Letters of Thomas Jefferson

1792 - 1793

“A Stepping Stone to Monarchy”

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 disburthening 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 & reflection than you could do here at any moment.

When you first mentioned to me your purpose of retiring from the government, tho’ 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 & impertinent: that before forming your decision, you had weighed all the reasons for & against the measure, had made up your mind on full view of them, & 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 & looking on, we should derive confidence from that circumstance, & resource if it failed.  The public mind too was calm & confident, and therefore in a favorable state for making the experiment.  Had no change of circumstances intervened, I should not, with any hope of success, have now ventured to propose to you a change of purpose.  But the public mind is no longer confident and serene; and that from causes in which you are in no ways personally mixed.  Tho 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 imaginary, 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 & creditor sides of accounts, instead of taking only their balances, which could have been paid off in a short time: That this accumulation of debt has taken for ever out of our power those easy sources of revenue, which, applied to the ordinary necessities and exigencies of government, would have answered them habitually, and covered us from habitual murmurings against taxes & tax-gatherers, reserving 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 generally expect, for the same or equivalent exigencies, yet we are already obliged to strain the impost till it produces clamour, and will produce evasion, & war on our own citizens to collect it: and even to resort to an Excise law, of odious character with the people, partial in it’s operation, unproductive unless enforced by arbitrary & vexatious means, and committing the authority of the government in parts where resistance is most probable, & 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 2/3 of the interest, we might have paid off the principal in 2/3 of the time: but that from this we are precluded by it’s being made irredeemable but in small portions & long terms: That this irredeemable quality was given it for the avowed purpose of inviting it’s transfer to foreign countries.  They predict that this transfer of the principal, when compleated, will occasion an exportation of 3. millions of dollars annually for the interest, a drain of coin, of which as there has been no example, no calculation can be made of it’s consequences: That the banishment of our coin will be compleated by the creation of 10. millions of paper money, in the form of bank bills, now issuing into circulation.  They think the 10. or 12. percent 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 & useless, producing, like that on a gaming table, no accession to itself, and is withdrawn from commerce & agriculture where it would have produced addition to the common mass: That it nourishes in our citizens habits of vice and idleness instead of industry & morality: That it has furnished effectual means of corrupting such a portion of the legislature, as turns the balance between the honest voters which ever way it is directed: That this corrupt squadron, deciding the voice of the legislature, have manifested their dispositions to get rid of the limitations imposed by the constitution 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 in the Convention is no secret, because it’s partisans have made none of it.  To effect it then was impracticable, but they are still eager after their object, and are predisposing every thing for it’s 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 it’s present form, are fewer in number.  They are fewer even when joined by the two, three, or half dozen anti-federalists, who, tho they dare not avow it, are still opposed to any general government: but being 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 before 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 the rest, & will be the instrument for producing in future a king, lords & commons, or whatever else those who direct it may chuse.  Withdrawn such a distance from the eye of their constituents, and these so dispersed as to be inaccessible to public information, & particularly to that of the conduct of their own representatives, they will form the most corrupt government on earth, if the means of their corruption be not prevented.  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 probably be either in principle or interest, 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 legislatures, & especially the first, have done.  Public faith & right will oppose this.  But some parts of the system may be rightfully reformed; a liberation from the rest unremittingly pursued as fast as right will permit, & 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 & 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.  Therefore 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, & shew that we have nothing 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 & peaceable, but the division of sentiment & interest happens unfortunately to be so geographical, that no mortal can say that what is most wise & temperate would prevail against what is most easy & obvious.  I can scarcely contemplate a more incalculable evil than the breaking of the union into two or more parts.  Yet when we review the mass which opposed the original coalescence, when we consider that it lay chiefly in the Southern quarter, that the legislature have availed themselves of no occasion of allaying it, but on the contrary whenever Northern & Southern prejudices have come into conflict, the latter have been sacrificed & the former soothed; that the owners of the debt are in the Southern & the holders of it in the Northern division; that the Anti-federal champions are now strengthened in argument by the fulfilment of their predictions; that this has been brought about by the Monarchical federalists themselves, who, having been for the new government merely as a stepping stone to monarchy, have themselves adopted the very constructions of the constitution, of which, when advocating it’s acceptance before the tribunal of the people, they declared it insusceptible; that the republican federalists, who espoused the same government for it’s intrinsic merits, are disarmed of their weapons, that which they denied as prophecy being now become true history: who can be sure that these 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, & to prevent which I consider your continuance at the head of affairs as of the last importance.  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 & lead the people in any quarter into violence or secession.  North & South will hang together, if they have you to hang on; and, if the first correction of a numerous representation should fail in it’s effect, your presence will give time for trying others not inconsistent with the union & peace of the states.

I am perfectly aware of the oppression under which your present office lays your mind, & of the ardor with which you pant for retirement to domestic life.  But there is sometimes an eminence of character on which society have such peculiar claims as to controul the predelection of the individual for a particular walk of happiness, & restrain him to that alone arising from the present & future benedictions of mankind.  This seems to be your condition, & the law imposed on you by providence in forming your character, & fashioning the events on which it was to operate; and it is to motives like these, & not to personal anxieties of mine or others who have no right to call on you for sacrifices, that I appeal from your former determination & urge a revisal of it, on the ground of change in the aspect of things.  Should an honest majority result from the new & enlarged representation; should those acquiesce whose principles or interest they may controul, 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 sessions will determine the crisis; and I cannot but hope that you can resolve to add one or two 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 sollicitation on my part obliges me to declare that no such motive exists.  It is a thing of mere indifference to the public whether I retain or relinquish my purpose 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 any thing 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 & satisfaction.  I therefore have no motive to consult but my own inclination, which is bent irresistibly on the tranquil enjoyment of my family, my farm, & 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 be mentioned, that weighty motives for your continuance are to be found in our foreign affairs.  I think it probable that both the Spanish & English negotiations, if not completed before your purpose is known, will be suspended from the moment it is known; & 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; & beg permission to follow you whether in public or private life with those sentiments of sincere attachment & respect, with which I am unalterably, Dear Sir, Your affectionate friend & humble servant.

“The Monster Aristocracy”

Behold you, then, my dear friend, at the head of a great army, establishing the liberties of your country against a foreign enemy.  May heaven favor your cause, and make you the channel thro’ which it may pour it’s favors.  While you are exterminating the monster aristocracy, & pulling out the teeth & fangs of it’s associate monarchy, a contrary tendency is discovered in some here.  A sect has shewn itself among us, who declare they espoused our new constitution, not as a good & sufficient thing itself, but only as a step to an English constitution, the only thing good & sufficient in itself, in their eye.  It is happy for us that these are preachers without followers, and that our people are firm & constant in their republican purity.  You will wonder to be told that it is from the Eastward chiefly that these champions for a king, lords & commons come.  They get some important associates from New York, and are puffed off by a tribe of Agioteurs which have been hatched in a bed of corruption made up after the model of their beloved England.  Too many of these stock jobbers & king-jobbers have come into our legislature, or rather too many of our legislature have become stock jobbers & king-jobbers.  However the voice of the people is beginning to make itself heard, and will probably cleanse their seats at the ensuing election.  -- The machinations of our old enemies are such as to keep us still at bay with our Indian neighbors.  -- What are you doing for your colonies?  They will be lost if not more effectually succoured.  Indeed no future efforts you can make will ever be able to reduce the blacks.  All that can be done in my opinion will be to compound with them as has been done formerly in Jamaica.  We have been less zealous in aiding them, lest your government should feel any jealousy on our account.  But in truth we as sincerely wish their restoration, and their connection with you, as you do yourselves.  We are satisfied that neither your justice nor their distresses will ever again permit their being forced to seek at dear & distant markets those first necessaries of life which they may have at cheaper markets placed by nature at their door, & formed by her for their support.  -- What is become of Mde de Tessy and Mde de Tott?  I have not heard of them since they went to Switzerland.  I think they would have done better to have come & reposed under the Poplars of Virginia.  Pour into their bosoms the warmest effusions of my friendship & tell them they will be warm and constant unto death.  Accept of them also for Mde de la Fayette & your dear children -- but I am forgetting that you are in the field of war, & they I hope in those of peace.  Adieu my dear friend!  God bless you all.  Yours affectionately.

“The Rights of Man”

DEAR SIR, -- I received with great pleasure the present of your pamphlets, as well 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 characters 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, & commons, & 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 surface, 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 practicable by operating on the mind than on the body of man, and be assured that it has not a more sincere votary nor you a more ardent well-wisher than Yrs. &c.

“Conflict With Hamilton”

DEAR SIR, -- I received on the 2d inst the letter of Aug 23, which you did me the honor to write me; but the immediate return of our post, contrary to his custom, prevented my answer by that occasion.  The proceedings of Spain mentioned in your letter are really of a complexion to excite uneasiness, & a suspicion that their friendly overtures about the Missisipi have been merely to lull us while they should be strengthening their holds on that river.  Mr. Carmichael’s silence has been long my astonishment: and however it might have justified something very different from a new appointment, yet the public interest certainly called for his junction with Mr. Short as it is impossible but that his knolege of the ground of negotiation of persons & characters, must be useful & even necessary to the success of the mission.  That Spain & Gr Britain may understand one another on our frontiers is very possible; for however opposite their interests or disposition may be in the affairs of Europe, yet while these do not call them into opposite action, they may concur as against us.  I consider their keeping an agent in the Indian country as a circumstance which requires serious interference on our part; and I submit to your decision whether it does not furnish a proper occasion to us to send an additional instruction to Messrs. Carmichael & Short to insist on a mutual & formal stipulation to forbear employing agents or pensioning any persons within each other’s limits: and if this be refused, to propose the contrary stipulation, to wit, that each party may freely keep agents within the Indian territories of the other, in which case we might soon sicken them of the license.

I now take the liberty of proceeding to that part of your letter wherein you notice the internal dissentions which have taken place within our government, & their disagreeable effect on it’s movements.  That such dissentions have taken place is certain, & even among those who are nearest to you in the administration.  To no one have they given deeper concern than myself: to no one equal mortification at being myself a part of them.  Tho’ 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, & 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; & 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 determination to intermeddle not at all with the legislature, & 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 understood 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; & as to that of the Treasury, has never been farther swerved from than by the mere enunciation 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 legislatures 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 usurpations on their freedom of judgment, & the conscientious pursuit of their own sense of duty.  That I have utterly, in my private conversations, disapproved of the system of the Secretary of the treasury, I acknolege & avow: and this was not merely a speculative difference.  His system flowed from principles adverse to liberty, & 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, & it’s first fruits to be the establishment of the great outlines of his project by the votes of the very persons who, having swallowed his bait were laying themselves out to profit by his plans: & 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 & interests of the people: & it was impossible to consider their decisions, which had nothing in view but to enrich themselves, 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 further 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 general 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 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 & preponderate, by their own, the scale which suited, & to have that 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 expressions 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 we have the most intimate connections, France & England, my system was to give some satisfactory distinctions to the former, of little cost to us, in return for the solid advantages yielded us by them; & to have met the English with some restrictions 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, & by high-toned declamation on other occasions, has forced down his own system, which was exactly the reverse.  He undertook, of his own authority, the conferences with the ministers of those two nations, & was, on every consultation, provided with some report 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; & I can safely appeal to you, who have seen all my letters & proceedings, whether I have not carried them into execution as sincerely as if they had been my own, tho’ I ever considered them as inconsistent with the honor & interest of our country.  That they have been inconsistent with our interest is but too fatally proved by the stab to our navigation given by the French.  -- So that if the question be By whose fault is it that Colo Hamilton & myself have not drawn together? the answer will depend on that to two other questions; whose principles of administration best justify, by their purity, conscientious adherence? and which of us has, notwithstanding, stepped farthest into the controul of the department of the other?

To this justification of opinions, expressed in the way of conversation, against the views of Colo Hamilton, I beg leave to add some notice of his late charges against me in Fenno’s gazette; for neither the stile, matter, nor venom of the pieces alluded to can leave a doubt of their author.  Spelling my name & character at full length to the public, while he conceals his own under the signature of “an American” he charges me 1.  With having written letters from Europe to my friends to oppose the present constitution while depending.  2.  With a desire of not paying the public debt.  3.  With setting up a paper to decry & slander the government.  1.  The first charge is most false.  No man in the U.S. I suppose, approved of every title in the constitution: no one, I believe approved more of it than I did: and more of it was certainly disproved by my accuser than by me, and of it’s parts most vitally republican.  Of this the few letters I wrote on the subject (not half a dozen I believe) will be a proof: & for my own satisfaction & justification, I must tax you with the reading of them when I return to where they are.  You will there see that my objection to the constitution was that it wanted a bill of rights securing freedom of religion, freedom of the press, freedom from standing armies, trial by jury, & a constant Habeas corpus act.  Colo Hamilton’s was that it wanted a king and house of lords.  The sense of America has approved my objection & added the bill of rights, not the king and lords.  I also thought a longer term of service, insusceptible of renewal, would have made a President more independant.  My country has thought otherwise, & I have acquiesced implicitly.  He wishes the general government should have power to make laws binding the states in all cases whatsoever.  Our country has thought otherwise: has he acquiesced?  Notwithstanding my wish for a bill of rights, my letters strongly urged the adoption of the constitution, by nine states at least, to secure the good it contained.  I at first thought that the best method of securing the bill of rights would be for four states to hold off till such a bill should be agreed to.  But the moment I saw Mr. Hancock’s proposition to pass the constitution as it stood, and give perpetual instructions to the representatives of every state to insist on a bill of rights, I acknoleged the superiority of his plan, & advocated universal adoption.  2.  The second charge is equally untrue.  My whole correspondence while in France, & every word, letter, & act on the subject since my return, prove that no man is more ardently intent to see the public debt soon & sacredly paid off than I am. This exactly marks the difference between Colo Hamilton’s views & mine, that I would wish the debt paid to morrow; he wishes it never to be paid, but always to be a thing where with to corrupt & manage the legislature.  3.  I have never enquired what number of sons, relations & friends of Senators, representatives, printers or other useful partisans Colo Hamilton has provided for among the hundred clerks of his department, the thousand excisemen, custom-house officers, loan officers &c. &c. &c. appointed by him, or at his nod, and spread over the Union; nor could ever have imagined that the man who has the shuffling of millions backwards & forwards from paper into money & money into paper, from Europe to America, & America to Europe, the dealing out of Treasury-secrets among his friends in what time & measure he pleases, and who never slips an occasion of making friends with his means, that such an one I say would have brought forward a charge against me for having appointed the poet Freneau translating clerk to my office, with a salary of 250. dollars a year.  That fact stands thus.  While the government was at New York I was applied to on behalf of Freneau to know if there was any place within my department to which he could be appointed.  I answered there were but four clerkships, all of which I found full, and continued without any change.  When we removed to Philadelphia, Mr. Pintard the translating clerk, did not chuse to remove with us.  His office then became vacant.  I was again applied to there for Freneau, & had no hesitation to promise the clerkship for him.  I cannot recollect whether it was at the same time, or afterwards, that I was told he had a thought of setting up a newspaper there.  But whether then, or afterwards, I considered it as a circumstance of some value, as it might enable me to do, what I had long wished to have done, that is, to have the material parts of the Leyden gazette brought under your eye & that of the public, in order to possess yourself & them of a juster view of the affairs of Europe than could be obtained from any other public source.  This I had ineffectually attempted through the press of Mr. Fenno while in New York, selecting & translating passages myself at first then having it done by Mr. Pintard the translating clerk, but they found their way too slowly into Mr. Fenno’s papers.  Mr. Bache essayed it for me in Philadelphia, but his being a daily paper, did not circulate sufficiently in the other states.  He even tried, at my request, the plan of a weekly paper of recapitulation from his daily paper, in hopes that that might go into the other states, but in this too we failed.  Freneau, as translating clerk, & the printer of a periodical paper likely to circulate thro’ the states (uniting in one person the parts of Pintard & Fenno) revived my hopes that the thing could at length be effected.  On the establishment of his paper therefore, I furnished him with the Leyden gazettes, with an expression of my wish that he could always translate & publish the material intelligence they contained; & have continued to furnish them from time to time, as regularly as I received them.  But as to any other direction or indication of my wish how his press should be conducted, what sort of intelligence he should give, what essays encourage, I can protest in the presence of heaven, that I never did by myself or any other, directly or indirectly, say a syllable, nor attempt any kind of influence.  I can further protest, in the same awful presence, that I never did by myself or any other, directly or indirectly, write, dictate or procure any one sentence or sentiment to be inserted in his, or any other gazette, to which my name was not affixed or that of my office.  -- I surely need not except here a thing so foreign to the present subject as a little paragraph about our Algerine captives, which I put once into Fenno’s paper.  -- Freneau’s proposition to publish a paper, having been about the time that the writings of Publicola, & the discourses on Davila had a good deal excited the public attention, I took for granted from Freneau’s character, which had been marked as that of a good whig, that he would give free place to pieces written against the aristocratical & monarchical principles these papers had inculcated.  This having been in my mind, it is likely enough I may have expressed it in conversation with others; tho’ I do not recollect that I did.  To Freneau I think I could not, because I had still seen him but once, & that was at a public table, at breakfast, at Mrs. Elsworth’s, as I passed thro’ New York the last year.  And I can safely declare that my expectations looked only to the chastisement of the aristocratical & monarchical writers, & not to any criticisms on the proceedings of government: Colo Hamilton can see no motive for any appointment but that of making a convenient partizan.  But you Sir, who have received from me recommendations of a Rittenhouse, Barlow, Paine, will believe that talents & science are sufficient motives with me in appointments to which they are fitted: & that Freneau, as a man of genius, might find a preference in my eye to be a translating clerk, & make good title to the little aids I could give him as the editor of a gazette, by procuring subscriptions to his paper, as I did some, before it appeared, & as I have with pleasure done for the labours of other men of genius.  I hold it to be one of the distinguishing excellencies of elective over hereditary succesions, that the talents, which nature has provided in sufficient proportion, should be selected by the society for the government of their affairs, rather than that this should be transmitted through the loins of knaves & fools passing from the debauches of the table to those of the bed.  Colo Hamilton, alias “Plain facts,” says that Freneau’s salary began before he resided in Philadelphia.  I do not know what quibble he may have in reserve on the word “residence.”  He may mean to include under that idea the removal of his family; for I believe he removed, himself, before his family did, to Philadelphia.  But no act of mine gave commencement to his salary before he so far took up his abode in Philadelphia as to be sufficiently in readiness for the duties of the office.  As to the merits or demerits of his paper, they certainly concern me not.  He & Fenno are rivals for the public favor.  The one courts them by flattery, the other by censure, & I believe it will be admitted that the one has been as servile, as the other severe.  But is not the dignity, & even decency of government committed, when one of it’s principal ministers enlists himself as an anonymous writer or paragraphist for either the one or the other of them?  -- No government ought to be without censors: & where the press is free, no one ever will.  If virtuous, it need not fear the fair operation of attack & defence.  Nature has given to man no other means of sifting out the truth either in religion, law, or politics.  I think it as honorable to the government neither to know, nor notice, it’s sycophants or censors, as it would be undignified & criminal to pamper the former & persecute the latter.  -- So much for the past.  A word now of the future.

When I came into this office, it was with a resolution to retire 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 contemplated 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 mariner, who has at length the land in view, & shall count the days & hours which still lie between me & it.  In the meanwhile my main object will be to wind up the business of my office avoiding as much as possible all new enterprize.  With the affairs of the legislature, as I never did intermeddle, so I certainly shall not now begin.  I am more desirous to predispose everything for the repose to which I am withdrawing, than expose it to be disturbed by newspaper contests.  If these however 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 belonging to those who employ me, 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, & using with freedom & truth the facts & names necessary to place the cause in it’s just form before that tribunal.  To a thorough disregard of the honors & emoluments of office I join as great a value for the esteem of my countrymen, & conscious of having merited it by an integrity which cannot be reproached, & by an enthusiastic devotion to their rights & 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 machinations against the liberty of the country which has not only received and given him bread, but heaped it’s 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 it’s 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 newspapers, not a syllable of them has ever proceeded from me; & that no cabals or intrigues of mine have produced those in the legislature, & I hope I may promise, both to you & myself, that none will receive 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.  -- Observing that letters written at Mount Vernon on the Monday, & arriving at Richmond on the Wednesday, reach me on Saturday, I have now the honor to mention that the 22d instant will be the last of our post-days that I shall be here, & consequently that no letter from you after the 17th, will find me here.  Soon after that I shall have the honor of receiving at Mount Vernon your orders for Philadelphia, & of there also delivering you the little matter which occurs to me as proper for the opening of Congress, exclusive of what has been recommended in former speeches, & not yet acted on.  In the meantime & ever I am with great and sincere affection & respect, dear Sir, your most obedient and most humble servant.

“The Will of the Nation”

DEAR SIR -- My last to you was of Mar. 7. since which I have received your Nos. 8. and 9.  I am apprehensive that your situation must have been difficult during the transition from the late form of government to the re-establishment of some other legitimate authority, and that you may have been at a loss to determine with whom business might be done.  Nevertheless when principles are well understood their application is less embarrassing.  We surely cannot deny to any nation that right whereon our own government is founded, that every one may govern itself under whatever forms it pleases, and change these forms at it’s own will, and that it may transact it’s business with foreign nations through whatever organ it thinks proper, whether King, convention, assembly, committee, President, or whatever else it may chuse.  The will of the nation is the only thing essential to be regarded.  On the dissolution of the late constitution in France, by removing so integral a part of it as the King, the National Assembly, to whom a part only of the public authority had been delegated, sensible of the incompetence of their powers to transact the affairs of the nation legitimately, incited their fellow citizens to appoint a national convention during this defective state of the national authority.  Duty to our constituents required that we should suspend paiment of the monies yet unpaid of our debt to that country, because there was no person or persons substantially authorized by the nation of France to receive the monies and give us a good acquittal.  On this ground my last letter desired you to suspend paiments till further orders, with an assurance, if necessary, that the suspension should not be continued a moment longer than should be necessary for us to see the re-establishment of some person or body of persons with authority to receive and give us a good acquittal.  Since that we learn that a Convention is assembled, invested with full powers by the nation to transact it’s affairs.  Tho’ we know that from the public papers only, instead of waiting for a formal annunciation of it, we hasten to act upon it by authorizing you, if the fact be true, to consider the suspension of paiment, directed in my last letter, as now taken off, and to proceed as if it had never been imposed; considering the Convention, or the government they shall have established as the lawful representatives of the Nation and authorized to act for them.  Neither the honor nor inclination of our country would justify our withholding our paiment under a scrupulous attention to forms.  On the contrary they lent us that money when we were under their circumstances, and it seems providential that we can not only repay them the same sum, but under the same circumstances.  Indeed, we wish to omit no opportunity of convincing them how cordially we desire the closest union with them: Mutual good offices, mutual affection and similar principles of government seem to have destined the two people for the most intimate communion, and even for a complete exchange of citizenship among the individuals composing them.

During the fluctuating state of the Assignats of France, I must ask the favor of you to inform me in every letter of the rate of exchange between them & coin, this being necessary for the regulation of our custom houses.  We are continuing our supplies to the island of St. Domingo at the request of the Minister of France here.  We would wish however to receive a more formal sanction from the government of France than has yet been given.  Indeed, we know of none but a vote of the late National Assembly for 4 millions of livres of our debt, sent to the government of St. Domingo, communicated by them to the Minister here, & by him to us.  And this was in terms not properly applicable to the form of our advances.  We wish therefore for a full sanction of the past & a complete expression of the desires of their government as to future supplies to their colonies.  Besides what we have furnished publicly, individual merchants of the U.S. have carried considerable supplies to the island of St. Domingo, which have been sometimes purchased, sometimes taken by force, and bills given by the administration of the colony on the minister here, which have been protested for want of funds.  We have no doubt that justice will be done to these

[text ends abruptly here]

“Paean to the French Revolution”

DEAR SIR, -- My last private letter to you was of Oct. 16. since which I have received your No. 103, 107, 108, 109, 110, 112, 113 & 114 and yesterday your private one of Sep 15, came to hand.  The tone of your letters had for some time given me pain, on account of the extreme warmth with which they censured the proceedings of the Jacobins of France.  I considered that sect as the same with the Republican patriots, & the Feuillants as the Monarchical patriots, well known in the early part of the revolution, & but little distant in their views, both having in object the establishment of a free constitution, & differing only on the question whether their chief Executive should be hereditary or not.  The Jacobins (as since called) yielded to the Feuillants & tried the experiment of retaining their hereditary Executive.  The experiment failed completely, and would have brought on the reestablishment of despotism had it been pursued.  The Jacobins saw this, and that the expunging that officer 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 assembly, they were come 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 any body, & shall deplore some of them to the day of my death.  But I deplore 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 & embalm their memories, 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 innocent blood?  My own affections have been deeply wounded by some of the martyrs to this cause, but rather than it should have failed, I would have seen half the earth desolated.  Were there but an Adam & an Eve left in every country, & left free, it would be better than as it now is.  I have expressed to you my sentiments, because they are really those of 99. in an hundred of our citizens.  The universal feasts, and rejoicings which have lately been had on account of the successes of the French shewed the genuine effusions of their hearts.  You have been wounded by the sufferings of your friends, and have by this circumstance been hurried into a temper of mind which would be extremely disrelished if known to your countrymen.  The reserve of the President of the United States had never permitted me to discover the light in which he viewed it, and as I was more anxious that you should satisfy him than me, I had still avoided explanations with you on the subject.  But your 113. induced him to break silence and to notice the extreme acrimony of your expressions.  He added that he had been informed the sentiments you expressed in your conversations were equally offensive to our allies, & that you should consider yourself as the representative of your country and that what you say might be imputed to your constituents.  He desired me therefore to write to you on this subject.  He added that he considered France as the sheet anchor of this country and its friendship as a first object.  There are in the U.S. some characters of opposite principles; some of them are high in office, others possessing great wealth, and all of them hostile to France and fondly looking to England as the staff of their hope.  These I named to you on a former occasion.  Their prospects have certainly not brightened.  Excepting them, this country is entirely republican, friends to the constitution, anxious to preserve it and to have it administered according to it’s own republican principles.  The little party above mentioned have espoused it only as a stepping stone to monarchy, and have endeavored to approximate it to that in it’s administration in order to render it’s final transition more easy.  The successes of republicanism in France have given the coup de grace to their prospects, and I hope to their projects.  -- I have developed to you faithfully the sentiments of your country, that you may govern yourself accordingly.  I know your republicanism to be pure, and that it is no decay of that which has embittered you against it’s votaries in France, but too great a sensibility at the partial evil which it’s object has been accomplished there.  I have written to you in the stile to which I have been always accustomed with you, and which perhaps it is time I should lay aside.  But while old men are sensible enough of their own advance in years, they do not sufficiently recollect it in those whom they have seen young.  In writing too the last private letter which will probably be written under present circumstances, in contemplating that your correspondence will shortly be turned over to I know not whom, but certainly to some one not in the habit of considering your interests with the same fostering anxieties I do, I have presented things without reserve, satisfied you will ascribe what I have said to it’s true motive, use it for your own best interest, and in that fulfil completely what I had in view.

With respect to the subject of your letter of Sep. 15. you will be sensible that many considerations would prevent my undertaking the reformation of a system with which I am so soon to take leave.  It is but common decency to leave to my successor the moulding of his own business.  -- Not knowing how otherwise to convey this letter to you with certainty, I shall appeal to the friendship and honour of the Spanish commissioners here, to give it the protection of their cover, as a letter of private nature altogether.  We have no remarkable event here lately, but the death of Dr. Lee; nor have I anything new to communicate to you of your friends or affairs.  I am with unalterable affection & wishes for your prosperity, my dear Sir, you sincere friend and servant.

“Peaceable Coercion”

The idea seems to gain credit that the naval powers combined against France will prohibit supplies even of provisions to that country.  Should this be formally notified I should suppose Congress would be called, because it is a justifiable cause of war, & as the Executive cannot decide the question of war on the affirmative side, neither ought it to do so on the negative side, by preventing the competent body from deliberating on the question.  But I should hope that war would not be their choice.  I think it will furnish us a happy opportunity of setting another example to the world, by shewing that nations may be brought to do justice by appeals to their interests as well as by appeals to arms.  I should hope that Congress instead of a denunciation of war, would instantly exclude from our ports all the manufactures, produce, vessels & subjects of the nations committing this aggression, during the continuance of the aggression & till full satisfaction made for it.  This would work well in many ways, safely in all, & introduce between nations another umpire than arms.  It would relieve us too from the risks & the horrors of cutting throats.  The death of the king of France has not produced as open condemnations from the Monocrats as I expected.  I dined the other day in a company where the subject was discussed.  I will name the company in the order in which they manifested their partialities; beginning with the warmest Jacobinism & proceeding by shades to the most heart felt aristocracy.  Smith (N.Y.) Coxe. Stewart. T. Shippen. Bingham. Peters. Breck. Meredith. Wolcott.  It is certain that the ladies of this city, of the first circle are all open-mouthed against the murderers of a sovereign, and they generally speak those sentiments which the more cautious husband smothers.  I believe it is pretty certain that Smith (S.C.) and Miss A. are not to come together.  Ternant has at length openly hoisted the flag of monarchy by going into deep mourning for his prince.  I suspect he thinks a cessation of his visits to me a necessary accompaniment to this pious duty.  A connection between him & Hamilton seems to be springing up.  On observing that Duer was secretary to the old board of treasury, I suspect him to have been the person who suggested to Hamilton the letter of mine to that board which he so tortured in his Catullus.  Dunlap has refused to print the piece which we had heard of before your departure, and it has been several days in Bache’s hands, without any notice of it.  The President will leave this about the 27th inst., & return about the 20th of April.  Adieu.

“The Gallant Genet”

I wrote you last on the 13’th..  Since that I have received yours of the 8’th..  I have scribbled on a separate paper some general notes on the plan of a house you enclosed.  I have done more.  I have endeavored to throw the same area, the same extent of walls, the same number of rooms, &of the same size, into another form so as to offer a choiceto the builder.  Indeed I varied my plan by shewing that itwould be with alcove bed rooms, to which I am much attached.

I dare say you will have judged from the pusillanimity of the proclamation, from whose pen it came.  A fear lest any affection should be discovered is distinguishable enough.  This base fear will produce the very evil they wish to avoid.  For our constituents seeing that the government does not express their mind, perhaps rather leans the other way, are coming forward to express it themselves.  It was suspected that there was not a clear mind in the P.’s counsellors to receive Genet.  The citizens however determined to receive him.  Arrangements were taken for meeting him at Gray’s ferry in a great body.  He escaped that by arriving in town with the letters which brought information that he was on the road.  The merchants i.e. Fitzsimmons & co. were to present an address to the P. on the neutrality proclaimed.  It contained much wisdom but no affection.  You will see it in the papers inclosed.  The citizens determined to address Genet. Rittenhouse, Hutcheson, Dallas, Sargeant &c. were at the head of it.  Tho a select body of only 30. was appointed to present it, yet a vast concourse of people attended them.  I have not seen it; but it is understood to be the counter address.  -- Ternant’s hopes of employment in the French army turn out to be without grounds.  He is told by the minister of war expressly that the places of Marechal de camp are all full.  He thinks it more prudent therefore to remain in America.  He delivered yesterday his letters of recall, & Mr. Genet presented his of credence.  It is impossible for anything to be more affectionate, more magnanimous than the purport of his mission.  ‘We know that under present circumstances we have a right to call upon you for the guarantee of our islands.  But we do not desire it.  We wish you to do nothing but what is for your own good, and we will do all in our power to promote it.  Cherish your own peace & prosperity.  You have expressed a willingness to enter into a more liberal treaty of commerce with us; I bring full powers (& he produced them) to form such a treaty, and a preliminary decree of the National convention to lay open our country & it’s colonies to you for every purpose of utility, without your participating the burthens of maintaining & defending them.  We see in you the only person on earth who can love us sincerely & merit to be so loved.’  In short he offers everything & asks nothing.  Yet I know the offers will be opposed, & suspect they will not be accepted.  In short, my dear Sir, it is impossible for you to conceive what is passing in our conclave: and it is evident that one or two at least, under pretence of avoiding war on the one side have no great antipathy to run foul of it on the other, and to make a part in the confederacy of princes against human liberty.  -- The people in the Western parts of this state have been to the excise officer & threatened to burn his house &c.  They were blacked & otherwise disguised so as to be unknown.  He has resigned, and H. says there is no possibility of getting the law executed there, & that probably the evil will spread.  A proclamation is to be issued, and another instance of my being forced to appear to approve what I have condemned uniformly from it’s first conception.

I expect every day to receive from Mr. Pinckney the model of the Scotch threshing machine.  It was to have come in a ship which arrived 3. weeks ago, but the workman had not quite finished it.  Mr. P. writes me word that the machine from which my model is taken threshes 8. quarters (64. bushels) of oats an hour, with 4. horses & 4. men.  I hope to get it in time to have one erected at Monticello to clean out the present crop.  -- I inclose you the pamphlet you desired.  Adieu.

“The Debt of Service”

I have to acknolege the receipt of your two favors of May 27 & 29, since the date of my last which was of the 2 inst.  In that of the 27th 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, & to which your friends can appeal.’  -- To my fellow-citizens the debt of service has been fully & faithfully paid.  I acknolege that such a debt exists, that a tour of 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 & twenty years; one half of which has been spent in total occupation with their affairs, & absence from my own.  I have served my tour then.  No positive engagement, by word or deed, binds me to their further service.  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 withdraw.  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 office, which could lead them, & others through them, into deception as to the time I might remain; & particularly they & all have known with what reluctance I engaged & have continued in the present one, & of my uniform determination to retire from it at an early day.  -- If the public then has no claim on me, & 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 perhaps the esteem of the world was of higher value in my eye than everything in it.  But age, experience & reflection, preserving to that only it’s due value, have set a higher on tranquility.  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 & my books, in the wholesome occupations of my farm & 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 or motion, of thought or incogitancy, owing account to myself alone of my hours & actions.  What must be the principle of that calculation which should balance against these the circumstances of my present existence! worn down with labours from morning to night, & day to day; knowing them as fruitless to others as they are vexatious to myself, committed singly in desperate & eternal contest against a host who are systematically undermining the public liberty & prosperity, even the rare hours of relaxation sacrificed to the society of persons in the same intentions, 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 & confidence, cut off from my family & friends, my affairs abandoned to chaos & 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, & so never let there be more between you & me, on this subject.

I inclose you some papers which have passed on the subject of a new loan.  You will see by them that the paper-Coryphaeus is either undaunted, or desperate.  I believe that the statement inclosed has secured a decision against his proposition.  -- I dined yesterday in a company where Morris & Bingham were, & 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 serve again in any public capacity.  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 have affected his looks most remarkably.  He is also extremely affected by the attacks made & kept up on him in the public papers.  I think he feels those things more than any person I ever 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 & sycophants which surrounded him had wound up the ceremonials of the government to a pitch of stateliness which nothing but his personal character could have supported, & 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 sanctimoniously reverenced, but inveloped 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 & it’s cause, which is universal.  -- Genet mentions freely enough in conversation that France does not wish to involve us in the war by our guarantee.  The information from St. Domingo & Martinique is that those two islands are disposed & 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 that, where you wish your work to be very exact, & 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 & heavy rains must have extended to us, & affected our wheat.  Adieu.  Yours affectionately.

“My Family, My Farm, My Books”

I have received, my good friend, your kind letter of August 19th, with the extract from that of Lafayette, for whom my heart has been constantly bleeding.  The influence of the United States has been put into action, as far as it could be either with decency or effect.  But I fear that distance and difference of principle give little hold to General Washington on the jailers of Lafayette.  However, his friends may be assured that our zeal has not been inactive.  Your letter gives me the first information that our dear friend Madame de Corny has been, as to her fortune among the victims of the times.  Sad times, indeed! and much lamented victim!  I know no country where the remains of a fortune could place her so much at her ease as this, and where public esteem is so attached to worth, regardless of wealth; but our manners, and the state of our society here, are so different from those to which her habits have been formed, that she would lose more perhaps in that scale.  And Madame Cosway in a convent!  I knew that to much goodness of heart she joined enthusiasm and religion; but I thought that very enthusiasm would have prevented her from shutting up her adoration of the God of the universe within the walls of a cloister; that she would rather have sought the mountain-top.  How happy should I be that it were mine that you, she, and Madame de Corny would seek.  You say, indeed, that you are coming to America, but I know that means New York.  In the meantime I am going to Virginia.  I have at length become able to fix that to the beginning of the new year.  I am then to be liberated from the hated occupations of politics, and to remain in the bosom of my family, my farm, and my books.  I have my house to build, my fields to farm, and to watch for the happiness of those who labor for mine.  I have one daughter married to a man of science, sense, virtue, and competence; in whom indeed I have nothing more to wish.  They live with me. If the other shall be as fortunate, in due process of time I shall imagine myself as blessed as the most blessed of the patriarchs.  Nothing could then withdraw my thoughts a moment from home but the recollection of my friends abroad.  I often put the question, whether yourself and Kitty will ever come to see your friends at Monticello? but it is my affection and not my experience of things which has leave to answer, and I am determined to believe the answer, because in that belief I find I sleep sounder, and wake more cheerful.  En attendant, God bless you.

Accept the homage of my sincere and constant affection.