lined all the streets through which the proces-
sion passed, and, with the crowds of people in the streets,
cloors and windows, saluted them everywhere with cries of
''vive la nation;" but not a single "vive le roy" was heard. The
King stopped at the Hotel de Ville. There Monsieur Bailly
presented and put into his hat the popular cockade, and ad-
dressed him. The King being unprepared and unable to answer,
Bailly went to him, gathered from him some scraps of s'en-
tences, and made out an answer, which he delivered to the
audience as from the King. On their return, the popular cries
were "vive le roy et la nation." He was conducted by a Garde
Bourgeoise to his palace at Versailles, and thus concluded
such an amende honorable, as no sovereign ever made, and no
people ever received. Letters written with his own hand to
the Marquis de La Fayette, remove the scruples of his posi-
tion. Tranquillity is now restored to the capital: the shops
are again opened; the people resuming their labors, and if the
want of bread does not disturb our peace, we may hope a
continuance of it. The demolition of the Bastile is going on,
486
rPJOMAS JEFFERSON
and the Milice Bourgeoise organiixing and training. The ancient
police of the city is abolished by the authority of the people >
the introduction of the King's troops will probably be pro-
scribed, and a watch or city guarc\s substituted, which shall
depend on the city alone. But we cam>ot suppose this paroxysnN
confined to Paris alone. The whole country must pass suc-
cessively through it, and happy if they get through it as soon
and as well as Paris has don'e.
I went yesterday to Versailles, to satisfy myself what had
passed there; for nothing can be believed but what one sees,
or has from an eye witness. They believe thei^ still, that threa
thousand people have fallen victims to the tumults of Paris.
Mr. Short and myself have been every day au>ong them, in
order to be sure what was passing. We cannot imd. with cer-
tainty, that anybody has been killed but the ihi ee before
mentioned, and those who fell in the assault or defence of the
Bastile. How many of the garrison were killed, nobody pre-
tends to have ever heard. Of the assailants, accounts vary
from six to six hundred. The most general belief is, that there
fell about thirty. There have been many reports of instantane-
ous executions by the mob, on such of their body as they
caught in acts of theft or robbery. Some of these may perhaps
be true. There was a severity of honesty observed, of which no
example has been known. Bags of money offered on various
occasions through fear or guilt, have been uniformly refused
by the mobs. The churches are now occupied in singing "De
projundis" and "Requiems" "for the repose of the souls of the
brave and valiant citizens who have sealed with their blood the
liberty of the nation." Monsieur de Montmorin is this day
replaced in the department of foreign affairs, and Monsieur de
St. Priest is named to the home department. The gazettes of
France and Leyden accompany this. I send, also, a paper
(called the Point du Jour), which will give you some idea
of the proceedings of the National Assembly. It is but an
indifferent thing; however, it is the best. . . .
487
LSTTSRS OF
TO JAMES MADISON
Paris, September 6, 1789
DEAR SIR, —I sit down to write to you without knowing
by what occasion I shall send my letter. I do it, because a
subject comes into my head, which I would wish to develop a
little more than is practicable in the hurry of the moment of
making up general despatches.
The question, whether one generation of men has a right to
bind another, seems never to have been started either on this
or our side of the water. Yet it is a question of such con-
sequences as not only to merit decision, but place also among
the fundamental principles of every government. The course
of reflection in which we are immersed here, on the elemen-
tary principles of society, has presented this question to my
mind; and that no such obligation can be transmitted, I think
very capable of proof. I set out on this ground, which I sup-
pose to be self-evident, that the earth belongs in usufruct to
the living; that the dead have neither powers nor rights over
it. The portion occupied by any individual ceases to be his
when himself ceases to be, and reverts to the society. If the
society has formed no rules for the appropriation of its lands
in severality, it will be taken by the first occupants, and these
will generally be the wife and children of the decedent. If they
have formed rules of appropriation, those rules may give it
to the wife and children, or to some one of them, or to the
legatee of the deceased. So they may give it to its creditor. But
the child, the legatee or creditor, takes it, not by natural right,
but by a law of the society of which he is a member, and to
which he is subject. Then, no man can, by natural right, oblige
the lands he occupied, or the persons who succeed him in that
occupation, to the payment of debts contracted by him. For if
he could, he might during his own life, eat up the usufruct of
the lands for several generations to come; and then the lands
488
THOMAS
would belong to the dead, and not to the living, which is the
reverse of our principle.
What is true of every member of the society, individually,
is true of them all collectively; since the rights of the whole
can be no more than the sum of the rights of the individuals,
To keep our ideas clear when applying them to a multitude,
let us suppose a whole generation of men to be born on the
same day, to attain mature age on the same day, and to dk
on the same day, leaving a succeeding generation in the,
moment of attaining their mature age, all together. Let the
ripe age be supposed of twenty-one years, and their period of
life thirty-four years more, that being the average term given
by the bills of mortality to persons of twenty-one years of age.
Each successive generation would, in this way, come and go
off the stage at a fixed moment, as individuals do now. Then 1
say, the earth belongs to each of these generations during its
course, fully and in its own right. The second generation re-
ceives it clear of the debts and incumbrances of the first, the
third of the second, and so on. For if the first could charge
it with a debt, then the earth would belong to the dead and not
to the living generation. Then, no generation can contract debt?
greater than may be paid during the course of its own existence
At twenty-one years of age, they may bind themselves and
their lands for thirty-four years to come; at twenty-two, foi
thirty-three; at twenty-three, for thirty-two; and at fifty-four,
for one year only; because these are the terms of life which
remain to them at the respective epochs. But a material
difference must be noted, between the succession of an in-
dividual and that of a whole generation. Individuals are parts
only of a society, subject to the laws of a whole. These laws
may appropriate the portion of land occupied by a decedent,
to his creditor, rather than to any other, or to his child, on
condition he satisfies the creditor. But when a whole genera-
tion, that is, the whole society, dies, as in the case we have
supposed, and another generation or society succeeds, this
489
OF
a whole, and there is no superior who can give their
territory to a third society, who may have lent money to their
predecessors, beyond their faculties of paying.
What is true of generations succeeding one another at fixed
epochs, as has b'een supposed for clearer conception, is true
for those renewed daily, as in the actual course of nature. As
a majority of the contracting generation will continue in being
thirty-four years, and a new majority will then come into
possession, the former may extend their engagement to that
term, and no longer. The conclusion then, is, that neither the
representatives of a nation, nor the whole nation itself as-
sembled, can validly engag'e debts beyond what they may pay
in their own time, that is to say, within thirty-four years of
the date of the engagement.
To render this conclusion palpable, suppose that Louis the
XIV. and XV. had contracted debts in the name of the French
nation, to the amount of ten thousand milliards, and that the
whole had been contracted in Holland. The interest of this
sum would be five hundred milliards, which is the whole rent-
roll or net proceeds of the territory of France. Must the present
generation of men have retired from the territory in which
nature produces them, and ceded it to the Dutch creditors?
No ; they have the same rights over the soil on which they were
produced, as the preceding generations had. They derive these
rights not from them, but from nature. They, then, and their
soil are, by nature, clear of the debts of their predecessors. To
present this in another point of view, suppose Louis XV. and
his contemporary generation, had said to the money lenders
of Holland, give us money, that we may eat, drink, and be
merry in our day; and on condition you will demand no
interest till the end of thirty-four years, you shall then, forever
after, receive an annual interest of fifteen per cent. The money
is lent on these conditions, is divided among the people, featen,
drunk, and squandered. Would the present generation be
obliged to apply the produce of the earth and of their labor,
to replace their dissipations? Not at all.
490
THOMAS J8FF8RSON
I suppose that the received opinion, that the public debts'
of one generation devolve on the next, has been suggested by
our seeing, habitually, in private life, that he who succeeds t«
lands is required to pay the debts of his predecessor; without
considering that this requisition is municipal only, not moral,
flowing from the will of the society, which has found it con-
venient to appropriate the lands of a decedent on the condi-
tion of a payment of his debts; but that between society
and society, or generation and generation, there is no municipal
obligation, no umpire but the law of nature.
The interest of the national debt of France being, in fact,
but a two thousandth part of its rent-roll, the payment of it is
practicable enough; and so becomes a question merely of honor
or of expediency. But with respect to future debts, would it not
be wise and just for that nation to declare in the constitution
they are forming, that neither the legislature nor the nation
itself, can validly contract more debt than they may pay within
their own age, or within the term of thirty-four years? And that
all future contracts shall be deemed void, as to what shall re-
main unpaid at the end of thirty-four years from their date?
This would put the lenders, and the borrowers also, on their
guard. By reducing, too, the faculty of borrowing within its
natural limits, it would bridle the spirit of war, to which too
free a course has been procured by the inattention of money
lenders to this law of nature, that succeeding generations are
not responsible for the preceding.
On similar ground it may be proved, that no society can
make a perpetual constitution, or even a perpetual law. True
earth belongs always to the living generation: they may man-
age it, then, and what proceeds from it, as they please, during
their usufruct. They are masters, too, of their own persons, and
consequently may govern them as they pleas'e. But persons and
property make the sum of the objects of government. The con-
stitution and the laws of their predecessors are extinguished
then, in their natural course, with those whose will gave them
being. This could preserve that being, till it ceased to be itself,
491
OF
and no longer. Every constitution, then, and every law, natu-
rally expires at the end of thirty-four years. If it be enforced
longer, it is an act of force, and not of right. It may be said,
that the succeeding generation exercising, in fact, the power of
repeal, this leaves them as free as if the constitution or law
had been expressly limited to thirty-four years only. In the
first place, this objection admits the right, in proposing an
equivalent. But the power of repeal is not an equivalent. It
might be, indeed, if every form of government were so per-
fectly contrived, that the will of the majority could always
be obtained, fairly and without impediment. But this is true
of no form. The people cannot assemble themselves; their
representation is unequal and vicious. Various checks are op-
posed to every legislative proposition. Factions get possession
of the public councils, bribery corrupts them, personal interests
lead them astray from the general interests of their constitu-
ents; and other impediments arise, so as to prove to every
practical man, that a law of limited duration is much more
manageable than one which needs a repeal.
This principle, that the earth belongs to the living and not
to the dead, is of very extensive application and consequences
in every country, and most especially in France. It enters into
the resolution of the questions, whether the nation may change
the descent of lands holden in tail; whether they may change
the appropriation of lands given anciently to the church, to
hospitals, colleges, orders of chivalry, and otherwise in per-
petuity; whether they may abolish the charges and privileges
attached on lands, including the whole catalogue, ecclesiastical
and feudal; it goes to hereditary offices, authorities and juris-
dictions, to hereditary orders, distinctions and appellations, to
perpetual monopolies in commerce, the arts or sciences, with
a long train of et ceteras; renders the question of reimburse-
ment, a question of generosity and not of right. In all these
cases, the legislature of the day could authorize such appro-
priations and establishments for their own time, but no longer ;
and the present holders, even where they or their ancestors
4Q2
THOMAS
have purchased, are in the case of bona fide purchasers of
what the seller had no right to convey.
Turn this subject in your mind, my dear Sir, and particularly
as to the power of contracting debts, and develop it with that
cogent logic which is so peculiarly yours. Your station in the
councils of our country gives you an opportunity of producing
it to public consideration, of forcing it into discussion. At first
blush it may be laughed at, as the dream of a theorist; but
texamination will prove it to be solid and salutary. It would
furnish matter for a fine preamble to our first law for appro-
priating the public revenue; and it will exclude, at the
threshold of our new government, the ruinous and contagious
errors of this quarter of the globe, which have armed despots
with means which nature does not sanction, for binding in
chains their fellow-men. We have already given, in example,
one effectual check to the dog of war, by transferring the
power of declaring war from the executive to the legislative
body, from those who are to spend, to those who are to pay.
I should be pleased to see this second obstacle held out by
us also, in the first instance. No nation can make a declaration
against the validity of long-contracted debts, so disinterestedly
as we, since we do not owe a shilling which will not be paidv
principal and interest, by the measures you have taken, within
the time of our own lives. I write you no news, because when
an occasion occurs, I shall write a separate letter for that.
I am always, with great and sincere esteem, dear Sir, your
affectionate friend and servant.
TO WM. HUNTER, ESQ., MAYOR OF ALEXANDRIA
Alexandria, March //, 1790
.... Convinced that the republican is the only form
of government which is not eternally at open or secret war
with the rights of mankind, my prayers and efforts shall be
cordially distributed to the support of that we have so happily
493
OF
established. It is indeed an animating thought, that while we
are securing the rights of ourselves and our posterity, we are
pointing out the way to struggling nations, who wish like us
to emerge from their tyrannies also. Heaven help their strug-
gles, and lead them, as it has done us, triumphantly through
them. . . .
TO THE MARQUIS DE LAFAYETTE
New York, April 2,
Behold me, my dear friend, elected Secretary of State,
instead of returning to the far more agreeable position which
placed me in the daily participation of your friendship. I
found the appointment in the newspapers the day of my arrival
in Virginia. I had indeed been asked while in France, whether I
would accept of any appointment at home, and I had answered
that, not meaning to remain long where I was, I meant it to be
the last office I should ever act in. Unfortunately this letter
had not arrived at the time of arranging the new Government.
I expressed fre'ely to the President my desire to return. He left
me free, but still showing his own desire. This, and the con-
cern of others, more general than I had a right to exnect,
induced, after three months parleying, to sacrifice my own in-
clinations. I have been here, then, ten days harnessed in new
gear. Wherever I am, or ever shall be, I shall be sincere in
my friendship to you and to your nation. I think with others,
that nations are to be governed with regard to their own in-
terests, but I am convinced that it is their interest, in the long
run, to be grateful, faithful to their engagements, even in the
worst of circumstances, and honorable and generous always. If
I had not known that the head of our government was in these
sentiments, and that his national and private ethics were the
same, I would never have been where I am. I am sorry to tell
you his health is less firm than it used to be. However, there
494
THOMAS JSFFSRSON
is nothing in it to give alarm. The opposition to our new Con-
stitution has almost totally disappeared. Some few indeed
had gone such lengths in their declarations of hostility, that
they feel it awkward perhaps to come over; but the amend-
ments proposed by Congress, have brought over almost all
their followers. If the President can be preserved a few years
till habits of authority and obedience can be established
generally, we have nothing to fear. The little vautrien, Rhode
Island, will come over with a little more time. Our last news
from Paris is of the 8th of January. So far it seemed that your
revolution had got along with a steady peace; meeting indeed
occasional difficulties and dangers, but we are not to expect
to be translated from despotism to liberty in a feather-bed. I
have n'ever feared for the ultimate result, though I have feared
for you personally. Indeed, I hope you will never see such
another 5th or 6th of October. Take care of yourself, my dear
friend, for though I think your nation would in any event work
out her salvation, I am persuaded, were she to lose you, it
would cost her oceans of blood, and years of confusion and
anarchy. Kiss and bless your dear children for me. Learn them
to be as you are, a cement between our two nations. I write te
Madame de LaFayette, so have only to add assurances of the
respect of your affectionate friend and humble servant.
TO MARIA JEFFERSON
New York, Apr. nth,
Where are you, my dear Maria? how do you do? how
are you occupied? Write me a letter by the first post, and
answer me all these questions. Tell me whether you see the sun
rise fevery day? how many pages a day you read in Don
Quixote? how far you are advanced in him? whether you
repeat a grammar lesson every day? what else you read? how
many hours a day you sew? whether you have an opportunity
i. [Randall.]
495
OF
of continuing your music? whether you know how to make a
pudding yet, to cut out a beefsteak, to sow spinach? or to set
a hen? Be good, my dear, as I have always found you; never
be angry with anybody, nor speak harm of them; try to let
everybody's faults be forgotten, as you would wish yours to be;
take more pleasure in giving what is best to another than in
having it yourself, and then all the worlcj will love you, and I
more than all the world. If your sister is with you, kiss her and
tell her how much I love her also, and present my affections to
Mr. Randolph. Love your aunt and uncle and be dutiful and
obliging to them for all their kindness to you, What would you
do without them and with such a. vagrant for a father? Say to
both of them a thousand affectionate things for me; and adieu,
my dear Maria.
TH. JEFFERSON.
TO MR. THOMAS MANN RANDOLPH
New York, May 30, 17 go
.... Your resolution to apply to the study of the law,
is wise in my opinion, and at the same time to mix with it a
good degree of attention to the farm. The one will relieve the
other. The study of the law is useful in a variety of points of
view. It qualifies a man to be useful to himself, to his neigh-
bors, and to the public. It is the most certain stepping-stone to
preferment in the political line. In political economy, I think
Smith's Wealth of Nations the best book fextant; in the science
of government, Montesquieu's Spirit of Laws is generally
recommended. It contains, indeed, a great number of political
truths; but also an equal number of heresies: so that the
reader must be constantly on his guard. There has been lately
published a letter of Helvetius, who was the intimate friend of
Montesquieu, and whom he consulted before the publication of
his book. Helvetius advised him not to publish it; and in this
496
THOMAS JSFFeRSON
letter to a friend he gives us a solution for the mixture of trutb
and error found in this book. He says Montesquieu was a man
of immense reading; that he had commonplaced all his reading,
and that his object was to throw the whole contents of his
commonplace book into systematical order, and to show his
ingenuity by reconciling the contradictory facts it presents.
Locke's little book on Government, is perfect as far as it goes.
Descending from theory to practice there is no better book
than the Federalist. Burgh's Political Disquisitions are good
also, especially after reading De Lome. Several of Hume's
Political Essays are good. There arfe some excellent books of
theory written by Turgot and the economists of France. For
parliamentary knowledge, the Lex Parliamentaria is the best
book. . . .
TO JOHN GARLAND JEFFERSON l
New York, June //,
DEAR SIR, —Your uncle mr Garland informs me, tha?,
your education being finished, you are desirous of obtaining
some clerkship or something else under government whereby
you may turn your talents to some account for yourself and
he had supposed it might be in my power to provide you with
some such office. His commendations of you are such as to
induce me to wish sincerely to be of service to you. But there
is not, and has not been, a single vacant office at my disposal.
Nor would I, as your friend, ever think of putting you into the
petty clerkships in the several offices, where you would have
to drudge through life for a miserable pittance, without a hope
of bettering your situation. But he tells me you are also dis-
posed to the study of the law. This therefore brings it more
within my power to serve you. It will be necessary for you in
that case to go and live somewhere in my neighborhood in
i. John Garland Jefferson was the son of George Jefferson, Thomas
Jefferson's cousin. [Ford].
407
O.F
Albemarle. The inclosed letter to Colo. Lewis near Charlottes-
ville will show you what I have supposed could be best done
for vou there, it is a general practice to study the law in the
office of some lawyer. This indeed gives to the student the
advantage of his instruction. But I have ever seen that the
services expected in return have b'een more than the instruc-
tions have been worth. All that is necessary for a student is
access to a library, and directions in what order the books are
to be read. This I will take the liberty of suggesting to you,
observing previously that as other branches of science, and
especially history, are necessary to form a lawyer, these must
be carried on together. I will arrange the books to be read into
three columns, and propose that you should read those in the
first column till 12. oclock every day; those in the 2d. from 12.
to 2. those in the 3d. after candlelight, leaving all the afternoon
for exercise and recreation, which are as necessary as reading:
I will rather say more necessary, because health is worth more
than learning.
ist. 2d. 3d.
-Coke on Littleton Dalrymple's feudal Mallet's North anti-
Coke's 2d. 3d & 4th.
system.
quit'.
institutes.
Hale's history of the
History of England
Coke's reports.
Com. law.
in 3 vols. folio com-
piled by Kennet.
Vaughan's do
Salkeld's
Gilbert on Devises
Uses
Ludlow's memoirs
Ld. Raymond's
Tenures.
Rents
Burnet's history
Ld. Orrery's history.
Strange's
Distresses.
Burke's George III.
Burrows's
Ejectments.
Robertson's hist, of
Kami's Principles of
Executions.
Scotl'd.
equity.
Evidence.
Robertson's hist, of
Vernon's reports.
Sayer's law of costs.
America.
Peere Williams.
Lambard's circonan-
Other American his-
tia.
tories.
498
THOMAS JSFFeRSON
ist 20. 3d.
Precedents in Chan- Bacon, voce Pleas & Voltaire's historical
eery. Pleadings works.
Tracy Atheyns. Cummingham's law
Verey. of
Hawkin's Pleas of MoUey de l'ure
the crown. _ ™ritl™-
_ , Locke on government.
Blackstone »>••<. • > c- • •*.
r. . . Montesquieu s Spirit
Virginia laws. of law
Smith's wealth of na-
tions.
Beccaria.
Kaim's moral essays.
Vattel's law of na-
tions.
Should there by any little intervals in the day not otherwise
occupied fill them up by reading Lowthe's grammar, Blair's
lectures on rhetoric, Mason on poetic & prosaic numbers,
Bolingbroke's works for the sake of the stile, which is declama-
tory & elegant, the English poets for the sake of style also.
As mr Peter Carr in Goochland is engaged in a course of
law reading, and has my books for that purpose, it will be
accessary for you to go to mrs Carr's, and to receive such as
iie shall be then done with, and settle with him a plan of
receiving from him regular [ly] the before mentioned books as
fast as he shall get through them. The losses I have sustained
by lending my books will be my apology to you for asking youi
particular attention to the replacing them in the presses as fast
as you finish them, and not to lend them to anybody else, noi
suffer anybody to have a book out of the Study under covej
of your name. You will find, when you get there, that I have
had reason to ask this exactness.
I would have you determin'e beforehand to make yourseli
a thorough lawyer, & not be contented with a mere smattering.
It is superiority of knowledge which can alone lift you above-
499
LETTERS OF
the heads of your competitors, and ensure you success, I think
therefore you must calculate on devoting between two & three
years to this course of reading, before you think of commencing
practice. Whenever that begins, there is an end of reading.
I shall be glad to hear from you from time to time, and shall
hope to se'e you in the fall in Albemarle, to which place I
propose a visit in that season. In the meantime wishing you
all the industry of patient perseverance which this course of
reading will require I am with great esteem Dear Sir Your most
obedient friend & servant.
TO MARIA JEFFERSON
New York, June i3th, 1790 ]
MY DEAR MARIA:
I have received your letter of May 23d, which was in
answer to mine of May 2d, but I wrote you also on the 23d of
May, so that you still owe me an answer to that, which I hope
is now on the road. In matters of correspondence as well as of
money, you must never be in debt. I am much pleased with
the account you give me of your occupations, and the making
the pudding is as good an article of them as any. When I come
to Virginia I shall insist on eating a pudding of your own
making, as well as on trying other specimens of your skill. You
must make the most of your time while you are with so good
an aunt who can learn you everything. We had not peas nor
strawberries here till the 8th day of this month. On the same
day I heard the first whip-poor-will whistle. Swallows and mar-
tins appeared here on the 2ist of April. When did they appear
with you? and when had you peas, strawberries, and whip-
poor-wills in Virginia? Take notice hereafter whether the whip-
poor-wills always come with the strawberries and peas. Send
me a copy of the maxims I gave you, also a list, of the books I
promised you. I have had a long touch of my periodical head-
ache, but a very moderate one. It has not quite left me yet,
i. [Randall.]
500
THOMAS JSFFSRSON
Adieu, my dear; love yonr uncle, aunt, and cousins, and me
more than all.
TO COUNF DE MOUSTIER
Philadelphia, December 3, 1790
.... The powers of the government for the collection
of taxes, are found to be perfect, so far as they have been
tried. This has been as yet only by duties on consumption. As
these fall principally on the rich, it is a general desire to make
them contribute the whole mone> we want, if possible. And
we have a hope that they will furnish enough for the expenses
of government and the interest of our whole public debt,
foreign and domestic. If they do this for the present, their
increase, from the increase of population and consumption,
(which is at the rate of five per centum per annum), will sink
the capital in thirteen or fourteen years, as it will operate in
the way of compound interest. Independent of this prospect,
which is itself a good one, we make the produce of our
office, and some other articles, a sinking fund for the
cipal. . . .
TO MARTHA JEFFERSON RANDOLPH
Philadelphia, Dec, 2$, 1790
MY DEAR DAUGHTER:
This is a scolding letter for you all. I have not received
a scrip of a pen from home since I left it. I think it so easy for
you to write me one letter 'every week, which will be but once
in the three weeks for each of you, when I write one every
week, who have not one moment's repose from business, from
the first to the last moment of the week.
Perhaps you think you have nothing to say to me. It is a
great deal to say you are well; or that one has a cold, another
a fever, etc.: besides that, there is not a sprig of grass that
i. [Randall.]
Soi
OF
shoots uninteresting to me; nor anything that moves from
yourself down to Bergere or Grizzle.1 Write, then, my dear
daughter, punctually on your day, and Mr. Randolph and
^olly on theirs. I suspect you may have news to tell me of
yourself of the most tender interest to me. Why silent
then? ....
TO MR. HAZARD 2
Philadelphia, February 18, 1791
SIR, —I return you the two volumes of records, with
thanks for the opportunity of looking into them. They are
curious monuments of the infancy of our country. I learn with
great satisfaction that you are about committing to the press
the valuable historical and State papers you have been so long
collecting. Time and accident are committing daily havoc on
the originals deposited in our public offices. The late war has
done the work of centuries in this business. The last cannot be
recovered, but let us save what remains; not by vaults and
locks whiclf fence them from the public eye and use in con-
signing them to the waste of time, but by such a multiplication
of copies, as shf.l! place them beyond the reach of accident.
This being the tendency of your undertaking, be assured there
is no one who wishes it more success than, Sir, your most
obedient, and most humble servant.
TO MAJOR L'ENFANT 3
Philadelphia, April 10, i?gi
SIR,— I am favored with your letter of the 4th instant ,
and in compliance with your request, I have examined my
1. These were the shepherd dogs Jefferson brought with him from
France.
2. Ebenezer Hazard was engaged in collecting and preparing for pub-
lication early Virginia and America documents.
3. Pierre Charles L'Enfant, Paris born soldier, artist, and engineer,
was at this time planning the New Federal City which was to become
Washington, D. C.
502
THOMAS J8FF8XSON
papers, and found the plans of Frankfort-on-the-Mayne, Carls-
ruhe, Amsterdam, Strasburg, Paris, Orleans, Bordeaux, Lyons,
Montpelier, Marseilles, Turin, and Milan, which J send in a
roll by the post. They are on large and accurate scales, having
been procured by me while in those respective cities myself.
As they are connected with the notes I made in my travels,
and often necessary to explain them to myself, I will beg your
care of them, and to return them when no longer useful to you,
leaving you absolutely free to keep them as long as useful.
I am happy that the President has left the planning of the
town in such good hands, and have no doubt it will be done to
general satisfaction. Considering that the grounds to be re-
served for the public are to be paid for by the acre, I think very
liberal reservations should be made for them; and if this be
about the Tyber and on the back of the town, it will be of no
injury to the commerce of the place, which will undoubtedly
establish itself on the deep waters towards the eastern branch
and mouth of Rock Creek; the water about the mouth of the
Tyber not being of any depth. Those connected with the gov-
ernment will prefer fixing themselves near the public grounds
in the centre, which will also be convenient to be resorted to
as walks from the lower and upper town. Having communicated
to the President, before he went away, such general ideas on
the subject of the town as occurred to me, I make no doubt
that, in explaining himself to you on the subject, he has inter-
woven with his own ideas, such of mine as he approved. For
fear of repeating therefore what he did not approve, and having
more confidence in the unbiassed state of his mind, than in my
own, I avoided interfering with what he may have expressed to
you. Whenever it is proposed to prepare plans for the Capitol,
I should prefer the adoption of some one of the models of
antiquity, which have had the approbation of thousands of
years; and for the President's house, I should prefer the
celebrated fronts of modern buildings, which have already
received the approbation of all good judges. Such are the
Galerie du Louire, the Gardes meubles, and two fronts of the
503
OF
Hotel de Salm. But of this it is yet time enough to consider.
In the meantime I am, with great esteem, Sir, your most
obedient humble servant.
TO THOMAS MANN RANDOLPH
Bennington, in Vermont, June 5, 1791
DEAR SIR,— Mr. Madison and myself are so far on the
tour we had projected. We have visited, in the course of it, the
principal scenes of General Burgoyne's misfortunes, to wit,
the grounds at Stillwater, where the action of that name was
fought, and particularly the breastworks, which cost so much
blood to both parties, the encampments at Saratoga and
ground where the British piled their arms, and the field of the
battle of Bennington, about nine miles from this place. We
have also visited Forts William, Henry and George, Ticon-
deroga, Crown Point, etc., which have been scenes of blood
from a very early part of our history. We were more pleased,
however, with the botanical objects which continually pre-
sented themselves. Those either unknown or rare in Virginia,
were the sugar maple in vast abundance. The silver fir, white
pine, pitch pine, spruce pin'e, a shrub with decumbent stems,
which they call juniper, an aralea, very different from the nudi-
flora, 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 honey-suckle 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. . . .
TO T. M. RANDOLPH
Philadelphia, July 3, 1791
You will observe by the enclosed and preceding papers
that I am mentioned on the subject 'of Pained pamphlet on
504
THOMAS JSFFSRSON
the Rights of Man; and you will have seen a note of mine pre-
fixed to that pamphlet whence it has been inferred that I fur-
nished the pamphlet to the printer and procured its publica-
tion. This is not true. The fact was this: Mr. Beckley had the
only copy of that pamphlet in town. He lent it to Mr. Madi-
son, who lent it to me under the injunction to return it to Mr.
Beckley within the day. Beckley came for it before I had fin-
ished reading it and desired as soon as I had done I would send
it to a Mr. Jonathan B. Smith whose brother was to reprint
it. Being an utter stranger to Mr. J. B. Smith I explained to
him in a note that I sent the pamphlet to him by order of Mr.
Beckley, and to take off somewhat of the dryness of the note I
added that I was glad to find it was to be reprinted here, etc.,
as you have seen in the printed note. I thought so little of this
note that I did not even retain a copy of it; and without the
least information or suspicion that it would be published, out
it comes the next week at the head of the pamphlet. I knew
immediately that it would give displeasure to some gentlemen
just by the chair of government who were in sentiment with
Burke and as much opposed to the sentiments of Paine.
I could not disavow my note, because I had written it. I
could not disavow my approbation of the pamphlet, because I
was fully in sentiment with it, and it would have been trifling
to have disavowed merely the publication of the note approv-
ing at the same time of the pamphlet. I determined, therefore,
to be utterly silent except so far as verbal explanations could
be made.
The Vice-President, who is at Boston, took up the cudgels
under the name of Publicola. He is in turn assailed by a host
of republican champions. I think it probable he will be aided
by some of his compeers, but, more cautious than he, they will
mask themselves better. For my part I am determined to let
them write and wrangle as they please without intermeddling
in word or deed.
I am unable as yet to fix a time for my trip to Virginia. It
must depend on the movements of the President. I foresee
SOS
L8TT6RS OF
nothing in the public affairs which threatens impediment. Pre-
sent me affectionately to my daughters, and believe me to be,
dear Sir, yours sincerely.
TO JOHN ADAMS
Philadelphia, July 17,
DEAR SIR,— I have a dozen times taken up my pen to
write to you, and as often laid it down again, suspended be-
tween opposing considerations. I determine, however, to write
from a conviction that truth, between candid minds, can never
do harm. The first of Paine's pamphlets on the rights of man,
which came to hand here, belonged to Mr. Beckley. He lent it
to Mr. Madison, who lent it to me; and while I was reading it,
Mr. Beckley called on me for it, and, as I had not finished it,
he desired me, as soon as I should have done so, to send it to
Mr. Jonathan B. Smith, whose brother meant to reprint it. I
finished reading it, and, as I had no acquaintance with Mr.
Jonathan B. Smith, propriety required that I should fexplain to
him why I, a stranger to him, sent him the pamphlet. I accord-
ingly wrote a note of compliment, informing him that I did it
at the desire of Mr. Beckley, and, to take off a little of the dry-
ness of the note, I added that I was glad it was to be reprinted
here, and that something was to be publicly said against the
political heresies which had sprung up among us, etc. I thought
so little of this note, that I did not even keep a copy of it; nor
ever heard a tittle more of it, till, the week following, I was
thunderstruck with seeing it come out at the head of the
pamphlet. I hoped, however, it would not attract notice. But
I found, on my return from a journey of a month, that a writer
came forward, under the signature of Publicola, attacking not
only the author and principles of the pamphlet, but myself as
its sponsor, by name. Soon after came hosts of other writers,
defending the pamphlet, and attacking you, by name, as the
writer of Publicola. Thus were our names thrown on the public
506
THOMAS J8FF8RSON
stage as public antagonists. That you and I differ in our ideas
of the best form of government, is well known to us both; but
we have differed as friends should do, respecting the purity of
each other's motives, and confining our difference of opinion to
private conversation. And I can declare with truth, in the pres-
ence of the Almighty, that nothing was further from my in-
tention or expectation than to have either my own or your
name brought before the public on this occasion. The friend-
ship and confidence which has so long existed between us, re-
quired this explanation from me, and I know you too well to
fear any misconstruction of the motives of it. Some people here,
who would wish me to be, or to be thought, guilty of impro-
prieties, have suggested that I was Agricola, that I was Brutus,
etc., etc. I never did in my life, either by myself or by any
other, have a sentence of mine inserted in a newspaper with-
out putting my name to it; and I believe I never shall.
TO WILLIAM SHORT *
Philadelphia, July 28, 1791
Whenever jealousies are expressed as to any supposed
views of ours, on the dominion of the West Indies, you cannot
go farther than the truth, in asserting we have none. If there
be one principle more deeply rooted than any other in the mind
of every American, it is, that we should have nothing to do with
conquest. As to commerce, indeed, we have strong sensations.
In casting our eyes over the earth, we see no instance of a na-
tion forbidden, as we are, by foreign powers, to deal with neigh-
bors, and obliged, with them, to carry into another hemisphere,
the mutual supplies necessary to relieve mutual wants. This is
not merely a question between the foreign power and our neigh-
bor. We are interested in it equally with the latter, and nothing
i. William Short, American diplomat, was Jefferson's protege and
intimate friend. He had served as Jefferson's orivate secretary in Paris*
and, at the time of this letter, was American charg6 d'affaires in Paris-
507
o/
but moderation, at least with respect to us, can render us in-
different to its continuance. An exchange of surplusses and
wants between neighbor nations, is both a right and a duty
under the moral law, and measures against right should be
mollified in their exercise, if it be wished to lengthen them to
the greatest term possible. Circumstances sometimes require,
that rights the most unquestionable should be advanced with
delicacy. It would seem that the one now spoken of, would need
only a mention, to be assented to by any unprejudiced mind:
but with respect to America, Europeans in general, have been
too long in the habit of confounding force with right. The Mar-
quis de La Fayette stands in such a relation between the two
countries, that I should think him perfectly capable of seeing
what is just as to both. Perhaps on some occasion of free con-
versation, you might find an opportunity of impressing these
truths on his mind, and that from him, they might be let out at
a proper moment as matters meriting consideration and weight,
when they shall be engaged in the work of forming a constitu-
tion for our neighbors. In policy, if not in justice, they should
be disposed to avoid oppression, which, falling on us, as well as
on their colonies, might tempt us to act together. . . .
TO BENJAMIN
Philadelphia, August 30, 1791
SIR,— I thank you sincerely for your letter of the iQth
instant, and for the Almanac it contained. Nobody wishes more
than I do to see such proofs as you exhibit, that nature has
given to our black brethren, talents equal to those of the other
colors of men, and that the appearance of a want of them is
owing merely to the degraded condition of their existence, both
in Africa and America. I can add with truth, that nobody
i. Benjamin Banneker, a Negro, was born in Baltimore County,
Maryland; although lacking any formal education, he invented, among
other things, a clock, and published an almanac for several years.
508
THOMAS J8FF8RSON
wishes more ardently to see a good system commenced for rais-
ing the condition both of their body and mind to what it ought
to be, as fast as the imbecility of their present existence, and
other circumstances which cannot be neglected, will admit. I
have taken the liberty of sending your Almanac to Monsieur de
Condorcet, Secretary of the Academy of Sciences at Paris, and
member of the Philanthropic Society, because i considered it
as a document to which your color had a right for their justifi-
cation against the doubts which have been 'entertained of them.
I am, with great esteem, Sir, your most obedient humble
servant.
TO MARTHA JEFFERSON RANDOLPH
Philadelphia, January i$th, 1792 *
MY DEAR MARTHA, —Having no particular subject for a
letter, I find none more soothing to my mind than to indulge
itself in expressions of the love I bear you, and the delight
with which I recall the various scenes through which we have
passed together in our wanderings over the world. These rev-
feries alleviate the toils and inquietudes of my present situa-
tion, and leave me always impressed with the desire of being at
home once more, and of exchanging labor, envy, and malice
for ease, domestic occupation, and domestic love and society;
where I may once more be happy with you, with Mr. Randolph
and dear little Anne, with whom even Socrates might ride on a
stick without being ridiculous. Indeed it is with difficulty that
my resolution will bear me through what yet lies between the
present day and that which, on mature consideration of all cir-
cumstances respecting myself and others, my mind has deter-
mined to be the proper one for relinquishing my office. Though
not very distant, it is not near enough for my wishes. The
ardor of these, however, would be abated if I thought that, on
coming home, I should be left alone. On the contrary, I hop*
i. [Ford.]
509
OF
that Mr. Randolph will find a convenience in making only
leisurely preparations for a settlement, and that I shall be able
to make you both happier than you have been at Monticello,
and relieve you of desagrements to which I have been sensible
you were exposed, without the power in myself to prevent it,
but by my own presence. Remember me affectionately to Mr.
Randolph, and be assured of the tender love of yours.
TO THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES *
Philadelphia, May 23, 1792
DEAR SIR,— I have determined to make the subject of a
letter what for some time past has been a subject of inquietude
to my mind, without having found a good occasion of dis-
burthening itself to you in conversation, during the busy scenes
which occupied you here. Perhaps, too, you may be able in
your present situation, or on the road, to give it more time and
reflection than you could do here at any moment.
When you first mentioned to me your purpos'e of retiring
from the government, though I felt all the magnitude of the
event, I was in a considerable degree silent. I knew that, to
such a mind as yours, persuasion was idle and impertinent;
that before forming your decision you had weighed all the
reasons for and against the measure, had made up your mind
on full view of them, and that there could be little hope of
changing the result. Pursuing my reflections, too, I knew we
were some day to try to walk alone, and if the essay should be
made while you should be alive and looking on, we should de-
rive confidence from that circumstance, and resource, if it
failed. The public mind, too, was calm and confident , and
therefore in a favorable state for making the experiment. Had
no change of circumstances intervened, I should not, with any
hopes of success, have now ventured to propose to you a change
v George Washington.
510
THOMAS JSFFSRSON
of purpos'e. But the public mind is no longer confident arid
serene; and that from causes in which you are no ways per-
sonally mixed. Though these causes have been hackneyed in
the public papers in detail, it may not be amiss, in order to
calculate the effect they are capable of producing, to take a
view of them in the mass, giving to each the form, real or imag-
inary, under which they have been presented.
It has been urged, then, that a public debt, greater than we
can possibly pay, before other causes of adding new debt to it
will occur, has been artificially created by adding together the
whole amount of the debtor and creditor sides of accounts, in-
stead of only taking their balances, which could have been paid
off in a short time: that this accumulation of debt has taken
forever out of our power those easy sources of revenue which,
applied to the ordinary necessities and exigencies of govern-
ment, would have answered them habitually, and covered us
from habitual murmurings against taxes and tax-gatherers, re-
serving extraordinary calls for those extraordinary occasions
which would animate the people to meet them: that though
the calls for money have been no greater than we must expect
generally, for the same or equivalent "exigencies, yet we are
already obliged to strain the impost till it produces clamor,
and will produce evasion and war on our own citizens to collect
it, and 'even to resort to an excise law of odious character with
the people, partial in its operation, unproductive unless en-
forced by arbitrary and vexatious means, and committing the
authority of the government in parts where resistance is most
probable and coercion least practicable. They cite propositions
in Congress, and suspect other projects on foot still to increase
the mass of debt. They say, that by borrowing at two-thirds of
the interest, we might have paid off the principal in two-thirds
of the time; but that from this we ar'e precluded by its being
made irredeemable but in small portions and long terms; that
this irredeemable quality was given it for the avowed purpose
of inviting its transfer to foreign countries. They predict that
this transfer of the principal, when completed, will occasion
OF
an exportation of three millions of dollars annually for the in-
terest, a drain of coin, of which, as there has been no examples,
no calculation can b'e made of its consequences: that the ban-
ishment of our coin will be complicated by the creation of ten
millions of paper money, in the form of bank bills now issuing
into circulation. They think the ten or twelve per cent, annual
profit paid to the lenders of this paper medium taken out of the
pockets of the people, who would have had without interest the
coin it is banishing: that all the capital employed in paper
speculation is barren and useless, producing, like that on a
gaming table, no accession to itself, and is withdrawn from
commerce and agriculture, where it would have produced addi-
tion to the common mass: that it nourishes in our citizens
habits of vice and idleness, instead of industry and morality:
that it has furnished effectual means of corrupting such a por-
tion of the legislature as turns the balance between the honest
voters, whichever way it is directed: that this corrupt squad-
ron, deciding the voice of the legislature, have manifested their
dispositions to get rid of the limitations imposed by the Con-
stitution on the general legislature, limitations, on the faith of
which, the States acceded to that instrument: that the ultimate
object of all this is to prepare the way for a change from the
present republican form of government to that of a monarchy,
of which the English Constitution is to be the model : that this
was contemplated by the convention is no secret, because its
partisans have made more of it. To effect it then was imprac-
ticable, but they are still eager after their object, and are pre-
disposing everything for its ultimate attainment. So many of
them have got into the Legislature, that, aided by the corrupt
squadron of paper dealers, who are at their devotion, they make
a majority in both houses. The republican party, who wish to
preserve the government in its present form, are fewer in num-
ber; they are fewer even when joined by the two, three, or
half dozen anti-federalists, who, though they dare not avow
it, are still opposed to any General Government; but, being
THOMAS JSFFSRSON
less so to a republican than a monarchical one, they naturally
join those whom they think pursuing the lesser evil.
Of all the mischiefs objected to the system of measures be-
fore mentioned, none is so afflicting and fatal to 'every honest
hope, as the corruption of the Legislature. As it was the earliest
of these measures, it became the instrument for producing thfc
risk, and will be the instrument for producing in future a king,
lords and commons, or whatever else those who direct it may
choose. Withdrawn such a distance from the eye of their con-
stituents, and these so dispersed as to be inaccessible to public
information, and particularly to that of the conduct of their
own representatives, they will form the most corrupt govern-
ment on fcarth, if the means of their corruption be not pre-
vented. The only hope of safety hangs now on the numerous
representation which is to come forward the ensuing year. Some
of the new members will be, probably, either in principle or in-
terest, with the present majority; but it is expected that the
great mass will form an accession to the republican party. They
will not be able to undo all which the two preceding Legisla-
tures, and especially the first, have done. Public faith and right
will oppose this. But some parts of the system may be right-
fully reformed, a liberation from the rest unremittingly pur-
sued as fast as right will p'ermit, and the door shut in future
against similar commitments of the nation. Should the next
Legislature take this course, it will draw upon them the whole
monarchical and paper interest; but the latter, I think, will
not go all lengths with the former, because creditors will never,
of their own accord, fly off entirely from their debtors; there-
fore, this is the alternative least likely to produce convulsion.
But should the majority of the new members be still in the
same principles with the present, and show that we have noth-
ing to expect but a continuance of the same practices, it is not
easy to conjecture what would be the result, nor what means
would be resorted to for correction of the evil. True wisdom
would direct that they should be temperate and peaceable; but
OF
the division of sentiment and interest happens unfortunately to
be so geographical, that no mortal can say that what is most
wise and temperate would prevail against what is most easy
and obvious? I can scarcely contemplate a more incalculable
evil than the breaking of the Union into two or more parts. Yet
when we consider the mass which opposed the original coales-
cence; when we consider that k lay chiefly in the Southern
quarter; that the Legislature have availed themselves of no
occasion of allaying it, but on the contrary, whenever North-
ern and Southern prejudices have come into conflict, the lat-
ter have been sacrificed and the former soothed; that the own-
ers of the debt are in the Southern, and the holders of it in
the Northern division; that the anti-federal champions are now
strengthened in argument by the fulfillment of their predic-
tions; that this has been brought about by the monarchical
federalists themselves, who, having been for the new govern-
ment merely as a stepping stone to monarchy, have themselves
adopted the very constructions of the Constitution, of which,
when advocating its acceptance before the tribunal of the peo-
ple, they declared it unsusceptible; that the republican fed-
eralists who espoused the same government for its intrinsic
merits, are disarmed of their weapons; that which they denied
as prophecy, having now become true history, who can be sure
that thes:e things may not proselyte the small number which
was wanting to place the majority on the other side? And this
is the event at which I tremble, and to prevent which I con-
sider your continuing at the head of affairs as of the last im-
portance. The confidence of the whole Union is centred in you.
Your being at the helm will be more than an answer to every
argument which can be used to alarm and lead the people in
any quarter, into violence and secession. North and South will
hang together if they have you to hang on; and if the first cor-
rection of a numerous representation should fail in its effect,
your presence will give time for trying others, not inconsistent
with the union and peace of the States.,
I am perfectly aware of the oppression under which your
THOMAS JSFFSRSON
present office lays your mind, and of the ardor with which you
pant for domestic life. But there is sometimes an eminence of
character or. which society have such peculiar claims as to con-
trol the predilections of the individual for a particular walk of
happiness, and restrain him to that alone arising from the pres-
ent and future benedictions of mankind. This seems to be your
condition, and the law imposed on you by providence in form-
ing your character, and fashioning the events on which it was
to operate; and it is to motives like these, and not to personal
anxieties of mine or others who have no right to call on you
for sacrifices, that I appeal, and urge a revisal of it, on the
ground of change in the aspect of things. Should an honest
majority result from the new and enlarged representation;
should those acquiesce whose principles or interest they may
control, your wishes for retirement would be gratified with less
danger, as soon as that shall be manifest, without awaiting the
completion of the second period of four years. One or two ses-
sions will determine the crisis; and I cannot but hope that you
can resolve to add more to the many years you have already
sacrificed to the good of mankind.
The fear of suspicion that any selfish motive of continuance
in office may enter into this solicitation on my part, obliges me
to declare that no such motive exists. It is a thing of mere in-
difference to the public whether I retain or relinquish my pur-
pose of closing my tour with the first periodical renovation of
the government. I know my own measure too well to suppose
that my services contribute anything to the public confidence,
or the public utility. Multitudes can fill the office in which you
have been pleased to place me, as much to their advantage and
satisfaction. I have, therefore, no motive to consult but my
own inclination, which is bent irresistibly on the tranquil en-
joyment of my family, my farm and my books. I should repose
among them, it is true, in far greater security, if I were to
know that you remained at the watch; and I hope it will be
so. To the inducements urged from a view of our domestic
affairs, I will add a bare mention, of what indeed need only to
LBTfBRS OF
be mentioned, that weighty motives for your continuance arte
to be found in our foreign affairs. I think it probable that both
the Spanish and English negotiations, if not completed before
your purpose is known, will be suspended from the moment
it is known, and that the latter nation will then use double
diligence in fomenting the Indian War. With my wishes for the
future, I shall at the same time express my gratitude for the
past, at least my portion in it; and beg permission to follow
you, whether in public or private life, with those sentiments of
sincere attachment and respect, with which I am unalterably,
dear Sir, your affectionate friend and humble servant.
TO THOMAS PAINE
Philadelphia, June 19, 1792 l
DEAR SIR,— I received with great pleasure the present
of your pamphlets, as well as for the thing itself as that it was
a testimony of your recollection. Would you believe it possible
that in this country there should be high & important char-
acters who need your lessons in republicanism, & who do not
heed them? It is but too true that we have a sect preaching up
& pouting after an English constitution of king, lords, & com-
mons, & whose heads are itching for crowns, coronets & mitres.
But our people, my good friend, are firm and unanimous in
their principles of republicanism & there is no better proof of
it than that they love what you write and read it with delight.
The printers season every newspaper with extracts from your
last, as they did before from your first part of the Rights of
Man. They have both served here to separate the wheat from
the chaff, and to prove that tho' the latter appears on the sur-
face, it is on the surface only. The bulk below is sound & pure.
Go on then in doing with your pen what in other times was
done with the sword: shew that reformation is more prac-
ticable by operating on the mind than on the body of man,
i. [Ford.]
THOMAS JSFFeRSON
and be assured that it has not a more sincere votary nor you a
more ardent well-wisher than Yrs. &c.
TO THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES
Monticello, September 9, 1792
.... I now take the liberty of proceeding to that part
of your letter wherein you notice the internal dissensions which
have taken place within our government, and their disagree-
able effect on its movements. That such dissensions have taken
place is certain, and even among those who are nearest to you
in the administration. To no one have they given deeper con-
cern than myself; to no one equal mortification at being my-
self a part of them. Though I take to myself no more than my
share of the general observations of your letter, yet I am so
desirous ever that you should know the whole truth, and believe
no more than the truth, that I am glad to seize every occasion
of developing to you whatever I do or think relative to the
government; and shall, therefore, ask permission to be more
lengthy now than the occasion particularly calls for, or could
otherwise perhaps justify.
When I embarked in the government, it was with a deter-
mination to intermeddle not at all with the Legislature, and as
little as possible with my co-departments. The first and only
instance of variance from the former part of my resolution, I
was duped into by the Secretary of the Treasury, and made a
tool for forwarding his schemes, not then sufficiently under-
stood by me; and of all the errors of my political life, this has
occasioned me the deepest regret. It has ever been my purpose
to explain this to you, when, from being actors on the scene,
we shall have become uninterested spectators only. The second
part of my resolution has been religiously observed with the
War Department; and as to that of the Treasury, has never
been further swerved from than by the mere enunciation of
Si?
OF
my sentiments in conversation, and chiefly among those who,
expressing the same sentiments, drew mine from me. If it has
been supposed that I have ever intrigued among the members
of the Legislature to defeat the plans of the Secretary of the
Treasury, it is contrary to all truth. As I never had the desire
to influence the members, so neither had I any other means
than my friendships, which I valued too highly to risk by usur-
pation on their freedom of judgment, and the conscientious
pursuit of their own sense of duty. That I have utterly, in my
private conversations, disapproved of the system of the Secre-
tary of the Treasury, I acknowledge and avow; and this was
not merely a speculative difference. His system flowed from
principles adverse to liberty, and was calculated to undermine
and demolish the Republic, by creating an influence of his
department over the members of the Legislature. I saw this
influence actually produced, and its first fruits to be the estab-
lishment of the great outlines of his project by the votes of the
very persons who, having swallowed his bait, were laying them-
selves out to profit by his plans; and that had these persons
withdrawn, as those interested in a question ever should, the
vote of the disinterested majority was clearly the reverse of
what they made it. These were no longer the votes then of the
representatives of the people, but of deserters from the rights
and interests of the people; and it was impossible to consider
their decisions, which had nothing in view but to enrich them-
selves, as the measures of the fair majority, which ought always
to be respected. If, what was actually doing, begat uneasiness
in those who wished for virtuous government, what was fur-
ther proposed was not less threatening to the friends of the
Constitution. For, in a report on the subject of manufactures,
(still to be acted on), it was expressly assumed that the Gen-
eral Government has a right to exercise all powers which may
be for the general welfare, that is to say, all the legitimate
powers of government; since no government has a legitimate
right to do what is not for the welfare of the governed. There
was, indeed, a sham limitation of the universality of this power
THOMAS J8FF8RSON
to cases where money is to be employed. But about what is it
that money cannot be employed? Thus the object of these
plans, taken together, is to draw all the powers of government
into the hands of the general Legislature, to establish means
for corrupting a sufficient corps in that Legislature to divide
the honest votes, and preponderate, by their own, the scale
which suited, and to have the corps under the command of the
Secretary of the Treasury, for the purpose of subverting, step
by step, the principles of the Constitution which he has so
often declared to be a thing of nothing, which must be changed.
Such views might have justified something more than mere ex-
pressions of dissent, beyond which, nevertheless, I never went.
Has abstinence from the department, committed to me, been
equally observed by him? To say nothing of other interferences
equally known, in the case of the two nations, with which wo
have the most intimate connections, France and England, my
system was to give some satisfactory distinctions to the for-
mer, of little cost to us, in return for the solid advantages
yielded us by them ; and to have met the English with some re-
strictions which might induce them to abate their severities
against our commerce. I have always supposed this coincided
with your sentiments. Yet the Secretary of the Treasury, by his
cabals with members of the Legislature, and by high-toned
declamations on other occasions, has forced down his own sys-
tem, which was exactly the reverse. He undertook, of his own
authority, the conferences with the ministers of those two na-
tions, and was, on every consultation, provided with some re-
port of a conversation with the one or the other of them,
adapted to his views. These views, thus made to prevail, their
execution fell, of course, to me; and I can safely appeal to you,
who have seen all my letters and proceedings, whether I have
not carried them into execution as sincerely as if they had been
my own, though I ever considered them as inconsistent with
the honor and interest of our country. That they have been in-
consistent with our interest is but too fatally proved by the
stab to our navigation given by the French. So that if the ques-
OF
tion be by whose fault is it that Colonel Hamilton and myself
have not drawn together? the answer will depend on that to
two other questions, whos'e principles of administration best
justify, by their purity, conscientious adherence? and which
of us has, notwithstanding, stepped farthest into the control of
the department of the other? ....
When I came into this office, it was with a resolution to re-
tire from it as soon as I could with decency. It pretty early
appeared to me that the proper moment would be the first of
those epochs at which the Constitution seems to have contem-
plated a periodical change or renewal of the public servants. In
this I was confirmed by your resolution respecting the same
period; from which, however, I am happy in hoping you have
departed. I look to that period with the longing of a wave-worn
marin'er, who has at length the land in view, and shall count
the days and hours which still lie between me and it. In the
meanwhile, my main object will be to wind up the business of
my office, avoiding as much as possible all new enterprise. With
the affairs of the Legislature, as I never did intermeddle, so I
certainly shall not now begin. I am more desirous to predis-
pose everything for the repose to which I am withdrawing, than
expose it to be disturbed by newspaper contests. If these, how-
ever, cannot be avoided altogether, yet a regard for your quiet
will be a sufficient motive for my deferring it till I become
merely a private citizen, when the propriety or impropriety of
what I may say or do, may fall on myself alone. I may then,
too, avoid the charge of misapplying that time which now, be-
longing to those who employ m'e, should be wholly devoted to
their service. If my own justification, or the interests of the
republic shall require it, I reserve to myself the right of then
appealing to my country, subscribing my name to whatever I
write, and using with freedom and truth the facts and names
necessary to place the cause in its just form before that tri-
bunal. To a thorough disregard of the honors and emoluments
of office, I join as great a valu'e for thq esteem of my country-
men, and conscious of having merited it by an integrity which
520
THOMAS J8FF8RSON
cannot be reproached, and by an enthusiastic devotion to their
rights and liberty, I will not suffer my retirement to be clouded
by the slanders of a man whose history, from the moment at
which history can stoop to notice him, is a tissue of machina-
tions against the liberty of the country which has not only re-
ceived and given him bread, but heaped its honors on his head.
Still, however, I repeat the hope that it will not be necessary to
make such an appeal. Though little known to the people of
America, I believe, that as far as I am known, it is not as an
enemy to the Republic, nor an intriguer against it, nor a
waster of its revenue, nor prostitutor of it to the purposes of
corruption, as the "American" represents me; and I confide
that yourself are satisfied that as to dissensions in the news-
papers, not a syllable of them has ever proceeded from m'e, and
that no cabals or intrigues of mine have produced those in the
Legislature, and I hope I may promise both to you and myself,
that none will rec'eive aliment from me during the short space
I have to remain in office, which will find ample employment
in closing the present business of the department.
TO WILLIAM SHORT
Philadelphia, January j,
. . . . The tone of your letters had for some tim'e given
me pain, on account of the extreme warmth with which they
censured the proceedings of the Jacobins of France. I consid-
ered that sect as the same with the Republican patriots, and
the Feuillants as the Monarchical patriots, well known in the
early part of the Revolution, and but little distant in their
views, both having in object the establishment of a free con-
stitution, differing only on the question whether their chief
Executive should be hereditary or not. The Jacobins (as since
called) yielded to the Feuillants, and tried the experiment of
retaining their hereditary Executive. The experiment failed
OF
completely, and would have brought on the re-establishment of
despotism had it been pursued. The Jacobins knew this, and
that the expunging that office was of absolute necessity. And
the nation was with them in opinion, for however they might
have been formerly for the constitution framed by the first as-
sembly, they were com'e over from their hope in it, and were
now generally Jacobins. In the struggle which was necessary,
many guilty persons fell without the forms of trial, and with
them some innocent. These I deplore as much as anybody, and
shall deplore some of them to the day of my death. But I de-
plore them as I should have done had they fallen in battle. It
was necessary to use the arm of the people, a machine not quite
so blind as balls and bombs, but blind to a certain degree. A
few of their cordial friends met at their hands the fate of
enemies. But time and truth will rescue and embalm their mem-
ories, while their posterity will be enjoying that very liberty
for which they would never have hesitated to offer up their
lives. The liberty of the whole earth was depending on the issue
of the contest, and was ever such a prize won with so little in-
nocent blood? My own affections have been deeply wounded
by some of the martyrs of this cause, but rather than it should
have failed I would have seen half the earth desolated; were
there but an Adam and an Eve left in fevery country, and left
free, it would be better than as it now is. ...
TO JAMES MADISON
Philadelphia, June 9,
I have to acknowledge the receipt of your two favors of
May syth and 29th, since the date of my last which was of the
2d instant. In that of the 2yth you say you must not make your
final exit from public life till it will be marked with justifying
circumstances which all good citizens will respect, and to which
your friends can appeal. To my fellow-citizens the debt of serv-
522
THOMAS
ice has been fully and faithfully paid. I acknowledge that such
a debt exists, that a tour ot duty, in whatever line he can be
most useful to his country, is due from every individual. It is
not easy perhaps to say of what length exactly this tour should
be, but we may safely say of what length it should not be. Not
of our whole life, for instance, for that would be to be born
a slave —not even of a very large portion of it. I have now been
in the public service four and twenty years; one half of which
has been spent in total occupation with their affairs, and ab-
sence from my own. I have served my tour then. No positive
engagement, by word or deed, binds me to their further serv-
ice. No commitment of their interests in any enterprise by me
requires that I should see them through it. I am pledged by no
act which gives any tribunal a call upon me before I with-
draw Even my enemies do not pretend this. I stand clear then
of public right on all points— my friends I have not committed.
No circumstances have attended my passage from office to of-
fice, which could lead them, and others through them, into de-
ception as to the time I might remain, and particularly they
and all have known with what reluctance I engaged and have
continued in the present one, and of my uniform determina-
tion to return from it at an early day. If the public then has no
claim on me, and my friends nothing to justify, the decision
will rest on my own feelings alone. There has been a time when
these were Very different from what they are now; when per-
haps the esteem of the world was of higher value in my eye
than everything in it. But age, experience and reflection pre-
serving to that only its due value, have set a higher on tran-
quillity. The motion of my blood no longer keeps time with the
tumult of the world. It leads me to seek for happiness in the
lap and love of my family, in the society of my neighbors and
my books, in the wholesome occupations of my farm and my
affairs, in an interest or affection in every bud that opens, in
every breath that blows around me, in an entire freedom of
rest, of motion of thought, owing account to myself alone of my
hours and actions. What must be the principle of that calcula*
S23
LSTTSRS OF
tion which should balance against these the circumstances of
my present existence— worn down with labors from morning to
night, and day to day; knowing them as fruitless to others as
they are vexatious to myself, committed singly in desperate and
eternal contest against a host who are systematically under-
mining the public liberty and prosperity, even the rare hours of
relaxation sacrificed to the society of persons in the same in-
tentions, of whose hatred I am conscious even in those moments
of conviviality when the heart wishes most to open itself to the
effusions of friendship and confidence, cut off from my family
and friends, my affairs abandoned to chaos and derangement,
in short, giving everything I love in exchange for everything I
hate, and all this without a single gratification in possession or
prospect, in present enjoyment or future wish. Indeed, my dear
friend, duty being out of the question, inclination cuts off all
argument, and so never let there be more between you and me,
on this subject.
I enclose you some papers which have passed on the subject
of a new town. You will see by them that the paper Coryphaeus
is either undaunted or desperate. I believe that the statement
enclosed has secured a decision against his proposition. I dined
yesterday in a company where Morris and Bingham were, and
happened to sit between them. In the course of a conversation
after dinner, Morris made one of his warm declarations that
after the expiration of his present senatorial term, nothing on
earth should ever engage him to s'erve again in any public ca-
pacity. He did this with such solemnity as renders it impossible
he should not be in earnest. The President is not well. Little
lingering fevers have been hanging about him for a week or ten
days, and affected his looks most remarkably. He is also ex-
tremely affected by the attacks made and kept up on him in
the public papers. I think he feels those things more than any
person I fever yet met with. I am sincerely sorry to see them. I
remember an observation of yours, made when I first went to
New York, that the satellites and sycophants which surrounded
him had wound up the ceremonials of the government to a
524
THOMAS JSFFSRSON
pitch of stateliness which nothing but his personal charactef
could have supported, and which no character after him could
ever maintain. It appears now that even his will be insufficient
to justify them in the appeal of the times to common sense as
the arbiter of everything. Naked he would have been sancti-
moniously reverenced; but enveloped in the rags of royalty,
they can hardly be torn off without laceration. It is the more
unfortunate that this attack is planted on popular ground, on
the love of the people to France and its cause, which is uni-
versal. Genet mentions freely enough in conversation that
France does not wish to involve us in the war by our guaran-
tee. The information from St. Domingo and Martinique is, that
thos'e two islands are disposed and able to resist any attack
which Great Britain can make on them by land. A blockade
would be dangerous, could it be maintained in that climate for
any length of time. I delivered to Genet your letter to Roland.
As the latter is out of office, he will direct it to the Minister of
the Interior. I found every syllable of it strictly proper. Your
ploughs shall be duly attended to. Have you ever taken notice
of Tull's horse-houghing plough? I am persuaded that * where
you wish your work to be very exact, and our great plough
where a less degree will suffice, leave us nothing to wish for
from other countries as to ploughs, under our circumstances. I
have not yet received my threshing machine. I fear the late,
long, and heavy rains must have extended to us, and affected
our wheat. Adieu. Yours affectionately.
TO THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES
Philadelphia, July 31,
DEAR SIR, —When you did me the honor of appointing
me to the office I now hold, I engaged in it without a view of
continuing any length of time, and I pretty early concluded on
the close of the first four years of our Republic as a proper
i. Correct in Ford; unintelligible in Memorial Edition.
525
OF
period for withdrawing; which I had the honor of communi-
cating to you. When the period, however, arrived, circum-
stances had arisen, which, in the opinion of some of my friends,
rendered it proper to postpone my purpose for awhile. These
circumstances have now ceased in such a degree as to leave me
free to think again of a day on which I may withdraw without
its exciting disadvantageous opinions or conjectures of any
kind. The close of the present quarter seems to be a conven-
ient period, because the quarterly accounts of the domestic
department are then settled of course, and by that time, also, I
may hope to receive from abroad the materials for bringing
up the foreign account to the end of its third year. At the close,
therefore, of the ensuing month of September, I shall beg leave
to retire to scenes of greater tranquillity, from those which I
am every day more and more convinced that neither my tal-
ents, tone of mind, nor time of life fit me. I have thought it my
duty to mention the matter thus early, that there may be time
for the arrival of a successor, from any part of the Union from
which you may think proper to call one. That you may find
one more able to lighten the burthen of your labors, I most
sincerely wish; for no man living more sincerely wishes that
your administration could be rendered as pleasant to yourself,
as it is useful and necessary to our country, nor feels for you
a more rational or cordial attachment and respect than, dear
Sir, your most obedient, and most humble servant.
TO ELI WHITNEY
Germantown, November i6y
SIR,— Your favor of Oct. 15. inclosing a drawing of your
cotton gin, was received on the 6th inst. The only requisite of
the law now uncomplied with is the forwarding a model, which
being received, your patent may be made out & delivered to
your order immediately,
i. [Ford.]
526
THOMAS JSFFeRSON
As the state of Virginia, of which I am, carries on house-
hold manufactures of cotton to a great extent, as I also do my-
self, and one of our great embarrassments is the clearing the
cotton of the seed, I feel a considerable interest in the success
of your invention for family use. Permit me thefefore to ask in-
formation from you on these points. Has the machine been
thoroughly tried in the ginning of cotton, or is it as yet but a
machine of theory? What quantity of cotton has it cleaned on
on average of several days, & worked by hand, & by how many
hands? What will be the cost of one of them made to be
worked by hand? Favorable answers to these questions would
induce me to engage one of them to be forwarded to Richmond
for me
TO JOHN ADAMS
Monticello, Apr. 25, 1794 *
DEAR SIR,— I am to thank you for the book you were so
good as to transmit me, as well as the letter covering it, and
your felicitations on my present quiet. The difference of my
present & past situation is such as to leave me nothing to re-
gret, but that my retirement has been postponed four years
too long. The principles on which I calculate the value of life,
are entirely in favor of my present course. I return to farming
with an ardor which I scarcely knew in my youth, and which
has got the better entirely of my love of study. Instead of writ-
ing 10. or 12. letters a day, which I have been in the habit of
doing as a thing of course, I put off answering my letters now,
farmer-like, till a rainy day, & then find it sometimes postponed
by other necessary occupations. The case of the Pays de Vaud
is new to me. The claims of both parties are on grounds which,
I fancy, we have taught the world to set little store by. The
rights of one generation will scarcely be considered hereafter
as depending on the paper transactions of another. My coun-
trymen are groaning under the insults of Gr Britain. I hope
i. [Ford.]
527
LSTTSRS OF
some means will turn up of reconciling our faith & honor with
peace. I confess to you I have seen enough of one war never
to wish to see another. With wishes of every degree of happi-
ness to you, both public & private, and with my best respects
to Mrs. Adams, I am; your affectionate & humble servant.
TO TENCH COXE 1
Montkello, May i,
.... Your letters give a comfortable view of French
affairs, and later events seem to confirm it. Over the foreign
powers I am convinced they will triumph completely, and I
cannot but hope that that triumph, and the consequent dis-
grace of the invading tyrants, is destined, in order of events,
to kindle the wrath of the people of Europe against those who
have dared to embroil them in such wickedness, and to bring
at length, kings, nobles and priests to the scaffolds which they
have been so long deluging with human blood. I am still warm
whenever I think of these scoundrels, though I do it as seldom
as I can, preferring infinitely to contemplate the tranquil
growth of my lucerne and potatoes. I have so completely with-
drawn myself from these spectacles of usurpation and misrule,
that I do not take a single newspaper, nor read one a month;
and I feel myself infinitely the happier for it.
We are alarmed here with the apprehensions of war; and
sincerely anxious that it may be avoided; but not at the ex-
pense either of our faith or honor. It seems much the general
opinion here, the latter has been too much wounded not to re-
quire reparation, and to seek it even in war, if that be neces-
sary. As to myself, I love peace, and I am anxious that we
should give the world still another useful lesson, by showing
to them other modes of punishing injuries than by war, which
i. Tench Coxe, American political economist and statesman, was a
staunch Federalist who later deserted the federalists and became an
ardent Jeffersonian.
528
THOMAS JSFF8RSON
is as much a punishment to the punisher as to the sufferer. I
love, therefore, .... [the] proposition of cutting off all com-
munication with the nation which has conducted itself so atro-
ciously. This, you will say, may bring on war. If it does, we will
meet it like men; but it may not bring on war, and then the ex-
periment will have been a happy one. I believe this war would
be vastly more unanimously approved than any one we ever
were engaged in; because the aggressions have been so wan-
ton and bare-faced, and so unquestionably against our de-
sire. . , .
TO JAMES MADISON
Monticello, December 28, 1794
.... The denunciation 1 of the democratic societies is
one of the extraordinary acts of boldness of which we have seen
so many from the faction of monocrats. It is wonderful indeed,
that the President should have permitted himself to be the
organ of such an attack on the freedom of discussion, the free-
dom of writing, printing and publishing. It must be a matter
of rare curiosity to get at the modifications of these rights pro-
posed by them, and to see what line their ingenuity would draw
between democratical societies, whose avowed object is the
nourishment of the republican principles of our Constitution,
and the society of the Cincinnati, a self-created one, carving
out for itself hereditary distinctions, lowering over our Con-
stitution eternally, meeting together in all parts of the Union,
periodically, with closed doors, accumulating a capital in their
separate treasury, corresponding secretly and regularly, and
of which society the very persons denouncing the democrats
are themselves the fathers, founders and high officers. Their
sight must be perfectly dazzled by the glittering of crowns and
coronets, not to see the extravagance of the proposition to
i. Washington, under Hamilton's influence, had written a strong
denunciation of the Democratic societies in his yearly message to Con-
gress.
529
L8TT8RS OF
suppress the friends of general freedom, while those who wish
to confine that freedom to the few, are permitted to go on in
their principles and practices. I here put out of sight the per-
sons whose misbehavior has been taken advantage of to slan-
der the friends of popular rights; and I am happy to observe,
that as far as the circle of my observation and information ex-
tends, everybody has lost sight of them, and views the abstract
attempt on their natural and constitutional rights in all its
nakedness. I have never heard, or heard of, a single expression
or opinion which did not condemn it as an inexcusable aggres-
sion. . . .
TO MONSIEUR D'IVERNOIS*
Monticello, February 6, 1795
DEAR SIR,— Your several favors on the affairs of Geneva
found me here, in the month of December last. It is now more
than a year that I have withdrawn myself from public affairs,
which I never liked in my life, but was drawn into by 'emer-
gencies which threatened our country with slavery, but ended
in establishing it free. I have returned, with infinite appetite,
to the enjoyment of my farm, my family and my books, and
had determined to meddle in nothing beyond their limits.
Your proposition, however, for transplanting the college of
Geneva to my own county, was too analogous to all my attach-
ments to science, and freedom, the first-born daughter of sci-
ence, not to excite a lively interest in my mind, and the essays
which were necessary to try its practicability. This depended
altogether on the opinions and dispositions of our State legis-
lature, which was then in session. I immediately communi-
cated your papers to a member of the legislature, whose abili-
ties and zeal pointed him out as proper for it, urging him to
sound as many of the leading members of the legislature as he
could, and if he found their opinions favorable, to bring for-
ward the proposition; but if he should find it desperate, not
i. Francois d'lvernois, liberal Swiss economist and political historian,
was a political exile from Geneva.
530
rHOMAS J8FF8RSON
to hazard it; because I thought it best not to commit the honor
either of our State or of your college, by an useless act of eclat.
It was not till within these three days that I have had an inter-
view with him, and an account of his proceedings. He com-
municated the papers to a great number of the members, and
discussed them maturely, but privately, with them. They were
generally well-disposed to the proposition, and some of them
warmly; however, there was no difference of opinion in the
conclusion, that it could not be effected. The reasons which
they thought would with certainty prevail against it, were i,
that our youth, not familiarized but with their mother tongue,
were not prepared to receive instructions in any other; 2, that
the expense of the institution would excite uneasiness in their
constituents, and endanger its permanence; and 3, that its ex-
tent was disproportioned to the narrow state of the population
with us. Whatever might be urged on these several subjects, yet
as the decision rested with others, there remained to us only to
regret that circumstances were such, or were thought to be
such, as to disappoint your and our wishes.
I should have seen with peculiar satisfaction the establish-
ment of such a mass of science in my country, and should prob-
ably have been tempted to approach myself to it, by procur-
ing a residence in its neighborhood, at those seasons of the
year at least when the operations of agriculture are less active
and interesting. I sincerely lament the circumstances which
have suggested this emigration. I had hoped that Geneva was
familiarized to such a degree of liberty, that they might with-
out difficulty or danger fill up the measure to its maximum; a
term, which, though in the insulated man, bounded only by
his natural powers, must, in society, be so far restricted as to
protect himself against the evil passions of his associates, and
consequently, them against him. I suspect that the doctrine,
that small States alone are fitted to be republics, will be ex-
ploded by experience, with some other brilliant fallacies ac-
credited by Montesquieu and other political writers. Perhaps it
will be found, that to obtain a just republic (and it is to secure
OF
our just rights that we resort to government at all) it must be
so extensive as that local egoisms may never reach its greater
part; that on every particular question, a majority may be
found in its councils free from particular interests, and giving,
therefore, an uniform prevalence to the principles of justice.
The smaller the societies, the more violent and more convul-
sive their schisms. We have chanced to live in an age which will
probably be distinguished in history, for its experiments in gov-
ernment on a larger scale than has yet taken place. But we
shall not live to see the result. The grosser absurdities, such as
hereditary magistracies, we shall see exploded in our day, long
experience having already pronounced condemnation against
them. But what is to be the substitute? This our children or
grandchildren will answer. We may we satisfied with the cer-
tain knowledge that none can ever be tried, so stupid, so un-
righteous, so oppressive, so destructive of every end for which
honest men enter into government, as that which their fore-
fathers had established, and their fathers alone venture to tum-
ble headlong from the stations they have so long abused. It
is unfortunate, that the efforts of mankind to recover the free-
dom of which they have been so long deprived, will be accom-
panied with violence, with errors, and even with crimes. But
while we weep over the means, we must pray for the end.
But I have been insensibly led by the general complexion of
the times, from the particular case of Geneva, to those to which
it bears no similitude. Of that we hope good things. Its in-
habitants must be too much enlightened, too well experienced
in the blessings of freedom and undisturbed industry, to tol-
erate long a contrary state of things. I should be happy to hear
that their government perfects itself, and leaves room for the
honest, the industrious and wise; in which case, your own tal-
ents, and those of the persons for whom you have interested
yourself, will, I am sure, find welcome and distinction. My
good wishes will always attend you, as a consequence of the
esteem and regard with which I am, djear Sir, your most obe-
dient, and most humble servant.
532
THOMAS
TO M. DE MEUSNIER1
Monticello, Virginia, Apr. 29, 95
.... I think it fortunate for the United States to have
become the asylum for so many virtuous patriots of different
denominations: but their circumstances, with which you were
so well acquainted before, enabled them to be but a bare asy-
lum, & to offer nothing for them but an entire freedom to uptf
their own means & faculties as they please. There is no such
thing in this country as what would be called wealth in Europe.
The richest are but a little at ease, & obliged to pay the most
rigorous attention to their affairs to keep them together. I do
not mean to speak here of the Beaujons of America. For we
have some of these tho' happily they are but ephemeral. Our
public economy also is such as to offer drudgery and subsist-
ence only to those entrusted with its administration, a wise &
necessary precaution against the degeneracy of the public serv-
ants. In our private pursuits it is a great advantage that every
honest employment is deemed honorable. I am myself a nail*
maker. On returning home after an absence of ten years, I
found my farms so much deranged that I saw evidently they
would be a burden to me instead of a support till T could regen-
erate them; & consequently that it was necessary for me to
find some other resource in the meantime. I thought for awhile
of taking up the manufacture of pot-ash, which requires but
small advances of money. I concluded at length however to
begin a manufacture of nails, which needs little or no capital, &
I now employ a dozen little boys from 10. to 16. years of age,
overlooking all the details of their business myself & drawing
from it a profit on which I can get along till I can put my farms
into a course of yielding, profit. My new trade of nail-making
i. M. de Meusnier was introduced to Jefferson by the Due de la
Rochefoucauld. He obtained much detailed information about the United
States from Jefferson for his article in the Encyclopedic Methodique.
[Ford.]
533
OF
is to me in this country what an additional title of nobility or
the ensigns of a new order are in Europe. . , .
TO MANN PAGE 1
Montkello, August 30,
.... I do most anxiously wish to see the highest de-
grees of education given to the higher degrees of genius, and
to all degrees of it, so much as may enable them to read and
understand what is going on in the world, and to keep their
part of it going on right : for nothing can keep it right but their
own vigilant and distrustful superintendence. I do not believe
with the Rochefoucaulds and Montaignes, that fourteen out of
fifteen men are rogues: I believe a great abatement from that
proportion may be made in favor of gen'eral honesty. But I have
ulways found that rogues would be uppermost, and I do not
know that the proportion is too strong for the higher orders,
and for those who, rising above the swinish multitude, always
contrive to nestle themselves into the places of power and
profit. These rogues set out with stealing the people's good
opinion, and then steal from them the right of withdrawing
it, by contriving laws and associations against the power of the
people themselves. Our part of the country is in considerable
fermentation, on what they suspect to be a recent roguery of
this kind. They say that while all hands were below deck mend-
ing sails, splicing ropes, and every one at his own business, and
the captain in his cabin attending to his log book and chart,
a rogue of a pilot has run them into an enemy's port. But
metaphor apart, there is much dissatisfaction with Mr. Jay
and his treaty. For my part, I consider myself now but as a
passenger, leaving the world and its government to those who
are likely to live longter in it. That you may be among the long-
est of these, is my sincere prayer. . . .
i. Son of Mann Page, the eminent Virginia planter and councilman.
534
THOMAS J8FF8RSON
TO GEORGE WYTHE
MonticdlOy January i6y 1796
In my letter which accompanied the box containing my
collection of printed laws, I promised to send you by post a
statement of the contents of the box. On taking up the subject
I found it better to take a more general review of the whole
of the laws I possessed, as well manuscript as printed, as also
of those which I do not possess, and suppose to be no longer
extant. 1'his general view you will have in the enclosed paper,
whereof the articles stated to be printed constitute the con-
tents of the box I sent you. Those in manuscript were not sent,
because not supposed to have been within your view, and be-
cause some of them will not bear removal, being so rotten,
that in turning over a leaf it sometim'es falls into powder. These
I preserve by wrapping and sewing them up in oil cloth, so
that neither air nor moisture can have access to them. Very
early in the course of my researches into the laws of Virginia,
I observed that many of them were already lost, and many
more on the point of being lost, as existing only in single
copies in the hands of careful or curious individuals, on whose
death they would probably be used for waste paper. I set my
self therefore to work, to collect all which were then existing,
in order that when the day should come in which the public
should advert to the magnitude of their loss in these precious
monuments of our property, and our history, a part of their
regret might be spared by information that a portion had been
saved from the wreck, which is worthy of their attention and
preservation. In searching after these remains, I spared neither
time, trouble, nor expense; and am of opinion that scarcely
any law escaped me, which was in being as late as the year
1790 in the middle or southern parts of the State. In the north-
ern parts, perhaps something might still be found. In the clerk's
offices in the ancient counties, some of these manuscript copies
of the laws may possibly still exist, which used to be furnished
535
OF
at the public expense to every county, before the use of the
press was introduced; and in the same places, and in the
hands of ancient magistrates or of their families, some of the
fugitive sheets of the laws of separate sessions, which have been
usually distributed since the practice commenced of printing
them. But recurring to what we actually possess, the question
is, what means will be the most effectual for preserving these
remains from future loss? All the care I can take of them, will
not preserve them from the worm, from the natural decay of the
paper, from the accidents of fire, or those of removal when it
is necessary for any public purposes, as in the case of those
now sent you. Our experience has proved to us that a single
copy, or a few, deposited in manuscript in the public offices,
cannot be relied on for any great length of tim'e. The ravages
of fire and of ferocious enemies have had but too much part in
producing the very loss we are now deploring. How many of
the precious works of antiquity were lost while they were pre-
served only in manuscript! has there ever been one lost since
the art of printing has rendered it practicable to multiply and
disperse copies? This leads us then to the only means of pre-
serving those remains of our laws now under consideration,
that is, a multiplication of printed copies. I think therefore
.that there should be printed at public expense, an edition of all
the laws fever passed by our legislatures which can now be
found; that a copy should be deposited in every public library
i'n America, in the principal public offices within the State, and
come perhaps in the most distinguished public libraries of Eu-
rope, and the rest should be sold to individuals, towards reim-
bursing the expenses of the edition. . . .
S36
THOMAS ySFFSRSON
TO PHILLIP MAZZEI 1
Monticello, April 24, 1796
.... The aspect of our politics has wonderfully changed
since you left us. In place of that noble love of liberty and
republican government which carried us triumphantly through
the war, an Anglican monarchical aristocratical party has
sprung up, whose avowed object is to draw over us the sub-
stance, as they have already done the forms, of the British
government. The main body of our citizens, however, remain
true to their republican principles; the whole landed interest is
republican, and so is a great mass of talents. Against us are
the Executive, the Judiciary, two out of three branches of the
Legislature, all the officers of the government, all who want to
be officers, all timid men who prefer the calm of despotism to
the boisterous sea of liberty, British merchants and Americans
trading on British capital, speculators and holders in the banks
and public funds, a contrivance invented for the purposes of
corruption, and for assimilating us in all things to the rotten as
well as the sound parts of the British model. It would give you a
fever were I to nam'e to you the apostates who have gone over
to these heresies, men who were Samsons in the field and Solo-
mons in the council, but who have had their heads shorn by
the harlot England. In short, we are likely to preserve the
liberty we have obtained only by unremitting labors and perils.
But we shall preserve it; and our mass of weight and wealth
on the good side is so great, as to leave no danger that force
will ever be attempted against us. We have only to awake and
snap the Lilliputian cords with which they have been en-
i. Philip Mazzei, Italian born physician, merchant, horticulturist, and
author of Recherches Historiques et Politiques sur les £tats-Unis de
VAmerique Septentrionale, had been Jefferson's friend and neighbor at
Monticello, and had served as confidential agent for Virginia during the
Revolution. In 1785 he left America, and spent the remainder of his life
abroad.
537
OF
tangling us during the first sleep which succeeded our
labors. . . .
TO JOHN ADAMS
Montkello, Dec. 28, 1796
DEAR SIR,— The public and the papers have been much
occupied lately in placing us in a point of opposition to each
other. I trust with confidence that less of it has been felt by
ourselves personally. In the retired canton where I am, I learn
little of what is passing: pamphlets I see never: papers but
a few; and the fewer the happier. Our latest intelligence from
Philadelphia at present is of the i6th instant, but though at
that date your election to the first magistracy seems not to
have been known as a fact, yet with me it has never been
doubted. I knew it impossible you should lose a vote north of
the Delaware, and even if that of Pennsylvania should be
against you in the mass, yet that you would get enough south of
that to place your succession out of danger. I have never one
single moment expected a different issue; and though I know
I shall not be believed, yet it is not the less true that I have
never wished it. My neighbors as my compurgators could aver
that fact, because they see my occupations and my attachment
to them. Indeed it is possible that you may be cheated of your
succession by a trick worthy the subtlety of your arch-friend
of New York who has been able to make of your real friends
tools to defeat th jr and your just wishes. Most probably he
will be disappointed as to you; and my inclinations place me
out of his reach. I leave to others the sublime delights of riding
in the storm, better pleased with sound sleep and a warm berth
below, with the society of neighbors, friends and fellow-laborers
of the earth, than of spies and sycophants. No one then will
congratulate you with purer disinterestedness than myself. . . .
538
THOMAS
TO JAMES MADISON
Monticello, Jan. i, 'p?
Yours of Dec. 19 has come safely. The event of the
election has never been a matter of doubt in my mind. I knew
that the Eastern States were disciplined in the schools of their
town meetings to sacrifice differences of opinion to the great
object of operating in phalanx, and that the more free and
moral agency practiced in the other States would always make
up the supplement of their weight. Indeed the vote comes much
nearer an equality than I had expected. I know the difficulty of
obtaining belief to one's declarations of a disinclination to
honors, and that it is greatest with those who still remain in
the world. But no arguments were wanting to reconcile me to a
relinquishment of the first office or acquiescence under the
second. As to the first it was impossible that a more solid
unwillingness settled on full calculation, coulcl have existed
in any man's mind, short of the degree of absolute refusal. The
only view on which I would have gone into it for awhile was
to put our vessel on her republican tack before she should be
thrown too much to leeward of her true principles. As to the
second, it is the only office in the world about which I am
unable to decide in my own mind whether I had rather have it
or not have it. Pride does not enter into the estimate; for I
think with the Romans that the general of to-day should be
a soldier to-morrow if necessary. I can particularly have no
feelings which would revolt at a secondary position to Mr.
Adams. I am his junior in life, was his junior in Congress, his
junior in the diplomatic line, his junior lately in the civil gov-
ernment. Before the receipt of your letter I had written the
enclosed one to him. I had intended it some time, but had
deferred it from time to time under the discouragement of a
despair of making him believe I could be sincere in it. The
papers by the last post not rendering it necessary to change
539
OF
anything in the letter I enclose it open for your perusal, not
only that you may possess the actual state of dispositions be-
tween us, but that if anything should render the delivery of it
ineligible in your opinion, you may return it to me. If Mr.
Adams can be induced to administer the government on its
true principles, and to relinquish his bias to an English con-
stitution, it is to be considered whether it would not be on the
whole for the public good to come to a good understanding
with him as to his future elections. He is perhaps the only
sure barrier against Hamilton's getting in. ...
TO ELBRIDGE GERRY 1
Philadelphia, May ij,
, . , . I entirely commend your dispositions towards Mr.
Adams; knowing his worth as intimately and esteeming it as
much as any one, and acknowledging the preference of his
claims, if any I could have had, to the high office conferred on
him. But in truth, I had neither claims nor wishes on the
subject, though I know it will be difficult to obtain belief of
this. When I retired from this place and the office of Secretary
of State, it was in the firmest contemplation of never more
returning here. There had indeed been suggestions in the public
papers, that I was looking towards a succession to the Presi-
dent's chair, but feeling a consciousness of their falsehood,
and observing that the suggestions came from hostile quarters,
I considered them as intended merely to excite public odium
against me. I never in my life exchanged a word with any
person on the subject, till I found my name brought forward
generally, in competition with that of Mr. Adams. Those with
whom I then communicated, could say, if it were necessary,
whether I met the call with desire, or even with a ready
acquiescence, and whether from the moment of my first acqui-
i. Elbridge Gerry, American statesman, was soon to be appointed, by
President John Adams, a member of the "X.Y.Z." Mission.
540
THOMAS J8FF8RSON
escence, I did not devoutly pray that the very thing might
happen which has happened. The second office of the govern-
ment is honorable and easy, the first is but a splendid misery.
You express apprehensions that stratagems will be used, to
produce a misunderstanding between the President and my-
self. Though not a word having this tendency has ever been
hazarded to me by any one, yet I consider as a certainty that
nothing will be left untried to alienate him from me. These
machinations will proceed from the Hamiltonians by whom he
is surrounded, and who are only a little less hostile to him than
to me. It cannot but damp the pleasure of cordiality, when we
suspect that it is suspected. I cannot help thinking, that it is
impossible for Mr. Adams to believe that the state of my mind
is what it really is; that he may think I view him as an
obstacle in my way. I have no supernatural power to impress
truth on the mind of another, nor he any to discover that the
estimate which he may form, on a just view of the human mind
as generally constituted, may not be just in its application to a
special constitution. This may be a source of private uneasiness
to us; I honestly confess that it is so to me at this time. But
neither of us is capable of letting it have effect on our public
duties. Those who may endeavor to separate us, are probably
excited by the fear that I might have influence on the execu-
tive councils; but when they shall know that I consider my
office as constitutionally confined to legislative functions, and
that I could not take any part whatever in executive consulta-
tions, even were it proposed, their fears may perhaps subside,
and their object be found not worth a machination.
I do sincerely wish with you, that we could take our stand
on a ground perfectly neutral and independent towards all
nations. It has been my constant object through my public
life; and with respect to the English and French, particularly,
I have too often expressed to the former my wishes, and made
to them propositions verbally and in writing, officially and
privately, to official and private characters, for them to doubt
of my views, if they would be content with equality. Of this
OF
they are in possession of several written and formal proofs,
in my own handwriting. But they have wished a monopoly of
commerce and influence with us; and they have in fact ob-
tained it. When we take notice that theirs is the workshop to
which we go for all we want; that with them centre either im-
mediately or ultimately all the labors of our hands and lands;
that to them belongs either openly or secretly the great mass
of our navigation; that even the factorage of their affairs here,
is kept to themselves by factitious citizenships; that these
foreign and false citizens now constitute the great body of what
are called our merchants, fill our sea ports, are planted in
every little town and district of the interior country, sway
everything in the former places by their own votes, and those
of their dependants, in the latter, by their insinuations and
the influence of their ledgers; that they are advancing fast to a
monopoly of our banks and public funds, and thereby placing
our public finances under their control; that they have in their
alliance the most influential characters in and out of office;
when they have shown that by all these bearings on the
different branches of the government, they can force it to pro-
ceed in whatever direction they dictate, and bend the interests
of this country entirely to the will of another; when all this, I
say, is attended to, it is impossible for us to say we stand on
independent ground, impossible for a free mind not to see
and to groan under the bondage in which it is bound. If any-
thing after this could excite surprise, it would be that they
have been able so far to throw dust in the eyes of our own
citizens, as to fix on those who wish merely to recover self-
government the charge of subserving one foreign influence,
because they resist submission to another. But they possess
our printing presses, a powerful engine in their government of
us. At this very moment, they would have drawn us into a
war on the side of England, had it not been for the failure of
her bank. Such was their open and loud cry, and that of their
gazettes till this event. After plunging us in all the broils of
the European nations, there would remain but one act to close
542
THOMAS
our tragedy, that is, to break up our Union; and even this they
have ventured seriously and solemnly to propose and main-
tain by arguments in a Connecticut paper. I have been happy,
however, in believing, from the stifling of this effort, that that
dose was found too strong, and excited as much repugnance
there as it did horror in other parts of our country, and that
whatever follies we may be led into as to foreign nations, we
shall never give up our Union, the last anchor of our hope, and
that alone which is to prevent this heavenly country from be-
coming an arena of gladiators. Much as I abhor war, and view
it as the greatest scourge of mankind, and anxiously as I wish
to keep out of the broils of Europe, I would yet go with my
brethren into these, rather than separate from them. But I
hope we may still keep clear of them, notwithstanding our
present thraldom, and that time may be given us to reflect
on the awful crisis we have passed through, and to find some
means of shielding ourselves in future from foreign influence,
political, commercial, or in whatever other form it may be
attempted. I can scarcely withhold myself from joining in the
wish of Silas Deane, that there were an ocean of fire between
us and the old world.
A perfect confidence that you are as much attached to peace
and union as myself, that you equally prize independence of
all nations, and the blessings of self-government, has induced
me freely to unbosom myself to you, and let you see the light
in which I have viewed what has been passing among us from
the beginning of the war. And I shall be happy, at all times,
in an intercommunication of sentiments with you, believing
that the dispositions of the different parts of our country have
been considerably misrepresented and misunderstood in each
part, as to the other, and that nothing but good can result
from an exchange of information and opinions between those
whose circumstances and morals admit no doubt of the in-
tegrity of their views.
I remain, with constant and sincere esteem, dear Sir, your
affectionate friend and servant.
543
OF
TO EDWARD RUTLEDGE
Philadelphia, June 24, 1797
.... We had, in 1793, the most respectable character in
the universe. What the neutral nations think of us now, I
know not; but we are low indeed with the belligerents. Their
kicks and cuffs prove their contempt. If we weather the present
storm, I hope we shall avail ourselves of the calm of peace,
to place our foreign connections under a new and different
arrangement. We must make the interest of every nation stand
surety for their justice, and their own loss to follow injury to
us, as effect follows its cause. As to everything except com-
merce, we ought to divorce ourselves from them all. But this
system would require time, temper, wisdom, and occasfonal
sacrifice of interest; and how far all of these will be ours, our
children may see, but we shall not. The passions are too high
at present, to be cooled in our day. You and I have formerly
seen warm debates and high political passions. But gentlemen
of different politics would then speak to each other, and sepa-
rate the business of the Senate from that of society. It 'is not
so now. Men who have been intimate all their lives, cross the
streets to avoid meeting, and turn their heads another way,
lest they should be obliged to touch their hats. This may do
/or young men with whom passion is enjoyment. But it is
afflicting to peaceable minds. Tranquillity is the old man's
milk. I go to enjoy it in a few days, and to exchange the roar
and tumult of bulls and bears, for the prattle of my grand-
children and senile rest. , , ,
TO ELBRIDGE GERRY
Philadelphia, January 26,
I do then, with sincere zeal, wish an inviolable preserva-
vfc>n of our present federal Constitution, according to the true
544
THOMAS JEFFERSON
sense in which it was adopted by the States, that in which if
was advocated by its friends, and not that which its enemie?
apprehended, who therefore became its enemies; and I air
opposed to the monarchising its features by the forms of it?
administration, with a view to conciliate a first transition to a
President and Senate for life, and from that to an hereditary
tenure of these offices, and thus to worm out the elective prin-
ciple. I am for preserving to the States the powers not yielded
by them to the Union, and to the legislature of the Union it*
constitutional share in the division of powers ; and I am not for
transferring all the powers of the States to the General Gov
ernment, and all those of that government to the executive
branch. I am for a government rigorously frugal and simpler
applying all the possible savings of the public revenue to the
discharge of the national debt; and not for a multiplication oi
officers and salaries merely to make partisans, and for increas-
ing, by every device, the public debt, on the principle of its
being a public blessing. I am for relying, for internal defence,
on our militia solely, till actual invasion, and for such a naval
force only as may protect our coasts and harbors from such
depredations as we have experienced; and not for a standing
army in time of peace, which may overawe the public sentij
ment; nor for a navy, which, by its own expenses and the
eternal wars in which it will implicate us, will grind us with
public burthens, and sink us under them. I am for free com-
merce with all nations; political connection with none; and
little or no diplomatic establishment. And I am not for linking
ourselves by new treaties with the quarrels of Europe; entering
that field of slaughter to preserve their balance, or joining in
the confederacy of kings to war against the principles of
liberty. I am for freedom of religion, and against all manoeuvres
to bring about a legal ascendancy of one sect over another:
for freedom of the press, and against all violations of the Con-
stitution to silence by force and not by reason the complaint?
or criticisms, just or unjust, of our citizens against the conduct
of their agents. And I am for encouraging the progress of
545
OF
science in all its branches; and not for raising a hue and cry
against the sacred name of philosophy; for awing the human
mind by stories of raw-head and bloody bones to a distrust
of its own vision, and to repose implicitly on that of others; to
go backwards instead of forwards to look for improvement;
to believe that government, religion, morality, and every other
science were in the highest perfection in ages of the darkest
ignorance, and that nothing can ever be devised more perfect
than what was established by our forefathers. To thes'e I will
add, that I was a sincere well-wisher to the success of the
French revolution, and still wish it may end in the establish-
ment of a free and well-ordered republic; but I have not been
insensible under the atrocious depredations they have com-
mitted on our commerce. The first object of my heart is my own
country. In that is embarked my family, my fortune, and my
own fexistence. I have not one farthing of interest, nor one
fibre of attachment out of it, nor a single motive of preference
of any one nation to another, but in proportion as they are
more or less friendly to us. But though deeply feeling the in-
juries of France, I did not think war the surest means of re-
dressing them. I did believe, that a mission sincerely disposed
to preserve peace, would obtain for us a peaceable and honor-
able settlement and retribution; and I appeal to you to say,
whether this might not have been obtained, if either of your
colleagues had been of the same s'entiment with yourself.
These, my friend, are my principles; they are unquestion-
ably the principles of the great body of our fellow-citizens, and
I know there is not one of them which is not yours also. In
truth, we never differed but on one ground, the funding system;
and as, from the moment of its being adopted by the con-
stituted authorities, I became religiously principled in the
sacred discharge of it to the uttermost farthing, we are united
now even on that single ground of difference. . . .
546
THOMAS JSFF8RSON
TO EDMUND PENDLETON 1
Philadelphia, January 29, 1799
DEAR SIR, —Your patriarchal address to your country
is running through all the republican papers, and has a very
great effect on the people. It is short, simple, and presents
things in a view they readily comprehend. The character and
circumstances too of the writer leave them without doubts of
his motives. If, like the patriarch of old, you had but one
blessing to give us, I should have wished it directed to a par-
ticular object. But I hope you have one for this also. You
know what a wicked use has been made of the French negotia-
tion; and particularly the X. Y. Z. dish cooked up by Marshall 2
where the swindlers are made to appear as the French gov-
ernment. Art and industry combined, have certainly wrought
out of this business a wonderful effect on the people. Yet they
have been astonished more than they have understood it, and
now that Gerry's correspondence comes out, clearing the
French government of that turpitude, and showing them "sin-
cere in their dispositions for peace, not wishing us to break
the British treaty, and willing to arrange a liberal one with us,"
the people will be disposed to suspect they have been duped.
But these communications are too voluminous for them, and
beyond their reach. A recapitulation is now wanting of the
whole story, stating everything according to what we may now
suppose to have been the truth, short, simple and levelled to
every capacity. Nobody in America can do it so well as your-
self, in the sam'e character of the father of your country, or
any form you like better, and so concise as, omitting nothing
material, may yet be printed in hand bills, of which we could
print and disperse ten or twelve thousand copies under letter
covers, through all the United States, by the members of Con-
1. Edmund Pendleton, Virginia jurist and Revolutionary patriot, al-
though a strict conservative, became in his later years a staunch defender
of Jefferson's policies.
2. Name deleted by editors of Memorial Edition.
547
OF
gress when they return hom'e. If the understanding of the
people could be rallied to the truth on this subject, by exposing
the dupery practised on them, there are so many other things
about to bear on them favorably for the resurrection of their
republican spirit, that a reduction of the administration to con-
stitutional principles cannot fail to be the effect. These are the
alien and sedition laws, the vexations of the stamp act, the
disgusting particularities of the direct tax, the additional army
without an enemy, and recruiting officers lounging at every
court-house to decoy the laborer from his plough, a navy of
fifty ships, five millions to be raised to build it, on the usurious
interest of eight per c'ent., the perseverance in war on our part,
when the French government shows such an anxious desire
to keep at peace with us, taxes of ten millions now paid by four
millions of people, and yet a necessity, in a year or two, of
raising five millions more for annual expenses. These things will
immediately be bearing on the public mind, and if it remain
not still blinded by a supposed necessity, for the purposes of
maintaining our independence and defending our country, they
will set things to rights. . . .
TO MARIA JEFFERSON EPPES *
Philadelphia, Feb. 7,
Your letter, my dear Maria, of January 2ist, was re-
ceived two days ago. It was, as Ossian says, or would say, like
the bright beams of the moon on the desolate heath. Environed
here in scenes of constant torment, malice and obliquy, worn
down in a station where no effort to render service can avail
anything, I feel not that existence is a blessing, but when some-
thing recalls my mind to my family or farm. This was the
effect of your letter, and its affectionate expressions kindled up
all those feelings of love for you and our dear connections which
i. Maria Jefferson Eppes, Jefferson's second daughter, had married her
half cousin, John Wayles Eppes, in 1797. [Randall.]
548
THOMAS JSFFSRSON
now constitute the only real happiness of my life. I am now
feeding on the idea of my departure for Monticello, which is
but three weeks distant. The roads will then be so dreadful
that, as to visit you even by the direct route of Fredericksburg
and Richmond would add 100 miles to the length of my jour-
ney, I must defer it in hope that about the last of March, or
first of April, I may be able to take a trip express to see you
The roads will then be fine; perhaps your sister may join in
a flying trip. . . . Continue always to love me, and be assured
that there is no object on earth so dear to my heart as your
health and happiness, and that my tenderest affections always
hang on you. Adieu, my ever dear Maria.
TO EDMUND RANDOLPH 1
Monticcllo, August 18,
DEAR SIR,— I received only two clays ago your favor
of the 1 2th, and as it was on the eve of the return of our post,
it was not possible to make so prompt a despatch of the answer.
Of all the doctrines which have ever been broached by the
federal government, the novel one, of the common law being in
force and cognizable as an existing law in their courts, is to
me the most formidable. All their other assumptions of un-
given powers have been in the detail. The bank law, the
treaty doctrine, the sedition act, alien act, the undertaking to
change the State laws of evidence in the State courts by cer-
tain parts of the stamp act, etc., etc., have been solitary, un-
consequential, timid things, in comparison with the audacious,
barefaced and swe'eping pretension to a system of law for the
United States, without the adoption of their Legislature, and
so infinitively beyond their power to adopt. If this assumption
be yielded to, the State courts may be shut up, as there wiF
then be nothing to hinder citizens of the same State suing each
i. Edmund Randolph, Virginia statesman, was Attorney General undo
Washington and succeeded Jefferson as Secretary of State.
549
OF
other in the federal courts in every case, as on a bond for in-
stance, because the common law obliges payment of it, and the
common law they say is their law. I am happy you have taken
up the subject; and I have carefully perused and considered
the notes you enclosed, and find but a single paragraph which
I do not approve. It is that wherein (page two) you say, that
laws b'eing emanations from the legislative department, and,
when once enacted, continuing in force from a presumption
that their will so continues, that that presumption fails and the
laws of course fall, on the destruction of that legislative de-
partment. I do not think this is the true bottom on which
laws and the administering them rest. The whole body of the
nation is the sovereign legislative, judiciary and executive
power for itself. The inconvenience of meeting to exercise these
powers in person, and their inaptitude to exercise them, induce
them to appoint special organs to declare their legislative will,
to judge and to execute it. It is the will of the nation which
makes the law obligatory; it is their will which creates or
annihilates the organ which is to declare and announce it.
They may do it by a single person, as an Emperor of Russia,
(constituting his declarations evidence of their will), or by a
few persons, as the aristocracy of Venice, or by a complica-
tion of councils, as in our former regal government, or our
present republican one. The law being law because it is the will
of the nation, is not changed by their changing the organ
through which they choose to announce their future will; no
more than the acts I have done by one attorney lose their
obligation by my changing or discontinuing that attorney. This
doctrine has been, in a certain degree, sanctioned by the federal
executive. For it is precisely that on which the continuance of
obligation from our treaty with France was established, and
the doctrine was particularly developed in a letter to Gouver-
neur Morris, written with the approbation of President Wash-
ington and his cabinet. Mercer once prevailed on the Virginia
Assembly to declare a different doctrine in some resolutions.
These met universal disapprobation in this, as well as the other
550
THOMAS
States, and if I mistake not, a subsequent Assembly did some-
thing to do away the authority of their former unguardfed
resolutions. In this case, as in all others, the true principle
will be quite as effectual to establish the just deductions.
Before the revolution, the nation of Virginia had, by the organs
they then thought proper to constitute, established a system
of laws, which they divided into three denominations of i,
common law; 2, statute law; 3, chancery: or if you please, into
two only, of i, common law; 2, chancery. When, by the Decla-
ration of Independence, they chose to abolish their former
organs of declaring their will, the acts of will already formally
and constitutionally declared, remained untouched. For the
nation was not dissolved, was not annihilated; its will, there-
fore, remained in full vigor; and on the establishing the new
organs, first of a convention, and afterwards a more com-
plicated legislature, the old acts of national will continued in
force, until the nation should, by its new organs, declare its
will changed. The common law, therefore, which was not in
force when we landed here, nor till we had formed ourselves
into a nation, and had manifested by the organs we constituted
that the common law was to be our law, continued to be our
law, because the nation continued in being, and because though
it changed the organs for the future declarations of its will,
yet it did not change its form'er declarations that the commorj
law was its law. Apply these principles to the present case.
Before the revolution there existed no such nation as the
United States; they then first associated as a nation, but for
special purposes only. They had all their laws to make, as
Virginia had on her first establishment as a nation. But they
did not, as Virginia had done, proceed to adopt a whole system
of laws ready made to their hand. As their association as a
nation was only for special purposes, to wit, for the manage-
ment of their concerns with one another and with foreign na-
tions, and the States composing the association chose to give
it powers for those purposes and no others, they could not
adopt any general system, because it would have embraced
OF
objects on which this association had no right to form or
declare a will. It was not the organ for declaring a national
will in these cases. In the cases confided to them, they were
free to declare the will of the nation, the law; but till it was
declared there could be no law. So that the common law did
not become, ipso facto, law on the new association; it could
only become so by a positive adoption, and so far only as they
were authorized to adopt.
I think it will be of great importance, when you come to
the proper part, to portray at full length the consequences of
this new doctrine, that the common law is the law of the
United States, and that their courts have, of couse, jurisdiction
co-extensive with that law, that is to say, general over all cases
and persons. But, great heavens! Who could have conceived
in 1789, that within ten years we should have to combat such
windmills! Adieu. Yours affectionately.
TO DR. JOSEPH PRIESTLEY *
Philadelphia, January 18, 1800
.... We have ... in Virginia a College (William
and Mary) just well enough endowed to draw out the miserable
existence to which a miserable constitution has doomed it. It
is moreover eccentric in its position, exposed to all bilious dis-
eases as all the lower country is, and therefore abandoned by
the public care, as that part of the country itself is in a con-
siderable degre'e by its inhabitants. We wish to establish in the
upper country, and more centrally for the State, an University
on a plan so broad and liberal and modern, as to be worth
patronizing with the public support, and be a temptation to
the youth of other States to corrie and drink of the cup of
'knowledge and fraternize with us. The first step is to obtain
i. Dr. Joseph Priestley, the celebrated English scientist, educator, and
Ihinker, was at this time a resident of the United States. Until his death
four years later, he was engaged in a stimulating and provocative corre-
spondence with Jefferson.
552
THOMAS JEFFERSON
a good plan; that is, a judicious selection of the sciences, and 2"
practicable grouping of some of them together, and ramifying
of others, so as to adopt the professorships to our uses anc/
our means. In an institution meant chiefly for use, some
branches of science, formerly esteemed, may be now omitted;
so may others now valued in Europe, but useless to us foi
ages to come. As an example of the former, the Oriental learn-
ing, and of the latter, almost the whole of the institution pnv
posed to Congress by the Secretary of War's report of the 5th
instant. Now there is no one to whom this subject is so familiar
as yourself. There is no one in the world who, equally with
yourself, unites this full possession of the subject with such a
knowledge of the state of our existence, as enables you to fit
the garment to him who is to pay for it and to wear it. To you
therefore we address our solicitations, and to lessen to you ar
much as possible the ambiguities of our object, I will venture
feven to sketch the sciences which seem useful and practicable
for us, as they occur to me while holding my pen. Botanyr
chemistry, zoology, anatomy, surgery, medicine, natural philos-
ophy, agriculture, mathematics, astronomy, geography, politics,
commerce, history, ethics, law, arts, fine arts. This list is
imperfect because I make it hastily, and because I am unequal
to the subject. It is evident that some of these articles are too
much for one professor and must therefore be ramifi'ed; others
may be ascribed in groups to a single professor. This is the
difficult part of the work, and requires a head perfectly know-
ing the extent of each branch, and the limits within which it
may be circumscribed, so as to bring the whole within thr
powers of the fewest professors possible, and consequently'
within the degree of Expense practicable for us. We should
propose that the professors follow no other calling, so that their
whole time may be given to their academical functions; and
we should propose to draw from Europe the first characters in
science, by considerable temptations, which would not need to
be repeated after the first set should have prepared fit suc-
cessors and given reputation to the institution
553
OF
TO DR. JOSEPH PRIESTLEY
Philadelphia, January 27, 1800
DEAR SIR, —In my last letter of the i8th, I omitted to
say any thing of the languages as part of our propos'ed Uni-
versity. It was not that I think, as some do, that they are use-
less. I am of a very different opinion. I do not think them very
essential to the obtaining eminent degrees of science; but 1
think them very useful towards it. I suppose there is a portion
of life during which our faculties are ripe enough for this, and
for nothing more useful. I think the Greeks and Romans have
left us the present models which exist of fine composition,
whether we examine them as works of reason, or of style and
fancy; and to them we probably owe these characteristics of
modern composition. I know of no composition of any other
ancient people, which merits the least regard as a model for its
matter or style. To all this I add, that to read the Latin and
Greek authors in their original, is a sublime luxury; and I deem
luxury in science to be at least as justifiable as in architecture,
painting, gardening, or the other arts. I enjoy Homer in his
own language infinitely beyond Pope's translation of him, and
both beyond the dull narrative of the same events by Dares
Phrygius; and it is an innocent enjoyment. I thank on my
knees, Him who directed my early education, for having put
into my possession this rich source of delight; and I would not
exchange it for anything which I could then have acquired,
and have not since acquired. With this regard for those lan-
guages, you will acquit me of meaning to omit them. About
twenty years ago, I drew a bill for our legislature, which pro-
posed to lay off every county into hundreds or townships of
five or six miles square, in the Centre of each of them was to be
a free English school; the whole State was further laid off into
ten districts, in each of which was to be a college for teaching
the languages, geography, surveying, and other useful things
of that grade; and then a single University for the sciences. It
554
THOMAS JEFFERSON
was received with enthusiasm; but as I had proposed that
William and Mary, under an improved form, should be the
University, and that was at that time pretty highly Episcopal,
the dissenters after awhile began to apprehend some secret
design of a preference to that sect. About three years ago
they enacted that part of my bill which related to English
schools, except that instead of obliging, they left it optional
in the court of 'every county to carry it into execution or not.
I think it probable that part of the plan for the middle grade
of education, may also be brought forward in due time. In the
meanwhile, we are not without a sufficient number of good
country schools, where the languages, geography, and the first
elements of mathematics, are taught. Having omitted this in-
formation in my former letter, I thought it necessary now to
supply it, that you might know on what base your super-
structure was to be reared. I have a letter from Mr. Dupont,
since his arrival at New York, dated the 2Oth, in which he says
he will be in Philadelphia within about a fortnight from that
time; but only on a visit. How much would it delight me if a
visit from you at the same time, wer'e to show us two such
illustrious foreigners embracing each other in my country, as
the asylum for whatever is great and good. Pardon, I pray you,
the temporary delirium which has been excited here, but which
is fast passing away. The Gothic idea that we are to look
backwards instead of forwards for the improvement of the
human mind, and to recur to the annals of our ancestors fof
what is most perfect in government, in religion and in learning,
is worthy of those bigots in religion and government, by whom
it has been recommended, and whose purposes it would answer.
But it is not an idea which this country will endure; and the
moment of their showing it is fast ripening; and the signs of it
will be their respect for you, and growing detestation of those
who have dishonored our country by endeavors to disturb our
tranquillity in it. No one has felt this with more sensibility
than, my dear Sir, your resp'ectful and affectionate friend and
servant,
555
OF
TO DR. WILLIAM BACHE *
Philadelphia, Feb. 2y 1800
.... You have seen the afflicting details from Paris.
On what grounds a revolution has been made, we are not in-
formed, & are still more at a loss to divine what will be its issue:
whether we are to have over again the history of Robespierre, of
Caesar, or the new phenomenon of an usurpation of the govern-
ment for the purpose of making it free. Our citizens, however,
should derive from this some useful lessons. They should see in
it a necessity to rally firmly and in close bands round their
Constitution. Never to suffer an iota of it to be infringed. To
inculcate on minorities the duty of acquiesence in the will of
the majority; and on majorities a respect for the rights of the
minority. To beware of a military force, even of citizens; and
to beware of too much confidence in any man. The confi-
dence of the French people in Bonaparte has enabled him to kick
down their Constitution and instead of that, to leave them de-
pendent on his will & his life. / have never seen so awful a mo-
:nent as the present. The prospects too, in this State, important
<as it is in our union, are very discouraging
TO SAMUEL ADAMS 2
Philadelphia, February 26, 1800
.... A letter from you, my respectable friend, after
three and twenty years of separation, has given me a pleasure
I cannot express. It recalls to my mind the anxious days we
then passed in struggling for the cause of mankind. Your prin-
ciples have been tested in the crucible of time, and have come
1. Dr. William Bache was a neighbor of Jefferson's in Virginia. [MS.
copy by Nicholas P. Trist, husband of Jefferson's grand-daughter, Virginia
Randolph, University of Virginia.]
2. This letter to Samuel Adams, one of the most important Revolu-
tionary patriots and second cousin of President John Adams, was written
three years before his death.
556
THOMAS JSFFSRSON
out pure. You have proved that it was monarchy, and not
merely British monarchy, you opposed. A government by rep^
resentatives, elected by the people at short periods, was oui1
object; and our maxim at that day was, "where annual election
ends, tyranny begins;" nor have our departures from it been
sanctioned by the happiness of their effects. A debt of an hun-
dred millions growing by usurious interest, and an artificial
paper phalanx overruling the agricultural mass of our country,
with other et ceteras, have a portentous aspect.
I fear our friends on the other side of the water, laboring in
the same cause, have yet a great deal of crime and misery to
wade through. 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.
Whatever his views may be, he has at least transferred the
destinies of the republic from the civil to the military arm.
Some will use this as a lesson against the practicability of
republican government. I read it as a lesson against the danger
of standing armies.
Adieu, my ever respected and venerable friend. May that
kind overruling providence which has so long spared you to
our country, still foster your remaining years with whatever
may make them comfortable to yourself and soothing to your
friends. Accept the cordial salutations of your affectionate
friend.
TO DR. BENJAMIN RUSH *
Monticclloj September 23, 1800
.... I promised you a letter on Christianity, which I
have not forgotten. On the contrary, it is because I have re-
flected on it, that I find much more time necessary for it than
I can at present dispose of. I have a view of the subject which
i. Dr. Benjamin Rush, distinguished American physician and humani-
tarian, and Jefferson, were fellow-members of the American Philosophical
Society. They corresponded frequently.
557
OF
ought to displease neither the rational Christian nor Deists,
and would reconcile many to a character they have too hastily
rejected. I do not know that it would reconcile the genus irri-
tabile vatum * who are all in arms against me. Their hostility
is on too interesting ground to be softened. The delusion into
which the X. Y. Z. plot showed it possible to push the people;
the successful experiment made under the prevalence of that
delusion on the clause of the Constitution, which, while it se-
cured the freedom of the press, covered also the freedom of
religion, had given to the clergy a very favorite hope of obtain-
ing an establishment of a particular form of Christianity
through the United States; and as every sect believes its own
form the true one, every one perhaps hoped for his own, but
especially the Episcopalians and Congregationalists. The re-
turning good sense of our country threatens abortion to their
hopes, and they believe that any portion of power confided to
me, will be exerted in opposition to their schemes. And they
believe rightly: for 1 have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal
hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.
But this is all they have to fear from me: and enough too in
their opinion
TO MARTHA JEFFERSON RANDOLPH
Washington, January 26, 1801
MY DEAR MARTHA,— I wrote to Mr. Randolph on the
9th and loth inst., and yesterday received his letter of the loth.
It gave me great joy to learn that Lilly had got a recruit of
hands from Mr. Allen, though still I would not have that pre-
vent the taking all from the nailery who are able to cut, as I
desired in mine of the gth, as I wish Craven's ground to be got
ready for him without any delay. Mr. Randolph writes me you
are about to wean Cornelia; this must be right and proper. T
long to be in the midst of the children, and have more pleasure
i. The irritable tribe of priests.
558
THOMAS
in their little follies than in the wisdom of the wise. Here, too,
there is such a mixture of the bad passions of the heart, that
one feels themselves in an enemy's country. It is an unpleasant
circumstance, if I am destined to stay here, that the great pro-
portion of those of the place who figure are Federalists, and
most of them of the violent kind. Some have been so personally
bitter that they can never forgive me, though I do them with
sincerity. Perhaps in time they will get tam'ed. Our prospect as
to the election has been alarming; as a strong disposition exists
to prevent an election, and that case not being provided for by
the Constitution, a dissolution of the government seemed pos-
sible. At present there is a prospect that some, though Federal-
ists, will prefer yielding to the wishes of the people rather than
have no government. If I am fixed here, it will be but three
easy days' journey from you, so that I should hope you and the
family could pay an annual visit here at least; which with mine
to Monticello of the spring and fall, might enable us to be to-
gether four or five months of the year. On this subject, how-
ever, we may hereafter converse, lest we should be counting
chickens before they are hatched. I inclose for Anne a story, too
long to be got by heart but worth reading. Kiss them all for me,
and keep them in mind of me. Tell Ellen I am afraid she has
forgotten me. I shall probably be with you the first week in
April, as I shall endeavor to be at our court for that month.
Continue to love me, my dear Martha, and be assured of my
unalterable and tenderest love to you. Adieu.
P. S. Hamilton is using his uttermost influence to procure
my election rather than Colonel Burr's.
TO T. M. RANDOLPH
Washington, February IQ, 1801
After exactly a week's balloting there at length ap-
peared ten States for me, four for Burr, and two voted blanks,
This was done without a single vote coming over. Morris of
Vermont withdrew, so that Lyon's vote became that of the
559
OF
State. The four Maryland federalists put in blanks, so then the
vote of the four republicans became that of their State. Mr.
Hager of South Carolina (who had constantly voted for me)
withdrew by agreement, his colleagues agreeing in that case to
put in blanks. Bayard, the sole member of Delaware, voted
blank. They had before deliberated whether they would come
over in a body, when they saw they could not force Burr on
the republicans, or keep their body entire and unbroken to act
in phalanx on such ground of opposition as they shall hereafter
be able to conjure up. Their vote showed what they had decided
on, and is considered as a declaration of perpetual war; but
their conduct has completely left them without support. Our
information from all quarters is that the whole body of federal-
ists concurred with the republicans in the last elections, and
with equal anxiety. They had been made to interest themselves
so warmly for the very choice, which while before the people
they opposed, that when obtained it came as a thing of their
own wishes, and they find themselves embodied with the re-
publicans, and their quondam leaders separated from them,
and I verily believe they will remain embodied with us, so
that this conduct of the minority has done in one week what
very probably could hardly have been effected by years of mild
and impartial administration .....
TO JOHN DICKINSON *
Washington, March 6, 1801
DEAR SIR,— No pleasure can exceed that which I re-
ceived from reading your letter of the 2ist ultimo. It was like
the joy we expect in the mansions of the blessed, when received
with the embraces of our forefathers, we shall be welcomed
with their blessing as having done our part not unworthily of
i. As a member of the Continental Congress, and as an important par-
ticipant in the affairs culminating in the formation of the United States of
America, John Dickinson, lawyer and statesman, had much in common
with Thomas Jefferson.
$60
THOMAS JEFFERSON
them. The storm through which we have passed, has been
tremendous indeed. The tough sides of our Argosy have been
thoroughly tried. Her strength has stood the waves into which
she was steered, with a view to sink her. We shall put her on
her republican tack, and she will now show by the beauty of
her motion the skill of her builders. Figure apart, our fellow-
citizens have been led hoodwinked from their principles, by a
most extraordinary combination of circumstances. But the band
is r'emoved, and they now see for themselves. I hope to see
shortly a perfect consolidation to effect which, nothing shall
be spared on my part, short of the abandonment of the prin-
ciples of our revolution. A just and solid republican government
maintained here, will be a standing monument and example for
the aim and imitation of the people of other countries; and I
join with you in the hope and belief that they will see, from our
example, that a free government is of all others the most ener-
getic; that the inquiry which has been excited among the mass
of mankind by our revolution and its consequences, will amel-
iorate the condition of man over a great portion of the globe.
What a satisfaction have we in the contemplation of the benevo-
lent effects of our efforts, compared with those of the leaders on
the other side, who have discountenanced all advances in
science as dangerous innovations, haVe endeavored to render
philosophy and republicanism terms of reproach, to persuade
us that man cannot be governed but by the rod, etc. I shall
have the happiness of living and dying in the contrary hope.
Accept assurances of my constant and sincere respect and
attachment, and my affectionate salutations.
TO DR. JOSEPH PRIESTLEY
Washington, March 21, i8oi
DEAR SIR,— I learned some time ago that you were in
Philadelphia, but that it was only for a fortnight; and I sup-
posed you were gone. It was not till yesterday I received in'
LSTfBRS OF
formation that you were still there, had been very ill, but were
on the recovery. I sincerely rejoice that you are so. Yours is
one of the few lives precious to mankind, and for the continu-
ance of which every thinking man is solicitous. Bigots may be
an exception. What an effort, my dear Sir, of bigotry in politics
and religion have we gone through! The barbarians really flat-
tered 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 educa-
tion, but it was to be the education of our ancestors. We were
to look backwards, not forwards, for improvement; the Presi-
dent himself declaring, in one of his answers to addresses, that
we were never to expect to go beyond them in real science. This
was the real ground of all the attacks on you. Those who live
by mystery and charlataneriey fearing you would render them
useless by simplifying the Christian philosophy,— the most sub-
lime and benevolent, but most perverted system that ever shone
on man,— 'endeavored to crush your well-earned and well-de-
served fame. But it was the Lilliputians upon Gulliver. Our
countrymen have recovered from the alarm into which art and
industry had thrown them; science and honesty are replaced on
their high ground; and you, my dear Sir, as their great apostle,
are on its pinnacle. It is with heartfelt satisfaction that, in the
first moments of my public action, I can hail you with welcome
to our land, tender to you the homage of its respect and esteem,
cover you under the protection of those laws which were made
for the wise and good like you, and disdain the legitimacy of
that libel on legislation, which, under the form of a law, was
for some time placed among them.
As the storm is now subsiding, and the horizon becoming
serene, it is pleasant to consider the phenomenon with atten-
tion. We can no longer say there is nothing new under the sun.
For this whole chapter in the history of man is new. The great
extent of our republic is new. Its sparse habitation is new.
The mighty wave of public opinion which has rolled over it is
562
THOMAS ySFFSRSON
new. But the most pleasing novelty is, its so quietly subsiding
over such an extent of surface to its true level again. The order
and good sense displayed in this recovery from delusion, and in
the momentous crisis which lately arose, really bespeaks a
strength of character in our nation which augurs well for the
duration of our republic; and I am much better satisfied now
of its stability than I was before it was tried. I have been,
above all things, solaced by the prospect which opened on us,
in the event of a non-election of a President; in which case, the
federal government would have been in the situation of a clock
or watch run down. There was no idea of force, nor of any occa-
sion for it. A convention, invited by the republican members of
Congress, with the virtual President and Vice-President, would
have be'en on the ground in eight weeks, would have repaired
the Constitution where it was defective, and wound it up again.
This peaceable and legitimate resource, to which we are in the
habit of implicit obedience, superseding all appeal to force and
being always within our reach, shows a precious principle of
self-preservation in our composition, till a change of circum-
stances shall take place, which is not within prospect at any
definite period
TO SAMUEL ADAMS
Washington, March 29, 1801
I addressed a letter to you, my very dear and ancient
friend, on the 4th of March: not indeed to you by name, but
through the medium of some of my fellow-citizens, whom occa-
sion called on me to address. In meditating the matter of that
address, I often asked myself, is this exactly in the spirit of the
patriarch, Samuel Adams? Is it as he would express it? Will he
approve of it? I have felt a great deal for our country in the
times we have seen. But individually for no one so much as
yourself. When I have been told that you were avoided, insulted,
frowned on, I could but ejaculate, "Father, forgive them, for
563
OF
they know not what they do." I confess I felt an indignation for
you, which for myself I have been able, under every trial, to
keep entirely passive. However, the storm is over, and we are in
port. The ship was not rigged for the service she was put on.
We will show the smoothness of her motions on her republican
tack. I hope we shall once more see harmony restored among
our citizens, and an entire oblivion of past feuds. Some of the
leaders who have most committed themselves cannot come into
this. But I hope the great body of our fellow-citizens will do it.
I will sacrifice everything but principle to procure it. A few ex-
amples of justice on officers who have perverted their functions
to the oppression of their fellow-citizens, must, in justice to
those citizens, be made. But opinion, and the just maintenance
of it, shall never be a crime in my view: nor bring injury on the
individual. Those whose misconduct in office ought to have pro-
duced their removal even by my predecessor, must not be pro-
tected by the delicacy due only to honest men. How much I
lament that time has deprived me of your aidl It would have
been a day of glory which should have called you to the first
office of the administration. But give us your counsel, my
friend, and give us your blessing; and be assured that there
exists not in the heart of man a more faithful esteem than
mine to you, and that I shall ever bear you the most affection-
ate veneration and respect.
TO ROBERT R. LIVINGSTON 1
Monticello, September $y 1801
.... On an element which nature has not subjected to
the jurisdiction of any particular nation, but has made com-
mon to all for the purposes to which it is fitted, it would seem
that the particular portion of it which happens to be occupied
by the vessel of any nation, in the course of its voyage, is for
i. As Minister to France during Jefferson's administration, the negotia-
tions of Robert Livingston, statesman, diplomat, and scientific experi-
menter, resulted in the Louisiana Purchase.
564
THOMAS JEFFERSON
the moment, the exclusive property of that nation, and, with
the vessel, is exempt from intrusion by any other, and from
its jurisdiction, as much as if it were lying in the harbor of its
sovereign. In no country, we believe, is the rule otherwise, as
to the subjects of property common to all. Thus the place oc-
cupied by an individual in a highway, a church, a theatre, or
other public assembly, cannot be intruded on, while its occu-
pant holds it for the purposes of its institution. The persons on
board a vessel traversing the ocean, carrying with them the
laws of their nation, have among themselves a jurisdiction, a
police, not established by their individual will, but by the au-
thority of their nation, of whose territory their vessel still
seems to compose a part, so long as it does not enter the ex-
clusive territory of another. No nation ever pretended a right
to govern by their laws the ship of another nation navigating
the ocean. By what law then can it enter that ship while in
peaceable and orderly use of the common element? W'e recog-
nize no natural precept for submission to such a right; and per-
ceive no distinction between the movable and immovable juris-
diction of a friend, which would authorize the entering the one
and not the other, to seize the property of an enemy.
It may be objected that this proves too much, as it proves
you cannot enter the ship of a friend to search for contraband
of war. But this is not proving too much. We believe the prac-
tice of seizing what is called contraband of war, is an abusive
practice, not founded in natural right. War between two na-
tions cannot diminish the rights of the rest of the world re-
maining at peace. The doctrine that the rights of nations
remaining quietly in the exercise of moral and social duties, are
to give way to the convenience of those who prefer plundering
and murdering one another, is a monstrous doctrine; and ought
to yield to *he more rational law, that "the wrong which two
nations endeavor to inflict on each other, must not infringe on
the rights or conveniences of those remaining at peace." And
what is contraband, by the law of nature? Either everything
which may aid or comfort an enemy, or nothing. Either all com-
565
OF
merce which would accommodate him is unlawful, or none is.
The difference between articles of one or another description,
is a difference in degree only. No line between them can be
drawn. Either all intercourse must cease between neutrals and
belligerents, or all be permitted. Can the world hesitate to say
which shall be the rule? Shall two nations turning tigers, break
up in one instant the peaceable relations of the whole world?
Reason and nature clearly pronounce that the neutral is to go
on in the tenjoyment of all its rights, that its commerce re-
mains free, not subject to the jurisdiction of another, nor con-
sequently its vessels to search, or to enquiries whether their
contents are the property of an en'emy, or are of those which
have been called contraband of war
TO THE SECRETARY OF THE TREASURY (ALBERT GALLATIN)
Washington, April i, 1802
. . . , we might hope to see the finances of the Union as
clear and intelligible as a merchant's books, so that every mem-
ber of Congress, and every man of any mind in the Union,
should be able to comprehend them to investigate abuses, and
consequently to control them. Our predecessors have endeav-
ored by intricacies of system, and shuffling the investigator
over from one officer to another, to cover everything from
detection. I hope we shall go in the contrary direction, and
that by our hon'est and judicious reformations, we may be
able, within the limits of our time, to bring things back to
that simple and intelligible system on which they should have
been organized at first. . . .
TO DOCTOR BENJAMIN RUSH
Washington, April 21, 1803
DEAR SIR,— In some of the delightful conversations with
you, in the evenings of 1798-99, and which served as an ano-
566
THOMAS J8FF8RSON
dyn'e to the afflictions of the crisis through which our country
was then laboring, the Christian religion was sometimes our
topic; and I then promised you, that one day or other, I would
give you my views of it. They are the result of a life of inquiry
and reflection, and very different from that anti-Christian sys-
tem imputed to me by those who know nothing of my opinions.
To the corruptions of Christianity I am, indeed, opposed; but
not to the genuine precepts of Jesus himself. I am a Christian,
in the only sense in which he wished any one to be; sincerely
attached to his doctrines, in preference to all others; ascrib-
ing to himself every human excellence; and believing he never
claimed any other. At the short interval since these conversa-
tions, when I could justifiably abstract my mind from public
affairs, the subject has been under my contemplation. But the
more I considered it, the more it expanded beyond the measure
of either my time or information. In the moment of my late de-
parture from Monticello, I received from Dr. Priestley, his
little treatise of "Socrates and Jesus Compared." This being
a section of the general view I had taken of the field, it be-
came a subject of reflection while on the road, and unoccupied
otherwise. The result was, to arrange in my mind a syllabus,
or outline of such an estimate of the comparative merits of
Christianity, as I wished to see executed by some one of more
leisure and information for the task, than myself. This I now
send you, as the only discharge of my promis'e I can probably
ever execute. And in confiding it to you, I know it will not be
exposed to the malignant perversions of those who make every
word from me a text for new misrepresentations and calum-
nies. I am moreover averse to the communication of my re-
ligious tenets to the public; because it would countenance the
presumption of those who have Endeavored to draw them be-
fore that tribunal, and to seduce public opinion to erect itself
into that inquisition over the rights of conscience, which the
laws have so justly proscribed. It behooves every man who
values liberty of conscience for himself, to resist invasions of
it in the case of others; or their case may, by change of cir-
567
OF
cumstances, become his own. It behooves him, too, in his own
case, to give no example of concession, betraying the common
right of independent opinion, by answering questions of faith,
which the laws have left between God and himself. Accept my
affectionate salutations.
Syllabus of an Estimate of the Merit of the Doctrines of Jesus,
compared with those of others
In a comparative view of the Ethics of the enlightened na-
tions of antiquity, of the Jews and of Jesus, no notice should
be taken of the corruptions of reason among the ancients, to
wit, the idolatry and superstition of the vulgar, nor of the cor-
ruptions of Christianity by the learned among its professors.
Let a just view be taken of the moral principles inculcated
by the most esteemed of the sects of ancient philosophy, or of
their individuals; particularly Pythagoras, Socrates, Epicurus,
Cicero, Epictetus, Seneca, Antoninus.
1. Philosophers, i. Their precepts r'elated chiefly to ourselves,
and the government of those passions which, unrestrained,
would disturb our tranquillity of mind.1 In this branch of phi-
losophy they were really great.
2. In developing our duties to others, they were short and
defective. They embraced, indeed, the circle of kindred and
friends, and inculcated patriotism, or the love of our country
in the aggregate, as a primary obligation: towards our neigh-
bors and countrymen they taught justice, but scarcely viewed
them as within the circle of benevolence. Still less have they
i. To explain, I will exhibit the heads of Seneca's and Cicero's phil-
osophical works, the most extensive of any we have received from the
ancients. Of ten heads in Seneca, seven relate to ourselves, viz. de ira,
consolatio, de tranquilitate, de constantia sapientis, de otto sapientis, de
vita beata, de brevitate vitae; two relate to others, de dementia, de bene-
ficiis; and one relates to the government of the world, de providentia.
Of eleven tracts of Cicero, five respect ourselves, viz. de finibus, Tusculana,
academica, paradoxa, de Senectute; one, de officiis, relates partly to our-
selves, partly to others ; one, de amicitia, relates to others ; and four are on
different subjects, to wit, de natura deorum, de divinatione, de jato, and
somnium Scipionis. [Jefferson's footnote.]
568
THOMAS J8FF8RSON
inculcated peace, charity and love to our fellow m'en, or em-
braced with benevolence the whole family of mankind.
II. Jews. i. Their system was Deism; that is, the belief in
one only God. But their ideas of him and of his attributes were
degrading and injurious.
2. Their Ethics were not only imperfect, but often irrecon-
cilable with the sound dictates of reason and morality, as they
respect intercourse with those around us; and repulsive and
anti-social, as respecting other nations. They needed reforma-
tion, therefore, in an eminent degree.
III. Jesus. In this state of things among the Jews, Jesus
appeared. His parentage was obscure; his condition poor; his
education null; his natural endowments great; his life correct
and innocent: he was meek, benevolent, patient, firm, disin-
terested, and of the sublimest eloquence.
The disadvantages under which his doctrines appear are re-
markable.
1. Like Socrates and Epictetus, he wrote nothing himself.
2. But he had not, like them, a Xenophon or an Arrian to
write for him. I name not Plato, who only used the name of
Socrates to cover the whimsies of his own brain. On the con-
trary, all the learned of his country, entrenched in its power
and riches, were opposed to him, lest his labors should under-
mine their advantages; and the committing to writing his life
and doctrines fell on unlettered and ignorant men; who wrote,
too, from memory, and not till long after the transactions had
passed.
3. According to the ordinary fate of those who attempt to
enlighten and reform mankind, he fell an early victim to the
jealousy and combination of the altar and the throne, at about
thirty-three years af age, his reason having not yet attained the
maximum of its energy, nor the course of his preaching, which
was but of three years at most, presented occasions for de-
veloping a complete system of morals.
4. Hence the doctrines which he really delivered were defec-
tive as a whole, and fragments only of what he did deliver have
come to us mutilated, misstated, and often unintelligible.
OF
5. They have been still more disfigured by the corruptions
of schismatizing followers, who have found an interest in so-
phisticating and perverting the simple doctrines he taught, by
engrafting on them the mysticisms of a Grecian sophist, fritter-
ing them into subtleties, and obscuring them with jargon, until
they have caused good men to reject the whole in disgust, and
to view Jesus hims'elf as an impostor.
Notwithstanding these disadvantages, a system of morals is
presented to us, which, if filled up in the style and spirit of the
rich fragments he left us, would be the most perfect and sub-
lime that has tever been taught by man.
The question of his being a member of the Godhead, or in
direct communication with it, claimed for him by some of
his followers, and denied by others, is foreign to the present
view, which is merely an estimate of the intrinsic merits of his
doctrines.
1. He corrected the Deism of the Jews, confirming them in
their belief of one only God, and giving them juster notions of
his attributes and government.
2. His moral doctrines, relating to kindred and friends, were
more pure and perfect than those of the most correct of the
philosophers, and greatly more so than those of the Jews; and
they went far beyond both in inculcating universal philan-
thropy, not only to kindred and friends, to neighbors and coun-
trymen, but to all mankind, gathering all into one family, under
the bonds of love, charity, peace, common wants and common
aids. A development of this head will evince the peculiar
superiority of the system of Jesus over all others.
3. The precepts of philosophy, and of the Hebrew code, laid
hold of actions only. He pushed his scrutinies into the heart of
man; erected his tribunal in the region of his thoughts, and
purified the waters at the fountain head.
4. He taught, emphatically, the doctrines of a future state,
which was either doubted, or disbelieved by the Jews; and
wielded it with efficacy, as an important incentive, supple-
mtentary to the other motives to moral conduct.
570
THOMAS JSFFSRSON
TO GENERAL HORATIO GATES *
Washington, July n, 1803
DEAR GENERAL,— I accept with pleasure, and with
pleasure reciprocate your congratulations on the acquisition of
Louisiana; for it is a subject of mutual congratulation, as it
interests every man of the nation. The territory acquired, as it
includes all the waters of the Missouri and Mississippi, has
mote than doubled the area of the United States, and the new
parts is not inferior to the old in soil, climate, productions and
important communications. If our Legislature dispose of it with
the wisdom we have a right to expect, they may make it the
means of tempting all our Indians on the east sidt of the Mis-
sissippi to remove to the west, and of condensing instead of
scattering our population. I find our opposition is very willing
to pluck feathers from Monroe, although not fond of sticking
them into Livingston's coat. The truth is, both have a just por-
tion of merit; and were it necessary or proper, it would be
shown that each has rendered peculiar s'ervices, and of impor-
tant value. These grumblers, too, are very uneasy lest the ad-
ministration should share some little credit for the acquisition,
the whole of which they ascribe to the accident of war. They
would be cruelly mortified could they see our files from May,
1801, the first organization of the administration, but more
especially from April, 1802. They would see, that though we
could not say when war would arise, yet We said with energy
what would take place when it should arise. We did not, by
our intrigues, produce the war; but we availed ourselves of it
when it happened. The other party saw the cas'e now existing,
on which our representations were predicated, and the wisdom
of timely sacrifice. But when these people makfe the war give
us everything, they authorize us to ask what the war gave us
in their day? They had a war; what did they make it bring us?
i. General Horatio Gates, although British born, espoused the patriot
cause and served with distinction in the American Army during the
Revolution.
571
OF
Instead of making our neutrality the ground of gain to their
country, they were for plunging into the war. And if they were
now in place, they would now be at war against the atheists
and disorganizers of France. They were for making their coun-
try an appendage to England. We are friendly, cordially and
conscientiously friendly to England. We are not hostile to
France. We will be rigorously just and sincerely friendly to
both. I do not believe we shall have as much to swallow from
them as our predecessors had
TO MONSIEUR CABANIS *
Washington, July 12, 1803
DEAR SIR,— I lately received your friendly letter . . .
with the two volumes on the relations between the physical and
moral faculties of man. This has ever been a subject of great
interest to the inquisitive mind, and it could not have got into
better hands for discussion than yours. That thought may be
a faculty of our material organization, has been believed in the
gross; and though the "modus operandi" of nature, in this, as
in most other cases, can never be developed and demonstrated
to beings limited as we are, yet I feel confident you will have
conducted us as far on the road as we can go, and have lodged
us within reconnoitering distance of the citadel itself
TO WILSON C. NICHOLAS 2
Monticello, September 7, 1803
.... I am aware of the force »of the observations you
make on the power given by the Constitution to Congress, to
admit new States into the Union, without restraining the subject
1. Pierre Jean George Cabanis, doctor and Ideologic philosopher, was a
pioneer in the field of experimental physiology.
2. As United States Senator and Representative, and as Governor of
Virginia, Wilson Gary Nicholas was a vigorous supporter of his long-time
friend Thomas Jefferson.
572
THOMAS J8FFSRSON
to the territory then constituting the United States. But when I
consider that the limits of the United States are precisely fixed
by the treaty of 1783, that the Constitution expressly declares
itself to be made for the United States, I cannot help believing
the intention was not to permit Congress to admit into the
Union new States, which should be formed out of the territory
for which, and under whose authority alone, they were then
acting. I do not believe it was meant that they might receive
England, Ireland, Holland, etc. into it, which would be the case
on your construction. When an instrument admits two con-
structions, the one safe, the other dangerous, the one precise,
the other indefinite, I prefer that which is safe and precise. I
had rather ask an enlargement of power from the nation, where
it is found necessary, than to assume it by a construction which
would make our powers boundless. Our peculiar security is in
the possession of a written Constitution. Let us not make it a
blank paper by construction. I say the same as to the opinion
of those who consider the grant of the treaty making power as
boundless. If it is, then we have no Constitution. If it has
bounds, they can be no others than the definitions of the
powers which that instrument gives. It specifies and delineates
the operations permitted to the federal government, and gives
all the powers necessary to carry these into execution. What-
ever of these enumerated objects is proper for a law, Congress
may make the law; whatever is proper to be executed by way
of a treaty, the President and Senate may "enter into the treaty;
whatever is to be done by a judicial sentence, the judges may
pass the sentence. Nothing is more likely than that their enu-
meration of powers is defective. This is the ordinary case of all
human works. Let us go on then perfecting it, by adding, by
way of amendment to the Constitution, those powers which
time and trial show are still wanting. But it has been taken
too much for granted, that by this rigorous construction the
treaty power would be reduced to nothing. I had occasion
once to examine its effect on the French treaty, made by the
old Congress, and found that out of thirty odd articles which
573
OF
that contained, there were one, two, or three only which could
not now be stipulated under our present Constitution. I confess,
then, I think it important, in the present case, to set an exam-
ple against broad construction, by appealing for new power to
the people. If, however, our friends shall think differently, cer-
tainly I shall acquiesce with satisfaction; confiding, that the
good sense of our country will correct the evil of construction
when it shall produce ill effects
TO JEAN BAPTISTE SAY1
Washington, February i, 1804
DEAR SIR,— I have to acknowledge the receipt of your
obliging letter, and with it, of two very interesting volumes on
Political Economy. These found me engaged in giving the
leisure moments I rarely find, to the perusal of Malthus' work
on population, a work of sound logic, in which some of the
opinions of Adam Smith, as well as of the economists, are ably
examined. I was pleased, on turning to some chapters where
you treat the same questions, to find his opinions corroborated
by yours. I shall proceed to the reading of your work with great
pleasure. In the meantime, the present conveyance, by a gentle-
man of my family going to Paris, is too safe to hazard a delay
in making my acknowledgments for this mark of attention, and
for having afforded to me a satisfaction, which the ordinary
course of literary communications could not have given me for
a considerable time.
The differences of circumstance between this and the old
countries of Europe, furnish differences of fact whereon to rea-
son, in questions of political economy, and will consequently
produce sometimes a difference of result. There, for instance,
the quantity of food is fixed, or increasing in a slow and only
i. Jean Baptiste Say, philosopher of scientific economics, modified and
developed the work of Adam Smith. He was founder and editor of the
D&cade philosphique, organ of the French Ideologists.
574
THOMAS
arithmetical ratio, and the proportion is limited by the same
ratio. Supernumerary births consequently add only to your
mortality. Here the immense extent of uncultivated and fertile
lands enables every one who will labor, to marry young, and
to raise a family of any size. Our food, then, may increase geo-
metrically with our laborers, and our births, however multi-
plied, become effective. Again, there the best distribution of
labor is supposed to be that which places the manufacturing
hands alongside the agricultural; so that the one part shall
feed both, and the other part furnish both with clothes and
other comforts. Would that be best here? Egoism and first ap-
pearances say yes. Or would it be better that all our laborers
should be employed in agriculture? In this cas'e a double or
treble portion of fertile lands would be brought into culture; a
double or treble creation of food be produced, and its surplus
go to nourish the now perishing births of Europe, who in re-
turn would manufacture and send us in exchange our clothes
and other comforts. Morality listens to this, and so invariably
do the laws of nature create our duties and interests, that when
they seem to be at variance, we ought to suspect some fallacy
in our reasonings. In solving this question, too, We should allow
its just weight to the moral and physical preference of the
agricultural, over the manufacturing, man. My occupations per-
mit me only to ask questions. They deny me the time, if I had
the information, to answer them. Perhaps, as worthy the atten-
tion of the author of the Trait& d'Economie Politique, I shall
find them answered in that work. If they are not, the reason
will have been that you wrote for Europe; while I shall have
asked them because I think for America. Accept, Sir, my re-
spectful salutations, and assurances of great consideration.
575
OF
TO JUDGE JOHN TYLER 1
Washington, June 28, 1804
.... No experiment can be more interesting than that
we are now trying, and which we trust will end in establishing
the fact, that man may be govern'ed by reason and truth. Our
first object should therefore be, to leave open to him all the
avenues to truth. The most effectual hitherto found, is the
freedom of the press. It is, therefore, the first shut up by those
who fear the investigation of their actions. The firmness with
which the people have withstood the late abuses of the press,
the discernment they have manifested between truth and false-
hood, show that they may safely be trusted to hear everything
true and false, and to form a correct judgment between them.
As little is it necessary to impose on their senses, or dazzle their
minds by pomp, splendor, or forms. Instead of this artificial,
how much surer is that real respect, which results from the use
of their reason, and the habit of bringing everything to the
test of common sense.
I hold it, therefore, certain, that to open the doors of truth,
and to fortify the habit of testing everything by reason, are
the most effectual manacles we can rivet on the hands of our
successors to prevent their manacling the people with their
own consent. The panic into which they were artfully thrown
in 1 798, the frenzy which was excited in them by their enemies
against their apparent readiness to abandon all the principles
established for their own protection, seemed for awhile to
countenance the opinions of those who say they cannot be
trusted with their own government. But I never doubted their
rallying; and they did rally much sooner than I expected. On
the whole, that experiment on their credulity has confirmed my
confidence in their ultimate good sense and virtue
i. Judge John Tyler, Revolutionary patriot, Governor of Virginia,
and father of President John Tyler, had met Jefferson when Jefferson was
studying law in Williamsburg. The two men continued to be friends until
Tyler's death in 1813.
576
THOMAS JSFFSRSON
TO C. F. C. DE VOLNEY l
Washington, February 8,
.... In no case, perhaps, does habit attach our choice
or judgment more than in climate. The Canadian glows with
delight in his sleigh and snow; the very idea of which gives
me the shivers. The comparison of climate between Europe and
North America, taking together its corresponding parts, hangs
chiefly on three great points, i. The changes between heat and
cold in America are greater and more frequent, and the ex-
tremes comprehend a greater scale on the thermometer in Amer-
ica than in Europe. Habit, however, prevents these from af-
fecting us more than the smaller changes of Europe affect the
European. But he is greatly affected by ours. 2. Our sky is al-
ways clear; that of Europe always cloudy. Hence a greater ac-
cumulation of heat here than there, in the same parallel. 3. The
changes between wet and dry are much more frequent and sud-
den in Europe than in America. Though we have double the
rain, it falls in half the time. Taking all these together, I prefer
much the climate of the United States to that of Europe. I
think it a more cheerful one. It is our cloudless sky which has
eradicated from our constitutions all disposition to hang our-
selves, which we might otherwise have inherited from our Eng-
lish ancestors. During a residence of between six and seven
years in Paris, I never, but once, saw the sun shine through a
whole day, without being obscured by a cloud in any part of it;
and I never saw the moment, in which, viewing the sky through
its whole hemisphere, I could say ther'e was not the smallest
speck of a cloud in it. I arrived at Monticello, on my return
from France, in January; and during only two months' stay
there, I observed to my daughters, who had been with me to
France, that, twenty odd times within that term, there was not
a speck of a cloud in the whole hemisphere. Still I do not won-
i. Constantin Francois Chasseboeuf Volney, French savant and author
of Les Ruines, which Jefferson translated into English, was a close friend
of Jefferson's during his stay in America.
577
OF
der that an European should prefer his gray to our azure sky.
Habit decides our taste in this, as in most other cases
TO THE CHIEFS OF THE CHEROKEE NATION
Washington, January 10, 1806
MY FRIENDS AND CHILDREN, CHIEFLY OF THE CHERO-
KEE NATION,— Having now finished our business and finished
it I hope to mutual satisfaction, I cannot take leave of you
without expressing the satisfaction I have received from your
visit. I see with my own eyes that the endeavors we have been
making to encourage and lead you in the way of improving
your situation have not been unsuccessful; it has been like
grains sown in good ground, producing abundantly. You are
becoming farm'ers, learning the use of the plough and the hoe,
enclosing your grounds and employing that labor in their cul-
tivation which you formerly employed in hunting and in war;
and I see handsome specimens of cotton cloth raised, spun and
wove by yourselves. You are also raising cattle and hogs for
your food, and horses to assist your labors. Go on, my children,
in the sam'e way and be assured the further you advance in it
the happier and more respectable you will be.
Our brethren, whom you have happened to meet here from
the West and Northwest, have tenabled you to compare your
situation now with what it was formerly. They also make the
comparison, and they see how far you are ahead of them, and
seeing what you are they are encouraged to do as you have
done. You will find your next want to be mills to grind your
corn, which by relieving your women from the loss of time in
beating it into meal, will enable them to spin and weave more.
When a man has enclosed and improved his farm, builds a good
house on it and raised plentiful stocks of animals, he will wish
when he dies that these things shall go to his wife and chil-
dren, whom he loves more than he does his other relations, and
for whom he will work with pleasure during his life. You will,
578
THOMAS JBFFSRSON
therefore, find it necessary to establish laws for this. When a
man has property, earned by his own labor, he will not like to
see another come and take it from him because he happens to
be stronger, or else to defend it by spilling blood. You will find
it necessary then to appoint good men, as judges, to decide
contests between man and man, according to reason and to the
rules you shall establish. If you wish to be aided by our coun-
sel and experience in these things we shall always be ready to
assist you with our advice.
My children, it is unnecessary for me to advise you against
spending all your time and labor in warring with and destroy-
ing your fellow-men, and wasting your own members. You al-
ready see the folly and iniquity of it. Your young men, how-
ever, are not yet sufficiently sensible of it. Som'e of them cross
the Mississippi to go and destroy people who have never done
them an injury. My children, this is wrong and must not be;
if we permit them to cross the Mississippi to war with the In-
dians on the other side of that river, we must let those Indians
cross the river to take revenge on you. I say again, this must
not be. The Mississippi now belongs to us. It must not be a
river of blood. It is now the water-path along which all our
people of Natchez, St. Louis, Indiana, Ohio, Tennessee, Ken-
tucky and the western parts of Pennsylvania and Virginia are
constantly passing with their property, to and from New Or-
leans. Young men going to war are not easily restrained. Find-
ing our people on the river they will rob them, perhaps kill
them. This would bring on a war between us and you. It is bet-
ter to stop this in time by forbidding your young men to go
across the river to make war. If they go to visit or to live with
the Cherokees on the other side of the river we shall not object
to that. That country is ours. We will permit them to live in it.
My children, this is what I wished to say to you. To go on in
learning to cultivate the earth and to avoid war. If any of your
neighbors injure you, our beloved men whom we place with you
will endeavor to obtain justice for you and we will support
them in it. If any of your bad people injure your neighbors,
579
OF
be ready to acknowledge it and to do them justice. It is more
honorable to repair a wrong than to persist in it. Tell all your
chiefs, your men, women and children, that I take them by the
hand and hold it fast. That I am their father, wish their happi-
ness and well-being, and am always ready to promote their
good.
My children, I thank you for your visit and pray to the
Great Spirit who made us all and planted us all in this land to
}ive together like brothers that He will conduct you safely to
your homes, and grant you to find your families and your
friends in good health.
TO THE REVEREND DOCTOR G. C. JENNER 1
Monticello, May 14, 1806
SIR,— I have received a copy of the evidence at large re-
specting the discovery of the vaccine inoculation which you
have been pleased to send me, and for which I return you my
thanks. Having been among the early converts, in this part of
the globe, to its efficiency, I took an early part in recommend-
ing it to my countrymen. I avail myself of this occasion of
rendering you a portion of the tribute of gratitude due to you
from the whole human family. Medicine has never before pro-
duced any single improvement of such utility. Harvey's dis-
covery of the circulation of the blood was a beautiful addition
to our knowledge of the animal economy, but on a review of
the practice of medicine before and since that epoch, I do not
see any great amelioration which has been derived from that
discovery. You have "erased from the calendar of human afflic-
tions one of its greatest. Yours is the comfortable reflection
that mankind can never forget that you have lived. Future na-
tions will know by history only that the loathsome small-pox
has existed and by you has been ^extirpated.
i. This is undoubtedly Dr. Edward Jenner, the famous English phy-
sician, who discovered vaccination.
580
THOMAS jeFFSRSON
Accept my fervent wishes for your health and happiness and
assurances of the greatest respect and consideration.
TO JOHN NORVELL 1
Washington, June n, 1807
.... To your request of my opinion of the manrier in
which a newspaper should be conducted, so as to be most use-
ful, I should answer, "by restraining it to true facts and sound
principles only." Yet I fear such a paper would find few sub-
scribers. It is a melancholy truth, that a suppression of the
press could not more completely deprive the nation of its bene-
fits, than is done by its abandoned prostitution to falsehood.
Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper.
Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted
vehicle. The real extent of this state of misinformation is
known only to those who are in situations to confront facts
within their knowledge with the lies of the day. I really look
with commiseration over the great body of my fellow citizens,
who, reading newspapers, live and die in the belief, that they
have known something of what has been passing in the world
in their time; whereas the accounts they have read in news-
papers are just as true a history of any other period of the
world as of the present, except that the real names of the day
are affixed to their fables. General facts may indeed be collected
from them, such as that Europe is now at war, that Bonaparte
has been a successful warrior, that he has subjected a great
portion of Europe to his will, etc., etc.; but no details can be
relied on. I will add, that the man who never looks into a news-
paper is better informed than he who reads them; inasmuch
as he who knows nothing is nearer to truth than he whose
mind is filled with falsehoods and errors. He who reads noth-
ing will still learn the great facts, and the details are all false.
i. Norvell, a resident of Danville, Virginia, had written Jefferson con-
cerning starting a newspaper.
OF
Perhaps an editor might begin a reformation in some such
way as this. Divide his paper into four chapters, heading the
ist, Truths. 2d, Probabilities. 3d, Possibilities. 4th, Lies. The
first chapter would be very short, as it would contain little
more than authentic papers, and information from such sources,
as the editor would be willing to risk his own reputation for
their truth. The second would contain what, from a mature
consideration of all circumstances, his judgment should con-
clude to be probably true. This, however, should rather contain
too little than too much. The third and fourth should be pro-
fessedly for those readers who would rather have lies for their
money than the blank paper they would occupy
Such an editor too, would have to set his face against the de-
moralizing practice of feeding the public mind habitually on
slander, and the depravity of taste which this nauseous aliment
induces. Defamation is becoming a necessary of life; inso-
much, that a dish of tea in the morning or evening cannot be
digested without this stimulant. Even those who do not believe
these abominations, still read them with complaisance to their
auditors, and instead of the abhorrence and indignation which
should fill a virtuous mind, betray a secret pleasure in the pos-
sibility that some may believe them, though they do not them-
selves. It seems to escape them, that it is not he who prints,
but he who pays for printing a slander, who is its real au-
thor
TO GOVERNOR JAMES SULLIVAN *
Washington, June ip,
.... With respect to the tour my friends of the north
have proposed that I should make in that quarter, I have not
made up a final opinion. The course of life which General Wash-
ington had run, civil and military, the services he had ren-
dered, and the space he, therefore, occupied in the affections of
i. Governor of Massachusetts.
582
THOMAS JSFFSRSON
his fellow citizens, take from his examples the weight of prece-
dent for others, because no others can arrogate to themselves
the claims which he had oh the public homage. To myself,
therefore, it comes as a new question, to be viewed under all
the phases it may present. I confess that I am not reconciled
to the idea of a chief magistrate parading himself through the
several States, as an object of public gaze, and in quest of an
applause which, to be valuable, should be purely voluntary.
I had rather acquire silent good-will by a faithful discharge of
my duties, than owe expressions of it to my putting mys'elf in
the way of receiving them. Were I to make such a tour to Ports-
mouth or Portland, I must do it to Savannah, perhaps to Or-
leans and Frankfort. As I have never yet seen the time whfen
the public business would have permitted me to be so long in a
situation in which I could not carry it on, so I have no reason
to expect that such a time will com'e while I remain in office. A
journey to Boston or Portsmouth, after I shall be a private
citizen, would much better harmonize with my feelings, as
well as duties; and, founded in curiosity, would give no claims
to an extension of it. I should see my friends too, more at our
mutual ease, and be left more exclusively to their society. How-
ever, I end as I began, by declaring I have made up no opinion
on the subject, and that I reserve it as a question for future
consideration and advice
TO DOCTOR CASPER WISTAR 1
Washington, June 21, 180?
. . . the disorders of the animal body, and the symp-
toms indicating them, are as various as the elements of which
the body is composed. The combinations, too, of these symp-
toms are so infinitely diversified, that many associations of them
appear too rarely to establish a definite disease; and to an un-
i. Casper Wistar was professor of anatomy and surgery at the Univer-
sity of Pennsylvania and, succeeding Jefferson in 1815, was president of
the American Philosophical Society.
583
OF
known disease, there cannot be a known remedy. Here then,
the judicious, the moral, the humane physician should stop.
Having been so often a witness to the salutary efforts which
nature makes to re-establish the disordered functions, he should
rather trust to their action, than hazard the interruption of
that, and a greater derangement of the system, by conjectural
experiments on a machine so complicated and so unknown as
the human body, and a subject so sacred as human life. Or, if
the appearance of doing something be necessary to keep alive
the hop'e and spirits of the patient, it should be of the most
innocent character. One of the most successful physicians I
have ever known, has assured me, that he used more bread
pills, drops of colored water, and powders of hickory ashes,
than of all other medicin'es put together. It was certainly a
pious fraud. But the adventurous physician goes on, and sub-
stitutes presumption for knowledge. From the scanty field of
what is known, he launches into the boundless region of what
is unknown. He establishes for his guide some fanciful theory
of corpuscular attraction, of chemical agency, of mechanical
powers, of stimuli, of irritability accumulated or exhausted, of
depletion by the lancet and repletion by mercury, or some other
ingenious dream, which lets him into all nature's secrets at
short hand. On the principle which he thus assumes, he forms
his table of nosology, arrays his diseases into families, and ex-
tends his curative treatment, by analogy, to all the cases he
has thus arbitrarily marshalled together. I have lived myself to
see the disciples of Hoffman, Boerhaave, Stahl, Cullen, Brown,
succeed one another like the shifting figures of a magic lantern,
and their fancies, like the dresses of the annual doll-babies from
Paris, becoming, from their novelty, the vogue of the day, and
yielding to the next novelty their ephemeral favor. The pa-
tient, treated on the fashionable theory, sometimes gets well
in spite of the medicine. The medicine, therefore, restored him,
and the young doctor receives new courage to proceed in his
bold experiments on the lives of his fellow-creatures. I believe
we may safely affirm, that the inexperienced and presumptuous
584
THOMAS
band of medical tyros let loose upon the world, destroys more
of human life in one year, than all the Robinhoods, Cartouches,
and Macheaths do in a century. It is in this part of medicine
that I wish to see a reform, an abandonment of hypothesis for
sober facts, the first degree of value set on clinical observation,
and the lowest on visionary theories. I would wish the young
practitioner, especially, to have deeply impressed on his mind,
the real limits of his art, and that when the state of his pa-
tient gets beyond these, his office is to be a watchful, but quiet
spectator of the operations of nature, giving them fair play by
a well-regulated regimen, and by all the aid they can derive
from the excitement of good spirits and hope in the patient
TO MONSIEUR DuPoNT DE NEMOURS 1
Washington, July 14, 180?
.... Burr's conspiracy has been one of the most flagi-
tious of which histroy 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. Yet al-
though there is not a man in the United States who is not satis-
fied of the depth of his guilt, such are the jealous provisions of
our laws in favor of the accused, and against the accuser, that
I question if he can be convicted. Out of the forty-eight jurors
who are to be summoned, he has a right to choose the twelve
who are to try him, and if any one of the twelve refuses to con-
cur in finding him guilty, he escapes. 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
i. Jefferson first met Pierre Samuel DuPont de Nemours, celebrated
liberal and educator, in Paris. Their friendship, solidified in 1800 when the
noted physiocrat established residence in America, continued until the lat-
ter's death in 1817.
OF
government connived at it. A proclamation alone, by undeceiv-
ing them, so completely disarmed him, that he had not above
thirty men left, ready to go all lengths with him. The first en-
terprise was to have been the seizure of New Orleans, which
he supposed would powerfully bridle the country above, and
place him at the door of Mexico. It has given me infinite satis-
faction 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 de-
scriptions
TO CHARLES PINCKNEY 1
Washington, March 30, 1808
.... With France we are in no immediate danger of
war. Her future views it is impossible to estimate. The imme-
diate danger we are in of a rupture with England, is postponed
for this year. This is effected by the embargo, as the question
was simply between that and war. That may go on a certain
time, perhaps through the year, without the loss of their prop-
erty to our citizens, but only its remaining unemployed on their
hands. A time would come, however, when war would be pref-
erable to a continuance of the embargo. Of this Congress may
have to decide at their next meeting. In the meantime, we have
good information, that a negotiation for peace between France
and England is commencing through the medium of Austria.
The way for it has been smoothed by a determination expressed
by France (through the Moniteur, which is their government
paper) that herself and her allies will demand from Great Brit-
ain no renunciation of her maritime principles; nor will they
i. Charles Cotesworth Pinckney of South Carolina, Revolutionary sol-
dier, statesman, and diplomat, had opposed Jefferson, as Federalist candi-
date, in the Presidential election of 1804.
586
THOMAS
denounce theirs. Nothing shall be said about them in the treaty,
and both sides will be left in the next war to act on their own.
No doubt the meaning of this is, that all the Continental pow-
ers of Europe will form themselves into an armed neutrality, to
enforce their own principles. Should peace be made, we shall
have safely rode out the storm in peace and prosperity. If we
have anything to fear, it will be after that. Nothing should be
spared from this moment in putting our militia in the best con-
dition possible, and procuring arms. I hope, that this summer,
we shall get our whole seaports put into that state of defence,
which Congress has thought proportioned to our circumstances
and situation; that is to say, put hors d'insulte from a mari-
time attack, by a moderate squadron. If armies are combined
with their fleets, then no resource can be provided, but to meet
them in the field. We propose to raise seven regiments only for
the present year, depending always on our militia for the opera-
tions of the first year of war. On any other plan, we should be
obliged always to keep a large standing army
TO THE PRINCE REGENT OF PORTUGAL
Washington, May 5, 1808
GREAT AND GOOD FRIEND, —Having learnt the safe ar-
rival of your Royal Highness at the city of Rio Janeiro, I per-
form with pleasure the duty of offering you my sincere con-
gratulations by Mr. Hill, a respected citizen of the United
States, who is specially charged with the delivery of this letter.
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 States of America have ever
taken a lively interest. Inhabitants now of the same land, of
that great continent which the genius of Columbus has given
to the world, the United States feel sensibly that they stand in
new and closer relations with your Royal Highness, and that
the motives which heretofore nourished the friendly relations
587
OF
which have so happily prevailed, have acquired increased
strength on the transfer of your residence to their own shores.
They see in prospect, a system of intercourse between the dif-
ferent regions of this hemisphere of which the peace and hap-
piness of mankind may be the essential principle. To this
principle your long-tried adherence, for the benefit of those you
governed, in the midst of warring powers, is a pledge to the new
world that its peace, its free and friendly intercourse, will be
your chief concern. On the part of the United States I assure
you, that these which have hitherto been their ruling objects,
will be most particularly cultivated with your Royal Highness
and your subjects at Brazil, and they hope that that country
so favored by the gifts of nature, now advanced to a station
under your immediate auspices, will find, in the interchange
of mutual wants and supplies, the true aliment of an unchang-
ing friendship with the United States of America.
TO MONSIEUR LASTEYRIE*
Washington, July 15, 1808
SIR,— I have duly received your favor of March 28th,
and with it your treatises on the culture of the sugar cane and
cotton plant in France. The introduction of new cultures, and
especially of objects of leading importance to our comfort, is
certainly worthy the attention of every government, and noth-
ing short of the actual experiment should discourage an essay
of which any hope can be entertained. Till that is made, the
result is open to conjecture; and I should certainly conjecture
that the sugar cane could never become an article of profitable
culture in France. We have within the ancient limits of the
United States, a great extent of country which brings the
orange to advantage, but not a foot in which the sugar canfe
can be matured. France, within its former limits, has but two
i. Lasteyrie du Saillant was an outstanding French agronomist and a
sponsor of progressive agricultural and industrial societies.
THOMAS
small spots, (Olivreles and Hieres) which brings the orange
in open air, and a jortiori, therefore, none proper for the cane.
I should think the maple-sugar more worthy of experiment.
There is no part of France of which the climate would not ad-
mit this tree. I have never seen a reason why every farmer
should not have a sugar orchard, as well as an apple orchard.
The supply of sugar for his family would require as little
ground, and the process of making it as easy as that of cider.
Mr. Micheaux, your botanist here, could send you plants as
well as seeds, in any quantity from the United States. I have no
doubt the cotton plant will succeed in some of the southern
parts of France. Whether its culture will be as advantageous
as those they are now engaged in, remains to be tried. We
could, in the United States, make as great a variety of wines
as are made in Europe, not exactly of the same kinds, but
doubtless as good. Yet I have ever observed to my countrymen,
who think its introduction important, that a laborer culti-
vating wheat, rice, tobacco, or cotton here, will be able with
the proceeds, to purchase double the quantity of the wine he
could make. Possibly the same quantity of land and labor in
France employed on the rich produce of your Southern coun-
ties, would purchase double the quantity of the cotton they
would yield there. This however may prove otherwise on trial,
and therefore it is worthy the trial. In general, it is a truth that
if every nation will employ itself in what it is fittest to produce,
a greater quantity will be raised of the things contributing to
human happiness, than if every nation attempts to raise every-
thing it wants within itself
TO THOMAS JEFFERSON RANDOLPH1
Washington, November 24, 1808
MY DEAR JEFFERSON, .... Your situation, thrown
at such a distance from us, and alone, cannot but give us all
i. Thomas Jefferson Randolph, Jefferson's oldest and favorite grandson,
was the son of Thomas Mann Randolph and Martha Jefferson.
589
OF
great anxieties for you. As much has been secured for you, by
your particular position and the acquaintance to which you
have been recommended, as could be done towards shielding
you from the dangers which surround you. But thrown on a
wide world, among entire strangers, without a friend or guard-
ian to advise, so young too, and with so little experience of
mankind, your dangers are great, and still your safety must
rest on yourself. A determination never to do what is wrong,
prud'ence and good humor, will go far towards securing to you
the estimation of the world. When I recollect that at fourteen
years of age, the whole care and direction of myself was thrown
on myself entirely, without a relation or friend qualified to ad-
vis'e or guide me, and recollect the various sorts of bad company
with which I associated from time to time, I am astonished I
did not turn off with some of them, and become as worthless
to society as they were. I had the good fortunate to become ac-
quainted very early with some characters of very high stand-
ing, and to feel the incessant wish that I could ever become
what they were. Under temptations and difficulties, I would
ask myself what would Dr. Small, Mr. Wythe, Peyton Ran-
dolph do in this situation? What cours'e in it will insure me
their approbation? I am certain that this mode of deciding on
my conduct, tended more to correctness than any reasoning
powers I possessed. Knowing the even and dignified line they
pursued, I could never doubt for a moment which of two
courses would be in character for them. Whereas, seeking the
same object through a process of moral reasoning, and with the
jaundiced eye of youth, I should often have 'erred. From the
circumstances of my position, I was often thrown into *he so-
ciety of horse racers, card players, fox hunters, scientific and
professional men, and of dignified men; and many a time have
I asked myself, in the enthusiastic moment of the death of a
fox, the victory of a favorite horse, the issue of a question elo-
quently argued at the bar, or in the great council of the nation,
well, which of these kinds of reputation should I prefer? That
of a horse jockey? a fox hunter? an orator? or the honest advo-
590
THOMAS JSFFSRSON
cate of my country's rights? Be assured, my dear Jeffersonr
that these little returns into ourselves, this self -catechising
habit, is not trifling nor useless, but leads to the prudent selec-
tion and steady pursuit of what is right.
I have mentioned good humor as one of the preservatives of
our peace and tranquillity. It is among the most effectual, and
its effect is so well imitated and aided, artificially, by polite-
ness, that this also becomes an acquisition of first rate value.
In truth, politeness is artificial good humor, it covers the nat-
ural want of it, and ends by rendering habitual a substitute
nearly equivalent to the real virtue. It is the practice of sacri-
ficing to those whom we meet in society, all the little conven-
iences and preferences which will gratify them, and deprive us
of nothing worth a moment's consideration; it is the giving a
pleasing and flattering turn to our expressions, which will con-
ciliate others, and make them pleased with us as well as them-
selves. How cheap a price for the good will of another ! When
this is in return for a rude thing said by another, it brings him
to his senses, it mortifies and corrects him in the most salutary
way, and places him at the feet of your good nature, in the eyes
of the company. But in stating prudential rules for our govern-
ment in society, I must not omit the important one of never
entering into dispute or argument with another. I never saw
an instance of one of two disputants convincing the other by
argument. I have seen many, on their getting warm, becom-
ing rude, and shooting one another. Conviction is the effect of
our own dispassionate reasoning, either in solitude, or weigh-
ing within ourselves, dispassionately, what we hear from others,
standing uncommitted in argument ourselves. It was one of the
rules which, above all others, made Doctor Franklin the most
amiable of men in society, "never to contradict anybody." If
he was urged to announce an opinion, he did it rather by ask-
ing questions, as if for information, or by suggesting doubts.
When I hear another express an opinion which is not mine, I
say to myself, he has a right to his opinion, as I to mine; why
should I question it? His error does me no injury, and shall 1
OF
become a Don Quixote, to bring all men by force of argument
to one opinion? If a fact be misstated, it is probable he is
gratified by a belief of it, and I have no right to deprive him
of the gratification. If he wants information, he will ask it, and
then I will give it in measured terms; but if he still believes
his own story, and shows a desire to dispute the fact with me,
I hear him and say nothing. It is his affair, not mine, if he
prefers error. There are two classes of disputants most fre-
quently to be met with among us. The first is of young stu-
dents, just entered the threshold of science, with a first view
of its outlines, not yet filled up with the details and modifica-
tions which a further progress would bring to their knowledge.
The other consists of the ill-tempered and rude men in society,
who have taken up a passion for politics. (Good humor and
politeness never introduce into mixed society, a question on
which they foresee there will be a difference of opinion.) From
both of these classes of disputants, my dear Jefferson, keep
aloof, as you would from the infected subjects of yellow fever
or pestilence. Consider yourself, when with them, as among the
patients of Bedlam, needing medical more than moral counsel.
Be a listener only, keep within yourself, and "endeavor to estab-
lish with yourself the habit of silence, especially on politics.
In the fevered state of our country, no good can ever result
from any attempt to s'et one of these fiery zealots to rights,
either in fact or principle. They are determined as to the facts
they will believe, and the opinions on which they will act. Get
by them, therefore, as you would by an angry bull; it is not for
a man of s'ense to dispute the road with such an animal. You
will be more exposed than others to have these animals shaking
their horns at you, because of the relation in which you stand
with me. Full of political venom, and willing to see me and to
hate me as a chief in the antagonist party, your presence will
be to them what the vomit grass is to the sick dog, a nostrum
for producing ejaculation. Look upon them exactly with that
eye, and pity them as objects to whom you can administer only
occasional ease. My character is not within their power. It is
592
THOMAS JSFFSRSON
in the hands of my fellow citizens at large, and will be con-
signed to honor or infamy by the verdict of the republican mass
of our country, according to what themselves will have seen,
not what their enemies and mine shall have said. Never, there-
fore, consider these puppies in politics as requiring any notice
from you, and always show that you are not afraid to leave my
character to the umpirag'e of public opinion. Look steadily to
the pursuits which have carried you to Philadelphia, be very
select in the society you attach yourself to, avoid taverns,
drinkers, smokers, idlers, and dissipated persons generally; for
it is with such that broils and contentions arise; and you will
find your path more easy and tranquil. The limits of my paper
warn me that it is time for me to close with my affectionate
adieu.
TO THOMAS LEIPER *
Washington, January 21, iSoQ
.... I have lately inculcated the encouragement of
manufactures to the extent of our own consumption at least,
in all articles of which we raise the raw material. On this the
federal papers and meetings have sounded the alarm of Chinese
policy, destruction of commerce, etc.; that is to say, the iron
which we make must not be wrought here into ploughs, axes,
hoes, etc., in order that the ship-owner may have the profit of
carrying it to Europe, and bringing it back in a manufactured
form, as if after manufacturing our own raw materials for our
own use, there would not be a surplus produce sufficient to em-
ploy a due proportion of navigation in carrying it to market
and exchanging it for those articles of which we have not the
raw material. Yet this absurd hue and cry has contributed
much to federalize New England, their doctrine goes to the
sacrificing agriculture and manufactures to commerce; to th&
calling all our people from the interior country to the sea-shore
i. Thomas Leiper was a Scottish born merchant who served in the
Revolution against England and who later became a staunch Jeffersoniaa
593
LSTTSRS OF
to turn merchants, and to convert this great agricultural coun-
try into a city of Amsterdam. But I trust the good s'ense of our
country will see that its greatest prosperity depends on a
due balance between agriculture, manufactures and commerce,
and not in this protuberant navigation which has kept us in hot
water from the commencement of our government, and is now
engaging us in war. That this may be avoided, if it can be done
without a surrender of rights, is my sincere prayer. Accept the
assurances of my constant esteem and respect.
TO JOHN HOLLINS
Washington, February 19, 1809
.... General Washington, in his time, received from
the same Society * the seed of the perennial succory, which Ar-
thur Young had carried over from France to England, and I
have since received from a member of it the seed of the famous
turnip of Sweden, now so well known here. I mention these
things, to show the nature of the correspondence which is carried
on between societies instituted for the benevolent purpose of
communicating to all parts of the world whatever useful is dis-
covered in any one of them. These societies are always in peace,
however their nations may be at war. Like the republic of
letters, they form a great fraternity spreading over the whole
earth, and their correspondence is never interrupted by any
civilized nation
TO M. HENRI GREGOIRE, EVEQUE ET SENATEUR A PARIS
Washington, February 25, 1809
SIR,— I have received the favor of your letter of August
lyth, and with it the volume you were so kind as to send me
on the "Literature of Negroes." Be assured that no person liv-
ing wishes more sincerely than I do, to see a complete refuta-
i. The Board of Agriculture of London.
594
THOMAS JEFfgRSON
tion of the doubts I have myself entertained and expressed on
the grad'e of understanding allotted to them by nature, and to
find that in this respect they are on a par with ourselves. My
doubts were the result of personal observation on the limited
sphere of my own State, where the opportunities for the devel-
opment of their genius were not favorable, and those of exer-
cising it still less so. I expressed them therefore with great
hesitation; but whatever be their degree of talent it is no meas-
ure of their rights. Because Sir Isaac Newton was superior to
others in understanding, he was not therefore lord of the per-
son or property of others. On this subject they are gaining daily
in the opinions of nations, and hopeful advances are making
towards their re-establishment on an equal footing with the
other colors of the human family. I pray you therefore to
accept my thanks for the many instances you have enabled me
to observe of respectable intelligence in that race of men,
which cannot fail to have effect in hastening the day of their
relief; and to be assured of the sentiments of high and just
esteem and consideration which I tender to yourself with all
sincerity.
TO MONSIEUR DuPoNT DE NEMOURS
Washington, March 2, 1809
.... Within a few days I retire to my family, my books
and farms; and having gained the harbor myself, I shall look
on my friends still buffeting the storm with anxiety indeed, but
not with envy. Never did a prisoner, released from his chains,
feel such relief as I shall on shaking off the shackles of power.
Nature intended me for the tranquil pursuits of science, by ren-
dering them my supreme delight. But the enormities of the
times in which I have lived, have forced me to take a part in
resisting them, and to commit myself on the boisterous ocean
of political passions. I thank God for the opportunity of retir-
ing from them without censure, and carrying with me the most
consoling proofs of public approbation. I leave everything in
595
LSTTSRS OF
the hands of men so able to take care of them, that if we are
destined to meet misfortun'es, it will be because no human wis-
dom could avert them. Should you return to the United States,
perhaps your curiosity may lead you to visit the hermit of
Monticello. He will receive you with affection and delight; hail-
ing you in the meantime with his affectionate salutations and
assurances of constant esteem and respect.
P. S. If you return to us, bring a couple of pair of true-bred
shepherd's dogs. You will add a valuable possession to a coun-
try now beginning to pay great attention to the raising sheep.
TO THE INHABITANTS OF ALBEMARLE CouNTY,1 IN VIRGINIA
Monticello, April 3, i8op
Returning to the scenes of my birth and early life, to
the society of those with whom I was raised, and who have
been ever dear to me, I receive, fellow citizens and neighbors,
with inexpressible pleasure, the cordial welcome you are so
good as to give me. Long absent on duties which the history of
a wonderful era made incumbent on those called to them, the
pomp, the turmoil, the bustle and splendor of office, have drawn
but deeper sighs for the tranquil and irresponsible occupations
of private life, for the enjoyment of an affectionate intercourse
with you, my neighbors and friends, and the endearments of
family love, which nature has given us all, as the sweetener of
every hour. For these I gladly lay down the distressing burden
of power, and seek, with my fellow citizens, repose and safety
under the watchful cares, the labors and perplexities of younger
and abler minds. The anxieties you express to administer to
my happiness, do, of themselves, confer that happiness; and
the measure will be complete, if my endeavors to fulfil my
duties in the several public stations to which I have been called,
i. This is one of the very first letters Jefferson wrote after his final
retirement from public office.
596
THOMAS jeFFSRSON
have obtained for me the approbation of my country. The part
which I have acted on the theatre of public life, has been before
them; and to their sentence I submit it; but the testimony of
my native county, of the individuals who have known me in
private life, to my conduct in its various duties and relations,
is the more grateful, as proceeding from eye witnesses and ob-
servers, from triers of the vicinage. Of you, then, my neigh-
bors, 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.
Your wishes for my happiness are received with just sensibility,
and I offer sincere prayers for your own welfare and prosperity.
TO JOHN WYCHE
Monticello, May IQ, 1809
SIR,— Your favor of March iQth came to hand but a
few days ago, and informs me of the establishment of the West-
ward Mill Library Society, of its general views and progress. I
always hear with pleasure of institutions for the promotion of
knowledge among my countrymen. The people of every coun-
try are the only safe guardians of their own rights, and are the
only instruments which can be used for their destruction. And
certainly they would never consent to be so used were they not
deceived. To avoid this, they should be instructed to a certain
degree. I have often thought that nothing would do more ex-
tensive good at small expense than the establishment of a small
circulating library in every county, to consist of a few well-
chosen books, to be lent to the people of the country, under
such regulations as would secure their safe return in due time.
These should be such as would give them a gen'eral view of
other history, and particular view of that of their own country,
a tolerable knowledge of Geography, the elements of Natural
Philosophy, of Agriculture and Mechanics. Should your ex-
597
L8TT8RS OF
ample lead to this, it will do great good. Having had more fa-
vorable opportunities than fall to every man's lot of becoming
acquainted with the best books on such subjects as might be
selected, I do not know that I can be otherwise useful to your
society than by offering them any information respecting these
which they might wish. My services in this way are freely at
their command, and I beg leave to tender to yourself my salu-
tations and assurances of respect.
TO DOCTOR B. S. BARTON *
Monticello, September 21, i8op
DEAR SIR,— I received last night your favor of the i4th,
and would with all possible pleasure have communicated to you
any part or the whole of the Indian vocabularies which I had
collected, but an irreparable misfortune has deprived me of
them. I have now been thirty years availing myself of every
possible opportunity of procuring Indian vocabularies to the
same set of words; my opportunities Were probably better than
will ever occur again to any person having the same desire. I
had collected about fifty, and had digested most of them in
collateral columns, and meant to have printed them the last
of my stay in Washington. But not having yet digested Cap-
tain Lewis' collection, nor having leisure then to do it, I put
it off till I should return home. The whole, as well digest as
originals, were packed in a trunk of stationery, and sent round
by water with about thirty other packages of my effects from
Washington, and while ascending James river, this package on
account of its weight and presumed precious contents, was
singled out and stolen. The thief being disappointed on open-
ing it, threw into the river all its contents, of which he thought
he could make no use. Among them were the whole of the
vocabularies. Some leaves floated ashore and were found in the
i. Benjamin Smith Barton, a nephew of David Rittenhouse the as-
tronomer, was a well-known physician and naturalist.
598
THOMAS JSFFSRSON
mud; but these were very few, and so defaced by th'e mud
and water that no general use can be made of them. On the
receipt of your letter I turned to them, and was very happy to
find, that the only morsel of an original vocabulary among
them, was Captain Lewis' of the Pani language, of which you
say you have not one word. I therefore enclose it to you as it
is, and a little fragment of some other, which I see is in his
handwriting, but no indication remains on it of what language
it is. It is a specimen of the condition of the little which was
recovered. I am the more concerned at this accident, as of the
two hundred and fifty words of my vocabularies, and the one
hundred and thirty words of the great Russian vocabularies of
the languages of the other quarters of the globe, seventy-three
were common to both, and would have furnished materials for
a comparison from which something might have resulted. Al-
though I believe no general use can ever be made of the wrecks
of my loss, yet I will ask the return of the Pani vocabulary
when you are done with it. Perhaps I may make another at-
tempt to collect, although I am too old to expect to make much
progress in it .....
TO REV. SAMUEL
Monticello, February 12, 1810
.... The boys of the rising generation are to be the
men of the next, and the sole guardians of the principles we
deliver over to them. That I have acted through life of those
on sincere republicanism I feel in every fibre of my constitu-
tion. And when men who feel like myself, bear witness in my
favor, my satisfaction is complete. . . . The times which
brought us within mutual observation were awfully trying.
But truth and reason are eternal. They have prevailed. And
they will eternally prevail, however in times and places they
i. Samuel Knox, a Scottish-born Presbyterian minister and educator,
at one time was considered for the professorship of languages and belles-
lettres at the proposed University of Virginia.
599
OF
may be overborne for a while by violence, military, civil, or
ecclesiastical. The preservation of the holy fire is confided to
us by the world, and the sparks which will emanate from it
will ever serve to rekindle it in other quarters of the globe,
numinibus secundis.1 ....
TO GENERAL THADDEUS KOSCIUSKO 2
Monticello, February 26, 1810
MY DEAR GENERAL AND FRIEND,— I have rarely written
to you; never but by safe conveyances; and avoiding every-
thing political, lest coming from one in the station I then held,
it might be imputed injuriously to our country, or perhaps even
excite jealousy of you. Hence my letters were necessarily dry.
Retired now from public concerns, totally unconnected with
them, and avoiding all curiosity about what is done or intended,
what I say is from myself only, the workings of my own mind,
imputable to nobody else.
The anxieties which I know you have felt, on being exposed
to the jostlings of a warring world, a country to which, in
early life, you devoted your sword and services when oppressed
by foreign dominion, were worthy of your philanthropy and
disinterested attachment to the freedom and happiness of man.
Although we have not made all the provisions which might be
necessary for a war in the field of Europe, yet we have not been
inattentive to such as would be necessary here. From the mo-
ment that the affair of the Chesapeake rendered the prospect of
war imminent, every faculty was exerted to be prepared for
it, and I think I may venture to solace you with the assurance,
that we are, in a good degree, prepared. Military stores for
many campaigns are on hand, all the necessary articles (sul-
phur excepted), and the art of preparing them among ourselves,
1. With the help of the gods.
2. Thaddeus Kosciusko, the Polish soldier and statesman who had
served the American forces during the Revolution, was, in most essen-
tials, a Jeffersonian democrat. He and Jefferson exchanged letters until
Kosciusko's death.
60O
THOMAS J6FF8RSON
abundantly; arms in our magazines for more men than will
ever be required in the field, and forty thousand new stand
yearly added, of our own fabrication, superior to any we have
ever seen from Europe; heavy artillery much beyond our need;
an increasing stock of field pieces, several foundries casting one
every other day each; a military school of about fifty students,
which has been in operation a dozen years; and the manu-
facture of men constantly going on, and adding forty thousand
young soldiers to our force every year that the war is deferred;
at all our seaport towns of the least consequence we have
erected works of defence, and assigned them gunboats, carrying
one or two heavy pieces, either eighteen, twenty-four, or thirty-
two pounders, sufficient in the smaller harbors to repel the
predatory attacks of privateers or single armed ships, and pro-
portioned in the larger harbors to such more serious attacks
as they may probably be exposed to. All these were nearly
completed, and their gunboats in readiness, when I retired from
the government. The works of New York and New Orleans
alone, being on a much larger scale, are not yet completed.
The former will be finished this summer, mounting four hun-
dred and thirty-eight guns, and, with the aid of from fifty to
one hundred gunboats, will be adequate to the resistance of any
fleet which will ever be trusted across the Atlantic. The works
for New Orleans are less advanced. These are our preparations.
They are very different from what you will be told by news-
papers, and travellers, even Americans. But it is not to them
the government communicates the public condition. Ask one
of them if he knows the exact state of any particular harbor,
and you will find probably that he does not know even that
of the one he comes from. You will ask, perhaps, where are the
proofs of these preparations for one who cannot go and see
them. I answer, in the acts of Congress, authorizing such prep-
arations, and in your knowledge of me, that, if authorized,
they would be executed.
Two measures have not been adopted, which I pressed on
Congress repeatedly at their meetings. The one, to settle the
601
LSTTSRS OF
whole ungranted territory of Orleans, by donations of land to
able-bodied young men, to be 'engaged and carried there at the
public expense, who would constitute a force always ready on
the spot to defend New Orleans. The other was, to class the
militia according to the years of their birth, and make all
those from twenty to twenty-five liable to be trained and called
into service at a moment's warning. This would have given us
a force of three hundred thousand young men, prepared by
proper training, for service in any part of the United States;
while those who had passed through that period would remain
at home, liable to be used in their own or adjacent States.
These two measures would have completed what I deemed
necessary for the entire security of our country. They would
have given me, on my retirement from the government of the
nation, the consolatory reflection, that having found, when I
was called to it, not a single seaport town in a condition to
repel a levy of contribution by a single privateer or pirate, I
had left every harbor so prepared by works and gunboats, as
to be in a reasonable state of security against any probable
attack; the territory of Orleans acquired, and planted with an
internal force sufficient for its protection; and the whole ter-
ritory of the United States organized by such a classification
of its male force, as would give it the benefit of all its young
population for active service, and that of a middle and ad-
vanced age for stationary defence. But these measures will, I
hope, be completed by my successor, who, to the purest prin-
ciples of republican patriotism, adds a wisdom and foresight
second to no man on earth.
So much as to my country. Now a word as to myself. I am
retired to Monticello, where, in the bosom of my family, and
surrounded by my books, I enjoy a repose to which I have been
long a stranger. My mornings are devoted to correspondence.
From breakfast to dinner, I am in my shops, my garden, or on
horseback among my farms; from dinner to dark, I give to
society and recreation with my neighbors and friends; and
from candle light to early bed-tim'e, I read. My health is per-
602
THOMAS JSFFSRSON
feet; and my strength considerably reinforced by the activity
of the course I pursue; perhaps it is as great as usually falls
to the lot of near sixty-seven years of age. I talk of ploughs
and harrows, of seeding and harvesting, with my neighbors,
and of politics too, if they choose, with as little reserve as the
rest of my fellow citizens, and feel, at length, the blessing of
being free to say and do what I please, without being re-
sponsible for it to any mortal. A part of my occupation, and
by no means the least pleasing, is the direction of the studies
of such young men as ask it. They place themselves in the
Neighboring village, and have the use of my library and coun-
sel, and make a part of my society. In advising the course of
their reading, I endeavor to keep their attention fixed on the
main objects of all science, the freedom and happin'ess of man.
So that coming to bear a share in the councils and govern-
ment of their country, they will keep ever in view the sole
objects of all legitimate government
TO GOVERNOR JOHN LANGDON *
MonticdlOy March 5, 1810
.... The practice of Kings marrying only in the
families of Kings, has been that of Europe for some centuries.
Now, take any race of animals, confine them in idleness and
inaction, whether in a stye, a stable or a state-room, pamper
them with high diet, gratify all their sexual appetites, immerse
them in sensualities, nourish their passions, let everything bend
before them, and banish whatever might lead them to think,
and in a few generations they become all body and no mind;
and this, too, by a law of nature, by that very law by which
we are in the constant practice of changing the characters and
propensities of the animals we raise for our own purposes.
Such is the regimen in raising Kings, and in this way they
have gone on for centuries. While in Europe, I often amused
i. Governor of New Hampshire.
603
OF
myself with contemplating the characters of the then reigning
sovereigns of Europe. Louis the XVI. was a fool, of my own
knowledge, and in despite of the answers made for him at his
trial. The King of Spain was a fool, and of Naples the same.
They passed their lives in hunting, and despatched two couriers
a week, one thousand miles, to let each other know what game
they had killed the preceding days. The King of Sardinia was
a fool. All these were Bourbons. The Queen of Portugal, a
Braganza, was an idiot by nature. And so was the King of
Denmark. Their sons, as regents, exercised the powers of gov-
ernment. The King of Prussia, successor to the great Frederick,
was a mere hog in body as well as in mind. Gustavus of Sweden,
and Joseph of Austria, were really crazy, and George of Eng-
land, you know, was in a straight waistcoat. There remained,
then, non'e but old Catharine, who had been too lately picked
up to have lost her common sense. In this state Bonaparte
found Europe; and it was this state of its rulers which lost it
with scarce a struggle. These animals had become without mind
and powerless; and so will every hereditary monarch be after
a few generations. Alexander, the grandson of Catharine, is as
yet an exception. He is able to hold his own. But he is only of
the third generation. His race is not yet worn out. And so
endeth the book of Kings, from all of whom the Lord deliver us,
and have you, my friend, and all such good men and true, in
His holy keeping.
TO GOVERNOR JOHN TYLER
Monticello, May 26, 1810
.... I have indeed two great measures at heart, with-
out which no republic can maintain itself in strength, i. That
of general education, to enable every man to judge for himself
what will secure or endanger his freedom. 2. To divide every
county into hundreds, of such size that all the children of each
will be within reach of a central school in it. But this division
looks to many other fundamental provisions. Every hundred,
604
THOMAS J&FF8RSON
besides a school, should have a justice of the peace, a constable
and a captain of militia. These officers, or some others within
the hundred, should be a corporation to manage all its con-
cerns, to take care of its roads, its poor, and its police by
patrols, etc. (as the selectmen! of the eastern townships).
Every hundred should elect one or two jurors to serve where
requisite, and all other elections should be made in the hun-
dreds separately, and the votes of all the hundreds be brought
together. Our present captaincies might be declared hundreds
for the present, with a power to the courts to alter them
occasionally. These little republics would be the main strength
of the great one. We owe to them the vigor given to our revo-
lution in its commencement in the Eastern States, and by them
the Eastern States were enabled to repeal the embargo in
opposition to the Middle, Southern and Western States, and
their large and lubberly division into counties which can never
be assembled. General orders are given out from a centre to the
foreman of every hundred, as to the sergeants of an army, and
the whole nation is thrown into energetic action, in the same
direction in one instant and as one man, and becomes ab-
solutely irresistible. Could I once see this I should consider
it as the dawn of the salvation of the republic, and say with
old Simeon, "mine dimittis Domine." But our children will
be as wise as we are, ana will establish in the fullness of time
those things not yet ripe for establishment. So be it, and to
yourself health, happiness and long life.
TO COLONEL WILLIAM DUANE x
Monticcllo, August 12, 1810
.... Our laws, language, religion, politics and manners
are so deeply laid in English foundations, that we shall never
i. William Duanc, journalist and politician, was an acquaintance of
Jefferson of many years standing. As editor of the Aurora, the most power-
ful mouthpiece of the Jeffersonians, he had exerted considerable influence
during the formative years of the Union.
605
OF
cease to consider their history as a part of ours, and to study
ours in that as its origin. Every one knows that judicious
matter and charms of style have rendered Hume s history the
manual of every student. I remember well the enthusiasm with
which I devoured it when young, and the length of time, the
research and reflection which were necessary to eradicate the
poison it had instilled into my mind. It was unfortunate that
he first took up the history of the Stuarts, became their apolo-
gist, and advocated all their enormities. To support his work,
when done, he went back to the Tudcrs, and so selected and
arranged the materials of their history as to present their
arbitrary acts only, as the genuine samples of the constitutional
power of the crown, and, still writing backwards, he then re-
verted to the early history, and wrote the Saxon and Norman
periods with the same perverted view. Although all this is
known, he still continues to be put into the hands of all our
young people, and to infect them with the poison of his own
principles of government. It is this book which has undermined
the fre'e principles of the English government, has persuaded
readers of all classes that these were usurpations on the legiti-
mate and salutary rights of the crown, and has spread universal
toryism over the land. And the book will still continue to be
read here as well as there. , , . .
TO J. B. COLVIN J
Monticello, September 20, 1810
.... A strict observance of the written laws is doubtless
one of the high duties of a good citizen, but it is not the highest.
The laws of necessity, of self-preservation, of saving our coun-
try when in danger, are of higher obligation. To lose our
country by a scrupulous adherence to written law, would be to
lose the law itself, with life, liberty, property and all thcs'e
i. John Colvin was the editor of the Republican Advocate in Frederick-
town, Maryland.
606
THOMAS JSFFSRSON
who are enjoying them with us; thus absurdly sacrificing the
end to the means. When, in the battle of Germantown, General
Washington's army was annoyed from Chew's house, he did
not hesitate to plant his cannon against it, although the prop-
erty of a citizen. When he besieged Yorktown, he leveled the
suburbs, feeling that the laws of property must be postponed
to the safety of the nation. While the army was before York,
the Governor of Virginia took horses, carriages, provisions and
even men by force, to enable that army to stay together till
it could master the public enemy; and he was justified. A ship
at sea in distress for provisions, meets another having abun-
dance, yet refusing a supply; the law of self-preservation
authorizes the distressed to take a supply by force. In all these
cases, the unwritten laws of necessity, of self-preservation, and
of the public safety, control the written laws of meum and
tuum. . . . ,
TO DR. BENJAMIN RUSH
Monticello, January 16, 1811
.... My present course of life admits less reading than
I wish. From breakfast, or noon at latest, to dinner, I am
mostly on horseback, attending to my farm or other concerns,
which I find healthful to my body, mind and affairs; and the
few hours I can pass in my cabinet, are devoured by corre-
spondences; not those with my intimate friends, with whom 1
delight to interchange sentiments, but with others, who, writing
to me on concerns of their own in which I have had an
agency, or from motives of mere respect and approbation, are
entitled to be answered with respect and a return of good will.
My hope is that this obstacle to the delights of retirement,
will wear away with the oblivion which follows that, and that
I may at length be indulged in those studious pursuits, from
which nothing but revolutionary duties would ever have called
me.
607
OF
I shall receive your proposed publication and read it with
the pleasure which everything gives me from your pen. Al-
though much of a sceptic in the practice of medicine, I read
with pleasure its ingenious theories.
I receive with sensibility your observations on the discon-
tinuance of friendly correspondence between Mr. Adams and
myself, and the concern you take in its restoration. This dis-
continuance has not proceeded from me, nor from the want of
sincere desire and of effort on my part, to renew our inter-
course. You know the perfect coincidence of principle and of
action, in the fearly part of the Revolution, which produced a
high degree of mutual respect and esteem between Mr. Adams
and myself. Certainly no man was ever truer than he was, in
that day, to those principles of rational republicanism which,
after the necessity of throwing off our monarchy, dictated all
our efforts in the establishment of a new government. And al-
though he swerved, afterwards, towards the principles of the
English constitution, our friendship did not abate on that ac-
count. While he was Vice-President, and I Secretary of State,
I received a letter from President Washington, then at Mount
Vernon, desiring me to call together the Heads of departments,
and to invite Mr. Adams to join us (which, by-the-bye, was the
only instance of that being done) in order to determine on
some measure which required despatch; and he desired me to
act on it, as decided, without again recurring to him. I invited
them to dine with me, and after dinner, sitting at our wine,
having settled our question, other conversation came on, in
which a collision of opinion arose between Mr. Adams and
Colonel Hamilton, on the merits of the British constitution,
Mr. Adams giving it as his opinion, that, if some of its defects
and abuses were corrected, it would be the most perfect con-
stitution of government 'ever devised by man. Hamilton, on the
contrary, asserted, that with its existing vices, it was the most
perfect model of government that could be formed; and that
the correction of its vices would render it an impracticable
government. And this you may be assured was the real line of
608
THOMAS JEFFERSON
difference between the political principles of these two gentle-
men. Another incident took place on the same occasion, which
will further delineate Mr. Hamilton's political principles. The
room being hung around with a collection of the portraits of
remarkable men, among them were those of Bacon, Newton
and Locke, Hamilton asked me who they were. I told him they
wei"e my trinity of the three greatest men the world had ever
produced, naming them. He paused for some time: "the great-
est man," said he, "that ever lived, was Julius Caesar." Mr.
Adams was honest as a politician, as well as a man; Hamilton
honest as a man, but, as a politician, believing in the necessity
of either force or corruption to govern men.
You remember the machinery which the federalists played
off, about that time, to beat down the friends to the real prin-
ciples of our Constitution, to silence by terror every expression
in their favor, to bring us into war with France and alliance
with England, and finally to homologize our Constitution with
that of England. Mr. Adams, you know, was overwhelmed with
feverish addresses, dictated by the fear, and often by the pen,
of the bloody buoy, and was seduced by them into some open
indications of his new principles of government, and in fact,
was so elated as to mix with his kindness a little supercilious-
ness towards me. Even Mrs. Adams, with all her good sense
and prudence, was sensibly flushed. And you recollect the
short suspension of our intercourse, and the circumstance which
gave rise to it, which you were so good as to bring to an
early explanation, and have set to rights, to the cordial satis-
faction of us all. The nation at length passed condemnation
on the political principles of the federalists, by refusing to
continue Mr. Adams in the Presidency. On the day on which
we learned in Philadelphia the vote of the city of New York,
which it was well known would decide the vote of the State,
and that, again, the vote of the Union, I called on Mr. Adams
on some official business. He was very sensibly affected, and
accosted me with these words: "Well, I understand that you
are to beat me in this contest, and I will only say that I will
609
OF
be as faithful a subject as any you will have." "Mr. Adams/'
said I, "this is no personal contest between you and me. Two
systems of principles on the subject of government divide
our fellow citizens into two parties. With one of these you
concur, and I with the other. As we have been longer on the
public stage than most of those now living, our names happen
to be more generally known. One of these parties, therefore,
has put your name at its head, the other mine. Were we both
to die to-day, to-morrow two other nam'es would be in the
place of ours, without any change in the motion of the ma-
chinery. Its motion is from its principle, not from you or
myself." "I believe you are right," said he, "that we are but
passive instruments, and should not suffer this matter to
affect our personal dispositions." But he did not long retain this
just view of the subject. I have always believed that the thou-
sand calumnies which the federalists, in bitterness of heart, and
mortification at their ejection, daily invented against me, were
carried to him by their busy intriguers, and made some im-
pression. When the election between Burr and myself was kept
in suspense by the federalists, and they were meditating to
place the President of the Senate at the head of the govern-
ment, I called on Mr. Adams with a view to have this desperate
measure prevented by his negative. He grew warm in an in-
stant, and said with a vehemence he had not used towards
me before, "Sir, the event of the election is within your own
power. You have only to say you will do justice to the public
creditors, maintain the navy, and not disturb those holding
offices, and the government will instantly be put into your
hands. We know it is the wish of the people it should be so."
"Mr. Adams," said I, "I know not what part of my conduct,
in either public or private life, can have authorized a doubt of
my fidelity to the public engagements. I say, however, I will
not come into the government by capitulation. I will not enter
on it, but in perfect freedom to follow the dictates of my own
judgment." I had before given the same answer to the same
intimation from Gouverneur Morris. "Then," said he, "things
610
THOMAS JSFFSRSON
must take their course." I turn'ed the conversation to some*
thing else, and soon took my leave. It was the first time in our
lives we had ever parted with anything like dissatisfaction. And
then followed those scenes of midnight appointment, which
have been condemned by all men. The last day of his political
power, the last hours, and even beyond the midnight, were em-
ployed in filling all offices, and especially permanent ones, with
the bitterest federalists, and providing for me the alternative,
either to execute the government by my enemies, whose study
it would be to thwart and defeat all my measures, or to incur
the odium of such numerous removals from office, as might
bear me down. A little time and reflection effaced in my mind
this temporary dissatisfaction with Mr. Adams, and restored
me to that just estimate of his virtues and passions, which a
long acquaintance had enabled me to fix. And my first wish be-
came that of making his retirement easy by any means in my
power; for it was understood he was not rich. I suggested to
some republican members of the delegation from his State, the
giving him, either directly or indirectly, an office, the most
lucrative in that State, and then offered to be resigned, if they
thought he would not deem it affrontive. They were of opinion
he would take great offence at the offer; and moreover, that
the body of republicans would consider such a step in the outset
as auguring very ill of the course I meant to pursue. I dropped
the idea, therefore, but did not cease to wish for some oppor-
tunity of renewing our friendly understanding.
Two or three years after, having had the misfortune to lose
a daughter, between whom and Mrs. Adams there had been a
considerable attachment, she made it the occasion of writing
me a letter, in which, with the tenderest expressions of concern
at this event, she carefully avoided a single one of friendship
towards myself, and even concluded it with the wishes "of her
who once took pleasure in subscribing herself your friend,
Abigail Adams." Unpromising as was the complexion of this
letter, I determined to make an effort towards removing the
cloud from between us. This brought on a correspondence
611
OF
which I now enclose for your perusal, after which be so good
as to return it to me, as I have never communicated it to any
mortal breathing, before. I send it to you, to convince you I
have not been wanting either in the desire, or the endeavor
to remove this misunderstanding. Indeed, I thought it highly
disgraceful to us both, as indicating minds not sufficiently
elevated to prevent a public competition from affecting our
personal friendship. I soon found from the correspondence that
conciliation was desperate, and yielding to an intimation in her
last letter, I ceased from further explanation. I have the same
good opinion of Mr. Adams which I 'ever had. I know him to be
an honest man, an able one with his pen, and he was a powerful
advocate on the floor of Congress. He has been alienated from
me, by belief in the lying suggestions contrived for electioneer-
ing purposes, that I perhaps mixed in the activity and intrigues
of the occasion. My most intimate friends can testify that I was
perfectly passive. They would sometimes, indeed, tell me what
was going on; but no man ever heard me take part in such
conversations; and none ever misrepresented Mr. Adams in
my presence, without my asserting his just character. With
very confidential persons I have doubtless disapproved of the
principles and practices of his administration. This was un-
avoidable. But never with those with whom it could do him
any injury. Decency would have required this conduct from me,
if disposition had not; and I am satisfied Mr. Adams' conduct
was equally honorable towards me. But I think it part of his
character to suspect foul play in those of whom he is jealous,
and not easily to relinquish his suspicions.
I have gone, my dear friend, into these details, that you
might know everything which had passed between us, might be
fully possessed of the state of facts and dispositions, and judge
for yourself whether they admit a revival of that friendly
intercourse for which you are so kindly solicitous. I shall cer-
tainly not be wanting in anything on my part which may
second your efforts, which will be the easier with me, inasmuch
as I do not entertain a sentiment of Mr. Adams, the expression
612
THOMAS J8FF6RSON
of which could give him reasonable offence. And I submit the
whole to yourself, with the assurance, that whatever be the
issue, my friendship and respect for yourself will remain
unaltered and unalterable.
TO COLONEL WILLIAM DUANE
Monticello, March 28, 1811
.... The last hope of human liberty in this world rests
on us. We ought, for so dear a state, to sacrifice every attach-
ment and every enmity. Leave the President free to choose his
own coadjutors, to pursue his own measures, and support him
and them, even if we think we are wiser than they, honester
than they are, or possessing more enlarged information of the
state of things. If we move in mass, be it ever so circuitously,
we shall attain our object; but if we break into squads, every
one pursuing the path he thinks most direct, we become an
easy conquest to those who can now barely hold us in check,
I repeat again, that we ought not to schismatize on either men
or measures. Principles alone can justify that. If we find our
government in all its branches rushing headlong, like our pred-
ecessors, into the arms of monarchy, if we find them violating
our dearest rights, the trial by jury, the freedom of the press,
the freedom of opinion, civil or religious, or opening on our
peace of mind or personal safety the sluices of terrorism, if we
see them raising standing armies, when the absence of all other
danger points to these as the sole objects on which they are to
be employed, then indeed let us withdraw and call the nation
to its tents. But while our functionaries are wise, and honest,
and vigilant, let us move compactly under their guidance, and
we have nothing to fear. Things may here and there go a little
wrong. It is not in their power to prevent it. But all will be
right in the end, though not perhaps by the shortest means.
613
LBTTSRS OF
TO DR. BENJAMIN RUSH
Poplar Forest, August 17, 1811
DEAR SIR,— I write to you from a place ninety miles
from Monticello, near the New London of this State, which I
visit three or four times a year, and stay from a fortnight to a
month at a time. I have fixed myself comfortably, keep some
books here, bring others occasionally, am in the solitude ot a
hermit, and quite at leisure to attend to my absent friends. I
note this to show that I am not in a situation to examine the
dates of our letters, whether I have overgone the annual pe-
riod of asking how you do? I know that within that time I
have received one or more letters from you, accompanied by a
volume of your introductory lectures, for which accept my
thanks. I have read them with pleasure and edification, for I
acknowledge facts in medicine as far as they go, distrusting
only their extension by theory. Having to conduct my grandson
through his course of mathematics, I have resumed that study
with great avidity. It was ever my favorite one. We have no
theories there, no uncertainties remain on the mind; all is
demonstration and satisfaction. I have forgotten much, and
recover it with more difficulty than when in the vigor of my
mind I originally acquired it. It is wonderful to me that old
men should not be sensible that their minds keep pace with
their bodies in the progress of decay. Our old revolutionary
friend Clinton, for example, who was a hero, but never a man
of mind, is wonderfully jealous on this head. He tells eternally
the stories of his younger days to prove his memory, as if
memory and reason were the same faculty. Nothing betrays
imbecility so much as the being insensible of it. Had not a
conviction of the danger to which an unlimited occupation of
the Executive chair would expose the republican constitution of
our government, made it conscientiously a duty to retire when
I did, the fear of becoming a dotard and of being insensible of
it, would of itself have resisted all solicitations to remain. I
have had a long attack of rheumatism, without fever and with-
614
THOMAS JEFFERSON
out pain while I keep myself still. A total prostration of the
muscles of the back, hips and thighs, deprived me of the power
of walking, and leaves it still in a very impaired state. A pain
when I walk, seems to have fixed itself in the hip, and to
threaten permanence. I take moderate rides, without much
fatigue; but my journey to this place, in a hard-going gig, gave
me great sufferings which I expect will be renewed on my
return as soon as I am able. The loss of the power of taking
exercise would be a sore affliction to me. It has been the delight
of my retirement to be in constant bodily activity, looking after
my affairs, if was never damped as the pleasures of reading
are, by the question of cui bono? for what object? I hope your
health of body continues firm. Your works show that of your
mind. The habits of exercise which your calling has given to
both, will tend long to preserve them. The sedentary character
of my public occupations sapped a constitution naturally sound
and vigorous, and draws it to an earlier close. But it will still
last quite as long as I wish it. There is a fulness of time when
men should go, and not occupy too long the ground to which
others have a right to advance. We must continue while here
to exchange occasionally our mutual good wishes. I find friend-
ship to be like wine, raw when new, ripened with age, the true
old man's milk and restorative cordial. God bless you and
preserve you through a long and healthy old age.
TO JOHN ADAMS
Monticcllo, January 21 , 1812
DEAR SIR,— I thank you beforehand (for they are not
yet arrived) for the specimens of homespun you have been so
kind as to forward me by post. I doubt not their excellence,
knowing how far you are advanced in these things in your
quarter. Here we do little in the fine way, but in coarse and
middling goods a great deal. Every family in the country is a
manufactory within itself, and is very generally able to make
within itself all the stouter and middling stuffs for its own
6iS
OF
clothing and household use. We consider a sheep for every
person in the family as sufficient to clothe it, in addition to
the cotton, hemp and flax which we raise ourselves. For fine
stuff we shall depend on your northern manufactories. Of these,
that is to say, of company establishments, we have none. We
use little machinery. The spinning jen^y, and loom with the
flying shuttle, can be managed in a family; but nothing more
complicated. The economy and thriftiness resulting from our
household manufactures are such that they will never again
be laid aside; and nothing more salutary for us has ever
happened than the British obstructions to our*demands for
their manufactures. Restore free intercourse when they will,
their commerce with us will have totally changed its form, and
the articles we shall in future want from them will not exceed
their own consumption of our produce.
A letter from you 1 calls up recollections very dear to my
mind. It carries me back to the times when, beset with diffi-
culties and dangers, we were fellow laborers in the same cause,
struggling for what is most valuable to man, his right of self-
government. Laboring always at the same oar, with some
wave ever ahead, threatening to overwhelm us, and yet passing
harmless under our bark, we knew not how we rode through
the storm with heart and hand, and made a happy port. Still
we did not expect to be without rubs and difficulties; and we
have had them. First, the detention of the western posts, then
the coalition of Pilnitz, outlawing our commerce with France,
and the British enforcement of the outlawry. In your day,
French depredations; in mine, English, and the Berlin and
Milan decrees; now, the English orders of council, and the
piracies they authorize. When these shall be over, it will be
the impressment of our seamen or something else; and so we
have gone on, and so we shall go on, puzzled and prospering
beyond example in the history of man. And I do believe we
i. Through Benjamin Rush, the friendship between Jefferson and Ad-
ams, interrupted because of political misunderstandings, was renewed, and
even stronger until the day of their deaths.
THOMAS JBFFSRSON
shall continue to growl, to multiply and prosper until we
exhibit an association, powerful, wise and happy, beyond what
has yet been seen by men. As for France and England, with all
their preeminence in science, the one is a den of robbers, and
the other of pirates. And if science produces no better fruits
than tyranny, murder, rapine and destitution of national moral-
ity, I would rather wish our country to be ignorant, honest and
estimable, as our neighboring savages are. But whither is senile
garrulity leading me? Into politics, of which I have taken final
leave. I think little of them and say less. I have given up news-
papers in exchange for Tacitus and Thucydides, for Newton
and Euclid, and I find myself much the happier. Sometimes^
indeed, I look back to former occurrences, in remembrance of
our old friends and fellow laborers, who have fallen before us.
Of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, I see now
living not more than half a dozen on your side of the Potomac,
and on this side, myself alone. You and I have been wonder-
fully spared, and myself with remarkable health, and a con
siderable activity of body and mind. I am on horseback three
or four hours of every day; visit three or four times a year a
possession I have ninety miles distant, performing the winter
journey on horseback. I walk little, however, a single mile being
too much for me, and I live in the midst of my grandchildren,
one of whom has lately promoted me to be a great-grandfather.
I have heard with pleasure that you also retain good health,
and a greater power of exercise in walking than I do. But I
would rather have heard this from yourself, and that, writing a
letter like mine, full of egotisms, and of details of your healthv
your habits, occupations and enjoyments, I should have the
pleasure of knowing that in the race of life, you do not keep,
in its physical decline, the same distance ahead of me which
you have done in political honors and achievements. No circum-
stances have lessened the interest I feel in these particulars
respecting yourself; none have suspended for one moment my
sincere esteem for you, and I now salute you with unchanged
affection and respect.
617
OF
TO F. A. VAN DER KEMP 1
Monticello, March 22, 1812
. . . . The only orthodox object of the institution of
government is to secure the greatest degree of happiness possible
to the general mass of those associated under it. The events
which this work proposes to embrace will establish the fact that
unless the mass retains sufficient control over those intrusted
with the powers of their government, these will be perverted
to their own oppression, and to the perpetuation of wealth and
power in the individuals and their families selected for the
trust. Whether our Constitution has hit on the exact degree
of control necessary, is yet under experiment; and it is a most
encouraging reflection that distance and other difficulties secur-
ing us against the brigand governments of Europe, in the safe
enjoyment of our farms and firesides, the experiment stands a
better chance of being satisfactorily made here than on any
occasion yet presented by history. To promote, therefore,
unanimity and perseverance in this great enterprise, to disdain
despair, encourage trial, and nourish hope, and the worthiest
objects of every political and philanthropic work; and that this
would be the necessary result of that which you have de-
lineated, the facts it will review, and the just reflections arising
out of them, will sufficiently answer. I hope, therefore, that it
is not in petto merely, but already completed; and that my
fellow citizens, warned in it of the rocks and shoals on which
other political associations have been wrecked, will be able
to direct theirs with a better knowledge of the dangers in
its way
i. Van der Kemp was a Dutch minister, writer and exiled patriot who
t>ecame a naturalized American citizen. Intellectual confidant of Jefferson
and Adams, he wrote a pamphlet on Jefferson's theory of natural history.
618
THOMAS JEFFERSON
TO JAMES MAURY'
Monticello, April 25, 1812
.... Our two countries are to be at war, but not you and
I. And why should our two countries be at war, when by peace
we can be so much more useful to one another? Surely the
world will acquit our government from having sought it. Never
before has there been an instance of a nation's bearing so much
as we have borne. Two items alone in our catalogue of wrongs
will forever acquit us of being the aggressors: the impressment
of our seamen, and the excluding us from the ocean. The first,
foundations of the social compact would be broken up, were
we definitively to refuse to its members the protection of their
persons and property, while in their lawful pursuits. I think
the war will not be short, because the object of England, long
obvious, is to claim the ocean as her domain, and to exact
transit duties from every vessel traversing it. This is the sum
of her orders of council, which were only a step in this bold
experiment, never meant to be retracted if it could be per-
manently maintained. And this object must continue her in war
with all the v/orld. To this I see no termination, until her
exaggerated efforts, so much beyond her natural strength and
resources, shall have exhausted her to bankruptcy. The ap-
proach of this crisis is, I think, visible in the departure of her
precious metals, and depreciation of her paper medium. We,
who have gone through that operation, know its symptoms, it:
course, and consequences. In England they will be more serious
than elsewhere, because half the wealth of her people is now in
that medium, the private revenue of her money-holders, or
rather of her paper-holders, being, I believe, greater than
that of her land-holders. Such a proportion of property, imag-
inary and baseless as it is, cannot be reduced to vapor but
with great explosion. She will rise out of its ruins, however,
because her lands, her houses, her arts will remain, and the
i. James Maury, an old schoolmate of Jefferson, had been, for years, a
citizen of England.
619
OF
greater part of her men. And these will give her again that
place among nations which is proportioned to her natural
means, and which we all wish her to hold. We believe that the
just standing of all nations is the health and security of all,
We consider the overwhelming power of England on the ocean,
and of France on the land, as destructive of the prosperity and
happiness of the world, and wish both to be reduced only to
the necessity of observing moral duties. We believe no more in
Bonaparte's fighting merely for the liberty of the seas, than in
Great Britain's fighting for the liberties of mankind. The object
of both is the same, to draw to themselves the power, the
wealth and the resources of other nations. We resist the enter-
prises of England first, because they first com'e vitally home to
us. And our feelings repel the logic of bearing the lash of
George the III. for fear of that of Bonaparte at some future
day. When the wrongs of France shall reach us with equal
effect, we shall resist them also. But one at a time is enough;
and having offered a choice to the champions, England first
takes up the gauntlet.
The English newspapers suppos'e me the personal enemy of
their nation. I am not so. I am an enemy to its injuries, as I
am to those of France. If I could permit myself to have na-
tional partialities, and if the conduct of England would have
permitted them to be directed towards her, they would have
been so. , , , ,
TO JOHN MELISH 1
Monticello, January 13, 1813
.... I had no conception that manufactures had made
such progress there [the Western States] , and particularly of the
number of carding and spinning machines dispersed through the
i. John Melish, Scottish geographer, traveler, and merchant, had lived
jiany years in the United States. His Travels in the United States of
America . . . , presented a very favorable picture of life in this country.
620
THOMAS
whole country. We are but beginning here to have them in our
private families. Small spinning jennies of from half a dozen
to twenty spindles, will soon, however, make their way into the
humblest cottages, as well as the richest houses; and nothing
is more certain, than that the coarse and middling clothing
for our families, will forever hereafter continue to be made
within ourselves. T have hitherto myself depended entirely on
foreign manufactures; but I have now thirty-five spindles
agoing, a hand carding machine, and looms with the fiying
shuttle, for the supply of my own farms, which will never be
relinquished in my time. The continuance of the war will fix
the habit generally, and out of the evils of impressment and of
the orders of council a great blessing for us will grow. I have-
not formerly been an advocate for great manufactories. 1
doubted whether our labor, employed in agriculture, and aided
by the spontaneous energies of the earth, would not procure
us more than we could make ourselves of other necessaries. But
other considerations 'entering into the question, have settled my
doubts.
The candor with which you have viewed the manners and
condition of our citizens, is so unlike the narrow prejudices of
the French and English travellers preceding you, who, consid-
ering each the manners and habits of their own people as the
only orthodox, have viewed everything differing from that test
as boorish and barbarous, that your work will be read here
extensively, and operate great good.
Amidst this mass of approbation which is given to every
other part of the work, there is a single sentiment which I
cannot help wishing to bring to what I think the correct one;
and, on a point so interesting, I value your opinion too highly
not to ambition its concurrence with my own. Stating in volume
one, page sixty-three, the principle of difference between the
two great political parties here, you conclude it to be, "whether
the controlling power shall be vested in this or that set of men."
That each party endeavors to get into the administration of
the government, and exclude the other from power, is true, and
621
OF
nay be stated as a motive of action: but this is only secondary;
the primary motive being a real and radical difference of politi-
cal principle. I sincerely wish our differences were but person-
ally who should govern, and that the principles of our constitu-
tion were those of both parties. Unfortunately, it is otherwise;
and the question of preference between monarchy and republi-
canism, which has so long divided mankind elsewhere, threat-
ens a permanent division here.
Among that section of our citizens called federalists, there
are three shades of opinion. Distinguishing between the leaders
and people who compose it, the leaders consider the English
constitution as a model of perfection, some, with a correction
of its vices, others, with all its corruptions and abuses. This
last was Alexander Hamilton's opinion, which others, as well
as myself, have often heard him declare, and that a correction
of what are called its vices, would render the English an im-
practicable government. This government they wished to have
established here, and only accepted and held fast, at first, to
the present constitution, as a steppingstone to the final estab-
lishment of their favorite model. This party has therefore
always clung to England as their prototype, and great auxiliary
in promoting and effecting this change. A weighty MINORITY,
however, of these leaders, considering the voluntary conversion
of our government into a monarchy as too distant, if not des-
perate, wish to break off from our Union its eastern fragment,
as being, in truth, the hot-bed of American monarchism, with a
view to a commencement of their favorite government, from
whence the other States may gangrene by degrees, and the
whole be thus brought finally to the desired point. For Massa-
chusetts, the prime mover in this enterprise, is the last State
in the Union to mean a final separation, as being of all the
most dependent on the others. Not raising bread for the sus-
tenance of her own inhabitants, not having a stick of timber
for the construction of vessel?, her principal occupation, nor an
article to export in them, where would she be, excluded from
the ports of the other States, and thrown into dependence on
THOMAS JSFFSRSON
England, her direct, and natural, but now insidious rival? At
the head of this MINORITY is what is called the Essex Junto of
Massachusetts. But the MAJORITY of these leaders do not aim
at separation. In this, they adhere to the known principle of
General Hamilton, never, under any views, to break the Union.
Anglomany, monarchy, and separation, then, are the principles
of the Essex federalists. Anglomany and monarchy, those of the
Hamiltonians, and Anglomany alone, that of the portion among
the people who call themselves federalists. These last are as
good republicans as the brethren whom they oppose, and differ
from them only in their devotion to England and hatred of
France which they have imbibed from their leaders. The mo-
ment that these leaders should avowedly propose a separation
of the Union, or the establishment of regal government, their
popular adherents would quit them to a man, and join the
republican standard; and the partisans of this change, even in
Massachusetts, would thus find themselves an army of officers
without a soldier.
The party called republican is steadily for the support of
the present constitution. They obtained at its commencement,
all the amendments to it they desired. These reconciled them
to it perfectly, and if they have any ulterior view, it is only,
perhaps, to popularize it further, by shortening the Senatorial
term, and devising a process for the responsibility of judges,
more practicable than that of impeachment. They esteem the
people of England and France equally, and equally detest the
governing powers of both.
This I verily believe, after an intimacy of forty years with
the public councils and characters, is a true statement of the
grounds on which they are at present divided, and that it is
not merely an ambition for power. An honest man can feel no
pleasure in the exercise of power over his fellow citizens. And
considering as the only offices of power those conferred by the
people directly, that is to say, the executive and legislative
functions of the General and State governments, the common
refusal of these, and multiplied resignations, are proofs suffi-
623
OF
cient that power is not alluring to pure minds, and is not, with
them, the primary principle of contest. This is my belief of it;
it is that on which I have acted; and had it been a mere con-
test who should be permitted to administer the government
according to its genuine republican principles, there has never
been a moment of my life in which I should have relinquished
for it the enjoyments of my family, my farm, my friends and
books.
You expected to discover the difference of our party prin-
ciples in General Washington's valedictory, and my inaugural
address. Not at all. General Washington did not harbor one
principle of federalism. He was neither an Angloman, a mon-
archist, nor a separatist. He sincerely wished the people to
have as much self-governm'ent as they were competent to
exercise themselves. The only point on which he and I ever
differed in opinion, was, that I had more confidence than he
had in the natural integrity and discretion of the people, and
in the safety and extent to which they might trust themselves
with a control over their government. He has asseverated to
me a thousand times his determination that the existing gov-
ernment should have a fair trial, and that in support of it he
would spend the last drop of his blood. He did this the more
repeatedly, because he knew General Hamilton's political bias,
and my apprehensions from it. It is a mere calumny, therefore,
in the monarchists, to associate General Washington with their
principles. But that may have happened in this case which
has been often seen in ordinary cases, that, by oft repeating
an untruth, men come to believe it themselves. It is a mere
artifice in this party to bolster themselves up on the revered
name of that first of our worthies. If I have dwelt longer on this
subject than was necessary, it proves the estimation in which
I hold your ultimate opinions, and my desire of placing the
subject truly before them. In so doing, I am certain I risk no
use of the communication which may draw me into contention
before the public. Tranquillity is the summum bonum of a
Septagenaire. . . . .
624
rnOMAS J8FF8RSON
TO COLONEL WILLIAM DUANE
Monticello, January 22, 1813
DEAR SIR,— I do not know how the publication of the
Review turned out in point of profit, whether gainfully or not.
1 know it ought to have been a book of great sale. I gave a copy
to a student of William and Mary college, and recommended it
to Bishop Madison, then President of the college, who was so
pleased with it that he established it as a school-book, and as
the young gentleman informed me, every copy which could
be had was immediately bought up, and there was a consider-
able demand for more. You probably know best whether new
calls for it have been made. President Madison was a good
whig. . . . Your experiment on that work will enable you to
decide whether you ought to undertake another, not of greater
but of equal merit. I have received from France a MS. work
on Political Economy, written by De Tutt Tracy, the most
conspicuous writer of the present day in the metaphysical line.
He has written a work entitled Ideology, which has given him
a high reputation in France. He considers that as having laid
a solid foundation for the present volume on PoliticaT Econ-
omy, and will follow it by one on Moral Duties. The present
volume is a work of great ability. It may be considered as a
review of the principles of the Economists, of Smith and of Say,
or rather an elementary book on the same subject. As Smith
had corrected some principles of the Economists, and Say some
of Smith's, so Tracy has done as to the whole. He has, in mji
opinion, corrected fundamental errors in all of them, and by
simplifying principles, has brought the subject within a narrow
compass. I think the volume would be of about the size of the
Review of Montesquieu. Although he puts his name to the
work, he is afraid to publish it in France, lest its freedom
should bring him into trouble. If translated and published here,
ne could disavow it, if necessary. In order to enable you to
iorm a better judgment of the work, I will subjoin a list of
625
the chapters or heads, and if you think proper to undertake
the translation and publication, I will send the work itself. You
will certainly find it one of the very first order .....
TO COLONEL WILLIAM DUANE
Monticcllo, April 4, 1813
.... It is true that I am tired of practical politics, and
happier while reading the history of ancient than of modern
times. The total banishment of all moral principle from the code
which governs the intercourse of nations, the melancholy re-
flection that after the mean, wicked and cowardly cunning of
the cabinets of the age of Machiavelli had given place to the
integrity and good faith which dignified the succeeding one of a
Chatham and Turgot, that this is to be swept away again by
the daring profligacy and avowed destitution of all moral
principle of a Cartouche and a Blackbeard, sickens my soul
unto death. I turn from the contemplation with loathing, and
take refuge in the histories of other times, where, if they also
furnish their Tarquins, their Catilines and Caligulas, their
stories are handed to us under the brand of a Livy, a Sallust
and a Tacitus, and we are comforted with the reflection that
the condemnation of all succeeding generations has confirmed
the censures of the historian, and consigned their memories to
everlasting infamy, a solace we cannot have with the Georges
and Napoleons but by anticipation .....
TO JOHN ADAMS
Monticello, May 27, 1813
.... I sincerely congratulate you on the successes of
eur little navy; which must be more gratifying to you than to
most men, as having been the early and constant advocate of
wooden walls. If I have differed with you on this ground, it was
626
THOMAS 7SFF8RSON
not on the principle, but the time; supposing that we cannot
build or maintain a na*7y, which will not immediately fall into
the same gulf which has swallowed not only the minor navies,
but even those of the great second-rate powers of the sea. When-
ever these can be resuscitated, and brought so near to a balance
with England that we can turn the scale, then is my epoch for
aiming at a navy, in the meantime, one competent to keep the
Barbary States in order, is necessary; these being the only-
smaller powers disposed to quarrel with us. , , t .
TO JOHN ADAMS
Monticello, June 27,
.... Men have differed in opinion, and been divided
into parties by these opinions, from the first origin of societies,
and in all governments where they have been permitted freely
to think and to speak. The same political parties which now
agitate the United States, have existed through all time.
Whether the power of the people or that of the aristoi * should
prevail, were questions which kept the States of Greece and
Rome in eternal convulsions, as they now schismatize every
people whose minds and mouths are not shut up by the gag of
a despot. And in fact, the terms of whig and tory belong to
natural as well as to civil history. They denote the temper and
constitution of mind of different individuals. To come to our
own country, and to the times when you and I became first
acquainted, we well remember the violent parties which agi-
tated the old Congress, and their bitter contests. There you and
I were together, and the Jays, and the Dickinsons, and other
anti-independents, were arrayed against us. They cherished
the monarchy of England, and we the rights of our country-
men. When our present government was in the mew, passing
from Confederation to Union, how bitter was the schism be-
tween the Feds and Antis! Here you and I were together again.
i. In Jefferson's letter this appears in Greek.
627
OF
For although, for a moment, separated by the Atlantic from
the scene of action, I favored the opinion that nine States
should confirm the constitution, in order to secure it, and the
others hold oft until certain amendments, deemed favorable
to. freedom, should be made. I rallied in the first instant to the
adser proposition of Massachusetts, that all should confirm,
and then all instruct their delegates to urge those amendments.
The amendments were made, and all were reconciled to the
government. But as soon as it was put into motion, the line
of division was again drawn. We broke into two parties, each
wishing to give the government a different direction; the one
to strengthen the most popular branch, the other the more
permanent branches, and to extend their permanence. Here
you and I separated for the first time, and as we had been
longer than most others on the public theatre, and our names
therefore were more familiar to our countrymen, the party
which considered you as thinking with them, placed your name
at their head; the other, for the same reason, selected mine.
But neither decency nor inclination permitted us to become
the advocates of ourselves, or to take part personally in the
violent contests which followed. We suffered ourselves, as you
so well expressed it, to be passive subjects of public dis-
cussion
TO DR. SAMUEL BROWN 1
Monticello, July 14, 1813
DEAR SIR,— Your favors of May 25th and June i3th
have been duly received, as also the first supply of Capsicum,
and the second of the same article with other seeds. I shall set
great store by the Capsicum, if it is hardy enough for our
climate, the species we have heretofore tried being too tender.
i. Dr. Samuel Brown held the chair of theory and practice of medicine
9t. the University (later Washington and Lee University) in Lexington,
Virginia.
628
THOMAS JSFF8RSON
The Galvance too, will be particularly attended to, as it ap-
pears very different from what we cultivate by that name. I
have so many grandchildren and others who might be endan-
gered by the poison plant, that I think the risk overbalances
the curiosity of trying it. The most elegant thing of that kind
known is a preparation of the Jamestown weed, Datura-Stra-
monium, invented by the French in the time of Robespierre.
Every man of firmness carried it constantly in his pocket to
anticipate the guillotine. It brings on the sleep of de^-h as
quietly as fatigue does the ordinary sleep, without ^he least
struggle or motion. Condorcet, who had recourse to it, was
found lifeless on his bed a few minutes after hirj landlady had
left him there, and even the slipper which slne had observed
half suspended on his foot, was not shaken-' °^- It seems far
preferable to the Venesection of the Romai<lS> the Hemlock of
the Greeks, and the Opium of the Turks. )T naye never been
able to learn what the preparation is, other t^an a strong con-
centration of its lethiferous principle. Could sue^ a medicament
be restrained to self-administration, it ought ntft to be kept
secret. There are ills in life as desperate as intolerable, to
which it would be the rational relief, e.g., the ' inveterate
cancer. As a relief from tyranny indeed, for which thfe • Romans
recurred to it in the times of the emperors, it has been & won-
der to me that they did not consider a poignard in the br&^t
of the tyrant as a better remedy
TO ISAAC McPiiERSoN 1
Monticello, August 13, 1813
.... It has been pretended by some, (and in England
especially,) that inventors have a natural and exclusive right
to their inventions, and not merely for their own lives, but in-
heritable to their heirs. But while it is a moot question whether
i. McPherson was a Baltimore inventor who had written Jefferson con-
cerning scientific matters.
629
OF
the origin of any kind of property is derived from nature at
all, it would be singular to admit a natural and even an heredi-
tary right to inventors. It is agreed by those who have seriously
considered the subject, that no individual has, of natural right,
a separate property in an acre of land, for instance. By an
universal law, indeed, whatever, whether fixed or movable,
belongs to all men equally and in common, is the property for
the moment of him who occupies it, but when he relinquishes
the occupation, the property goes with it. Stable ownership is
the gift of social law, and is given late in the progress of
society. It would be curious then, if an idea, the fugitive fer-
mentation of an individual brain, could, of natural right, be
claimed in exclusive and stable property. If nature has made
any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive
property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea,
which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps
it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into
the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess
himself of it. JAs peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses
the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who
receives an, idea from me, receives instruction himself without
lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives
light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread
fror/a one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual
instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems
to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature,
when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, with-
out lessening their density in any point, and like the air in
which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable
of confinement or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then can-
not, in nature, be a subject of property. Society may give an
exclusive right to the profits arising from them, as an encour-
agement to men to pursue ideas which may produce utility, but
this may or may not be done, according to the will and con-
venience of the society, without claim or complaint from
anybody
630
THOMAS
TO JOHN ADAMS
MontkellOy October 13, 1813
.... To compare the morals of the Old, with those of
the New Testament, would require an attentive study of the
former, a search through all its books for its precepts, and
through all its history for its practices, and the principles they
prove. As commentaries, too, on these, the philosophy of the
Hebrews must be inquired into, their Mishna, their Gemara,
Cabbala, Jezirah, Sohar, Cosri, and their Talmud, must be
examined and understood, in order to do them full justice.
Brucker, it would seem, has gone deeply into these repositories
of their ethics, and Enfield, his epitomizer, concludes in these
words: "Ethics were so little understood among the Jews, that
in their whole compilation called the Talmud, there is only one
treatise on moral subjects. Their books of morals chiefly con-
sisted in a minute enumeration of duties. From the law of
Moses were deduced six hundred and thirteen precepts, which
were divided into two classes, affirmative and negative, two
hundred and forty-eight in the former, and three hundred and
sixty-five in the latter. It may serve to give the reader some
idea of the low state of moral philosophy among the Jews in
the middle age, to add that of the two hundred and forty-eight
affirmative precepts, only three were considered as obligatory
upon women, and that in order to obtain salvation, it was
judged sufficient to fulfill any one single law in the hour of
death; the observance of the rest being deemed necessary, only
to increase the felicity of the future life. What a wretched
depravity of sentiment and manners must have prevailed, be-
fore such corrupt maxims could have obtained credit! It is im-
possible to collect from these writings a consistent series of
moral doctrine." Enfield, B. 4, chapter 3. It was the reforma-
tion of this "wretched depravity" of morals which Jesus under-
took. In extracting the pure principles which he taught, we
should have to strip off the artificial vestments in which they
631
OF
have been muffled by priests, who have travestied them into
various forms, as instruments of riches and power to them-
selves. We must dismiss the Platonists and Plotinists, the
Stagyrites, and Gamalielites, the Eclectics, the Gnostics and
Scholastics, their essences and emanations, their Logos and
Demiurgos, JEons and Daemons, male and female, with a long
train of etc., etc., etc., or, shall I say at once, of nonsense. We
must reduce our volume to the simple evangelists, select, even
from them, the very words only of Jesus, paring off the am-
phiboligisms into which they have been led, by forgetting
often, or not understanding, what had fallen from him, by
giving their own misconceptions as his dicta, and expressing
unintelligibly for others what they had not understood them-
selves. There will be found remaining the most sublime and
benevolent code of morals which has ever been offered to man.
I have performed this operation for my own use, by cutting
verse by verse out of the printed book, and arranging the
matter which is evidently his, and which is as easily distin-
guishable as diamonds in a dunghill. The result is an octavo
of forty-six pages, of pure and unsophisticated doctrines, such
as were professed and acted on by the unlettered Apostles, the
Apostolic Fathers, and the Christians of the first century. Their
Platonizing successors, indeed, in after times, in order to legiti-
mate the corruptions which they had incorporated into the
doctrines of Jesus, found it necessary to disavow the primitive
Christians, who had taken their principles from the mouth of
Jesus hims'elf, of his Apostles, and the Fathers cotemporary
with them. They excommunicated their followers as heretics,
branding them with the opprobrious name of Ebionites or
Beggars
TO JOHN ADAMS
Monticello, October 28, 1813
.... I agree with you that there is a natural aristoc-
racy among men. The grounds of this aje virtue and talents.
632
THOMAS JSFFSRSON
Formerly, bodily powers gave place among the aristoi. But since
the invention of gunpowder has armed the weak as well as the
strong with missile death, bodily strength, like beauty, good
humor, politeness and other accomplishments, has become but
an auxiliary ground of distinction. There is also an artificial
aristocracy, founded on wealth and birth, without either virtue
or talents; for with these it would belong to the first class. The
natural aristocracy I consider as the most precious gift of na-
ture, for the instruction, the trusts, and government of society.
And indeed, it would have been inconsistent in creation to have
formed man for the social state, and not to have provided
virtue and wisdom enough to manage the concerns of the so-
ciety. May we not even say, that that form of government is
the best, which provides the most effectually for a pure selec-
tion of these natural aristoi into the offices of government? The
artificial aristocracy is a mischievous ingredient in government,
and provision should be made to prevent its ascendency
With respect to aristocracy, we should further consider, that
before the establishment of the American States, nothing was
known to history but the man of the old world, crowded within
limits either small or overcharged, and steeped in the vices
which that situation generates. A government adapted to such
men would be one thing; but a very different one, that for
the man of these States. Here every one may have land to
labor for himself, if he chooses; or, preferring the exercise of
any other industry, may exact for it such compensation as
not only to afford a comfortable subsistence, but wherewith
to provide for a cessation from labor in old age. Every one, by
his property, or by his satisfactory situation, is interested in
the support of law and order. And such men may safely and
advantageously reserve to themselves a wholesome control over
their public affairs, and a degree of freedom, which, in the
hands of the canaille of the cities of Europe, would be instantly
perverted to the demolition and destruction of everything pub-
lic and private. The history of the last twenty-five years of
France, and of the last forty years in America, nay of its last
633
LETTERS OF
two hundred years, proves the truth of both parts of this
observation.
But even in Europe a change has sensibly taken place in the
mind of man. Science had liberated the ideas of those who
read and reflect, and the American example had kindled feel-
ings of right in the people. An insurrection has consequently
begun, of science, talents, and courage, against rank and birth,
which have fallen into contempt. It has failed in its first feffort,
because the mobs of the cities, the instrument used for its
accomplishment, debased by ignorance, poverty, and vice, could
not be restrained to rational action. But the world will recover
from the panic of this first catastrophe. Science is progressive,
and talents and enterprise on the alert. Resort may be had to
the people of the country, a more governable power from their
principles and subordination; and rank, and birth, and tinsel-
aristocracy will finally shrink into insignificance, even there.
This, however, we have no right to meddle with. It suffices for
us, if the moral and physical condition of our own citizens
qualifies them to select the able and good for the direction of
their government, with a recurrence of elections at such short
periods as will enable them to displace an unfaithful servant,
before the mischief he meditates may be irremediable
TO DR. THOMAS COOPER 1
Monticello, January 16, 1814
.... You ask if it is a secret who wrote the commentary
on Montesquieu? It must be a secret during the author's life.
I may only say at present that it was written by a Frenchman,
that the original MS. in French is now in my possession, that it
was translated and edited by General Duane, and that I should
rejoice to see it printed in its original tongue, if any one would
i. Dr. Thomas Cooper, famous English scientist, educator, and free-
thinker, like his friend and fellow expatriate Dr. Jnseph Priestley, was a
close friend of Thomas Jefferson.
634
THOMAS J8FF8RSON
undertake it. No book can suffer more by translation, because
of the severe correctness of the original in the choice of its
terms. I have taken measures for securing to the author his
justly-earned fame, whenever his death or other circumstances
may render it safe for him. Like you, T do not agree with him in
everything, and have had some correspondence with him on
particular points. But on the whole, it is a most valuable work,
one which I think will form an epoch in the science of govern-
ment, and which I wish to see in the hands of every American
student, as the elementary and fundamental* institute of that
important branch of human science. . . .
TO MONSIEUR N. G. DUFIEF *
Monticello, April 19, 1814
DEAR SIR,— Your favor of the 6th instant is just re-
ceived, and I shall with equal willingness and truth, state the
degree of agency you had, respecting the copy of M. de Be-
court's book, which came to my hands. That gentleman in-
formed me, by letter, that he was about to publish a volume in
French, "Sur la Creation du Monde, un Systeme d'Organisa-
tion Primitive," which, its title promised to be, either a geo-
logical or astronomical work. I subscribed; and, when pub-
lished, he sent me a copy; and as you were my correspondent
in the book line in Philadelphia, I took the liberty of desiring
him to call on you for the price, which, he afterwards informed
me, you were so kind as to pay him for me, being, I believe,
two dollars. But the sole copy which came to me was from him-
self directly, and, as far as I know, was never seen by you.
I am really mortified to be told that, in the United States of
of America, a fact like this can become a subject of inquiry,
and of criminal inquiry too, as an offence against religion; that
i. Nicholas Gouin Dufief was a bookseller in Philadelphia and the au-
thor of Nature Displayed. He was, over a period of many years, one of
Jefferson's principal book agents.
635
OF
a question about the sale of a book 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 dog-
matize 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 our-
selves, 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 blas-
phemy 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
TO THOMAS LAW, Esq.1
Poplar Forest, June zj, 1814
DEAR SIR,— The copy of your Second Thoughts on In-
stinctive Impulses, with the letter accompanying it, was re-
ceived just as I was setting out on a journey to this place, two
or three days distant from Monticello. I brought it with me
and read it with great satisfaction, and with the more as it con-
tained exactly my own creed on the foundation of morality in
man. It is really curious that on a question so fundamental,
such a variety of opinions should have prevailed among men,
and those, too, of the most exemplary virtue and first order of
understanding. It shows how necessary was the care of the
Creator in making the moral principle so much a part of our
constitution as that no errors of reasoning or of speculation
might lead us astray from its observation in practice. Of all the
i. Thomas Law, former British civil servant in India, settled in the
United States out of preference for American institutions. He wrote on
moral philosophy and financial theory, and helped develop the city of
Washington.
636
THOMAS JSFFSRSON
theories on this question, the most whimsical seems to have
been that of Wollaston, who considers truth as the foundation
of morality. The thief who steals your guinea does wrong only
inasmuch as he acts a lie in using your guinea as if it were his
own. Truth is certainly a branch of morality, and a very im-
portant one to society. But presented as its foundation, it is as
if a tree taken up by the roots, had its stem reversed in the
air, and one of its branches planted in the ground. Some have
made the love of God the foundation of morality. This, too, is
but a branch of our moral duties, which are generally divided
into duties to God and duties to man. If we did a good act
merely from the love of God and a belief that it is pleasing to
Him, whence arises the morality of the Atheist? It is idle to
say, as some do, that no such being exists. We have the same
evidence of the fact as of most of those we act on, to wit: their
own affirmations, and their reasonings in support of them. I
have observed, indeed, generally, that while in Protestant
countries the defections from the Platonic Christianity of the
priests is to Deism, in Catholic countries they are to Atheism.
Diderot, D'Alembert, D'Holbach, Condorcet, are known to
have been among the most virtuous of men. Their virtue, then,
must have had some other foundation than the love of God.
The To KaXov x of others is founded in a different faculty,
that of taste, which is not 'even a branch of morality. We have
indeed an innate sense of what we call beautiful, but that is
exercised chiefly on subjects addressed to the fancy, whether
through the eye in visible forms, as landscape, animal figure,
dress, drapery, architecture, the composition of colors, etc., or
to the imagination directly, as imagery, style, or measure in
prose or poetry, or whatever else constitutes the domain of
criticism or taste, a faculty entirely distinct from the moral
one. Self-interest, or rather self-love, or egoism, has been more
plausibly substituted as the basis of morality. But I consider
our relations with others as constituting the boundaries of
morality. With ourselves we stand on the ground of identity,
i. The beautiful.
637
L8TT8RS OF
not of relation, which last, requiring two subjects, excludes self-
love confined to a single one. To ourselves, in strict language,
we can owe no duties, obligation requiring also two parties.
Self-love, therefore, is no part of morality. Indeed it is exactly
its counterpart. It is the sole antagonist of virtue, leading us
constantly by our propensities to self-gratification in violation
of our moral duties to others. Accordingly, it is against this
enemy that are erected the batteries of moralists aid religion-
ists, as the only obstacle to the practice of morality. Take from
man his selfish propensities, and he can have nothing to seduce
him from the practice of virtue. Or subdue those propensities
by education, instruction or restraint, and virtue remains with-
out a competitor. Egoism, in a broader sense, has been thus
presented as the source of moral action. It has been said that
we feed the hungry, clothe the naked, bind up the wounds of
the man beaten by thieves, pour oil and wine into them, set
him on our own beast and bring him to the inn, because we
receive ourselves pleasure from these acts. So Helvetius, one
of the best men on earth, and the most ingenious advocate of
this principle, after defining "interest" to mean not merely
that which is pecuniary, but whatever may procure us pleasure
or withdraw us from pain, [de I' esprit, 2,1,] says, [ib. 2, 2,]
"the humane man is he to whom the sight of misfortune is in-
supportable, and who to rescue himself from this spectacle, is
forced to succor the unfortunate object." This indeed is true.
But it is one step short of the ultimate question. These good
acts give us pleasure, but how happens it that they give us
pleasure? Because nature hath implanted in our breasts a love
of others, a sense of duty to them, a moral instinct, in short,
which prompts us irresistibly to feel and to succor their dis-
tresses, and protests against the language of Helvetius, [ib. 2,
5,] "what other motive than self-interest could determine a
man to generous actions? It is as impossible for him to love
what is good for the sake of good, as to love evil for the sake of
evil." The Creator would indeed have been a bungling artist,
had he intended man for a social animal, without planting
638
THOMAS JSFFSRSON
in him social dispositions. It is true they are not planted in
every man, because there is no rule without exceptions; but it
is false reasoning which converts exceptions into the general
rule. Some men are born without the organs of sight, or of
hearing, or without hands. Yet it would be wrong to say that
man is born without these faculties, and sight, hearing, and
hands may with truth enter into the general definition of man.
The want or imperfection of the moral sense in some men,
like the want or imperfection of the senses of sight and hearing
in others, is no proof that it is a general characteristic of the
species. When it is wanting, we endeavor to supply the defect
by education, by appeals to reason and calculation, by present-
ing to the being so unhappily conformed, other motives to do
good and to eschew evil, such as the love, or the hatred, or re-
jection of those among whom he lives, and whose society is
necessary to his happiness and even existence; demonstrations
by sound calculation that honesty promotes interest in the
long run; the rewards and penalties established by the laws;
and ultimately the prospects of a future state of retribution for
the evil as well as the good done while here. These are the cor-
rectives which are supplied by education, and which exercise
the functions of the moralist, the preacher, and legislator; and
they lead into a course of correct action all those whose dis-
parity is not too profound to be eradicated. Some have argued
against the existence of a moral sense, by saying that if nature
had given us such a sense, impelling us to virtuous actions, and
warning us against those which are vicious, then nature would
also have designated, by some particular ear-marks, the two
sets of actions which are, in themselves, the one virtuous and
the other vicious. Whereas, we find, in fact, that the same ac-
tions are deemed virtuous in one country and vicious in an-
other. The answer is, that nature has constituted utility to man,
the standard and test of virtue. Men living in different coun-
tries, under different circumstances, different habits and regi-
mens, may have different utilities; the same act, therefore, may
be useful, and consequently virtuous in one country which is
639
OF
injurious and vicious in another differently circumstanced. I
sincerely, then, believe with you in the general existence of a
moral instinct. I think it the brightest gem with which the
human character is studded, and the want of it as more de-
grading than the most hideous of the bodily deformities. I am
happy in reviewing the roll of associates in this principle which
you present in your second letter, some of which I had not be-
fore met with. To these might be added Lord Kaims, one of
thfe ablest of our advocates, who goes so far as to say, in his
Principles of Natural Religion, that a man owes no duty to
which he is not urged by some impulsive feeling. This is cor-
rect, if referred to the standard of general feeling in the given
case, and not to the feeling of a single individual. Perhaps I
may misquote him, it being fifty years since I read his book.
The leisure and solitude of my situation here has led me to
the indiscretion of taxing you with a long letter on a subject
whereon nothing n'ew can be offered you. I will indulge myself
no farther than to repeat the assurances of my continued es-
teem and respect.
TO JOHN ADAMS
Monticello, July 5, 1814
.... Shall you and I last to see the course the seven-
fold wonders of the times will take? The Attila of the age de-
throned, 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 dwin-
dled to the condition of an humble and degraded pensioner on
the bounty of those he had most injured. How miserably, 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
But Bonaparte was a lion in the field only. In civil life, a
640
THOMAS JSFFBRSON
cold-blooded, calculating, unprincipled usurper, without a vir-
tue; no statesman, knowing nothing of commerce, political
economy, or civil government, and supplying ignorance by bold
presumption
TO EDWARD COLES *
Monticello, August 2$thf '14
DEAR SIR,— Your favour of July 31, was duly received,
and was read with peculiar pleasure. The sentiments breathed
through the whole do honor to both the head and heart of the
writer. Mine on the subject of slavery of negroes have long
since been in possession of the public, and time has only served
to give them stronger root. The love of justice and the love of
country plead equally the cause of these people, and it is a
moral reproach to us that they should have pleaded it so long
in vain, and should have produced not a single effort, nay I fear
not much serious willingness to relieve them & ourselves from
our present condition of moral & political reprobation. From
those of the former generation who were in the fulness of age
when I came into public life, which was while our controversy
with England was on paper only, I soon saw that nothing was
to be hoped. Nursed and educated in the daily habit of seeing
the degraded condition, both bodily and mental, of those unfor-
tunate beings, not reflecting that that degradation was very
much the work of themselves & their fathers, few minds have
yet doubted but that they were as legitimate subjects of prop-
erty as their horses and cattle. The quiet and monotonous
course of colonial life has been disturbed by no alarm, and
little reflection on the value of liberty. And when alarm was
taken at an enterprize on their own, it was not easy to carry
them to the whole length of the principles which they invoked
i. Edward Coles, Jefferson's neighbor in Albemarle County, was at
this time President Madison's private secretary. Later Governor of Illi-
nois, to which state he and his freed slaves had removed, he devoted the
greater part of his life to the cause of Abolition. [Ford.J
641
OF
for themselves. In the first or second session of the Legislature
after I became a member, 1 drew to this subject the atten-
tion of Col. Bland, one of the oldest, ablest, & most respected
members, and he undertook to move for certain moderate ex-
tensions of the protection of the laws to these people. I sec-
onded his motion, and, as a younger member, was more spared
in the debate; but he was denounced as an enemy of his coun-
try, & was treated with the grossest indecorum. From an early
stage of our revolution other & more distant duties were as-
signed to me, so that from that time till my return from Europe
in 1789, and I may say till I returned to reside at home in 1809,
I had little opportunity of knowing the progress of public sen-
tim'ent here on this subject. I had always hoped that the
younger generation receiving their early impressions after the
flame of liberty had been kindled in every breast, & had be-
come as it were the vital spirit of every American, that the
generous temperament of youth, analogous to the motion of
their blood, and above the suggestions of avarice, would have
sympathized with oppression wherever found, and proved their
love of liberty beyond their own share of it. But my intercourse
with them, since my return has not been sufficient to ascertain
that they had made towards this point the progress I had
hoped. Your solitary but welcome voice is the first which has
brought this sound to my ear; and I have considered the gen-
eral silence which prevails on this subject as indicating an
apathy unfavorable to every hope. Yet the hour of 'emancipa-
tion is advancing, in the march of time .....
TO PETER CARR
Monticello, September 7, 1814
DEAR SIR,— On the subject of the academy or college
proposed to be established in our neighborhood, I promised the
trustees that I would prepare for them a plan, adapted, in the
first instance, to our slender funds, but susceptible of being
642
THOMAS JEFFERSON
enlarged, either by their own growth or by accession from other
quarters.
I have long entertained the hope that this, our native State,
would take up the subject of education, and make an establish-
ment, 'either with or without incorporation into that of William
and Mary, where every branch of science, deemed useful at
this day, should be taught in its highest degree. With this view,
I have lost no occasion of making myself acquainted with the
organization of the best seminaries in other countries, and with
the opinions of the most enlightened individuals, on the sub-
ject of the sciences worthy of a place in such an institution.
In order to prepare what I have promised our trustees, I have
lately revised these several plans with attention; and I am
struck with the diversity of arrangement observable in them —
no two alike. Yet, I have no doubt that these several arrange-
ments have been the subject of mature reflection, by wise and
learned men, who, contemplating local circumstances, have
adapted them to the conditions of the section of society for
which they have been framed. I am strengthened in this con-
clusion by an examination of each separately, and a conviction
that no one of them, if adopted without change, would be
suited to the circumstances and pursuit of our country. The
example they set, then, is authority for us to select from their
different institutions the materials which are good for us, and,
with them, to erect a structure, whose arrangement shall cor-
respond with our own social condition, and shall admit of en-
largement in proportion to the encouragement it may merit
and receive. As I may not be able to attend the meetings of the
trustees, I will nicike you the depository of my ideas on the
subject, which may be corrected, as you proceed, by the bet
ter view of others, and adapted, from time to time, to the pros-
pects which open upon us, and which cannot be specifically
seen and provided for.
In the first place, we must ascertain with prec ision the ob^
ject of our institution, by taking a survey of the genera! field
of science, and marking out the portion we mean to occupy at
OF
first, and the ultimate extension of our views beyond that,
should we be enabled to render it, in the end, as comprehensive
af> we would wish.
1. Elementary schools.
It is highly interesting to our country, and it is the duty of
'its functionaries, to provide that every citizen in it should re*
ceive an education proportioned to the condition and pursuits
of his life. The mass of our citizens may be divided into two
classes— the laboring and the learned. The laboring will need
the first grade of education to qualify them for their pursuits
and duties ; the learned will need it as a foundation for further
acquirements. A plan was formerly proposed to the legislature
of this State for laying off every county into hundreds or wards
of five or six miles square, within each of which should be a
school for the education of the children of the ward, wherein
they should receive three years' instruction gratis, in reading,
writing, arithmetic as far as fractions, the roots and ratios, and
geography. The Legislature at one time tried an ineffectual
expedient for introducing this plan, which having failed, it is
hoped they will some day resume it in a more promising form.
2. General schools.
At the discharging of the pupils from the elementary schools,
the two classes separate— those destined for labor will engage
in the business of agriculture, or enter into apprenticeships to
such handicraft art as may be their choice; their companions,
destined to the pursuits of science, will proceed to the college,
which will consist, ist of general schools; and, 2d, of profes-
sional schools. The general schools will constitute the second
grade of education.
The learned class may still be subdivided into two sections:
i, Those who are destined for learned professions, as means of
livelihood; and, 2, The wealthy, who, possessing independent
fortunes, may aspire to share in conducting the affairs of the
nation, or to live with usefulness and respect in the private
ranks of life. Both of these sections will require instruction in
all the higher branches of science; the wealthy to qualify them
644
THOMAS
for either public or private life; the professional section will
need those branches, especially, which are the basis of their
future profession, and a general knowledge of the others, as
auxiliary to that, and necessary to their standing and associa-
tion with the scientific class. All the branches, then, of useful
science, ought to be taught in the general schools, to a compe-
tent degree, in the first instance. These sciences may be ar-
ranged into three departments, not rigorously scientific, indeed,
but sufficiently so for our purposes. These are, I. Language;
II. Mathematics; III. Philosophy.
I. Language. In the first department, I would arrange a dis-
tinct science, i, Languages and History, ancient and modern;
2, Grammar; 3, Belles Lettres; 4, Rhetoric and Oratory; 5, A
school for the deaf, dumb and blind. History is here associated
with languages, not as a kindred subject, but on the principle
of economy, because both may be attained by the same course
of reading, if books are selected with that view.
II. Mathematics. In the department of Mathematics, I should
give place distinctly: i, Mathematics pure; 2, Physico-Mathe-
matics; 3, Physics; 4, Chemistry; 5. Natural History, to wit:
Mineralogy; 6, Botany; and 7, Zoology; 8, Anatomy; 9, the
Theory of Medicine.
III. Philosophy. In the Philosophical department, I should
distinguish: i, Ideology; 2, Ethics; 3, the Law of Nature and
Nations; 4, Government; 5, Political Economy.
But, some of these terms being used by different writers, in
different degrees of extension, I shall define exactly what I
mean to comprehend in each of them.
I. 3. Within the term of Belles Lettres I include poetry and
composition generally, and criticism.
II. i.I consider pure mathematics as the science of, i, Num-
bers, and 2, Measure in the abstract; that of numbers compre-
hending Arithmetic, Algebra and Fluxions; that of Measure
(under the general appellation of Geometry), comprehending
Trigonometry, plane and spherical, conic sections, and tran-
scendental curves.
645
OF
II. 2. Physico-Mathematics treat of physical subjects by the
aid of mathematical calculation. These are Mechanics, Statics,
Hydrostatics, Hydrodynamics, Navigation, Astronomy, Geog-
raphy, Optics, Pneumatics, Acoustics.
II. 3. Physics, or Natural Philosophy (not entering the lim-
its of Chemistry) treat of natural substances, their properties,
mutual relations and action. They particularly examine the sub-
jects of motion, action, magnetism, electricity, galvanism, light,
meteorology, with an fete, not easily enumerated. These defini-
tions and specifications render immaterial the question whether
I use the generic terms in the exact degree of comprehension in
which others use them; to be understood is all that is neces-
sary to the present object.
3. Professional Schools.
At the close of this course the students separate; the wealthy
retiring, with a sufficient stock of knowledge, to improve them-
selves to any degree to which their views may lead them, and
the professional section to the professional schools, constituting
the third grade of education, and teaching the particular sci-
ences which the individuals of this section mean to pursue, with
more minuteness and detail than was within the scope of the
general schools for the second grade of instruction. In these
professional schools each science is to be taught in the highest
degree it has yet attained. They are to be the
ist Department, the fine arts, to wit: Civil Architecture,
Gardening, Painting, Sculpture, and the Theory of Music; the
2d Department, Architecture, Military and Naval; Projec-
tiles, Rural Economy (comprehending Agriculture, Horticul-
ture and Veterinary), Technical Philosophy, the Practice of
Medicine, Materia Medica, Pharmacy and Surgery. In the
3d Department, Theology and Ecclesiastical History; Law,
Municipal and Foreign.
To these professional schools will com'e those who separated
at the close of their first elementary course, to wit:
The lawyer to the law school.
The ecclesiastic to that of theology and ecclesiastical history.
646
THOMAS J8FF8RSON
The physician to those of medicine, materia medica, phar-
macy and surgery.
The military man to that of military and naval architecture
and projectiles.
The agricultor to that of rural economy.
The gentleman, the architect, the pleasure gardener, painter
and musician to the school of fine arts.
And to that of technical philosophy will come the mariner,
carpenter, shipwright, pumpmaker, clockmaker, machinist,
optician, metallurgist, founder, cutler, druggist, brewer, vint-
ner, distiller, dyer, painter, bleacher, soapmaker, tanner
powdermaker, saltmaker, glassmaker, to learn as much as shall
be necessary to pursue their art understandingly, of the sci-
ences of geometry, mechanics, statics, hydrostatics, hydraulics,
hydrodynamics, navigation, astronomy, geography, optics,
pneumatics, physics, chemistry, natural history, botany, min-
eralogy and pharmacy.
The school of technical philosophy will differ essentially in
its functions from the other professional schools. The others
are instituted to ramify and dilate the particular sciences taught
in the schools of the second grade on a general scale only. The
technical school is to abridge those which were taught there
too much in extenso for the limited wants of the artificer or
practical man. These artificers must be grouped together, ac-
cording to the particular branch of science in which they need
elementary and practical instruction; and a special lecture or
lectures should be prepared for each group. And these lectures
should be given in the evening, so as not to interrupt the la-
bors of the day, The school, particularly, should be main-
tained wholly at the public expense, on the same principles with
that of the ward schools. Through the while of the collegiate
course, at the hours of recreation on certain days, all the slu-
dents should be taught the manual exercise; military evolutions
and manoeuvers should be under a standing organization as a
military corps, and with proper officers to train and command
them.
647
LSTTBRS OF
A tabular statement of this distribution of the sciences will
place the system of instruction more particularly in view:
ist or Elementary Grade in the Ward Schools.
Reading, Writing, Arithmetic, Geography.
2d, or General Grade.
1. Language and History, ancient and modern.
2. Mathematics, viz: Mathematics pure, Physico-Mathemat-
ics, Physics, Chemistry, Anatomy, Theory of Medicine, Zool-
ogy, Botany and Mineralogy.
3. Philosophy, viz: Ideology, and Ethics, Law of Nature and
Nations, Government, Political Economy.
3d, or Professional Grades.
Theology and Ecclesiastical History; Law, Municipal and
Foreign; Practice of Medicine; Materia Medica and Phar-
macy; Surgery; Architecture, Military and Naval, and Projec-
tiles; Technical Philosophy; Rural Economy; Fine Arts.
On this survey of the field of science, I recur to the question,
what portion of it we mark out for the occupation of our in-
stitution? With the first grade of education we shall have noth-
ing to do. The sciences of the second grade are our first object;
and, to adapt them to our slender beginnings, we must separate
them into groups, comprehending many sciences each, and
greatly more, in the first instance, than ought to be imposed
on, or can be competently conducted by a single professor per-
manently. They must be subdivided from time to time, as our
means increase, until each professor shall have no more under
his care than he can attend to with advantage to his pupils
and ease to himself. For the present, we may group the sciences
into professorships, as follows, subject, however, to be changed,
according to the qualifications of the persons we may be able
to engage.
648
THOMAS
I. Professorship.
Languages and History, ancient and modern ,
Belles-Lettres, Rhetoric and Oratory.
II. Professorship.
Mathematics pure, Physico-Mathematics.
Physics, Anatomy, Medicine, Theory.
III. Professorship.
Chemistry, Zoology, Botany, Mineralogy.
IV. Professorship.
Philosophy.
The organization of the branch of the institution which /c.
spects its government, police and economy, depending on prin-
ciples which have no affinity with those of its institution, may
be the subject of separate and subsequent consideration.
With this tribute of duty to the board of trustees, accept as-
surances of my great esteem and consideration.
TO DR. THOMAS COOPER
Monticello, September 10, 1814
.... And, first, we have no paupers, the old and crippled
among us, who possess nothing and have no families to take
care of them, being too few to merit notice as a separate section
of society, or to affect a general estimate. The great mass of
our population is of laborers; our rich, who can live without
labor, either manual or professional, being few, and of mod-
erate wealth. Most of the laboring class possess property, cul-
tivate their own lands, have families, and from the demand
for their labor are enabled to exact frorr the rich and the com-
649
LETTERS OF
petent such prices as enable them to be fed abundantly, clothed
above mere decency, to labor moderately and raise their fami-
lies. They are not driven to the ultimate resources of dexterity
and skill, because their wares will sell although not quite so
nice as those of England. The wealthy, on the other hand, and
those at their ease, know nothing of what the Europeans call
luxury. They have only somewhat more of the comforts and
decencies of life than those who furnish them. Can any condi-
tion of society be more desirable than this? ....
TO SAMUEL H. SMITH, Esq.1
MonticellOj September 21, 1814
DEAR SIR,— I learn from the newspapers that the van-
dalism of our enemy has triumphed at Washington over science
as well as the ar ts, by the destruction of the public library with
the noble edifice in which it was deposited.2 Of this transaction,
as of that of Copenhagen, the world will entertain but one
sentiment. They will see a nation suddenly withdrawn from a
great war, full armed and full handed, taking advantage of an-
other whom they had recently forced into it, unarmed, and un-
prepared, to indulge themselves in acts of barbarism which do
not belong to a civilized age. When Van Ghent destroyed their
shipping at Chatham, and De Ruyter rode triumphantly up the
Thames, he might in like manner, by the acknowledgment of
their own historians, have forced all their ships up to London
bridge, and there have burnt them, the Tower, and city, had
these examples been then set. London, when thus menaced,
was near a thousand years old ; Washington is but in its teens.
I presume it will be among the early objects of Congress to
1. Samuel Harrison Smith, a long-time friend of Jefferson, was editor
of the National Intelligencer and Washington Advertiser, which had been
the official organ of /he Jefferson administration. At the time of this letter,
he was chairman ot the Library Committee for the Library of Congress.
2. When the British attacked Washington in the autumn of 1814 the
Library of Congress was destroyed.
650
THOMAS JSFFSRSOi;
re-commence their collection. This will be difficult while the
war continues, and intercourse with Europe is attended with
so much risk. You know my collection, its condition and ex-
tent. I have been fifty years making it, and have spared no
pains, opportunity or expense, to make it what it is. While re-
siding in Paris, I devoted every afternoon I was disengaged,
for a summer or two, in examining all the principal bookstores,
turning over every book with my own hand, and putting by
everything which related to America, and indeed whatever was
rare and valuable in every science. Besides this, I had standing
orders during the whole time I was in Europe, on its principal
book-marts, particularly Amsterdam, Frankfort, Madrid and
London, for such works relating to America as could not be
found in Paris. So that in that department particularly, such a
collection was made as probably can never again be effected,
because it is hardly probable that the same opportunities, the
same time, industry, perseverance and expense, with some
knowledge of the bibliography of the subject, would again hap-
pen to be in concurrence. During the same period, and after my
return to America, I was led to procure, also, whatever related
to the duties of those in the high concerns of the nation. So that
the collection, which I suppose is of between nine and ten thou-
sand volumes, while it includes what is chiefly valuable in
science and literature generally, extends more particularly to
whatever belongs to the American statesman. In the diplomatic
and parliamentary branches, it is particularly full. It is long
since I have been sensible it ought not to continue private
property, and had provided that at my death, Congress should
have the refusal of it at their own price. But the loss they have
now incurred, makes the present the proper moment for their
accommodation, without regard to the small remnant of time
and the barren use of my enjoying it. I ask of your friendship,
therefore, to make for me the tender of it to the library com-
mittee of Congress, not knowing myself of whom the committee
consists. I enclose you the catalogue, which will enable them
to judge of its contents. Nearly the whole are well bound, abun«
651
OF
dance of them elegantly, and of the choicest editions existing.
They may be valued by persons named by themselves, and the
payment made convenient to the public. It may be, for in-
stance, in such annual instalments as the law of Congress has
left at their disposal, or in stock of any of their late loans, or
of any loan they may institute at this session, so as to spare
the present calls of our country, and await its days of peace
and prosperity. They may enter, nevertheless, into immediate
use of it, as eighteen or twenty wagons would place it in Wash-
ington in a single trip of a fortnight. I should be willing indeed,
to retain a few of the books, to amuse the time I have yet to
pass, which might be valued with the rest, but not included in
the sum of valuation until they should be restored at my death ,
which I would carefully provide for, so that the whole library
as it stands in the catalogue at this moment should be theirs
without any garbling. Those T should like to retain would be
chiefly classical and mathematical. Some few in other branches,
,and particularly one of the five encyclopedias in the cata-
Jogue
TO WILLIAM SHORT, ESQ.
MonticellOy November 28, 1814
.... Although withdrawn from all anxious attention to
political concerns, yet I will state my impressions as to the pres-
ent war, because your letter leads to the subject. The essential
grounds of the war were, ist, the orders of council; and 2d, the
impressment of our citizens; (for I put out of sight from the
love of peace the multiplied insults on our government and
aggressions on our commerce, with which our pouch, like the
Indian's, had long been filled to the mouth.) What immediately
produced the declaration was, ist, the proclamation of the
Prince Regent that he would never repeal the orders of council
as to us, until Bonaparte should have revoked his decrees as
to all other nations as well as ours; and 2d, the declaration of
his minister to ours that no arrangement whatever could be
652
THOMAS JSFF8RSON
devised, admissible in lieu of impressment. It was certainly a
misfortune that they did not know themselves at the date oi
this silly and insolent proclamation, that within one month
they would repeal the orders, and that we, at the date oi our
declaration, could not know of the repeal which was then going
on one thousand leagues distant. Their determinations, as de-
clared by themselves, could alone guide us, and they shut the
door on all further negotiation, throwing down to us the
gauntlet of war or submission as the only alternatives. We can-
not blame the government for choosing that of war, because
certainly the great majority of the nation thought it ought to
be chosen, not that they were to gain by it in dollars and cents;
all men know that war is a losing game to both parties. But
they know also that if they do not resist encroachment at some
point, all will be taken from them, and that more would then
be lost even in dollars and cents by submission than resistance.
It is the case of giving a part to save the whole, a limb to save
life. It is the melancholy law of human societies to be com-
pelled sometimes to choose a great evil in order to ward off a
greater; to deter their neighbors from rapine by making it cost
them more than honest gains. The enemy are accordingly now
disgorging what they had so ravenously swallowed. The orders
of council had taken from us near one thousand vessels. Our
list of captures from them is now one thousand three hundred,
and, just become sensible that it is small and not large ships
which gall them most, we shall probably add one thousand
prizes a year to their past losses. Again, supposing that, ac-
cording to the confession of their own minister in Parliament,
the Americans they had impressed were something short of
two thousand, the war against us alone cannot cost them less
than twenty millions of dollars a year, so that each American
impressed has already cost them ten thousand dollars, and
every year will add five thousand dollars more to his price. We,
I suppose, expend more; but had we adopted the other alterna-
tive of submission, no mortal can tell what the cost would have
been. I consider the war then as entirely justifiable on our part,
653
OF
although I am still sensible it is a deplorable misfortune to us.
It has arrested the course of the most remarkable tide of pros-
perity any nation ever experienced, and has closed such pros-
pects of future improvement as were never before in the /iew
of any people. Farewell all hopes of extinguishing public debt!
farewell all visions of applying surpluses of revenue to trie im-
provements of peace rather than the ravages of war. Our enemy
has indeed the consolation of Satan on removing our first par-
ents from Paradise: from a peaceable and agricultural nation,
he makes us a military and manufacturing one. We shall in-
deed survive the conflict. Breeders enough will remain to carry
on population. We shall retain our country, and rapid advances
in the art of war will soon enable us to beat our enemy, and
probably drive him from the continent
TO THE MARQUIS DE LAFAYETTE
MonticellOy February 14, 7815
, . . . Possibly you may remember, at the date of the
jeu de paume, how earnestly I urged yourself and the patriots
of my acquaintance, to enter then into a compact with the king,
securing freedom of religion, freedom of the press, trial by jury,
habeas corpus, and a national legislature, all of which it was
known he would then yield, to go home, and let these work on
the amelioration of the condition of the people, until they
should have rendered them capable of more, when occasions
would not fail to arise for communicating to them more. This
was as much as I then thought them able to bear, soberly and
usefully for themselves. You thought otherwise, and that the
dose might still be larger. And I found you were right; for sub-
sequent events proved they were equal to the Constitution of
1791. Unfortunately, some of the most honest and enlightened
of our patriotic friends, (but closet politicians merely, unprac-
tised in the knowledge of man,) thought more could still be
obtained and borne. They did not weigh the hazards of a tran-
654
THOMAS JEFFERSON
sition from one form of government to another, the value of
what they had already rescued from those hazards, and might
hold in security if they pleased, nor the imprudence of giving
up the certainty of such a degree of liberty, under a limited
monarch, for the uncertainty of a little more under the form of
a republic. You differed from them. You were for stopping
there, and for securing the Constitution which the National
Assembly had obtained. Here, too, you were right; and from
this fatal error of the republicans, from their separation from
yourself and the constitutionalists, in their councils, flowed all
the subsequent sufferings and crimes of the French nation,
The hazards of a second change fell upon them by the wny.
The foreigner gained time to anarchise by gold the government
he could not overthrow by arms, to crush in their own councils
the genuine republicans, by the fraternal embraces of exagger-
ated and hired pretenders, and to turn the machine of Jacobin-
ism from the change to the destruction of order; and, in the
end, the limited monarchy they had secured was exchanged for
the unprincipled and bloody tyranny of Robespierre, and the
equally unprincipled and maniac tyranny of Bonaparte. You
are now rid of him, and I sincerely wish you may continue so,
But this may depend on the wisdom and moderation of the re-
stored dynasty. It is for them now to read a lesson in the fatal
errors of the republicans; to be contented with a certain por-
tion of power, secured by formal compact with the nation,
rather than, grasping at more, hazard all upon uncertainty, and
risk meeting the fate of their predecessor, or a renewal of their
own exile
TO JAMES MAURY
Monticello, June 15, 1815
I congratulate you, my dear and ancient friend, on the
return of peace, and the restoration of intercourse between our
two countries. What has passed may be a lesson to both of the
injury which either can do the other, and the peace now opened
OF
may show what would be the value of a cordial friendship ; and
I hope the first moments of it will be employed to remove the
stumbling block which must otherwise keep us eternal enemies.
I mean the impressment of our citizens. This was the sole ob-
ject of the continuance of the late war, which the repeal of the
orders of council would otherwise have ended at its beginning.
If according to our estimates, England impressed into her navy
6,000 of our citizens, let her count the cost of the war, and a
greater number of men lost in it, and she will find this resource
for manning her navy the most expensive she can adopt, each
of these men having cost her £30,000 sterling, and a man of her
own besides. On that point we have thrown away the scabbard,
and the moment an European war brings her back to this prac-
tice, adds us again to her enemies. But I hope an arrangement
is already made on this subject. Have you no statesmen who
can look forward two or three score years? It is but forty years
since the battle of Lexington. One-third of those now living
saw that day, when we were about two millions of people, and
have lived to see this, when we are ten millions. One-third of
those now living, who see us at ten millions, will live another
forty years, and see us forty millions; and looking forward only
through such a portion of time as has passed since you and I
were scanning Virgil together, (which I believe is near three
score years,) we shall be seen to have a population of eighty
millions, and of not more than double the average density of
the present. What may not such a people be worth to England
as customers and friends? and what might she not apprehend
from such a nation as enemies? Now, what is the price we ask
for our friendship? Justice, and the comity usually observed be-
tween nation and nation
TO ALBERT GALLATIN
Monticello, October i6y 1815
.... I grieve for France; although it cannot be denied
that by the afflictions with which she wantonly and wickedly
656
THOMAS JSFFSRSON
overwhelmed other nations, she has merited severe reprisals
For it is no excuse to lay the enormities to the wretch who led
to them, and who has been the author of more misery and suf-
fering 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 suf-
ferings cannot be too great. But theirs I sincerely deplore, and
what is to be their term? The will of the allies? There is no
more moderation, forbearance, or even honesty in theirs, than
in that of Bonaparte. They have proved that their object, like
his, is plunder. They, like him, are shuffling nations together,
or into their own hands, as if all were right which they feel a
power to do. In the exhausted state in which Bonaparte has left
France, I see no period to her sufferings, until this combinatioL
of robbers fall together by the ears. The French may then rise
up and choose their side. And I trust they will finally establish
for themselves a government of rational and well-tempered lib
erty. So much science cannot be lost; so much light shed ovei
them can never fail to produce to them some good, in the
end
TO COLONEL CHARLES YANCEY *
Monticello, January 6, 1816
.... 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 na-
tion is liable to be, under whatever bubble, design, or delusion
may puff up in moments when off their guard. We are now
taught to believe that legerdemain tricks upon paper can pro-
i. Yancey was a prominent member of the Virginia legislature in 1820
He was the son of Robert Yancey, Rector of Trinity Parish, Virginia.
657
OF
duce as solid Wealth as hard labor in the earth. It is vain for
common sense to urge that nothing can produce but nothing;
that it is an idle dream to believe in a philosopher's stone
which is to turn everything into gold, and to redeem man from
the original sentence of his Maker, "in the sweat of his brow
shall he eat his bread." Not Quixote enough, however, to at-
tempt to reason Bedlam to rights, my anxieties are turned to
the most practicable means of withdrawing us from the ruin
into which we have run. Two hundred millions of paper in the
hands of the people, (and less cannot be from the employment
of a banking capital known to exceed one hundred millions,) is
a fearful tax to fall at haphazard on their heads. The debt
which purchased our independence was but of eighty millions,
of which twenty years of taxation had in 1809 paid but the
one half. And what have we purchased with this tax of two
hundred millions which we are to pay by wholesale but usury,
swindling, and new forms of demoralization. Revolutionary his-
tory has warned us of the probable moment when this baseless
trash is to receive its fiat. Whenever so much of the precious
metals shall have returned into the circulation as that every
one can get some in exchange for his produce, paper, as in
the Revolutionary war, will experience at once an universal re-
jection. When public opinion changes, it is with the rapidity
of thought. Confidence is already on the totter, and every one
now handles this paper as if playing at Robin's alive. That in
the present state of the circulation the banks should resume
payments in specie, would require their vaults to be like the
widow's cruse. The thing to be aimed at is, that the excesses
of their emissions should be withdrawn as gradually, but as
speedily, too, as is practicable, without so much alarm as to
bring on the crisis dreaded. Some banks are said to be calling
in their paper. But ought we to let this depend on their discre-
tion? Is it not the duty of the legislature to endeavor to avert
from their constituents such a catastrophe as the extinguish-
ment of two hundred millions of paper in their hands? The dif-
^culty is indeed great; and the greater, because the patient re
658
THOMAS JSFFSRSON
volts against all medicine. I am far from presuming to say that
any plan can be relied on with certainty, because the bubble
may burst from one moment to another; but if it fails, we shall
be but where we should have been without any effort to save
ourselves. Different persons, doubtless, will devise different
schemes of relief. One would be to suppress instantly the cur-
rency of all paper not issued under the authority of our own
State or of the General Government; to interdict after a few
months the circulation of all bills of five dollars and under;
after a few months more, all of ten dollars and under; after
other terms, those of twenty, fifty, and so on to one hundred
dollars, which last, if any must be left in circulation, should
be the lowest denomination. These might be a convenience in
mercantile transactions and transmissions, and would be ex-
cluded by their size from ordinary circulation. But the disease
may be too pressing to await such a remedy. With the legisla-
ture I cheerfully leave it to apply this medicine, or no medicine
at all. I am sure their intentions are faithful; and embarked in
the same bottom, I am willing to swim or sink with my fellow
citizens. If the latter is their choice, I will go down with them
without a murmur. But my exhortation would rather be "not
to give up the ship." ....
TO CHARLES THOMSON*
Monticello, January p, 1816
.... I retain good health, am rather feeble to walk
much, but ride with ease, passing two or three hours a day on
horseback, and every three or four months taking in a carriage
a journey of ninety miles to a distant possession, where I pass
a good deal of my time. My eyes need the aid of glasses by
night, and with small print in the day also; my hearing is not
quite so sensible as it used to be; no tooth shaking yet, but
i. Misspelled Thompson in Memorial Edition. Charles Thomson, Irish
born Secretary of the Continental Congress, was an old, esteemed friend
of Jefferson.
659
LSTTSRS OF
shivering and shrinking in body from the cold we now experi-
ence, my thermometer having been as low as 12° this morn-
ing. My greatest oppression is a correspondence afflictingly la-
borious, the extent of which I have been long endeavoring to
curtail. This keeps me at the drudgery of the writing-table all
the prime hours of the day, leaving for the gratification of my
appetite for reading, only what I can steal from the hours of
sleep. Could I reduce this epistolary corvee within the limits of
my friends and affairs, and give the time redeemed from it to
reading and reflection, to history, ethics, mathematics, my life
would be as happy as the infirmities of age would admit, and I
should look on its consummation with the composure of one
"qui summum nee me tuit diem nee optat" 1 . . . .
TO JOSEPH C. CABELL 2
Monticello, February 2, 1816
.... No, my friend, the way to have good and safe
government, is not to trust it all to one, but to divide it among
the many, distributing to every one exactly the functions he is
competent to. Let the national government be entrusted with
the defence of the nation, and its foreign and federal relations;
the State governments with the civil rights, laws, police, and
administration of what concerns the State generally; the coun-
ties with the local concerns of the counties, and each ward di-
rect the interests within itself. It is by dividing and subdivid-
ing these republics from the great national one down through
all its subordinations, until it ends in the administration of
every man's farm by himself; by placing under every one what
his own eye may superintend, that all will be done for the best.
What has destroyed liberty and the rights of man in every
government which has ever existed under the sun? The general-
1. "Who neither fear nor desire my last day."
2. Joseph Carringtpn Cabell was Jefferson's principal co-worker in es-
tablishing the University of Virginia.
660
THOMAS JSFF8RSON
izing and concentrating all cares and powers into one body, no
matter whether of the autocrats of Russia or France, or of the
aristocrats of a Venetian senate. And I do believe that if the
Almighty has not decreed that man shall never be free, (and it
is a blasphemy to believe it,) that the secret will be found to
be in the making himself the depository of the powers respect-
ing himself, so far as he is competent to them, and delegating
only what is beyond his competence by a synthetical process,
to higher and higher orders of functionaries, so as to trust
fewer and fewer powers in proportion as the trustees become
more and more oligarchical. The elementary republics ot the
wards, the county republics, the State republics, and the re-
public of the Union, would form a gradation of authorities,
standing each on the basis of law, holding every one its dele-
gated share of powers, and constituting truly a system of fun-
damental balances and checks for the government. Where every
man is a sharer in the direction of his ward-republic, or of some
of the mgner ones, and feels that he is a participator in the
government of affairs, not merely at an election one day in the
year, but every day; when there shall not be a man in the
State who will not be a member of some one of its councils,
great or small, he will let the heart be torn out of his body
sooner than his power be wrested from him by a Caesar or a
Bonaparte. How powerfully did we feel the energy of this or-
ganization in the case of embargo? I felt the foundations of the
government shaken under my feet by the New England town-
ships. There was not an individual in their States whose body
was not thrown with all its momentum into action; and al-
though the whole of the other States were known to be in favor
of the measure, yet the organization of this little selfish minor-
ity enabled it to overrule the Union. What would the unwieldy
counties of the Middle, the South, and the West do? Call a
county meeting, and the drunken loungers at and about the
court-houses would have collected, the distances being too
great for the good people and the industrious generally to at-
tend. The character of those who really met would have been
661
OF
the measure of the weight they would have had in the scale of
public opinion. As Cato, then, concluded every speech with the
words, "Carthago delenda est," so do I every opinion, with the
injuction, "divide the counties into wards." Begin them only
for a single purpose; they will soon show for what others they
are the best instruments. God bless you, and all our rulers, and
give them the wisdom, as I am sure they have the will, to fortify
us against the degeneracy of our government, and the concen-
tration of all its powers in the hands of the one, the few, the
well-born or the many.
TO MR. JOSEPH MILLIGAN *
Monticello, April 6, 1816
SIR,— Your favor of March 6th did not come to hand
until the i5th. I then expected I should finish revising the
translation of Tracy's book within a week, and could send the
whole together. I got through it, but, on further consideration,
thought I ought to read it over again, lest any errors should
have been left in it. It was fortunate I did so, for I found sev-
feral little errors. The whole is now done and forwarded by this
mail, with a title, and something I have written which may
serve for a Prospectus, and indeed for a Preface also, with a
little alteration. . . .
My name must in nowise appear connected with the work.
I have no objection to your naming me in conversation, but not
in print, as the person to whom the original was communicated.
Although the author puts his name to the work, yet, if called to
account- for it by his government, he means to disavow it, which
its publication at such a distance will enable him to do. But he
would not think himself at liberty to do this if avowedly sanc-
tioned by me here. The best open mark of approbation I can
give is to subscribe for a dozen copies; or if you would prefer
1. Joseph Milligan was a well-known Georgetown bookdealer whom
Jefferson had known and respected for years.
662
THOMAS JSFF8RSON
it, you may place on your subscription paper a letter in these
words: "Sir, I subscribe with pleasure for a dozen copies of the
invaluable book you are about to publish on Political Economy.
I should be happy to see it in the hands of every American
citizen." ....
TITLE.— "A Treatise on Political Economy by the Count
Destutt Tracy, member of the Senate and Institute of France,
and of the American Philosophical Society, to which is prefixed
a supplement to a preceding work on the Understanding or
Elements of Ideology, by the same author, with an analytical
table, and an introduction on the faculty of the will, translated
from the unpublished French original."
Prospectus.— Political Economy in modern times assumed
the form of a regular science first in the hands of the political
sect in France, called the Economists. They made it a branch
only of a comprehensive system on the natural order of socie-
ties. Quesnai first, Gournay, Le Frosne, Turgot and Dupont
de Nemours, the enlightened, philanthropic, and venerable citi-
zen, now of the United States, led the way in these develop-
ments, and gave to our inquiries the direction they have since
observed. Many sound and valuable principles established by
them, have received the sanction of general approbation. Some,
as in the infancy of a science might be expected, have been
brought into question, and have furnished occasion for much
discussion. Their opinions on production, and on the proper
subjections of taxation, have been particularly controverted;
and whatever may be the merit of their principles of taxation,
it is not wonderful they have not prevailed; not on the ques-
tioned score of correctness, but because not acceptable to the
people, whose will must be the supreme law. Taxation is in
fact the most difficult function of government— and that against
which their citizens are most apt to be refractory. The general
aim is therefore to adopt the mode most consonant with the cir-
cumstances and sentiments of the country.
Adam Smith, first in England, published a rational and sys-
663
OF
tematic work on Political Economy, adopting generally thfe
ground of the Economists, but differing on the subjects before
specified. The system being novel, much argument and detail
seemed then necessary to establish principles which now are
assented to as soon as proposed. Hence his book, admitted to
be able, and of the first degree of merit, has yet been considered
as prolix and tedious.
In France, John Baptist Say has the merit of producing a
very superior work on the subject of Political Economy. His
arrangement is luminous, ideas clear, style perspicuous, and the
whole subject brought within half the volume of Smith's work.
Add to this considerable advances in correctness and extension
of principles.
The work of Senator Tracy, now announced, comes forward
with all the lights of his predecessors in the science, and with
the advantages of further experience, more discussion, and
greater maturity of subjects. It is certainly distinguished by
important traits; a cogency of logic which has never been ex-
ceeded in any work, a rigorous enchainment of ideas, and con-
stant recurrence to it to keep it in the reader's view, a fearless
pursuit of truth whithersoever it leads, and a diction so correct
that not a word can be changed but for the worse; and, as
happens in other cases, that the more a subject is understood,
the more briefly it may be explained, he has reduced, not in-
deed all the details, but all the elements and the system of
principles within the compass of an 8vo, of about 400 pages.
Indeed we might say within two-thirds of that space, the one-
third being taken up with some preliminary pieces now to be
noticed.
Mr. Tracy is the author of a treatise on the Elements of
Ideology, justly considered as a production of the first order
in the science of our thinking faculty, or of the understanding.
Considering the present work but as a second section to those
Elements under the titles of Analytical Table, Supplement, and
Introduction, he gives in these preliminary pieces a supplement
664
THOMAS
to the Elements, shows how the present work stands on that as
its basis, presents a summary view of it, and, before entering
on the formation, distribution, and employment of property
and personality, a question not new indeed, yet one which has
not hitherto been satisfactorily settled. These investigations
are very metaphysical, profound, and demonstrative, and will
give satisfaction to minds in the habit of abstract speculation.
Readers, however, not disposed to enter into them, after read-
ing the summary view, entitled, "on our actions," will probably
pass on at once to the commencement of the main subject of
the work, which is treated of under the following heads:
Of Society.
Of Production, or the formation of our riches.
Of Value, or the measure of utility.
Of change of form, or fabrication.
Of change of place, or commerce.
Of Money.
Of the distribution of our riches.
Of Population.
Of the employmenut of our riches, or consumption.
Of public revenue, expenses and debts.
Although the work now offered is but a translation, it may
be considered in some degree as the original, that having nevet
been published in the country in which it was written. The
author would there have been submitted to the unpleasant al-
ternative either of mutilating his sentiments, where they were
either free or doubtful, or of risking himself under the unset-
tled regimen of the press. A manuscript copy communicated to
a friend here has enabled him to give it to a country which is
afraid to read nothing, and which may be trusted with any-
thing, so long as its reason remains unfettered by law.
In the translation, fidelity has been chiefly consulted. A
more correct style would sometimes have given a shade of sen-
timent which was not the author's, and which, in a work stand-
ing in the place of the original, would have been unjust to-
665
OF
wards him. Some Gallicisms have, therefore, been admitted,
where a single word gives an idea which would require a whole
phrase of dictionary English. Indeed, the horrors of Neologism,
which startle the purist, have given no alarm to the translator.
Where brevity, perspecuity, and even euphony can be pro-
moted by the introduction of a new word, it is an improvement
to the language. It is thus the English lanuguage has been
brought to what it is; one-half of it having been innovations,
made at different times, from the Greek, Latin, French, and
other languages. And is it the worse for these? Had the pro-
posterous idea of fixing the language been adopted by our
Saxon ancestors, of Pierce Plowman, of Chaucer, of Spenser,
the progress of ideas must have stopped with that of the lan-
guage. On the contrary, nothing is more evident than that as
we advance in the knowledge of new things, and of new com-
binations of old ones, we must have new words to express them.
Were Van Helmont, Stane, Scheele, to rise from the dead at
this time, they would scarcely understand one word of their
own science. Would it have been better, then, to have aban-
boned the science of Chemistry, rather than admit innovations
in its terms? What a wonderful accession of copiousness and
force has the French language attained, by the innovations of
the last thirty years! And what do we not owe to Shakespeare
for the enrichment of the language, by his free and magical cre-
ation of words? In giving a loose to Neologism, indeed, un-
couth words will sometimes be offered; but the public will
judge them, and receive or reject, as sense or sound shall sug-
gest, and authors will be approved or condemned according to
the use they make of this license, as they now are from their
use of the present vocabulary. The claim of the present trans-
lation, however, is limited to its duties of fidelity and justice
to the sense of its original; adopting the author's own word
only where no term of our own language would convey his
meaning.
666
THOMAS
TO JOHN ADAMS
Monticello, April 8, 1816
.... You ask, if I would agree to live my seventy or
rather seventy- three years over again? To which I say, yea. I
think with you, that it is a good world on the whole; that it
has been framed on a principle of benevolence, and more pleas-
ure than pain dealt out to us. There are, indeed, (who might
say nay) gloomy and hypochondriac minds, inhabitants of dis-
eased bodies, disgusted with the present, and despairing of the
future; always counting that the worst will happen, because
it may happen. To these I say, how much pain have cost us the
evils which have never happened! My temperament is san-
guine. I steer my bark with Hope in the head, leaving Fear
astern. My hopes, indeed, sometimes fail; but not oftener than
the forebodings of the gloomy. There are, I acknowledge, even
in the happiest life, some terrible convulsions, heavy set-offs
against the opposite page of the account. I have often won-
dered for what good end the sensations of grief could be in-
tended. All our other passions, within proper bounds, have an
useful object. And the perfection of the moral character is,
not in a stoical apathy, so hypocritically vaunted, and so un-
truly too, because impossible, but in a just equilibrium of all
the passions. I wish the pathologists then would tell us what
is the use of grief in the economy, and of what good it is the
cause, proximate or remote.
Did I know Baron Grimm while at Paris? Yes, most inti-
mately. He was the pleasantest and most conversable member
of the diplomatic corps while I was there; a man of good
fancy, acuteness, irony, cunning and egoism. No heart, not
much of any science, yet enough of every one to speak its lan-
guage; his forte was belles-lettres, painting and sculpture. In
these he was the oracle of society, and as such, was the Empress
Catharine's private correspondent and factor, in all things not
diplomatic Although I never heard Grimm express the
667
OF
opinion directly, yet I always supposed him to be of the school
of Diderot, D'Alembert, D'Holbach; the first of whom com-
mitted his system of atheism to writing in "Le bon sens," and the
last in his "Systeme de la Nature" It was a numerous school in
the Catholic countries, while the* infidelity of the Protestant took
generally the form of theism. The former always insisted that
it was a mere question of definition between them, the hypos-
tasis of which, on both sides, was "Nature" or "the Universe;"
that both agreed in the order of the existing system, but the
one supposed it from eternity, the other as having begun in
time. And when the atheist descanted on the unceasing motion
and circulation of matter through the animal, vegetable and
mineral kingdoms, never resting, never annihilated, always
changing form, and under all forms gifted with the power of
reproduction; the theist pointing "to the heavens above, and
to the earth beneath, and to the waters under the earth/' asked,
if these did not proclaim a first cause, possessing intelligence
and power; power in the production, and intelligence in the
design and constant preservation of the system; urged the
palpable existence of final causes; that the eye was made to
see, and the ear to hear, and not that we see because we have
eyes, and hear because we have ears; an answer obvious to
the senses, as that of walking across the room, was to the phi-
losopher demonstrating the non-existence of motion. It was in
D'Holbach's conventicles that Rousseau imagined all the ma-
chinations against him were contrived ; and he left, in his Con-
fessions, the most biting anecdotes of Grimm
TO JOHN TAYLOR 1
Monticello, May 28, 1816
DEAR SIR, —On my return from a long journey and con-
siderable absence from home, I found here the copy of your
i. John Taylor of Caroline [Virginia], political writer, agriculturist,
and philosopher of agrarian liberalism, was the author of An Inquiry into
the Principles and Policy of the Government of the United States.
668
THOMAS JSFFSRSON
"Enquiry into the Principles of our Government," which you
had been so kind as to send me; and for which I pray you to
accept my thanks. The difficulties of getting new works in our
situation, inland and without a single bookstore, are such as
had prevented my obtaining a copy before; and letters which
had accumulated during my absence, and were calling for an-
swers, have not yet permitted me to give to the whole a thor-
ough reading; yet certain that you and I could not think dif-
ferently on the fundamentals of rightful government, I was
impatient, and availed myself of the intervals of repose from
the writing-table, to obtain a cursory idea of the body of the
work.
I see in it much matter for profound reflection; much which
should confirm our adhesion, in practice, to the good principles
of our Constitution, and fix our attention on what is yet to be
made good. The sixth section on the good moral principles of
our government, I found so interesting and replete with sound
principles, as to postpone my letter-writing to its thorough
perusal and consideration. Besides much other good matter, it
settles unanswerably the right of instructing representatives,
and their duty to obey. 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. Funding I consider as limited, rightfully, to a
redemption of the debt within the lives of a majority of the
generation contracting it; every generation coming equally, by
the laws of the Creator of the world to the free possession of
the earth He made for their subsistence, unincumbered by
their predecessors, who, like them, were but tenants for life.
You have successfully and completely pulverized Mr. Adams'
system of orders, and his opening the mantle of republicanism
to every government of laws, whether consistent or not with
natural right. Indeed, it must be acknowledged, that the term
republic is of very vague application in every language: Wit-
669
OF
ness the self-styled republics of Holland, Switzerland, Genoa,
Venice, Poland. Were I to assign to this term a precise and
definite idea, I would say, purely and simply, it means a gov-
ernment by its citizens in mass, acting directly and personally,
according to rules established by the majority; and that every
other government is more or less republican, in proportion as
it has in its composition more or less of this ingredient of the
direct action of the citizens. Such a government is evidently re-
strained to very narrow limits of space and population. I doubt
if it would be practicable beyond the extent of a New England
township. The first shade from this pure element, which, like
that of pure vital air, cannot sustain life of itself, would be
where the powers of the government, being divided, should be
exercised each by representatives chosen either pro hac vice?
or for such short terms as should render secure the duty of
expressing the will of their constituents. This I should consider
as the nearest approach to a pure republic, which is practicable
on a large scale of country or population. And we have ex-
amples of it in some of our State Constitutions, which, if not
poisoned by priest-craft, would prove its excellence over all mix-
tures with other elements; and, with only equal doses of poison,
would still be the best. Other shades of republicanism may be
found in other forms of government, where the executive, ju-
diciary and legislative functions, and the different branches of
the latter, are chosen by the people more or less directly, for
longer terms of years, or for life, or made hereditary; or where
there are mixtures of authorities, some dependent on, and others
independent of the people. The further the departure from di-
rect and constant control by the citizens, the less has the gov-
ernment of the ingredient of republicanism; evidently none
where the authorities are hereditary, as in France, Venice, etc.,
or self-chosen, as in Holland; and little, where for life, in pro-
portion as the life continues in being after the act of election.
The purest republican feature in the government of our
own State, is the House of Representatives. The Senate is
i. For the occasion.
670
THOMAS jeFFSRSON
equally so the first year, less the second, and so on. The Exe-
cutive still less, because not chosen by the people directly. The
Judiciary seriously anti-republican, because for life; and the
national arm wielded, as you observe, by military leaders, ir-
responsible but to themselves. Add to this the vicious consti-
tution of our county courts (to whom the justice, the execu-
tive administration, the taxation, police, the military appoint-
ments of the county, and nearly all our daily concerns are con-
fided), self-appointed, self-continued, holding their authorities
for life, and with an impossibility of breaking in on the perpet-
ual succession of any faction once possessed of the bench.
They are in truth, the executive, the judiciary, and the mili-
tary of their respective counties, and the sum of the counties
makes the State. And add, also, that one-half of our brethren
who fight and pay taxes, are excluded, like Helots, from the
rights of representation, as if society were instituted for the
soil, and not for the men inhabiting it; or one-half of these
could dispose of the rights and the will of the other half, with-
out their consent.
"What constitutes a State?
Not high-raised battlements, or labor'd mound,
Thick wall, or moated gate;
Not cities proud, with spires and turrets crown'd;
No: men, high-minded men;
Men, who their duties know;
But know their rights; and knowing, dare maintain.
These constitute a State."
In the General Government, the House of Representatives
is mainly republican; the Senate scarcely so at all, as not elected
by the people directly, and so long secured even against those
who do elect them; the Executive more republican than the
Senate, from its shorter term, its election by the people, in
practice, (for they vote for A only on an assurance that he will
vote for B,) and because, in practice also, a principle of ro-
tation seems to be in a course of establishment; the judiciary
671
OF
independent of the nation, their coercion by impeachment be-
ing found nugatory.
If, then, the control of the people over the organs of their
government be the measure of its republicanism, and I con-
fess I know no other measure, it must be agreed that our gov-
ernments have much less of republicanism than ought to have
been expected; in other words, that the people have less regu-
lar control over their agents, than their rights and their inter-
ests require. And this I ascribe, not to any want of republican
dispositions in those who formed these Constitutions, but to a
submission of true principle to European authorities, to specu-
lators on government, whose fears of the people have been in-
spired by the populace of their own great cities, and were
unjustly entertained against the independent, the happy, and
therefore orderly citizens of the United States. Much I appre-
hend that the golden moment is past for reforming these heres-
ies. The functionaries of public power rarely strengthen in their
dispositions to abridge it, and an unorganized call for timely
amendment is not likely to prevail against an organized opposi-
tion to it. We are always told that things are going on well ; why
change them? "C hist a bene, non si muove" said the Italian,
"let him who stands well, stand still." This is true; and I
verily believe they would go on well with us under an absolute
\nonarch, while our present character remains, of order, in-
dustry and love of peace, and restrained, as he would be, by the
proper spirit of the people. But it is while it remains such, we
should provide against the consequences of its deterioration.
And let us rest in the hope that it will yet be done, and spare
ourselves the pain of evils which may never happen.
On this view of the import of the term republic, instead
of saying, as has been said, "that it may mean anything or
nothing," we may say with truth and meaning, that govern-
ments are more or less republican, as they have more or less of
the element of popular election and control in their composition;
and believing, as I do, that the mass of the citizens is the safest
depository of their own rights and especially, that the <evils
672
THOMAS
flowing from the duperies of the people, are less injurious than
those from the egoism of their agents, I am a friend to that
composition of government which has in it the most of this
ingredient. And I sincerely believe, with you, that banking
establishments are more dangerous than standing armies; and
that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity,
under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large
scale.
I salute you with constant friendship and respect.
TO SAMUEL KERCHEVAL 1
Monticello, July 12, 1816
.... I am not among those who fear the people. They,
and not the rich, are our dependence for continued freedom.
And to preserve their independence, we must not let our rulers
load us with perpetual debt. We must make our election be-
tween economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude. If we
run into such debts, as that we must be taxed in our meat and
in our drink, in our necessaries and our comforts, in our labors
and our amusements, for our callings and our creeds, as the
people of England are, our people, like them, must come to
labor sixteen hours in the twenty-four, give the earnings of fif-
teen of these to the government for their debts and daily ex-
penses; and the sixteenth being insufficient to afford us bread,
we must live, as they now do, on oatmeal and potatoes; have
no time to think, no means of calling the mismanagers to ac-
count; but be glad to obtain subsistence by hiring ourselves
to rivet their chains on the necks of our fellow suffers. Our
land-holders, too, like theirs, retaining indeed the title and
stewardship of estates called theirs, but held really in trust for
the treasury, must wander, like theirs, in foreign countries, and
be contented with penury, obscurity, exile, and the glory of
i. Samuel Kercheval had written Jefferson concerning a revision of the
first Constitution of Virginia.
673
OF
the nation. This example reads to us the salutary lesson, that
private fortunes are destroyed by public as well as by private
extravagance. And this is the tendency of all human govern-
ments. A departure from principle in one instance becomes a
precedent for a second; that second for a third; and so on, till
the bulk of the society is reduced to be mere automatons of
misery, to have no sensibilities left but for sinning and suffer-
ing. Then begins, indeed, the bellum omnium in omnia, which
some philosophers observing to be so general in this world,
have mistaken it for the natural, instead of the abusive state
of man. And the fore horse of this frightful team is public debt.
Taxation follows that, and in its train wretchedness and op-
pression.
Some men look at constitutions with sanctimonious rever-
ence, and deem them like the ark of the covenant, too sacred to
be touched. They ascribe to the men of the preceding age a wis-
dom more than human, and suppose what they did to be beyond
amendment. I knew that age well ; I belonged to it, and labored
with it. It deserved well of its country. It was very like the
present, but without the experience of the present; and forty
years of experience in government is worth a century of book-
reading; and this they would say themselves, were they to rise
from the dead. I am certainly not an advocate for frequent and
untried changes in laws and constitutions. I think moderate
imperfections had better be borne with; because, when once
known, we accommodate ourselves to them, and find practcial
means of correcting their ill effects. But I know also, that laws
and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the
human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlight-
ened, as new discoveries are made, new truths disclosed, and
manners and opinions change with the change of circumstances,
institutions must advance also, and keep pace with the times.
We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which
fitted him when a boy, as civilized society to remain ever under
the regimen of their barbarous ancestors. It is this preposter-
ous idea which has lately deluged Europe in blood. Their mon-
674
THOMAS
arcns, instead of wisely yielding to the gradual change' of
circumstances, of favoring progressive accommodation to pro-
gressive improvement, have clung to old abuses, entrenched
themselves behind steady habits, and obliged their subjects to
seek through blood and violence rash and ruinous innovations,
which, had they been referred to the peaceful deliberations and
collected wisdom of the nation, would have been put into ac-
ceptable and salutary forms. Let us follow no such fexamples,
nor weakly believe that one generation is not as capable as an-
other of taking care of itself, and of ordering its own affairs.
Let us, as our sister States have done, avail ourselves of our
reason and experience, to correct the crude essays of our first
and unexperienced, although wise, virtuous, and well-meaning
councils. And lastly, let us provide in our Constitution for its
revision at stated periods. What these periods should be, nature
herself indicates. By the European tables of mortality, of the
adults living at any one moment of time, a majority will be
dead in about nineteen years. At the end of that period then,
a new majority is come into place; or, in other words, a new
generation. Each generation is as independent of the one pre-
ceding, as that was of all which had gone before. It has then,
like them, a right to choose for itself the form of government
it believes most promotive of its own happiness; consequently,
to accommodate to the circumstances in which it finds itself,
that received from its predecessors; and it is for the peace and
good of mankind, that a solemn opportunity of doing this
every nineteen or twenty years, should be provided by the
Constitution; so that it may be handed on, with periodical re-
pairs, from generation to generation, to the end of time, if
anything human can so long endure. It is now forty years since
the constitution of Virginia was formed. The same tables in-
form us, that, within that period, two-thirds of the adults then
living are now dead. Have then the remaining third, feven if
they had the wish, the right to hold in obedience to their will,
and to laws heretofore made by them, the other two-thirds, who,
with themselves, compose the present mass 01 adults? If they
675
OF
have not, who has? The dead? But the dead have no rights.
They are nothing; and nothing cannot own something. Where
there is no substance, there can be no accident. This corporeal
globe, and everything upon it, belong to its present corporeal
inhabitants, during their generation. They alone have a right
to direct what is the concern of themselves alone, and to de-
clare the law of that direction; and this declaration can only
be made by their majority. That majority, then, has a right to
depute representatives to a convention, and to make the Con-
stitution what they think will be the best for themselves. But
how collect their voice? This is the real difficulty. If invited by
private authority, or county or district meetings, these divi-
sions are so large that few will attend; and their voice will be
imperfectly, or falsely, pronounced. Here, then, would be one
of the advantages of the ward divisions I have proposed. The
mayor of every ward, on a question like the present, would call
his ward together, take the simple yea or nay of its members,
convey these to the county court, who would hand on those of
all its wards to be the proper general authority; and the voice
of the whole people would be thus fairly, fully, and peaceably
expressed, discussed, and decided by the common reason of the
society. If this avenue be shut to the call of sufferance, it will
make itself heard through that of force, and we shall go on,
as other nations are doing, in the endless circle of oppression,
rebellion, reformation; and oppression, rebellion, reformation,
again; and so on forever
TO JOHN ADAMS
Monticello, August i, 1816
.... We shall have our follies without doubt. Some one
or more of them will always be afloat. But ours will be the
follies of enthusiasm, not of bigotry, not of Jesuitism. Bigotry
is the disease of ignorance, of morbid minds; enthusiasm of
the free and buoyant. Education and free discussion are the
676
THOMAS 3SFFSRSON
antidotes of both. We are destined to be a barrier against the
returns of ignorance and barbarism. Old Europe will have to
lean on our shoulders, and to hobble along by our side, under
the monkish trammels of priests and kings, as she can. What
a colossus shall we be when the southern continent comes up to
our mark! What a stand will it secure as a ralliance for the
reason and freedom of the globe! I like the dreams of the
future better than the history of the past,— so good night! I
will dream on, always fancying that Mrs. Adams and yourself
are by my side marking the progress and the obliquities of
ages and countries.
TO MRS. ABIGAIL ADAMS 1
Monticello, January n, 1817
I owe you, dear Madam, a thousand thanks for the
letters communicated in your favor of December i5th, and
now returned. They give me more information than I possessed
before, of the family of Mr. Tracy. But what is infinitely inter '
esting, is the scene of the exchange of Louis XVIII. for Bona-
parte. What lessons of wisdom Mr. 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 of St. Helena, like a lion in
the tower. That is probably the closing verse of the chapter of
his crimes. But not so with Louis. He has other vicissitudes to
go through.
I communicated the letters, according to your permission,
to my grand-daughter, Ellen Randolph, who read them with
pleasure and edification. She is justly sensible of, and flattered
by your kind notice of her; and additionally so, by the favor*
able recollections of our northern visiting friends. If Monti
i. Abigail Adams was the wife of John Adams.
677
OF
cello has anything which has merited their remembrance, it
gives it a value the more in our 'estimation; and could I, in the
spirit of your wish, count backwards a score of years, it would
not be long before Ellen and myself would pay our homage
personally to Quincy. But those twenty years! Alas! where
are they? With those beyond the flood. Our next meeting must
then be in the country to which they have flown,— a country
for us not now very distant. For this journey we shall need
neither gold nor silver in our purse, nor scrip, nor coats, nor
staves. Nor is the provision for it more easy than the prepara-
tion has been kind. Nothing proves more than this that the
Being who presides over the world is essentially benevolent.
Stealing from us, one by on'e, the faculties of enjoyment, searing
our sensibilities, leading us, like the horse in his mill, round
and round the same beaten circle,
To see what we have seen,
To taste the tasted, and at each return
Less tasteful; o'er our palates to decant
Another vintage —
Lntil satiated and fatigued with this leaden iteration, we ask
our own cong&. I heard once a very old friend, who had troubled
himself with neither poets nor philosophers, say the same thing
in plain prose, that he was tired of pulling off his shoes and
stockings at night, and putting them on again in the morning.
The wish to stay here is thus gradually extinguished ; but not so
easily that of returning once, in awhile, to see how things have
gone on. Perhaps, however, one of the elements of future
felicity is to be a constant and unimpassioned view of what is
passing here. If so, this may well supply the wish of occasional
visits. Mercier has given us a vision of the year 2440; but
prophecy is one thing, and history another. On the whole, how-
ever, perhaps it is wise and well to be contented with the good
things which the master of the feast places before us, and to
be thankful for what we have, rather than thoughtful about
what we have not. You and I, dear Madam, have already had
678
THOMAS ySFFSRSON
more than an ordinary portion of life, and more, too, of health
than the general measure. On this score I owe boundless
thankfulness. Your health was, some time ago, not so good as
it has been; and I perceive in the letters communicated some
complaints still. I hope it is restored; and that life and health
may be continued to you as many years as yourself shall wish,
is the sincere prayer of your affectionate and respectful friend.
TO CHARLES THOMSON
Monticello, Janry. 29, 1817*
.... It is a singular anxiety which some people have
that we should all think alike. Would the world be more beau-
tiful were all our faces alike? were our tempers, our talents, our
tastes, our forms, our wishes, aversions and pursuits cast
exactly in the same mould? If no varieties existed in the animal,
vegetable or mineral creation, but all move strictly uniform,
catholic & orthodox, what a world of physical and moral monot-
ony it would be! These are the absurdities into which thost
run who usurp the throne of God and dictate to Him what He
should have done. May they with all their metaphysical riddles
appear before that tribunal with as clean hands and hearts as
you and I shall. There, suspended in the scales of eternal jus-
tice, faith and works will show their worth by their weight.
God bless you and preserve you long in life & health.
TO JOSEPH DELAPLAINE 2
Monticello, April 12, 1817
DEAR SIR,— My repugnance is so invincible to be saying
anything of my own history as if worthy to occupy the public
attention that I have suffered your letter of March 17, but riot
1. [Ford.]
2. Jefferson and Joseph Delaplaine, contemporary historian, occasion-
ally corresponded concerning matters of historical interest.
679
L8TTSRS OF
received till March 28, to lie thus long without resolution
enough to take it up. I indulged myself at some length on a
former occasion because it was to repel a calumny still some-
times repeated after the death of its numerous brethren, by
which a party at one time thought they could vofe me down,
deeming even science itself as well as my affection for it a fit
object of ridicule and a disqualification for the affairs of gov-
ernment. I still think that many of the objects of our inquiry
are too minute for public notice. The number of names and
ages of my children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, etc.,
would produce fatigu'e and disgust to your readers of which I
would be an unwilling instrument, it will certainly be enough
to say that from one daughter living and another deceased, I
have a numerous family of grandchildren and an increasing one
of great-grandchildren.
I was married on New Year's day of 1772, and Mrs. J. died
in the autumn of 1782. I was educated at William and Mary
College, in Williamsburg. I read Greek, Latin, French, Italian,
Spanish and English of course, with something of its radics,
the Anglo-Saxon. I became a member of the legislature of
Virginia in 1769 at the accession of Lord Botetourt to our
government. I could not readily make a statement of the
literary societies of which I am a member, they are many and
would be long to enumerate and would savor too much of
vanity and pedantry. Would it not be better to say merely that
I am a member of many literary societies in Europe and
America.
Your statements of the corrections of the Declaration of
Independence by Dr. Franklin and Mr. Adams are neither of
them at all exact. I should think it better to say generally that
the rough draft was communicated to those two gentlemen,
who each of them made two or three short and verbal alter-
ations only, but even this is laying more stress on mere com-
position than it merits, for that alone was mine. The sentiments
were of all America. . . .
680
THOMAS
TO BARON ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT*
Monticello, June 13, 1817
.... The physical information you have given us of a
country [Spain] hitherto so shamefully unknown, has come
exactly in time to guide our understandings in the great polit-
ical revolution now bringing it into prominence on the stage of
the world. The issue of its struggles, as they respect Spain, is
no longer matter of doubt. As it respects their own liberty,
peace and happiness, we cannot be quite so certain. Whether
the blinds of bigotry, the shackles of the priesthood, and the
fascinating glare of rank and wealth, give fair play to the com'
mon sense of the mass of their people, so far as to qualify them
for self-government, is what we do not know. Perhaps our
wishes may be stronger than our hopes. The first principle of
republicanism is, that the lex majoris partis 2 is the funda-
mental law of every society of individuals of tequal rights; to
consider the will of the society enounced by the majority of a
single vote, as sacred as if unanimous, is the first of all lessons
in importance, yet the last which is thoroughly learnt. This
law once disregarded, no other remains but that of force,
which ends necessarily in military despotism. This has been the
history of the French Revolution, and I wish the understand-
ing of our Southern brethren may be sufficiently enlarged and
firm to see that their fate depends on its sacred observance.
TO MONSIEUR BARBE DE MARBOIS 3
Monticello, June 14, 1817
.... When I left France at the close of '89, your revolu-
tion was, as I thought, under the direction of able and honest
i. Jefferson frequently corresponded with Friedricfi Heinrich Alexander
(Baron von) Humboldt, the famous German naturalist and traveler.
2. Law of the majority.
3. M. Barbe de Marbois had been Secretary of the French Legation in
Philadelphia. His inquiries had prompted Jefferson to write the Notes on
Virginia.
68 1
LSTT8RS OF
men. But the madness of some of their successors, the vices of
others, the malicious intrigues of an envious and corrupting
neighbor, the tracasserie of the Directory, the usurpations, the
havoc, and devastations of your Attila, and the tequal usurpa-
tions, depredations and oppressions of your hypocritical de-
liverers, will form a mounrful period in the history of man, a
period of which the last chapter will not be seen in your day
or mine, and one which I still fear is to be written in characters
of blood. Had Bonaparte reflected that such is the moral con-
struction of the world, that no national crime passes unpun-
ished in the long run, he would not now be in the cage of St.
Helena; and were your present oppressors to reflect on the
same truth, they would spare to their own countries the penal-
ties on their present wrongs which will be inflicted on them
on future times. The seeds of hatred and revenge which they
are now sowing with a large hand, will not fail to produce their
fruits in time. Like their brother robbers on the highway, they
suppose the escape of the moment a final escape, and deem
infamy and future risk countervailed by present gain. Our lot
has been happier. When you witnessed our first struggles in the
War of Independence, you little calculated, more than we did,
on the rapid growth and prosperity of this country; on the
practical demonstration it was about to exhibit, of the happy
truth that man is capable of self-government, and only ren-
dered otherwise by the moral degradation designedly super-
induced on him by the wicked acts of his tyrants.
I have much confidence that we shall proceed successfully
for ages to come, and that, contrary to the principle of Mon-
tesquieu, it will be seen that the larger the extent of country,
the more firm its republican structure, if founded, not on con-
quest, but in principles of compact and equality. My hope of
its duration is built much on the enlargement of the resources
of life going hand in hand with the enlargement of territory,
and the belief that men are disposed to live honestly, if the
means of doing so are open to them. With the consolation of
this belief in the future result of our labors, I have that of
682
THOMAS JSFFSRSON
other prophets who foretell distant events, that I shall not
live to see it falsified. My theory has always been, that if we
are to dream, the flatteries of hope are as cheap, and pleasanter
than the gloom of despair. I wish to yourself a long life of
honors, health and happiness.
TO GEORGE TICKNOR *
Poplar Forest near Lynchburg, Nov. 25, 1817
.... I had before heard of the military ingredients
which Bonaparte had infused into all the schools of France,
but have never so well understood them as from your letter.
The penance he is now doing for all his atrocities must be
soothing to every virtuous heart. It proves that we have a god
in heaven. That he is just, and not careless of what passes in
this world. And we cannot but wish to this inhuman wretch, a
long, long life, that time as well as intensity may fill up his
sufferings to the measure of his enormities. But indeed what
sufferings can atone for his crimes against the liberties & happi-
ness of the human race; for the miseries he has already in-
flicted on his own generation, & on those yet to come, on whom
he has rivetted the chains of despotism! ....
TO JOHN TRUMBULL2
MonticellOy Jan. 8, 1818
DEAR SIR,— I can have no hesitation in placing my name
on the roll of subscribers to the print of your Declaration of
Independence, & I desire to do it for two copies, the advance of
1. George Ticknor, later to become a distinguishd author and educator,
was at this time studying in Europe. He had visited Jefferson at Monti-
cello prior to going abroad, and the older man's paternal interest in
Ticknor was exceeded only by his respect and admiration for Jefferson.
[Ford.1
2. John Trumbull, the painter of the American Revolution, is still the
most famous interpreter of this period. [MS. Franklin Collection, Yale
University.]
OF
price from 18.66 to 20. D. cannot be objected to by anyone
because of the disproportionate decrease in the value of the
money, what discourages our citizens in the purchase of prints
is the tawdry taste prevailing for gew-gaw gilt framfes. these
flaring things injure greatly the effect of the print, a narrow
fillet of gilt on the inner & outer edge, merely to relieve the
black of the main breadth, permits the eye to rest in composure
on the field of the print, undisturbed by the glare of a massive,
refulgent border, frames of the prevailing style cost as much,
& often more than the print itself, while it is right to indulge the
luxury of the rich with copies of exquisite & perfect execution
would it not be worth your while to have one of mere outline
engraved which could be sold for a dollar apiece? were such to
be had, scarcely a hovel in the U. S. would be without one,
and 50. of them would be sold for one of the superior, however
you understand the public taste better than I do, and will do
what is for your own best interest, which I sincerely wish to
see prompted, because you possess my sincere and affectionate
esteem
TO COUNT DUGNANI *
(PAPAL NUNCIO)
Monticello, February 14, 1818
.... During the terrible revolutions of Europe I felt
great anxiety for you, and have never yet learnt with certainty
how far they affected you. Your letter to the Archbishop being
from Rome and so late as September makes me hope that all
is well, and thanks be to God the tiger who revelled so long
in the blood and spoils of Europe is at length, like another
Prometheus, chained to his rock, where the vulture of remorse
for his crimes will be preying on his vitals and in like manner
without consuming them. Having been, like him, intrusted
i. Count Antonio Dugnani was the foreign ambassador sent by Pope
Pius VI to the Court of France in 1789.
684
THOMAS JSFFSRSON
with the happiness of my country, I feel the blessing of re-
sembling him in no other point. I have not caused the death of
five or ten millions of human beings, the devastation of other
countries, the depopulation of my own, the exhaustion of all
its resources, the destruction of its liberties, nor its foreign sub-
jugation. All this he has done to render more illustrious the
atrocities perpetrated for illustrating himself and his family
with plundered diadems and sceptres. On the contrary, I have
the consolation to reflect that during the period of my admin-
istration not a drop of the blood of a single fellow citizen was
shed by the sword of war or of the law, and that after cherish-
ing for eight years their peace and prosperity I laid down their
trust of my own accord and in the midst of their blessings
and importunities to continue in it. But, beginning to be sen-
sible of the effect of age, I feared that its infirmities might
injure their interests and believed the example would be salu-
tary against inveteration in office, and I now enjoy in retire-
ment the comfort of their good will and of a conscience calm
and without reproach
TO DR. BENJAMIN WATERHOUSE
Monticello, March j, 1818
DEAR SIR,— I have just received your favor of February
2Oth, in which you observe that Mr. Wirt, on page 47 of his
Life of Patrick Henry, quotes me as saying that "Mr. Henry
certainly gave the first impulse to the ball of revolution." I well
recollect to have used some such expression in a letter to him,
and am tolerably certain that our own State being the subject
under contemplation, I must have used it with respect to that
only. Whether he has given it a more general aspect I cannot
say, as the passage is not in the page you quote, nor, after
thumbing over much of the book, have I been able to find
it. In page 417 there is something like it, but not the exact
685
LSTTSRS OF
expression, and even there it may be doubted whether Mr. Wirt
had his eye on Virginia alone, or on all the colonies. But the
question, who commenced the Revolution?. is as difficult as that
of the first inventors of a thousand good things. For example,
who first discovered the principle of gravity? Not Newton; for
Galileo, who died the year that Newton was born, had meas-
ured its force in the descent of gravid bodies. Who invented the
Lavoiserian chemistry? The English say Dr. Black, by the
preparatory discovery of latent heat. Who invented the steam-
boat? Was it Gerbert, the Marquis of Worcester, Newcomen,
Savary, Papin, Fitch, Fulton? The fact is, that one new idea
leads to another, that to a third, and so on through a course
of time until some one, with whom no one of these ideas was
original, combines all together, and produces what is justly
called a new invention. I suppose it would be as difficult to
trace our Revolution to its first embryo. We do not know how
long it was hatching in the British Cabinet before they ven-
tured to make the first of the experiments which were to
develop it in the end and to produce complete parliamentary
supremacy. Those you mention in Massachusetts as preceding
the stamp act, might be the first visible symptoms of that
design. The proposition of that act in 1764, was the first here.
Your opposition, therefore, preceded ours, as occasion was
sooner given there than here, and the truth, I suppose, is, that
the opposition in every colony began whenever the "encroach-
ment was presented to it. This question of priority is as the
inquiry would be who first, of the three hundred Spartans,
offered his name to Leonidas? I shall be happy to see justice
done to the merits of all, by the unexceptionable umpirage of
date and facts, and especially from the pen which is proposed
to be employed in it.
I rejoice, indeed, to learn from you that Mr. Adams retains
the strength of his memory, his faculties, his cheerfulness, and
even his epistolary industry. This last is gone from me. The
aversion has been growing on me for a considerable time, and
THOMAS JSFFSRSON
now, near the close of seventy-five, is become almost insupera-
ble. I am much debilitated in body, and my memory sensibly
on the wane. Still, however, I enjoy good health and spirits,
and am as industrious a reader as when a student at college.
Not of newspapers. These I have discarded. I relinquish, as I
ought to do, all intermeddling with public affairs, committing
myself cheerfully to the watch and care of those for whom, in
my turn, I have watched and cared. When I contemplate the
immense advances in science and discoveries in the arts which
have been made within the period of my life, I look forward
with confidence to equal advances by the present generation,
and have no doubt they will consequently be as much wiser
than we have been as we than our fathers were, and they than
the burners of witches. Even the metaphysical contest, which
you so pleasantly described to me in a former letter, will prob-
ably end in improvement, by clearing the mind of Platonic
mysticism and unintelligible jargon. Although age is taking
from me the power of communicating by letter with my
friends as industriously as heretofore, I shall still claim with
them the same place they will fever hold in my affections, anc*
on this ground I, with sincerity and pleasure, assure you of mv
great esteem and respect.
TO NATHANIEL BURWELL, Esq.1
MonticellOy March 14, 1818
DEAR SIR,— Your letter of February iyth found me
suffering under an attack of rheumatism, which has but now
left me at sufficient ease to attend to the letters I have received,
A plan of female education has never been a subject of sys-
tematic contemplation with me. It has occupied my attention
so far only as the education of my own daughters occasionally
required. Considering that they would be placed in a country
i. Nathaniel Burwell was a member of a distinguished Virginia family,
687
OF
situation, where little aid could be obtained from abroad, I
thought it essential to give them a solid education, which might
enable them, when become mothers, to educate their own
daughters, and even to direct the course for sons, should their
fathers be lost, or incapable, or inattentive. M> surviving
daughter accordingly, the mother of many daughters as well
as sons, has made their education the object of her life, and
being a better judge of the practical part than myself, it is with
her aid and that of one of her eleves, that I shall subjoin a
catalogue of the books for such a course of reading as we have
practiced.
A great obstacle to good education is the inordinate passion
prevalent for novels, and the time lost in that reading which
should be instructively employed. When this poison infects the
mind, it destroys its tone and revolts it against wholesome
reading. Reason and fact, plain and unadorned, are rejected.
Nothing can engage attention unless dressed in all the figments
of fancy, and nothing so bedecked comes amiss. The result is a
bloated imagination, sickly judgment, and disgust towards all
the real businesses of life. This mass of trash, however, is not
without some distinction; some few modelling their narratives,
although fictitious, on the incidents of real life, have been able
to make them interesting and useful vehicles of a sound moral-
ity. Such, I think, are Marmontel's new moral tales, but not
his old ones, which are really immoral. Such are the writings of
Miss Edgeworth, and some of those of Madame Genlis. For a
like reason, too, much poetry should not be indulged. Some
is useful for forming style and taste. Pope, Dryden, Thompson,
Shakespeare, and of the French, Moliere, Racine, the Cor-
neilles, may be read with pleasure and improvement.
The French language, become that of the general intercourse
of nations, and from their extraordinary advances, now the
depository of all science, is an indispensable part of education
for both sexes. In the subjoined catalogue, therefore, I have
placed the books of both languages indifferently, according as
the one or the other offers what is best.
68*
THOMAS
The ornaments too, and the amusements of life, are entitled
to their portion of attention. These, for a female, are dancing,
drawing, and music. The first is a healthy exercise, elegant and
very attractive for young people. Every affectionate parent
would be pleased to see his daughter qualified to participate
with her companions, and without awkwardness at least, in the
circles of festivity, of which she occasionally becomes a part.
It is a necessary accomplishment, therefore, although of short
use; 'for the French rule is wise, that no lady dances after mar-
riage. This is founded in solid physical reasons, gestation and
nursing leaving little time to a married lady when this exercise
can be either safe or innocent. Drawing is thought less of in
this country than in Europe*. It is an innocent and engaging
amusement, often useful, and a qualification not to be neg-
lected in one who is to become a mother and an instructor.
Music is invaluable where a person has an ear. Where they
have not, it should not be attempted. It furnishes a delightful
recreation for the hours of respite from the cares of the day,
and lasts us through life. The taste of this country, too, calls
for this accomplishment more strongly than for either of the
others.
I need say nothing of household economy, in which the
mothers of our country are generally skilled, and generally
careful to instruct their daughters. We all know its value, and
that diligence and dexterity in all its processes are inestimable
treasures. The order and economy of a house are as honor-
able to the mistress as those of the farm to the master, and if
either be neglected, ruin follows, and children destitute of the
means of living.
This, Sir, is offered as a summary sketch on a subject on
which I have not thought much. It probably contains nothing
but what has already occurred to yourself, and claims your
acceptance on no other ground than as a testimony of my re-
spect for your wishes, and of my great esteem and respect.
689
OF
TO JOHN ADAMS
Monticello, November 13, 1818
The public papers, my dear friend, announce the fatal
jvent * of which your letter of October the 2Oth had given
me ominous foreboding. Tried myself in the school of affliction,
by the loss of every form of connection which can rive the
human heart, I know well, and feel what you have lost, what
you have suffered, are suffering, and have yet to endure. The
same trials have taught me that for ills so immeasurable, time
and silence are the only medicine. I will not, therefore, by use-
less condolences, open afresh the sluices of your grief, nor. al-
though mingling sincerely my tears with yours, will I say a
word more where words are vain, but that it is of some com-
fort to us both, that the term is not very distant, at which we
are to deposit in the same cerement, our sorrows and suffering
bodies, and to ascend in essence to an ecstatic meeting with the
friends we have loved and lost, and whom we shall still love
and never lose again. God bless you and support you under
/our heavy affliction.
TO DOCTOR VINE UTLEY
Monticello, March 21, 1819
SIR,— Your letter of February the i8th came to hand on
th'e ist instant; and the request of the history of my physical
habits would have puzzled me not a little, had it not been for
the model with which you accompanied it, of Doctor Rush's
answer to a similar inquiry. I live so much like other people,
that I might refer to ordinary life as the history of my own.
Like my friend the Doctor, I have lived temperately, eating
little animal food, and that not as an aliment, so much as a
condiment for the vegetables, which constitute my principal
i. The death of Adams's wife, Abigail.
690
THOMAS JSFFBRSON
diet. I double however, the Doctor's glass and a half of wine,
and even treble it with a friend; but halve its effects by drink-
ing the weak wines only. The ardent wines I cannot drink, nor
do I use ardent spirits in any form. Malt liquors and cider are
my table drinks, and my breakfast, like that also of my friend,
is of tea and coffee. I have been blest with organs of digestion
which accept and concoct, without ever murmuring, whatever
the palate chooses to consign to them, and I have not yet lost
a tooth by age. I was a hard student until I entered on the
business of life, the duties of which leave no idle time to those
disposed to fulfil them; and now, retired, and at the age of
seventy-six, I am again a hard student. Indeed, my fondness
for reading and study revolts me from the drudgery of letter-
writing. And a stiff wrist, the consequence of an early disloca-
tion, makes writing both slow and painful. I am not so regular
in my sleep as the Doctor says he was, devoting to it from five
to eight hours, according as my company or the book I am
reading interests me; and I never go to bed without an hour,
or half hour's previous reading of something moral, whereon to
ruminate in the intervals of sleep. But whether I retire to bed
early or late, I rise with the sun. I use spectacles at night, but
not necessarily in the day, unless in reading small print. My
hearing is distinct in particular conversation, but confused
when several voices cross each other, which unfits me for the
society of the table. I have been more fortunate than my friend
in the article of health. So free from catarrhs that I have not
had one, (in the breast, I mean) on an average of eight or ten
years through life. I ascribe this exemption partly to the habit
of bathing my feet in cold water every morning, for sixty years
past. A fever of more than twenty-four hours I have not had
above two or three times in my life. A periodical headache has
afflicted me occasionally, once, perhaps, in six or eight years,
for two or three weeks at a time, which seems now to have left
me; and except on a late occasion of indisposition, I enjoy
good health; too feeble, indeed, to walk much, but riding with-
out fatigue six or eight miles a day, and sometimes thirty or
691
LSTTSRS OF
forty. I may end these egotisms, therefore, as I began, by say-
ing that my life has been so much like that of other people,
that I might say with Horace, to every one "nomine mutato,
narratur fabula de te" 1 I must not end, however, without due
thanks for the kind sentiments of regard you are so good as to
express towards myself; and with my acknowledgments for
these, be pleased to accept the assurances of my respect and
esteem.
TO MR. LAPORTE 2
Montkello, June 4, i8ip
SIR,— In answer to your request to be informed of the
particular style of dieting the students which would be ap-
proved by the visitors of the University, I can only say that,
the University not being yet in action, nor the Hotels for
boarding houses in readiness which will be at their disposal,
no style of dieting has been agreed on: but if I may form a
judgment from the conversations we have had on the subject I
think something like the following course will meet their appro-
bation.
for breakfast, wheat or cornbread, at the choice of each par-
ticular, with butter, and milk, or Coffee-au-lait, at the choice
of each, no meat.
for dinner, a soup, a dish of salt meat, a dish of fresh meat,
& as great a variety of vegetables well cooked as you please.
for supper, corn or wheat bread at their choice, & milk, or
Coffee-au lait, also at their choice, but no meat.
their drink at all times water, a young stomach needing no
stimulating drinks, and the habit of using them being dan-
gerous.
1. "With a change of name, the tale can be told of you."
2. Mr. Laporte was in charge of one of the Hotels (students' rooming
and boarding house) for the proposed University of Virginia. [MS., Uni-
versity of Virginia.]
692
THOMAS
and I should recommend as late a dinner as the rules of theii
school will permit.
no game of chance to be permitted in the house.
TO WILLIAM SHORT
Monticello, October 31, 181$
DEAR SIR,— Your favor of the 2ist is received. My late
illness, in which you are so kind as to feel an interest, was
produced by a spasmodic stricture of the ileum, which came
upon me on the yth inst. The crisis was short, passed over
favorably on the fourth day, and I should soon have been well
but that a dose of calomel and jalap, in which were only eight
or nine grains of the former, brought on a salivation. Of this,
however, nothing now remains but a little soreness of the
mouth. I have been able to get on horseback for three or four
days past.
As you say of yourself, I too am an Epicurian. I consider
the genuine (not the imputed) doctrines of Epicurus as con-
taining everything rational in moral philosophy which Greece
and Rome have left us. Epictetus indeed, has given us what
was good of the Stoics; all beyond, of their dogmas, being
hypocrisy and grimace. Their great crime was in their calum-
nies of Epicurus and misrepresentations of his doctrines; in
which we lament to see the candid character of Cicero engag-
ing as an accomplice. Diffuse, vapid, rhetorical, but enchant-
ing. His prototype Plato, eloquent as himself, dealing out mys-
ticisms incomprehensible to the human mind, has been deified
by certain sects usurping the name of Christians; because, h\
his foggy conceptions, they found a basis of impenetrable dark*
ness whereon to rear fabrications as delirious, of their own in-
vention. These they fathered blasphemously on Him whom
they claimed as their Founder, but who would disclaim thenf
with the indignation which their caricatures of His religion s<
693
OF
justly excite. Of Socrates we have nothing genuine but in the
Memorabilia of Xenophon; for Plato makes him one of his
Collocutors merely to cover his own whimsies under the man-
tle of his name; a liberty of which we are told Socrates him-
self complained. Seneca is indeed a fine moralist, disfiguring
his work at times with some Stoicisms, and affecting too much
of antithesis and point, yet giving us on the whole a great deal
of sound and practical morality. But the greatest of all the re-
formers of the depraved religion of His own country, was Jesus
of Nazareth. Abstracting what is really His from the rubbish
in which it is buried, easily distinguished by its lustre from the
dross of His biographers, and as separable from that as the
diamond from the dunghill, we have the outlines of a system
of the most sublime morality which has ever fallen from the
lips of man; outlines which it is lamentable He did not live to
fill up. Epictetus and Epicurus give laws for governing our-
selves, Jesus a supplement of the duties and charities we owe
to others. The establishment of the innocent and genuine char-
acter of this benevolent Moralist, and the rescuing it from the
imputation of imposture, which has resulted from artificial sys-
tems,1 invented by ultra-Christian sects, unauthorized by a
single word ever uttered by Him, is a most desirable object,
and one to which Priestley has successfully devoted his labors
and learning. It would in time, it is to be hoped, effect a quiet
euthanasia of the heresies of bigotry and fanaticism which have
so long triumphed over human reason, and so generally and
deeply afflicted mankind; but this work is to be begun by win-
nowing the grain from the chaff of the historians of His life. I
have sometimes thought of translating Epictetus (for he has
never been tolerably translated into English) by adding the
genuine doctrines of Epicurus from the Syntagma of Gassendi,
i. E.g. The immaculate conception of Jesus, His deification, the crea-
tion of the world by Him, His miraculous powers, His resurrection and
visible ascension, His corporeal presence in the Eucharist, the Trinity,
original sin, atonement, regeneration, election, orders of Hierarchy, etc.
[Jefferson's note.]
694
THOMAS JEFFERSON
and an abstract from the Evangelists of whatever has the
stamp of the eloquence and fine imagination of Jesus. The last
I attempted too hastily some twelve or fifteen years ago. It was
the work of two or three nights only, at Washington, after get-
ting through the evening task of reading the letters and papers
of the day. But with one foot in the grave, these are now idle
projects for me. My business is to beguile the wearisomeness
of declining life, as I endeavor to do, by the delights of classi-
cal reading and of mathematical truths, and by the consola-
tions of a sound philosophy, equally indifferent to hope and
fear.
I take the liberty of observing that you are not a true dis
ciple of our master Epicuitis, in indulging the indolence to
which you say you are yielding. One of his canons, you know,
was that "that indulgence which presents a greater pleasure,
or produces a greater pain, is to be avoided. " Your love of re-
pose will lead, in its progress, to a suspension of healthy exer-
cise, a relaxation of mind, an indifference to everything around
you, and finally to a debility of body, and hebetude of mind,
the farthest of all things from the happiness which the well-
regulated indulgences of Epicurus ensure; fortitude, you know,
is one of his four cardinal virtues. That teaches us to meet and
surmount difficulties; not to fly from them, like cowards; and
to fly, too, in vain, for they will mest and arrest us at every
turn of our road. Weigh this matter well; brace yourself up;
take a seat with Correa, and come and see the finest portion
of your country, which, if you have not forgotten, you still
do not know, because it is no longer the same as when you
knew it. It will add much to the happiness of my recovery to
be able to receive Correa and yourself, and prove the estima-
tion in which I hold you both. Come, too, and see our in-
cipient University, which has advanced with great activity this
year. By the end of the next, we shall have elegant accommo-
dations for seven professors, and the year following the pro-
fessors themselves. No secondary character will be received
69S
OF
among them. Either the ablest which America or Europe can
furnish, or none at all. They will give us the selected society
of a great city separated from the dissipations and levities of
its ephemeral insects.
I am glad the bust of Condorcet has been saved and so well
placed. His genius should be before us; while the lamentable
but singular act of ingratitude which tarnished his latter days,
may be thrown behind us.
I will place under this a syllabus of the doctrines of Epi-
curus, somewhat in the lapidary style, which I wrote some
twenty years ago; a like one of the philosophy of Jesus, of
nearly the same age, is too long to be copied. Vale, et tibi per-
suade carissimum te esse mihi.
Syllabus of the doctrines of Epicurus
Physical.— The Universe eternal.
Its parts, great and small, interchangeable.
Matter and Void alone.
Motion inherent in matter which is weighty and declining.
Eternal circulation of the elements of bodies.
Gods, an order of beings next superior to man, enjoying in
their sphere, their own felicities; but not meddling with the
concerns of the scale of beings below them.
Moral.— Happiness the aim of life.
Virtue the foundation of happiness.
Utility the test of virtue.
Pleasure active and In-do-lent .
In-do-lence is the absence of pain, the true felicity.
Active, consists in agreeable motion; it is not happiness,
but the means to produce it.
Thus the absence of hunger is an article of felicity; eating
the means to obtain it.
The summum bonum is to be not pained in body, nor trou-
bled in mind.
i.e. In-do-lence of body, tranquillity of mind.
696
THOMAS jeFFGRSON
To procure tranquillity of mind we must avoid desire and
fear, the two principal diseases of the mind.
Man is a free agent.
Virtue consists in i. Prudence. 2. Temperance. 3. Fortitude.
4. Justice.
To which are opposed, i. Folly. 2. Desire. 3. Fear, 4. Deceit,
TO DR. THOMAS COOPER *
Monticello, March 13, 1820
.... I must explain to you the state of religious parties
with us. about % of our state is Baptist, % Methodist, and
of the remaining third two parts may be Presbyterian and one
part Anglican. The Baptists are sound republicans and zealous
supporters of their government. The M'ethodists are republican
mostly, satisfied with their governmt. medling with nothing
out the concerns of their own calling and opposing nothing,
these two sects are entirely friendly to our university, the
anglicans are the same, the Presbyterian clergy alone (not their
followers) remain bitterly federal and malcontent with their
government, they are violent, ambitious of power, and intol-
erant in politics as in religion and want nothing but license
from the laws to kindle again the fires of their leader John
Knox, and to give us a 2d blast from his trumpet. Having a
little more monkish learning than the clergy of the other sects,
they are jealous of the general diffusion of science, and there-
fore hostile to our Seminary lest it should qualify their an
tagonists of the other sects to meet them in equal combat. Not
daring to attack the institution with the avowal of their real
motives, they peck at you, at me, and every feather they can
spy out. but in this they have no weight, even with their own
followers, excepting a few old men among them who may still
be federal & Anglomen, their main body are good citizens,
friends to their government, anxious for reputation, and there-
fore friendly to the University
[i. MS., University of Virginia.]
697
OF
TO JOHN HOLMES *
MontlcellOy April 22, 1820
I thank you, dear Sir, for the copy you have been so
kind as to send me of the letter to your constituents on the
Missouri question. It is a perfect justification to them. I had
for a long time ceased to read newspapers, or pay any atten-
tion to public affairs, confident they were in good hands, and
content to be a passenger in our bark to the shore from which
I am not distant. But this momentous question, like a fire-bell
in the night, awakened and filled me with terror. I considered
it at once as the knell of the Union. It is hushed, indeed, for
the moment. But this is a reprieve only, not a final sentence.
A geographical line, coinciding with a marked principle, moral
and political, once conceived and held up to the angry passions
of men, will never be obliterated ; and every new irritation will
mark it deeper and deeper. I can say, with conscious truth,
that there is not a man on earth who would sacrifice more than
I would to relieve us from this heavy reproach, in any prac-
ticable way. The cession of that kind of property, for so it is
misnamed, is a bagatelle which would not cost me a second
thought, if, in that way, a general emancipation and expatria-
tion could be effected; and, gradually, and with due sacrifices,
I think it might be. But as it is, we have the wolf by the ears,
and we can neither hoi a him, nor safely let him go. Justice is
in one scale, and self -preservation in the other. Of one thing
I am certain, that as the passage of slaves from one State to
another, would not wake a slave of a single human being who
would not be so without it, so their diffusion over a greater sur-
face would make them individually happier, and proportion-
ally facilitate the accomplishment of their emancipation, by
dividing the burden on a greater number of coadjutors. An
abstinence tc/.>, from this act of power, would remove the
i. A merorr.T of the Massachusetts Senate, Holmes led the protest
against the >V/7t#ord Convention and broke with the Federalists. The de-
punrvatioiv 'A W& former party form a series of brilliant political speeches.
698
THOMAS jeFFSRSON
jealousy excited by the undertaking of Congress to regulate
the condition of the different descriptions of men composing
a State. This certainly is the exclusive right of every State,
which nothing in the Constitution has taken from them and
given to the General Government. Could Congress, for exam-
ple, say, that the non-freemen of Connecticut shall be freemen,
or that they shall not emigrate into any other State?
I regret that I am now to die in the belief, that the useless
sacrifice of themselves by the generation of 1776, to acquire
self-government and happiness to their country, is to be thrown
away by the unwise and unworthy passions of their sons, and
that my only consolation is to be, that I live not to weep over
it. If they would but dispassionately weigh the blessings they
will throw away, against an abstract principle more likely to
be Effected by union than by scission, they would pause be-
fore they would perpetrate this act of suicide on themselves,
and of treason against the hopes of the world. To yourself, as
the faithful advocate of the Union, I tender the offering of
my high esteem and respect.
TO WILLIAM SHORT
Monticello, August 4, 1820
.... The day is not distant, when we may formally re-
quire a meridian of partition through the ocean which sep-
arates the two hemispheres, on the hither side of which no
European gun shall ever be heard, nor an American on the
other; and when, during the rage of the eternal wars of Europe,
the lion and the lamb, within our regions, shall lie down to-
gether in peace. The excess of population in Europe, and want
of room, render war, in their opinion, necessary to keep down
that excess of numbers. Here, room is abundant, population
scanty, and peace the necessary means for producing men, to
whom the redundant soil is offering the means of life and hap-
piness. The principles of society there and here, then, are radi*
699
OF
cally different, and I hope no American patriot will ever lose
sight of the essential policy of interdicting in the seas and ter-
ritories of both Americas, the ferocious and sanguinary con-
tests of Europe. I wish to see this coalition begun. I am earnest
for an agreement with the maritime powers of Europe, assign-
ing them the task of keeping down the piracies of their seas
and the cannibalisms of the African coasts, and to us, the sup-
pression of the same enormities within our seas; and for this
purpose, I should rejoice to see the fleets of Brazil and the
United States riding together as brethren of the same family,
and pursuing the same object. And indeed it would be of happy
augury to begin at once this concert of action here, on the in-
vitation of either to the other government, while the way might
be preparing for withdrawing our cruisers from Europe, and
preventing naval collisions there which daily endanger our
peace
TO JOHN ADAMS
Monticello, August 75, 1820
.... But enough of criticism: let me turn to your puz-
zling letter of May the i2th, on matter, spirit, motion, etc. Its
crowd of scepticisms kept me from sleep. I read it, and laid it
down; read it, and laid it down, again and again; and to give
rest to my mind, I was obliged to recur ultimately to my habit-
ual anodyne, "I feel, therefore I exist." I feel bodies which are
not myself: there are other existences then. I call them matter.
I feel them changing place. This gives me motion. Where there
is an absence of matter, I call it void, or nothing, or imma-
terial space. On the basis of sensation, of matter and motion,
we may erect the fabric of all the certainties we can have or
need. I can conceive thought to be an action of a particular
organization of matter, formed for that purpose by its Cre-
ator, as well as that attraction is an action of matter, or mag-
netism of loadstone. When he who denies to the Creator the
power of endowing matter with the mode of action called
700
THOMAS
thinking, shall show how He could endow the sun with the
mode of action called attraction, which reins the planets in
the track of their orbits, or how an absence of matter can
have a will, and by that will put matter into motion, then the
Materialist may be lawfully required to explain the process
by which matter exercises the faculty of thinking. When once
we quit the basis of sensation, all is in the wind. To talk of
immaterial existences, is to talk of nothings. To say that the
human soul, angels, God, are immaterial, is to say, they are
nothings, or that there is no God, no angels, no soul. I cannot
reason otherwise: but I believe I am supported in my creed of
materialism by the Lockes, the Tracys and the Stewarts. At
what age * of the Christian Church this heresy of immaterial-
ism, or masked atheism, crept in, I do not exactly know. But
a heresy it certainly is. Jesus taught nothing of it. He told us.
indeed, that "God is a Spirit/' but He has not defined what a
spirit is, nor said that it is not matter. And the ancient fa-
thers generally, of the three first centuries, held it to be mat-
ter, light and thin indeed, an etherial gas; but still matter
Rejecting all organs of information, therefore, but my senses,
I rid myself of the pyrrhonisms with which an indulgence in
speculations hyper physical a*id antiphysical, so uselessly oc-
cupy and disquiet the mind. A single sense may indeed be
sometimes deceived, but rarely; and never all our senses to-
gether, with their faculty of reasoning. They evidence reali-
ties, and there are enough of these for all the purposes of life,
without plunging into the fathomless abyss of dreams and
phantasms. I am satisfied, and sufficiently occupied with the
things which are, without tormenting or troubling myself
about those which may indeed be, but of which I have no evi-
dence. I am sure that I really know many, many things, and
none more surely than that I love you with all my heart, and
pray for the continuance of your life until you shall be tired of
it yourself.
i. That of Athanasius and the Council of Nicaea, anno 324. [Jefferson's
oote.J
701
OF
TO WILLIAM ROSCOE *
MonticellOy December 27, 1820
. . . * i?bur Liverpool institution will also aid us in the
organization of our new University, an establishment now in
progress in I his State, and to which my remaining days and
faculties will be devoted. When ready for its professors, we
shall apply for them chiefly to your island. Were we content
to remain stationary in science, we should take them from
among ourselves; but, desirous of advancing, we must seek
them in countries already in advance; and identity of lan-
guage points to our best resource. To furnish inducements, we
provide for the professors separate buildings, in which them-
selves and their families may be handsomely and comfortably
lodged, and to liberal salaries will be added lucrative perqui-
sites. This instil ation will be based on the illimitable freedom
of the human mind. For here we are not afraid to follow truth
wherever it may lead, nor to tolerate any error so long as rea-
son is left free to combat it
TO JOHN ADAMS
MonticellOy September 12, 1821
.... Yet I will not believe our labors are lost. I shall
not die without a hope that light and liberty are on steady ad-
vance. We have seen, indeed, once within the records of history,
a complete eclipse of the human mind continuing for centuries.
And this, too, by swarms of the same northern barbarians, con-
quering and taking possession of the countries and govern-
ments of the civilized world. Should this be again attempted,
should the same northern hordes, allured again by the corn,
wine, and oil of the south, be able again to settle their swarms
in the countries of their growth, the art of printing alone, and
i. Roscoe was an English historian, pamphleteer, verse writer, and
liberal.
702
THOMAS J8FF8RSON
the vast dissemination of books, will maintain the mind where
it is? and raise the conquering ruffians to the level of the con-
quered, instead of degrading these to that of their conquerors.
And even should the cloud of barbarism and despotism again
obscure the science and liberties of Europe, this country re-
mains to preserve and restore light and liberty to them. In
short, the flames kindled on the 4th of July, 1776, have spread
over too much of the globe to be extinguished by the feeble
engines of despotism; on the contrary, they will consume these
engines and all who work them
TO JAMES SMITH *
Monticcllo, December 8, 1822
SIR,— I have to thank you for your pamphlets on the
subject of Unitarianism, and to express my gratification with
your efforts for the revival of primitive Christianity in your
quarter. No historical fact is better established, than that the
doctrine of one God, pure and uncompounded, was that of thi
early ages of Christianity; and was among the efficacious doc-
trines which gave it triumph over the polytheism of the an-
cients, sickened v/ith the absurdities of their own theology.
Nor was the unity of the Supreme Being ousted from the Chrifv
tian creed by the force of reason, but by the sword of civjl
government, wielded at the will of the fanatic Athanasius. The
hocus-pocus phantasm of a God like another Cerberus, with
one body and three heads, had its birth and growth in the
blood of thousands and thousands of martyrs. And a strong
proof of the solidity of the primitive faith, is its restoration,
as soon as a nation arises which vindicates to itself the free-
dom of religious opinion, and its 'external divorce from the
civil authority. The pure and simple unity of the Creator of
the universe, is now all but ascendant in the Eastern States;
it is dawning in the West, and advancing towards the South;
i. James Smith, resident of Ohio, was a theological writer.
703
OF
and I confidently expect that the present generation will see
Unitarianism become the general religion of the United States.
The Eastern presses are giving us many excellent pieces on the
subject, and Priestley's learned writings on it are, or should
be, in every hand. In fact, the Athanasian paradox that one
is three, and three but one, is so incomprehensible to the human
mind, that no candid man can say he has any idea of it, and
how can he believe what presents no idea? He who thinks he
does, only deceives himself. He proves, also, that man, once
surrendering his reason, has no remaining guard against ab-
surdities the most monstrous, and like a ship without rudder,
is the sport of every wind. With such persons, gullibility which
they call faith, takes the helm from the hand of reason, and
the mind becomes a wreck.
I write with freedom, because while I claim a right to be-
lieve in one God, if so my reason tells me, I yield as freely to
others that of believing in three. Both religions, I find, make
honest men, and that is the only point society has any right to
look to. Although this mutual freedom should produce mutual
indulgence, yet I wish not to be brought in question before
the public on this or any other subject, and I pray you to con-
sider me as writing under that trust. I take no part in contro-
versies, religious or political. At the age of eighty, tranquillity
is the greatest good of life, and the strongest of our desires
that of dying in the good will of all mankind. And with the
assurance of all my good will to Unitarian and Trinitarian, to
Whig and Tory, accept for yourself that of my entire respect.
TO ROBERT WALSH *
Monticello, April 5, 1823
DEAR SIR,— Your favor of Mar. 18 has been duly re-
cieved [sic]. I have had several applications, within a few
i. Robert Walsh, journalist and writer, was the founder of the first
American quarterly, the American Review of History and Politics. [MS.
University of Virginia.]
704
THOMAS JSFFSRSON
years past, from different persons, to furnish them with mate-
rials for writing my life, and have uniformly declined it on the
ground of the decay of my memory, the decline of the powers
of body & mind, the heaviness of age, and the crippled state
of both my hands, which renders writing the most painful
labor I can undertake, these causes are becoming every day
stronger; and I assure you, dear Sir, that they should not be
urged in answer to a request from you but from their unwel-
come and absolute reality. I am greatly changed since I had
the pleasure of seeing you here; and am going down hill so
rapidly as to be sensible of it from month to month, were my
biography worth the desire of the public, there is certainly no
pen by which I could be more flattered to have it given them
than your's. with these uncontroulable [sic] obstacles, I must
moreover question an opinion stated in your prospectus. I do
not think a biography should be written, or at least not pub-
lished, during the life of the person the subject of it. it is im-
possible that the writer's delicacy should permit him to speak
as freely of the faults or errors of a living, as of a dead char-
acter, there is still however a better reason, the letters of a
person, especially of one whose business has been chiefly trans-
acted by letters, form the only full and genuine journal of his
life; and few can let them go out of their own hands while
they live, a life written after these hoards become opened to
investigation must supercede any previous one. it may be ob-
served too that before you will have got through with the dead,
the living will be dying off and furnishing fresh matter, how-
ever I do not pretend but to suggest these considerations to
you, nor to urge more than my regrets at my own disability.
TO JOHN ADAMS
Monticcllo, April u, 1823
.... I can never join Calvin in addressing his God. He
was indeed an atheist, which I can never be; or rather his re-
70S
OF
iigion was daemonism. If ever man worshiped a false God, he
did. The Being described in his five points, is not the God
whom you and I acknowledge and adore, the Creator and be-
nevolent Governor of the world; but a daemon of malignant
spirit. It would be more pardonable to believe in no God at all,
iian to blaspheme Him by the atrocious attributes of Calvin.
Indeed, I think that every Christian sect gives a great handle
to atheism by their general dogma, that, without a revelation,
there would not be sufficient proof of the being of a God. Now
one-sixth of mankind only are supposed to be Christians; the
other five-sixths then, who do not believe in the Jewish and
Christian revelation, are without a knowledge of the existence
of a God! This gives completely a gain de cause to the dis-
ciples of Ocellus, Timaeus, Spinosa, Diderot and D'Holbach.
The argument which they rest on as triumphant and unanswer-
able is, that in every hypothesis of cosmogony, you must ad-
mit an eternal pre-existence of something; and according to the
rule of sound philosophy, you are never to employ two prin-
ciples to solve a difficulty when one will suffice. They say
then, that it is more simple to believe at once in the eternal
pre-existence of the world, as it is now going on, and may for-
ever go on by the principle of reproduction which we see and
witness, than to believe in the eternal pre-existence of an ul-
terior cause, or Creator of the world, a Being whom we see
not and know not, of whose form, substance and mode, or place
of existence, or of action, no sense informs us, no power of the
mind enables us to delineate or comprehend. On the contrary,
I hold, (without appeal to revelation) that when we take a
view of the universe, in its parts, general or particular, it is
impossible for the human mind not to perceive and feel a con-
viction of design, consummate skill, and indefinite power in
every atom of its composition. The movements of the heav-
enly bodies, so exactly held in their course by the balance of
centrifugal and centripetal forces; the structure of our earth
itself, with its distribution of lands, waters and atmosphere;
animal and vegetable bodies, examined in all their minutest
706
THOMAS JBFFSRSON
particles; insects, mere atoms of life, yet as perfectly organ
ized as man or mammoth; the mineral substances, their gen*
eration and uses; it is impossible, I say, for the human mind
not to believe, that there is in all this, design, cause and effect,
up to an ultimate cause, a Fabricator of all things from mat-
ter and motion, their Preserver and Regulator while permitted
to exist in their present forms, and their regeneration into new
and other forms. We see, too, evident proofs of the necessity
of a superintending power, to maintain the universe in its
course and order. Stars, well known, have disappeared, new
ones have come into view; comets, in their incalculable courses,
may run foul of suns and planets, and require renovation under
other laws; certain races of animals are become extinct; and
were there no restoring power, all existences might Extinguish
successively, one by one, until all should be reduced to a
shapeless chaos. So irresistible are these evidences of an intelli-
gent and powerful Agent, that, of the infinite numbers of men
who have existed through all time, they have believed, in the
proportion of a million at least to unit, in the hypothesis of
an eternal pre-existence of a Creator, rather than in that of a
self -^existent universe. Surely this unanimous sentiment ren-
ders this more probable, than that of the few in the other hy-
pothesis. Some early Christians, indeed, have believed in the
co-eternal pre-'existence of both the Creator and the world,
without changing their relation of cause and effect
TO GENERAL SAMUEL SMITH l
Monticcllo, May 5, 1823
.... A tax on whiskey is to discourage its consumption;
a tax on foreign spirits encourages whiskey by removing its
rival from competition. The price and present duty throw for-
eign spirits already out of competition with whiskey, and
i. Smith had temporarily accepted direction of the Navy Department
under Jefferson, but had declined permanent appointment in order to
manage his commercial and shipping affairs.
707
OF
accordingly they are used but to a salutary extent. You see
no persons besotting themselves with imported spirits, wines,
liquors, cordials, etc. Whiskey claims to itself alone the ex-
clusive office of sot-making. Foreign spirits, wines, teas, cof-
fee, segars, salt, are articles of as innocent consumption as
broadcloths and silks; and ought, like them, to pay but the
Average ad valorem duty of other imported comforts. All of
them are ingredients in our happiness, and the government
which steps out of the ranks of the ordinary articles of con-
sumption to select and lay under disproportionate burdens a
particular one, because it is a comfort, pleasing to the taste, or
n'ecessary to health, and will therefore be bought, is, in that
particular, a tyranny
TO THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES (JAMES MONROE)
Monticello, October 24, 1823
DEAR SIR,— The question presented by the letters you
have sent me, is the most momentous which has ever been of-
fered to my contemplation since that of Independence. That
made us a nation, this sets our compass and points the course
which we are to steer through the ocean of time opening on
us. And never could we embark on it under circumstances more
auspicious. Our first and fundamental maxim should be, never
to entangle ourselves in the broils of Europe. Our second, never
to suffer Europe to intermeddle with cis-Atlantic affairs. Amer-
ica, North and South, has a set of interests distinct from those
of Europe, and peculiarly her own. She should therefore have
a system of her own, separate and apart from that of Europe.
While the last is laboring to become the domicile of despotism,
our endeavors should surely be, to make our hemisphere that
of freedom. One nation, most of all, could disturb us in this
pursuit; she now offers to lead, aid, and accompany us in it.
By acceding to her proposition, we detach her from the bands,
bring her mighty weight into the scale of free government, and
708
THOMAS
emancipate a continent at one stroke, which might otherwise
linger long in doubt and difficulty. Great Britain is the nation
which can do us the most harm of any one, or all on earth;
and with her on our side we need not fear the whole world.
With her then, we should most sedulously cherish a cordial
friendship; and nothing would tend more to knit our affections
than to be fighting once more, side by side, in the same cause.
Not that I would purchase even her amity at the price of tak-
ing part in her wars. But the war in which the present proposi-
tion might engage us, should that be its consequence, is not
her war, but ours. Its object is to introduce and establish the
American system, of keeping out of our land all foreign powers,
of never permitting those of Europe to intermeddle with the
affairs of our nations. It is to maintain our own principle, not
to depart from it. And if, to facilitate this, we can effect a divi-
sion in the body of the European powers, and draw over to our
side its most powerful member, surely we should do it. But I
am clearly of Mr. Canning's opinion, that it will prevent in-
stead of provoking war. With Great Britain withdrawn from
their scale and shifted into that of our two continents, all
Europe combined would not undertake such a war. For how
would they propose to get at either enemy without superior
fleets,? Nor is the occasion to be slighted which this proposi-
tion offers, of declaring our protest against the atrocious viola-
tions of the rights of nations, by the interference of any one in
the internal affairs of another, so flagitiously begun by Bona-
parte, and now continued by the equally lawless Alliance, call-
ing itself Holy.
But we have first to ask ourselves a question. Do we wish
to acquire to our own confederacy any one or more of the
Spanish provinces? I candidly confess, that I have ever looked
on Cuba as the most interesting addition which could ever be
made to our system of States. The control which, with Florida
Point, this island would give us over the Gulf of Mexico, and
the countries and isthmus bordering on it, as well as all those
whose waters flow into it, would fill up the measure of our po*
709
LETTERS OF
Jitical well-being. Yet, as I am sensible that this can never be
obtained, even with her own consent, but by war ; and its inde-
pendence, which is our second interest, (and Especially its
independence of England,) can be secured without it, I have
no hesitation in abandoning my first wish to future chances,
and accepting its independence, with peace and the friendship
of England, rather than its association, at the expense of war
and her enmity.
I could honestly, therefore, join in the declaration proposed,
that we aim not at the acquisition of any of those possessions,
tfiat we will not stand in the way of any amicable arrangement
between them and the Mother country; but that we will op-
pose, with all our means, the forcible interposition of any other
power, as auxiliary, stipendiary, or under any other form or
pretext, and most especially, their transfer to any power by
conquest, cession, or acquisition in any other way. I should
think it, therefore, advisable, that the Executive should en-
courage the British government to a continuance in the dis-
positions expressed in these letters, by an assurance of his
concurrence with them as far as his authority goes; and that
as it may lead to war, the declaration of which requires an act
of Congress, the case shall be laid before them for considera-
tion at their first meeting, and under the reasonable aspect
in which it is seen by himself.
I have been so long weaned from political subjects, and have
so long ceased to take any interest in them, that I am sen-
sible I am not qualified to offer opinions on them worthy of
any attention. But the question now proposed involves conse-
quences so lasting, and effects so decisive of our future desti-
nies, as to rekindle all the interest I have heretofore felt on
such occasions, and to induce me to the hazard of opinions,
which will prove only my wish to contribute still my mite to-
wards anything which may be useful to our country. And pray-
ing you to accept it at only what it is worth, I add the assur-
ance of my constant and affectionate friendship and respect.
710
THOMAS JEFFERSON
TO MONSIEUR A. CORAY *
Monticello, October 31,
.... The government of Athens, for example, was that
of the people of one city making laws for the whole country
subjected to them. That of Lacedaemon was the rule of mili-
tary monks over the laboring class of the people, reduced to
abject slavery. These are not the doctrines of the present age.
The equal rights of man, and the happiness of every individual,
are now acknowledged to be the only legitimate objects of
government. Modern times have the signal advantage, too, of
having discovered the only device by which these rights can
be secured, to wit: government by the people, acting not in
person, but by representatives chosen by themselves, that i?
to say, by every man of ripe years and sane mind, who either
contributes by his purse or person to the support of his coun-
try. The small and imperfect mixture of representative govern-
ment in England, impeded as it is by other branches, aristocrats
cal and hereditary, shows yet the power of the representative
principle towards improving the condition of man. With us,
all the branches of the government are elective by the people
themselves, except the judiciary, of whose science and quali-
fications they are not competent judges. Yet, even in that de-
partment, we call in a jury of the people to decide all contro-
verted matters of fact, because to that investigation they are
entirely competent, leaving thus as little as possible, merely
the law of the case, to the decision of the judges. And '.rue it
is that the people, especially when moderately instruaod, are
the only safe, because .the only honest, depositories ci the pub-
lic rights, and should therefore be introduced into the admin,
istration of them in every function to which thiy are sufficient1,
they will 'err sometimes and accidentaHy, b'lt riever designedly,
i. Greek doctor, philologist and translator jf the ancient Greeks.
Coray lived in Paris. There he promoted the otu&e of Greek liberty, and
Was unofficial messenger of good will for liir people in Europe.
711
OF
and with a systematic and persevering purpose of overthrow-
ing the free principles of the government. Hereditary bodies,
an the contrary, always existing, always on the watch for their
own aggrandizement, profit of every opportunity of advancing
the privileges of their order, and encroaching on the rights of
the people
TO THE MARQUIS DE LAFAYETTE
Monticello, November 4, 1823
.... For in truth, the parties of Whig and Tory, are
those of nature. They exist in all countries, whether called by
these names, or by those of Aristocrats and Democrats, Cote
Droite and Cote Gauche, Ultras and Radicals, Serviles and
Liberals. The sickly, weakly, timid man, fears the people, and
is a Tory by nature. The healthy, strong and bold, cherishes
them, and is formed a Whig by nature. On the eclipse of fed-
eralism with us, although not its extinction, its leaders got up
the Missouri question, under the false front of lessening the
measure of slavery, but with the real view of producing a geo-
graphical division of parties, which might insure them the
next President. The people of the North went blindfold into
the snare, followed their leaders for awhile with a Zeal truly
moral and laudable, until they became sensible that they were
injuring instead of aiding the real interests of the slaves, that
they had been used merely as tools for electioneering pur-
poses; and that trick of hypocrisy then fell as quickly as it
had been got up. To that is now succeeding a distinction,
which, like that of Republican and Federal, or Whig and Tory,
being equally intermixed through every State, threatens none
of those geographical schisms which go immediately to a sep-
aration. The line of division now, is the preservation of State
rights, as reserved in the Constitution, or by strained con-
712
THOMAS
structions of that instrument, to merge all into a consolidated
government. The Tories are for strengthening the Executive
and General Government; the Whigs cherish the representa-
tive branch, and the rights reserved by the States, as the bul-
wark against consolidation, which must immediately generate
monarchy. And although this division excites, as yet, no
warmth, yet it exists, is well understood, and will be a prin-
ciple of voting at the ensuing election, with the reflecting mer,
of both parties
TO MR. DAVID HARDING, PRESIDENT OF THE JEFFERSON DE-
BATING SOCIETY OF HINGHAM
MonticellOy April 20, 1824
SIR,— I haVe duly received your favor of the 6th in-
stant, informing me of the institution of a debating society in
Hingham, composed of adherents to the republican principles
of the Revolution; and I am justly sensible of the honor done
my name by associating it with the title of the society. The ob-
ject of the society is laudable, and in a republican nation,
whose citizens are to be led by reason and persuasion, and not
by force, the art of reasoning becomes of first importance. In
this line antiquity has left us the finest models for imitation;
and he who studies and imitates them most nearly, will nearest:
approach the perfection of the art. Among these I should con-
sider the speeches of Livy, Sallust, and Tacitus, as pre-eminent
specimens of logic, taste, and that sententious brevity which
using not a word to spare, leaves not a moment for inattention
to the hearer. Amplification is the vice of modern oratory. It
is an insult to an assembly of reasonable men, disgusting and
revolting instead of persuading. Speeches measured by the
hour, die with the hour. I will not, however, further indulge
the disposition of the age to sermonize, and especially to thosf
surrounded by so much better advice
OF
TO MAJOR JOHN CARTWRIGHT *
Monticello, June 5, 1824
.... Can one generation bind another, and all others,
in succession forever? I think not. The Creator has made the
earth for the living, not the dead. Rights and powers can only
belong to persons, not to things, not to mere matter, unen-
dowed with will. The dead are not even things. The particles
of matter which composed their bodies, make part now of the
bodies of other animals, vegetables, or minerals, of a thou-
sand forms. To what then are attached the rights and powers
they held while in the form of men? A generation may bind
itself as long as its majority continues in life; when that has
disappeared, another majority is in place, holds all the rights
and powers their predecessors once held, and may change their
laws and institutions to suit themselves. Nothing then is un-
changeable but the inherent and unalienable rights of man
TO HENRY LEE *
Monticello, August 10, 1824
.... As to myself, it is many years since I have ceased
to read but a single paper. I am no longer, therefore, a gen-
eral subscriber for any other. Yet, to encourage the hopeful
in the outset, I have sometimes subscribed for the first year on
condition of being discontinued at the end of it, without fur-
ther warning. I do the same now with pleasure for yours; and
unwilling to have outstanding accounts, which I am liable to
target, I now enclose the price of the tri-weekly paper. I am
no believer in the amalgamation of parties, nor do I consider
i. Major John Cartwright was a political reformer and author of The
English Constitution Produced and Illustrated.
i. Henry Lee was the son of General Henry Lee who was a bitter critic
and political enemy of Jefferson. When editing his father's Memoirs, Lee
developed a correspondence with Jefferson, and tried to make amends for
his father's unmerited censure.
714
THOMAS J8FFSRSON
it as either desirable or useful for the public; but only that,
like religious differences, a difference in politics should never
be permitted to enter into social intercourse, or to disturb its
friendships, its charities, or justice. In that form, they are
censors of the conduct of each other, and useful watchmen for
the public. Men by their constitutions are naturally divided
into two parties: i. Those who fear and distrust the people,
and wish to draw all powers from them into the hands of the
higher classes. 2. Those who identify themselves with the peo-
ple, have confidence hi them, cherish and consider them as the
most honest and safe, although not the most wise depository
of the public interests. In every country these two parties
exist, and in every one where they are free to think, speak,
and write, they will declare themselves. Call them, therefore,
Liberals and Serviles, Jacobins and Ultras, Whigs and Tories,
Republicans and Federalists, Aristocrats and Democrats, or
by whatever name you please, they are the same parties stih)
and pursue the same object. The last appellation of Aristocrats
and Democrats is the true one expressing the essence of all.
A paper which shall be governed by the spirit of Mr. Madison's
celebrated report, of which you express in your prospectus so
just and high an approbation, cannot be false to the rights of
all classes. The grandfathers of the present generation of your
family I knew well. They were friends and fellow laborers with
me in the same cause and principle. Their descendants cannot
follow better guides. Accept the assurance of my best wishes
and respectful consideration.
TO CHARLES SIGOURNEY 1
Montkello, August 15, 1824
.... in April last we were enabled to send an Agent to
Great Britain to procure some professors, those of the first
i. Charles Sigourney, English-trained educator, had corresponded with
Jefferson concerning the plans for the University of Virginia. [MS., Li-
brary of Congress.]
7*5
OF
iirder not being to be had in this country, for had it been 5n
our power to seduce from their present situations some of the
eminent characters established in our American seminaries,
it was forbidden by every honorable principle; and a resort to
secondary and unemployed characters would not have fulfilled
the object of our institution, we considered too that a country
which is willing that it's [sic] science should be stationary
where it is, may employ it's own eleves [sic] ; but if it wishes
to advance, it must seek instructors from countries already in
advance of them. I know that our pride & prejudices bristle
up at the employment of foreigners, but it is science we want,
and to this we must sacrifice our pride and prejudices, some
difficulties will arise in accommodating to our habits the ideas,
methods and manners of those we employ, this too is a part of
the price we are to pay for their aid. we must meet the diffi-
culty, compromise with it, and make up our minds, with the
honey, to swallow the few dregs we can not separate from it.
no good in life can be obtained pure and unmixed we must
take it as it is offered, alloyed always with some evil, and at
what other price have we obtained all our arts and sciences?
TO JOHN ADAMS
Monticello, January 8, 1825
.... I have lately been reading the most extraordinary
of all books, and at the same time the most demonstrative by
numerous and unequivocal facts. It is Flourend's experiments
on the functions of the nervous system, in Vertebrated ani-
mals. He takes out the cerebrum completely, leaving the cere-
bellum and other parts of the system uninjured. The animal
loses all its senses of hearing, seeing, feeling, smelling, tasting,
is totally deprived of will, intelligence, memory, perception,
etc., yet lives for months in perfect health, with all its powers
of motion, but without moving but on external excitement,
716
THOMAS JSFFSRSON
starving even on a pile of grain, unless crammed down its
inroat; in short, in a state of the most absolute stupidity. He
takes the cerebellum out of others, leaving the cerebrum un-
touched. The animal retains all its senses, faculties, and under-
standing, but loses the power of regulated motion, and exhib-
its all the symptoms of drunkenness. While he makes incisions
in the cerebrum and cerebellum, lengthwise and crosswise,
which heal and get well, a puncture in the medulla elongata is
instant death; and many other most interesting things too long
for a letter. Cabanis had proved by the anatomical structure
of certain portions of the human frame, that they might be
capable of receiving from the hand of the Creator the faculty
of thinking; Flourend proves that they have received it; that
the cerebrum is the thinking organ; and that life and health
may continue, and the animal be entirely without thought, if de-
prived of that organ. I wish to see what the spiritualists will
say to this. Whether in this state the soul remains in the body,
deprived of its essence of thought? or whether it leaves it, as ii>
death, and where it goes? His memoirs and experiments have
been reported on with approbation by a committee of the In
stitute, composed of Cuvier, Bertholet, Dumaril, Portal and
Pin'el. But all this, you and I shall know better when we meet
again, in another place, and at no distant period. Tn the mean-
time, that the revived powers of your frame, and the anodyne
of philosophy may preserve you from all suffering, is my sincere
and affectionate prayer.
TO THOMAS JEFFERSON SMITH 1
Monticcllo, February 21, 1825
This letter will, to you, be as one from the dead. The
writer will be in the grave before you can weigh its counsels.
Your affectionate and excellent father has requested that I
i. Thomas Jefferson Smith was the son of Jefferson's old friend Sam-
uel Harrison Smith, one-time editor of the National Intelligencer.
717
OF
would address to you something which might possibly have a
favorable influence on the course of life you have to run, and I
too, as a namesake, fed an interest in that course. Few words
will be necessary, with good dispositions on your part. Adore
God. Reverence and cherish your parents. Love your neighbor
as yourself, and your country more than yourself. Be just. Be
true. Murmur not at. the ways of Providence. So shall the life
into which you have Entered, be the portal to one of eternal and
ineffable bliss. And if to the dead it is permitted to care for
the things of this world, every action of your life will be under
my regard. Farewell.
The portrait of a good man by the most sublime of poets,
jor your imitation.
Lord, who's the happy man that may to Thy blest courts repair,
Not stranger-like to visit them, but to inhabit there?
Tis he whose every thought and deed by rules of virtue moves,
Whose generous tongue disdains to speak the thing his heart dis-
proves.
Who never did a slander forge, his neighbor's fame to wound,
Nor hearken to a false report, by malice whispered round.
Who vice, in ail its pomp and power, can treat with just neglect;
And piety, though clothed in rags, religiously respect.
Who to his plighted vows and trust has ever firmly stood,
And though he promise to his loss, he makes his promise good.
Whose soul in usury disdains his treasure to employ,
Whom no rewards can ever bribe the guiltless to destroy.
The man who, by this steady course, has happiness insur'd,
fVhen earth's foundations shake, shall stand, by Providence secur'd.
A Decalogue of Canons for observation in practical life
1. Never put off till to-morrow what you can do to-day.
2. Never trouble another for what you can do yourself.
3 . Never spend your money before you have it.
4. Never buy what you do not want, because it is cheap; it
will be dear to you.
THOMAS JSFFSRSON
5. Pride costs us more than hunger, thirst, and cold.
6. We never repent of having eaten too little.
7. Nothing is troublesome that we do willingly.
8. How much pain have cost us the evils which have
happened.
9. Take things always by their smooth handle.
10. When angry, count ten, before you speak; if very angry>
an hundred.
TO HENRY LEE
Monticello, May 8, 182$
.... But with respect to our rights, and the acts of the
British government contravening those rights, there was but
one opinion on this side of the water. All American Whigs
thought alike on these subjects. When forced, therefore, to re-
sort to arms for redress, an appeal to the tribunal of the world
was deemed proper for our justification. This was the object of
the Declaration of Independence. Not to find out new prin-
ciples, or new arguments, never before thought of, not merely
to say things which had n'ever been said before; but to place
before mankind the common sense of the subject, in terms so
plain and firm as to command their assent, and to justify our'
selves in the independent stand we are compelled to take. Neithet
aiming at originality of principle or sentiment, nor yet copied
from any particular and previous writing, it was intended to be
an expression of the American mind, and to give to that expres-
sion the proper tone and spirit called for by the occasion. AU
its authority rests then on the harmonizing sentiments of the
day, whether expressed in conversation, in letters, printed es-
says, or in the elementary books of public right, as Aristotle,
Cicero, Locke, Sidney, etc. The historical documents which you
mention as in your possession, ought all to be found, and 1 an?
persuaded you will find, to be corroborative of the facts and
principles advanced in that Declaration
719
OF
TO ELLEN W. COOLIDGE *
Monticello, August 27,
Your affectionate letter, my dear Ellen, of the ist inst.
came to hand in due time. The assurances of your love, so le'el-
ingiy expressed, were truly soothing to my soul, and none were
ever met with warmer sympathies. We did not know until you
left us what a void it would make in our family. Imagination had
illy sketched its full measure to us; and, at this moment, every-
v,hing around serves but to remind us of our past happiness, only
consoled by the addition it has made to yours. Of this we are
abundantly assured by the most excellent and amiable char-
acter to which we have committed your future well-being, and
by the kindness with which you have been received by the
worthy family into which you are now engrafted. We have no
fear but that their affections will grow with their growing knowl-
edge of you, and the assiduous cultivation of these becomes the
first object in importance to you. I have no doubt you will find
also the state of society there more congenial with your mind
than the rustic scenes you have left although these do not want
their points of endearment. Nay, one single circumstance
changed, and their scale would hardly be the lightest. One fatal
stain deforms what nature had bestowed on us of her fairest
gifts.
I am glad you took the delightful tour which you describe in
your letter. It is almost Exactly that which Mr. Madison and
myself pursued in May and June, 1791. Setting out from Phila-
delphia, our course was to New York, up the Hudson to Al-
bany, Troy, Saratoga, Fort Edward, Fort George. Lake George,
'.ficonderoga, Crown Point, penetrated into Lake Champlain,
returned the same way to Saratoga, thence crossed the moun-
tains to Bennington, Northampton, along Connecticut River to
its mouth, crossed the Sound into Long Island, and along its
i. Ellen Wayles Coolidge was the second surviving daughter of
Thomas Mann and Martha (Jefferson) Randolph. She married Joseph
Coolidge, Jr., of Boston, in May, 1825.
720
THOMAS 38FF8RSON
northern margin to Brooklyn, re-crossed to New York, and re-
turned. But from Saratoga till we got back to Northampton was
then mostly desert. Now it is what thirty-four years of free and
;$ood government have made it. It shows how soon the labor
of men would make a paradise of the whole earth, were it not
for misgovernment, and a diversion of all his energies from their
proper object— the happiness of man,— to the selfish interests
of kings, nobles, and priests.
Our University goes on well. We have passed the limit of
100 students some time since. As yet it has been a model of
order and good behavior, having never yet had occasion for the
exercise of a single act of authority. We studiously avoid too
much government. We treat them as men and gentlemen, under
the guidance mainly of their own discretion. They so consider
themselves, and make it their pride to acquire that character for
their institution. In short, we are as quiet on that head as the
experience of six months only can justify. Our professors, too,
continue to be what we wish them. Mr. Gilmer accepts the Law
chair, and all is well.
My own health is what it was when you left me. I have not
been out of the house since, except to take the turn of the
Roundabout twice ; nor have I any definite prospect when it will
be otherwise.
I shall not venture into the region of small news, of which
your other correspondents of the family are so much better in-
formed. I am expecting to hear from Mr. Coolidge on the sub-
ject of the clock for the Rotunda. Assure him of my warmest
affections and respect, and pray him to give you ten thousand
kisses for me, and they will still fall short of the measure of my
love to you. If his parents and family can set any store by the
esteem and respect of a stranger, mine are devoted to them.
721
OF
TO DR. JAMES MEASE*
Monticello, September 26,
DEAR SIR, —It is not for me to estimate the importance
of the circumstances concerning which your letter of the 8th
makes inquiry. They prove, even in their minuteness, the sacred
attachments of our fellow citizens to the event of which the
paper of July 4th, 1776, was but the Declaration, the genuine
effusion of the soul of our country at that time. Small things
may, perhaps, like the relics of saints, help to nourish our de-
votion to this holy bond of our Union, and keep it longer alive
and warm in our affections. This teffect may give importance to
circumstances, however small. At the time of writing that instru-
ment, I lodged in the house of a Mr. Graaf , a new brick house,
three stories high, of which I rented the second floor, consisting
of a parlor and bed-room, ready furnished. In that parlor I
wrote habitually, and in it wrote this paper, particularly. So far
I state from written proofs in my possession. The proprietor,
Graaf, was a young man, son of a German, and then newly mar-
ried. I think he was a bricklayer, and that his house was on
the south side of Market street, probably between Seventh and
Eighth streets, and if not the only house on that part of the
street, I am sure there were few others near it. I have some idea
that it was a corner house, but no other recollections throwing
light on the question, or worth communication. I am ill, there-
fore only add assurance of my great respect and esteem.
TO [GEORGE WASHINGTON LEWIS? 2]
Monticello, October 25, 1825
DEAR SIR,— I know not whether the professors to whom
ancient and modern history are assigned in the University, have
1. Dr. James Mease, one time a student of Benjamin Rush, was a
writer and scientist as well as a physician. He was curator of the Ameri-
can Philosophical Society at the time of this letter.
2. George Washington Lewis, member of a distinguished Virginia fam-
ily, was one of the first students at the University of Virginia.
722
THOMAS J8FF8RSON
ret decided on the course of historical reading which they will
•ecommend to their schools. If they have, I wish this letter t«'-
>e considered as not written, as their course, the result of ma-
.ure consideration, will be preferable to anything I could recom-
nend. Under this uncertainty, and the rather as you are of
icither of these schools, I may hazard some general ideas, to be
:orrected by what they may recommend hereafter.
In all cases I prefer original authors to compilers. For a
:ourse of ancient history, therefore, of Greece and Rome espe-
:ially, I should advise the usual suite of Heredotus, Thucydides.
£enophon, Diodorus, Livy, Caesar, Suetonius, Tacitus, and
Dion, in their originals if understood, and in translations if nott
For its continuation to the final destruction of the empire we
nust then be content with Gibbon, a compiler, and with Segur,
'or a judicious recapitulation of the whole. After this general
:ourse, there are a number of particular histories filling up the
:hasms, which may be read at leisure in the progress of life. Such
s Arrian, 2 Curtius, Polybius, Sallust, Plutarch, Dionysius.
Salicarnassus, Micasi, etc. The ancient universal history should
DC on our shelves as a book of general reference, the most
earned and most faithful perhaps that ever was written. Its
style is very plain but perspicuous.
In modern history, there are but two nations with whose
:ourse it is interesting to us to be intimately acquainted, to wit:
France and England. For the former, Millot's General History
)f France may be sufficient to the period when i Davila com-
mences. He should be followed by Perefixe, Sully, Voltaire's
Louis XIV and XV, la Cretelles XVIIIme siecle, Marmontel's
Regence, Foulongion's French Revolution, and Madame dfc
StaeFs, making up by a succession of particular history, the
general one which they want.
Of England there is as yet no general history so laithtul as
Rapin's. He may be followed by Ludlow, Fox, Belsham, Hume,
ind Brodie. Hume's, were it faithful, would be the finest piece
?f history which has ever been written by man. Its unfortunate
bias may be partly ascribed to the accident of his having wrt-
723
OF
ten backwards. His maiden work was the History of the Stuarts.
It was a first essay to try his strength before the public. And
whether as a Scotchman he had really a partiality for that fam-
ily, or thought that the lower their degradation, the more fame
he should acquire by raising them up to some favor, the object
of his work was an apology for them. He spared nothing, there-
fore, to wash them white, and to palliate their misgovernment.
For this purpose he suppressed truths, advanced falsehoods,
forged authorities, and falsified records. All this is proved on
him unanswerably by Brodie. But so bewitching was his style
and manner, that his readers were unwilling to doubt anything,
swallowed everything, and all England becamfe Tories by the
magic of his art. His pen revolutionized the public sentiment of
that country more completely than the standing armies could
ever have done, which were so much dreaded and deprecated by
the patriots of that day.
Having succeeded so eminently in the acquisition of fortune
ind fame by this work, he undertook the history of the two
preceding dynasties, the Plantagenets and Tudors. It was all-
important in this second work, to maintain the thesis of the
first, that "it was the people who encroached on the sovereign,
not the sovereign who usurped on the rights of the people."
And, again, chapter 53d, "the grievances under which the Eng-
lish labored [to wit: whipping, pillorying, cropping, imprison-
ing, fining, etc.,] when considered in themselves, without regard
to the Constitution, scarcely deserve the name, nor were they
either burdensome on the people's properties, or anywise shock-
ing to the natural humanity of mankind." During the constant
wars, civil and foreign, which prevailed while these two families
occupied the throne, it was not difficult to find abundant in-
stances of practices the most despotic, as are wont to occur
in tim'es of violence. To make this second epoch support the
third, therefore, required but a little garbling of authorities. And
it then remained, by a third work, to make of the whole a com-
plete history of England, on the principles on which he had ad-
724
THOMAS JSFF8RSON
vocated that of the Stuarts. This would comprehend the Saxon
and Norman conquests, the former exhibiting the genuine form
and political principles of the people constituting the nation,
and founded in the rights of man; the latter built on conquest
and physical force, not at all affecting moral rights, nor even
assented to by the free will of the vanquished. The battle of
Hastings, indeed, was lost, but the natural rights of the na-
tion were not staked on the event of a single battle. Their will
to recover the Saxon constitution continued unabated, and was
at the bottom of all the unsuccessful insurrections which suc-
ceeded in subsequent times. The victors and vanquished con-
tinued in a state of living hostility, and the nation may still say,
after losing the battle of Hastings,
"What though the field is lost?
All is not lost; the unconquerable will
And study of revenge, immortal hate
And courage never to submit or yield."
The government of a nation may be usurped by the forcible
intrusion of an individual into the throne. But to conquer its
will, so as to rest the right on that, the only legitimate basis,
requires long acquiescence and cessation of all opposition. The
Whig historians of England, therefore, have always gone back
to the Saxon period for the true principles of their constitution,
while the Tories and Hume, their Coryphaeus, date it from the
Norman conquest, and hence conclude that the continual claim
by the nation of the good old Saxon laws, and the struggles
to recover them, were " encroachments of the people on the
crown, and not usurpations of the crown on the people."
Hume, with Brodie, should be the last histories of England
to be read. If first read, Hume makes an English Tory, from
whence it is an easy step to American Toryism. But there is a
history, by Baxter, in which, abridging somewhat by leaving
out some entire incidents as less interesting now than when
Hume wrote, he has given the rest in the identical words of
725
OF
Hume, texcept that when he comes to a fact falsified, he
states it truly, and when to a suppression of truth, he sup-
plies it, never otherwise changing a word. It is, in fact, an editic
expurgation of Hume. Those who shrink from the volume of
Rapin, may read this first, and from this lay a first foundation
in a basis of truth.
For modern continental history, a very general idea may
be first aimed at, leaving for future and occasional reading
the particular histories of such countries as may excite curios-
ity at the time. This may be obtained from Mollet's North-
ern Antiquities, Vol. Esprit et Moeurs des Nations, Millot's
Modern History, Russel's Modern Europe, Hallam's Middle
Ages, and Robertson's Charles V
TO JAMES MADISON
Monticello, February 77, 1826
.... In the selection of our Law Professor,1 we must
be rigorously attentive to his political principles. You will recol-
lect that before the Revolution, Coke Littleton was the universal
elementary book of law students, and a sounder Whig never
wrote, nor of pro founder learning in the orthodox doctrines
of the British constitution, or in what were called English
liberties. You remember also that our lawyers were then all
Whigs. But when his black-letter text, and uncouth but cun-
ning learning got out of fashion, and the honeyed Mansfield-
ism of Blackstone became the students' hornbook, from that
moment, that profession (the nursery of our Congress) began
to slide into toryism, and nearly all the young brood of law-
yers now are of that hue. They suppose themselves, indeed,
to be Whigs, because they no longer know what Whigism or re-
publicanism means. It is in our seminary that that vestal flame
is to be kept alive; it is thence it is to spread anew over our
i. For the University of Virginia.
726
1HOMAS jeFFSRSON
own and the sister States. If we are true and vigilant in our
trust, within a dozen or twenty years a majority of our own leg-
islature will be from one school, and many disciples will have
carried its doctrines home with them to their several States,
and will have leavened thus the whole mass. New York has
taken strong ground in vindication of the Constitution; South
Carolina had already done the same. Although I was against
our leading, I am equally against omitting to follow in the
same line, and backing them firmly; and I hope that your-
self or some other will mark out the track to be pursued by us.
You will have seen in the newspapers some proceedings in
the legislature, which have cost me much mortification. My
own debts had become considerable, but not beyond the effect
of some lopping of property, which would have been little felt,
when our friend Nicholas * gave me the coup de grace. Ever
since that I have been paying twelve hundred dollars a year
interest on his debt, which, with my own, was absorbing so
much of my annual income, as that the maintenance of my
family was making deep and rapid inroads on my capital, and
had already done it. Still, sales at a fair price would leave me
completely provided. Had crops and prices for several years
been such as to maintain a steady competition of substantial
bidders at market, all would have been safe. But the long
succession of years of stunted crops, of reduced prices, the
general prostration of the farming business, under levies for
the support of manufacturers, etc., with the calamitous fluctua-
tions of value in our paper medium, have kept agriculture in a
state of abject depression, which has peopled the Western
States by silently breaking up those on the Atlantic, and
glutted the land market, while it drew off its bidders. In such
a state of things, property has lost its character of being a
resource for debts. High land in Bedford, which, in the days
i. Name deleted in Memorial Edition. Jefferson had endorsed a $20,-
ooo note for his friend and fellow-statesman Wilson Gary Nicholas.
Nicholas's default of this note caused Jefferson acute financial distress.
727
OF
of our plethory, sold readily for from fifty to one hundred
dollars the acre, (and such sales were many then,) would not
now sell for more than from ten to twenty dollars, or one-
quarter or one-fifth of its former price. Reflecting on these
things, the practice occurred to me, of selling, on fair valua-
tion, and by way of lottery, often resorted to before the Revo-
lution to effect large sales, and still in constant usage in every
State for individual as well as corporation purposes. If it is
permitted in my case, my lands here alone, with the mills,
etc., will pay everything, and leave m'e Monticello and a farm
free. If refused, I must sell everything here, perhaps consider-
ably in Bedford, move thither with my family, where I havte
not even a log hut to put my head into, and whether ground
for burial, will depend on the depredations which, under the
form of sales, shall have been committed on my property. The
question then with me was ultrum horum? But why afflict you
with these details? Indeed, I cannot tell, unless pains are les-
sened by communication with a friend. The friendship which
has subsisted between us, now half a century, and the harmony
of our political principles and pursuits, have been sources of
constant happiness to me through that long period. And if
I remove beyond the reach of attentions to the University, or
beyond the bourne of life itself, as I soon must, it is a com-
fort to leave that institution under your care, and an assur-
ance that it will not be wanting. It has also been a great solace
to me, to believe that you are engaged in vindicating to pos-
terity the course we have pursued for preserving to them, in
all their purity, the blessings of self-government, which we had
assisted too in acquiring for them. If ever the earth has beheld
a system of administration conducted with a single and stead-
fast eye to the general interest and happiness of those com-
mitted to it, one which, protected by truth, can never know
reproach, it is that to which our lives have been devoted. To
myself you have been a pillar of support through life. Take
care of me when dead, and be assured that I shall leave with
you my last affections.
728
THOMAS jeFFSRSON
TO ROGER C. WEIGHTMAN l
Monticcllo, June 24, 1826
RESPECTED SIR,— The kind invitation I receive from
you, on the part of the citizens of the city of Washington, to
be present with them at their celebration on the fiftieth anni-
versary of American Independence, as one of the surviving
signers of an instrument pregnant with our own, and the fate
of the world, is most flattering to myself, and heightened by
the honorable accompaniment proposed for the comfort of
such a journey. It adds sensibly to the sufferings of sickness, to
be deprived by it of a personal participation in the rejoic-
ings of that day. But acquiescence is a duty, under circum-
stances not placed among those we are permitted to control. I
should, indeed, with peculiar delight, have met and exchanged
there congratulations personally with the small band, the rem-
nant of that host of worthies, who joined with us on that day,
m the bold and doubtful election we were to make for our
country, between submission or the sword; and to have en-
joyed with them the consolatory fact, that our fellow citizens,
after half a century of experience and prosperity, continue to
approve the choice we made. May it be to the world, what
I believe it will be (to some parts sooner, to others later, but
finally to all), the signal of arousing men to burst the chains
under which monkish ignorance and superstition had per-
suaded them to bind themselves, and to assume the blessings
and security of self-government. That form which we have
substituted, restores the free right to the unbounded exercise
of reason and freedom of opinion. All eyes are opened, or
opening, to the rights of man. The general spread of the light
of science has already laid open to every view the palpable
truth, that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles
i. Roger C. Weightman, as chairman of a proposed Independence Day
celebration in Washington, had written Jefferson asking him to be pres-
ent at the ceremonies. Jefferson's reply, written less than two weeks be*
fore his death, is his last extant letter.
729
on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready
to ride them legitimately, by the grace of God. These are
grounds of hope for others. For ourselves, let the annual re-
turn of this day forever refresh our recollections of these
rights, and an undiminished devotion to them.
I will ask permission here to express the pleasure with which
I should have met my ancient neighbors of the city of Wash-
ington and its vicinities, with whom I passed so many years of
a pleasing social intercourse; an intercourse which so much re-
lieved the anxieties of the public cares, and left impressions so
deeply engraved in my affections, as never to be forgotten.
With my regret that ill health forbids me the gratification of
an acceptance, be pleased to receive for yourself and those for
whom you write, th? assurance of my highest respect and
friendly attachme^ \?t
730
INDEX
— A—
Abolition of slavery, 641-2
Aborigines, American, 225-6
"Academical village," xlii
Academy of Sciences, French, 509
Acoustics, 646-8
Act of Virginia for establishing
religious freedom, text, 311-3
Acts, Great Britain, for securing
His Majesty's Dockyards, Maga-
zines, etc., 303
Adams, Abigail (Smith), 86, 528,
609, 611, 690 n; letters to, 677-9
— John, xxxii-iv, xix-xx, n, 14, 17,
20, 29, 53, 63-4, 66, 85-6, 126-9,
290, 505, 539-43, 556 n, 618 n,
669, 680, 686; TJ's relations
with, 608-11; letters to, 434-6,
506-7, 527-8, 5^8, 615-7, 626-8,
631-4, 640-1, 667-8, 676-9, 690,
700-3, 705-7, 716-7
— John Quincy, xxxix
— Samuel, n; letters to, 556-7,
563-4
Adriatic Sea, 143
Agde, 75
Agrarianism, 280, 575, 668 n
Agriculture, xxvii, 148, 280-1, 330,
385-6, 496, 553, 575, 578-9, 588-
9, 593-4, 597, 616, 621, 646-8,
668 n; encouragement of, 324;
European, 420-1 ; French, 135-
49; Italian, 135, 139-435 restric-
tions on, 321; Virginia, 198-214,
268
Aix-en-Provcncc, 75
Aix-la-Chapelle, 415
Albany, N. Y., 720
Albermarle County, Va., xvi, 10,
498, 500, 641 n; TJ's address to
inhabitants of, 596-7; TJ's re-
solves for, xix
Albermarle Sound, 227
Albenga, 75, 143-4
Alberti, Francis see Fabroni, John
Alexander I of Russia, 604
Alexandria, Va., 228
Alembert, Jean le Rond d', 637, 668
Algebra, 645-6
Algiers, 62, 69
Alien act, 549
Alien and sedition acts, xxxiii, xxxv,
548
Aliens, 255, 272, see also, naturali-
zation
Allen, Mr., 558
— Ethan, 362
Allegheny Mountains, 187, 192-3,
227
Allegheny River, 191 n
Almanacs, 508-9
Alps, 139,421
Alvensleben, Philip Charles, count
von, 79
Amendments, constitutional, 628
America, climate of, 577; explora-
tion of, 225-6
"American," pseudonym of Alex-
ander Hamilton, 521
American Philosophical Society,
557 n, 583 n, 663, 722 n
American Review of History and
Politics, 704 n
American Revolution, xxi-ii, 176,
181, 453, 502, 605, 607, 641-2,
656, 658, 685-6, 713; effect on
France, 71-2; finances of, 121-2;
in Boston, 358-9
American state papers, TJ's, 288
Americans, character of, 418
Amsterdam, 78-9, 86-7, 317, 503
Anacreon, 375
Anarchy, 400
Anas, TJ's, 117-31
Anatomy, 52, 267, 425, 553, 583 n,
645, 647, 716-7
Ancenis, 144
Andes mountains, 198
Angers, 144
Anglo-Saxon, 680; TJ's essay on,
153-70
Anglomaniacs, 76
Animals, degeneracy of, 179
Annapolis, 54, 57, 62-3, 118-9
Anne, Queen, 37
Annual message, 1802, text of, 334;
1803, text of, 334-8; 1804, text
of, 338-9 ; 1808, text of, 347-8
Anthropology, xli
732
INDEX
Antibes, 75
Antoninus, 375, 568
Antwerp, 86, 317
Apalachies Indians, 192
Appenines, 143
Appiani, architect, 141
Apollo Room, xix, 6, 9
Appomattox River, 189, 228
Archbishop of France, 90
Architecture, 48-9, 148, 393, 397,
414-6, 503, 646-8; of Virginia
capital, 380-1 ; Virginia, TJ's
criticism of, 268-71
Arenas, 415
Argiles, 144
Argyle, Duke of, 177
Aristocracies, xxix, 51, 149, 386,
661, 715; French, 90-1, 95, 102-
3, 107-9, 485-6; hereditary, 118-
9; natural, 632-4
Arithmetic, 645-6, 649
Arkansas River, 191
Armies, 328-30; foreign, 309-10;
standing, 24, 285-6, 437, 451, 545,
548, 587, 613
Arnold, Benedict, 360-2
Arrian, 569, 723
Articles of Confederation, 177, 235,
423, 437; drafting of, 20, 28-38;
failure of, 80-5, 118; territorial
government under, 313-5
Artists, slave, 260
Artois, Charles Philippe, comte d',
90, 96, 99, 102-4, 435) 473, 477,
486
Arts, xli, 358, 381, 553, 619; fine,
267, 646-8, 683-4; handicraft,
280; mechanical, 148, 393, 467-8;
plastic, 214; progress in, 687;
technical, 646-7
Assemblages, unlawful, 309
Assembly of Notables, French, 72-
4, 88, 99, 409, 415, 429, 454-6,
465
Astronomy, 214, 553, 635, 646-8
Atheism, xxxvi, 453, 572, 637, 668
Auckland, William Eden, Lord, 78,
80
Aurora, 605 n
Austria, 62, 79, 586
Autobiographies, Franklin's, 112,
114; TJ's, 290, 679-80; TJ's,
text of, 3-114
Autocracies, 661
Auvergne, 468
Avignon, 75
— B—
Bache, William, 112 ; letter to, 556
Bacon, Francis, 173, 609
"Bagatelle," 398
Bailly, Jean Sylvain, 103-4, 485-6
Baker, Polly, 180
Balbec, architecture of, 380
Baltimore, George Calvert, Lord,
232
Baltimore, Md., xliii, 54
Baltimore, Va., 228
Banishment, 73
Banister, John, Jr., letter to, 385-8
Banjoes, 258 n
Bank of U. S., xxix, 125, 549
Bankers, 85-7
Banks, 657-9, 669
Banneker, Benjamin, letter to, 508-
9
Baptists, 697; text of address to,
332-3
Barbary pirates, 67-71
Barbary states, 627; war with, xxv,
326-7
Barbe de Marbois, Francois, mar-
quis de, letter to, 681-3
Barentin, Charles Paul Nicolas, vi-
comte de Montchat, 482
Bareti, Guiseppe, 376
Bar-le-duc, 87
Barnave, Joseph, 108
Barton, Dr. Benjamin S., letter to,
598-9
Basle, 106
Bassoons, 363-4
Bastille, 73, 396; fall of, 101-4, 484-
6
Battlefields, Revolutionary, 504
Bauvau, Prince of, 106
Baxter, 725-6
Bayard, James, 560
Beaujolais, 75, 138-9, 414
Beaune, 137
Beauty, theory of, 637-8
Becarria, Giovanni Battista, 47
Beckley, John, 505-6
Bedford County, Va., 727-8
INDEX
733
Beggars, 135, 250-1
"Belinda," see Burwell, Rebecca
Bellini, Charles, letter to, 382-3
— Luisa, 383
Belsham, 723
Bennett, Richard, 234
Bennington, 504, 720
Bercourt, 635-6
Berlin, 77
Berthelot, Pierre Eugene Marcelin,
717
Bezieres, 75, 144
Bezout, Etienne, 376
Bible, 431-2 ; morality of, 631-2
Big-bone Lick, 201-2
Bigotry, 562, 676-7
Bill of attainder against TJ, n
Bill of rights, U. S., xxviii, 364,
437-8, 442-3, 447, 45°-2, 460,
462-4; Virginia, 273
Bingham, William, 524
Biography, of TJ, 704-5
Birds, 467
Black, Dr. Joseph, 686
"Blackbeard," pirate, 626
Blackstone, William, 726
Blacon, 108
Blair, John, 462
Bland, Richard, 181, 288, 642
Blind, education of, 645
Blockades, xxxviii
Blowing Cave, 196
Blue Ridge Mountains, 4, 189, 192-
5, 197, 219, 227, 399
Board of Agriculture, London, 594
Boerhaave, Herman, 584
Bois le due, 86
Bonaparte, Napoleon see Napoleon
I
Bonne, 87
Book of common prayer, 233
Books, xxiv, 176-7, 383, 43°- J i 459,
500, 602, 614, 669, 702-3, 719;
catalog of, 688; TJ's collection
of, 650-2 ; law, 726-8, list of
recommended, 498-9 ; selection
of, 375-6; translated, 634-5;
value of, 597-8
Bordeaux, 145, 503 ; archbishop of,
106-7
Boston, 63, 173, 583; closing of
port of, xix, 8, 300; port of 302 ;
Revolutionary war in, 358-60;
"tea party," 301
Botany, 425, 467, 504, 553, 645-9
Botetourt, Norborne Berkeley,
Baron de, 6, 680
Bouchain, 86
Boundaries, U. S., xxxvii-viii, 334-
7, 572-3
Bourbon, duchess of, 178; family,
604
Boxing, 386
Boyle, Sir Robert, 266-7
Brabant, 428
Bracton, Henry de, 44
Brafferton Indian School, 267-8
Braganza family, 604
Brain, experiments on, 716-7
Brandy, 371
Brazil, 588, 700
Sreckin ridge, John, xxxvi
Brehan, marquise de, 407
Breteuil, Louis Auguste, baron de,
91, TOO
Bricks, 381
Bridges, 397, 46 7
Brienne, Comte de, 75
Brittany, 392 ; riots in, 465
Brodie, George, 723-5
Broglie, Victor Francois de, 91, 99*
100, 481-2
Brooklyn, 721
Brown, Dr. John, 584
— Dr. Samuel, letter to, 628-9
Brucker, Johann Jakob, 631
Brunswick, Charles William, duke
of, 78-9
Brussels, 100
Bruxelles, 86
Buchanan, James, 380
Buffaloes, 201
Buffon, George Louis Leclerc,
comte de, 199 n, 201, 205 n, 10,
213, 215, 391
Burgh, Ulick de, 497
Burgoyne, Gen. John, 504
Burgundy, 75, 135-6; soil of, 420;
wine of, 137
Burial customs, Indian, 222-4
Burke, Edmund, n, 104, 505
— John Daly, 52
Burr, Aaron, xxxiv, xxxix, 559-60,
585-6, 610
734
INDEX
Burwell, Lewis, 353 n, 356
— Nathaniel, letter to, 687-9
— Rebecca ("Belinda"), xvii, 353
w-4, 356
Bute, John Stuart, Earl of, 177
— C—
Cabala, 631
Cabals, 518-9, 521
Cabanis, Pierre Jean George, 716
Cabell, Joseph C., letter to, 660-1
Cabinet makers, 363
Caesar, 375 n, 416, 661, 723
Caius Caesar, 380
Calf pasture River, 196
California, 225
Caligula, 626
Calonne, Charles Alexandre, 73-4,
454-5
Calvin, John, 705
Cameos, 141
Cambray, 86
Camoens, Luis, 214 n
Canada, 195; American campaign
in, 359-62
Canals, 340, 401
Cancer, 629
Canning, George, 709
Capital, U. S., location of, 124-5,
316
Capitol, U. S., SQV, Virginia, 48,
380-1 ; Williamsburg, 269
Capsicum seeds, 628-9
Carcassonne, 75
Card playing, 590
Carlsruhe, 87, 503
Carmarthen, Francis Godolphin,
marquis of, 66
Carmichael, William, 79, 179; let-
ter to, 445-6
Carr, Dabney, 7, 373 n
— Martha (Jefferson), 373 n
—Peter, 499; letters to, 373-7, 429-
34, 642-9
Carrington, Edward, letters to,
411-2, 427-8, 441-2, 446-7
Carroll, Daniel, 129
Carrying trade, 330, 393, 593-4
Cartouche, Louis Dominique, 626
Cartwright, John, letter to, 714
Casa Belgioisa, 141
Casa Candiani, 141
Casa Roma, 141
Cascades, Virginia, 194-8
Casino, TJ on, 141
Castelnaudary, 75
Castries, Charles Eugene Gabriel de
la, marguis de, 74
Catalogs, library, 652
Catherine II, Empress of Russia,
604, 667
Catholics, 668
Catiline, 626
Cato, 260, 662
Cattle, 135
Caverns, Virginia, 194-8
Cedar Creek, 197
Census, U. S., 327-8
Ceres (ship), 63
Cette, 75
Censorship, 89
Chalons sur Marne, 87
Chamber of Deputies, French, 415-
6
Chambertin, 137
Champagne, France, 75, 420; wine
of, 135
Chancery courts, 39-40, 52
Chanteloup, 146-7
Charity, 638
Charles I, 231, 296
Charlotte, Queen, 66
Charlottesville, Va , xlii
Charters, of College of William
and Mary, 266
Chase, Jeremiah, 58
— Samuel, 29-30, 32
Chastellux, Franqois Jean, marquis
de, 145 ; letter to, 365-6
Chateau de Grillemont, 145
Chateau de Laye-Epinaye, 138, 414
Chateau de Sevigny, 136
Chateau Thierry, 87
Chatham, William Pitt, Earl of,
359,626
Chaucer, Geoffrey, 666
Chaudiere River, 360
Cheese, xxvii, 141-2
Chemistry, 52, 386, 425, 553, 645-
9, 680
Cherokee Indians, text of address
to, 578-80
Chesapeake (ship) , xxxix, 600- 1
Chesapeake Bay, 180, 227
INDEX
735
Chesterfield, Va., 3, in
Chew, Mr., 607
Chickasaw Indians, 190
Chickahominy River, 189, 404
Children, labor of, 135
Chivasco, TJ on, 140
Chowanoc Indians, 221
Christianity, xxxvii, 47, 251, 268,
557-8, 562, 566-70, 693-4, 7oi,
703-4, 706-7; Platonic, 637
Christmas, 351
Church of England, 40-1, 50, 227,
272-4
Churches, established, 40-1, 50,
276-7,332, 558
Ciandola, 139
Cicero, 375-6, 568, 693, 719
Ciliano, 140
Cincinnati, Society of, 118-9, 529-
30
Cinquac, 187
Citeaux, monks of, 138
Citizenship, 42, 314; laws on, 331;
right to, 217-8
City planning, 503-4
Civil power, 24, 471
Claiborne, William, 234
Clarinets, 363-4
Clark, Mr., 56
Clarmont, marquis de, 138
Classics, 4, 385
Claudius, 260
Clergy, French, 89-90, 94-5, 97-8,
456, 465, 472, 475-8, 485-6; U.
S., 558
Clermont (ship), in
Clerrisau, Charles Louis, 48
Cleves, 87
Climate, 203-6, 577, 588-9
Clinton, De Witt, 614
Clothing, 366
Coblentz, 87
Cohoes, Ohio, 190
Coinage, TJ's report on, 54-6
Coke, Sir Edward, 353, 726 .
Col de Tende, 75
Coles, Edward, letter to, 641-2
College of William and Mary see
William and Mary College
Colleges, 50, 530
Colley, Capt. Nathaniel, in
Cologne, 87
Columbian Order, text of address
to, 346-7
Columbus, 587
Colvin, John B., letter to, 606-7
Commerce, 10, 324, 326, 334, 377,
393-4, 414, 641 ; freedom of, 73-
4, 311; restraint of, 88, 348;
study of, 553; U. S., xxx, 330,
384, 507-8, 537-8, 541-4, 593-4J
U. S. report on, 319-21; Virgin-
ia, 279-81
Commercial treaties, U. S., xxiv
Committees of correspondence,
xviii, 7-8
Common law, see Law, common
Common sense, 72, 411-2, 431, 459,
658
Common Sense, Paine's, 94, 259,
467
Conchology, 145-6
Conde, Louis Joseph, prince de, 486
Condorcet, M.AJ.N.C., 406, 509.
629, 696
Congress, xxiii, 175, 191; TJ in,
290; powers of, 80-5, 427-8
Coni, 75, 139-40
Connecticut, 62, 70, 720
Constitutional Conventions, 43-4,
81-5, 427-8
Constitutions, 24, 26, 314; British,
126, 175-6, 217, 303,512,516,608,
724, 726; comparison of, 424;
French, 93-7, 108-9, 457, 472,
479-So, 522, 556; right to change,
674-6; state, 83-4; territorial,
314; theories of, 669-73; U. S.,
xxvii-viii, 59-6o, 131, 175, 217.
322, 339, 435-6, 442-4, 446-7, 453;
460-4, 466, 495, 529, 544-6, 558-
9, 572-3, 618, 699, 727; U. S.,
amendments to, 82-3, 340, 447;
U. S. attacks on, 609 ; U. S. con-
struction of, xxxvi, 514; TJ. S.
discussion of, 436-41 ; U. S., im-
plied powers, 549-52 ; U. S.,
power to amend, 440-3, 466,
563; U. S., ratification of, 450,
628; U. S., reform of, 427; U.
S., threats to, 518-21, 712-3. Set
also Bill of Rights, U. S., Vir.
ginia constitution
736
INDEX
Consular conventions, 88
Continental Congress, xxiii, xix-xx,
11-12, 54, 176, 290, 359, 627, 659
n, 726; debates in, 28-38, 60- 1 ;
disagreements in, 56-7; TJ in,
290, 423; proposed, 9-10; resolu-
tions, 14-21
Conventions, treaty, 318
Cook, Capt. James, 70, 225
Cookery, 495-6, 500
Coolidge, Ellen Wayles (Ran-
dolph), 720-1
— Joseph, Jr., 720 n,-i
Cooper, Dr. Thomas, xl; letters to,
634-5, 649-50, 697
Copenhagen, 105
Coray, Daimant, 710
Corbin, Alice, 354
Cordilleras, 400
Corinthian columns, 415
Corneille, Pierre
— Thomas, 688
Cornwallis, Charles, Lord, xxi
Corny, Louis Dominque Ethis de,
101-2, 483-4
Correa da Serra, Jose, 694
Corruption in government, 125-6
Corvees, 73, 88-9
Cosri, 631
Cosway, Maria Louisa Catherine
Cecelia (Hadfield), xxvi; letters
to, 395-407
— Richard, xxvi, 396, 407
Cote, 137
Cotton, 588-9
Cotton gin, Whitney's, 526-7
Counties, 50
Courts of chancery, 39-40
Cowes, xxvi, 63, in
Cowpasture river, 196
Coxe, Tench, letter to, 528-9
Craney Island, Virginia, 188
Craven, John, 558
Crevecoeur, Hector St. Jean de,
letter to, 409-11
Crimes, 182
Criminal law, 45, 138
Croft, Herbert, letter to, 153-5
Cromwell, Oliver, 232, 557
Crown Point, 361-2, 504, 720
Cuba, 709
Cullen, William, 584
Cumberland River, 191 n
Currie, James, 392
Currency, 619; TJ's report on, 54-
6; speculation in, 512-6; U. S.,
xxiii, 121-4; Virginia, 283-4
Curtis, Edmond, 234
Curtuis, 723
Cussy les forges, 136
Customs, French, 409
Cutting, John B., letter to, 449-50
Cuvier, G.L.C.F.D., baron, 717
— D—
Dagout, 1 08
Danbury Baptist Association, Text
of address to, 332-3
D'Ancarville see Hancarville
Dancing, 689
D'Anville, Duchess de la Roche-
foucauld, 398
Dares Phrygius, 554
Datura-stramonium, 629
D'Aubenton, 203, 209
Dauphin, 477
Davila, Enrico Caterino, 127, 357,
723
Deaf, education of, 645
Deane, Silas, 53, 179-80, 543
Dearborn, Henry, 553
Death, 690
Debt assumption, xxix, 122-5
Debtors, laws on, 250
Debts, British, 270-1, 423; heredi-
tary, 488-93 ; French national,
469, 471; of American colonists,
298; public, 85-7, 121-4, 334,
337, SGI, 654; U. S., 384, 390-1,
510-6
Decade philosophique, 574 n
Declaration of Independence, xx,
xliii-v, 178-9, 182, 288, 290, 551,
680, 703, 719, 722; drafting of,
xix-xx, 14-21; engraving of, 683-
4; 5oth anniversary of, 729-30;
signers of, 617 ; text of, 22-8
Declaration of rights, 14, 442 ;
French, 99, 107, 457, 469-71, 473-
4, 479-8o, 482, 654-5; U. S., 81,
462-4, 466; Virginia, 273
Declaration of the causes and ne-
cessity of taking up arms, TJ's,
12-13
INDEX
737
Defense, national, 347-8, 587, 600-3
Deism, 558, 637; of Jews, 569-70
De La Lande, Pierre Antoine, 376
Delaplaine, Joseph, letter to, 679-
80
de la Tour, 138
Delaware, 60, 538
De Lome, 497
Democracy, xxxic, xliii-iv; Ameri-
can, xv ; principles of, 291
Democratic societies, 529
Democrats, 715
Demonism, 453
Denmark, 62, 65, 70
Descartes, Rene, 275
Despotisms, 100, 324, 449, 482, 537,
683, 703 ; elective, 237-8
Destutt de Tracy, Alexandre Cesar
Victor Charles, 625-6, 634, 677,
701 ; discussion of work of, 662-6
"Dialogue between my head & my
heart," TJ's, xxvi, 395-407
Diana, sculpture of, 139, 414
Dickinson, John, 10, 12-14, 2I>
627 ; letter to, 560-1
Dictators, xxii-iii, 246-7
Diderot, Denis, 637, 668, 706
Diet, 690-1
Dieuze, 87
Dijon, 138
Dinwiddie, Robert, 287
Diodorus Siculus, 375, 723
Dion, 723
Diplomacy, 67
Discourses on Davila, Adams', 127
Disease, theory of, 583-5
d'lvernois, Francois, letter to, 530-
2
Dodge, Nehemiah, 332
Dogs, shepherd, 502, 596
Don Quixote, 495
Donald, Alexander, letter to, 442-3
Dorset, Duke of, 80
Douglass, Rev. William, 4
Dramatists, xvi
Drawing, 417, 689
Dress, advice on, 366
Drunkenness, 383, 386
Dryden, John, 688
Duane, William, 634 n; letters to,
605-6, 613, 625-6
Dufief, Nicholas Gouin, letter to,
635-6
Dugnani, Antonia, count, 684-5
Dumaril, 717
Dumb, education of, 645
"Dungeness," Va., 3
Dunmore, John Murray, Earl of,
xix, 7-9, 12, 360
Dupont de Nemours, Pierre Sam-
uel, 555, 663; letters to, 585-6,
595-6
Duport, Adrien, 108
Dusseldorf, 87
Duties, import, 320
Duty, 568-9
Dutch, treaty with Great Britain,
58-60
Duysberg, 87
— E—
"Earth belongs to the living," 488-
93, 527-8, 546, 599-6oo, 674-6,
714
East India Co., 300
Eclectics, 632
Economists, political, 574
Economy, government, xxxv, 339-
40, 673-4; household, 689
Eden, Lord see Auckland
Eddystone lighthouse, 57
Edgeworth, Maria, 688
Edinburgh Review, on TJ, xxvii
Education, 180-1, 340, 413, 440,
639, 676-7, 702-3; advice on,
373-7, 385-8, 4I7-2Q, 424-6, 429-
34, 495-Soo, 589-93, 603, 614,
642-9, 722-6; general, 604-5;
TJ's, 351, 590, 656, 680, 691;
military, 683 ; of George IV, 458 ;
of Indians see Indians; of Jesus,
569, of women, 495-6, 500-1,
687-9; philosophy of, xli; public,
49-5o; scheme of, 552-5; theory
of, 534; Virginia, xlii, 52, 530-2;
Virginia plan for, 262-6
Egypt, 67
Electricity, 646-7
Elephants, 203-4
Elizabeth, Queen, 228
Elizabeth City, Va., 180
Elizabeth River, 188
Elk, for Buffon, 391-2 "
73&
INDEX
Ellery, Christopher, 58
Embargo, xxviii-ix, 586-7, 605, 616
Emancipation, 641-2, 661, 698-9,
712
Encyclopedic, 408, 459-60
Encyclopedic methodique et dic-
tionnaire d'Economie Politiquet
119
Encyclopedists, 215
Endymion, sculpture of, 139
Enfield, William, 631-2
England, xxxviii-ix, 177; history
of, 723-6; TJ in, xxvii; TJ's im-
pressions of, 392-4
The English Constitution produced
and illustrated, 714 n
Enlightenment, age of, xv
Entails, abolition of, xx, 51-2, 255
Entangling alliances, 441-2
Enterprise (schooner), 327
Epicurus, 568, 693-7
Episcopalians, 697
Eppes, Elizabeth (Wayles), 363
— Francis, in ; letter to, 361-3
— Maria (Jefferson), xxxvii, 63,
75, 418-9, 459; death of, 611;
letters to, 495-6, 500-1, 548-9
"Eppington," Va., in
Epitectus, 260, 375, 568-9, 693-4
Equality, 367 ; of representation,
34-5 *
Essay towards facilitating instruc-
tion in the Anglo-Saxon . . .
TJ's, 153-70
Ethics, 5, 553, 645, 647, 660; com-
parative, 631-2; Jewish, 569-70;
ot Jesus, 568-70
Etiquette, American, 444
Euripides, 375
Europe, climate of, 577; education
in, 385-88; inequalities in, 412;
opinions on U. S., 390-1 ; politics
in, 428-9; society in, 366-7, 382-
3; U. S. relations with, 441-2,
708-10; wars in, 448, 618
Euthanasia, 629
Evans, Lewis, 191
Executive power, 74, 81, 107, 125,
408, 422-3, 427-8, 460, 466, 537,
671, 713 ; constitutional limits
on, 345-6
Exercise, 375-6, 417, 426, 431, 614-
5,695
Exile, 89
Exports, 370-1, 377
Extravagance, 393
Fabroni, John [correction for
Francis Alberti], letter to, 363-4
Fairfax, Thomas, Lord, 232
Falling Spring, Va., 194, 399
Fame, 373
Farmers, 135, 410, 538; "chosen
people of God," 280; value of,
377-8
Farmers-general, 67, 369-71
Farming, 527-8, 533, 607, 727
Faubourg St. Antoine, 92
Fauquier, Francis, xvii, 5
Federal government, powers of,
407-8
Federalist Party, xxx
Federalist Papers, 452, 497
Federalists, xxvii, xxxl, xxxiii-iv,
xxxviii, 128, 291, 322, 460, 516,
528 n, 559-6o, 593, 609-10, 621-4,
627-8, 697, 712, 715
Fenestrange, 87
Fenno, John, xxix
Ferries, Va., 268
Fertilizing, 42 1
Feuillants, 521-2
Feudalism, 106-7, 138-9, 307
Fiction, 357
Fier Rodrigue (ship), 188
Finances, French, 454-7 ; TJ's, xlii-
iii; U. S., 566
Fisheries, 334
Fisher's Bar, 189
Fitch, John, 686
Fitzherbert, Mary Anne, 459
Flag of truce, 362
Fleschelles, Jacques de, 102, 484
Florida, xxxvii, 709
Flourens, Pierre Jean Marie, 716
Fluvanna River, 189
Fontainebleau, 388, 407
Food, at University of Virginia,
692-3
Force, 310, 324, 508
Foreign affairs, 328, 516
Fort Edwards, 720
INDEX
739
Fort George, 504, 720
Fort Henry, 504
Fort William, 504
Fossils, Virginia, 198-200
Foster, Capt., 362
Fothcrgill, John, 177
Fourth of July, xliii-iv
Foullon, Joseph Francois, 91, 100,
482
Fox, 723; Charles James, 458-9
France, xxxv-ix, 16, 54, 70, 76;
agriculture in, 588-9 ; charter of
rights for, 469-71; contrast to
America, 366-7; education in,
425-6; government of, 424; his-
tory of, 723; imports U. S.
flour, 92 ; inequalities in, 394-5 ;
influence of American Revolu-
tion on, 71-2; TJ in, xxvi-vii,
120, 290; TJ's tour of, 75, 135-
49, 414-6, 420-2, 428-9; TJ's
love for, in, 371-2, 379, 546;
manners in, 382-1; national debt
of, 490-3; politics in, 12, 428-9,
434-5, 444-5, 449-5°, 453-7, 464-
6, 471-6, 478-87, 521-2, 528-9,
556, 654-5 ; relations with Great
Britain, 414; relations with U.
S., xxx, 370-1, 519-20, 525, 541-
3, 547-8, 571-2, 586-7, 616-7,
620; riots in, 92; treaties with,
62, 79,317-9
Frankfort, Ky., 583
Frankfort-on-Main, 87, 503
Franklin, Benjamin, xix-xx, xxiv,
xxvii, 14, 20, 33, 53, 57, 61, 63-
4, 66, 86, 88, 112-4, 214-5, 410,
591, 680; TJ's anecdotes of, 176-
80
— William Temple, 113-4
Franks, Col., 62
Fraser, 79
Frederick the Great, 65, 76, 78,
390, 604
Frederick William II, 78-9, 604
Frcdericksburg, Va., 549
Fredericktown, Md., 193
Free trade, 384, 589
Freedom, xli-lv, 346, 394-5, 468,
522, 530, 533, 729-30; defense
of, 347-8; in France, 72; moral,
xliii-iv; of commerce, 319-21;
of conscience, g6; of discussion,
343-4; of person, 81-2, 89, 96,
466, 470; of navigation, 316-7,
3^5-?; cf opinion, 321-2, 613;
of the press, xxxiii, 81-2, 89. 91,
90, 3;s2, 543-4, 437, 442, 450-1,
457, 460, 4^6. 4^1, 5^8, 581, 613,
635, 654; of the seas, xxxviii-ix,
64-5, 326-7, 338-9, 347-8, 564-6,
619-20, 653-4, 656; of thought,
291, 466, 679, 702 ; of trade, 294-
8; religious, xx-i, 5, 47, 81-2, 182,
322, 332, 341, 437, 442, 450-1,
460, 545, 613, 6^6, 654, 679, 704;
religious, in France, 409 ; reli-
gious, Virginia act for, xx-1, 47,
291, 311-13, 408-9
Freemen, 30-1
Frejus, 75
French Directory, xxxii, 56, 682
French horns, 363-4
French language, 385-6, 425-6, 430,
458, 680, 688
French Revolution, xxiv-v, 72-4,
120, 465, 521-2, 541, 654-5, 681-
2, 723; effect on U. S., 128-9;
Franklin on, 112-3; TJ on, 91-
iii ; outbreak of, 481-7
Freneau, Philip, xxix, 130-1
Friendship, 402-4, 443, 506-7, 518,
523, 538, 544, 596-7, 615, 656,
690
Frontignan, 75
Fry, Joshua, 4, 191
Fulton, Robert, 686
Fur trade, 71
— G—
Gabelles, 73, 88, 409
Glerie du Loire, 503
Galileo, 275, 686
Gallatin, Albert, xxxv; letters to,
566, 656-7
Galvance, 629
Gambling, 693
Gamaliel, 632
Gardener, 128
Gardeners, 363
Gardens, 148; King's, 398; pleas-
ure, 393, 647
Gardes meubles, 503
740
INDEX
Garland, John, 497
Garonne River, 75
Gas pee (revenue cutter), xviii
Gates, Gen. Horatio, letters to,
57i-2
— Sir Thomas, 229
Geismer, Baron, letter to, 379-80
Generations, rights of, 488, 527,
599-600, 674-6, 714
Genet, Edmund, xxx, 525
Geneva, 385-6, 53°
Genius, 212-5, 263, 468, 534, 696
Genlis, Stephanie Ftlicite, 688
Genoa, 62, 75, 142-3
Gentil, Mons., 145
Geography, 263, 467, 555, 597
Geology, 635
Geometry, 312
George III, xviii, 9, 23, 25-6, 66,
131, 178, 235, 291, 293, 302-11,
360, 393, 448, 630, 626
George IV, 626, 652; character of,
457-8
Georgetown, D. C., 124, 662 n
Georgia, 281
Gerbert, Martin, Baron von Hon-
au, 686
Germantown, Pa., 607
Germany, TJ in, xxvii, 86-7
Gerry, Elbridge, xxxii, 58, 547 ; let-
ters to, 540-6
Gibbon, Edward, 375 n, 723
Gibraltar, 327
Gilmer, Francis Walker, 721
Gimson weed, 629
Girardin, Louis Hue, 52
Givet, 79
Gnostics, 632
God, existence of, 431-3
Godfrey, Thomas, 214 n
Goldsmith, Oliver, 374
Goochland County, Va., 3
Goufiier, Choiseul, 48
Gournay, Pierre Mathias, 86, 663
Government, xviii, 149, 379, 546,
728; British, 606; by corruption
and force, 608-9; changing of,
654-5; civil, 217, 328; compari-
sons of, 33-8, 550, 670, 699-700,
711-2; division of powers of,
427-8; economy in, 545, 673-4;
federal and state, 407-8; free,
xli; French, 107; good, 322-4;
hereditary, 127; importance of
knowledge of history in, 265-6;
Indian, 221; interest in agricul-
ture, 588-9 ; legitimate powers of,
275; monarchical, 119-20; ob-
jects of, 22, 479-80, 618; prin-
ciples of, 452; reform of, 72;
religious interference in, 697;
republican, 51-2, 119-20, 129,
245-7> 493-4, 531-2; right to
change, 448-9; Roman, 247,
275; science of, 635; state, 235-
6; strength of, 585-6; study of,
645, 648; theory of, 660-2; U.
S. territorial, xxiii-iv, 313-5, 322-
3, 572-3
Governor's Palace, William sburg,
xvii, 269
Graaf, Mr., 722
Grain, 67
Grammar, 376, 499, 645, 649
Grammar schools, 52
Grand, Ferdinand, 85-6
Great Britain, xxx, 54, 65, 70;
navy, 627; Orders in Council,
652-3; politics, 428-9, 448; rela-
tions with France, 379; Parlia-
ment, 301, 306-7, 359; interfer-
ence in colonial affairs, 232 ;
relations with U. S., 527-8, 537-
8, 541-3, 547-8, 571-2, 586-7,
616-7, 619-20, 709-10; treaties,
58, 60, 62 ; U. S. heritage from,
605-6; War with Netherlands,
75-8o
Great Kanahway River, 187, 189-
90 n, 216
Great Miami River, 191 n
Great Sandy River, 191 n
Greece, 374; architecture of, 380;
government of, 711-2; history of,
723
Greek language, 4, 181, 263-4, 267,
351, 554, 680
Green River, 191 n
Greene, Nathaniel, xxii
Grimm, Frederic Melchoir, Baron,
71, 667-8
Grist mills, 394
Grotius, Hugo, 319
Guiandot River, 191 n
INDEX
Guiche, Madame de, 103, 486
Guillotine, 104
Guitars, 258 n
Gulf of Mexico, xxxvii, 192-3, 710
Gustavus IV Adolphus, 604
Habeas corpus, right of, 81-2, 96,
437-8, 450-1, 457, 460, 470, 654
Hadley, John, 214 n
Hague, 65, 76, 85-6
Halicarnassus, 723
Hall aux Bleds, 397
Hallam, Henry, 726
Hamburg, 62, 131
Hamilton, Alexander, xxviii-ix, xxx,
xxxii-iii, xxxix, 120-1, 123-5, I29-
31, 175, Si7-2i, 538, 540, 559,
608-9, 622-4
Hamiltonians, 541
Hampton Roads, 189
Hanau, 87
Hancarville, Pierre Francois Hugues
d', 395-6
Hancock, John, n
Happiness, 97, 372, 394-5, 4OI-3>
413, 417, 426, 523, 527, 559, 561,
618, 667, 683, 685, 72i, 728;
morals essential to, 404
Harding, David, letter to, 73
Harmer, Col. Josiah, 62, 179
Harpsichords, 363
Harrison, Benjamin, 12-14, 31
Harrison's Bar, 189
Hartford convention, 128
Hartley, David, 64
Harvard University, 467 n
Harvey, Dr. William, 580
Harvie, John, 291 ; letter to, 351
Havre, 63, in
Hay, William, 380
Hazard, Ebenezer, letter to, 502
Health, 375-6, 416-7, 419, 426, 434,
583-5, 617, 679, 686-7, 690-3,
729-30; TJ's, 602-3, 614-5, 659-
60
Heidelberg, 87
Helvetius, Claude Adrien, 497, 638
Hemlock, 629
Henriade, 214 n
Henry IV, 357
Henry, Patrick, xviii, 6-8, 10, 39,
43, 181 ; life of, 685-6
Heretics, 274, 632
Herodotus, 375-6, 723
Hieres, 75, 139
Hill, Mr., 587
Hingham Debating Society, 713
Histoire des deux Indes, Raynal's,
1 80
Historians, 723-6
Histories, of Virginia, 287-8
History, 82, 264, 553, 597, 606,
626, 645-7, 649, 660, 678, 702-3,
719; as moral exercise, 358;
knowledge of, important in gov-
ernment, 265-6; sources of, 502;
study of, 374-5, 425
History of Virginia, Burke's, 52
Hocheim, 87
Hockhocking River, 191 n
Hoffman, Friedrich, 584
Hogendorp, Charles von, letter to,
384-5
Holbach, Paul Thierry d', 637, 668,
706
Holland, 78, 317; invasion of, 79:
TJ in, xxvii, 86-7 ; politics in,
428-9
Hollins, John, letter to, 594
Holmes, John, letter to, 698-9
Holy Alliance, 106
Home, Henry, Lord Kames, 641
Homer, 213-4 n, 261, 375, 410, 554
Honesty, 534, 562, 564, 566
Hopkins, Mr., 36
Hopkinson, Francis, letter to, 459-
62
Horace, 375, 692
Horrocks, Rev. James, 356
Horse racing, 386, 590
Horses, 375
Hospital for insane, Williamsburg,
269
Hospitality, Virginia, 351
Hotel de Salm, 415, 504
Hotel de Ville, 102, 104, 484
Hotel des Invalides, 101, 103, 483-4
Howe, Lord and Lady, 113
— Admiral Richards, 361
— Gen. William, 361
Howell, David, 58
Hudson River, 361, 720
Humanism, xxiv
742
INDEX
Humanity, 341
Humboldt, Friedrich Heinrich Alex-
ander, Baron von, letter to, 681
Hume, David, 497, 606, 723-6
Humphreys, David, 130, 179; let-
ter to, 464-7
Hunter, William, letter to, 493-4
Hunting, 388, 590
Hurt, Rev. Mr., n
Hydrodynamics, 646-7
Hydrostatics, 646-7
Hypocrisy, 311
Ideologists, French, 574 n
Ignorance, 394-5
Illinois River, 190-1, 202, 336
Imagination, 357
Immigrants, 533
Impeachment, 305
Imports, duties on, 340, 370-1, 707-
8
Impressment of seamen, xxxviii,
607, 653, 656
Inaugural address, TJ's, xxxiv-v;
1801, 291; text of, 321-4; 1805,
text, 339-45
Independence, 346 ; American, 239-
40, 360-1
Indian Languages, 220
Indians, 25, 190, 192, 201-2, 291,
412-3, 571; arts of, 258; burial
customs, 222-4; conversion and
education, 266-8; education of,
210, 326, 333, 337, 341-2, 578-
80; lands of, 253-4,314; mission-
aries to, 267-8; North American,
210-13 J rights of, 336, 341-2 ; so-
cieties of, 408; text of address
to, 333. 578-8o; Virginia, 220-7;
vocabularies of, xxxvii, 598-9;
wars of, 216
Individualism, 364-5
Inquiry into the Principles and
Politics of the Government of
the United States, Taylor's, 668
«-73
Inquiry into the Rights of the Bri-
tish Colonies, 1766, 288
Insurrections, 25
Xntemperance, 458
Intolerance, 676-7
Inventions, 142, 409-10, 467-8, 508-
9, 629-31, 686
Iron works, 252
Isolationists, xxvii
Italian language, 385-6, 426, 430,
680
Italy, TJ in, xxvi-vii, 75, 135-49,
415, 420-2, 428-9
Izard, Ralph, letter to, 448
T
Jackson River, 189
Jacobins, 128, 521-2, 655, 715
James I of England, 229, 231;
Statutes of, 45
James II, 17
James River, 4, 188-9, I92> J97»
220-1, 228, 252
Jamestown, Va., 42, 189, 221, 229,
232
Jamestown weed, 629
Jay, John, 13, 53, 77, no, 446,
627; letters to, 377-8, 409, 457-9,
471-8, 481-7
Jay's Treaty, xxxii, 129, 534
Jefferson, Field, 3
— George, 497 n
— Jane (Randolph), 3
— John Garland, letter to, 497-500
— Lucy Elizabeth, 63, 75
— Maria see Eppes, Maria (Jeffer-
son)
— Martha see Randolph, Martha
(Jefferson)
— Martha, TJ's sister, 373 n
— Martha (Wayles) Skelton, xiii,
xviii, xx-i, 5-6 ; death of, 53, 365,
680
— Peter, xv-vi, 3-4, 191, 351 n
— Thomas, autobiograhpy of, 3-
114; birth of, xv ; breaks wrist,
75; financial straits of, 727-8;
Public Papers, texts of, 293-348
— Thomas, TJ's grandfather, 2
Jenner, Dr. Edward, 580-1
Jesuits, 676
Jesus, 432-3, 567-70; doctrines of,
568-70; morals of, 631-2; phi-
losophy of, 701
Jews, religion of, 568-70; 693-6
Jezirah, 631
Johansberg, 87
INDEX
743
Johnson, Mr., 6
Jones, Dr. Walter, letters to, 173
n
— wat 356
Joseph II of Austria, 604
Journals, travel, TJ's, 135-49
Judicial systems, 83-4
Judiciary, U. S., 330; Virginia, 38
Judiciary powers, see Powers
Julius Caesar, 609
Juries, trial by, 24, 39-40, 52, 81-2,
96, 330-1. 359, 437-8, 45O-I, 457,
460, 480, 613, 654
Justice, 343-4, 459, 568-9, 656, 683
Justin, 375; code of, 44
— K—
Kames, Lord see Home, Henry,
Lord Kames
Kaskaskia Indians, protection of,
336
Kaskaskia River, 190-1
Kamschatka, 71, 225
Keith, Sir Walter, 287
Kelk, 87
Kennebcc River, 360
Kentucky, 198-9; secession in, 391
Kentucky Resolution, TJ's, xxxiii
Kentucky River, 191 n
Kercheval, Samuel, letter to, 673-6
Kings, 438-9; rights of, 479-80; TJ
on, 104-5, 603
Knox, Henry, 118
— John, 697
— Samuel, letter to, 599-600
Knowledge, xl, 383, 552; applied,
422; diffusion of, 262-6
Kosciusko, Thaddeus, xl; letter to,
600-3
Krumpholz, Johann Baptiste, 398
Labor, xxvii, 633; rights of, 323;
of children, 135 ; of women, 135,
140, 144
Laborers, 148-9, 644, 649-50; status
of, 30-1
Lacretelle, Pierre Louis, 406, 723
Lake Champlain, 720
Lake George, 504, 720
Lafayette, Marie Adrienne Fran-
goise, marquise de, 495
— Marie Joseph Paul Yves Gilbert
Motier, marquis de, xxiii-v, 67,
73, 99, 103, 108, no, 413-4, 468-
9, 474, 482, 485-6, 508; letters
to, 420-2, 494-5, 654-5, 712; Vir-
ginia lands for, 392
Lameth, Alexandre, 108
Lamoignon, 93
Land, laws on, 252-4; taxes on, 32,
35
Land tenure, 307-8, 633; British,
393; European, 420-1
Lands, public, 384-5; sale of, 727-
8; uncultivated, 389-90
Langdon, John, letter to, 603-4
Languages, 376-7, 385-6, 430, 555,
605, 645, 649, 666, 688; Indian,
268; TJ on, 153-70; TJ's knowl-
edge of, 680; modern, 52; study
of, 554* teaching of, 263-4;
theories of, 666
Langon, 75
Languedoc, canal of, 75, 144
La Porte, Jean Baptiste de, 100
— P., letters to, 692-3
La Ptrouse, Jean Frangois de, 467
La Rochefoucauld, Cardinal de la,
477
La Rochelle, 75
Lasteyrie du Saillant, letter to,
588-9
Latin, 4, 181, 263-4, 267, 351, 385-
6, 426, 458, 554, 680
Latrobe, Benjamin H., 49
La Tude, Jean Henry de, 407
Launay, Bernard Rene, 101-2,
484-5
Laurens, Henry, 53
La Vaugayon, Paul Francois de Q.
de S., due de, 91, 100
Lavoisier, Antoine Laurent, 686
Law, Thomas, letter to, 636-40
Law, 181, 221; books on, 498-9;
common, 47, 243, 254, 549; con-
stitutional, xxxiii; criminal, 45,
73-4; English, 249-50, 307-8; in-
ternational, 338-9; TJ's practice
of, 5; majority, 681 ; moral, 318;
Mosiac, 631; natural, 243, 316,
427; of descents, 45; of nations,
316-9, 564-5 I of nature, 310, 345 ;
of Nature and Nations, 645-6.
744
INDEX
648, parliamentary, 182; pro-
fessors of, 52, 267, 721 ; study of,
xviii, 58, 386, 425-6, 479-500,
553, 646-8
Laws, 34, 605, 666; evils of un-
stable, 441 ; for public good, 23 ;
French, 88-90, 99, 470; mild,
400; object of, 479-80; observa-
tion of, 606-7; property, 261;
reform of, 401 ; U. S., 367 ;
wholesome, 342 ; Virginia see
Virginia, laws
Lawyers, 61
Laye, M. de, 138-9
Lear, Tobias, 130
Ledyard, John, 70-1
Lee; peace commissioner, 53
— Dr. Arthur, 58, 288
— Francis Lightfoot, 7-8, 10
— Henry, letters to, 714-5, 719
— Richard Henry, 7-8, 10, 13-14*
17, 124
— Thomas Lightfoot, 44-5
Le Frosne, 663
Legislation, commercial, 319-21
Legislative powers see Powers
Legislatures, colonial, 306-8
Legrand, Jacques Guillaume, 397
Leiper, Thomas, letter to, 593-4
L'Enfant, Pierre Charles, letter to,
502-4
Leonidas, 686
Le Saumal, 144
Letter writing, 660
Letters, 704-5 ; TJ's, 35*-73O
Letters of an American Farmer,
409 n
Lettres de cachet, 89-90, 465
Levant, 67
Levees, 130, 175, 375 n, 388
Lewis, George W., letters to, 722-6
Lewis, John, 181-2
— Meriwether, 598-9
— Nicholas, 498
— Warner, 365
Lex talionis, 46
Lexington, Mass., battle of, 656
Leyden, 87
Libel, 343-4, 451,471,576
Liberties, decay of, 36
Liberty, xli, 25, 175, 214, 217, 309,
322, 341, 346, 348, 364, 367, 377,
447, 449-50, 522, 531, 537, 606,
613, 620, 641-2, 655, 657, 660,
681, 683, 685, 702-3; individual,
xxxiii; of conscience, 567; of
person, 470; people only source
of, 440-1; personal, 149; public,
238; public, 238, 4H-3, 436;
right to, 22
Libraries, 50
Library, TJ's, 498-9, 603; TJ's of-
fered to Library of Congress,
650-2 ; value of, 597-8 ; Virginia,
xlii
Library of Congress, xxxvii, 650-2
Life, liberty and property, 606;
philosophy of see Philosophy;
right to, 22
Ligny, 87
Lilly, Gabriel, 558
Limone, TJ on, 139-40
Listen, Robert, 79
Literature, 645, 649; classical, 554;
TJ on, 357-8; morality in, 688;
Negro, 594-5 ; study of, 375-6
Little Miami River, 191 n
Littleton, Thomas, 267
Livingston, Robert R., 14, 20, 564-
6, 571
— William, 12-13
Livy, 417-8, 431-2, 626, 713, 723
Locke, John, 173, 497, 609, 701,
719
Lomenie de Brienne, Etienne
Charles, 74
London, xxvi, 66, 77, 86-7, 379;
description of, 393
Long Island, N. Y., 720
L'Orient, 75
Lottery, TJ's, xliii
Louis XIV, 490
Louis XVI, xxv, 73, 76, 88-9, 90,
94-110, 318, 371-2, 388, 409, 414-
5, 424, 429, 435, 445, 449-50,
455-6, 465, 469, 471-5, 476-8,
481-3, 485-6, 604; letter of, 477
Louis XVIII, 677
Louisiana, 586
Louisiana Purchase, xxxv-vii, 334-
7, 564 n, 57i, 602
Louvre, 86
Loyalists, American, xxviii
Loyalty, TJ on, xxvi
INDEX
745
Lucius Caesar, 380
"Luvucienne," 398
Ludlow, Edmund, 723
Luxembourg, due de, letter to, 477
Luxuries, tax on, 340
Luxury, 386, 391
Luzerne, Ann Cezar, Marquis de
la, 52, 75, 9i, ioo
— Cesar Henri, comte de, 75, 106,
482
Lynchburg, Va., xli
Lyons, Peter, 559
Lyons, 75, 415, 503 J TJ on, 139
— M—
McClurg, James, 356
Machiavelli, 626
McPherson, Isaac, letter to, 629-30
Madison, James, xxviii-ix, xxxi, 43-
4, 81, 130, 376, 398, 406, 412-4,
504, 641 n, 715, 720; letters to,
380-1, 392, 407-9, 412-4, 422-4,
436-41, 450-2, 462-4, 488-93,
522-5, 539-40, 726-80; Presi-
dent, xl; Secretary of State,
XXXV
— James, Bishop, 625 ; letters to,
388-90
Madison's Cave, 195
Madrid, 79
Magna Charta, 47
Maison Quarree, 48, 380, 414
Maison neuve, 136
Majority will, 130, 316, 322, 466,
556, 681
Malesherbes, Chretien Guillaume
de Lamoignon, 74, 424
Malines, 86
Malmesburg, Charles Harris, Lord,
77
Malta, 70
Malthus, Thomas Robert, 574
Mammoths, 201-6, 208-10
Manheim, 87
Mannahoac Indian, 220
Manners, 44, 459, 591-2, 605, 631,
715, 726; American, 363, 387-8,
621 ; French, 372, 382-3
Manufactures, 148, 330, 340, 727;
American, 297-8; domestic, 320,
527, 533-4, 593-4, 615-6, 620-1;
evils of, 279-81, 379; protection
of, 334; Virginia, 279-81
Maps, American, xxxvii; trf Vir-
ginia, 4> J9*
Marble, 141
Marbois, Francois de Barbe, mar-
quis de, xxii, 63-4
Maria Theresa of Austria, 428
Marie Antoinette, 72, 89, 91, 97-8,
104-5, 424, 435, 473-4, 477, 486-7
Marly, 95, 398 ; Council at, 471-2
Marmontel, Jean Francois, 357,
688, 723
Marriage, 387 ; laws on, 251
Marseilles, 75, 419, 503
Marshall, John, xxxi-ii, xxxiv,
xxxix, 8, 119, 547
Martin, 141
Martinique, 525
Maryland, 60, 187-8, 281 ; bound-
aries, 236; Constitutional Con-
vention, 447 ; slavery in, 368
Mason, George, 42-5
Massachusetts, 180; Committee of
Correspondence, 8; debt of, 122;
government of, 245-6; opposes
Stamp Acts, 6; plan for U. S.
Constitution, 446-7, 461, 628;
politics in, 622-3; rebellion in,
440; Revolution in, 685-6
Materialism, 700-1
Mathematics, 4, 52, 181, 213-5,
267, 35i, 376, 386, 425, 458, 553,
555, 645, 647, 649, 660
Maubourg, 108
Maury, Rev. James, xvi, 4
— James, letters to, 619-20, 655-6
Mayence, 87
Mazzei, Phillip, letter to, 537-8
Mease, Dr. James, letter to, 722
Meaux, 87
Mechanical arts, 148
Mechanics, 597
MedicaZ students, 445-6
Medicine, 52, 267, 553, 580, 583-5,
628 n, 645, 649; study of, 386;
theory of, 608, 614-5 ; veterinary,
646-7, 649
Mediterranean, 67-71, 143, 330;
pirates in, 327
Meherrin Indians, 221
Meherrin river, 221
Melish, John, letter to,' 620-4
746
INDEX
Mennonites, 251
Mercer, James, 12, 550
Mercier, Louis Sebastien, 679
Mersault, 137
Message, ist annual, text of, 325-
32
Metaphysics, 625, 687
Meteorology, 646-8
Methodists, 697
Meusnier, Jean Baptiste Marie,
H9,533-4
Mexico, xxxix, 585-6
Miami Indians, text of address to,
333
Micasi, 723
"Midnight appointments," xxxiv,
611
Milan, 75, 503 ; TJ on, 141
Military, education, 413 ; power
see Power; preparedness and
freedom, 347-8; stores, 329
Militia, 219, 545, 602
Milligan, Joseph, letter to, 662-6
Millot, 723, 726
Mills, 252, 394
Milton, John, 213-4 n, 375
Milton, Va., 52
Mineralogy, 467, 645-9
Mines, Virginia, 198-215
Minister plenipotentiary, TJ as, 63,
290
Minorities, duties of, 556; power
of, 661 ; rights of, 322
Minuets, 352
Mirabeau, Victor Riqueti, marquis
de, 97, 481
Miracles, 694 n
Mishna, 631
Mississippi bubble, 657
Mississippi River, 187, 190, 192-3,
281, 571, 579; navigation of,
xxxv-vi, 316-7, 334-6, 39*» 408
Missouri question, 698-9, 712-3
Missouri River, 190-1, 400, 571
Mobs, 446; Dutch, 77; European,
633 ; French, 435, 474, 483-4
Moliere, Jean Baptiste Poquelin,
688
Molinos, Jacques, 397
Monacan Indians, 220-1
Monaco, 75
Monarchies, xxix, 117, 119-20, 127,
131, 175-6, 217, 243-5, 438-9,
464, 479-8o, 514, 537, 545, 557,
603-4, 613, 622-4, 713
Monarchists, 125
Monarchy, French, 107-8; princi-
ples of, 99
Money, paper, 121-4; public, 238
Moniteur (newspaper), 586
Monitor's Letters, 1769, 288
Monocrats, 529
Monongahela River, 191 n
Monopolies, 88-9 ; restriction of,
437,442,451,460
Monrachet, 137-8
Monroe, James, xl, 58, 571; letters
to, 364-7, 428-9, 708-10; Presi-
dent, xlii
Monroe Doctrine, xlii, 708-10
Mons, 86
Montague, Charles, n
Montaigne, Michel de, 534
Montesquieu, Charles Louis de
Secondat, Baron de la Brede et
de, 440, 449, 496-7, 531-2, 625;
commentary on, 634-5
Montesson, M de, 103, 486
Montgomery, Gen. Richard, 359
"Monticello," xviii, xx, xxviii, xl-
ii', 14, 373, 379, 5io, 549, 559,
567, 577, 596, 602, 614; descrip-
tion of, 400
Montmorin-St-Herem, A r m o n d
Marc, comte de, xxv, 67, 74, 80,
88, 92, 96, 100, 106, 109, 424,
473,478,487
Montpellier, France, 75, 103
Montreal, 359
Monuments, Indian, 221-2
Moral: character, 667; duties, 318-
9, 625; faculties, 572; philosophy
see Philosophy ; reasoning, 590-1 ;
rules, 345 ; sense, 261, 430-1
Moralists, classical, xvi
Morality, xxxvii, 373-4, 387, 403-
4, 434, 459, 546, 634, 682, 718-9;
in history, 357-8; in literature,
688; Indian, 221; natural, 221,
636-40; of Bible, 631-2; of
Jesus, 568-70, 694-7; study of,
375
Morocco, 62
Morris, Gouverneur, 54-5, 550, 610
INDEX
747
— Lewis, 559
—Robert, 54-5, 58, 124, 524
"Most favored nation," 65
Mounier, Jean Joseph, 108
"Mount Vernon," 126
Moustier, Elenore Franqois Elie,
comte de, 407; letters to, 443-5,
SGI
Moyenvie, 87
Murder, 46, 357
Music, xxxi, 352, 363-4, 383, 4i7,
459, 496, 646-8, 689; of Negroes,
258
Musicians, domestic band of, 363-4
Muskingum river, 191 n
Mussenbroek, Peter van, 376
Napoleon I, xxxiii, xxxvi, xxxviii,
61, 105-6, 556-7, 581, 620, 626,
640-1, 652, 655, 661, 677, 682-5
Napoleonic wars, 656-7
Nassau, 87
Nassau-Siegen, Charles Henri Nico-
las Othon, Prince, 77
Nassau-Orange, Princess of, 75-8o
National Assembly of France, xxv,
103-4, 478
National Gazette, xxix, 130 n
National Intelligencer, 650 n
Nations, laws of, 316-9, 378; U.
S. relations with, 324
Natural Bridge, 193, 399; descrip-
tion of, 196-8
Natural history, 52, 198-215, 376,
386, 425, 467, 618 », 645-9
Natural philosophy see Philosophy
Natural reason, 217
Natural rights sec Rights
Naturalization, 23, 251-2, 255, 331;
see also Aliens
Nature, philosophy of, 572
Nature Displayed, 635 n
Navigation, 334, 377, 384, 646-8;
freedom of, 316-7, 319-21; 326-7,
334-5; steam, 467; U. S., 330,
Si9> 593-4
Navy, 285-6, 328-30, 545, 548,
587, 700; British, 656; French,
73; U. S., 626-7
Necker, Jacques, 90, 93, 96-8, 103,
106, 455, 471, 473-6, 481-2
Negroes, 255-61, 641-2 ; abilities
of, 508-9; as property, 29-31;
first importation of, 40; litera-
ture of, 594-5
Nelson, Stephen S., 332
— Thomas, Jr., 53
Neologism, 666
Neutrality, 78, 338-9, 347-8, 529,
541, 544, 566
New England, xxxix; commerce of,
301
New Hampshire, 63 ; constitu-
tional convention, 447
New Jersey, 246
New Orleans, La., xxxv-vi, 334-5,
583 ; defense of, 601-2
New Testament, 432-3
New York, xliii, 83, 276, 720-1,
727; capital in, 130; colonial leg-
islature suspended, 299; Cong-
ress in, 114; constitutional con-
vention, 447 ; defence of, 6ot ;
government of, 246; TJ in,
xxviii; Revolution in, 361; riots
in, 445-6
Newcastle, Va , 228
Newcomen, Thomas, 686
Newspapers, xxix, 379, 411-2, 461-
2, 476, 487, 538, 542-3, 714-5;
London, 400-1 ; methods of con-
ducting, 581-2 ; republican, 547
Newton Isaac, 173, 275, 595, 609,
686
Niagara Falls, 194, 399
Nice, 75, 139
Nicholas, Robert Carter, 8, 12, 41,
181, 288
— Wilson Cary, xxxvi, 572-4, 727
Nimegeuen, 87
Nismes, 48, 380, 414-6
Nivernois, Louis Jules Mancini,
due de, 74
Noailles, Louis, vicomte de, 106
Nobility, French, 90, 93-8, 106,
4i5, 455-7, 465, 472, 477-8, 485-
6
Noli, 75, 143
Non-importation, 6, 176
Non-intercourse, xxxviii-ix, 347,
529
Nootka Sound, 71
Norfolk, Va., in, 188, 227
748
INDEX
North, Frederick, Lord, 113; pro-
posals, 12-14
North Carolina, xxi, 60, 83, 188;
boundaries, 4, 236; General As-
sembly, text of TJ's address to,
345-6 ; rice culture in, 75
North Holston River, 202-4
North Mountain, 196
Northampton, Mass., 720-1
Northwest territory, government
of, xxiii-iv
Norvell, John, letter to, 581-2
"Notes on the Establishment of a
Money Unit," TJ's, xxiii
Notes on Virginia, TJ's, xxii-iii;
text of, 187-288; writing of, 63-
4
Nottoway Indians, 221
Nottoway River, 221
Novara, 75
Novels, criticism of, 688
Novi, 75
Noyons, 99
Nuys, 137
Oboes, 363-4
Ocellus, 706
Odometers, 56, 141
Ohio River, 187, 190-1, 202, 336
Okisko, Indian king, 228
Oils, 371
Old Point Comfort, 229
Oligarchies, 243-5
Olioules, 139
Olive culture, 141
Oneglia, 75
Opinion, 627; differences of, 276;
freedom of, 321-2
Opium, 629
Oppenheim, 87
Optics, 646-8
Optimism, 667-8, 683
Orcai, Mons. d', 145
Ordinance of the Northwest Ter-
ritory, xxiii-iv
Orange, 415 ; Prince of, see Nassau-
Siegen
Oranges, 139, 589
Oratory, 645, 649, 713
Orleans, Louis Philippe, due de,
89, 474
Orleans, 503
Osborne's, Va., 3
Osgood, 128
Ossian, 3 75 , 548
—P—
Pagan Creek, 188
Page, John, xvi; letters to, 351-6,
392-4
• — Mann, letter to, 534
Paine, Thomas, xxxvi, 94, 467,
504-6; letters to, 478-80, 516-7
Painting, 148, 383, 400, 646-8
Palazza Marcello Durazzo, 142
Palmyra, arch of, 380
Pani Indians, 599
Panther Gap, 196
Paper currency, 658-9, 727; specu-
lation in, 510-6
Papin, Denis, 686
Paris, 64, 66, 80, 87-8, 94, uif
503; climate of, 577; TJ in,
xxiv, no-i ; revolution in, 100/7 ;
riots in, 90
Passy, 63, 179-80
Patapsco River, 228
Patents, 467, 526-7, 629-30
Patriot Party, Dutch, 76, 80
Patriot (Reform) Party, French,
xxv, 72, 107-10, 455-6, 654
Patriotism, 342, 346, 379, 436, 470,
546, 602, 606-7, 641, 700
Pavia, 75
Payne, Elisha, 32
Peace, xliii-iv, 324, 326, 333-4. 3*8-
40, 528-9
Peace mission, U. S., xxxii-iii, 53- 4
Peaks of Otter, 194
Pedigrees, 3
Pendleton, Edmund, xx, 10, 39, 41,
44, 46, 49-50, 181, 254 n, 462;
letter to, 547-8
Penitentiary, 49
Penn, William, 188
Pennsylvania, 60, 187-8, 276, 538,
boundaries, 236, 288; govern-
ment of, 246; University of, 583
n
Penobscot, Me., 122
People, 622; faith in, 672-4, 712-
3, 715 ; only safe repository of
rights, 711-2; source of govern-
INDEX
749
ment, 576; tyranny of, 724; un-
derstanding of, 548; wisdom of,
411-2
Perefixe, Hardouin de Beaumont
de, 723
Peronne, 86
Pessimism, 667-8
Petersburg, Va., 189, 228
Phaedrus, 260
Phalsbourg, 87
Pharmacy, 646-7, 649
Philadelphia, xix, xxix, xxxii, xlii,
9, n-2, 112-3, 393, 397, 404-$,
722; capital in, 124-5; Congress
at, 119; TJ in, 54
Phillips, William, 220
Philology, 598-9
Philosophy, xvi, 177,214-5,376,403,
546, 561, 645, 649, 717; ancient,
568 ; Christian, 562 ; Hebrew,
631 ; moral, 52, 181, 267, 430,
458, 631-2, 636-40; natural, 52,
181, 267, 376, 386, 425, 458, 553,
597; of education, xli; of life,
667-8, 678-9, 693-7, 7oo-i, 716,
718-9
Physiocrats, 574-5, 5^5 ", 625
Physiology, 572 n
Physics, 312, 376, 386, 645-9
Pickering, Judge, 84 n
Piedmont, 67, 75
Pierrelatte, 422
Piers Plowman, 666
Pilnits, coalition of, 616
Pinckney, Charles C., xxxii; letter
to, 586-7
Pinel, Philippe, 717
Pinto de Souza Coutinho, Luiz,
chevalier, 66
Pirates, xxxv, 67-71, 326-7
Plans, of cities, 503
Plantagenet, house of, 724
Plato, 375, 569, 632, 637, 687, 693
Pleasure, 638
Plotinus, 632
Plows, 525 ; TJ's design for, xxxi
Plutarch, 723
Pneumatics, 646-8
Poetry, 258, 499, 645-7, 649
Poets, xvi, 213-4, 375-6
Poland, 71
Polignac, Yolande., duchesse de,
103, 435, 486
Politeness, 541-2
Political economy, 496, 625, 641,
645, 647,649,663-5
Politics, xli, 148, 359, 461, 562,
592-3, 605, 617, 626; party,
xxviii, 120-1, 128-9, 609-11, 621-
4, 627-8, 712-5; study of, 425-6,
553J U. S., 537-8, 562-4
Polybius, 723
Pommard, 137
Pompadour, Jeanne Antoinette
Poisson le Normant D'Etoiles,
marquise de, 54, 407
Pont D'Ainay, 139
Pont St. Maxence, 86
Poor, laws on, 250
Pope, Alexander, 375, 554, 688
"Poplar Forest," xli, 614
Population, problem of, 216-7.
574-5
Port de Ncuilly, 398
Portal, 717
Porte, 62
Portland, 583
Portsmouth, 250, 583
Portugal, 62, 66, 70; Prince Regent,
letter to, 587-8 ; Queen of, 604
Potomac River, 124, 187, 192-3,
220-1, 399
Potter, Susan, 354
Poverty, 135, 388-9, 404-5, 649
Power, 624; abuse of, 88-9; limits
on, 73-4, 82-5, 97, 99; vs free-
dom, 343-4; vs right, 345; vs
virtue, 633; veto, 44, 81, 423
Powers, 714; balance of, 81 ; civil,
24, 309-10; concentration of,
327-8; constitutional 334; divi-
sion of, 407-8, 437, 46o, 466, 550,
660-2 ; executive, 74, 235-6, 303 ;
federal, 85; implied, 427, 549-
52; judiciary, 24, 81, 107, 235-6,
422-3, 437, 444, 460, 462, 466,
537, 550, 671; legislative, 23, 81,
107, 125, 235-6, 427-8, 437- 460,
466, 517, 537, 550, 671, 713;
military, 24, 309-10, 324, 471;
taxing, 73-4
Powhatan Indians, 220-1
750
INDEX
Powtewatamie Indians, text of ad-
dress to, 333
Praetorian Palace, 415
Prejudice, 394-5
Presbyterians, 40, 697
President, John Adams as, 538-43,
609-10; TJ as, xxxi-n, xxxiv-xl,
290, 559-60, 593-7, 600, 685; re-
eligibility of, 81-3, 345-6, 435-6,
438-9, 442, 447, 452, 460-1, 466,
545, 582-3, 614; Washington as,
514-5
President's House, 503
Press, abuses of, 576; curbing of,
xxxiii, French, 454; freedom of,
343-4, 412 ; influences on, 542
Price, Richard, letters to, 367-9,
453-7
Priestley, Joseph xxxvii, xl, 567,
634 n, 694, 704; letters to, 552-
5, 561-3
Primogeniture, abolition of, xx, 38-
9,45-6,51-2, 255
Principles, 291, 310
Principles of Natural Religion, 640
Pringle, Sir John, 177
Prisons, 48-9
Privateers, 64-5, 602
Privileges, special, 471
Property, 606-7 ; distribution of,
389-90, 649-50; laws on, 565;
right Negroes as, 29-31; right to,
630, see also Rights
Protestants, 668
Prussia, 62, 65, 428
Psalms, 7, 1 8
Public good, 121, 344
Public mind, 510-1
Public office, 586, 418, 497m 514-
6,522-5,527,530,595-7>6oo
Public opinion, 83, 342, 465, 562-3,
662
Public papers. TJ's, 293-348
Public records, 535-6
Public service, 364-5, 623, 645
"Publicola," pseud, of John Adams,
505-6
Puffendorf, Samuel, baron, 319
Punishment, 46-8, 182, 311
Puritans, 9
Pursuit of happiness, 22
Puy Segur, Jacques Francois, 100,
482
Pythagorus, 568
Quadruple Alliance, 79
Quakers, 40, 251, 272-3
Quesnay, Frangois, 663
Qu'est ce que le Tier titat, 94
Quintus Curtius, 375
Racine, 213, 688
Raleigh, Sir Walter, 40, 228-9, 287
Raleigh Tavern, xvii, xix, 6-7
Randolph, Ann Gary, 509
— Cornelia, 558
— Edmund, 130; letter to, 549-52
—Ellen, 559, 677-8
— Isham, 3
— Jane, xv
— John, letter to, 359-61
— John of Roanoke, xxxviii-ix, 359
n
— Martha (Jefferson), xl, 63, 112,
459, 589 ni 688, 720 n; letters to,
366, 416-20, 501-2, 509-10, 558-
9
— Peyton, 7-8, 10-1, 181, 351, 590
— Thomas Jefferson, letter to, 589-
93
— Thomas Mann, letters to, 424-6,
496-7, 502, 504-6, 559-6o
— Virginia Jefferson, 371 n
Rapin de Thoyras, Paul de, 723
Rappahannock River, 198
Rastadt, 87
Ravaillac, Francois, 357
Raynal, Guillaume, abbe de, 179,
213, 215
Read, Jacobm 58, 60
Reading, 607
Reason, 94, 276, 554, 576, 599; in
religion, 431; natural, 217; pow-
er of, 322
Rebellions, 113, 247; U. S., 411-3;
value of, 413, 436, 440
Recueil de Dissertations, Sauva-
giere's, 145-6
Redress of grievances, 73
Reign of Terror, 104-5, 128-9, 68s
INDEX
75'
Religion, xli, 135, 459, 461, 546,
555, 557-8, 566-70, 605, 637, 668,
693-7, 7oo-i, 703-6, 718; ad-
vice on, 431-4; bigotry in, 562;
comparative, 453 ; established,
40-1, 322; freedom of, see Free-
dom; in Virginia, 272; TJ's
early, 355-6; natural, 640; of
Negroes, 259; sects in, 251
Rennes, 75
Representation, equality of, 34-5
Republic of letters, 594
Republican Advocate, 606 n
Republicanism, 117, 493-4, 516,
539, 56r, 564, 599
Republicans, xxxi, xxxiii-iv, 322,
464, 512, 516, 547, 560, 621-4,
627-8, 697, 712-3, 715, 726;
democratic, xxx
Republics, 119-20, 175-6, 670, 681;
education needed in, 604-5
Retirement, TJ's, 614-5
Reveillon, Mons., 93
Revolution, American see Ameri-
can Revolution; French, see
French Revolution
Revolutions, xxiv, 324; Dutch, 18;
South American, 391, 681
Rhetoric, 5, 425-6, 499, 645, 649,
7i3
Rhone River, 87
Rhode Island, 7, 60, 495 ; constitu-
tional convention, 447 ; govern-
ment of, 246
Rhone River, 75
Richard II, 306
Richmond, Va., xxii, 48, 189, 228,
380, 527, 549; market, 397
Rice, 67, 75, 141,371, 589
Right, 94; common, 243; of emi-
gration, 293-4; of expatriation,
42; of self-government, 316,
616; to employment, 389-90
Rights, 466, 711-2; American, 298-
300; chartered, 232-5; civil, 312,
324, 660, 664; common, 72, con-
stitutional, xxxvi, 530; conven-
tional, 235; inalienable, xx, 22;
individual, 364-5, 489; minority,
322; natural, 39, 52, 120, 235,
290, 310, 313, 316, 332, 488, 530,
630; of British America, 719; of
citizens, 99; of conscience, 332;
of deposit, 334 ; of Kings, 99 ; oi
man, 99, 109, 291, 459, 479, 493-
4, 660, 714, 729-30; of nations,
99, 338-9, 709-10; of thinking,
466; property, 344, 378, 479-*°)
530, 633; religious, 273-4;
States, 33-4, 324, 549-52; to in-
ventions, 630; to trial by jury,
81-2
Rights of Man, Paine's, 504-6, 516
Rio de Janeiro, 587
Riots, 455-6, 465 ; suppression ot
302, 309
Rittenhouse, David, 214, 406, 598
n
Rivanna River, 189-90
Rivers, navigable, 316-7, 334-6;
Virginia, 188-91
"Road to glory," 27
Roads, 340, 401, 549; public, 255;
Virginia, 268
Roanoke River, 3, 188
Robbins, Ephraim, 332
Robespierre, Maximilien Francois
Marie Isidore, 556, 629, 655
Robertson, William, 726
Rochefort, 75
Rochefoucauld familv, 534
Rochefoucauld de Liancourt, due
de la, 102, 485
Rock Creek, 503
Rockingham County, Va., 195
Roland de Platiere, Jean Marie,
525
Rome, 62, 380, 385-6, 4*5-6, his-
tory of, 723 ; slaves of, 259-61
Romanic, 137
Roscoe, William, letter to, 702
Rotterdam, 86
Rotunda, University of Virginia,
721
Rousseau, Jean Jacques, 668
Roye, 86
Rozzano, 141-2
Rudesheim, 87
Ruggieri Brothers, 398
Rumsey, James, 467
Rush, Benjamin, xxxvii, 36, 616 n,
690-1, 722 n; letters to, 557-8,
566-70, 607-1 5
752
INDEX
Rushworth, John, 9
Russia, 62, 71, 79, 448
Russell, John Rusell, first Earl, 726
Rutledge, Edward, 12, 14, 20; let-
ters to, 448-9, 544
—John, Jr., 147
St. Andrew Club, 131
St. Cloud, 398
St. Denis, 395-6
St. Diziers, 87
St. Etienne Rabaud de, letter to,
469-71
St. Feriole, 75
St. Germains, 398
St. Lawrence River, 192
St. Lazare prison, 101, 483
St. Ouen, 100
St. Petersburg, 71, 79
St. Priest, Francois Emmanuel
Guignard, chevalier, 100, 106,
482-3,487
Salm, Rhingrave of, 79
Salt Lick, 201-2
Salt River, 191 n
Sallust, 623, 713, 723
Sancho, Ignatius, 259
San Domingo, 525
Sanderson, John, 180
Saratoga, 504, 720-1
Sardinia, 62
Sarsnet, marquis de, 138
Sauvagiere, Mons. de la, 145-6
Savannah, 250, 583
Savery, Thomas, 686
Saxony, 62
Say, Jean Baptiste, 664; letter to,
574-5
Sceaux, gardes de, 93, 100, 106
Scheele, Carl Wilhelm, 666
Scholastics, 632
Schools, elementary, 50; grammar,
263; night, 647; public, 554-5;
Virginia, plan for, 644-9
Schuylkill River, 397
Science, xli, xliv, 4-5, 176-7, 214-5,
373, 404, 406, 426, 430, 468, 531,
546, 553, 562, 592, 617, 634, 644-
5, 657, 666, 687, 716-7; advance
of, 561
Scotland, 177
Sculpture, 139, 383, 414, 646-7
Seamen, impressment of, 25
Seas, freedom of, see Freedom
Search, right of, 565-6
Secession, 123, 128, 622-3
Second Thoughts on Instinctive
Impulses, 636
Secretary of State, TJ as, xxviii,
xxx, 176, 290, 494; TJ offered,
111-2; TJ resigns, 526; TJ's
opinions as, 117-31
Sedition act, 549
Segur, Louis Philippe, comte de, 74
Seine River, 75
Self-interest, 637-8
Self-preservation, 606-7
Semoulin, 71
Senate, term of office, 545
Seneca, 375, 568
Senlis, 86
Sens, 135
Settimo, 140
Seutonius, 375 n, 723
Sewall's Point, 188
Shakespeare, 357-8, 375
Shadwell, Va., xv-vi, 3, 355
Shay's rebellion, 440
Sheep, 596, 616
Shells, fossil, 198-200
Shenandoah County, 195
Sherman, Roger, 20
Shipbuildings, 622
Shippen, William, 145
Short, William, xl, 469, 487 ; letters
to, 507-8, 521-2, 652-4, 693-7,
699-700
Sicily, 70
Sidney, Algernon, 719
Sieves, Emmanuel Joseph, abbe, 94,
106-7
Sigourney, Charles, letter to, 715-6
Simeon, 605
Sioto River, 191 n
Skelton, Bathurst, 5
— Martha (Wayles) see Jefferson,
Martha (Wayles) Skelton
Skipwith, Robert, letter to, 357-8
Slavery, xviii, 21, 25, 29-32, 40, 46,
178, 364, 367-8, 523, 530, 641-2,
712; evil effects in Virginia, 277-
8; TJ's opposition to, 255-62;
prohibited in territories, 313-5 n
INDEX
753
Slaves, emancipation of, 5, 51, 218-
9, 255, 698-9; laws governing,
249, 252; Roman, 259-61
Sleepy Hole, 188
Slodtz, Michael Angelo, 139, 414
Small, Dr. William, xvii, 358-9, 590
Smallpox, 580
Smith, Mr., 131
— Adam, 496, 574, 625, 663-4
— James, letter to, 703-4
— Capt. John, 4, 221, 287
— Jonathan B., 505-6
— -Samuel, letter to, 707-8
— Samuel Harrison, 717 n; letter
to, 650-2
— Thomas, 229
— Thomas Jefferson, letter to, 717
— William, 123
— William Stephens, 66; letter to,
436
"Snowden," 3-4
Societies, Indian, 412-3; learned,
594; literary, 680; political, 346-
7 ; religious, 341
Society, 217, 430, 638-9, 649-50,
715, 720; duties to, 332; Euro-
pean, 366-7, 382-3, 385-8; free,
xv ; French, xxiv; Indian, 408;
people source of authority in,
317-9; rights of, 630
Socrates, 509, 568-9, 694
Socrates and Jesus Compared,
Priestley's, 567
Socratic dialogues, 375
Sohar, 631
Soissons, 99
South America, 198, 391, 709-10;
revolutions in, 68 1
South Carolina, xxi, 62, 123, 188,
727; boundaries, 236; constitu-
tional convention, 447 ; rice cul-
ture in, 75
'south Sea Bubble, 657
Sophocles, 375
Spain, xxxv, xxxvii, xxxix, .16, 62,
228, 317, 430; agressions of, 391 ;
colonies of, 709; King of, 604;
quadruple alliance, 79; revolts
against, 68 1 ; treaties, 69
Spanish language, 376, 386, 426,
430, 680
Speculation, 121-4, 130, 512-6, 669
Spencer, Edmund, 666
Spinning jennies, 616, 620-1
Spinosa, 706
Spirit of Laws, 496
Stael, Madame de, 723
Stafford (ship), 188
Stagyrites, 632
Stahl, George Ernest, 584
Stamp Acts, 181, 299, 548-9, 686;
resolutions on, xviii, 6, 287-8
Stane, 666
Stanley, 202
States, constitutions of, 670; debts
of, xxix, 122-4; powers of, 81,
407-8, 427, 437-8, 660-2; west-
ern, 585-6
States General, France, 76-7, 89-90,
93, 445, 450, 454-6, 465, 47°-4>
476-8, 481
States' rights, 33, 118, 699, 712-3
Steam engines, 394
Steam navigation, 467, 686
Sterne, Laurence, 358, 431
Sterrett, Andrew, 327
Steuben, Frederick William A. H
F., baron von, 118, 446
Stewart, Dugald, 701
Stillwater battlefield, 504
Stith, William, 287
Strasburg, 87, 503
Stuart, Archibald, letter to, 390-2
—House of, 606, 724-5
Suffolk, 188
Suffrage, 236, 266
Suffren, Pierre Andre, bailli de, 79
Sugar, 588-9
Sullivan, James, letter to, 582-3
Sully, 723
Summary View of the Rights of
British America, TJ's, xix, n,
290; text of, 293-311
Sur la Creation du Monde, 635-6
Surgery, 553, 583 n, 646-7, 649
Sweden, 77, 448
Swift, Jonathan, 375
Tacitus, 375 n, 431-2, 626, 713, 723
Tattles, 88
Taliaferro, Richard, 182
Talleyrand-Perigord, Charles Mail*
rice de, xxxii
7S4
INDEX
Talmud, 631
Tammany Society, text of address
to, 346-7
Tarleton, Banastre, xxii
Tarquin, 626
Tasso, 214 n
Taxation, xxx, xxxv, 29-31, 233-4,
390; right of, 97, no, 311; theo-
ries of, 663-4
Taxes, 72, 337, 437, 548, 658, 671,
673-4, 707-8 ; French, 88-90, 429,
470-1 ; land, 32, 35 ; limit on, 73-
4 ; power to collect, 501 ; reduc-
tion of, 339-40; tea, no, 299;
301; U. S., 510-6
Taylor, John, letter to, 668-73
Temperance, 383, 386-7, 692-3,
707-8
Temple, William, 58
Tende, 139
Tennessee River, 191 n, 202
"Tennis court oath," 472, 654-5
Terence, 260, 375
Territory, western, government
for, 313-5
Tesse, comtesse de, letter to, 414-6
Texas, xxxvii
Theism, 668
Theology, 646-7, 648
Thompson, Mr., 356, 688
— General, 362
Thomson, Charles, letters to, 659-
60, 679
Threshing machines, 525
Thucydides, 375-6, 723
Thulemeyer, Baron, 65
Tiber Creek, 503
Ticonderoga, 504, 720
Ticknor, George, letter to, 683
Tiers-Etat, 90, 94-5, 97-8, 456-7,
465,471,473-4,476-8
Timaeus, 706
Tithes, 88, 106
Tobacco, 266, 385, 589; evils of
culture of, 281-2 ; French mo-
nopoly of, 67, 367-71
Tories, 131, 271-2, 393, 627, 704,
712, 715, 725-6
Torture, 73, 89
Toul, 87
Toulon, 75
Toulouse, 75, 454
Tour du Pin, 106
Touraine, 145
Tours, 144-5
Tracy, Nathaniel, 63
Trade, 234-5; free, 17, 293-6, 370-1
Traite d'Economie Politique, Say's,
575
Travel, disadvantages of, 433-4
Travel journals, TJ's, 135-49, 147-
9
Travels in United States of Ameri-
ca, Melish's, 620 n
Treason, 46, 246
Treaties, xxxiv-v, 54, 57-60, 63-8,
105, 188, 191, 319-21, 37o-i;
right to renounce, 317-9; U. S.,
xxx, 62, 67-71, 78-9, 129, 175,
334-5, 550, 573
Treatise on Political Economyf
Destutt de Tracy's, 662-6
"Tree of liberty," 436
Trenton, 54
Tresilian, Sir Robert, 305
Tripoli, 62, 326-7
Trist, Elizabeth, letter to, 371-2
— Nicholas P., 371 n> 556 n
— Virginia Jefferson (Randolph),
371 n, 556 n
Troy, 720
Trumbull, John, 397; letter to,
683-4
Truth, xlii-iv, 357, 374, 576, 581-2,
599, 637, 702
"Tuckahoe," Va., xvi, 112
Tudor, House of, 606, 724
Tuileries, 415
Tull, Jethro, 525
Tunis, 62
Turgot, Anne Robert Jacques, 497,
626
Tuscany, 62, 65
Tuteloe Indians, 221
Tyler, John, letters to, 576, 604-5
Tyranny, 97, 109, 238, 246-7, 296,
312, 430, 464, 494, 558, 617, 629,
655, 682, 708
— U—
Unitarianism, 703-4
Union, 128-9, 311 ; division of, 514;
right to dissolve, 322 ; threats to,
INDEX
United Netherlands, 62, 75-80
United States, credit, xxvii; for-
eign relations, 708-10; ships
floui to France, 92 ; Treasury,
85-7, 123-4
United States Gazette, xxix
Universities, 50, 265 ; plan for,
552-5
University of Virginia, xlii, 599 n,
660 w, 697 ; essay on Anglo-
Saxon for, TJ's, 153-70; plans
for, 642-9; progress of, 694-5,
721; professors for, 715-6, 726-
8; student diet at, 692-3; teach-
ing of history in, 722-6
Utilitarianism, 357, 422
Utley, Dr. Vine, letter to, 690-1
Utrecht, 77, 79, 87
Vaccination, smallpox, 580
Valenciennes, 86
Van der Kemp, Francis Adrien, 618
Van Helmont, Francis M., 666
Vattel, Emrich von, 319
Vaudrcuil-Cavagt-al, Pierre Fran-
Qois, marquis de, 103, 195, 486
Veaune, 137
Venesection, 629
Venetian blinds, 142
Venice, 62, 70
Verac, Charles Oliver de St.
Georges, marquis de, 76
Vercelli, 75
Vergennes, Charles Gravier, comte
de, 65, 67, 70, 74, 369-71, 414
Verget, Mons. de, 145
Vermantown, 135
Vermi, comte del, 141
Vermont, abbe dc, 103, 486
Vermont, 504
Versailles, 65, 69, 80, 94, 101, 104
Veterinary medicine, 646-7, 649
Veto power, 44, 81, 423
Vienna, 428
Villedeuil, 74, 100, 482
Vineyards, French, 136-8
Virgil, 213-4 n, 375, 656
Virginia, 60, 83, 120; administra-
tion of justice in, 248-66; bound-
aries of, 4, 187-8, 229-30; cities,
227-8; colonial charters, 187,
228-47; colony, articles for sur-
render to commonwealth, 1651,
232-4; committee for revisal of
laws of, 38-42, 44-52, 182, 254-
5; constitution, 228-47; consti-
tutional convention, 239, 290;
convention of delegates, xix, n-
2 ; council of state, 43 ; counties,
227-8, 305; education in, 530-2;
exports, 281-3; Fry & Jefferson
map of, 4; General Assembly,
xxiii, xix, 14, 61, 176, 290, TJ
in, 290; General Court, 5, 181;
House of Burgesses, xv, 6, 8, n,
181-2, TJ in, xviii : House of
Delegates, xx, 182, TJ in, 5, 42-
52; imports, 281-3; invasion of,
52; TJ governor of, \\i-ii, 52-3,
290; TJ's Notes on, xxii-iii, 63-4,
187-288; lands for Lafayette,
392; laws, 248-66 550-1, TJ's
collection ot, 5^5-6, reform of,
xx-i, revised by TJ, 18-42, 44-
52, 182; militia of, 219, moun-
tains, 191-4; public income, 284-
6; population of. 215-9, Revolu-
tion in, xxi-ii, 360-1, 379 n, 404,
685-6; settlement of, 220; soil of,
135 ; state government criticized,
670-1 ; Statute for Religious
Freedom, xx-i, 47, 291, 311-3,
408-9
Virginia Company of London, 3,
229-32
Virginia Resolution, Madison's,
xxxiii
Virtue, 468; foundation of, 637;
in literature, 357-8
Vitry, 87
Vitteaux, 136
Volcanoes, 194
Volney, Constantin Chassebouef,
letter to, 577-8
Voltaire, Francois Marie Aroust,
145, 200, 213, 215,382, 723
Vougeau, 137
Voulenay, 136-7
— W—
Wabash River, 191 nt 202
Wages, 141
Wales. %
756
INDEX
Walker, John, 356
Walsh, Robert, letters to, 176 n,
704-5
War, 75-80, 97, 105, 328, 333, 340,
378, 443, 449-50, 493, 528-9, 543-
4, 548, 566, 571-2, 59374, 708-
10; atrocities of, 650; civil, 33;
danger of, 586-7; evils of, 284-6
War Department, 517
War of 1812, 616-20, 626-8, 650-6
Wars, European, 326, 337-9, 346-7,
428-9, 544, 581, 600, 618, 684-5,
699-700, 724-5; Indian, 579
Warwick, Va., 189, 236
Washington, George, xxi-ii, xxvii-
viii, xxx, 61, 81, 111-2, 117-8,
120, 126-7, 214-5, 36i, 494, 503,
505, 524-5, 529, 550, 557, 582-3,
594, 607-8, 624; TJ's conversa-
tions with, 129-31; TJ's sketch
of, 173-6; letters to, 468, 510-21,
525-6
Washington, D. C, xxix, xxxv, 85,
729-30; burned by British, 650;
capital in, 125; plan of, 503-4
Washington Advertiser, 650 n
Wateihouse, Dr. Benjamin, xl; let-
ter to, 685-7
Watkin's Point, 187
Wayles, John, 5-6
Wealth, distribution of, 649-50;
measures of, 29-32
Wealth of Nations, 496
Weavers, 363
Weeauk Indians, text of address
to, 333
Weightman, Roger, letter to, 729-
30
Weights and measures, 283-4
Wells, Samuel Adams, 8, 28
Weopomeioc Indians, 228
West Indies, 78, 92, 507
Westward Mill Library Society,
letter to, 597-8
Whale oil, 67
Wheat, 589
Wheatley, Phyllis, 259
Wheels, invention of, 409-10
Whigs, 83, 627, 704, 712, 715, 719,
725-6
Whiskey, 707-8
White, Alexander, 124
Whitney, Eli, letter to, 526-7
Will, 413, Divine, 355; of nations,
332
Willard, Dr. Joseph, letter to, 467-8
William the Norman, 307-8
William III, 306
William and Mary College, xvi-vii,
4, 49-50, 263, 287, 351 n, 368,
552, 555, 625, 643; disturbance
at, 356; history of, 266-8; TJ
at, 4-5, 680; TJ Visitor of, 52;
professors, 52, 267
Williamsburg, Va., xvi, xviii-ix, 6,
9-10, 42, 46, 52, 182, 227, 291,
353, 355, 425, 680
Williamson, 58
Wilson, Mr., 437
— James, 14, 3 1 37
Wine, xxvii, 359, 371, 589, 708;
French, 136-9, Italian, 139; TJ
on, 147-8
Wirt, William, 6-8, 685-6
Wistar, Dr. Caspar, letter to, 583-5
Witherspoon, John, 32, 34
Wolf, Johann Christian, 319
Wollaston, William, 637
Women, education of, 417-20, 687-
9; European, 387; French, 388-
9; Indian, 211-2; labor of, 135,
140, 145 ; qualities of, 399
Worcester Edward Somerset, mar-
quis of, 686
Worms, 87
Wyche, John, letter to, 597-8
Wythe, Elizabeth (Taliaferro), 182
— George, xvii-viii, xx, 5, 10, 17,
43-6, 254, 368, 386, 425, 429-30,
462, 590; TJ's biography of, 180-
3; letters to, 394-5 535-6
— X— Y— Z—
"X. Y. Z." affair, xxxii, 128, 547,
558
Xenophon, 569, 694, 723
Xenophontis Anabasis, 375-6
Yancey, Charles, letter to, 657-9
— Robert, 657 n
Yorktown, 173 ; siege of, 607
Young, Arthur, 594
Zane, Isaac, 196
Zoology, xli, 467, 553, 645-9
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