Every man should be protected in his lawful acts. --

TITLE: To Isaac McPherson.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 175.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1813

We were far from considering you as the author of all the measures we blamed. They were placed under the protection of your name, but we were satisfied they wanted much of your approbation. We ascribed them to their real authors, the Pickerings, Wolcotts, the Tracys, the Sedgwicks, et id genus omne, with whom we supposed you in a state of duresse. I well remember a conversation with you in the morning of the day on which you nominated to the Senate a substitute for Pickering, in which you expressed a just impatience under “the legacy of secretaries which General Washington had left you,” and whom you seemed, therefore, to consider as under public protection. Many other incidents showed how differently you would have acted with less impassioned advisers; and subsequent events have proved that your minds were not together. You would do me great injustice, therefore, by taking to yourself what was intended for men who were then your secret, as they are now your open enemies. --

TITLE: To John Adams.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 126.
EDITION: Ford ed., ix, 387.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: June. 1813

John Adams was the pillar of its [Declaration of Independence] support on the floor of Congress; its ablest advocate and defender against the multifarious assaults it encountered. For many excellent persons opposed it on doubts whether we were provided sufficiently with the means of supporting it, whether the minds of our constituents were yet prepared to receive it &c., who, after it was decided, united zealously in the measures it called for. --

TITLE: To William P. Gardner.
EDITION: Ford ed., ix, 377.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1813

Duty tells me that the public interest is so deeply concerned in your perfect knowledge of the characters employed in its high stations, that nothing should be withheld which can give you useful information. --

TITLE: To President Madison.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 101.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1813

There is no degree of affliction, produced by the loss of those dear to us, which experience has not taught me to estimate. I have ever found time and silence the only medicine, and these but assuage, they never can suppress, the deep drawn sigh which recollection forever brings up, until recollection and life are extinguished together. --

TITLE: To John Adams.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 221.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1813

-- With honesty and self-government for her portion, agriculture may abandon contentedly to others the fruits of commerce and corruption. --

TITLE: To Henry Middleton.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 91.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: Jan. 1813

The European nations constitute a separate division of the globe; their treaties make them part of a distinct system; they have a set of interests of their own in which it is our business never to engage ourselves. America has a hemisphere to itself. It must have its separate system of interests, which must not be subordinated to those of Europe. The insulated state in which nature has placed the American continent, should so far avail it that no spark of war kil dled in the other quarters of the globe should be wafted across the wide oceans which separate us from them. And it will be so. --

TITLE: To Baron Von Humboldt.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 268.
EDITION: Ford ed., ix, 431.

DATE: Dec. 1813
See Canada, Colonies, South America, United States.

Anglomany, monarchy, and separation are the principles of the Essex federalists. Anglomany and monarchy, those of the Hamiltonians, and Anglomany alone, that of the portion of the people who call themselves federalists. --

TITLE: To John Melish.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 96.
EDITION: Ford ed., ix, 375.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1813

Annuities for single lives are also beyond our powers, because the single life May pass the term of a generation. This last practice is objectionable too, as encouraging celibacy, and the disinherison of heirs. --

TITLE: To J. W. Eppes.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 198.
EDITION: Ford ed., ix, 397.
PLACE: Popular Forest, Va. ,,
DATE: 1813 1813 gt;
See Generations.

I have been long endeavoring to procure the cork tree from Europe, but without success. A plant which I brought with me from Paris died after languishing some time, and of several parcels of acorns received from a correspondent at Marseilles, not one has ever vegetated. I shall continue my endeavors, although disheartened by the nonchalance of our southern fellow citizens, with whom alone they can thrive. --

TITLE: To James Ronaldson.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 92.
EDITION: Ford ed., ix, 370.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: Jan. 1813

There is a natural aristocracy among men. The grounds of this are virtue and talents. Formerly, bodily powers gave place among the aristoi. But since the invention of gunpowder has armed the weak as well as the strong with missile death, bodily strength, like beauty, good humor, politeness and other accomplishments, has become but an auxiliary ground of distinction. There is, also, an artificial aristocracy, founded on wealth and birth, without either virtue or talents: for with these it would belong to the first class. The natural aristocracy I consider as the most precious gift of nature for the instruction, the trusts, and government of society. And indeed, it would have been inconsistent in creation to have formed man for the social state, and not to have provided virtue and wisdom enough to manage the concerns of the society. May we not even say, that that form of government is the best, which provides the most effectually for a pure selection of these natural aristoi into the offices of government? The artificial aristocracy is a mischievous ingredient in government, and provision should be made to prevent its ascendency. On the question, what is the best provision, you and I differ; but we differ as rational friends, using the free exercise of our own reason, and mutually indulging its errors. You think it best to put the pseudo-aristoi into a separate chamber of legislation, where they may be hindered from doing mischief by their coordinate branches and where, also, they may be a protection to wealth against the agrarian and plundering enterprises of the majority of the people. I think that to give them power in order to prevent them from doing mischief, is arming them for it, and increasing instead of remedying the evil. For, if the coordinate branches can arrest their action, so may they that of the coordinates. Mischief may be done negatively as well as positively. Of this, a cabal in the Senate of the United States has furnished many proofs. Nor do I believe them necessary to protect the wealthy; because enough of these will find their way into every branch of the legislature to protect themselves. From fifteen to twenty legislatures of our own, in action for thirty years past, have proved that no fears of an equalization of property are to be apprehended from them. I think the best remedy is exactly that provided by all our

TITLE: To John Adams.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 223.
EDITION: Ford ed., ix, 425.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1813

The bill [of the Revised Code of Virginia] for the more general diffusion of learning proposed to divide every county into wards of five or six miles square, like the [New England] townships; to establish in each ward a free school for reading, writing and common arithmetic; to provide for the annual selection of the best subjects from these schools, who might receive, at the public expense, a higher degree of education at a district school; and from these district schools to select a certain number of the most promising subjects, to be completed at an University, where all the useful sciences should be taught. Worth and genius would thus have been sought out from every condition of life, and completely prepared by education for defeating the competition of wealth and birth for public trusts. --

TITLE: To John Adams.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 225.
EDITION: Ford ed., ix, 427.
PLACE: Paris
DATE: 1813

This bill on education would have raised the mass of the people to the high ground of moral respectability necessary to their own safety, and to orderly government; and would have completed the great object of qualifying them to secure the veritable aristoi for the trusts of government to the exclusion of the pseudalists. [* * *] Although this law has not yet been acted on but in a small and inefficient degree, it is still considered as before the Legislature, [* * *] and I have great hope that some patriotic spirit will, at a favorable moment, call it up, and make it the key stone of the arch of our government. --

TITLE: To John Adams.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 226.
EDITION: Ford ed., ix, 428.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1813

But even in Europe a change has sensibly taken place in the mind of man. Science has liberated the ideas of those who read and reflect, and the American example has kindled feelings of right in the people. An insurrection has consequently begun of science, talents, and courage, against rank and birth, which have fallen into contempt. It has failed in its first effort, because the mobs of the cities, the instrument used for its accomplishment, debased by ignorance, poverty and vice, could not be restrained to rational action. But the world will soon recover from the panic of this first catastrophe. Science is progressive, and talents and enterprise are on the alert. Resort may be had to the people of the country, a more governable power from their principles and subordination; and rank, and birth, and tinsel-aristocracy will finally shrink into insignificance, even there. This, however, we have no right to meddle with. It suffices for us, if the moral and physical condition of our own citizens qualifies them to select the able and good for the direction of their government, with a recurrence of elections at such short periods as will enable them to displace an unfaithful servant, before the mischief he meditates may be irremediable. --

TITLE: To John Adams.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 227.
EDITION: Ford ed., ix, 429.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1813

The law for religious freedom, [* * *] put down the aristocracy of the clergy [in Virginia] and restored to the citizen the freedom of the mind. --

TITLE: To John Adams.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 226.
EDITION: Ford ed., ix, 428.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1813

From what I have seen of Massachusetts and Connecticut myself, and still more from what I have heard, and the character given of the former by yourself, who know them so much better, there seems to be in those two States a traditionary reverence for certain families, which has rendered the offices of the government nearly hereditary in those families. I presume that from an early period of your history, members of those families happening to possess virtue and talents, have honestly exercised them for the good of the people, and by their services have endeared their names to them. In coupling Connecticut with you, I mean it politically only, not morally. For having made the Bible the common law of their land, they seem to have modeled their morality on the story of Jacob and Laban. But although this hereditary succession to office with you, may, in some degree, be founded in real family merit, yet in a much higher degree, it has proceeded from your strict alliance of Church and State. Those families are canonized in the eyes of the people on common principles, “you tickle me, and I will tickle you.” --

TITLE: To John Adams.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 224.
EDITION: Ford ed., ix, 426.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1813

In Virginia, we have no traditional reverence for certain families. Our clergy, before the Revolution, having been secured against rivalship by fixed salaries, did not give themselves the trouble of acquiring influence over the people. Of wealth, there were great accumulations in particular families, handed down from generation to generation, under the English law of entails. But the only object of ambition for the wealthy was a seat in the King's council. All their court was paid to the crown and its creatures; and they Philipised in all collisions between the King and the people. Hence they were unpopular; and that unpopularity continues attached to their [Col 2] names. A Randolph, a Carter, or a Burwell must have great personal superiority over a common competitor to be elected by the people even at this day. --

TITLE: To John Adams.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 224.
EDITION: Ford ed., ix, 426.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1813

At the first session of our Legislature after the Declaration of Independence, we passed a law abolishing entails. And this was followed by one abolishing the privilege of primogeniture, and dividing the lands of intestates equally among all the children, or other representatives. These laws, drawn by myself, laid the axe to the root of pseudo-aristocracy. And had another which I had prepared been adopted by the Legislature, our work would have been complete. It was a bill for the more general diffusion of learning. --

TITLE: To John Adams.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 225.
EDITION: Ford ed., ix, 427.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1813

I have long ago in my heart congratulated my country on your call to the place you now occupy. [* * *] Whatever you do in office, I know will be honestly and ably done, and although we who do not see the whole ground may sometimes impute error, it will be because we, not you, are in the wrong; or because your views are defeated by the wickedness or incompetence of those you are obliged to trust with their execution. --

TITLE: To General John Armstrong.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 103.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: Feb. 1813

Tardy enlistments proceed from the happiness of our people at home. --

TITLE: To James Monroe.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 130.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: June. 1813

It is more a subject of joy [than of regret] that we have so few of the desperate characters which compose modern regular armies. But it proves more forcibly the necessity of obliging every citizen to be a soldier; this was the case with the Greeks and Romans, and must be that of every free State. Where there is no oppression there can be no pauper hirelings. --

TITLE: To James Monroe.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 130.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: June. 1813

The unfortunate obstinacy of the Senate in preferring the greatest blockhead to the greatest military genius, if one day longer in commission, renders it doubly important to sift well the candidates for command in new corps, and to marshal them at first, towards the head, in proportion to their qualifications. --

TITLE: To General Armstrong.
EDITION: Ford ed., ix, 380.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: Feb. 1813

There is not, I believe, a service on earth where seniority is permitted to give a right to advance beyond the grade of captain. --

TITLE: To General Armstrong.
EDITION: Ford ed., ix, 380.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: Feb. 1813

We are doomed. [* * *] to sacrifice the lives of our citizens by thousands to this blind principle, for fear the peculiar interest and responsibility of our Executive should not be sufficient to guard his selection of officers against favoritism. --

TITLE: To General Armstrong.
EDITION: Ford ed., ix, 380.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1813

When you have new corps to raise you are free to prefer merit: and our mechanical law of promotion, when once men have been set in their places, makes it most interesting indeed to place them originally according to their capacities. It is not for me even to ask whether in the raw regiments now to be raised, it would not be advisable to draw from the former the few officers who may already have discovered military talent, and to bring them forward [Col 2] in the new corps to those higher grades, to which, in the old, the blocks in their way do not permit you to advance them? --

TITLE: To General Armstrong.
EDITION: Ford ed., ix, 380.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: Feb. 1813
See Generals.

I learn with great pleasure the progress you have made towards an establishment on Columbia river. I view it as the germ of a great, free, and independent empire on that side of our continent, and that liberty and self-government spreading from that as well as from this side, will insure their complete establishment over the whole. It must be still more gratifying to yourself to foresee that your name will be handed down with that of Columbus and Raleigh, as the father of the establishment and [Col 2] founder of such an empire. It would be an afflicting thing, indeed, should the English be able to break up the settlement. Their bigotry to the bastard liberty of their own country, and habitual hostility to every degree of freedom in any other, will induce the attempt; they would not lose the sale of a bale of furs for the empire of the whole world. But I hope your party will be able to maintain themselves [* * *] and have no doubt our government will do for its success whatever they have power to do and especially that at the negotiations for peace, they will provide, by convention with the English, for the safety and independence of that country, and an acknowledgment of our right of patronizing the Indians in all cases of injury from foreign nations. --

TITLE: To John Jacob Astor.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 247.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1813
See Fur Trade.

It seems to me that in proportion as commercial avarice and corruption advance on us from the North and East, the principles of free government are to retire to the agricultural States of the South and West, as their last asylum and bulwark. --

TITLE: To Henry Middleton.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 91.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1813

After the loss of the Philadelphia, Captain Bainbridge had a character to redeem. He has done it most honorably, and no one is more gratified by it than myself. --

TITLE: To Matthew Carr.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 132.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1813

The scheme is for Congress to establish [Col 2] a national bank, suppose of thirty millions capital, of which they shall contribute ten millions in six per cent. stock, the States ten millions, and individuals ten millions, one half of the two last contributions to be of a similar stock, for which the parties are to give cash to Congress; the whole, however, to be under the exclusive management of the individual subscribers, who are to name all the directors; neither Congress nor the States having any power of interference in its administration. Discounts are to be at five per cent., but the profits are expected to be at seven per cent. Congress then will be paying six per cent. on twenty millions, and receiving seven per cent. on ten millions, being its third of the institution; so that on the ten millions cash which they receive from the States and individuals, they will, in fact, have to pay but five per cent. interest. This is the bait. The charter is proposed to be for forty or fifty years, and if any future augmentations should take place, the individual proprietors are to have the privilege of being the sole subscribers for that. Congress are further allowed to issue to the amount of three millions of notes, bearing interest, which they are to receive back in payment for lands at a premium of five or ten per cent., or as subscriptions for canals, roads, and bridges, in which undertakings they are, of course, to be engaged. This is a summary of the case as I understand it; but it is very possible I may not understand it in all its parts, these schemes being always made unintelligible for the gulls who are to enter into them. --

TITLE: To J. W. Eppes.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 228.
EDITION: Ford ed., ix, 403.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: Nov. 1813

The advantages and disadvantages shall be noted promiscuously as they occur; leaving out the speculation of canals &c., which, being an episode only in the scheme, may be omitted, to disentangle it as much as we can. 1. Congress are to receive five millions from the States (if they will enter into this partnership, which few probably will), and five millions from the individual subscribers, in exchange for ten millions of six per cent. stock, one per cent. of which, however, they will make on their ten millions of stock remaining in bank, and so reduce it, in effect, to a loan of ten millions at five per cent. interest. This is good; but, 2. They authorize this bank to throw into circulation ninety millions of dollars (three times the capital), which increases our circulating medium fifty per cent.; depreciates proportionably the present value of a dollar, and raises the price of all future purchases in the same proportion. 3. This loan of ten millions at five per cent., is to be once for all, only. Neither the terms of the scheme, nor their own prudence could ever permit them to add to the circulation in the same, or any other way, for the supplies of the succeeding years of the war. These succeeding years then are to be left unprovided for, and the means of doing it in a great measure precluded. 4. The individual subscribers, on

TITLE: To J. W. Eppes.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 229.
EDITION: Ford ed., ix, 403.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: Nov. 1813

Let us examine these causes and proofs of the want of our increase of medium, one by one. 1. The additional industry created to supply a variety of articles for troops, ammunition, &c. Now, I had always supposed that war produced a diminution of industry, by the number of hands it withdraws from industrious pursuits for employment in arms, &c., which are totally unproductive. And if it calls for new industry in the articles of ammunition and other military supplies, the hands are borrowed from other branches on which the demand is slackened by the war; so that it is but a shifting of these hands from one pursuit to another. 2. The cash sent to the frontiers occasions a vacuum in the trading towns, which requires a new supply. Let us examine what are the calls for money to the frontiers. Not for clothing, tents, ammunition, arms, which are all bought in the trading towns. Not for provisions; for although these are bought [Col 2] partly in the immediate country, bank bills are more acceptable there than even in the trading towns. The pay of the army calls for some cash, but not a great deal, as bank notes are as acceptable with the military men, perhaps more so; and what cash is sent must find its way back again in exchange for the wants of the upper from the lower country. For we are not to suppose that cash stays accumulating there forever. 3. This scarcity has been occasioned by the late loans. But does the government borrow money to keep it in their coffers? Is it not instantly restored to circulation by payment for its necessary supplies? And are we to restore a vacuum of twenty millions of dollars by an emission of ninety millions? 4. The want of medium is proved by the recurrence of individuals with good paper to brokers at exorbitant interest; and 5. By the numerous applications to the State governments for additional banks; New York wanting eighteen millions, Pennsylvania ten millions, &c. But say more correctly, the speculators and spendthrifts of New York and Pennsylvania, but never consider them as being the States of New York and Pennsylvania. These two items shall be considered together. --

TITLE: To J. W. Eppes.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 231.
EDITION: Ford ed., ix, 405.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: Nov. 1813

It is a litigated question, whether the circulation of paper, rather than of specie, is a good or an evil. In the opinion of England and of English writers it is a good; in that of all other nations it is an evil; and excepting England and her copyist, the United States, there is not a nation existing, I believe, which tolerates a paper circulation. The experiment is going on, however, desperately in England, pretty boldly with us, and at the end of the chapter, we shall see which opinion experience approves: for I believe it to be one of those cases where mercantile clamor will bear down reason, until it is corrected by ruin. --

TITLE: To J. W. Eppes.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 232.
EDITION: Ford ed., ix, 405.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: Nov. 1813

After the solemn decision of Congress against the renewal of the charter of the Bank of the United States, and the grounds of that decision (the want of constitutional power), I had imagined that question at rest, and that no more applications would be made to them for the incorporation of banks. The opposition on that ground to its first establishment, the small majority by which it was overborne, and the means practiced for obtaining it, cannot be already forgotten. The law having passed, however, by a majority, its opponents, true to the sacred principle of submission to a majority, suffered the law to flow through its term without obstruction. During this, the nation had time to consider the constitutional question, and when the renewal was proposed, they condemned it, not by their representatives in Congress only, but by express instructions from different organs of their will. Here

TITLE: To J. W. Eppes.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 232.
EDITION: Ford ed., ix, 406.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: Nov. 1813

The idea of creating a national bank, I do not concur in, because it seems now decided that Congress has not that power (although I sincerely wish they had it exclusively), and because I think there is already a vast redundancy, rather than a scarcity of paper medium. The rapid rise in the nominal price of land and labor (while war and blockade should produce a fall) proves the progressive state of the depreciation of our medium. --

TITLE: To Thomas Law.
EDITION: Ford ed., ix, 433.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1813

At the time we were funding our national debt, we heard much about “a public debt being a public blessing”; that the stock representing it was a creation of active capital for the aliment of commerce, manufactures and agriculture. This paradox was well adapted to the minds of believers in dreams, and the gulls of that size entered bonâ fide into it. But the art and mystery of banks is a wonderful improvement on that. It is established on the principle that “private debts are a public blessing.” That the evidences of those private debts, called bank notes, become active capital, and aliment the whole commerce, manufactures, and agriculture of the United States. Here are a set of people, for instance, who have bestowed on us the great blessing of running in our debt about two hundred millions of dollars, without our knowing who they are, where they are, or what property they have to pay this debt when called on; nay, who have made us so sensible of the blessings of letting them run in our debt, that we have exempted them by law from the repayment of these debts beyond a given proportion (generally estimated at one-third). And to fill up the measure of blessing, instead of paying, they receive an interest on what they owe from those to whom they owe; for all the notes, or evidences of what they owe, which we see in circulation, have been lent to somebody on an interest which is levied again on us through the medium of commerce. And they are so ready still to deal out their liberalities to us, that they are now willing to let themselves run in our debt ninety millions more, on our paying them the same premium of six or eight per cent. interest, and on the same legal exemption from the repayment of more than thirty millions of the debt, when it shall be called for. But let us look at this principle in its original form, and its copy will then be equally understood. “A public debt is a public blessing.” That our debt was juggled from forty-three up to eighty millions, and funded at that amount, according to this opinion was a great public blessing, because the evidences of it could be vested in commerce, and thus converted into active capital, and then the more the debt was made to be, the more active capital was created. That is to say, the creditors could now employ in commerce the money due them from the public, and make from it an annual profit of five per cent., or four millions of dollars. But observe, that the public were at the same time paying on it an interest of exactly the same

TITLE: To J. W. Eppes.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 239.
EDITION: Ford ed., ix, 411.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: Nov. 1813

Capital may be produced by industry, and accumulated by economy; but jugglers only will propose to create it by legerdemain tricks with paper. --

TITLE: To J. W. Eppes.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 241.
EDITION: Ford ed., ix, 413.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: Nov. 1813

Banks of deposit, where cash should be lodged, and a paper acknowledgment taken out as its representative, entitled to a return of the cash on demand, would be convenient for remittances, traveling persons, &c. But, liable as its cash would be to be plifered and robbed, and its paper to be fraudulently reissued, or issued without deposit, it would require skilful and strict regulation. This would differ from the bank of Amsterdam, in the circumstance that the cash could be redeemed on returning the note. --

TITLE: To J. W. Eppes.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 247.
EDITION: Ford ed., ix, 417.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: Nov. 1813

My original disapprobation of banks circulating paper is not unknown, nor have I since observed any effects either on the morals or fortunes of our citizens, which are any counter balance for the public evils produced. --

TITLE: To J. W. Eppes.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 203.
EDITION: Ford ed., ix, 402.
PLACE: Popular Forest, Va. ,,
DATE: Sep. 1813

The toleration of banks of paper-discount costs the United States one half their war taxes; or, in other words, doubles the expense of every war. --

TITLE: To J. W. Eppes.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 201.
EDITION: Ford ed., ix, 400.
PLACE: Popular Forest, Va. ,,
DATE: Sep. 1813

The States should be applied to, to transfer the

TITLE: To J. W. Eppes.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 140.
EDITION: Ford ed., ix, 393.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: June. 1813

The States should be urged to concede to the General Government, with a saving of chartered rights, the exclusive power of establishing banks of discount for paper. --

TITLE: To J. W. Eppes.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 427.
EDITION: Ford ed., ix, 417.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: Nov. 1813

I still believe that on proper representations of the subject, a great proportion of the Legislatures would cede to Congress their power of establishing banks, saving the charter rights already granted. And this should be asked, not by way of amendment to the Constitution, because until three-fourths should consent, nothing could be done; but accepted from them one by one, singly, as their consent might be obtained. Any single State, even if no other should come into the measure, would find its interest in arresting foreign bank paper immediately, and its own by degrees. Specie would flow in on them as paper disappeared. Their own banks would call in and pay off their notes gradually, and their constituents would thus be saved from the general wreck. Should the greater part of the States concede, as is expected, their power over banks to Congress, besides insuring their own safety, the paper of the non-conceding States might be so checked and circumscribed, by prohibiting its receipt in any of the conceding States, and even in the non-conceding as to duties, taxes, judgments, or other demands of the United States, or of the citizens of other States, that it would soon die of itself, and the medium of gold and silver be universally restored. This is what ought to be done. But it will not be done. Carthago non delibitur. The overbearing clamor of merchants, speculators, and projectors, will drive us before them with our eyes open, until, as in France, under the Mississippi bubble, our citizens will be overtaken by the crash of this baseless fabric, without other satisfaction than that of execrations on the heads of those functionaries, who, from ignorance, pusillanimity or corruption, have betrayed the fruits of their industry into the hands of projectors and swindlers. --

TITLE: To J. W. Eppes.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 245.
EDITION: Ford ed., ix, 415.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: Nov. 1813

Private fortunes, in the present state of our circulation, are at the mercy of those selfcreated money-lenders, and are prostrated by the floods of nominal money with which their avarice deluges us. He who lent his money to the public or to an individual, before the institution of the United States Bank, twenty years ago, when wheat was well sold at a dollar the bushel, and receives now his nominal sum when it sells at two dollars, is cheated of half his fortune; and by whom? By the banks, which, since that, have thrown into circulation ten dollars of their nominal money where there was one at that time. --

TITLE: To John W. Eppes.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 142.
EDITION: Ford ed., ix, 394.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: June. 1813

Instead of yielding to the cries of scarcity of medium set up by speculators, projectors and commercial gamblers, no endeavors should be spared to begin the work of reducing it by such gradual means as may give

TITLE: To J. W. Eppes.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 246.
EDITION: Ford ed., ix, 417.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: Nov. 1813

We are called on to add ninety millions more to the circulation. Proceeding in this career, it is infallible, that we must end where the Revolutionary paper ended. Two hundred millions was the whole amount of all the emissions of the old Congress, at which point their bills ceased to circulate. We are now at that sum, but with treble the population, and of course a longer tether. Our depreciation is, as yet, but about two for one. Owing to the support its credit receives from the small reservoirs of specie in the vaults of the banks, it is impossible to say at what point their notes will stop. Nothing is necessary to effect it but a general alarm; and that may take place whenever the public shall begin to reflect on, and perceive the impossibility that the banks should repay this sum. At present, caution is inspired no farther than to keep prudent men from selling property on long payments. Let us suppose the panic to arise at three hundred millions, a point to which every session of the Legislature hastens us by long strides. Nobody dreams that they would have three hundred millions of specie to satisfy the holders of their notes. Were they even to stop now, no one supposes they have two hundred millions in cash, or even the sixty-six and two-third millions, to which amount alone the law compels them to repay. One hundred and thirtythree and one-third millions of loss, then, is thrown on the public by law; and as to the sixty-six and two-thirds, which they are legally bound to pay, and ought to have in their vaults, every one knows there is no such amount of cash in the United States, and what would be the course with what they really have there? Their notes are refused. Cash is called for. The inhabitants of the banking towns will get what is in the vaults, until a few banks declare their insolvency; when, the general crush becoming evident, the others will withdraw even the cash they have, declare their bankruptcy at once, and have an empty house and empty coffers for the holders of their notes. In this scramble of creditors, the country gets nothing, the towns but little. What are they to do? Bring suits? A million of creditors bring a million of suits against John Nokes and Robert Styles, wheresoever to be found? All nonsense. The loss is total. And a sum is thus swindled from our citizens, of seven times the amount of the real debt, and four times that of the fictitious one of the United States, at the close of the war. All this they will justly charge on their Legislatures; but this will be poor satisfaction for the two or three hundred millions they will have lost. It is time, then, for the public functionaries to look to this. Perhaps it may not be too late. Perhaps, by giving time to the banks, they May call in and pay off their paper by degrees. But no remedy is ever to be expected while it rests with the State Legislatures. Personal [Col 2] motive can be excited through so many avenues to their will, that, in their hands, it will continue to go on from bad to worse, until the catastrophe overwhelms us. --

TITLE: To J. W. Eppes.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 243.
EDITION: Ford ed., ix, . 414.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: Nov. 1813

But, it will be asked, are we to have no banks? Are merchants and others to be deprived of the resource of short accommodations, found so convenient? I answer, let us have banks; but let them be such as are alone to be found in any country on earth, except Great Britain. There is not a bank of discount on the continent

TITLE: To John W. Eppes.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 141.
EDITION: Ford ed., ix, 394.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: June. 1813

Let banks continue if they please, but let them discount for cash alone or for treasury notes. They discount for cash alone in every other country on earth except Great Britain, and her too often unfortunate copyist, the United States. If taken in time they may be rectified by degrees, but if let alone till the alternative forces itself on us, of submitting to the enemy for want of funds, or the suppression of bank paper, either by law or by convulsion, we cannot foresee how it will end. --

TITLE: To J. W. Eppes.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 199.
EDITION: Ford ed., ix, 399.
PLACE: Popular Forest, Va. ,,
DATE: Sep. 1813

To the existence of banks of discount for cash, as on the continent of Europe, there can be no objection, because there can be no danger of abuse, and they are a convenience both to merchants and individuals. I think they should even be encouraged, by allowing them a larger than legal interest on short discounts, and tapering thence in proportion as the term of discount is lengthened, down to legal interest on those of a year or more. --

TITLE: To J. W. Eppes.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 247.
EDITION: Ford ed., ix, 417.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: Nov. 1813

No man on earth has stronger detestation than myself of the unprincipled tyrant who is deluging the continent of Europe with blood. No one was more gratified by his disasters of the last campaign. ⁵¹ --

TITLE: To Dr. George Logan.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 216.
EDITION: Ford ed., ix, 423.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: Oct. 1813

-- To complete and universalize the desolation of the globe, it has been the will of Providence to raise up, at the same time, a tyrant as unprincipled and as overwhelming, for the ocean. Not in the poor maniac George, but in his government and nation. Bonaparte will die, and his tyrannies with him. But a nation never dies. The English government, and its piratical principles and practices, have no fixed term of duration. Europe feels, and is writhing under the scorpion whips of Bonaparte. We are assailed by those of England. The one continent thus placed under the gripe of England, and the other of Bonaparte, each has to grapple with the enemy immediately pressing on itself. We must extinguish the fire kindled in our own house, and leave to our friends beyond the water that which is consuming theirs. --

TITLE: To Madame de Stael.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 115.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: May. 1813

I know nothing which can so severely try the heart and spirit of man, and especially of the man of science, as the necessity of a passive acquiescence under the abominations of an unprincipled tyrant who is deluging the earth with blood to acquire for himself the reputation of a Cartouche or a Robin Hood. The petty larcenies of the Blackbeards and Buccaneers of the ocean, the more immediately exercised on us, are dirty and grovelling things addressed to our contempt, while the horrors excited by the Scelerat of France are beyond all human execrations. --

TITLE: To Dr. Morrell.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 100.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: Feb. 1813

Robespierre met the fate, and his memory the execration, he so justly merited. The rich were his victims, and perished by thousands. It is by millions that Bonaparte destroys the poor, and he is eulogized and deified by the sycophants even of science. These merit more than the mere oblivion to which they will be consigned: and the day will come when a just posterity will give to their hero the only preeminence he has earned, that of having been the greatest of the destroyers of the human race. What year of his military life has not consigned a million of human beings to death, to poverty and wretchedness! What field in Europe may not raise a monument of the murders, the burnings, the desolations, the famines, and miseries it has witnessed from him? And all [Col 2] this to acquire a reputation, which Cartouche attained with less injury to mankind, of being fearless of God or man. --

TITLE: To Madame de Stael.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 114.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: May. 1813

A ruthless tyrant, drenching Europe in blood to obtain through future time the character of the destroyer of mankind. --

TITLE: To Henry Middleton.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 91.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: Jan. 1813

We have taken Upper Canada, [* * *] and hope to remove the British fully and finally from our continent. --

TITLE: To Madame de Tesse.
EDITION: Washington ed. iv, 273.
EDITION: Ford ed., ix, 440.

DATE: Dec. 1813

We have a great and a just claim of indemnifications against the British for the thousand ships they have taken piratically, and six thousand seamen impressed. Whether we can, on this score, successfully insist on curtailing their American possessions, by the meridian of Lake Huron, so as to cut them off from the Indians bordering on us, would be matter for conversation and experiment at the treaty of pacification. --

TITLE: To William Short.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 129.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: June. 1813

Could we acquire that country, we might perhaps insist successfully at St. Petersburg on retaining all [westward] of the meridian of Lake Huron, or of Ontario, or of Montreal, according to the pulse of the place, as an indemnification for the past and security for the future. To cut them off from

TITLE: To James Monroe.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 131.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: June. 1813

A thousand ships taken unjustifiably in time of peace, and thousands of our citizens impressed, warrant expectations of indemnification; such a Western frontier, perhaps, given to Canada, as may put it out of their power to employ the tomahawk and scalping knife of the Indians on our women and children; or, what would be nearly equivalent, the exclusive right to the Lakes. --

TITLE: To Dr. George Logan.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 216.
EDITION: Ford ed., ix, 422.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: Oct. 1813

The conduct of the British during the war in exciting the Indian hordes to murder and scalp the women and children on our frontier, renders peace forever impossible but on the establishment of such a meridian boundary to their possessions, as that they never more can have such influence with the savages as to excite again the same barbarities. The thousand ships, too, they took from us in peace, and the six thousand seamen impressed call for this indemnification. --

TITLE: To Don. V. Toronda Coruna.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 275.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: Dec. 1813

If the war is lengthened we shall take Canada, which will relieve us from Indians, and Halifax, which will put an end to their occupation of the American Seas, because every vessel must then go to England to repair every accident. To retain these would become objects of first importance to us, and of great importance to Europe, as the means of curtailing the British marine. But at present, being merely in posse, they should not be an impediment to peace. --

TITLE: To William Short.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 129.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: June. 1813

Capital may be produced by industry, and accumulated by economy; but jugglers only will propose to create it by legerdemain tricks with paper. --

TITLE: To J. W. Eppes.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 241.
EDITION: Ford ed., ix, 413.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: Nov. 1813

-- Every citizen [should] be a soldier. This was the case with the Greeks and Romans, and must be that of every free State. --

TITLE: To James Monroe.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 131.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1813

My principle has ever been that war should not suspend either exports or imports. --

TITLE: To William Short.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 128.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1813

A constitution has been acquired, which, though neither of us thinks perfect, yet both consider as competent to render our fellow citizens the happiest and the securest on whom the sun has ever shone. --

TITLE: To John Adams.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 227.
EDITION: Ford ed., ix, 429.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1813

As to myself, I shall take no part in any discussions. I leave others to judge of what I have done, and to give me exactly the place which they shall think I have occupied. Marshall has written libels on one side; others, I suppose, will be written on the other side; and the world will sift both and separate the truth as well as they can. --

TITLE: To John Adams.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 127.
EDITION: Ford ed., ix, 388.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1813

I found him one of the most learned and amiable of men. --

TITLE: To Baron von Humboldt.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 267.
EDITION: Ford ed., ix, 430.
PLACE: [none given]
DATE: 1813

It seems to me that in proportion as commercial avarice and corruption advance on us from the North and East, the principles of free government are to retire to the agricultural States of the South and West as their last asylum and bulwark. --

TITLE: To Henry Middleton.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 91.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1813

It is a wise rule, and should be a fundamental in a government disposed to cherish its credit, and at the same time to restrain the use of it within the limits of its faculties, “never to borrow a dollar without laying a tax in the same instant for paying the interest annually, and the principal within a given term; and to

TITLE: To John W. Eppes.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 136.
EDITION: Ford ed., ix, 389.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: June. 1813

I confess that when I heard of the atrocities committed by the English troops at Hampton, I did not believe them, but subsequent evidence has placed them beyond doubt. To this has been added information from another quarter which proves the violation of women to be their habitual practice in war. Mr. Hamilton, a son of Alexander Hamilton, of course, a federalist and Angloman, and who was with the British army in Spain, declares it is their constant practice, and that at the taking of Badajoz, he was himself eye

TITLE: To Josiah Meigs.
EDITION: Ford ed., ix, 419.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1813
See Cornwallis and Retaliation.

That we are bound to defray the expenses of the war within our own time, and unauthorized to burthen posterity with them, I suppose to have been proved in my former letter. I will place the question nevertheless in one additional point of view. The former regarded their independent right over the earth; this over their own persons. There have existed nations, and civilized and learned nations, who have thought that a father had a right to sell his child as a slave, in perpetuity; that he could alienate his body and industry conjointly, and à fortiari his industry separately; and consume its fruits himself. A nation asserting this fratricide right might well suppose they could burthen with public as well as private debt their nati natorum, et qui nascentur ab illis. But we, this age, and in this country especially, are advanced beyond those notions of natural law. We acknowledge that our children are born free; that that freedom is the gift of nature, and not of him who begot them; that though under our care during infancy, and therefore of necessity, under a duly tempered authority, that care is confided to us to be exercised for the good of the child only; and his labors during youth are given as a retribution for the charges of infancy. As he was never the property of his father, so when adult he is sui juris, entitled himself to the use of his own limbs and the fruits of his own exertions: so far we are advanced, without mind enough, it seems, to take the whole step. We believe, or we act as if we believed, that although an individual father cannot alienate the labor of his son, the aggregate body of fathers may alienate the labor of all their sons, or of their posterity in the aggregate, and oblige them to pay for all the enterprises, just or unjust, profitable or ruinous, into which our vices, our passions, or our personal interests may lead us. But I trust that this proposition needs only to be looked at by an American to be seen in its true point of view, and that we shall all consider ourselves unauthorized to saddle posterity with our debts, and morally bound to pay them ourselves; and consequently within what May be deemed the period of a generation, or the life of the majority. [* * *] We must raise, then, ourselves the money for this war, either by taxes within the year, or by loans; and if by loans, we must repay them ourselves, proscribing forever the English practice of perpetual funding; the ruinous consequences of which, putting right out of the question,

TITLE: To J. W. Eppes.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 196.
EDITION: Ford ed., ix, 396.
PLACE: Popular Forest, Va. ,,
DATE: Sep. 1813
See Generations.

The public expenses of England during the present reign have amounted to the fee simple value of the whole island. If its whole soil could be sold, farm by farm, for its present market price, it would not defray the cost of governing it during the reign of the present King, as managed by him. Ought not then the right of each successive generation to be guaranteed against the dissipations and corruptions of those preceding, by a fundamental provision in our Constitution? And, if that has not been made, does it exist the less; there being between generation and generation, as between nation and nation, no other law than that of nature? And is it the less dishonest to do what is wrong, because not expressly prohibited by written law? Let us hope our moral principles are not yet in that stage of degeneracy, and that in instituting the system of finance to be hereafter pursued, we shall adopt the only safe, the only lawful and honest one, of borrowing on such short terms of reimbursement of interest and principal as will fall within the accomplishment of our own lives. --

TITLE: To J. W. Eppes.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 199.
EDITION: Ford ed., ix, 398.
PLACE: Popular Forest, Va. ,,
DATE: Sep. 1813

What is to hinder [the government] from creating a perpetual debt? The laws of nature, I answer. The earth belongs to the living not to the dead. The will and the power of man expire with his life, by nature's law. Some societies give it an artificial continuance, for the encouragement of industry; some refuse it, as our aboriginal neighbors, whom we call barbarians. The generations of men may be considered as bodies or corporations. Each generation has the usufruct of the earth during the period of its continuance. When it ceases to exist the usufruct passes on to the succeeding generation, free and unincumbered, and so on, successively, from one generation to another forever. We may consider each generation as a distinct nation, with a right, by the will of its majority, to bind themselves, but none to bind the succeeding generation, more than the inhabitants of another country. Or the case may be likened to the ordinary one of a tenant for life, who may hypothecate the land for his debts, during the continuance of his usufruct; but at his death, the reversioner (who is also for life only) receives it exonerated from all burden. The period of a generation, or the term of its life, is determined by the laws of mortality, which, varying a little only in different climates, offer a general average to be found by observation. I turn, for instance, to Buffon's tables, of twenty-three thousand nine hundred and ninety-four deaths, and the ages at which they happened, and I find that of the numbers of all ages living at one moment, half will be dead in twenty-four years and eight months. But (leaving out minors, who have not the power of self-government) of the adults (of twenty-one years of age) living at one moment, a majority of whom act for the society, one-half will be dead in eighteen years and eight months. At nineteen years, then, from the date of a contract, the majority of the contractors are dead, and their contract with them. Let this general theory be applied to a particular case. Suppose the annual births of the State of New York to be twenty-three thousand nine hundred and ninety-four the whole number of its inhabitants, according to Buffon, will be six hundred and seventeen thousand, seven hundred and three of all ages. Of these there would constantly be two hundred and sixty-nine thousand two hundred and eighty-six minors, and three hundred and forty-eight thousand four hundred and seventeen adults, of which last, one hundred and seventy-four thousand two hundred and nine will be a majority. Suppose that majority, on the first day of the year 1794, had borrowed a sum of money equal to the fee-simple value of the State, and to have consumed it in eating, drinking and

TITLE: To John Wayles Eppes.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 136.
EDITION: Ford ed., ix, 389.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: June. 1813
See Generations.

At the time we were funding our national debt, we heard much about “a public debt being a public blessing”; that the stock representing it was a creation of active capital for the aliment of commerce, manufactures and agriculture. This paradox was well adapted to the minds of believers in dreams, and the gulls of that size entered bonâ fide into it. But the art and mystery of banks is a wonderful improvement on that. It is established on the principle that “private debts are a public blessing ”; that the evidences of those private debts, called bank notes, become active capital, and aliment the whole commerce, manufactures, and agriculture of the United States. Here are a set of people, for instance, who have bestowed on us the great blessing of running in our debt about two hundred millions of dollars, without our knowing who they are, where they are, or want property they have to pay this debt when called on; nay, who have made us so sensible of the blessings of letting them run in our debt, that we have exempted them by law from the re [Col 2] payment of these debts beyond a given proportion (generally estimated at one-third). And to fill up the measure of blessing, instead of paying, they receive an interest on what they owe from those to whom they owe; for all the notes, or evidences of what they owe, which we see in circulation, have been lent to somebody on an interest which is levied again on us through the medium of commerce. And they are so ready still to deal out their liberalities to us, that they are now willing to let themselves run in our debt ninety millions more, on our paying them the same premium of six or eight per cent. interest, and on the same legal exemption from the repayment of more than thirty millions of the debt when it shall be called for. But let us look at this principle in its original form, and its copy will then be equally understood. “A public debt is a public blessing.” That our debt was juggled from forty-three to eighty millions, and funded at that amount, according to this opinion a great public blessing, because the evidences of it could be vested in commerce, and thus converted into active capital, and then the more the debt was made to be, the more active capital was created. That is to say, the creditors could now employ in commerce the money due them from the public, and make from it an annual profit of five per cent., or four millions of dollars. But observe, that the public were at the same time paying on it an interest of exactly the same amount of four millions of dollars. Where, then, is the gain to either party, which makes it a public blessing? There is no change in the state of things, but of persons only. A has a debt due to him from the public, of which he holds their certificate as evidence, and on which he is receiving an annual interest. He wishes, however, to have the money itself, and to go into business with it. B has an equal sum of money in business, but wishes now to retire, and live on the interest. He therefore gives it to A in exchange for A's certificates of public stock. Now, then, A has the money to employ in business, which B so employed before. B has the money on interest to live on, which A lived on before; and the public pays the interest to B which they paid to A before. Here is no new creation of capital, no additional money employed, nor even a change in the employment of a single dollar. The only change is of place between A and B in which we discover no creation of capital, nor public blessing. Suppose, again, the public to owe nothing. Then A not having lent his money to the public, would be in possession of it himself, and would go into business without the previous operation of selling stock. Here, again, the same quantity of capital is employed as in the former case, though no public debt exists. In neither case is there any creation of active capital, nor other difference than that there is a public debt in the first case, and none in the last; and we may safely ask which of the two situations is most truly a public blessing? If, then, a public debt be no public blessing, we

TITLE: To J. W. Eppes.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 239.
EDITION: Ford ed., ix, 411.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: Nov. 1813

Many excellent persons opposed it on doubts whether we were provided sufficiently with the means of supporting it, whether the minds of our constituents were yet prepared to receive, &c., who, after it was decided, united zealously in the measures it called for. --

TITLE: To William P. Gardner.
EDITION: Ford ed., ix, 377.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1813

Mr. Barralet's sketch of the ornaments proposed to accompany the publication of the Declaration of Independence, contemplated by Mr. Murray and yourself, has been received. I am too little versed in the art of design to be able to offer any suggestions to the artist. As far as I am a judge, the composition appears to be judicious and well-imagined. Were I to hazard a suggestion, it should be that Mr. Hancock, as President of Congress, should occupy the middle and principal place. No man better merited than did Mr. John Adams to hold a most conspicuous place in the design. --

TITLE: To William P. Gardner.
EDITION: Ford ed., ix, 377.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: Feb. 1813

Of the papers of July, 1775, I recollect well that Mr. Dickinson drew the petition to the King. --

TITLE: To John Adams.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 194.
EDITION: Ford ed., ix, 419.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1813

I prefer public benefit to all personal considerations. --

TITLE: To J. W. Eppes.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 203.
EDITION: Ford ed., ix, 402.
PLACE: Popular Forest, Va. ,,
DATE: Sep. 1813

The earth belongs to the living, not to the dead. The will and the power of man expire with his life, by nature's law. Some societies give it an artificial continuance, for the encouragement of industry: some refuse it, as our aboriginal neighbors, whom we call barbarians. The generations of men may be considered as bodies or corporations. Each generation has the usufruct of the earth during the period of its continuance. When it ceases to exist. the usufruct passes on to the succeeding generation, free and unencumbered, and so on, successively, from one generation to another forever. --

TITLE: To John Wayles Eppes.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 136.
EDITION: Ford ed., ix, 389.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: June. 1813

The soil is the gift of God to the living. --

TITLE: To John W. Eppes.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 138.
EDITION: Ford ed., ix, 391. M.,
PLACE: [none given]
DATE: 1813
See Generations.

We must make military instruction a regular part of collegiate education. We can never be safe till this is done. ¹⁵⁵ --

TITLE: To James Monroe.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 131.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1813

The English government never dies because their King is no part of it; he is a mere formality and the real government is the aristocracy of the country, for the House of Commons is of that class. --

TITLE: To Doctor Samuel Brown.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 165.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1813

Our lot happens to have been cast in an age when two nations to whom circumstances have given a temporary superiority over others, the one by land, the other by sea, throwing off all restraints of morality, all pride of national character, forgetting the mutability of fortune, and the inevitable doom which the laws of nature pronounce against departure from justice, individual or national, have declared to treat her reclamations with derision, and to set up force instead of reason as the umpire of nations. Degrading themselves thus from the character of lawful societies into lawless bands of robbers and pirates, they are abusing their brief ascendency by desolating the world with blood and rapine. Against such a banditti, war had become less ruinous than peace, for then peace was a war on one side only. --

TITLE: To J. W. Eppes.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 195.
EDITION: Ford ed., ix, 396.
PLACE: Popular Forest, Va. ,,
DATE: Sep. 1813

How much to be lamented that the world cannot unite and destroy these two land and sea monsters. The one drenching the earth with human gore, the [Col 2] other ravaging the ocean with lawless piracies and plunder. --

TITLE: To Dr. Samuel Brown.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 165.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: July. 1813

A nation of buccaneers, urged by sordid avarice, and embarked in the flagitious enterprise of seizing to itself the maritime resources and rights of all other nations. --

TITLE: To Henry Middleton.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 91.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: Jan. 1813

During the eight years of my administration. there was not a year that England did not give us such cause as would have provoked a war from any European government. But I always hoped that time and friendly remonstrances would bring her to a sounder view of her own interests, and convince her that these would be promoted by a return to justice and friendship towards us. --

TITLE: To Dr. George Logan.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 215.
EDITION: Ford ed., ix, 421.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: Oct. 1813

Among that section of our citizens called federalists, there are three shades of opinion. Distinguishing between the leaders and people who compose it, the leaders consider the English constitution as a model of perfection, some, with a correction of its vices, others, with all its corruptions and abuses. This last was Alexander Hamilton's opinion, which others, as well as myself, have often heard him declare, and that a correction of what are called its vices, would render the English an impracticable government. This government they wished to have established here, and only accepted and held fast at first, to the present Constitution, as a stepping stone to the final

TITLE: To John Mellish.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 95.
EDITION: Ford ed., ix, 374.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: Jan. 1813

I am sorry to learn that a banditti from our country are taking part in the domestic contests of the country adjoining you; and the more so as from the known laxity of execution in our laws, they cannot be punished. It will give a wrongful hue to a rightful act of taking possession of Mobile, and will be imputed to the national authority, as Miranda's enterprise was, because not punished by it. --

TITLE: To Dr. Samuel Brown.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 165.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1813

We are in a state of semi-warfare with your adjoining colonies, the Floridas. We do not consider this as affecting our peace with Spain, or any other of her former possessions. We wish her and them well; and under her present difficulties at home, and her doubtful future relations with her colonies, both wisdom and interest will, I presume, induce her to leave them to settle themselves the quarrels they draw on themselves from their neighbors. The commanding officers in the Floridas have excited and armed the neighboring savages to war against us, and to murder and scalp many of our women and children as well as men, taken by surprise -- poor creatures! They have paid for it with the loss of the flower of their strength, and have given us the right, as we possess the power, to exterminate or to expatriate them beyond the Mississippi. This conduct of the Spanish officers will probably oblige us to take possession of the Floridas, and the rather as we believe the English will otherwise seize them, and use them as stations to distract and annoy us. But should we possess ourselves of them, and Spain retain her other colonies in this hemisphere, I presume we shall consider them in our hands as subjects of negotiation. --

TITLE: To Don V. Toranda Coruna.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 274.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: Dec. 1813

Private fortunes, in the present state of our circulation, are at the mercy of those selfcreated money-lenders, and are prostrated by the floods of nominal money with which their avarice deluges us. --

TITLE: To J. W. Eppes.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 142.
EDITION: Ford ed., ix, 394.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1813

The Creator has not thought proper to mark those in the forehead who are of stuff to make good generals. We are first, therefore, to seek them blindfold, and let them learn the trade at the expense of great losses. --

TITLE: To General Bailey.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 100.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: Feb. 1813

Our only hope is that these misfortunes will at length elicit by trial the characters qualified by nature from those unqualified, to be entrusted with the destinies of their fellow citizens. --

TITLE: To General Armstrong.
EDITION: Ford ed., ix, 380.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: Feb. 1813

Our war on the land has commenced most inauspiciously. I fear we are to expect reverses until we can find out who are qualified for command, and until these can learn their profession. --

TITLE: To William Duane.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 99.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: Jan. 1813

It is unfortunate that heaven has not set its stamp on the foreheads of those whom it has qualified for military achievement; that it has left us to draw for them in a lottery of so many blanks to a prize, and where the blank is to be manifested only by the public misfortunes. If nature had planted the fœnum in cornu on the front of treachery, of cowardice, of imbecility, the unfortunate dèbut we have made on the theatre of war would not have sunk our spirits at home, and our character abroad. --

TITLE: To General John Armstrong.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 103.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: Feb. 1813

These experiments will at least have the good effect of bringing forward those whom nature has qualified for military trust. --

TITLE: To President Madison.
EDITION: Ford ed., ix, 380.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: Feb. 1813

Whenever we have good commanders, we shall have good soldiers, and good successes. --

TITLE: To President Madison.
EDITION: Ford ed., ix, 380.
PLACE: [none given]
DATE: 1813

On the land, indeed, we have been most unfortunate; so wretched a succession of generals never before destroyed the fairest expectations of a nation, counting on the bravery of its citizens, which has proved itself on all these trials. --

TITLE: To Dr. Benjamin Rush.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 106.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: March. 1813

I am happy to observe the public mind not discouraged, and that it does not associate its government with these unfortunate agents. --

TITLE: To President Madison.
EDITION: Ford ed., ix, 380.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: Feb. 1813

During the first campaign [in the war of 1812] we suffered several checks, from the want of capable and tried officers; all the higher ones of the Revolution having died off during an [Col 2] interval of thirty years of peace. --

TITLE: To Don V. T. Coruna.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 275.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1813

Perhaps we ought to expect such trials after deperdition of all military science consequent on so long a peace. --

TITLE: To President Madison.
EDITION: Ford ed., ix, 380.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: Feb. 1813

Three frigates taken by our gallant navy, do not balance in my mind three armies lost by the treachery, cowardice, or incapacity of those to whom they were intrusted. I see that our men are good, and only want generals. --

TITLE: To William Duane.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 110.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: April. 1813

The proof of a general, to know whether he will stand fire, costs a more serious price than that of a cannon; these proofs have already cost us thousands of good men, and deplorable degradation of reputation, and as yet have elicited but a few negative and a few positive characters. But we must persevere till we recover the rank we are entitled to. --

TITLE: To William Duane.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 99.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1813

We are doomed [* * *] to sacrifice the lives of our citizens by thousands to this blind principle [seniority] , for fear the peculiar interest and responsibility of our Executive should not be sufficient to guard his selection of officers against favoritism. --

TITLE: To General Armstrong.
EDITION: Ford ed., ix, 380.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1813

We may yet hope that the talents which always exist among men will show themselves with opportunity, and that it will be found that this age also can produce able and honest defenders of their country, at what further expense, however, of blood and treasure is yet to be seen. --

TITLE: To William Duane.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 110.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: April. 1813

Another general, it seems, has given proof of his military qualifications by the loss of another thousand men; for there cannot be a surprise but through the fault of the commanders, and especially by an enemy who has given us heretofore so many of these lessons. --

TITLE: To President Madison.
EDITION: Ford ed., ix, 379.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: Feb. 1813

Our men are good, but our generals unqualified. Every failure we have incurred has been the fault of the general, the men evincing courage in every instance. --

TITLE: To Dr. Samuel Brown.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 165.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: July. 1813

Our men are good, but force without conduct is easily baffled. --

TITLE: To General Bailey.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 100.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1813

I am happier while reading the history of ancient than of modern times. The total banishment of all moral principle from the code which governs the intercourse of nations, the melancholy reflection that after the mean, wicked and cowardly cunning of the cabinets of the age of Machiavelli had given place to the integrity and good faith which dignified the succeeding one of a Chatham and Turgot, that this is to be swept away again by the daring profligacy and avowed destitution of all moral principle of a Cartouche and a Blackbeard, sicken my soul unto death. I turn from the contemplation with loathing, and take refuge in the histories of other times, where, if they also furnished their Tarquins, their Catalines and Caligulas, their stories are handed to us under the brand of a Livy, a Sallust and a Tacitus, and we are comforted with the reflection that the condemnation of all succeeding generations has confirmed the sentence of the historian, and consigned their memories to everlasting infamy, a solace we cannot have with the Georges and Napoleons but by anticipation. --

TITLE: To William Duane.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 109.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: April. 1813

Why omit all mention of the scandalous campaigns of Commodore Morris? A two years' command of an effective squadron, with discretionary instructions, wasted in sailing from port to port of the Mediterranean, and a single half day before the port of the enemy against which he was sent. All this can be seen in the proceedings of the court on which he was dismissed; and it is due to the honorable truths with which the book abounds, to publish those which are not so. --

TITLE: To Matthew Carr.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 132.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1813

Continued impressments of our seamen by her naval commanders, whose interest it was to mistake them for theirs, her innovations on the law of nations to cover real piracies, could illy be borne; and perhaps would not have been borne, had not contraventions of the same law by France, fewer in number but equally illegal, rendered it difficult to single the object of war. England, at length, singled herself, and took up the gauntlet, when the unlawful decrees of France being revoked as to us, she, by the proclamation of her Prince Regent, protested to the world that she would never revoke hers until those of France should be removed as to all nations. Her minister, too, about the same time, in an official conversation with our Chargé, rejected our substitute for her practice of impressment; proposed no other; and declared explicitly that no admissible one for this abuse could be proposed. Negotiation being thus cut short, no alternative remained but war, or the abandonment of the persons and property of our citizens on the ocean. The last one, I presume, no American would have preferred. War was therefore declared, and justly declared; but accompanied with immediate offers of peace on simply doing us justice. --

TITLE: To Dr. George Logan.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi