Томас Джефферсон
The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, Vol. 3 (of 9)
TO M. DE LA FAYETTE
Philadelphia, June 16, 1792.
Behold you, then, my dear friend, at the head of a great army establishing the liberties of your country against a foreign enemy. May heaven favor your cause, and make you the channel through which it may pour its favors. While you are estimating the monster Aristocracy, and pulling out the teeth and fangs of its associate, Monarchy, a contrary tendency is discovered in some here. A sect has shown itself among us, who declare they espoused our new Constitution not as a good and sufficient thing in itself, but only as a step to an English constitution, the only thing good and sufficient in itself, in their eye. It is happy for us that these are preachers without followers, and that our people are firm and constant in their republican purity. You will wonder to be told that it is from the eastward chiefly that these champions for a king, lords, and commons, come. They get some important associates from New York, and are puffed up by a tribe of Agioteurs which have been hatched in a bed of corruption made up after the model of their beloved England. Too many of these stock-jobbers and king-jobbers have come into our Legislature, or rather too many of our Legislature have become stock-jobbers and king-jobbers. However, the voice of the people is beginning to make itself heard, and will probably cleanse their seats at the ensuing election. The machinations of our old enemies are such as to keep us still at bay with our Indian neighbors. What are you doing for your colonies? They will be lost, if not more effectually succored. Indeed, no future efforts you can make will ever be able to reduce the blacks. All that can be done, in my opinion, will be to compound with them, as has been done formerly in Jamaica. We have been less zealous in aiding them, lest your government should feel any jealousy on our account. But, in truth, we as sincerely wish their restoration and their connection with you, as you do yourselves. We are satisfied that neither your justice nor their distresses will ever again permit their being forced to seek at dear and distant markets those first necessaries of life which they may have at cheaper markets, placed by nature at their door, and formed by her for their support. What is become of Madame de Tessy and Madame de Tott? I have not heard of them since they went to Switzerland. I think they would have done better to have come and reposed under the poplars of Virginia. Pour into their bosoms the warmest effusions of my friendship, and tell them they will be warm and constant unto death. Accept of them also for Madame de La Fayette, and your dear children; but I am forgetting that you are in the field of war, and they I hope in those of peace. Adieu, my dear friend. God bless you all. Yours affectionately.
TO MR. BARLOW
Philadelphia, June 20, 1792.
Dear Sir,—Though I am in hopes you are now on the ocean home-bound, yet I cannot omit the chance of my thanks reaching you, for your "Conspiracy of Kings" and advice to the privileged orders, the second part of which I am in hopes is out by this time. Be assured that your endeavors to bring the trans-Atlantic world into the road of reason, are not without their effect here. Some here are disposed to move retrograde, and to take their stand in the rear of Europe, now advancing to the high ground of natural right; but of all this your friend Mr. Baldwin gives you information, and doubtless paints to you the indignation with which the heresies of some people here fill us.
This will be conveyed by Mr. Pinckney, an honest, sensible man, and good republican. He goes our Minister Plenipotentiary to London. He will arrive at an interesting moment in Europe. God send that all the nations who join in attacking the liberties of France may end in the attainment of their own. I still hope this will not find you in Europe, and therefore add nothing more than assurances of affectionate esteem from, dear Sir, your sincere friend and servant.
TO PETER CARR
Philadelphia, June 22, 1792.
Dear Sir,—I received in due time your favor of May 28, with the notes it contained on the subject of Waste. Your view of the subject, as far as it goes, is perfectly proper. Perhaps, on such a question in this country, where the husbandry is so different, it might be necessary to go further, and inquire whether any difference of this kind should produce a difference in the law. The main objects of the law of waste in England are, 1st, to prevent any disguise of the lands which might lessen the revisioner's evidence of title, such as the change of pasture into arable; 2d, to prevent any deterioration of it, as the cutting down forest, which in England is an injury. So careful is the law there against permitting a deterioration of the land, that though it will permit such improvements in the same line, as manuring arable lands, leading water into pasture lands, &c., yet it will not permit improvements in a different line, such as erecting buildings, converting pasture into arable, &c., lest this should lead to a deterioration. Hence we might argue in Virginia, that though the cutting down of forest in Virginia is, in our husbandry, rather an improvement generally, yet it is not so always, and therefore it is safer never to admit it. Consequently, there is no reason for adopting different rules of waste here from those established in England.
Your objection to Lord Kaims, that he is too metaphysical, is just, and it is the chief objection to which his writings are liable. It is to be observed also, that though he has given us what should be the system of equity, yet it is not the one actually established, at least not in all its parts. The English Chancellors have gone on from one thing to another without any comprehensive or systematic view of the whole field of equity, and therefore they have sometimes run into inconsistencies and contradictions.
Never fear the want of business. A man who qualifies himself well for his calling, never fails of employment in it. The foundation you will have laid in legal reading, will enable you to take a higher ground than most of your competitors, and even ignorant men can see who it is that is not one of themselves. Go on then with courage, and you will be sure of success; for which be assured no one wishes more ardently, nor has more sincere sentiments of friendship towards you, than, dear Sir, your affectionate friend.
TO MR. VAN BERCKEL
Philadelphia, July 2, 1792.
Sir,—It was with extreme concern that I learned from your letter of June the 25th, that a violation of the protection due to you as the representative of your nation had been committed, by an officer of this State entering your house and serving therein a process on one of your servants. There could be no question but that this was a breach of privilege; the only one was, how it was to be punished. To ascertain this, I referred your letter to the Attorney General, whose answer I have the honor to enclose you. By this you will perceive, that from the circumstance of your servant's not being registered in the Secretary of State's office, we cannot avail ourselves of the more certain and effectual proceeding which had been provided by an act of Congress for punishing infractions of the law of nations, that act having thought proper to confine the benefit of its provisions to such domestics only, as should have been registered. We are to proceed, therefore, as if that act had never been made, and the Attorney General's letter indicates two modes of proceeding. 1. By a warrant before a single magistrate, to recover the money paid by the servant under a process declared void by law. Herein the servant must be the actor, and the government not intermeddle at all. The smallness of the sum to be re-demanded will place this cause in the class of those in which no appeal to the higher tribunal is permitted, even in the case of manifest error, so that if the magistrate should err, the government has no means of correcting the error. 2. The second mode of proceeding would be, to indict the officer in the Supreme Court of the United States; with whom it would rest to punish him at their discretion, in proportion to the injury done and the malice from which it proceeded; and it would end in punishment alone, and not in a restitution of the money. In this mode of proceeding, the government of the United States is actor, taking the management of the cause into its own hands, and giving you no other trouble than that of bearing witness to such material facts as may not be otherwise supported. You will be so good as to decide in which of these two ways you would choose the proceeding should be; if the latter, I will immediately take measures for having the offender prosecuted according to law.
I have the honor to be, with sentiments of respect, Sir, your most obedient, and most humble servant.
TO HIS EXCELLENCY THE GOVERNOR OF GEORGIA
Philadelphia, July 3, 1792.
Sir,—I have the honor to enclose to your Excellency, the copy of a letter I have received from his Catholic Majesty's representatives here, in consequence of a complaint from the Governor of Florida, that three inhabitants of the State of Georgia, to wit, Thomas Harrison, David Rees, and William Ewin, had entered the Spanish territory and brought from thence five negro slaves, the property of John Blackwood, a Spanish subject, without his consent, in violation of the rights of that State and the peace of the two countries. I had formerly had the honor of sending you a copy of the convention entered into between the said Governor and Mr. Leagrove, on the part of the United States for the mutual restitution of fugitive slaves. I now take the liberty of requesting your Excellency to inform me what is done, or likely to be done with you for the satisfaction of the Spanish government in this instance. Nobody knows better than your Excellency the importance of restraining individuals from committing the peace and honor of the two nations, and I am persuaded that nothing will be wanting on your part to satisfy the just expectations of the government of Florida on the present occasion. I have the honor to be, with great respect, your Excellency's most obedient, and most humble servant.
TO MESSRS. DE VIAR AND JAUDENES
Philadelphia, July 9, 1792.
Gentlemen,—Information has been received that the government of West Florida has established an agent within the territory of the United States, belonging to the Creek Indians, and it is even pretended that that agent has excited those Indians to oppose the making a boundary between their district and that of the citizens of the United States. The latter is so inconsistent with the dispositions to friendship and good neighborhood which Spain has always expressed towards us, with that concert of interest which would be so advantageous to the two nations, and which we are disposed sincerely to promote, that we find no difficulty in supposing it erroneous. The sending an agent within our limits we presume has been done without the authority or knowledge of your Government. It has certainly been the usage, where one nation has wished to employ agents of any kind within the limits of another, to obtain the permission of that other, and even to regulate by convention and on principles of reciprocity, the functions to be exercised by such agents. It is not to a nation whose dominions are circumstanced as those of Spain in our neighborhood, that we need develop the inconveniences of permitting reciprocally the unlicensed mission of agents into the territories of each other. I am persuaded nothing more is necessary than to bring the fact under the notice of your Government in order to its being rectified, which is the object of my addressing you on this occasion; with every assurance that you will make the proper communications on the subject to your court. I have the honor to be, with sentiments of perfect esteem and respect, Gentlemen, your most obedient, and most humble servant.
TO COLONEL HUMPHREYS
Philadelphia, July 12, 1792.
Dear Sir,—We have been very long indeed without any vessel going from this port to Lisbon. This is the reason why I have been so long without acknowledging the receipt of your letters. Your Nos. from 45 to 53 inclusive are received, except No. 52, not yet come to hand. The President set out yesterday for Virginia, and I shall follow him to-morrow. During my absence the public papers will be forwarded to you by every opportunity by Mr. Taylor, with whom this letter is left, as we know of no present opportunity of forwarding it. The State of Vermont has lately taken some decisive step to extend its jurisdiction nearer to the British ports than has hitherto been done. This has produced a complaint from Mr. Hammond. We shall endeavor to keep things quiet, in hopes of voluntary justice from them. We shall probably have no campaign this year against the Indians. There are some hopes they will accept of peace and the rather as we have never asked anything in return for it. We really wish not to hurt them. I need not repeat occurrences which you will see in the gazettes. I am, with great and sincere esteem, dear Sir, your most obedient, and most humble servant.
TO HIS EXCELLENCY GOVERNOR LEE
Monticello, August 13, 1792.
Sir,—It was not till yesterday that I was honored with the receipt of yours of July 23d, or it should have been sooner answered. I am of opinion that all communications between nations should pass through the channels of their Executives. However, in the instance of condolence on the death of Dr. Franklin, the letter from our general government was addressed to the President of the National Assembly; so was a letter from the Legislature of Pennsylvania, containing congratulations on the achievement of liberty to the French nation. I have not heard that, in either instance, their Executive took it amiss that they were not made the channel of communication. Perhaps, therefore, this method may at present be the safest, as it is not quite certain that the sentiments of their executive and legislative are exactly the same on the subject on which you have to address them. I cannot better justify the honor of your consultation than by thus giving you my ideas without reserve, and beg you to be assured of the sentiments of respect and esteem, with which I have the honor to be, your Excellency's most obedient, and most humble servant.
TO MR. PALESKE
Monticello, August 19, 1792.
Sir,—I have received at this place your favor of the 9th instant, wherein you request, that agreeably to the treaty of commerce between the United States and his Prussian Majesty, his consul general be acknowledged as belonging to a most favored nation; that the privileges and immunities due to a consul general of the most favored nation be granted to his consul general, and that commissioners be appointed to regulate, by particular convention, the functions of the consuls and vice-consuls of the respective nations.
Treaties of the United States duly made and ratified, as is that with his Prussian Majesty, constitute a part of the law of the land, and need only promulgation to oblige all persons to obey them, and to entitle all to those privileges which such treaties confer. That promulgation having taken place, no other act is necessary or proper on the part of our government, according to our rules of proceeding, to give effect to the treaty. This treaty, however, has not specified the privileges or functions of consuls; it has only provided that these "shall be regulated by particular agreement." To the proposition to proceed as speedily as possible to regulate these functions by a convention, my absence from the seat of government does not allow me to give a definitive answer. I know, in general, that it would be agreeable to our government, on account of the recent changes in its form, to suspend for awhile the contracting specific engagements with foreign nations, until something more shall be seen of the direction it will take, and of its mode of operation, in order that our engagements may be so moulded to that, as to insure the exact performance of them which we are desirous ever to observe. Should this be the sentiment of our government on the present occasion, the friendship of his Prussian Majesty is a sufficient reliance to us for that delay which our affairs might require for the present; and the rather, as his vessels are not yet in the habit of seeking our ports, and for the few cases which may occur for some time, our own laws, copied mostly in this respect from those of a very commercial nation, have made the most material of those provisions which could be admitted into a special convention for the protection of vessels, their crews and cargoes, coming hither. We shall on this, however, and every other occasion, do everything we can to manifest our friendship to his Prussian Majesty and our desire to promote commercial intercourse with his subjects; and of this, we hope, he will be fully assured.
I have the honor to be, with great respect, Sir, your most obedient, and most humble servant.
TO THE MINISTER PLENIPOTENTIARY OF FRANCE
August 27, 1792.
Sir,—Your letter of the 2d instant, informing me that the Legislative body, on the proposition of the King of the French, had declared war against the King of Hungary and Bohemia, has been duly received, and is laid before the President of the United States; and I am authorized to convey to you the expression of the sincere concern we feel on learning that the French nation, to whose friendship and interests we have the strongest attachment, are now to encounter the evils of war. We offer our prayers to Heaven that its duration may be short, and its course marked with as few as may be of those calamities which render the condition of war so afflicting to humanity, and we add assurances that, during its course, we shall continue in the same friendly dispositions, and render all those good offices which shall be consistent with the duties of a neutral nation.
I have the honor to be, with sentiments of the most perfect esteem and respect, Sir, your most obedient, and most humble servant.
TO THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES
Monticello, September 9, 1792.
Dear Sir,—I received on the 2d instant the letter of August 23d, which you did me the honor to write me; but the immediate return of our post, contrary to his custom, prevented my answer by that occasion. The proceedings of Spain, mentioned in your letter, are really of a complexion to excite uneasiness, and a suspicion that their friendly overtures about the Mississippi, have been merely to lull us while they should be strengthening their holds on that river. Mr. Carmichael's silence has been long my astonishment; and however it might have justified something very different from a new appointment, yet the public interest certainly called for his junction with Mr. Short, as it is impossible but that his knowledge of the ground of negotiation, of persons and characters, must be useful and even necessary to the success of the mission. That Spain and Great Britain may understand one another on our frontiers is very possible; for however opposite their interests or disposition may be in the affairs of Europe, yet while these do not call them into opposite action, they may concur as against us. I consider their keeping an agent in the Indian country as a circumstance which requires serious interference on our part; and I submit to your decision whether it does not furnish a proper occasion to us to send an additional instruction to Messrs. Carmichael and Short to insist on a mutual and formal stipulation to forbear employing agents or pensioning any persons within each other's limits; and if this be refused, to propose the contrary stipulation, to wit, that each party may freely keep agents within the Indian territories of the other, in which case we might soon sicken them of the license.
I now take the liberty of proceeding to that part of your letter wherein you notice the internal dissensions which have taken place within our government, and their disagreeable effect on its movements. That such dissensions have taken place is certain, and even among those who are nearest to you in the administration. To no one have they given deeper concern than myself; to no one equal mortification at being myself a part of them. Though I take to myself no more than my share of the general observations of your letter, yet I am so desirous ever that you should know the whole truth, and believe no more than the truth, that I am glad to seize every occasion of developing to you whatever I do or think relative to the government; and shall, therefore, ask permission to be more lengthy now than the occasion particularly calls for, or could otherwise perhaps justify.
When I embarked in the government, it was with a determination to intermeddle not at all with the Legislature, and as little as possible with my co-departments. The first and only instance of variance from the former part of my resolution, I was duped into by the Secretary of the Treasury, and made a tool for forwarding his schemes, not then sufficiently understood by me; and of all the errors of my political life, this has occasioned me the deepest regret. It has ever been my purpose to explain this to you, when, from being actors on the scene, we shall have become uninterested spectators only. The second part of my resolution has been religiously observed with the War Department; and as to that of the Treasury, has never been further swerved from than by the mere enunciation of my sentiments in conversation, and chiefly among those who, expressing the same sentiments, drew mine from me. If it has been supposed that I have ever intrigued among the members of the Legislature to defeat the plans of the Secretary of the Treasury, it is contrary to all truth. As I never had the desire to influence the members, so neither had I any other means than my friendships, which I valued too highly to risk by usurpation on their freedom of judgment, and the conscientious pursuit of their own sense of duty. That I have utterly, in my private conversations, disapproved of the system of the Secretary of the Treasury, I acknowledge and avow; and this was not merely a speculative difference. His system flowed from principles adverse to liberty, and was calculated to undermine and demolish the Republic, by creating an influence of his department over the members of the Legislature. I saw this influence actually produced, and its first fruits to be the establishment of the great outlines of his project by the votes of the very persons who, having swallowed his bait, were laying themselves out to profit by his plans; and that had these persons withdrawn, as those interested in a question ever should, the vote of the disinterested majority was clearly the reverse of what they made it. These were no longer the votes then of the representatives of the people, but of deserters from the rights and interests of the people; and it was impossible to consider their decisions, which had nothing in view but to enrich themselves, as the measures of the fair majority, which ought always to be respected. If, what was actually doing, begat uneasiness in those who wished for virtuous government, what was further proposed was not less threatening to the friends of the Constitution. For, in a report on the subject of manufactures, (still to be acted on,) it was expressly assumed that the General Government has a right to exercise all powers which may be for the general welfare, that is to say, all the legitimate powers of government; since no government has a legitimate right to do what is not for the welfare of the governed. There was, indeed, a sham limitation of the universality of this power to cases where money is to be employed. But about what is it that money cannot be employed? Thus the object of these plans, taken together, is to draw all the powers of government into the hands of the general Legislature, to establish means for corrupting a sufficient corps in that Legislature to divide the honest votes, and preponderate, by their own, the scale which suited, and to have the corps under the command of the Secretary of the Treasury, for the purpose of subverting, step by step, the principles of the Constitution which he has so often declared to be a thing of nothing, which must be changed. Such views might have justified something more than mere expressions of dissent, beyond which, nevertheless, I never went. Has abstinence from the department, committed to me, been equally observed by him? To say nothing of other interferences equally known, in the case of the two nations, with which we have the most intimate connections, France and England, my system was to give some satisfactory distinctions to the former, of little cost to us, in return for the solid advantages yielded us by them; and to have met the English with some restrictions which might induce them to abate their severities against our commerce. I have always supposed this coincided with your sentiments. Yet the Secretary of the Treasury, by his cabals with members of the Legislature, and by high-toned declamations on other occasions, has forced down his own system, which was exactly the reverse. He undertook, of his own authority, the conferences with the ministers of those two nations, and was, on every consultation, provided with some report of a conversation with the one or the other of them, adapted to his views. These views, thus made to prevail, their execution fell, of course, to me; and I can safely appeal to you, who have seen all my letters and proceedings, whether I have not carried them into execution as sincerely as if they had been my own, though I ever considered them as inconsistent with the honor and interest of our country. That they have been inconsistent with our interest is but too fatally proved by the stab to our navigation given by the French. So that if the question be by whose fault is it that Colonel Hamilton and myself have not drawn together? the answer will depend on that to two other questions, whose principles of administration best justify, by their purity, conscientious adherence? and which of us has, notwithstanding, stepped farthest into the control of the department of the other?
To this justification of opinions, expressed in the way of conversation, against the views of Colonel Hamilton, I beg leave to add some notice of his late charges against me in Fenno's Gazette; for neither the style, matter, nor venom of the pieces alluded to, can leave a doubt of their author. Spelling my name and character at full length to the public, while he conceals his own under the signature of "An American," he charges me, 1st. With having written letters from Europe to my friends to oppose the present Constitution, while depending. 2d. With a desire of not paying the public debt. 3d. With setting up a paper to decry and slander the government. 1st. The first charge is most false. No man in the United States, I suppose, approved of every tittle in the Constitution: no one, I believe, approved more of it than I did, and more of it was certainly disapproved by my accuser than by me, and of its parts most vitally republican. Of this the few letters I wrote on the subject (not half a dozen I believe) will be a proof; and for my own satisfaction and justification, I must tax you with the reading of them when I return to where they are. You will there see that my objection to the Constitution was, that it wanted a bill of rights securing freedom of religion, freedom of the press, freedom from standing armies, trial by jury, and a constant habeas corpus act. Colonel Hamilton's was, that it wanted a king and house of lords. The sense of America has approved my objection and added the bill of rights, not the king and lords. I also thought a longer term of service, insusceptible of renewal, would have made a President more independent. My country has thought otherwise, I have acquiesced implicitly. He wishes the General Government should have power to make laws binding the States in all cases whatsoever. Our country has thought otherwise: has he acquiesced? Notwithstanding my wish for a bill of rights, my letters strongly urged the adoption of the Constitution, by nine States at least, to secure the good it contained. I at first thought that the best method of securing the bill of rights would be for four States to hold off till such a bill should be agreed to. But the moment I saw Mr. Hancock's proposition to pass the Constitution as it stood, and give perpetual instructions to the representatives of every State to insist on a bill of rights, I acknowledged the superiority of his plan, and advocated universal adoption. 2d. The second charge is equally untrue. My whole correspondence while in France, and every word, letter and act on the subject, since my return, prove that no man is more ardently intent to see the public debt soon and sacredly paid off than I am. This exactly marks the difference between Colonel Hamilton's views and mine, that I would wish the debt paid to-morrow; he wishes it never to be paid, but always to be a thing wherewith to corrupt and manage the Legislature. 3d. I have never enquired what number of sons, relatives and friends of Senators, Representatives, printers or other useful partisans Colonel Hamilton has provided for among the hundred clerks of his department, the thousand excisemen, at his nod, and spread over the Union; nor could ever have imagined that the man who has the shuffling of millions backwards and forwards from paper into money and money into paper, from Europe to America, and America to Europe, the dealing out of treasury secrets among his friends in what time and measure he pleases, and who never slips an occasion of making friends with his means, that such an one, I say, would have brought forward a charge against me for having appointed the poet, Freneau, translating clerk to my office, with a salary of 250 dollars a year. That fact stands thus. While the government was at New York I was applied to on behalf of Freneau to know if there was any place within my department to which he could be appointed. I answered there were but four clerkships, all of which I found full, and continued without any change. When we removed to Philadelphia, Mr. Pintard, the translating clerk, did not choose to remove with us. His office then became vacant. I was again applied to there for Freneau, and had no hesitation to promise the clerkship for him. I cannot recollect whether it was at the same time, or afterwards, that I was told he had a thought of setting up a newspaper there. But whether then, or afterwards, I considered it a circumstance of some value, as it might enable me to do, what I had long wished to have done, that is, to have the material parts of the Leyden Gazette brought under your eye, and that of the public, in order to possess yourself and them of a juster view of the affairs of Europe than could be obtained from any other public source. This I had ineffectually attempted through the press of Mr. Fenno, while in New York, selecting and translating passages myself at first, then having it done by Mr. Pintard, the translating clerk, but they found their way too slowly into Mr. Fenno's papers. Mr. Bache essayed it for me in Philadelphia, but his being a daily paper, did not circulate sufficiently in the other States. He even tried, at my request, the plan of a weekly paper of recapitulation from his daily paper, in hopes that that might go into the other States, but in this too we failed. Freneau, as translating clerk, and the printer of a periodical paper likely to circulate through the States (uniting in one person the parts of Pintard and Fenno), revived my hopes that the thing could at length be effected. On the establishment of his paper, therefore, I furnished him with the Leyden Gazette, with an expression of my wish that he could always translate and publish the material intelligence they contained, and have continued to furnish them from time to time, as regularly as I received them. But as to any other direction or indication of my wish how his press should be conducted, what sort of intelligence he should give, what essays encourage, I can protest, in the presence of heaven, that I never did by myself, or any other, or indirectly, say a syllable, nor attempt any kind of influence. I can further protest, in the same awful presence, that I never did, by myself, or any other, directly or indirectly, write, dictate or procure any one sentence or sentiment to be inserted in his, or any other gazette, to which my name was not affixed or that of my office. I surely need not except here a thing so foreign to the present subject as a little paragraph about our Algerine captives, which I put once into Fenno's paper. Freneau's proposition to publish a paper, having been about the time that the writings of Publicola, and the discourses on Davila, had a good deal excited the public attention, I took for granted from Freneau's character, which had been marked as that of a good whig, that he would give free place to pieces written against the aristocratical and monarchical principles these papers had inculcated. This having been in my mind, it is likely enough I may have expressed it in conversation with others, though I do not recollect that I did. To Freneau I think I could not, because I had still seen him but once, and that was at a public table, at breakfast, at Mrs. Elsworth's, as I passed through New York the last year. And I can safely declare that my expectations looked only to the chastisement of the aristocratical and monarchical writers, and not to any criticisms on the proceedings of government. Colonel Hamilton can see no motive for any appointment, but that of making a convenient partizan. But you, Sir, who have received from me recommendations of a Rittenhouse, Barlow, Paine, will believe that talents and science are sufficient motives with me in appointments to which they are fitted; and that Freneau, as a man of genius, might find a preference in my eye to be a translating clerk, and make good title to the little aids I could give him as the editor of a gazette, by procuring subscriptions to his paper, as I did some before it appeared, and as I have with pleasure done for the labors of other men of genius. I hold it to be one of the distinguishing excellences of elective over hereditary successions, that the talents which nature has provided in sufficient proportion, should be selected by the society for the government of their affairs, rather than that this should be transmitted through the loins of knaves and fools, passing from the debauches of the table to those of the bed. Colonel Hamilton, alias "Plain Facts," says, that Freneau's salary began before he resided in Philadelphia. I do not know what quibble he may have in reserve on the word "residence." He may mean to include under that idea the removal of his family; for I believe he removed himself, before his family did, to Philadelphia. But no act of mine gave commencement to his salary before he so far took up his abode in Philadelphia, as to be sufficiently in readiness for the duties of the office. As to the merits or demerits of his paper, they certainly concern me not. He and Fenno are rivals for the public favor. The one courts them by flattery, the other by censure, and I believe it will be admitted that the one has been as servile, as the other severe. But is not the dignity, and even decency of government committed, when one of its principal ministers enlists himself as an anonymous writer or paragraphist for either the one or the other of them? No government ought to be without censors; and where the press is free, no one ever will. If virtuous, it need not fear the fair operation of attack and defence. Nature has given to man no other means of sifting out the truth, either in religion, law, or politics. I think it as honorable to the government neither to know, nor notice, its sycophants or censors, as it would be undignified and criminal to pamper the former and persecute the latter. So much for the past, a word now of the future.
