Томас Джефферсон
The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, Vol. 5 (of 9)
TO JUDGE DAVID CAMPBELL
Monticello, January 28, 1810.
Dear Sir,—Your letter of November 5th, was two months on its passage to me. I am very thankful for all the kind expressions of friendship in it, and I consider it a great felicity, through a long and trying course of life, to have retained the esteem of my early friends unaltered. I find in old age that the impressions of youth are the deepest and most indelible. Some friends, indeed, have left me by the way, seeking, by a different political path, the same object, their country's good, which I pursued with the crowd along the common highway. It is a satisfaction to me that I was not the first to leave them. I have never thought that a difference in political, any more than in religious opinions, should disturb the friendly intercourse of society. There are so many other topics on which friends may converse and be happy, that it is wonderful they would select, of preference, the only one on which they cannot agree. I am sensible of the mark of esteem manifested by the name you have given to your son. Tell him from me, that he must consider as essentially belonging to it, to love his friends and wish no ill to his enemies. I shall be happy to see him here whenever any circumstance shall lead his footsteps this way. You doubt, between law and physic, which profession he shall adopt. His peculiar turn of mind, and your own knowledge of things will best decide this question. Law is quite overdone. It is fallen to the ground, and a man must have great powers to raise himself in it to either honor or profit. The mob of the profession get as little money and less respect, than they would by digging the earth. The followers of Esculapius are also numerous. Yet I have remarked that wherever one sets himself down in a good neighborhood, not pre-occupied, he secures to himself its practice, and if prudent, is not long in acquiring whereon to retire and live in comfort. The physician is happy in the attachment of the families in which he practices. All think he has saved some one of them, and he finds himself everywhere a welcome guest, a home in every house. If, to the consciousness of having saved some lives, he can add that of having at no time, from want of caution, destroyed the boon he was called on to save, he will enjoy, in age, the happy reflection of not having lived in vain; while the lawyer has only to recollect how many, by his dexterity, have been cheated of their right and reduced to beggary. After all, I end where I began, with the observation that your son's disposition and your prudence, are the best arbiters of this question, and with the assurances of my great esteem and respect.
TO CÆSAR A. RODNEY
Monticello, February 10, 1810.
My Dear Sir,—I have to thank you for your favor of the 31st ultimo, which is just now received. It has been peculiarly unfortunate for us, personally, that the portion in the history of mankind, at which we were called to take a share in the direction of their affairs, was such an one as history has never before presented. At any other period, the even-handed justice we have observed towards all nations, the efforts we have made to merit their esteem by every act which candor or liberality could exercise, would have preserved our peace, and secured the unqualified confidence of all other nations in our faith and probity. But the hurricane which is now blasting the world, physical and moral, has prostrated all the mounds of reason as well as right. All those calculations which, at any other period, would have been deemed honorable, of the existence of a moral sense in man, individually or associated, of the connection which the laws of nature have established between his duties and his interests, of a regard for honest fame and the esteem of our fellow men, have been a matter of reproach on us, as evidences of imbecility. As if it could be a folly for an honest man to suppose that others could be honest also, when it is their interest to be so. And when is this state of things to end? The death of Bonaparte would, to be sure, remove the first and chiefest apostle of the desolation of men and morals, and might withdraw the scourge of the land. But what is to restore order and safety on the ocean? The death of George III? Not at all. He is only stupid; and his ministers, however weak and profligate in morals, are ephemeral. But his nation is permanent, and it is that which is the tyrant of the ocean. The principle that force is right, is become the principle of the nation itself. They would not permit an honest minister, were accident to bring such an one into power, to relax their system of lawless piracy. These were the difficulties when I was with you. I know they are not lessened, and I pity you.
It is a blessing, however, that our people are reasonable; that they are kept so well informed of the state of things as to judge for themselves, to see the true sources of their difficulties, and to maintain their confidence undiminished in the wisdom and integrity of their functionaries. Macte virtute therefore. Continue to go straight forward, pursuing always that which is right, as the only clue which can lead us out of the labyrinth. Let nothing be spared of either reason or passion, to preserve the public confidence entire, as the only rock of our safety. In times of peace the people look most to their representatives; but in war, to the executive solely. It is visible that their confidence is even now veering in that direction; that they are looking to the executive to give the proper direction to their affairs, with a confidence as auspicious as it is well founded.
I avail myself of this, the first occasion of writing to you, to express all the depth of my affection for you; the sense I entertain of your faithful co-operation in my late labors, and the debt I owe for the valuable aid I received from you. Though separated from my fellow laborers in place and pursuit, my affections are with you all, and I offer daily prayers that ye love one another, as I love you. God bless you.
TO REV. MR. KNOX
Monticello, February 12, 1810.
Sir,—Your favor of January 22d loitered on the way somewhere, so as not to come to my hand until the 5th inst. The title of the tract of Buchanan which you propose to translate, was familiar to me, and I possessed the tract; but no circumstance had ever led me to look into it. Yet I think nothing more likely than that, in the free spirit of that age and state of society, principles should be avowed, which were felt and followed, although unwritten in the Scottish constitution. Undefined powers had been entrusted to the crown, undefined rights retained by the people, and these depended for their maintenance on the spirit of the people, which, in that day was dependence sufficient. I shall certainly, after what you say of it, give it a serious reading. His latinity is so pure as to claim a place in school reading, and the sentiments which have recommended the work to your notice, are such as ought to be instilled into the minds of our youth on their first opening. The boys of the rising generation are to be the men of the next, and the sole guardians of the principles we deliver over to them. That I have acted through life on those of sincere republicanism I feel in every fibre of my constitution. And when men who feel like myself, bear witness in my favor, my satisfaction is complete. The testimony of approbation implied in the desire you express of coupling my name with Buchanan's work, and your translation of it, cannot but be acceptable and flattering; and the more so as coming from one of whom a small acquaintance had inspired me with a great esteem. This I am now happy in finding an occasion to express. The times which brought us within mutual observation were awfully trying. But truth and reason are eternal. They have prevailed. And they will eternally prevail, however, in times and places they may be overborne for a while by violence, military, civil, or ecclesiastical. The preservation of the holy fire is confided to us by the world, and the sparks which will emanate from it will ever serve to rekindle it in other quarters of the globe, numinibus secundis.
Amidst the immense mass of detraction which was published against me, when my fellow citizens proposed to entrust me with their concerns, and the efforts of more candid minds to expose their falsehood, I retain a remembrance of the pamphlet you mention. But I never before learned who was its author; nor was it known to me that Mr. Pechin had ever published a copy of the Notes on Virginia. But had all this been known, I should have seen myself with pride by your side. Wherever you lead, we may all safely follow, assured that it is in the path of truth and liberty. Mr. Pechin knew well that your introduction would plead for his author, and only erred in not asking your leave. Wishing every good effect which may follow your undertaking, I tender you the assurances of my high esteem and respect.
TO W. D. G. WORTHINGTON, ESQ
Monticello, February 24, 1810.
Sir,—I have to thank you for the pamphlet you have been so kind as to send me, and especially for its contents so far as they respect myself personally. I had before read your speech in the newspapers, with great satisfaction, and the more, as, besides the able defence of the government, I saw that an absent and retired servant would still find, in the justice of the public counsellors, friendly advocates who would not suffer his name to be maligned without answer or reproof. If, brooding over past calamities, the attentions of federalism can, by abusing me, be diverted from disturbing the course of government, they will make me useful longer than I had expected to be so. Having served them faithfully for a term of twelve or fourteen years, in the terrific station of Rawhead and Bloodybones, it was supposed that, retired from power, I should have been functus officio, of course, for them also. If, nevertheless, they wish my continuance in that awful office, I yield, and the rather as it may be exercised at home, without interfering with the tranquil enjoyment of my farm, my family, my friends and books. In truth, having never felt a pain from their abuse, I bear them no malice. Contented with our government, elective as it is in three of its principal branches, I wish not, on Hamilton's plan, to see two of them for life; and still less, hereditary, as others desire. I believe that the yeomanry of the Federalists think on this subject with me. They are substantially republican. But some of their leaders, who get into the public councils, would prefer Hamilton's government, and still more the hereditary one. Hinc illæ lachrymæ, I wish them no harm, but that they may never get into power, not for their harm, but for the good of our country. I hope the friends of republican government will keep strict watch over them, and not let them want, when they need it, the wholesome discipline of which you have sent me a specimen. I commit them with entire confidence to your care, and salute you with esteem and respect.
TO MR. BURWELL
Monticello, February 25, 1810.
Dear Sir,—Yours of the 16th, has given me real uneasiness. I was certainly very unfortunate in the choice of my expression, when I hit upon one which could excite any doubt of my unceasing affections for you. In observing that you might use the information as you should find proper, I meant merely that you might communicate it to the President, the Secretaries of State or War, or to young Mr. Lee, as should be judged by yourself most proper. I meant particularly, to permit its communication to Mr. Lee, to enlighten his enquiries, for I do not know that his father received the medal. I could only conduct the information to the completion of the dye and striking off a proof. With such assurances as I have of your affection, be assured that nothing but the most direct and unequivocal proofs can ever make me suspect its abatement, and conscious of as warm feelings towards yourself, I hope you will ever be as unready to doubt them. Let us put this, then, under our feet.
I like your convoy bill, because although it does not assume the maintenance of all our maritime rights, it assumes as much as it is our interest to maintain. Our coasting trade is the first and most important branch, never to be yielded but with our existence. Next to that is the carriage of our own productions in our own vessels, and bringing back the returns for our own consumption; so far I would protect it, and force every part of the Union to join in the protection at the point of the bayonet. But though we have a right to the remaining branch of carrying for other nations, its advantages do not compensate its risks. Your bill first rallies us to the ground the constitution ought to have taken, and to which we ought to return without delay; the moment is the most favorable possible, because the Eastern States, by declaring they will not protect that cabotage by war, and forcing us to abandon it, have released us from every future claim for its protection on that part. Your bill is excellent in another view: it presents still one other ground to which we can retire before we resort to war; it says to the belligerents, rather than go to war, we will retire from the brokerage of other nations, and confine ourselves to the carriage and exchange of our own productions; but we will vindicate that in all its rights—if you touch it, it is war.
The present delightful weather has drawn us all into our farms and gardens; we have had the most devastating rain which has ever fallen within my knowledge. Three inches of water fell in the space of about an hour. Every hollow of every hill presented a torrent which swept everything before it. I have never seen the fields so much injured. Mr. Randolph's farm is the only one which has not suffered; his horizontal furrows arrested the water at every step till it was absorbed, or at least had deposited the soil it had taken up. Everybody in this neighborhood is adopting his method of ploughing, except tenants who have no interest in the preservation of the soil.
Present me respectfully to Mrs. Burwell, and be assured of my constant affection.
TO GENERAL KOSCIUSKO
Monticello, February 26, 1810.
My Dear General and Friend,—I have rarely written to you; never but by safe conveyances; and avoiding everything political, lest coming from one in the station I then held, it might be imputed injuriously to our country, or perhaps even excite jealousy of you. Hence my letters were necessarily dry. Retired now from public concerns, totally unconnected with them, and avoiding all curiosity about what is done or intended, what I say is from myself only, the workings of my own mind, imputable to nobody else.
The anxieties which I know you have felt, on seeing exposed to the justlings of a warring world, a country to which, in early life, you devoted your sword and services when oppressed by foreign dominion, were worthy of your philanthropy and disinterested attachment to the freedom and happiness of man. Although we have not made all the provisions which might be necessary for a war in the field of Europe, yet we have not been inattentive to such as would be necessary here. From the moment that the affair of the Chesapeake rendered the prospect of war imminent, every faculty was exerted to be prepared for it, and I think I may venture to solace you with the assurance, that we are, in a good degree, prepared. Military stores for many campaigns are on hand, all the necessary articles (sulphur excepted), and the art of preparing them among ourselves, abundantly; arms in our magazines for more men than will ever be required in the field, and forty thousand new stand yearly added, of our own fabrication, superior to any we have ever seen from Europe; heavy artillery much beyond our need; an increasing stock of field pieces, several foundries casting one every other day each; a military school of about fifty students, which has been in operation a dozen years; and the manufacture of men constantly going on, and adding forty thousand young soldiers to our force every year that the war is deferred; at all our seaport towns of the least consequence we have erected works of defence, and assigned them gunboats, carrying one or two heavy pieces, either eighteen, twenty-four, or thirty-two pounders, sufficient in the smaller harbors to repel the predatory attacks of privateers or single armed ships, and proportioned in the larger harbors to such more serious attacks as they may probably be exposed to. All these were nearly completed, and their gunboats in readiness, when I retired from the government. The works of New York and New Orleans alone, being on a much larger scale, are not yet completed. The former will be finished this summer, mounting four hundred and thirty-eight guns, and, with the aid of from fifty to one hundred gunboats, will be adequate to the resistance of any fleet which will ever be trusted across the Atlantic. The works for New Orleans are less advanced. These are our preparations. They are very different from what you will be told by newspapers, and travellers, even Americans. But it is not to them the government communicates the public condition. Ask one of them if he knows the exact state of any particular harbor, and you will find probably that he does not know even that of the one he comes from. You will ask, perhaps, where are the proof of these preparations for one who cannot go and see them. I answer, in the acts of Congress, authorizing such preparations, and in your knowledge of me, that, if authorized, they would be executed.
Two measures have not been adopted, which I pressed on Congress repeatedly at their meetings. The one, to settle the whole ungranted territory of Orleans, by donations of land to able-bodied young men, to be engaged and carried there at the public expense, who would constitute a force always ready on the spot to defend New Orleans. The other was, to class the militia according to the years of their birth, and make all those from twenty to twenty-five liable to be trained and called into service at a moment's warning. This would have given us a force of three hundred thousand young men, prepared by proper training, for service in any part of the United States; while those who had passed through that period would remain at home, liable to be used in their own or adjacent States. These two measures would have completed what I deemed necessary for the entire security of our country. They would have given me, on my retirement from the government of the nation, the consolatory reflection, that having found, when I was called to it, not a single seaport town in a condition to repel a levy of contribution by a single privateer or pirate, I had left every harbor so prepared by works and gunboats, as to be in a reasonable state of security against any probable attack; the territory of Orleans acquired, and planted with an internal force sufficient for its protection; and the whole territory of the United States organized by such a classification of its male force, as would give it the benefit of all its young population for active service, and that of a middle and advanced age for stationary defence. But these measures will, I hope, be completed by my successor, who, to the purest principles of republican patriotism, adds a wisdom and foresight second to no man on earth.
So much as to my country. Now a word as to myself. I am retired to Monticello, where, in the bosom of my family, and surrounded by my books, I enjoy a repose to which I have been long a stranger. My mornings are devoted to correspondence. From breakfast to dinner, I am in my shops, my garden, or on horseback among my farms; from dinner to dark, I give to society and recreation with my neighbors and friends; and from candle light to early bed-time, I read. My health is perfect; and my strength considerably reinforced by the activity of the course I pursue; perhaps it is as great as usually falls to the lot of near sixty-seven years of age. I talk of ploughs and harrows, of seeding and harvesting, with my neighbors, and of politics too, if they choose, with as little reserve as the rest of my fellow citizens, and feel, at length, the blessing of being free to say and do what I please, without being responsible for it to any mortal. A part of my occupation, and by no means the least pleasing, is the direction of the studies of such young men as ask it. They place themselves in the neighboring village, and have the use of my library and counsel, and make a part of my society. In advising the course of their reading, I endeavor to keep their attention fixed on the main objects of all science, the freedom and happiness of man. So that coming to bear a share in the councils and government of their country, they will keep ever in view the sole objects of all legitimate government.
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Instead of the unalloyed happiness of retiring unembarrassed and independent, to the enjoyment of my estate, which is ample for my limited views, I have to pass such a length of time in a thraldom of mind never before known to me. Except for this, my happiness would have been perfect. That yours may never know disturbance, and that you may enjoy as many years of life, as health and ease to yourself shall wish, is the sincere prayer of your constant and affectionate friend.
