Томас Джефферсон
The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, Vol. 5 (of 9)
TO HIS EXCELLENCY GOVERNOR CLAIBORNE
Monticello, May 3, 1810.
Dear Sir,—Your letters of January 12th and February 1st, came to hand only a fortnight ago. The enclosed contains my answer to the latter, for communication to the Legislature. So many false views on the subject of the batture have been presented in and out of Congress, that duty to myself, as well as justice to the citizens of New Orleans and of the western country generally, required that I should avail myself of the occasion these resolutions presented, of stating, in the fewest words possible, the true ground of my conduct, and, as I think, of the rights of the western country. But the occasion also restricted me to the limits of a short text only, every word of which would be matter for copious commentary, in a dilated discussion of the subject. Has Moreau de l'Isle's opinion ever been printed? I wish it were possible to get a copy of it. Perhaps I might be able to make good use of it.
Before the receipt of your letter of Jan. 12th, I had heard of your great loss, and been impressed with the depth of it. Long tried in the same school of affliction, no loss which can rend the human heart is unknown to mine; and a like one particularly, at about the same period of life, had taught me to feel the sympathies of yours. The same experience has proved that time, silence and occupation are its only medicines. Of occupation, you have enough and of the highest order; that of continuing to make a worthy people happy by a just and parental government, and of protecting them from the wolves prowling around to devour them. Your own example will be the best lesson for the son which has been left to comfort you, to whose course in life I hope it will give a shape which shall make him truly a comfort and support to your latter days, protracted to your own wishes.
I really wish effect to the hints in my letter to you for so laying off the additions to the city of New Orleans, as to shield it from yellow fever. My confidence in the idea is founded in the acknowledged experience that we have never seen the genuine yellow fever extend itself into the country, nor even to the outskirts or open parts of a close-built city. In the plan I propose, every square would be surrounded, on every side, by open and pure air, and would, in fact, be a separate town with fields or open suburbs around it.
TO MESSRS. HUGH L. WHITE, THOMAS M'CORRY, JAMES CAMPBELL, ROBERT CRAIGHEAD, JOHN N. GAMBLE, TRUSTEES FOR THE LOTTERY OF EAST TENNESSEE COLLEGE
Monticello, May 6, 1810.
Gentlemen,—I received, some time ago, your letter of February 28th, covering a printed scheme of a lottery for the benefit of the East Tennessee College, and proposing to send tickets to me to be disposed of. It would be impossible for them to come to a more inefficient hand. I rarely go from home, and consequently see but a few neighbors and friends, who occasionally call on me. And having myself made it a rule never to engage in a lottery or any other adventure of mere chance, I can, with the less candor or effect, urge it on others, however laudable or desirable its object may be. No one more sincerely wishes the spread of information among mankind than I do, and none has greater confidence in its effect towards supporting free and good government. I am sincerely rejoiced, therefore, to find that so excellent a fund has been provided for this noble purpose in Tennessee. Fifty-thousand dollars placed in a safe bank, will give four thousand dollars a year, and even without other aid, must soon accomplish buildings sufficient for the object in its early stage. I consider the common plan followed in this country, but not in others, of making one large and expensive building, as unfortunately erroneous. It is infinitely better to erect a small and separate lodge for each separate professorship, with only a hall below for his class, and two chambers above for himself; joining these lodges by barracks for a certain portion of the students, opening into a covered way to give a dry communication between all the schools. The whole of these arranged around an open square of grass and trees, would make it, what it should be in fact, an academical village, instead of a large and common den of noise, of filth and of fetid air. It would afford that quiet retirement so friendly to study, and lessen the dangers of fire, infection and tumult. Every professor would be the police officer of the students adjacent to his own lodge, which should include those of his own class of preference, and might be at the head of their table, if, as I suppose, it can be reconciled with the necessary economy to dine them in smaller and separate parties, rather than in a large and common mess. These separate buildings, too, might be erected successively and occasionally, as the number of professorships and students should be increased, or the funds become competent.
I pray you to pardon me if I have stepped aside into the province of counsel; but much observation and reflection on these institutions have long convinced me that the large and crowded buildings in which youths are pent up, are equally unfriendly to health, to study, to manners, morals and order; and, believing the plan I suggest to be more promotive of these, and peculiarly adapted to the slender beginnings and progressive growth of our institutions, I hoped you would pardon the presumption, in consideration of the motive which was suggested by the difficulty expressed in your letter, of procuring funds for erecting the building. But, on whatever plan you proceed, I wish it every possible success, and to yourselves the reward of esteem, respect and gratitude due to those who devote their time and efforts to render the youths of every successive age fit governors for the next. To these accept, in addition, the assurances of mine.
TO THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES
Monticello, May 13, 1810.
Dear Sir,—I thank you for your promised attention to my portion of the Merinos, and if there be any expenses of transportation, &c., and you will be so good as to advance my portion of them with yours and notify the amount, it shall be promptly remitted. What shall we do with them? I have been so disgusted with the scandalous extortions lately practised in the sale of these animals, and with the description of patriotism and praise to the sellers, as if the thousands of dollars apiece they have not been ashamed to receive were not reward enough, that I am disposed to consider as right, whatever is the reverse of what they have done. Since fortune has put the occasion upon us, is it not incumbent upon us so to dispense this benefit to the farmers of our country, as to put to shame those who, forgetting their own wealth and the honest simplicity of the farmers, have thought them fit objects of the shaving art, and to excite, by a better example, the condemnation due to theirs? No sentiment is more acknowledged in the family of Agriculturists than that the few who can afford it should incur the risk and expense of all new improvements, and give the benefit freely to the many of more restricted circumstances. The question then recurs, What are we to do with them? I shall be willing to concur with you in any plan you shall approve, and in order that we may have some proposition to begin upon, I will throw out a first idea, to be modified or postponed to whatever you shall think better.
Give all the full-blooded males we can raise to the different counties of our State, one to each, as fast as we can furnish them. And as there must be some rule of priority for the distribution, let us begin with our own counties, which are contiguous and nearly central to the State, and proceed, circle after circle, till we have given a ram to every county. This will take about seven years, if we add to the full descendants those which will have past to the fourth generation from common ewes, to make the benefit of a single male as general as practicable to the county, we may ask some known character in each county to have a small society formed which shall receive the animal and prescribe rules for his care and government. We should retain ourselves all the full-blooded ewes, that they may enable us the sooner to furnish a male to every county. When all shall have been provided with rams, we may, in a year or two more, be in a condition to give an ewe also to every county, if it be thought necessary. But I suppose it will not, as four generations from their full-blooded ram will give them the pure race from common ewes.
In the meantime we shall not be without a profit indemnifying our trouble and expense. For if of our present stock of common ewes, we place with the ram as many as he may be competent to, suppose fifty, we may sell the male lambs of every year for such reasonable price as, in addition to the wool, will pay for the maintenance of the flock. The first year they will be half bloods, the second three-quarters, the third seven-eights, and the fourth full-blooded, if we take care in selling annually half the ewes also, to keep those of highest blood, this will be a fund for kindnesses to our friends, as well as for indemnification to ourselves; and our whole State may thus, from this small stock, so dispersed, be filled in a very few years with this valuable race, and more satisfaction result to ourselves than money ever administered to the bosom of a shaver. There will be danger that what is here proposed, though but an act of ordinary duty, may be perverted into one of ostentation, but malice will always find bad motives for good actions. Shall we therefore never do good? It may also be used to commit us with those on whose example it will truly be a reproof. We may guard against this perhaps by a proper reserve, developing our purpose only by its execution.
Vive, vale, et siquid novisti rectius istis
Candidus imperti sinon, his ulere mecum.
TO GOVERNOR TYLER
Monticello, May 26, 1810.
Dear Sir,—Your friendly letter of the 12th has been duly received. Although I have laid it down as a law to myself, never to embarrass the President with my solicitations, and have not till now broken through it, yet I have made a part of your letter the subject of one to him, and have done it with all my heart, and in the full belief that I serve him and the public in urging that appointment. We have long enough suffered under the base prostitution of law to party passions in one judge, and the imbecility of another. In the hands of one the law is nothing more than an ambiguous text, to be explained by his sophistry into any meaning which may subserve his personal malice. Nor can any milk-and-water associate maintain his own dependence, and by a firm pursuance of what the law really is, extend its protection to the citizens or the public. I believe you will do it, and where you cannot induce your colleague to do what is right, you will be firm enough to hinder him from doing what is wrong, and by opposing sense to sophistry, leave the juries free to follow their own judgment.
I have long lamented with you the depreciation of law science. The opinion seems to be that Blackstone is to us what the Alcoran is to the Mahometans, that everything which is necessary is in him, and what is not in him is not necessary. I still lend my counsel and books to such young students as will fix themselves in the neighborhood. Coke's institutes and reports are their first, and Blackstone their last book, after an intermediate course of two or three years. It is nothing more than an elegant digest of what they will then have acquired from the real fountains of the law. Now men are born scholars, lawyers, doctors; in our day this was confined to poets. You wish to see me again in the legislature, but this is impossible; my mind is now so dissolved in tranquillity, that it can never again encounter a contentious assembly; the habits of thinking and speaking off-hand, after a disuse of five and twenty years, have given place to the slower process of the pen. I have indeed two great measures at heart, without which no republic can maintain itself in strength. 1. That of general education, to enable every man to judge for himself what will secure or endanger his freedom. 2. To divide every county into hundreds, of such size that all the children of each will be within reach of a central school in it. But this division looks to many other fundamental provisions. Every hundred, besides a school, should have a justice of the peace, a constable and a captain of militia. These officers, or some others within the hundred, should be a corporation to manage all its concerns, to take care of its roads, its poor, and its police by patroles, &c., (as the select men of the Eastern townships.) Every hundred should elect one or two jurors to serve where requisite, and all other elections should be made in the hundreds separately, and the votes of all the hundreds be brought together. Our present Captaincies might be declared hundreds for the present, with a power to the courts to alter them occasionally. These little republics would be the main strength of the great one. We owe to them the vigor given to our revolution in its commencement in the Eastern States, and by them the Eastern States were enabled to repeal the embargo in opposition to the Middle, Southern and Western States, and their large and lubberly division into counties which can never be assembled. General orders are given out from a centre to the foreman of every hundred, as to the sergeants of an army, and the whole nation is thrown into energetic action, in the same direction in one instant and as one man, and becomes absolutely irresistible. Could I once see this I should consider it as the dawn of the salvation of the republic, and say with old Simeon, "nune dimittas Domine." But our children will be as wise as we are, and will establish in the fulness of time those things not yet ripe for establishment. So be it, and to yourself health, happiness and long life.
TO HIS EXCELLENCY, COUNT PAHLEN, ENVOY EXTRAORDINARY AND MINISTER PLENIPOTENTIARY OF RUSSIA
Monticello, July 13, 1810.
Sir,—I have been honored with your letter of the 25th ult., and have to return you my thanks for those of Madame de Tessé and General Lafayette, and for the print of Baron Humboldt, all of which are come safely to hand, and present to me the proofs and recollections of their much-valued friendships. To these acknowledgments, permit me to add my congratulations on your safe arrival in the United States, after journeys and voyages which, from their length, cannot have been pleasant. If, after this, it shall be found that a change of twenty degrees of latitude shall have no unfavorable influence on your health, it will furnish double cause of felicitation.
I am much flattered by the kind notice of the Emperor, which you have been so obliging as to communicate to me. The approbation of the good is always consoling; but that of a sovereign whose station and endowments are so pre-eminent, is received with the sensibility which the veneration for his character inspires. Among other motives of commiseration which the calamities of Europe cannot fail to excite in every virtuous mind, the interruption which these have given to the benevolent views of the Emperor is prominent. The accession of a sovereign, with the dispositions and qualifications to improve the condition of a great nation, and to place its happiness on a permanent basis, is a phenomenon so rare in the annals of mankind, that, when the blessing occurs, it is lamentable that any portion of it should be usurped by occurrences of the character of those we have seen. If, separated from these scenes by an ocean of a thousand leagues breadth, they have required all our cares to keep aloof from their desolating effects, I can readily conceive how much more they must occupy those to whose territories they are contiguous.
That the Emperor may be able, whenever a pacification takes place, to show himself the father and friend of the human race, to restore to nations the moral laws which have governed their intercourse, and to prevent, forever, a repetition of those ravages by sea and land, which will distinguish the present as an age of Vandalism, I sincerely pray.
I consider as a happy augury, the choice which the Emperor has made of a person to reside near our government, so distinguished by his dispositions and qualifications to cherish the friendship and the interests of both nations. With my best wishes that your residence among us may be rendered entirely agreeable, and be accompanied with the blessing of health, accept the assurances of my great respect and consideration.
TO MR. BOTTA
Monticello, July 15, 1810.
Sir,—I am honored with your letter of the 12th of January, and although the work you therein mention is not yet come to hand, I avail myself of an occasion, now rendered rare and precarious between our two countries, of anticipating the obligation I shall owe for the pleasure I shall have in perusing it, and of travelling over with you the important scenes, quorum pars minima fui, scenes which have given an impulsion to the world, which, as to ourselves, has been a great blessing, but whether to Europe or not, can only be estimated by him who sees the future as well as the present and past. We are certainly indebted to those who think our revolution worthy of their pen, and who will do justice to our actions and motives; and to yourself I have no doubt we shall owe this obligation, and I now make you my acknowledgments with confidence and pleasure. It will be a worthy preface to the history of this age of revolutions, to be ended we know not when nor how. I pray you to accept the assurances of my great respect and consideration.
TO MR. LAMBERT
Monticello, July 16, 1810.
Sir,—An indispensable piece of business which has occupied me for a month past, obliged me to suspend all correspondence during that time. This must apologize for my late acknowledgment of your favor of May 19th, and for the tardy expression of my thanks for so much of the papers you enclosed as respected myself. The approbation of my political conduct by my republican countrymen generally, is a pillow of sweet repose to me, undisturbed by the noise of the enemies to our form of government. The political sentiments expressed by your society are in the pure spirit of the principles of our revolution; so long as these prevail, we are safe from everything which can assail us from without or within.
Your several communications on the first meridian, have been regularly handed to the Philosophical Society; not corresponding regularly with any of the members, I have received no information respecting them. I have formerly observed to you that while I entertain no doubt of their accuracy, my own familiarity with the subject had been too long suspended, to enable me to render a critical opinion on them. My occupations here are almost exclusively given to my farm and affairs. They furnish me exercise, health and amusement, and with the recreations of family and neighborly society, fill up most of my time, and give a tranquillity necessary to my time of life. With my best wishes for your prosperity, accept the assurances of my esteem and respect.
TO GENERAL DEARBORNE
Monticello, July 16, 1810.
Dear General and Friend,—Your favor of May the 31st was duly received, and I join in congratulations with you on the resurrection of republican principles in Massachusetts and New Hampshire, and the hope that the professors of these principles will not again easily be driven off their ground. The federalists, during their short-lived ascendency, have nevertheless, by forcing us from the embargo, inflicted a wound on our interests which can never be cured, and on our affections which will require time to cicatrize. I ascribe all this to one pseudo-republican, Story. He came on (in place of Crowningshield, I believe) and staid only a few days; long enough, however, to get complete hold of Bacon, who, giving in to his representations, became panic-struck, and communicated his panic to his colleagues, and they to a majority of the sound members of Congress. They believed in the alternative of repeal or civil war, and produced the fatal measure of repeal. This is the immediate parent of all our present evils, and has reduced us to a low standing in the eyes of the world. I should think that even the federalists themselves must now be made, by their feelings, sensible of their error. The wealth which the embargo brought home safely, has now been thrown back into the laps of our enemies, and our navigation completely crushed, and by the unwise and unpatriotic conduct of those engaged in it. Should the orders prove genuine, which are said to have been given against our fisheries, they too are gone; and if not true as yet, they will be true on the first breeze of success which England shall feel, for it has now been some years that I am perfectly satisfied her intentions have been to claim the ocean as her conquest, and prohibit any vessel from navigating it, but on such a tribute as may enable her to keep up such a standing navy as will maintain her dominion over it. She has hauled in, or let herself out, been bold or hesitating, according to occurrences, but has in no situation done anything which might amount to a relinquishment of her intentions. I have ever been anxious to avoid a war with England, unless forced by a situation more losing than war itself. But I did believe we could coerce her to justice by peaceable means, and the embargo, evaded as it was, proved it would have coerced her had it been honestly executed. The proof she exhibited on that occasion, that she can exercise such an influence in this country as to control the will of its government and three-fourths of its people, and oblige the three-fourths to submit to one-fourth, is to me the most mortifying circumstance which has occurred since the establishment of our government. The only prospect I see of lessening that influence, is in her own conduct, and not from anything in our power. Radically hostile to our navigation and commerce, and fearing its rivalry, she will completely crush it, and force us to resort to agriculture, not aware that we shall resort to manufactures also, and render her conquests over our navigation and commerce useless, at least, if not injurious to herself in the end, and perhaps salutary to us, as removing out of our way the chief causes and provocations to war.
But these are views which concern the present and future generation, among neither of which I count myself. You may live to see the change in our pursuits, and chiefly in those of your own State, which England will effect. I am not certain that the change on Massachusetts, by driving her to agriculture, manufactures and emigration, will lessen her happiness. But once more to be done with politics. How does Mrs. Dearborne do? How do you both like your situation? Do you amuse yourself with a garden, a farm, or what? That your pursuits, whatever they be, may make you both easy, healthy and happy, is the prayer of your sincere friend.
