Letters of Thomas Jefferson

1823

“Calvin and Cosmology”

DEAR SIR, -- The wishes expressed, in your last favor, that I may continue in life and health until I become a Calvinist, at least in his exclamation of ‘mon Dieu! jusque a quand’! would make me immortal.  I can never join Calvin in addressing his god.  He was indeed an Atheist, which I can never be; or rather his religion was Daemonism.  If ever man worshipped a false god, he did.  The being described in his 5. points is not the God whom you and I acknolege and adore, the Creator and benevolent governor of the world; but a daemon of malignant spirit.  It would be more pardonable to believe in no god at all, than to blaspheme him by the atrocious attributes of Calvin.  Indeed I think that every Christian sect gives a great handle to Atheism by their general dogma that, without a revelation, there would not be sufficient proof of the being of a god.  Now one sixth of mankind only are supposed to be Christians: the other five sixths then, who do not believe in the Jewish and Christian revelation, are without a knolege of the existence of a god!  This gives compleatly a gain de cause to the disciples of Ocellus, Timaeus, Spinosa, Diderot and D’Holbach.  The argument which they rest on as triumphant and unanswerable is that, in every hypothesis of Cosmogony you must admit an eternal pre-existence of something; and according to the rule of sound philosophy, you are never to employ two principles to solve a difficulty when one will suffice.  They say then that it is more simple to believe at once in the eternal pre-existence of the world, as it is now going on, and may for ever go on by the principle of reproduction which we see and witness, than to believe in the eternal pre-existence of an ulterior cause, or Creator of the world, a being whom we see not, and know not, of whose form substance and mode or place of existence, or of action no sense informs us, no power of the mind enables us to delineate or comprehend.  On the contrary I hold (without appeal to revelation) that when we take a view of the Universe, in it’s parts general or particular, it is impossible for the human mind not to percieve and feel a conviction of design, consummate skill, and indefinite power in every atom of it’s composition.  The movements of the heavenly bodies, so exactly held in their course by the balance of centrifugal and centripetal forces, the structure of our earth itself, with it’s distribution of lands, waters and atmosphere, animal and vegetable bodies, examined in all their minutest particles, insects mere atoms of life, yet as perfectly organised as man or mammoth, the mineral substances, their generation and uses, it is impossible, I say, for the human mind not to believe that there is, in all this, design, cause and effect, up to an ultimate cause, a fabricator of all things from matter and motion, their preserver and regulator while permitted to exist in their present forms, and their regenerator into new and other forms.  We see, too, evident proofs of the necessity of a superintending power to maintain the Universe in it’s course and order.  Stars, well known, have disappeared, new ones have come into view, comets, in their incalculable courses, may run foul of suns and planets and require renovation under other laws; certain races of animals are become extinct; and, were there no restoring power, all existences might extinguish successively, one by one, until all should be reduced to a shapeless chaos.  So irresistible are these evidences of an intelligent and powerful Agent that, of the infinite numbers of men who have existed thro’ all time, they have believed, in the proportion of a million at least to Unit, in the hypothesis of an eternal pre-existence of a creator, rather than in that of a self-existent Universe.  Surely this unanimous sentiment renders this more probable than that of the few in the other hypothesis.  Some early Christians indeed have believed in the coeternal pre-existance of both the Creator and the world, without changing their relation of cause and effect.  That this was the opinion of St. Thomas, we are informed by Cardinal Toleto, in these words ‘Deus ab aeterno fuit jam omnipotens, sicut cum produxit mundum.  Ab aeterno potuit producere mundum.  -- Si sol ab aeterno esset, lumen ab aeterno esset; et si pes, similiter vestigium.  At lumen et vestigium effectus sunt efficientis solis et pedis; potuit ergo cum causa aeterna effectus coaeterna esse.  Cujus sententiae est S. Thomas Theologorum primus’ Cardinal Toleta.

Of the nature of this being we know nothing. Jesus tells us that ‘God is a spirit.’  4. John 24. but without defining what a spirit is {pneyma o Theos}.  Down to the 3d. century we know that it was still deemed material; but of a lighter subtler matter than our gross bodies.  So says Origen.  ‘Deus igitur, cui anima similis est, juxta Originem, reapte corporalis est; sed graviorum tantum ratione corporum incorporeus.’  These are the words of Huet in his commentary on Origen.  Origen himself says ‘appelatio {asomaton} apud nostros scriptores est inusitata et incognita.’  So also Tertullian ‘quis autem negabit Deum esse corpus, etsi deus spiritus?  Spiritus etiam corporis sui generis, in sua effigie.’  Tertullian.  These two fathers were of the 3d. century.  Calvin’s character of this supreme being seems chiefly copied from that of the Jews.  But the reformation of these blasphemous attributes, and substitution of those more worthy, pure and sublime, seems to have been the chief object of Jesus in his discources to the Jews: and his doctrine of the Cosmogony of the world is very clearly laid down in the 3 first verses of the 1st. chapter of John, in these words, ‘{en arche en o logos, kai o logos en pros ton Theon kai Theos en o logos.  ‘otos en en arche pros ton Theon.  Panta de ayto egeneto, kai choris ayto egeneto ode en, o gegonen}.  Which truly translated means ‘in the beginning God existed, and reason (or mind) was with God, and that mind was God.  This was in the beginning with God.  All things were created by it, and without it was made not one thing which was made’.  Yet this text, so plainly declaring the doctrine of Jesus that the world was created by the supreme, intelligent being, has been perverted by modern Christians to build up a second person of their tritheism by a mistranslation of the word {logos}.  One of it’s legitimate meanings indeed is ‘a word.’  But, in that sense, it makes an unmeaning jargon: while the other meaning ‘reason’, equally legitimate, explains rationally the eternal preexistence of God, and his creation of the world.  Knowing how incomprehensible it was that ‘a word,’ the mere action or articulation of the voice and organs of speech could create a world, they undertake to make of this articulation a second preexisting being, and ascribe to him, and not to God, the creation of the universe.  The Atheist here plumes himself on the uselessness of such a God, and the simpler hypothesis of a self-existent universe.  The truth is that the greatest enemies to the doctrines of Jesus are those calling themselves the expositors of them, who have perverted them for the structure of a system of fancy absolutely incomprehensible, and without any foundation in his genuine words.  And the day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the supreme being as his father in the womb of a virgin will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter.  But we may hope that the dawn of reason and freedom of thought in these United States will do away with all this artificial scaffolding, and restore to us the primitive and genuine doctrines of this the most venerated reformer of human errors.

So much for your quotation of Calvin’s ‘mon dieu! jusqu’a quand’ in which, when addressed to the God of Jesus, and our God, I join you cordially, and await his time and will with more readiness than reluctance.  May we meet there again, in Congress, with our antient Colleagues, and recieve with them the seal of approbation ‘Well done, good and faithful servants.’

“The Supreme Court and the Constitution”

DEAR SIR, -- Our correspondence is of that accommodating character, which admits of suspension at the convenience of either party, without inconvenience to the other.  Hence this tardy acknowledgment of your favor of April the 11th.  I learn from that with great pleasure, that you have resolved on continuing your history of parties.  Our opponents are far ahead of us in preparations for placing their cause favorably before posterity.  Yet I hope even from some of them the escape of precious truths, in angry explosions or effusions of vanity, which will betray the genuine monarchism of their principles.  They do not themselves believe what they endeavor to inculcate, that we were an opposition party, not on principle, but merely seeking for office.  The fact is, that at the formation of our government, many had formed their political opinions on European writings and practices, believing the experience of old countries, and especially of England, abusive as it was, to be a safer guide than mere theory.  The doctrines of Europe were, that men in numerous associations cannot be restrained within the limits of order and justice, but by forces physical and moral, wielded over them by authorities independent of their will.  Hence their organization of kings, hereditary nobles, and priests.  Still further to constrain the brute force of the people, they deem it necessary to keep them down by hard labor, poverty and ignorance, and to take from them, as from bees, so much of their earnings, as that unremitting labor shall be necessary to obtain a sufficient surplus barely to sustain a scanty and miserable life.  And these earnings they apply to maintain their privileged orders in splendor and idleness, to fascinate the eyes of the people, and excite in them an humble adoration and submission, as to an order of superior beings.  Although few among us had gone all these lengths of opinion, yet many had advanced, some more, some less, on the way.  And in the convention which formed our government, they endeavored to draw the cords of power as tight as they could obtain them, to lessen the dependence of the general functionaries on their constituents, to subject to them those of the States, and to weaken their means of maintaining the steady equilibrium which the majority of the convention had deemed salutary for both branches, general and local.  To recover, therefore, in practice the powers which the nation had refused, and to warp to their own wishes those actually given, was the steady object of the federal party.  Ours, on the contrary, was to maintain the will of the majority of the convention, and of the people themselves.  We believed, with them, that man was a rational animal, endowed by nature with rights, and with an innate sense of justice; and that he could be restrained from wrong and protected in right by moderate powers, confided to persons of his own choice, and held to their duties by dependence on his own will.  We believed that the complicated organization of kings, nobles, and priests, was not the wisest nor best to effect the happiness of associated man; that wisdom and virtue were not hereditary, that the trappings of such a machinery, consumed by their expense, those earnings of industry, they were meant to protect, and, by the inequalities they produced, exposed liberty to sufferance.  We believed that men, enjoying in ease and security the full fruits of their own industry, enlisted by all their interests on the side of law and order, habituated to think for themselves, and to follow their reason as their guide, would be more easily and safely governed, than with minds nourished in error, and vitiated and debased, as in Europe, by ignorance, indigence and oppression.  The cherishment of the people then was our principle, the fear and distrust of them, that of the other party.  Composed, as we were, of the landed and laboring interests of the country, we could not be less anxious for a government of law and order than were the inhabitants of the cities, the strongholds of federalism.  And whether our efforts to save the principles and form of our constitution have not been salutary, let the present republican freedom, order and prosperity of our country determine.  History may distort truth, and will distort it for a time, by the superior efforts at justification of those who are conscious of needing it most.  Nor will the opening scenes of our present government be seen in their true aspect, until the letters of the day, now held in private hoards, shall be broken up and laid open to public view.  What a treasure will be found in General Washington’s cabinet, when it shall pass into the hands of as candid a friend to truth as he was himself!  When no longer, like Caesar’s notes and memorandums in the hands of Anthony, it shall be open to the high priests of federalism only, and garbled to say so much, and no more, as suits their views!

With respect to his farewell address, to the authorship of which, it seems, there are conflicting claims, I can state to you some facts.  He had determined to decline re-election at the end of his first term, and so far determined, that he had requested Mr. Madison to prepare for him something valedictory, to be addressed to his constituents on his retirement.  This was done, but he was finally persuaded to acquiesce in a second election, to which no one more strenuously pressed him than myself, from a conviction of the importance of strengthening, by longer habit, the respect necessary for that office, which the weight of his character only could effect.  When, at the end of his second term, his Valedictory came out, Mr. Madison recognized in it several passages of his draught, several others, we were both satisfied, were from the pen of Hamilton, and others from that of the President himself.  These he probably put into the hands of Hamilton to form into a whole, and hence it may all appear in Hamilton’s hand-writing, as if it were all of his composition.

I have stated above, that the original objects of the federalists were, 1st, to warp our government more to the form and principles of monarchy, and, 2d, to weaken the barriers of the State governments as coordinate powers.  In the first they have been so completely foiled by the universal spirit of the nation, that they have abandoned the enterprise, shrunk from the odium of their old appellation, taken to themselves a participation of ours, and under the pseudo-republican mask, are now aiming at their second object, and strengthened by unsuspecting or apostate recruits from our ranks, are advancing fast towards an ascendancy.  I have been blamed for saying, that a prevalence of the doctrines of consolidation would one day call for reformation or revolution.  I answer by asking if a single State of the Union would have agreed to the constitution, had it given all powers to the General Government?  If the whole opposition to it did not proceed from the jealousy and fear of every State, of being subjected to the other States in matters merely its own?  And if there is any reason to believe the States more disposed now than then, to acquiesce in this general surrender of all their rights and powers to a consolidated government, one and undivided?

You request me confidentially, to examine the question, whether the Supreme Court has advanced beyond its constitutional limits, and trespassed on those of the State authorities?  I do not undertake it, my dear Sir, because I am unable.  Age and the wane of mind consequent on it, have disqualified me from investigations so severe, and researches so laborious.  And it is the less necessary in this case, as having been already done by others with a logic and learning to which I could add nothing.  On the decision of the case of Cohens vs. The State of Virginia, in the Supreme Court of the United States, in March, 1821, Judge Roane, under the signature of Algernon Sidney, wrote for the Enquirer a series of papers on the law of that case.  I considered these papers maturely as they came out, and confess that they appeared to me to pulverize every word which had been delivered by Judge Marshall, of the extra-judicial part of his opinion; and all was extra-judicial, except the decision that the act of Congress had not purported to give to the corporation of Washington the authority claimed by their lottery law, of controlling the laws of the States within the States themselves.  But unable to claim that case, he could not let it go entirely, but went on gratuitously to prove, that notwithstanding the eleventh amendment of the constitution, a State could be brought as a defendant, to the bar of his court; and again, that Congress might authorize a corporation of its territory to exercise legislation within a State, and paramount to the laws of that State.  I cite the sum and result only of his doctrines, according to the impression made on my mind at the time, and still remaining.  If not strictly accurate in circumstance, it is so in substance.  This doctrine was so completely refuted by Roane, that if he can be answered, I surrender human reason as a vain and useless faculty, given to bewilder, and not to guide us.  And I mention this particular case as one only of several, because it gave occasion to that thorough examination of the constitutional limits between the General and State jurisdictions, which you have asked for.  There were two other writers in the same paper, under the signatures of Fletcher of Saltoun, and Somers, who, in a few essays, presented some very luminous and striking views of the question.  And there was a particular paper which recapitulated all the cases in which it was thought the federal court had usurped on the State jurisdictions.  These essays will be found in the Enquirers of 1821, from May the 10th to July the 13th.  It is not in my present power to send them to you, but if Ritchie can furnish them, I will procure and forward them.  If they had been read in the other States, as they were here, I think they would have left, there as here, no dissentients from their doctrine.  The subject was taken up by our legislature of 1821 - ’22, and two draughts of remonstrances were prepared and discussed.  As well as I remember, there was no difference of opinion as to the matter of right; but there was as to the expediency of a remonstrance at that time, the general mind of the States being then under extraordinary excitement by the Missouri question; and it was dropped on that consideration.  But this case is not dead, it only sleepeth.  The Indian Chief said he did not go to war for every petty injury by itself, but put it into his pouch, and when that was full, he then made war.  Thank Heaven, we have provided a more peaceable and rational mode of redress.

This practice of Judge Marshall, of travelling out of his case to prescribe what the law would be in a moot case not before the court, is very irregular and very censurable.  I recollect another instance, and the more particularly, perhaps, because it in some measure bore on myself.  Among the midnight appointments of Mr. Adams, were commissions to some federal justices of the peace for Alexandria.  These were signed and sealed by him, but not delivered. I found them on the table of the department of State, on my entrance into office, and I forbade their delivery.  Marbury, named in one of them, applied to the Supreme Court for a mandamus to the Secretary of State, (Mr. Madison) to deliver the commission intended for him.  The court determined at once, that being an original process, they had no cognizance of it; and therefore the question before them was ended.  But the Chief Justice went on to lay down what the law would be, had they jurisdiction of the case, to wit: that they should command the delivery.  The object was clearly to instruct any other court having the jurisdiction, what they should do if Marbury should apply to them.  Besides the impropriety of this gratuitous interference, could anything exceed the perversion of law?  For if there is any principle of law never yet contradicted, it is that delivery is one of the essentials to the validity of the deed.  Although signed and sealed, yet as long as it remains in the hands of the party himself, it is in fieri only, it is not a deed, and can be made so only by its delivery.  In the hands of a third person it may be made an escrow.  But whatever is in the executive offices is certainly deemed to be in the hands of the President; and in this case, was actually in my hands, because, when I countermanded them, there was as yet no Secretary of State.  Yet this case of Marbury and Madison is continually cited by bench and bar, as if it were settled law, without any animadversion on its being merely an obiter dissertation of the Chief Justice.

It may be impracticable to lay down any general formula of words which shall decide at once, and with precision, in every case, this limit of jurisdiction.  But there are two canons which will guide us safely in most of the cases.  1st.  The capital and leading object of the constitution was to leave with the States all authorities which respected their own citizens only, and to transfer to the United States those which respected citizens of foreign or other States: to make us several as to ourselves, but one as to all others.  In the latter case, then, constructions should lean to the general jurisdiction, if the words will bear it; and in favor of the States in the former, if possible to be so construed.  And indeed, between citizens and citizens of the same State, and under their own laws, I know but a single case in which a jurisdiction is given to the General Government.  That is, where anything but gold or silver is made a lawful tender, or the obligation of contracts is any otherwise impaired.  The separate legislatures had so often abused that power, that the citizens themselves chose to trust it to the general, rather than to their own special authorities.  2d.  On every question of construction, carry ourselves back to the time when the constitution was adopted, recollect the spirit manifested in the debates, and instead of trying what meaning may be squeezed out of the text, or invented against it, conform to the probable one in which it was passed.  Let us try Cohen’s case by these canons only, referring always, however, for full argument, to the essays before cited.

1.  It was between a citizen and his own State, and under a law of his State.  It was a domestic case, therefore, and not a foreign one.

2.  Can it be believed, that under the jealousies prevailing against the General Government, at the adoption of the constitution, the States meant to surrender the authority of preserving order, of enforcing moral duties and restraining vice, within their own territory?  And this is the present case, that of Cohen being under the ancient and general law of gaming.  Can any good be effected by taking from the States the moral rule of their citizens, and subordinating it to the general authority, or to one of their corporations, which may justify forcing the meaning of words, hunting after possible constructions, and hanging inference on inference, from heaven to earth, like Jacob’s ladder?  Such an intention was impossible, and such a licentiousness of construction and inference, if exercised by both governments, as may be done with equal right, would equally authorize both to claim all power, general and particular, and break up the foundations of the Union.  Laws are made for men of ordinary understanding, and should, therefore, be construed by the ordinary rules of common sense.  Their meaning is not to be sought for in metaphysical subtleties, which may make anything mean everything or nothing, at pleasure.  It should be left to the sophisms of advocates, whose trade it is, to prove that a defendant is a plaintiff, though dragged into court, torto collo, like Bonaparte’s volunteers, into the field in chains, or that a power has been given, because it ought to have been given, et alia talia.  The States supposed that by their tenth amendment, they had secured themselves against constructive powers.  They were not lessoned yet by Cohen’s case, nor aware of the slipperiness of the eels of the law.  I ask for no straining of words against the General Government, nor yet against the States.  I believe the States can best govern our home concerns, and the General Government our foreign ones.  I wish, therefore, to see maintained that wholesome distribution of powers established by the constitution for the limitation of both; and never to see all offices transferred to Washington, where, further withdrawn from the eyes of the people, they may more secretly be bought and sold as at market.

But the Chief Justice says, “there must be an ultimate arbiter somewhere.”  True, there must; but does that prove it is either party?  The ultimate arbiter is the people of the Union, assembled by their deputies in convention, at the call of Congress, or of two-thirds of the States.  Let them decide to which they mean to give an authority claimed by two of their organs.  And it has been the peculiar wisdom and felicity of our constitution, to have provided this peaceable appeal, where that of other nations is at once to force.

I rejoice in the example you set of seriatim opinions.  I have heard it often noticed, and always with high approbation.  Some of your brethren will be encouraged to follow it occasionally, and in time, it may be felt by all as a duty, and the sound practice of the primitive court be again restored.  Why should not every judge be asked his opinion, and give it from the bench, if only by yea or nay?  Besides ascertaining the fact of his opinion, which the public have a right to know, in order to judge whether it is impeachable or not, it would show whether the opinions were unanimous or not, and thus settle more exactly the weight of their authority.

The close of my second sheet warns me that it is time now to relieve you from this letter of unmerciful length.  Indeed, I wonder how I have accomplished it, with two crippled wrists, the one scarcely able to move my pen, the other to hold my paper.  But I am hurried sometimes beyond the sense of pain, when unbosoming myself to friends who harmonize with me in principle.  You and I may differ occasionally in details of minor consequence, as no two minds, more than two faces, are the same in every feature.  But our general objects are the same, to preserve the republican form and principles of our constitution and cleave to the salutary distribution of powers which that has established.  These are the two sheet anchors of our Union.  If driven from either, we shall be in danger of foundering.  To my prayers for its safety and perpetuity, I add those for the continuation of your health, happiness, and usefulness to your country.

“Rivers of Blood Must Yet Flow”

DEAR SIR, -- Your letter of Aug. 15. was recieved in due time, and with the welcome of every thing which comes from you.  With it’s opinions on the difficulties of revolutions, from despotism to freedom, I very much concur.  The generation which commences a revolution can rarely compleat it.  Habituated from their infancy to passive submission of body and mind to their kings and priests, they are not qualified, when called on, to think and provide for themselves and their inexperience, their ignorance and bigotry make them instruments often, in the hands of the Bonapartes and Iturbides to defeat their own rights and purposes.  This is the present situation of Europe and Spanish America.  But it is not desperate.  The light which has been shed on mankind by the art of printing has eminently changed the condition of the world.  As yet that light has dawned on the midling classes only of the men of Europe.  The kings and the rabble of equal ignorance, have not yet recieved it’s rays; but it continues to spread.  And, while printing is preserved, it can no more recede than the sun return on his course.  A first attempt to recover the right of self-government may fail; so may a 2d. a 3d. etc., but as a younger, and more instructed race comes on, the sentiment becomes more and more intuitive, and a 4th. a 5th. or some subsequent one of the ever renewed attempts will ultimately succeed.  In France the 1st. effort was defeated by Robespierre, the 2d. by Bonaparte, the 3d. by Louis XVIII. and his holy allies; another is yet to come, and all Europe, Russia excepted, has caught the spirit, and all will attain representative government, more or less perfect.  This is now well understood to be a necessary check on kings, whom they will probably think it more prudent to chain and tame, than to exterminate.  To attain all this however rivers of blood must yet flow, and years of desolation pass over.  Yet the object is worth rivers of blood, and years of desolation for what inheritance so valuable can man leave to his posterity?  The spirit of the Spaniard and his deadly and eternal hatred to a Frenchman, gives me much confidence that he will never submit, but finally defeat this atrocious violation of the laws of god and man under which he is suffering; and the wisdom and firmness of the Cortes afford reasonable hope that that nation will settle down in a temperate representative government, with an Executive properly subordinated to that.  Portugal, Italy, Prussia, Germany, Greece will follow suit.  You and I shall look down from another world on these glorious atchievements to man, which will add to the joys even of heaven.

I observe your toast of Mr. Jay on the 4th. of July, wherein you say that the omission of his signature to the Declaration of Independance was by accident.  Our impressions as to this fact being different, I shall be glad to have mine corrected, if wrong.  Jay, you know, had been in constant opposition to our laboring majority.  Our estimate, at the time, was that he, Dickinson and Johnson of Maryland by their ingenuity, perseverance and partiality to our English connection, had constantly kept us a year behind where we ought to have been in our preparations and proceedings.  From about the date of the Virginia instructions of May 15. 76. to declare Independance Mr. Jay absented himself from Congress, and never came there again until Dec. 78.  Of course he had no part in the discussions or decision of that question.  The instructions to their delegates by the Convention of New York, then sitting, to sign the Declaration, were presented to Congress on the 15th. of July only, and on that day the journals shew the absence of Mr. Jay by a letter recieved from him, as they had done as early as the 29th. of May by another letter.  And, I think, he had been omitted by the Convention on a new election of Delegates when they changed their instructions.  Of this last fact however having no evidence but an antient impression, I shall not affirm it.  But whether so or not, no agency of accident appears in the case.  This error of fact however, whether yours or mine, is of little consequence to the public.  But truth being as cheap as error, it is as well to rectify it for our own satisfaction.

I have had a fever of about three weeks during the last and preceding month, from which I am entirely recovered except as to strength.  Ever and affectionately yours

“The Best Letter That Ever Was Written . . .”

DEAR SIR, -- I do not write with the ease which your letter of Sep. 18. supposes.  Crippled wrists and fingers make writing slow and laborious.  But, while writing to you, I lose the sense of these things, in the recollection of antient times, when youth and health made happiness out of every thing.  I forget for a while the hoary winter of age, when we can think of nothing but how to keep ourselves warm, and how to get rid of our heavy hours until the friendly hand of death shall rid us of all at once.  Against this tedium vitae however I am fortunately mounted on a Hobby, which indeed I should have better managed some 30. or 40. years ago, but whose easy amble is still sufficient to give exercise and amusement to an Octogenary rider.  This is the establishment of an University, on a scale more comprehensive, and in a country more healthy and central than our old William and Mary, which these obstacles have long kept in a state of languor and inefficiency.  But the tardiness with which such works proceed may render it doubtful whether I shall live to see it go into action.

Putting aside these things however for the present, I write this letter as due to a friendship co-eval with our government, and now attempted to be poisoned, when too late in life to be replaced by new affections.  I had for some time observed, in the public papers, dark hints and mysterious innuendoes of a correspondence of yours with a friend, to whom you had opened your bosom without reserve, and which was to be made public by that friend, or his representative.  And now it is said to be actually published.  It has not yet reached us, but extracts have been given, and such as seemed most likely to draw a curtain of separation between you and myself.  Were there no other motive than that of indignation against the author of this outrage on private confidence, whose shaft seems to have been aimed at yourself more particularly, this would make it the duty of every honorable mind to disappoint that aim, by opposing to it’s impression a seven-fold shield of apathy and insensibility.  With me however no such armour is needed.  The circumstances of the times, in which we have happened to live, and the partiality of our friends, at a particular period, placed us in a state of apparent opposition, which some might suppose to be personal also; and there might not be wanting those who wish’d to make it so, by filling our ears with malignant falsehoods, by dressing up hideous phantoms of their own creation, presenting them to you under my name, to me under your’s, and endeavoring to instill into our minds things concerning each other the most destitute of truth.  And if there had been, at any time, a moment when we were off our guard, and in a temper to let the whispers of these people make us forget what we had known of each other for so many years, and years of so much trial, yet all men who have attended to the workings of the human mind, who have seen the false colours under which passion sometimes dresses the actions and motives of others, have seen also these passions subsiding with time and reflection, dissipating, like mists before the rising sun, and restoring to us the sight of all things in their true shape and colours.  It would be strange indeed if, at our years, we were to go an age back to hunt up imaginary, or forgotten facts, to disturb the repose of affections so sweetening to the evening of our lives.  Be assured, my dear Sir, that I am incapable of recieving the slightest impression from the effort now made to plant thorns on the pillow of age, worth, and wisdom, and to sow tares between friends who have been such for near half a century.  Beseeching you then not to suffer your mind to be disquieted by this wicked attempt to poison it’s peace, and praying you to throw it by, among the things which have never happened, I add sincere assurances of my unabated, and constant attachment, friendship and respect.

“The Monroe Doctrine”

DEAR SIR, -- The question presented by the letters you have sent me, is the most momentous which has ever been offered to my contemplation since that of Independence.  That made us a nation, this sets our compass and points the course which we are to steer through the ocean of time opening on us.  And never could we embark on it under circumstances more auspicious.  Our first and fundamental maxim should be, never to entangle ourselves in the broils of Europe.  Our second, never to suffer Europe to intermeddle with cis-Atlantic affairs.  America, North and South, has a set of interests distinct from those of Europe, and peculiarly her own.  She should therefore have a system of her own, separate and apart from that of Europe.  While the last is laboring to become the domicil of despotism, our endeavor should surely be, to make our hemisphere that of freedom.  One nation, most of all, could disturb us in this pursuit; she now offers to lead, aid, and accompany us in it.  By acceding to her proposition, we detach her from the bands, bring her mighty weight into the scale of free government, and emancipate a continent at one stroke, which might otherwise linger long in doubt and difficulty.  Great Britain is the nation which can do us the most harm of any one, or all on earth; and with her on our side we need not fear the whole world.  With her then, we should most sedulously cherish a cordial friendship; and nothing would tend more to knit our affections than to be fighting once more, side by side, in the same cause.  Not that I would purchase even her amity at the price of taking part in her wars.  But the war in which the present proposition might engage us, should that be its consequence, is not her war, but ours.  Its object is to introduce and establish the American system, of keeping out of our land all foreign powers, of never permitting those of Europe to intermeddle with the affairs of our nations.  It is to maintain our own principle, not to depart from it.  And if, to facilitate this, we can effect a division in the body of the European powers, and draw over to our side its most powerful member, surely we should do it.  But I am clearly of Mr. Canning’s opinion, that it will prevent instead of provoking war.  With Great Britain withdrawn from their scale and shifted into that of our two continents, all Europe combined would not undertake such a war.  For how would they propose to get at either enemy without superior fleets?  Nor is the occasion to be slighted which this proposition offers, of declaring our protest against the atrocious violations of the rights of nations, by the interference of any one in the internal affairs of another, so flagitiously begun by Bonaparte, and now continued by the equally lawless Alliance, calling itself Holy.

But we have first to ask ourselves a question.  Do we wish to acquire to our own confederacy any one or more of the Spanish provinces?  I candidly confess, that I have ever looked on Cuba as the most interesting addition which could ever be made to our system of States.  The control which, with Florida Point, this island would give us over the Gulf of Mexico, and the countries and isthmus bordering on it, as well as all those whose waters flow into it, would fill up the measure of our political well-being.  Yet, as I am sensible that this can never be obtained, even with her own consent, but by war; and its independence, which is our second interest, (and especially its independence of England,) can be secured without it, I have no hesitation in abandoning my first wish to future chances, and accepting its independence, with peace and the friendship of England, rather than its association, at the expense of war and her enmity.

I could honestly, therefore, join in the declaration proposed, that we aim not at the acquisition of any of those possessions, that we will not stand in the way of any amicable arrangement between them and the mother country; but that we will oppose, with all our means, the forcible interposition of any other power, as auxiliary, stipendiary, or under any other form or pretext, and most especially, their transfer to any power by conquest, cession, or acquisition in any other way.  I should think it, therefore, advisable, that the Executive should encourage the British government to a continuance in the dispositions expressed in these letters, by an assurance of his concurrence with them as far as his authority goes; and that as it may lead to war, the declaration of which requires an act of Congress, the case shall be laid before them for consideration at their first meeting, and under the reasonable aspect in which it is seen by himself.

I have been so long weaned from political subjects, and have so long ceased to take any interest in them, that I am sensible I am not qualified to offer opinions on them worthy of any attention.  But the question now proposed involves consequences so lasting, and effects so decisive of our future destinies, as to rekindle all the interest I have heretofore felt on such occasions, and to induce me to the hazard of opinions, which will prove only my wish to contribute still my mite towards anything which may be useful to our country.  And praying you to accept it at only what it is worth, I add the assurance of my constant and affectionate friendship and respect.