Томас Джефферсон
The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, Vol. 5 (of 9)
TO W. C. NICHOLAS, ESQ
Monticello, December 16, 1809.
Dear Sir,—I now enclose you the agricultural catalogue. I do not know whether I have made it more or less comprehensive than you wished; but in either case, you can make it what it should be by reduction or addition—there are probably other good books with which I am unacquainted. I do not possess the Geoponica, nor Rozier's Dictionary. All the others I have, and set them down on my own knowledge, except Young's Experimental Agriculture, which I have not, but had the benefit of reading your copy. I am sorry to address this catalogue to Warren, instead of Washington. Never was there a moment when it was so necessary to unite all the wisdom of the nation in its councils. Our affairs are certainly now at their ultimate point of crisis. I understand the Eastern Republicans will agree to nothing which shall render not-intercourse effectual, and that in any question of that kind, the Federalists will have a majority. There remains, then, only war or submission, and if we adopt the former, they will desert us. Under these difficulties you ought not to have left us. A temporary malady was not a just ground for permanent withdrawing, and you are too young to be entitled as yet to decline public duties. I think there never was a time when your presence in Congress was more desirable. However, the die is cast, and we have only to regret what we cannot repair. You must indulge me a little in scolding on this subject, and the rather as it is the effect of my great esteem and respect.
TO MR. SAMUEL KERCHEVAL
Monticello, January 15, 1810.
Sir,—Your favor of December 12th has been duly received, as was also that of September 28th. With the blank subscription paper for the academy of Frederic county, enclosed in your letter of September, nothing has been done. I go rarely from home, and therefore have little opportunity of soliciting subscriptions. Nor could I do it in the present case in conformity with my own judgment of what is best for institutions of this kind. We are all doubtless bound to contribute a certain portion of our income to the support of charitable and other useful public institutions. But it is a part of our duty also to apply our contributions in the most effectual way we can to secure their object. The question then is whether this will not be better done by each of us appropriating our whole contributions to the institutions within our own reach, under our own eye; and over which we can exercise some useful control? Or would it be better that each should divide the sum he can spare among all the institutions of his State, or of the United States? Reason, and the interest of these institutions themselves, certainly decide in favor of the former practice. This question has been forced on me heretofore by the multitude of applications which have come to me from every quarter of the Union on behalf of academies, churches, missions, hospitals, charitable establishments, &c. Had I parcelled among them all the contributions which I could spare, it would have been for each too feeble a sum to be worthy of being either given or received. If each portion of the State, on the contrary, will apply its aids and its attentions exclusively to those nearest around them, all will be better taken care of. Their support, their conduct, and the best administration of their funds, will be under the inspection and control of those most convenient to take cognizance of them, and most interested in their prosperity. With these impressions myself, I could not propose to others what my own judgment disapproved, as to their duty as well as my own. These considerations appear so conclusive to myself, that I trust they will be a sufficient apology for my not having fulfilled your wishes with respect to the paper enclosed. They are therefore submitted to your candor, with assurances of my best wishes for the success of the institution you patronize, and of my respect and consideration for yourself.
TO MR. EPPES
Monticello, January 17, 1810.
Dear Sir,—Yours of the 10th came safely to hand, and I now enclose you a letter from Francis; he continues in excellent health, and employs his time well. He has written to his mamma and grandmamma. I observe that the H. of R. are sensible of the ill effects of the long speeches in their house on their proceedings. But they have a worse effect in the disgust they excite among the people, and the disposition they are producing to transfer their confidence from the legislature to the executive branch, which would soon sap our constitution. These speeches, therefore, are less and less read, and if continued will cease to be read at all. The models for that oratory which is to produce the greatest effect by securing the attention of hearers and readers, are to be found in Livy, Tacitus, Sallust, and most assuredly not in Cicero. I doubt if there is a man in the world who can now read one of his orations through but as a piece of task-work. I observe the house is endeavoring to remedy the eternal protraction of debate by setting up all night, or by the use of the Previous Question. Both will subject them to the most serious inconvenience. The latter may be turned upon themselves by a trick of their adversaries. I have thought that such a rule as the following would be more effectual and less inconvenient. "Resolved that at [viii.] o'clock in the evening (whenever the house shall be in session at that hour) it shall be the duty of the Speaker to declare that hour arrived, whereupon all debate shall cease. If there be then before the house a main question for the reading or passing of a bill, resolution or order, such main question shall immediately be put by the Speaker, and decided by yeas and nays.
"If the question before the house be secondary, as for amendment, commitment, postponement, adjournment of the debate or question, laying on the table, reading papers, or a previous question, such secondary, [or any other which may delay the main question,] shall stand ipso facto discharged, and the main question shall then be before the house, and shall be immediately put and decided by yeas and nays. But a motion for adjournment of the house, may once and once only, take place of the main question, and if decided in the negative, the main question shall then be put as before. Should any question of order arise, it shall be decided by the Speaker instanter, and without debate or appeal; and questions of privilege arising, shall be postponed till the main question be decided. Messages from the President or Senate may be received but not acted on till after the decision of the main question. But this rule shall be suspended during the [three] last days of the session of Congress."
No doubt this, on investigation, will be found to need amendment; but I think the principle of it better adapted to meet the evil than any other which has occurred to me. You can consider and decide upon it, however, and make what use of it you please, only keeping the source of it to yourself. Ever affectionately yours.
TO MR. SAMUEL KERCHEVAL
Monticello, January 19, 1810.
Sir,—Yours of the 7th inst. has been duly received, with the pamphlet enclosed, for which I return you my thanks. Nothing can be more exactly and seriously true than what is there stated: that but a short time elapsed after the death of the great reformer of the Jewish religion, before his principles were departed from by those who professed to be his special servants, and perverted into an engine for enslaving mankind, and aggrandizing their oppressors in Church and State: that the purest system of morals ever before preached to man has been adulterated and sophisticated by artificial constructions, into a mere contrivance to filch wealth and power to themselves: that rational men, not being able to swallow their impious heresies, in order to force them down their throats, they raise the hue and cry of infidelity, while themselves are the greatest obstacles to the advancement of the real doctrines of Jesus, and do, in fact, constitute the real Anti-Christ.
You expect that your book will have some effect on the prejudices which the society of Friends entertain against the present and late administrations. In this I think you will be disappointed. The Friends are men formed with the same passions, and swayed by the same natural principles and prejudices as others. In cases where the passions are neutral, men will display their respect for the religious professions of their sect. But where their passions are enlisted, these professions are no obstacle. You observe very truly, that both the late and present administration conducted the government on principles professed by the Friends. Our efforts to preserve peace, our measures as to the Indians, as to slavery, as to religious freedom, were all in consonance with their profession. Yet I never expected we should get a vote from them, and in this I was neither deceived nor disappointed. There is no riddle in this to those who do not suffer themselves to be duped by the professions of religions sectaries. The theory of American Quakerism is a very obvious one. The mother society is in England. Its members are English by birth and residence, devoted to their own country as good citizens ought to be. The Quakers of these States are colonies or filiations from the mother society, to whom that society sends its yearly lessons. On these, the filiated societies model their opinions, their conduct, their passions and attachments. A Quaker is essentially an Englishman, in whatever part of the earth he is born or lives. The outrages of Great Britain on our navigation and commerce, have kept us in perpetual bickerings with her. The Quakers here have taken side against their own government, not on their profession of peace, for they saw that peace was our object also; but from devotion to the views of the mother society. In 1797-8, when an administration sought war with France, the Quakers were the most clamorous for war. Their principle of peace, as a secondary one, yielded to the primary one of adherence to the Friends in England, and what was patriotism in the original, became treason in the copy. On that occasion, they obliged their good old leader, Mr. Pemberton, to erase his name from a petition to Congress against war, which had been delivered to a Representative of Pennsylvania, a member of the late and present administration; he accordingly permitted the old gentleman to erase his name. You must not therefore expect that your book will have any more effect on the Society of Friends here, than on the English merchants settled among us. I apply this to the Friends in general, not universally. I know individuals among them as good patriots as we have.
I thank you for the kind wishes and sentiments towards myself, expressed in your letter, and sincerely wish to yourself the blessings of heaven and happiness.
TO MR. BALDWIN
Monticello, January 19, 1810.
Thomas Jefferson returns to Mr. Baldwin his thanks for the copy of the letters of Cerus and Amicus just received from him. He sincerely wishes its circulation among the Society of Friends may have the effect Mr. Baldwin expects, of abating their prejudices against the government of their country. But he apprehends their disease is too deeply seated; that identifying themselves with the mother society in England, and taking from them implicitly their politics, their principles and passions, it will be long before they will cease to be Englishmen in everything but the place of their birth, and to consider that, and not America, as their real country. He is particularly thankful to Mr. Baldwin for the kind wishes and sentiments expressed in his letter, and sincerely wishes to him the blessings of health and happiness.
TO MR. THOMAS T. HEWSON
Monticello, January 21, 1810.
Sir,—I have duly received your favor of the 8th inst., informing me that the American Philosophical Society had been pleased again unanimously to re-elect me their President. For these continued testimonials of their favor, I can but renew the expressions of my continued gratitude, and the assurances of my entire devotion to their service. If, in my present situation, I can in any wise forward their laudable pursuits for the information and benefit of mankind, all other duties shall give place to that.
I pray you to be the channel of communicating these sentiments, with the expressions of my dutiful respects to the Society, and to accept, yourself, the assurance of my great esteem and respect.
TO THE HONORABLE PAUL HAMILTON
Monticello, January 23, 1810.
Sir,—The enclosed letter would have been more properly addressed to yourself, or perhaps to the Secretary of War. I have no knowledge at all of the writer; but suppose the best use I can make of his letter, as to himself or the public, is to enclose it to you for such notice only as the public utility may entitle it to; perhaps I should ask the favor of you to communicate it, with the samples, and with my friendly respects, to the Secretary of War, who may know something of the writer. I recollect that his predecessor made some trial of cotton tenting, and found it good against the water. Its combustibility, however, must be an objection to it for that purpose, and perhaps even on shipboard. I avail myself of the occasion which this circumstance presents of expressing my sincere anxieties for the prosperity of the administration in all its parts, which indeed involves the prosperity of us all, and of tendering to yourself in particular the assurances of my high respect and consideration.
TO MR. BARLOW
Monticello, January 24, 1810.
Dear Sir,—Yours of the 15th is received, and I am disconsolate on learning my mistake as to your having a dynamometer. My object being to bring a plough to be made here to the same standard of comparison by which Guillaume's has been proved, nothing less would be satisfactory than an instrument made by the same standard. I must import one, therefore, but how, in the present state of non-intercourse, is the difficulty. I do not know * * * personally, but by character well. He is the most red-hot federalist, famous, or rather infamous for the lying and slandering which he vomited from the pulpit in the political harangues with which he polluted the place. I was honored with much of it. He is a man who can prove everything if you will take his word for proof. Such evidence of Hamilton's being a republican he may bring; but Mr. Adams, Edmund Randolph, and myself, could repeat an explicit declaration of Hamilton's against which * * proofs would weigh nothing.
I am sorry to learn that your rural occupations impede so much the progress of your much to be desired work. You owe to republicanism, and indeed to the future hopes of man, a faithful record of the march of this government, which may encourage the oppressed to go and do so likewise. Your talents, your principles, and your means of access to public and private sources of information, with the leisure which is at your command, point you out as the person who is to do this act of justice to those who believe in the improvability of the condition of man, and who have acted on that behalf, in opposition to those who consider man as a beast of burthen made to be rode by him who has genius enough to get a bridle into his mouth. The dissensions between two members of the Cabinet are to be lamented. But why should these force Mr. Gallatin to withdraw? They cannot be greater than between Hamilton and myself, and yet we served together four years in that way. We had indeed no personal dissensions. Each of us, perhaps, thought well of the other as a man, but as politicians it was impossible for two men to be of more opposite principles. The method of separate consultation, practised sometimes in the Cabinet, prevents disagreeable collisions.
You ask my opinion of Maine. I think him a most excellent man. Sober, industrious, intelligent and conscientious. But, in the difficulty of changing a nursery establishment, I suspect you will find an insurmountable obstacle to his removal. Present me respectfully to Mrs. Barlow, and be assured of my constant and affectionate esteem.
P. S. The day before yesterday the mercury was at 5½° with us, a very uncommon degree of cold here. It gave us the first ice for the ice house.
TO GIDEON GRANGER, ESQ
Monticello, January 24, 1810.
Dear Sir,—I was sorry, by a letter from Mr. Barlow the other day, to learn the ill state of your health, and I sincerely wish that this may find you better. Young, temperate and prudent as you are, great confidence may be reposed in the provision nature has made for the restoration of order in your system when it has become deranged; she effects her object by strengthening the whole system, towards which medicine is generally mischevous. Nor are the sedentary habits of office friendly to it. But of all this your own good understanding, instructed by your experience, is the best judge. * * * * * I cannot pass over this occasion of writing to you, the first presented me since retiring from office, without expressing to you my sense of the important aid I received from you in the able and faithful direction of the office committed to your charge. With such auxiliaries, the business and burthen of government becomes all but insensible, and its painful anxieties are relieved by the certainty that all is going right. In no department did I feel this sensation more strongly than in yours, and though at this time of little significance to yourself, it is a relief to my mind to discharge the duty of bearing this testimony to your valuable services. I must add my acknowledgments for your friendly interference in setting the public judgment to rights with respect to the Connecticut prosecutions, so falsely and maliciously charged on me. I refer to a statement of the facts in the National Intelligencer of many months past, which I was sensible came from your hand. I pray you to be assured of my great and constant attachment, esteem and respect.
TO MR. J. GARLAND JEFFERSON
Monticello, January 25, 1810.
Dear Sir,—Your favor of December 12th was long coming to hand. I am much concerned to learn that any disagreeable impression was made on your mind, by the circumstances which are the subject of your letter. Permit me first to explain the principles which I had laid down for my own observance. In a government like ours, it is the duty of the Chief Magistrate, in order to enable himself to do all the good which his station requires, to endeavor, by all honorable means, to unite in himself the confidence of the whole people. This alone, in any case where the energy of the nation is required, can produce a union of the powers of the whole, and point them in a single direction, as if all constituted but one body and one mind, and this alone can render a weaker nation unconquerable by a stronger one. Towards acquiring the confidence of the people, the very first measure is to satisfy them of his disinterestedness, and that he is directing their affairs with a single eye to their good, and not to build up fortunes for himself and family, and especially, that the officers appointed to transact their business, are appointed because they are the fittest men, not because they are his relations. So prone are they to suspicion, that where a President appoints a relation of his own, however worthy, they will believe that favor and not merit, was the motive. I therefore laid it down as a law of conduct for myself, never to give an appointment to a relation. Had I felt any hesitation in adopting this rule, examples were not wanting to admonish me what to do and what to avoid. Still, the expression of your willingness to act in any office for which you were qualified, could not be imputed to you as blame. It would not readily occur that a person qualified for office ought to be rejected merely because he was related to the President, and the then more recent examples favored the other opinion. In this light I considered the case as presenting itself to your mind, and that the application might be perfectly justifiable on your part, while, for reasons occurring to none perhaps, but the person in my situation, the public interest might render it unadvisable. Of this, however, be assured that I considered the proposition as innocent on your part, and that it never lessened my esteem for you, or the interest I felt in your welfare.
My stay in Amelia was too short, (only twenty-four hours,) to expect the pleasure of seeing you there. It would be a happiness to me any where, but especially here, from whence I am rarely absent. I am leading a life of considerable activity as a farmer, reading little and writing less. Something pursued with ardor is necessary to guard us from the tedium-vitæ, and the active pursuits lessen most our sense of the infirmities of age. That to the health of youth you may add an old age of vigor, is the sincere prayer of
