Letters of Thomas Jefferson

1810

“American Quakerism”

SIR, -- Yours of the 7th instant has been duly received, with the pamphlet inclosed, for which I return you my thanks.  Nothing can be more exactly and seriously true than what is there stated; that but a short time elapsed after the death of the great reformer of the Jewish religion, before his principles were departed from by those who professed to be his special servants, and perverted into an engine for enslaving mankind, and aggrandising their oppressors in Church and State; that the purest system of morals ever before preached to man, has been adulterated and sophisticated by artificial constructions, into a mere contrivance to filch wealth and power to themselves; that rational men not being able to swallow their impious heresies, in order to force them down their throats, they raise the hue and cry of infidelity, while themselves are the greatest obstacles to the advancement of the real doctrines of Jesus, and do in fact constitute the real Anti-Christ.

You expect that your book will have some effect on the prejudices which the society of Friends entertain against the present and late administrations.  In this I think you will be disappointed.  The Friends are men, formed with the same passions, and swayed by the same natural principles and prejudices as others.  In cases where the passions are neutral, men will display their respect for the religious professions of their sect.  But where their passions are enlisted, these professions are no obstacle.  You observe very truly, that both the late and present administration conducted the government on principles professed by the Friends.  Our efforts to preserve peace, our measures as to the Indians, as to slavery, as to religious freedom, were all in consonance with their professions.  Yet I never expected we should get a vote from them, and in this I was neither deceived nor disappointed.  There is no riddle in this, to those who do not suffer themselves to be duped by the professions of religious sectaries.  The theory of American Quakerism is a very obvious one.  The mother society is in England.  Its members are English by birth and residence, devoted to their own country, as good citizens ought to be.  The Quakers of these States are colonies or filiations from the mother society, to whom that society sends its yearly lessons.  On these the filiated societies model their opinions, their conduct, their passions and attachments.  A Quaker is, essentially, an Englishman, in whatever part of the earth he is born or lives.  The outrages of Great Britain on our navigation and commerce, have kept us in perpetual bickerings with her.  The Quakers here have taken side against their own government; not on their profession of peace, for they saw that peace was our object also; but from devotion to the views of the mother society.  In 1797 and 8, when an administration sought war with France, the Quakers were the most clamorous for war.  Their principle of peace, as a secondary one, yielded to the primary one of adherence to the Friends in England, and what was patriotism in the original became treason in the copy.  On that occasion, they obliged their good old leader, Mr. Pemberton, to erase his name from a petition to Congress, against war, which had been delivered to a Representative of Pennsylvania, a member of the late and present administration.  He accordingly permitted the old gentleman to erase his name.  You must not, therefore, expect that your book will have any more effect on the society of Friends here, than on the English merchants settled among us.  I apply this to the Friends in general, not universally.  I know individuals among them as good patriots as we have.

I thank you for the kind wishes and sentiments towards myself, expressed in your letter, and sincerely wish to yourself the blessings of health and happiness.

“Nepotism and the Republic”

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

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

Yours, affectionately.

“Prostration of Reason”

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

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

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

“The Book of Kings”

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

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

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

When I observed, however, that the King of England was a cypher, I did not mean to confine the observation to the mere individual now on that throne.  The practice of Kings marrying only into 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 every thing bend before them, and banish whatever might lead them to think, and in a few generations they become all body and no mind: and this, too, by a law of nature, by that very law by which we are in the constant practice of changing the characters and propensities of the animals we raise for our own purposes.  Such is the regimen in raising Kings, and in this way they have gone on for centuries.  While in Europe, I often amused myself with contemplating the characters of the then reigning sovereigns of Europe.  Louis the XVI. was a fool, of my own knowledge, and in despite of the answers made for him at his trial.  The King of Spain was a fool, and of Naples the same.  They passed their lives in hunting, and despatched two couriers a week, one thousand miles, to let each other know what game they had killed the preceding days.  The King of Sardinia was a fool.  All these were Bourbons.  The Queen of Portugal, a Braganza, was an idiot by nature.  And so was the King of Denmark.  Their sons, as regents, exercised the powers of government.  The King of Prussia, successor to the great Frederick, was a mere hog in body as well as in mind.  Gustavus of Sweden, and Joseph of Austria, were really crazy, and George of England you know was in a straight waistcoat.  There remained, then, none but old Catherine, who had been too lately picked up to have lost her common sense.  In this state Buonaparte 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 Catherine, 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.

“An Academical Village”

GENTLEMEN, -- I received, some time ago, your letter of February 28th, covering a printed scheme of a lottery for the benefit of the East Tennessee College, and proposing to send tickets to me to be disposed of.  It would be impossible for them to come to a more inefficient hand.  I rarely go from home, and consequently see but a few neighbors and friends, who occasionally call on me.  And having myself made it a rule never to engage in a lottery or any other adventure of mere chance, I can, with the less candor or effect, urge it on others, however laudable or desirable its object may be.  No one more sincerely wishes the spread of information among mankind than I do, and none has greater confidence in its effect towards supporting free and good government.  I am sincerely rejoiced, therefore, to find that so excellent a fund has been provided for this noble purpose in Tennessee.  Fifty-thousand dollars placed in a safe bank, will give four thousand dollars a year, and even without other aid, must soon accomplish buildings sufficient for the object in its early stage.  I consider the common plan followed in this country, but not in others, of making one large and expensive building, as unfortunately erroneous.  It is infinitely better to erect a small and separate lodge for each separate professorship, with only a hall below for his class, and two chambers above for himself; joining these lodges by barracks for a certain portion of the students, opening into a covered way to give a dry communication between all the schools.  The whole of these arranged around an open square of grass and trees, would make it, what it should be in fact, an academical village, instead of a large and common den of noise, of filth and of fetid air.  It would afford that quiet retirement so friendly to study, and lessen the dangers of fire, infection and tumult.  Every professor would be the police officer of the students adjacent to his own lodge, which should include those of his own class of preference, and might be at the head of their table, if, as I suppose, it can be reconciled with the necessary economy to dine them in smaller and separate parties, rather than in a large and common mess.  These separate buildings, too, might be erected successively and occasionally, as the number of professorships and students should be increased, or the funds become competent.

I pray you to pardon me if I have stepped aside into the province of counsel; but much observation and reflection on these institutions have long convinced me that the large and crowded buildings in which youths are pent up, are equally unfriendly to health, to study, to manners, morals and order; and, believing the plan I suggest to be more promotive of these, and peculiarly adapted to the slender beginnings and progressive growth of our institutions, I hoped you would pardon the presumption, in consideration of the motive which was suggested by the difficulty expressed in your letter, of procuring funds for erecting the building.  But, on whatever plan you proceed, I wish it every possible success, and to yourselves the reward of esteem, respect and gratitude due to those who devote their time and efforts to render the youths of every successive age fit governors for the next.  To these accept, in addition, the assurances of mine.

“A Plan for the Merinos”

DEAR SIR, -- I thank you for your promised attention to my portion of the Merinos, and if there be any expenses of transportation, &c., and you will be so good as to advance my portion of them with yours and notify the amount, it shall be promptly remitted.  What shall we do with them?  I have been so disgusted with the scandalous extortions lately practised in the sale of these animals, and with the description of patriotism and praise to the sellers, as if the thousands of dollars apiece they have not been ashamed to receive were not reward enough, that I am disposed to consider as right, whatever is the reverse of what they have done.  Since fortune has put the occasion upon us, is it not incumbent upon us so to dispense this benefit to the farmers of our country, as to put to shame those who, forgetting their own wealth and the honest simplicity of the farmers, have thought them fit objects of the shaving art, and to excite, by a better example, the condemnation due to theirs?  No sentiment is more acknowledged in the family of Agriculturists than that the few who can afford it should incur the risk and expense of all new improvements, and give the benefit freely to the many of more restricted circumstances.  The question then recurs, What are we to do with them?  I shall be willing to concur with you in any plan you shall approve, and in order that we may have some proposition to begin upon, I will throw out a first idea, to be modified or postponed to whatever you shall think better.

Give all the full-blooded males we can raise to the different counties of our State, one to each, as fast as we can furnish them.  And as there must be some rule of priority for the distribution, let us begin with our own counties, which are contiguous and nearly central to the State, and proceed, circle after circle, till we have given a ram to every county.  This will take about seven years, if we add to the full descendants those which will have past to the fourth generation from common ewes, to make the benefit of a single male as general as practicable to the county, we may ask some known character in each county to have a small society formed which shall receive the animal and prescribe rules for his care and government.  We should retain ourselves all the full-blooded ewes, that they may enable us the sooner to furnish a male to every county.  When all shall have been provided with rams, we may, in a year or two more, be in a condition to give an ewe also to every county, if it be thought necessary.  But I suppose it will not, as four generations from their full-blooded ram will give them the pure race from common ewes.

In the meantime we shall not be without a profit indemnifying our trouble and expense.  For if of our present stock of common ewes, we place with the ram as many as he may be competent to, suppose fifty, we may sell the male lambs of every year for such reasonable price as in addition to the wool, will pay for the maintenance of the flock.  The first year they will be half bloods, the second three-quarters, the third seven-eights, and the fourth full-blooded, if we take care in selling annually half the ewes also, to keep those of highest blood, this will be a fund for kindnesses to our friends, as well as for indemnification to ourselves; and our whole State may thus, from this small stock, so dispersed, be filled in a very few years with this valuable race, and more satisfaction result to ourselves than money ever administered to the bosom of a shaver.  There will be danger that what is here proposed, though but an act of ordinary duty, may be perverted into one of ostentation, but malice will always find bad motives for good actions.  Shall we therefore never do good?  It may also be used to commit us with those on whose example it will truly be a reproof.  We may guard against this perhaps by a proper reserve, developing our purpose only by its execution.

Vive, vale, et siquid novisti rectius istis
Candidus imperti sinon, his ulere mecum.

“Schools and ‘Little Republics’”

DEAR SIR, -- Your friendly letter of the 12th has been duly received.  Although I have laid it down as a law to myself, never to embarrass the President with my solicitations, and have not till now broken through it, yet I have made a part of yourletter the subject of one to him, and have done it with all my heart, and in the full belief that I serve him and the public in urging that appointment.  We have long enough suffered under the base prostitution of law to party passions in one judge, and the imbecility of another.  In the hands of one the law is nothing more than an ambiguous text, to be explained by his sophistry into any meaning which may subserve his personal malice.  Nor can any milk-and-water associate maintain his own dependance, and by a firm pursuance of what the law really is, extend its protection to the citizens or the public.  I believe you will do it, and where you cannot induce your colleague to do what is right, you will be firm enough to hinder him from doing what is wrong, and by opposing sense to sophistry, leave the juries free to follow their own judgment.

I have long lamented with you the depreciation of law science.  The opinion seems to be that Blackstone is to us what the Alcoran is to the Mahometans, that everything which is necessary is in him, and what is not in him is not necessary.  I still lend my counsel and books to such young students as will fix themselves in the neighborhood.  Coke’s institutes and reports are their first, and Blackstone their last book, after an intermediate course of two or three years.  It is nothing more than an elegant digest of what they will then have acquired from the real fountains of the law.  Now men are born scholars, lawyers, doctors; in our day this was confined to poets.  You wish to see me again in the legislature, but this is impossible; my mind is now so dissolved in tranquillity, that it can never again encounter a contentious assembly; the habits of thinking and speaking off-hand, after a disuse of five and twenty years, have given place to the slower process of the pen.  I have indeed two great measures at heart, without which no republic can maintain itself in strength.  1.  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, 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 concerns, to take care of its roads, its poor, and its police by patrols, &c., (as the select men 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 hundreds 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 revolution 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 absolutely irresistible.  Could I once see this I should consider it as the dawn of the salvation of the republic, and say with old Simeon, “nunc dimittas Domine.”  But our children will be as wise as we are, and will establish in the fulness of time those things not yet ripe for establishment.  So be it, and to yourself health, happiness and long life.

“Hume and Montesquieu”

SIR, -- Your letter of July 16th has been duly received, with the paper it enclosed, for which accept my thanks, and especially for the kind sentiments expressed towards myself.  These testimonies of approbation, and friendly remembrance, are the highest gratifications I can receive from any, and especially from those in whose principles and zeal for the public good I have confidence.  Of that confidence in yourself the military appointment to which you allude was sufficient proof, as it was made, not on the recommendations of others, but on our own knowledge of your principles and qualifications.  While I cherish with feeling the recollections of my friends, I banish from my mind all political animosities which might disturb its tranquillity, or the happiness I derive from my present pursuits.  I have thought it among the most fortunate circumstances of my late administration that, during its eight years continuance, it was conducted with a cordiality and harmony among all the members, which never were ruffled on any, the greatest or smallest occasion.  I left my brethren with sentiments of sincere affection and friendship, so rooted in the uniform tenor of a long and intimate intercourse, that the evidence of my own senses alone ought to be permitted to shake them.  Anxious, in my retirement, to enjoy undisturbed repose, my knowledge of my successor and late coadjutors, and my entire confidence in their wisdom and integrity, were assurances to me that I might sleep in security with such watchmen at the helm, and that whatever difficulties and dangers should assail our course, they would do what could be done to avoid or surmount them.  In this confidence I envelope myself, and hope to slumber on to my last sleep.  And should difficulties occur which they cannot avert, if we follow them in phalanx, we shall surmount them without danger.

I have been long intending to write to you as one of the associated company for printing useful works.

Our laws, language, religion, politics and manners are so deeply laid in English foundations, that we shall never 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 apologist, and advocated all their enormities.  To support his work, when done, he went back to the Tudors, 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 reverted 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 free principles of the English government, has persuaded readers of all classes that these were usurpations on the legitimate 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.  Baxter, one of Horne Tooke’s associates in persecution, has hit on the only remedy the evil admits.  He has taken Hume’s work, corrected in the text his misrepresentations, supplied the truths which he suppressed, and yet has given the mass of the work in Hume’s own words.  And it is wonderful how little interpolation has been necessary to make it a sound history, and to justify what should have been its title, to wit, “Hume’s history of England abridged and rendered faithful to fact and principle.”  I cannot say that his amendments are either in matter or manner in the fine style of Hume.  Yet they are often unperceived, and occupy so little of the whole work as not to depreciate it.  Unfortunately he has abridged Hume, by leaving out all the less important details.  It is thus reduced to about one half its original size.  He has also continued the history, but very summarily, to 1801.  The whole work is of 834 quarto pages, printed close, of which the continuation occupies 283.  I have read but little of this part.  As far as I can judge from that little, it is a mere chronicle, offering nothing profound.  This work is so unpopular, so distasteful to the present Tory palates and principles of England, that I believe it has never reached a second edition.  I have often inquired for it in our book shops, but never could find a copy in them, and I think it possible the one I imported may be the only one in America.  Can we not have it re-printed here?  It would be about four volumes 8vo.

I have another enterprise to propose for some good printer.  I have in my possession a MS. work in French, confided to me by a friend, whose name alone would give it celebrity were it permitted to be mentioned.  But considerations insuperable forbid that.  It is a Commentary and Review of Montesquieu’s Spirit of Laws.  The history of that work is well known.  He had been a great reader, and had commonplaced everything he read.  At length he wished to undertake some work into which he could bring his whole commonplace book in a digested form.  He fixed on the subject of his Spirit of Laws, and wrote the book.  He consulted his friend Helvetius about publishing it, who strongly dissuaded it.  He published it, however, and the world did not confirm Helvetius’ opinion.  Still, every man who reflects as he reads, has considered it as a book of paradoxes; having, indeed, much of truth and sound principle, but abounding also with inconsistencies, apochryphal facts and false inferences.  It is a correction of these which has been executed in the work I mention, by way of commentary and review; not by criticising words or sentences, but by taking a book at a time, considering its general scope, and proceeding to confirm or confute it.  And much of confutation there is, and of substitution of true for false principle, and the true principle is ever that of republicanism.  I will not venture to say that every sentiment in the book will be approved, because, being in manuscript, and the French characters, I have not read the whole, but so much only as might enable me to estimate the soundness of the author’s way of viewing his subject; and, judging from that which I have read, I infer with confidence that we shall find the work generally worthy of our high approbation, and that it everywhere maintains the preeminence of representative government, by showing that its foundations are laid in reason, in right, and in general good.  I had expected this from my knowledge of the other writings of the author, which have always a precision rarely to be met with.  But to give you an idea of the manner of its execution, I translate and enclose his commentary on Montesquieu’s eleventh book, which contains the division of the work.  I wish I could have added his review at the close of the twelve first books, as this would give a more complete idea of the extraordinary merit of the work.  But it is too long to be copied.  I add from it, however, a few extracts of his reviews of some of the books, as specimens of his plan and principles.  If printed in French, it would be of about 180 pages 8vo, or 23 sheets.  If any one will undertake to have it translated and printed on their own account, I will send on the MS. by post, and they can take the copyright as of an original work, which it ought to be understood to be.  I am anxious it should be ably translated by some one who possesses style as well as capacity to do justice to abstruse conceptions.  I would even undertake to revise the translation if required.  The original sheets must be returned to me, and I should wish the work to be executed with as little delay as possible.

I close this long letter with assurances of my great esteem and respect.

“A Law Beyond the Constitution”

SIR, -- Your favor of the 14th has been duly received, and I have to thank you for the many obliging things respecting myself which are said in it.  If I have left in the breasts of my fellow citizens a sentiment of satisfaction with my conduct in the transaction of their business, it will soften the pillow of my repose through the residue of life.

The question you propose, whether circumstances do not sometimes occur, which make it a duty in officers of high trust, to assume authorities beyond the law, is easy of solution in principle, but sometimes embarrassing in practice.  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 country 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 those 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 property 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 abundance, 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.  Further to exemplify the principle, I will state an hypothetical case.  Suppose it had been made known to the Executive of the Union in the autumn of 1805, that we might have the Floridas for a reasonable sum, that that sum had not indeed been so appropriated by law, but that Congress were to meet within three weeks, and might appropriate it on the first or second day of their session.  Ought he, for so great an advantage to his country, to have risked himself by transcending the law and making the purchase?  The public advantage offered, in this supposed case, was indeed immense; but a reverence for law, and the probability that the advantage might still be legally accomplished by a delay of only three weeks, were powerful reasons against hazarding the act.  But suppose it foreseen that a John Randolph would find means to protract the proceeding on it by Congress, until the ensuing spring, by which time new circumstances would change the mind of the other party.  Ought the Executive, in that case, and with that foreknowledge, to have secured the good to his country, and to have trusted to their justice for the transgression of the law?  I think he ought, and that the act would have been approved.  After the affair of the Chesapeake, we thought war a very possible result.  Our magazineswere illy provided with some necessary articles, nor had any appropriations been made for their purchase.  We ventured, however, to provide them, and to place our country in safety; and stating the case to Congress, they sanctioned the act.

To proceed to the conspiracy of Burr, and particularly to General Wilkinson’s situation in New Orleans.  In judging this case, we are bound to consider the state of the information, correct and incorrect, which he then possessed.  He expected Burr and his band from above, a British fleet from below, and he knew there was a formidable conspiracy within the city.  Under these circumstances, was he justifiable, 1st, in seizing notorious conspirators?  On this there can be but two opinions; one, of the guilty and their accomplices; the other, that of all honest men.  2d.  In sending them to the seat of government, when the written law gave them a right to trial in the territory?  The danger of their rescue, of their continuing their machinations, the tardiness and weakness of the law, apathy of the judges, active patronage of the whole tribe of lawyers, unknown disposition of the juries, an hourly expectation of the enemy, salvation of the city, and of the Union itself, which would have been convulsed to its centre, had that conspiracy succeeded; all these constituted a law of necessity and self-preservation, and rendered the salus populi supreme over the written law.  The officer who is called to act on this superior ground, does indeed risk himself on the justice of the controlling powers of the constitution, and his station makes it his duty to incur that risk.  But those controlling powers, and his fellow citizens generally, are bound to judge according to the circumstances under which he acted.  They are not to transfer the information of this place or moment to the time and place of his action; but to put themselves into his situation.  We knew here that there never was danger of a British fleet from below, and that Burr’s band was crushed before it reached the Mississippi.  But General Wilkinson’s information was very different, and he could act on no other.

From these examples and principles you may see what I think on the question proposed.  They do not go to the case of persons charged with petty duties, where consequences are trifling, and time allowed for a legal course, nor to authorize them to take such cases out of the written law.  In these, the example of overleaping the law is of greater evil than a strict adherence to its imperfect provisions.  It is incumbent on those only who accept of great charges, to risk themselves on great occasions, when the safety of the nation, or some of its very high interests are at stake.  An officer is bound to obey orders; yet he would be a bad one who should do it in cases for which they were not intended, and which involved the most important consequences.  The line of discrimination between cases may be difficult; but the good officer is bound to draw it at his own peril, and throw himself on the justice of his country and the rectitude of his motives.

I have indulged freer views on this question, on your assurances that they are for your own eye only, and that they will not get into the hands of newswriters.  I met their scurrilities without concern, while in pursuit of the great interests with which I was charged.  But in my present retirement, no duty forbids my wish for quiet.

Accept the assurances of my esteem and respect.