Letters of Thomas Jefferson

1820

“A Fire Bell in the Night”

I thank you, dear Sir, for the copy you have been so kind as to send me of the letter to your constituents on the Missouri question.  It is a perfect justification to them.  I had for a long time ceased to read newspapers, or pay any attention to public affairs, confident they were in good hands, and content to be a passenger in our bark to the shore from which I am not distant.  But this momentous question, like a fire bell in the night, awakened and filled me with terror.  I considered it at once as the knell of the Union.  It is hushed, indeed, for the moment.  But this is a reprieve only, not a final sentence.  A geographical line, coinciding with a marked principle, moral and political, once conceived and held up to the angry passions of men, will never be obliterated; and every new irritation will mark it deeper and deeper.  I can say, with conscious truth, that there is not a man on earth who would sacrifice more than I would to relieve us from this heavy reproach, in any practicable way.  The cession of that kind of property, for so it is misnamed, is a bagatelle which would not cost me a second thought, if, in that way, a general emancipation and expatriation could be effected; and gradually, and with due sacrifices, I think it might be.  But as it is, we have the wolf by the ears, and we can neither hold him, nor safely let him go.  Justice is in one scale, and self-preservation in the other.  Of one thing I am certain, that as the passage of slaves from one State to another, would not make a slave of a single human being who would not be so without it, so their diffusion over a greater surface would make them individually happier, and proportionally facilitate the accomplishment of their emancipation, by dividing the burthen on a greater number of coadjutors.  An abstinence too, from this act of power, would remove the jealousy excited by the undertaking of Congress to regulate the condition of the different descriptions of men composing a State.  This certainly is the exclusive right of every State, which nothing in the constitution has taken from them and given to the General Government.  Could Congress, for example, say, that the non-freemen of Connecticut shall be freemen, or that they shall not emigrate into any other State?

I regret that I am now to die in the belief, that the useless sacrifice of themselves by the generation of 1776, to acquire self-government and happiness to their country, is to be thrown away by the unwise and unworthy passions of their sons, and that my only consolation is to be, that I live not to weep over it.  If they would but dispassionately weigh the blessings they will throw away, against an abstract principle more likely to be effected by union than by scission, they would pause before they would perpetrate this act of suicide on themselves, and of treason against the hopes of the world.  To yourself, as the faithful advocate of the Union, I tender the offering of my high esteem and respect.

“Jesus and the Jews”

DEAR SIR, -- I owe you a letter for your favor of June the 29th, which was received in due time; and there being no subject of the day, of particular interest, I will make this a supplement to mine of April the 13th.  My aim in that was, to justify the character of Jesus against the fictions of his pseudo-followers, which have exposed him to the inference of being an impostor.  For if we could believe that he really countenanced the follies, the falsehoods and the charlatanisms which his biographers father on him, and admit the misconstructions, interpolations and theorizations of the fathers of the early, and fanatics of the latter ages, the conclusion would be irresistible by every sound mind, that he was an impostor.  I give no credit to their falsifications of his actions and doctrines, and to rescue his character, the postulate in my letter asked only what is granted in reading every other historian.  When Livy and Siculus, for example, tell us things which coincide with our experience of the order of nature, we credit them on their word, and place their narrations among the records of credible history.  But when they tell us of calves speaking, of statues sweating blood, and other things against the course of nature, we reject these as fables not belonging to history.  In like manner, when an historian, speaking of a character well known and established on satisfactory testimony, imputes to it things incompatible with that character, we reject them without hesitation, and assent to that only of which we have better evidence.  Had Plutarch informed us that Caesar and Cicero passed their whole lives in religious exercises, and abstinence from the affairs of the world, we should reject what was so inconsistent with their established characters, still crediting what he relates in conformity with our ideas of them.  So again, the superlative wisdom of Socrates is testified by all antiquity, and placed on ground not to be questioned.  When, therefore, Plato puts into his mouth such paralogisms, such quibbles on words, and sophisms, as a school boy would be ashamed of, we conclude they were the whimsies of Plato’s own foggy brain, and acquit Socrates of puerilities so unlike his character.  (Speaking of Plato, I will add, that no writer, antient or modern, has bewildered the world with more ignes fatui, than this renowned philosopher, in Ethics, in Politics and Physics.  In the latter, to specify a single example, compare his views of the animal economy, in his Timaeus, with those of Mrs. Bryan in her Conversations on Chemistry, and weigh the science of the canonised philosopher against the good sense of the unassuming lady.  But Plato’s visions have furnished a basis for endless systems of mystical theology, and he is therefore all but adopted as a Christian saint.  It is surely time for men to think for themselves, and to throw off the authority of names so artificially magnified.  But to return from this parenthasis.)  I say, that this free exercise of reason is all I ask for the vindication of the character of Jesus.  We find in the writings of his biographers matter of two distinct descriptions.  First, a groundwork of vulgar ignorance, of things impossible, of superstitions, fanaticisms and fabrications.  Intermixed with these, again, are sublime ideas of the Supreme Being, aphorisms and precepts of the purest morality and benevolence, sanctioned by a life of humility, innocence and simplicity of manners, neglect of riches, absence of worldly ambition and honors, with an eloquence and persuasiveness which have not been surpassed.  These could not be inventions of the groveling authors who relate them.  They are far beyond the powers of their feeble minds.  They shew that there was a character, the subject of their history, whose splendid conceptions were above all suspicion of being interpolations from their hands.  Can we be at a loss in separating such materials, and ascribing each to its genuine author?  The difference is obvious to the eye and to the understanding, and we may read as we run to each his part; and I will venture to affirm, that he who, as I have done, will undertake to winnow this grain from its chaff, will find it not to require a moment’s consideration.  The parts fall asunder of themselves, as would those of an image of metal and clay.

There are, I acknowledge, passages not free from objection, which we may, with probability, ascribe to Jesus himself; but claiming indulgence from the circumstances under which he acted.  His object was the reformation of some articles in the religion of the Jews, as taught by Moses.  That sect had presented for the object of their worship, a being of terrific character, cruel, vindictive, capricious and unjust.  Jesus, taking for his type the best qualities of the human head and heart, wisdom, justice, goodness, and adding to them power, ascribed all of these, but in infinite perfection, to the Supreme Being, and formed him really worthy of their adoration.  Moses had either not believed in a future state of existence, or had not thought it essential to be explicitly taught to his people.  Jesus inculcated that doctrine with emphasis and precision.  Moses had bound the Jews to many idle ceremonies, mummeries and observances, of no effect towards producing the social utilities which constitute the essence of virtue; Jesus exposed their futility and insignificance.  The one instilled into his people the most anti-social spirit towards other nations; the other preached philanthropy and universal charity and benevolence.  The office of reformer of the superstitions of a nation, is ever dangerous.  Jesus had to walk on the perilous confines of reason and religion: and a step to right or left might place him within the gripe of the priests of the superstition, a blood thirsty race, as cruel and remorseless as the being whom they represented as the family God of Abraham, of Isaac and of Jacob, and the local God of Israel.  They were constantly laying snares, too, to entangle him in the web of the law.  He was justifiable, therefore, in avoiding these by evasions, by sophisms, by misconstructions and misapplications of scraps of the prophets, and in defending himself with these their own weapons, as sufficient, ad homines, at least.  That Jesus did not mean to impose himself on mankind as the son of God, physically speaking, I have been convinced by the writings of men more learned than myself in that lore.  But that he might conscientiously believe himself inspired from above, is very possible.  The whole religion of the Jews, inculcated on him from his infancy, was founded in the belief of divine inspiration.  The fumes of the most disordered imaginations were recorded in their religious code, as special communications of the Deity; and as it could not but happen that, in the course of ages, events would now and then turn up to which some of these vague rhapsodies might be accommodated by the aid of allegories, figures, types, and other tricks upon words, they have not only preserved their credit with the Jews of all subsequent times, but are the foundation of much of the religions of those who have schismatised from them.  Elevated by the enthusiasm of a warm and pure heart, conscious of the high strains of an eloquence which had not been taught him, he might readily mistake the coruscations of his own fine genius for inspirations of an higher order.  This belief carried, therefore, no more personal imputation, than the belief of Socrates, that himself was under the care and admonitions of a guardian Daemon.  And how many of our wisest men still believe in the reality of these inspirations, while perfectly sane on all other subjects.  Excusing, therefore, on these considerations, those passages in the gospels which seem to bear marks of weakness in Jesus, ascribing to him what alone is consistent with the great and pure character of which the same writings furnish proofs, and to their proper authors their own trivialities and imbecilities, I think myself authorised to conclude the purity and distinction of his character, in opposition to the impostures which those authors would fix upon him; and that the postulate of my former letter is no more than is granted in all other historical works.

Mr. Correa is here, on his farewell visit to us. He has been much pleased with the plan and progress of our University, and has given some valuable hints to its botanical branch.  He goes to do, I hope, much good in his new country; the public instruction there, as I understand, being within the department destined for him.  He is not without dissatisfaction, and reasonable dissatisfaction too, with the piracies of Baltimore; but his justice and friendly dispositions will, I am sure, distinguish between the iniquities of a few plunderers, and the sound principles of our country at large, and of our government especially.  From many conversations with him, I hope he sees, and will promote in his new situation, the advantages of a cordial fraternization among all the American nations, and the importance of their coalescing in an American system of policy, totally independent of, and unconnected with that of Europe.  The day is not distant, when we may formally require a meridian of partition through the ocean which separates the two hemispheres, on the hither side of which no European gun shall ever be heard, nor an American on the other; and when, during the rage of the eternal wars of Europe, the lion and the lamb, within our regions, shall lie down together in peace.  The excess of population in Europe and want of room, render war, in their opinion, necessary to keep down that excess of numbers.  Here, room is abundant, population scanty, and peace the necessary means for producing men, to whom the redundant soil is offering the means of life and happiness.  The principles of society there and here, then, are radically different, and I hope no American patriot will ever lose sight of the essential policy of interdicting in the seas and territories of both Americas, the ferocious and sanguinary contests of Europe.  I wish to see this coalition begun.  I am earnest for an agreement with the maritime powers of Europe, assigning them the task of keeping down the piracies of their seas and the cannibalisms of the African coasts, and to us, the suppression of the same enormities within our seas: and for this purpose, I should rejoice to see the fleets of Brazil and the United States riding together as brethren of the same family, and pursuing the same object.  And indeed it would be of happy augury to begin at once this concert of action here, on the invitation of either to the other government, while the way might be preparing for withdrawing our cruisers from Europe, and preventing naval collisions there which daily endanger our peace.

Turning to another part of your letter, I do not think the obstacles insuperable which you state as opposed to your visit to us. From one of the persons mentioned, I never heard a sentiment but of esteem for you and I am certain you would be recieved with kindness and cordiality.  But still the call may be omitted without notice.  The mountain lies between his residence and the main road, and occludes the expectation of transient visits.  I am equally ignorant of any dispositions not substantially friendly to you in the other person.  But the alibi there gives you ten free months in the year.  But if the visit is to be but once in your life, I would suppress my impatience and consent it should be made a year or two hence.  Because, by that time our University will be compleate and in full action: and you would recieve the satisfaction, in the final adieu to your native state, of seeing that she would retain her equal standing in the sisterhood of our republics.  However, come now, come then, or come when you please, your visit will give me the gratification I feel in every opportunity of proving to you the sincerity of my friendship and respect for you.

“The University, Neology, and Materialism”

I am a great defaulter, my dear Sir, in our correspondence, but prostrate health rarely permits me to write; and, when it does, matters of business imperiously press their claims.  I am getting better however, slowly, swelled legs being now the only serious symptom, and these, I believe, proceed from extreme debility.  I can walk but little; but I ride 6. or 8. miles a day without fatigue; and within a few days, I shall endeavor to visit my other home, after a twelve month’s absence from it.  Our University, 4 miles distant, gives me frequent exercise, and the oftener as I direct it’s architecture.  It’s plan is unique, and it is becoming an object of curiosity for the traveller.  I have lately had an opportunity of reading a critique on this institution in your North American Review of January last, having been not without anxiety to see what that able work would say of us: and I was relieved on finding in it much coincidence of opinion, and even, where criticisms were indulged, I found they would have been obviated had the developements of our plan been fuller.  But these were restrained by the character of the paper reviewed, being merely a report of outlines, not a detailed treatise, and addressed to a legislative body, not to a learned academy.  E.g. as an inducement to introduce the Anglo-Saxon into our plan, it was said that it would reward amply the few weeks of attention which alone would be requisite for it’s attainment; leaving both term and degree under an indefinite expression, because I know that not much time is necessary to attain it to an useful degree, sufficient to give such instruction in the etymologies of our language as may satisfy ordinary students, while more time would be requisite for those who would propose to attain a critical knolege of it.  In a letter which I had occasion to write to Mr. Crofts (who sent you, I believe, as well as myself, a copy of his treatise on the English and German languages, as preliminary to an Etymological dictionary he meditated) I went into explanations with him of an easy process for simplifying the study of the Anglo-Saxon, and lessening the terrors, and difficulties presented by it’s rude Alphabet, and unformed orthography.  But this is a subject beyond the bounds of a letter, as it was beyond the bounds of a Report to the legislature.  Mr. Crofts died, I believe, before any progress was made in the work he had projected.

The reviewer expresses doubt, rather than decision, on our placing Military and Naval architecture in the department of Pure Mathematics. Military architecture embraces fortification and field works, which with their bastions, curtains, hornworks, redoubts etc. are based on a technical combination of lines and angles.  These are adapted to offence and defence, with and against the effects of bombs, balls, escalades etc.  But lines and angles make the sum of elementary geometry, a branch of Pure Mathematics: and the direction of the bombs, balls, and other projectiles, the necessary appendages of military works, altho’ no part of their architecture, belong to the conic sections, a branch of transcendental geometry.  Diderot and Dalembert therefore, in their Arbor scientiae, have placed military architecture in the department of elementary geometry.  Naval architecture teaches the best form and construction of vessels; for which best form it has recourse to the question of the Solid of least resistance, a problem of transcendental geometry.  And it’s appurtenant projectiles belong to the same branch, as in the preceding case.  It is true that so far as respects the action of the water on the rudder and oars, and of the wind on the sails, it may be placed in the department of mechanics, as Diderot and Dalambert have done: but belonging quite as much to geometry, and allied in it’s military character, to military architecture, it simplified our plan to place both under the same head.  These views are so obvious that I am sure they would have required but a second thought to reconcile the reviewer to their location under the head of Pure Mathematics.  For this word Location, see Bailey, Johnson, Sheridan, Walker etc.  But if Dictionaries are to be the Arbiters of language, in which of them shall we find neologism.  No matter.  It is a good word, well sounding, obvious, and expresses an idea which would otherwise require circumlocution.  The Reviewer was justifiable therefore in using it; altho’ he noted at the same time, as unauthoritative, centrality, grade, sparse; all which have been long used in common speech and writing.  I am a friend to neology.  It is the only way to give to a language copiousness and euphony.  Without it we should still be held to the vocabulary of Alfred or of Ulphilas; and held to their state of science also: for I am sure they had no words which could have conveyed the ideas of Oxigen, cotyledons, zoophytes, magnetism, electricity, hyaline, and thousands of others expressing ideas not then existing, nor of possible communication in the state of their language.  What a language has the French become since the date of their revolution, by the free introduction of new words!  The most copious and eloquent in the living world; and equal to the Greek, had not that been regularly modifiable almost ad infinitum.  Their rule was that whenever their language furnished or adopted a root, all it’s branches, in every part of speech were legitimated by giving them their appropriate terminations. {adelphos} [“brother”], {adelphe} [“sister”], {adelphidion} [“little brother”], {adelphotes} [“brotherly affection”], {adelphixis} [“brotherhood”], {adelphidoys} [“nephew”], {adelphikos} [“brotherly,” adj.], {adelphizo} [“to adopt as a brother”], {adelphikos} [“brotherly,” adv.].  And this should be the law of every language.  Thus, having adopted the adjective fraternal, it is a root, which should legitimate fraternity, fraternation, fraternisation, fraternism, to fraternate, fraternise, fraternally.  And give the word neologism to our language, as a root, and it should give us it’s fellow substantives, neology, neologist, neologisation; it’s adjectives neologous, neological, neologistical, it’s verb neologise, and adverb neologically.  Dictionaries are but the depositories of words already legitimated by usage.  Society is the work-shop in which new ones are elaborated.  When an individual uses a new word, if illformed it is rejected in society, if wellformed, adopted, and, after due time, laid up in the depository of dictionaries.  And if, in this process of sound neologisation, our transatlantic brethren shall not choose to accompany us, we may furnish, after the Ionians, a second example of a colonial dialect improving on it’s primitive.

But enough of criticism: let me turn to your puzzling letter of May 12. on matter, spirit, motion etc. It’s croud of scepticisms kept me from sleep.  I read it, and laid it down: read it, and laid it down, again and again: and to give rest to my mind, I was obliged to recur ultimately to my habitual anodyne, ‘I feel: therefore I exist.’  I feel bodies which are not myself: there are other existencies then.  I call them matter.  I feel them changing place.  This gives me motion.  Where there is an absence of matter, I call it void, or nothing, or immaterial space.  On the basis of sensation, of matter and motion, we may erect the fabric of all the certainties we can have or need.  I can concieve thought to be an action of a particular organisation of matter, formed for that purpose by it’s creator, as well as that attraction in an action of matter, or magnetism of loadstone.  When he who denies to the Creator the power of endowing matter with the mode of action called thinking shall shew how he could endow the Sun with the mode of action called attraction, which reins the planets in the tract of their orbits, or how an absence of matter can have a will, and, by that will, put matter into motion, then the materialist may be lawfully required to explain the process by which matter exercises the faculty of thinking.  When once we quit the basis of sensation, all is in the wind.  To talk of immaterial existences is to talk of nothings.  To say that the human soul, angels, god, are immaterial, is to say they are nothings, or that there is no god, no angels, no soul.  I cannot reason otherwise: but I believe I am supported in my creed of materialism by Locke, Tracy, and Stewart.  At what age of the Christian church this heresy of immaterialism, this masked atheism, crept in, I do not know.  But a heresy it certainly is.  Jesus taught nothing of it.  He told us indeed that ‘God is a spirit,’ but he has not defined what a spirit is, nor said that it is not matter.  And the antient fathers generally, if not universally, held it to be matter: light and thin indeed, an etherial gas; but still matter.  Origen says ‘Deus reapse corporalis est; sed graviorum tantum corporum ratione, incorporeus.’  Tertullian ‘quid enim deus nisi corpus?’ and again ‘quis negabit deumesse corpus?  Etsi deus spiritus, spiritus etiam corpus est, sui generis, in sua effigie.’  St. Justin Martyr ‘{to Theion phamen einai asomaton oyk oti asomaton -- epeide de to me krateisthai ypo tinos, toy krateisthai timioteron esti, dia toyto kaloymen ayton asomaton.}’  And St. Macarius, speaking of angels says ‘quamvis enim subtilia sint, tamen in substantia, forma et figura, secundum tenuitatem naturae eorum, corpora sunt tenuia.’  And St. Austin, St. Basil, Lactantius, Tatian, Athenagoras and others, with whose writings I pretend not a familiarity, are said by those who are, to deliver the same doctrine.  Turn to your Ocellus d’Argens 97. 105. and to his Timaeus 17. for these quotations.  In England these Immaterialists might have been burnt until the 29. Car. 2. when the writ de haeretico comburendo was abolished: and here until the revolution, that statute not having extended to us.  All heresies being now done away with us, these schismatists are merely atheists, differing from the material Atheist only in their belief that ‘nothing made something,’ and from the material deist who believes that matter alone can operate on matter.

Rejecting all organs of information therefore but my senses, I rid myself of the Pyrrhonisms with which an indulgence in speculations hyperphysical and antiphysical so uselessly occupy and disquiet the mind.  A single sense may indeed be sometimes decieved, but rarely: and never all our senses together, with their faculty of reasoning.  They evidence realities; and there are enough of these for all the purposes of life, without plunging into the fathomless abyss of dreams and phantasms.  I am satisfied, and sufficiently occupied with the things which are, without tormenting or troubling myself about those which may indeed be, but of which I have no evidence.  I am sure that I really know many, many, things, and none more surely than that I love you with all my heart, and pray for the continuance of your life until you shall be tired of it yourself.

“Judicial Subversion”

DEAR SIR, -- On my return home after a long absence, I find here your favor of November the 23d, with Colonel Taylor’s “Construction Construed,” which you have been so kind as to send me, in the name of the author as well as yourself.  Permit me, if you please, to use the same channel for conveying to him the thanks I render you also for this mark of attention.  I shall read it, I know, with edification, as I did his Inquiry, to which I acknowledge myself indebted for many valuable ideas, and for the correction of some errors of early opinion, never seen in a correct light until presented to me in that work.  That the present volume is equally orthodox, I know before reading it, because I know that Colonel Taylor and myself have rarely, if ever, differed in any political principle of importance.  Every act of his life, and every word he ever wrote, satisfies me of this.  So, also, as to the two Presidents, late and now in office, I know them both to be of principles as truly republican as any men living.  If there be anything amiss, therefore, in the present state of our affairs, as the formidable deficit lately unfolded to us indicates, I ascribe it to the inattention of Congress to their duties, to their unwise dissipation and waste of the public contributions.  They seemed, some little while ago, to be at a loss for objects whereon to throw away the supposed fathomless funds of the treasury.  I had feared the result, because I saw among them some of my old fellow laborers, of tried and known principles, yet often in their minorities.  I am aware that in one of their most ruinous vagaries, the people were themselves betrayed into the same phrenzy with their Representatives.  The deficit produced, and a heavy tax to supply it, will, I trust, bring both to their sober senses.

But it is not from this branch of government we have most to fear.  Taxes and short elections will keep them right.  The judiciary of the United States is the subtle corps of sappers and miners constantly working under ground to undermine the foundations of our confederated fabric.  They are construing our constitution from a co-ordination of a general and special government to a general and supreme one alone.  This will lay all things at their feet, and they are too well versed in English law to forget the maxim, “boni judicis est ampliare juris-dictionem.”  We shall see if they are bold enough to take the daring stride their five lawyers have lately taken.  If they do, then, with the editor of our book, in his address to the public, I will say, that “against this every man should raise his voice,” and more, should uplift his arm.  Who wrote this admirable address?  Sound, luminous, strong, not a word too much, nor one which can be changed but for the worse.  That pen should go on, lay bare these wounds of our constitution, expose the decisions seriatim, and arouse, as it is able, the attention of the nation to these bold speculators on its patience.  Having found, from experience, that impeachment is an impracticable thing, a mere scare-crow, they consider themselves secure for life; they sculk from responsibility to public opinion, the only remaining hold on them, under a practice first introduced into England by Lord Mansfield.  An opinion is huddled up in conclave, perhaps by a majority of one, delivered as if unanimous, and with the silent acquiescence of lazy or timid associates, by a crafty chief judge, who sophisticates the law to his mind, by the turn of his own reasoning.  A judiciary law was once reported by the Attorney General to Congress, requiring each judge to deliver his opinion seriatim and openly, and then to give it in writing to the clerk to be entered in the record.  A judiciary independent of a king or executive alone, is a good thing; but independence of the will of the nation is a solecism, at least in a republican government.

But to return to your letter; you ask for my opinion of the work you send me, and to let it go out to the public.  This I have ever made a point of declining, (one or two instances only excepted.)  Complimentary thanks to writers who have sent me their works, have betrayed me sometimes before the public, without my consent having been asked.  But I am far from presuming to direct the reading of my fellow citizens, who are good enough judges themselves of what is worthy their reading.  I am, also, too desirous of quiet to place myself in the way of contention.  Against this I am admonished by bodily decay, which cannot be unaccompanied by corresponding wane of the mind.  Of this I am as yet sensible, sufficiently to be unwilling to trust myself before the public, and when I cease to be so, I hope that my friends will be too careful of me to draw me forth and present me, like a Priam in armor, as a spectacle for public compassion.  I hope our political bark will ride through all its dangers; but I can in future be but an inert passenger.

I salute you with sentiments of great friendship and respect.

“The Missouri Question”

DEAR SIR, -- ‘It is said to be an ill wind which blows favorably to no one.’  My ill health has long suspended the too frequent troubles I have heretofore given you with my European correspondence.  To this is added a stiffening wrist, the effect of age on an antient dislocation, which renders writing slow and painful, and disables me nearly from all correspondence, and may very possibly make this the last trouble I shall give you in that way.

Looking from our quarter of the world over the horizon of yours we imagine we see storms gathering which may again desolate the face of that country.  So many revolutions going on, in different countries at the same time, such combinations of tyranny, and military preparations and movements to suppress them.  England & France unsafe from internal conflict, Germany, on the first favorable occasion, ripe for insurrection, such a state of things, we suppose, must end in war, which needs a kindling spark in one spot only to spread over the whole.  Your information can correct these views which are stated only to inform you of impressions here.

At home things are not well.  The flood of paper money, as you well know, had produced an exaggeration of nominal prices and at the same time a facility of obtaining money, which not only encouraged speculations on fictitious capital, but seduced those of real capital, even in private life, to contract debts too freely.  Had things continued in the same course, these might have been manageable.  But the operations of the U.S. bank for the demolition of the state banks, obliged these suddenly to call in more than half of their paper, crushed all fictitious and doubtful capital, and reduced the prices of property and produce suddenly to 1/3 of what they had been.  Wheat, for example, at the distance of two or three days from market, fell to and continues at from one third to half a dollar.  Should it be stationary at this for a while, a very general revolution of property must take place.  Something of the same character has taken place in our fiscal system.  A little while back Congress seemed at a loss for objects whereon to squander the supposed fathomless funds of our treasury.  This short frenzy has been arrested by a deficit of 5 millions the last year, and of 7. millions this year.  A loan was adopted for the former and is proposed for the latter, which threatens to saddle us with a perpetual debt.  I hope a tax will be preferred, because it will awaken the attention of the people, and make reformation & economy the principles of the next election. The frequent recurrence of this chastening operation can alone restrain the propensity of governments to enlarge expence beyond income.  The steady tenor of the courts of the US. to break down the constitutional barrier between the coordinate powers of the States, and of the Union, and a formal opinion lately given by 5. lawyers of too much eminence to be neglected, give uneasiness.  But nothing has ever presented so threatening an aspect as what is called the Missouri question.  The Federalists compleatly put down, and despairing of ever rising again under the old division of whig and tory, devised a new one, of slave-holding, & non-slave-holding states, which, while it had a semblance of being Moral, was at the same time Geographical, and calculated to give them ascendancy by debauching their old opponents to a coalition with them.  Moral the question certainly is not, because the removal of slaves from one state to another, no more than their removal from one country to another, would never make a slave of one human being who would not be so without it.  Indeed if there were any morality in the question it is on the other side; because by spreading them over a larger surface, their happiness would be increased, & the burthen of their future liberation lightened by bringing a greater number of shoulders under it.  However it served to throw dust into the eyes of the people and to fanaticise them, while to the knowing ones it gave a geographical and preponderant line of the Patomac and Ohio, throwing 12. States to the North and East, & 10. to the South & West.  With these therefore it is merely a question of power: but with this geographical minority it is a question of existence.  For if Congress once goes out of the Constitution to arrogate a right of regulating the conditions of the inhabitants of the States, its majority may, and probably will next declare that the condition of all men within the US. shall be that of freedom, in which case all the whites South of the Patomak and Ohio must evacuate their States; and most fortunate those who can do it first.  And so far this crisis seems to be advancing.  The Missouri constitution is recently rejected by the House of Representatives.  What will be their next step is yet to be seen.  If accepted on the condition that Missouri shall expunge from it the prohibition of free people of colour from emigration to their state, it will be expunged, and all will be quieted until the advance of some new state shall present the question again.  If rejected unconditionally, Missouri assumes independent self-government, and Congress, after pouting awhile, must recieve them on the footing of the original states.  Should the Representative propose force, 1.  the Senate will not concur.  2.  were they to concur, there would be a secession of the members South of the line, & probably of the three North Western states, who, however inclined to the other side, would scarcely separate from those who would hold the Misisipi from it’s mouth to it’s source.  What next?  Conjecture itself is at a loss.  But whatever it shall be you will hear from others and from the newspapers.  And finally the whole will depend on Pensylvania.  While she and Virginia hold together, the Atlantic states can never separate.  Unfortunately in the present case she has become more fanaticised than any other state.  However useful where you are, I wish you were with them.  You might turn the scale there, which would turn it for the whole.  Should this scission take place, one of it’s most deplorable consequences would be it’s discouragement of the efforts of the European nations in the regeneration of their oppressive and Cannibal governments.

Amidst this prospect of evil, I am glad to see one good effect.  It has brought the necessity of some plan gf general emancipation & deportation more home to the minds of our people than it has ever been before.  Insomuch, that our Governor has ventured to propose one to the legislature.  This will probably not be acted on at this time.  Nor would it be effectual; for while it proposes to devote to that object one third of the revenue of the State, it would not reach one tenth of the annual increase.  My proposition would be that the holders should give up all born after a certain day, past, present, or to come, that these should be placed under the guardianship of the State, and sent at a proper age to S. Domingo.  There they are willing to recieve them, & the shortness of the passage brings the deportation within the possible means of taxation aided by charitable contributions.  In this I think Europe, which has forced this evil on us, and the Eastern states who have been it’s chief instruments of importation, would be bound to give largely.  But the proceeds of the land office, if appropriated, would be quite sufficient.  God bless you and preserve you multos aNos.