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 Another Random Document on
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be found? The most advantageous relation in which she can stand
with her American colonies is that of independent friendship,
secured by the ties of consanguinity, sameness of language, religion,
manners, and habits, and certain from the influence of these, of a
preference in her commerce, if, instead of the eternal irritations,
thwartings, machinations against their new governments, the insults
and aggressions which Great Britain has so unwisely practised
towards us, to force us to hate her against our natural inclinations,
Spain yields, like a genuine parent, to the forisfamiliation of her
colonies, now at maturity, if she extends to them her affections, her
aid, her patronage in every court and country, it will weave a bond
of union indissoluble by time. We are in a state of semi-warfare with
your adjoining colonies, the Floridas. We do not consider this as
affecting our peace with Spain or any other of her former
possessions. We wish her and them well; and under her present
difficulties at home, and her doubtful future relations with her
colonies, both wisdom and interest will, I presume, induce her to
leave them to settle themselves the quarrels they draw on
themselves from their neighbors. The commanding officers in the
Floridas have excited and armed the neighboring savages to war
against us, and to murder and scalp many of our women and
children as well as men, taken by surprise—poor creatures! They
have paid for it with the loss of the flower of their strength, and
have given us the right, as we possess the power, to exterminate or
to expatriate them beyond the Mississippi. This conduct of the
Spanish officers will probably oblige us to take possession of the
Floridas, and the rather as we believe the English will otherwise
seize them, and use them as stations to distract and annoy us. But
should we possess ourselves of them, and Spain retain her other
colonies in this hemisphere, I presume we shall consider them in our
hands as subjects of negociation.
We are now at the close of our second campaign with England.
During the first we suffered several checks, from the want of capable
and tried officers; all the higher ones of the Revolution having died
off during an interval of thirty years of peace. But this second
campaign has been more successful, having given us all the lakes
and country of Upper Canada, except the single post of Kingston, at
its lower extremity. The two immediate causes of the war were the
Orders of Council, and impressment of our seamen. The first having
been removed after we had declared war, the war is continued for
the second; and a third has been generated by their conduct during
the war, in exciting the Indian hordes to murder and scalp the
women and children on our frontier. This renders peace for ever
impossible but on the establishment of such a meridian boundary to
their possessions, as that they never more can have such influence
with the savages as to excite again the same barbarities. The
thousand ships, too, they took from us in peace, and the six
thousand seamen impressed, call for this indemnification. On the
water we have proved to the world the error of their invincibility, and
shown that with equal force and well-trained officers, they can be
beaten by other nations as brave as themselves. Their lying officers
and printers will give to Europe very different views of the state of
their war with us. But you will see now, as in the Revolutionary war,
that they will lie, and conquer themselves out of all their possessions
on this continent.
I pray for the happiness of your nation, and that it may be blessed
with sound views and successful measures, under the difficulties in
which it is involved; and especially that they may know the value of
your counsels, and to yourself I tender the assurances of my high
respect and esteem.

JOHN ADAMS TO THOMAS JEFFERSON.

Quincy, December 25, 1813.

Dear Sir,—Answer my letters at your leisure. Give yourself no

concern. I write as for a refuge and protection against ennui.
The fundamental principle of all philosophy and all christianity, is
"Rejoice always in all things!" "Be thankful at all times for all good,
and all that we call evil." Will it not follow that I ought to rejoice and
be thankful that Priestley has lived? That Gibbon has lived? That
Hume has lived, though a conceited Scotchman? That Bolingbroke
has lived, though a haughty, arrogant, supercilious dogmatist? That
Burke and Johnson have lived, though superstitious slaves, or self-
deceiving hypocrites, both? Is it not laughable to hear Burke call
Bolingbroke a superficial writer? To hear him ask: "Who ever read
him through?" Had I been present, I would have answered him, "I, I
myself, I have read him through more than fifty years ago, and more
than five times in my life, and once within five years past. And in my
opinion, the epithet 'superficial,' belongs to you and your friend
Johnson more than to him."
I might say much more. But I believe Burke and Johnson to have
been as political christians as Leo Tenth.
I return to Priestley, though I have great complaints against him for
personal injuries and persecution, at the same time that I forgive it
all, and hope and pray that he may be pardoned for it all above.
Dr. Brocklesby, an intimate friend and convivial companion of
Johnson, told me that Johnson died in agonies of horror of
annihilation; and all the accounts we have of his death, corroborate
this account of Brocklesby. Dread of annihilation! Dread of nothing!
A dread of nothing, I should think, would be no dread at all. Can
there be any real, substantial, rational fear of nothing? Were you on
your death-bed, and in your last moments informed by
demonstration of revelation, that you would cease to think and to
feel, at your dissolution, should you be terrified? You might be
ashamed of yourself for having lived so long to bear the proud man's
contumely. You might be ashamed of your Maker, and compare him
to a little girl, amusing herself, her brothers and sisters, by blowing
bubbles in soap-suds. You might compare him to boys sporting with
crackers and rockets, or to men employed in making mere artificial
fire-works, or to men and women at fairs and operas, or Sadler's
Wells' exploits, or to politicians in their intrigues, or to heroes in their
butcheries, or to Popes in their devilisms. But what should you fear?
Nothing. Emori nolo, sed me mortuum esse nihil estimo.
To return to Priestley. You could make a more luminous book than
his, upon the doctrines of heathen philosophers compared with
those of revelation. Why has he not given us a more satisfactory
account of the Pythagorean Philosophy and Theology? He barely
names Œileus, who lived long before Plato. His treatise of kings and
monarchy has been destroyed, I conjecture, by Platonic
Philosophers, Platonic Jews or Christians, or by fraudulent
republicans or despots. His treatise of the universe has been
preserved. He labors to prove the eternity of the world. The Marquis
D'Argens translated it, in all its noble simplicity. The Abbé Batteaux
has since given another translation. D'Argens not only explains the
text, but sheds more light upon the ancient systems. His remarks
are so many treatises, which develop the concatenation of ancient
opinions. The most essential ideas of the theology, of the physics,
and of the morality of the ancients are clearly explained, and their
different doctrines compared with one another and with the modern
discoveries. I wish I owned this book and one hundred thousand
more that I want every day, now when I am almost incapable of
making any use of them. No doubt he informs us that Pythagoras
was a great traveller. Priestley barely mentions Timæus, but it does
not appear that he had read him. Why has he not given us an
account of him and his book? He was before Plato, and gave him the
idea of his Timæus, and much more of his philosophy.
After his master, he maintained the existence of matter; that matter
was capable of receiving all sorts of forms; that a moving power
agitated all the parts of it, and that an intelligence produced a
regular and harmonious world. This intelligence had seen a plan, an
idea (Logos) in conformity to which it wrought, and without which it
would not have known what it was about, nor what it wanted to do.
This plan was the idea, image or model which had represented to
the Supreme Intelligence the world before it existed, which had
directed it in its action upon the moving power, and which it
contemplated in forming the elements, the bodies and the world.
This model was distinguished from the intelligence which produced
the world, as the architect is from his plans. He divided the
productive cause of the world into a spirit which directed the moving
force, and into an image which determined it in the choice of the
directions which it gave to the moving force, and the forms which it
gave to matter. I wonder that Priestley has overlooked this, because
it is the same philosophy with Plato's, and would have shown that
the Pythagorean as well as the Platonic philosophers probably
concurred in the fabrication of the Christian Trinity. Priestley
mentions the name of Achylas, but does not appear to have read
him, though he was a successor of Pythagoras, and a great
mathematician, a great statesman and a great general. John Gram,
a learned and honorable Dane, has given a handsome edition of his
works, with a Latin translation and an ample account of his life and
writings. Seleucus, the Legislator of Locris, and Charondas, of
Sybaris, were disciples of Pythagoras, and both celebrated to
immortality for the wisdom of their laws, five hundred years before
Christ. Why are those laws lost? I say the spirit of party has
destroyed them; civil, political and ecclesiastical bigotry.
Despotical, monarchical, aristocratical and democratical fury have all
been employed in this work of destruction of everything that could
give us true light, and a clear insight of antiquity. For every one of
these parties, when possessed of power, or when they have been
undermost, and struggling to get uppermost, has been equally prone
to every species of fraud and violence and usurpation.
Why has not Priestley mentioned these Legislators? The preamble to
the laws of Zaleucus, which is all that remains, is as orthodox
christian theology as Priestley's, and christian benevolence and
forgiveness of injuries almost as clearly expressed.
Priestley ought to have done impartial justice to philosophy and
philosophers. Philosophy, which is the result of reason, is the first,
the original revelation of the Creator to his creature, man. When this
revelation is clear and certain by intuition or necessary induction, no
subsequent revelation supported by prophecies or miracles can
supersede it. Philosophy is not only the love of wisdom, but the
science of the universe and its cause.
There is, there was, and there will be but one master of philosophy
in the universe. Portions of it, in different degrees, are revealed to
creatures.
Philosophy looks with an impartial eye on all terrestrial religions. I
have examined all, as well as my narrow sphere, my straightened
means and my busy life would allow me, and the result is, that the
Bible is the best book in the world. It contains more of my little
philosophy than all the libraries I have seen; and such parts of it as I
cannot reconcile to my little philosophy, I postpone for future
investigation.
Priestley ought to have given us a sketch of the religion and morals
of Zoroaster, of Sanchoniathon, of Confucius, and all the founders of
religions before Christ, whose superiority would, from such a
comparison, have appeared the more transcendent.
Priestley ought to have told us that Pythagoras passed twenty years
in his travels in India, in Egypt, in Chaldea, perhaps in Sodom and
Gomorrah, Tyre and Sydon. He ought to have told us that in India he
conversed with the Brahmins, and read the Shasta, five thousand
years old, written in the language of the sacred Sansosistes, with the
elegance and sentiments of Plato. Where is to be found theology
more orthodox, or philosophy more profound, than in the
introduction to the Shasta? "God is one creator of all universal
sphere, without beginning, without end. God governs all the creation
by a general providence, resulting from his eternal designs. Search
not the essence and the nature of the eternal, who is one; your
research will be vain and presumptuous. It is enough that, day by
day, and night by night, you adore his power, his wisdom and his
goodness, in his works. The eternal willed in the fullness of time, to
communicate of his essence and of his splendor, to beings capable
of perceiving it. They as yet existed not. The eternal willed and they
were. He created Birma, Vitsnou and Siv." These doctrines, sublime,
if ever there were any sublime, Pythagoras learned in India, and
taught them to Zaleucus and his other disciples. He there learned
also his Metempsychosis, but this never was popular, never made
much progress in Greece or Italy, or any other country besides India
and Tartary, the region of the grand immortal Lama. And how does
this differ from the possessions of demons in Greece and Rome?
from the demon of Socrates? from the worship of cows and
crocodiles in Egypt and elsewhere?
After migrating through various animals, from elephants to serpents,
according to their behavior, souls that at last behaved well, became
men and women, and then if they were good, they went to heaven.
All ended in heaven, if they became virtuous. Who can wonder at
the widow of Malabar? Where is the lady, who, if her faith were
without doubt that she should go to heaven with her husband on the
one, or migrate into a toad or a wasp on the other, would not lay
down on the pile, and set fire to the fuel?
Modifications and disguises of the Metempsychosis, has crept into
Egypt, and Greece, and Rome, and other countries. Have you read
Farmer on the Dæmons and possessions of the New Testament?
According to the Shasta, Moisasor, with his companions, rebelled
against the eternal, and were precipitated down to Ondoro, the
region of darkness.
Do you know anything of the Prophecy of Enoch? Can you give me a
comment on the 6th, the 9th, the 14th verses of the epistle of Jude?
If I am not weary of writing, I am sure you must be of reading such
incoherent rattle. I will not persecute you so severely in future, if I
can help it.
So farewell.
 TO THOMAS LIEPER.

Monticello, January 1, 1814.

Dear Sir,—I had hoped, when I retired from the business of the
world, that I should have been permitted to pass the evening of life
in tranquillity, undisturbed by the peltings and passions of which the
public papers are the vehicles. I see, however, that I have been
dragged into the newspapers by the infidelity of one with whom I
was formerly intimate, but who has abandoned the American
principles out of which that intimacy grew, and become the bigoted
partisan of England, and malcontent of his own government. In a
letter which he wrote to me, he earnestly besought me to avail our
country of the good understanding which existed between the
executive and myself, by recommending an offer of such terms to
our enemy as might produce a peace, towards which he was
confident that enemy was disposed. In my answer, I stated the
aggressions, the insults and injuries, which England had been
heaping on us for years, our long forbearance in the hope she might
be led by time and reflection to a sounder view of her own interests,
and of their connection with justice to us, the repeated propositions
for accommodation made by us and rejected by her, and at length
her Prince Regent's solemn proclamation to the world that he would
never repeal the orders in council as to us, until France should have
revoked her illegal decrees as to all the world, and her minister's
declaration to ours, that no admissible precaution against the
impressment of our seamen, could be proposed: that the
unavoidable declaration of war which followed these was
accompanied by advances for peace, on terms which no American
could dispense with, made through various channels, and unnoticed
and unanswered through any; but that if he could suggest any other
conditions which we ought to accept, and which had not been
repeatedly offered and rejected, I was ready to be the channel of
their conveyance to the government; and, to show him that neither
that attachment to Bonaparte nor French influence, which they
allege eternally without believing it themselves, affected my mind, I
threw in the two little sentences of the printed extract enclosed in
your friendly favor of the 9th ultimo, and exactly these two little
sentences, from a letter of two or three pages, he has thought
proper to publish, naked, alone, and with my name, although other
parts of the letter would have shown that I wished such limits only
to the successes of Bonaparte, as should not prevent his completely
closing Europe against British manufactures and commerce; and
thereby reducing her to just terms of peace with us.
Thus am I situated. I receive letters from all quarters, some from
known friends, some from those who write like friends, on various
subjects. What am I to do? Am I to button myself up in Jesuitical
reserve, rudely declining any answer, or answering in terms so
unmeaning as only to prove my distrust? Must I withdraw myself
from all interchange, of sentiment with the world? I cannot do this.
It is at war with my habits and temper. I cannot act as if all men
were unfaithful because some are so; nor believe that all will betray
me, because some do. I had rather be the victim of occasional
infidelities, than relinquish my general confidence in the honesty of
man.
So far as to the breach of confidence which has brought me into the
newspapers, with a view to embroil me with my friends, by a
supposed separation in opinion and principle from them. But it is
impossible that there can be any difference of opinion among us on
the two propositions contained in these two little sentences, when
explained, as they were explained in the context from which they
were insulated. That Bonaparte is an unprincipled tyrant, who is
deluging the continent of Europe with blood, there is not a human
being, not even the wife of his bosom, who does not see: nor can
there, I think, be a doubt as to the line we ought to wish drawn
between his successes and those of Alexander. Surely none of us
wish to see Bonaparte conquer Russia, and lay thus at his feet the
whole continent of Europe. This done, England would be but a
breakfast; and, although I am free from the visionary fears which
the votaries of England have effected to entertain, because I believe
he cannot effect the conquest of Europe; yet put all Europe into his
hands, and he might spare such a force, to be sent in British ships,
as I would as leave not have to encounter, when I see how much
trouble a handful of British soldiers in Canada has given us. No. It
cannot be to our interest that all Europe should be reduced to a
single monarchy. The true line of interest for us, is, that Bonaparte
should be able to effect the complete exclusion of England from the
whole continent of Europe, in order, as the same letter said, "by this
peaceable engine of constraint, to make her renounce her views of
dominion over the ocean, of permitting no other nation to navigate it
but with her license, and on tribute to her, and her aggressions on
the persons of our citizens who may choose to exercise their right of
passing over that element." And this would be effected by
Bonaparte's succeeding so far as to close the Baltic against her. This
success I wished him the last year, this I wish him this year; but
were he again advanced to Moscow, I should again wish him such
disasters as would prevent his reaching Petersburg. And were the
consequences even to be the longer continuance of our war, I would
rather meet them than see the whole force of Europe wielded by a
single hand.
I have gone into this explanation, my friend, because I know you will
not carry my letter to the newspapers, and because I am willing to
trust to your discretion the explaining me to our honest fellow
laborers, and the bringing them to pause and reflect, if any of them
have not sufficiently reflected on the extent of the success we ought
to wish to Bonaparte, with a view to our own interests only; and
even were we not men, to whom nothing human should be
indifferent. But is our particular interest to make us insensible to all
sentiments of morality? Is it then become criminal, the moral wish
that the torrents of blood this man is shedding in Europe, the
sufferings of so many human beings, good as ourselves, on whose
necks he is trampling, the burnings of ancient cities, devastations of
great countries, the destruction of law and order, and demoralization
of the world, should be arrested, even if it should place our peace a
little further distant? No. You and I cannot differ in wishing that
Russia, and Sweden, and Denmark, and Germany, and Spain, and
Portugal, and Italy, and even England, may retain their
independence. And if we differ in our opinions about Towers and his
four beasts and ten kingdoms, we differ as friends, indulging mutual
errors, and doing justice to mutual sincerity and honesty. In this
spirit of sincere confidence and affection, I pray God to bless you
here and hereafter.

TO DOCTOR WALTER JONES.

Monticello, January 2, 1814.

Dear Sir,—Your favor of November the 25th reached this place

December the 21st, having been near a month on the way. How this
could happen I know not, as we have two mails a week both from
Fredericksburg and Richmond. It found me just returned from a long
journey and absence, during which so much business had
accumulated, commanding the first attentions, that another week
has been added to the delay.
I deplore, with you, the putrid state into which our newspapers have
passed, and the malignity, the vulgarity, and mendacious spirit of
those who write for them; and I enclose you a recent sample, the
production of a New England judge, as a proof of the abyss of
degradation into which we are fallen. These ordures are rapidly
depraving the public taste, and lessening its relish for sound food. As
vehicles of information, and a curb on our functionaries, they have
rendered themselves useless, by forfeiting all title to belief. That this
has, in a great degree, been produced by the violence and malignity
of party spirit, I agree with you; and I have read with great pleasure
the paper you enclosed me on that subject, which I now return. It is
at the same time a perfect model of the style of discussion which
candor and decency should observe, of the tone which renders
difference of opinion even amiable, and a succinct, correct, and
dispassionate history of the origin and progress of party among us.
It might be incorporated as it stands, and without changing a word,
into the history of the present epoch, and would give to posterity a
fairer view of the times than they will probably derive from other
sources. In reading it with great satisfaction, there was but a single
passage where I wished a little more development of a very sound
and catholic idea; a single intercalation to rest it solidly on true
bottom. It is near the end of the first page, where you make a
statement of genuine republican maxims; saying, "that the people
ought to possess as much political power as can possibly exist with
the order and security of society." Instead of this, I would say, "that
the people, being the only safe depository of power, should exercise
in person every function which their qualifications enable them to
exercise, consistently with the order and security of society; that we
now find them equal to the election of those who shall be invested
with their executive and legislative powers, and to act themselves in
the judiciary, as judges in questions of fact; that the range of their
powers ought to be enlarged," &c. This gives both the reason and
exemplication of the maxim you express, "that they ought to possess
as much political power," &c. I see nothing to correct either in your
facts or principles.
You say that in taking General Washington on your shoulders, to
bear him harmless through the federal coalition, you encounter a
perilous topic. I do not think so. You have given the genuine history
of the course of his mind through the trying scenes in which it was
engaged, and of the seductions by which it was deceived, but not
depraved. I think I knew General Washington intimately and
thoroughly; and were I called on to delineate his character, it should
be in terms like these.
His mind was great and powerful, without being of the very first
order; his penetration strong, though not so acute as that of a
Newton, Bacon, or Locke; and as far as he saw, no judgment was
ever sounder. It was slow in operation, being little aided by invention
or imagination, but sure in conclusion. Hence the common remark of
his officers, of the advantage he derived from councils of war, where
hearing all suggestions, he selected whatever was best; and
certainly no General ever planned his battles more judiciously. But if
deranged during the course of the action, if any member of his plan
was dislocated by sudden circumstances, he was slow in re-
adjustment. The consequence was, that he often failed in the field,
and rarely against an enemy in station, as at Boston and York. He
was incapable of fear, meeting personal dangers with the calmest
unconcern. Perhaps the strongest feature in his character was
prudence, never acting until every circumstance, every
consideration, was maturely weighed; refraining if he saw a doubt,
but, when once decided, going through with his purpose, whatever
obstacles opposed. His integrity was most pure, his justice the most
inflexible I have ever known, no motives of interest or consanguinity,
of friendship or hatred, being able to bias his decision. He was,
indeed, in every sense of the words, a wise, a good, and a great
man. His temper was naturally irritable and high toned; but
reflection and resolution had obtained a firm and habitual
ascendency over it. If ever, however, it broke its bonds, he was most
tremendous in his wrath. In his expenses he was honorable, but
exact; liberal in contributions to whatever promised utility; but
frowning and unyielding on all visionary projects, and all unworthy
calls on his charity. His heart was not warm in its affections; but he
exactly calculated every man's value, and gave him a solid esteem
proportioned to it. His person, you know, was fine, his stature
exactly what one would wish, his deportment easy, erect and noble;
the best horseman of his age, and the most graceful figure that
could be seen on horseback. Although in the circle of his friends,
where he might be unreserved with safety, he took a free share in
conversation, his colloquial talents were not above mediocrity,
possessing neither copiousness of ideas, nor fluency of words. In
public, when called on for a sudden opinion, he was unready, short
and embarrassed. Yet he wrote readily, rather diffusely, in an easy
and correct style. This he had acquired by conversation with the
world, for his education was merely reading, writing and common
arithmetic, to which he added surveying at a later day. His time was
employed in action chiefly, reading little, and that only in agriculture
and English history. His correspondence became necessarily
extensive, and, with journalizing his agricultural proceedings,
occupied most of his leisure hours within doors. On the whole, his
character was, in its mass, perfect, in nothing bad, in few points
indifferent; and it may truly be said, that never did nature and
fortune combine more perfectly to make a man great, and to place
him in the same constellation with whatever worthies have merited
from man an everlasting remembrance. For his was the singular
destiny and merit, of leading the armies of his country successfully
through an arduous war, for the establishment of its independence;
of conducting its councils through the birth of a government, new in
its forms and principles, until it had settled down into a quiet and
orderly train; and of scrupulously obeying the laws through the
whole of his career, civil and military, of which the history of the
world furnishes no other example.
How, then, can it be perilous for you to take such a man on your
shoulders? I am satisfied the great body of republicans think of him
as I do. We were, indeed, dissatisfied with him on his ratification of
the British treaty. But this was short lived. We knew his honesty, the
wiles with which he was encompassed, and that age had already
began to relax the firmness of his purposes; and I am convinced he
is more deeply seated in the love and gratitude of the republicans,
than in the Pharisaical homage of the federal monarchists. For he
was no monarchist from preference of his judgment. The soundness
of that gave him correct views of the rights of man, and his severe
justice devoted him to them. He has often declared to me that he
considered our new constitution as an experiment on the
practicability of republican government, and with what dose of
liberty man could be trusted for his own good; that he was
determined the experiment should have a fair trial, and would lose
the last drop of his blood in support of it. And these declarations he
repeated to me the oftener and more pointedly, because he knew
my suspicions of Colonel Hamilton's views, and probably had heard
from him the same declarations which I had, to wit, "that the British
constitution, with its unequal representation, corruption and other
existing abuses, was the most perfect government which had ever
been established on earth, and that a reformation of those abuses
would make it an impracticable government." I do believe that
General Washington had not a firm confidence in the durability of
our government. He was naturally distrustful of men, and inclined to
gloomy apprehensions; and I was ever persuaded that a belief that
we must at length end in something like a British constitution, had
some weight in his adoption of the ceremonies of levees, birth-days,
pompous meetings with Congress, and other forms of the same
character, calculated to prepare us gradually for a change which he
believed possible, and to let it come on with as little shock as might
be to the public mind.
These are my opinions of General Washington, which I would vouch
at the judgment seat of God, having been formed on an
acquaintance of thirty years. I served with him in the Virginia
legislature from 1769 to the Revolutionary war, and again, a short
time in Congress, until he left us to take command of the army.
During the war and after it we corresponded occasionally, and in the
four years of my continuance in the office of Secretary of State, our
intercourse was daily, confidential and cordial. After I retired from
that office, great and malignant pains were taken by our federal
monarchists, and not entirely without effect, to make him view me
as a theorist, holding French principles of government, which would
lead infallibly to licentiousness and anarchy. And to this he listened
the more easily, from my known disapprobation of the British treaty.
I never saw him afterwards, or these malignant insinuations should
have been dissipated before his just judgment, as mists before the
sun. I felt on his death, with my countrymen, that "verily a great
man hath fallen this day in Israel."
More time and recollection would enable me to add many other
traits of his character; but why add them to you who knew him well?
And I cannot justify to myself a longer detention of your paper.
Vale, proprieque tuum, me esse tibi persuadeas.
 TO JOHN PINTARD RECORDING SECRETARY OF THE NEW
YORK HISTORICAL SOCIETY.

Monticello, January 9, 1814.

Sir,—I have duly received your favor of December 22d, informing

me that the New York Historical Society had been pleased to elect
me an honorary member of that institution. I am entirely sensible of
the honor done me by this election, and I pray you to become the
channel of my grateful acknowledgments to the society. At this
distance, and at my time of life, I cannot but be conscious how little
it will be in my power to further their establishment, and that I
should be but an unprofitable member, carrying into the institution
indeed, my best wishes for its success, and a readiness to serve it on
any occasion which should occur. With these acknowledgments, be
so good as to accept for the society, as well as for yourself, the
assurances of my high respect and consideration.

TO SAMUEL M. BURNSIDE, SECRETARY OF THE AMERICAN

ANTIQUARIAN SOCIETY.

Monticello, January 9, 1814.

Sir,—I have duly received your favor of the 13th of December,

informing me of the institution of the American Antiquarian Society,
and expressing its disposition to honor me with an admission into it,
and the request of my co-operation in the advancement of its
objects. No one can be more sensible of the honor and the favor of
these dispositions, and I pray you to have the goodness to testify to
them all the gratitude I feel on receiving assurances of them. There
has been a time of life when I should have entered into their views
with zeal, and with a hope of not being altogether unuseful. But,
now more than septuagenary, retired from the active scenes and
business of life, I am sensible how little I can contribute to the
advancement of the objects of their views; but I shall certainly, and
with great pleasure, embrace any occasion which shall occur, of
rendering them any services in my power. With these assurances, be
so good as to accept for them and for yourself, those of my high
respect and consideration.

TO DOCTOR THOMAS COOPER.

Monticello, January 16, 1814.

Dear Sir,—Your favor of November 8th, if it was rightly dated, did not
come to hand till December 13th, and being absent on a long
journey, it has remained unanswered till now. The copy of your
introductory lecture was received and acknowledged in my letter of
July 12, 1812, with which I sent you Tracy's first volume on Logic.
Your Justinian came safely also, and I have been constantly meaning
to acknowledge it, but I wished, at the same time, to say something
more. I possessed Theopilus', Vinnius' and Harris' editions, but read
over your notes and the addenda et corrifenda, and especially the
parallels with the English law, with great satisfaction and edification.
Your edition will be very useful to our lawyers, some of whom will
need the translation as well as the notes. But what I had wanted to
say to you on the subject, was that I much regret that instead of this
work, useful as it may be, you had not bestowed the same time and
research rather on a translation and notes on Bracton, a work which
has never been performed for us, and which I have always
considered as one of the greatest desiderata in the law. The laws of
England, in their progress from the earliest to the present times,
may be likened to the road of a traveller, divided into distinct stages
or resting places, at each of which a review is taken of the road
passed over so far. The first of these was Bracton's De legibus
Angliæ; the second, Coke's Institutes; the third, the Abridgment of
the law by Matthew Bacon; and the fourth, Blackstone's
Commentaries. Doubtless there were others before Bracton which
have not reached us. Alfred, in the preface to his laws, says they
were compiled from those of Ina, Offa, and Aethelbert, into which,
or rather preceding them, the clergy have interpolated the 20th,
21st, 22d, 23d and 24th chapters of Exodus, so as to place Alfred's
preface to what was really his, awkwardly enough in the body of the
work. An interpolation the more glaring, as containing laws expressly
contradicted by those of Alfred. This pious fraud seems to have been
first noted by Howard, in his Contumes Anglo Normandes (188), and
the pious judges of England have had no inclination to question it;
[of this disposition in these judges, I could give you a curious sample
from a note in my common-place book, made while I was a student,
but it is too long to be now copied. Perhaps I may give it to you with
some future letter.] This digest of Alfred of the laws of the Heptarchy
into a single code, common to the whole kingdom, by him first
reduced into one, was probably the birth of what is called the
common law. He has been styled, "Magnus Juris Anglicani Conditor;"
and his code, the Dom-Dec, or doom-book. That which was made
afterwards under Edward the Confessor, was but a restoration of
Alfred's, with some intervening alterations. And this was the code
which the English so often, under the Norman princes, petitioned to
have restored to them. But, all records previous to the Magna Charta
having been early lost, Bracton's is the first digest of the whole body
of law which has come down to us entire. What materials for it
existed in his time we know not, except the unauthoritative
collections of Lambard & Wilkins, and the treatise of Glanville,
tempore H. 2. Bracton's is the more valuable, because being written
a very few years after the Magna Charta, which commences what is
called the statute law, it gives us the state of the common law in its
ultimate form, and exactly at the point of division between the
common and statute law. It is a most able work, complete in its
matter and luminous in its method.
2. The statutes which introduced changes began now to be
preserved; applications of the law to new cases by the courts, began
soon after to be reported in the year-books, these to be methodized
and abridged by Fitzherbert, Broke, Rolle, and others; individuals
continued the business of reporting; particular treatises were written
by able men, and all these, by the time of Lord Coke, had formed so
large a mass of matter as to call for a new digest, to bring it within
reasonable compass. This he undertook in his Institutes,
harmonizing all the decisions and opinions which were reconcilable,
and rejecting those not so. This work is executed with so much
learning and judgment, that I do not recollect that a single position
in it has ever been judicially denied. And although the work loses
much of its value by its chaotic form, it may still be considered as
the fundamental code of the English law.
3. The same processes re-commencing of statutory changes, new
divisions, multiplied reports, and special treatises, a new
accumulation had formed, calling for new reduction, by the time of
Matthew Bacon. His work, therefore, although not pretending to the
textual merit of Bracton's, or Coke's, was very acceptable. His
alphabetical arrangement, indeed, although better than Coke's
jumble, was far inferior to Bracton's. But it was a sound digest of the
materials existing on the several alphabetical heads under which he
arranged them. His work was not admitted as authority in
Westminster Hall; yet it was the manual of every judge and lawyer,
and, what better proves its worth, has been its daily growth in the
general estimation.
4. A succeeding interval of changes and additions of matter
produced Blackstone's Commentaries, the most lucid in arrangement
which had yet been written, correct in its matter, classical in style,
and rightfully taking its place by the side of the Justinian Institutes.
But, like them it was only an elementary book. It did not present all
the subjects of the law in all their details. It still left it necessary to
recur to the original works of which it was the summary. The great
mass of law books from which it was extracted, was still to be
consulted on minute investigations. It wanted, therefore, a species
of merit which entered deeply into the value of those of Bracton,
Coke and Bacon. They had in effect swept the shelves of all the
materials preceding them. To give Blackstone, therefore, a full
measure of value, another work is still wanting, to-wit: to
incorporate with his principles a compend of the particular cases
subsequent to Bacon, of which they are the essence. This might be
done by printing under his text a digest like Bacon's continued to
Blackstone's time. It would enlarge his work, and increase its value
peculiarly to us, because just there we break off from the parent
stem of the English law, unconcerned in any of its subsequent
changes or decisions.
Of the four digests noted, the three last are possessed and
understood by every one. But the first, the fountain of them all,
remains in its technical Latin, abounding in terms antiquated,
obsolete, and unintelligible but to the most learned of the body of
lawyers. To give it to us then in English, with a glossary of its old
terms, is a work for which I know nobody but yourself possessing
the necessary learning and industry. The latter part of it would be
furnished to your hand from the glossaries of Wilkins, Lambard,
Spelman, Somner in the X. Scriptores, the index of Coke and the law
dictionaries. Could not such an undertaking be conveniently
associated with your new vocation of giving law lectures? I pray you
to think of it.[8] A further operation indeed, would still be desirable.
To take up the doctrines of Bracton, separatim et seriatim, to give
their history through the periods of Lord Coke and Bacon, down to
Blackstone, to show when and how some of them have become
extinct, the successive alterations made in others, and their progress
to the state in which Blackstone found them. But this might be a
separate work, left for your greater leisure or for some future pen.[9]
I have long had under contemplation, and been collecting materials
for the plan of an university in Virginia which should comprehend all
the sciences useful to us, and none others. The general idea is
suggested in the Notes on Virginia, Qu. 14. This would probably
absorb the functions of William and Mary College, and transfer them
to a healthier and more central position: perhaps to the
neighborhood of this place. The long and lingering decline of William
and Mary, the death of its last president, its location and climate,
force on us the wish for a new institution more convenient to our
country generally, and better adapted to the present state of
science. I have been told there will be an effort in the present
session of our legislature, to effect such an establishment. I confess,
however, that I have not great confidence that this will be done.
Should it happen, it would offer places worthy of you, and of which
you are worthy. It might produce, too, a bidder for the apparatus
and library of Dr. Priestley, to which they might add mine on their
own terms. This consists of about seven or eight thousand volumes,
the best chosen collection of its size probably in America, and
containing a great mass of what is most rare and valuable, and
especially of what relates to America.
You have given us, in your Emporium, Bollman's medley on Political
Economy. It is the work of one who sees a little of everything, and
the whole of nothing; and were it not for your own notes on it, a
sentence of which throws more just light on the subject than all his
pages, we should regret the place it occupies of more useful matter.
The bringing our countrymen to a sound comparative estimate of
the vast value of internal commerce, and the disproportionate
importance of what is foreign, is the most salutary effort which can
be made for the prosperity of these States, which are entirely misled
from their true interests by the infection of English prejudices, and
illicit attachments to English interests and connections. I look to you
for this effort. It would furnish a valuable chapter for every
Emporium; but I would rather see it also in the newspapers, which
alone find access to every one.
Everything predicted by the enemies of banks, in the beginning, is
now coming to pass. We are to be ruined now by the deluge of bank
paper, as we were formerly by the old Continental paper. It is cruel
that such revolutions in private fortunes should be at the mercy of
avaricious adventurers, who, instead of employing their capital, if
any they have, in manufactures, commerce, and other useful
pursuits, make it an instrument to burthen all the interchanges of
property with their swindling profits, profits which are the price of no
useful industry of theirs. Prudent men must be on their guard in this
game of Robin's alive, and take care that the spark does not
extinguish in their hands. I am an enemy to all banks discounting
bills or notes for anything but coin. But our whole country is so
fascinated by this Jack-lantern wealth, that they will not stop short
of its total and fatal explosion.[10]
Have you seen the memorial to Congress on the subject of Oliver
Evans' patent rights? The memorialists have published in it a letter
of mine containing some views on this difficult subject. But I have
opened it no further than to raise the questions belonging to it. I
wish we could have the benefit of your lights on these questions.
The abuse of the frivolous patents is likely to cause more
inconvenience than is countervailed by those really useful. We know
not to what uses we may apply implements which have been in our
hands before the birth of our government, and even the discovery of
America. The memorial is a thin pamphlet, printed by Robinson of
Baltimore, a copy of which has been laid on the desk of every
member of Congress.
You ask if it is a secret who wrote the commentary on Montesquieu?
It must be a secret during the author's life. I may only say at
present that it was written by a Frenchman, that the original MS. in
French is now in my possession, that it was translated and edited by
General Duane, and that I should rejoice to see it printed in its
original tongue, if any one would undertake it. No book can suffer
more by translation, because of the severe correctness of the
original in the choice of its terms. I have taken measures for
securing to the author his justly-earned fame, whenever his death or
other circumstances may render it safe for him. Like you, I do not
agree with him in everything, and have had some correspondence
with him on particular points. But on the whole, it is a most valuable
work, one which I think will form an epoch in the science of
government, and which I wish to see in the hands of every American
student, as the elementary and fundamental institute of that
important branch of human science.[11]
I have never seen the answer of Governor Strong to the judges of
Massachusetts, to which you allude, nor the Massachusetts reports
in which it is contained. But I am sure you join me in lamenting the
general defection of lawyers and judges, from the free principles of
government. I am sure they do not derive this degenerate spirit from
the father of our science, Lord Coke. But it may be the reason why
they cease to read him, and the source of what are now called
"Blackstone lawyers."
Go on in all your good works, without regard to the eye "of suspicion
and distrust with which you may be viewed by some," and without
being weary in well doing, and be assured that you are justly
estimated by the impartial mass of our fellow citizens, and by none
more than myself.

TO OLIVER EVANS, ESQ.

Monticello, January 16, 1814.

Sir,—In August last I received a letter from Mr. Isaac McPherson of

Baltimore, on the controversies subsisting between yourself and
some persons in that quarter interested in mills. These related to
your patent rights for the elevators, conveyors, and hopper-boys;
and he requested any information I could give him on that subject.
Having been formerly a member of the patent board, as long as it
existed, and bestowed in the execution of that trust much
consideration on the questions belonging to it, I thought it an act of
justice, and indeed of duty, to communicate such facts and principles
as had occurred to me on the subject. I therefore wrote the letter of
August 13, which is the occasion of your favor to me of the 7th
instant, just now received, but without the report of the case tried in
the circuit court of Maryland, or your memorial to Congress,
mentioned in the letter as accompanying it. You request an answer
to your letter, which my respect and esteem for you would of
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