Agriculture is the basis of the subsistence, the comforts and the happiness of man. --

TITLE: To Baron de Moll.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 363.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1814

To the wonders of Bonaparte's rise and fall, we may add that of a Czar of Muscovy, dictating, in Paris, laws and limits to all the successors of the Caesars, and holding even the balance in which the fortunes of this new world are suspended. --

TITLE: To John Adams.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 353.
EDITION: Ford ed., ix, 461.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1814

With respect to the dismission of the prosecutions for sedition in Connecticut, it is well known to have been a tenet of the republican portion of our fellow citizens, that the Sedition law was contrary to the Constitution and, therefore, void. On this ground I considered it as a nullity whenever I met it in the course of my duties; and on this ground I directed nolle prosequis in all the prosecutions which had been instituted under it; and, as far as the public sentiment can be inferred from the occurrences of the day, we must say that this opinion had the sanction of the nation. The prosecutions, therefore, which were afterwards instituted in Connecticut, of which two were against printers, two against preachers, and one against a judge, were too inconsistent with this principle to be permitted to go on. We were bound to administer to others the same measure of law, not which they had meted to us, but we to ourselves, and to extend to all equally the protection of the same constitutional principles. These prosecutions, too, were chiefly for charges against myself, and I had from the beginning laid it down as a [Col 2] rule to notice nothing of the kind. I believed that the long course of services in which I had acted on the public stage, and under the eye of my fellow citizens, furnished better evidence to them of my character and principles, than the angry invectives of adverse partisans in whose eyes the very acts most approved by the majority were subjects of the greatest demerit and censure. These prosecutions against them, therefore, were to be dismissed as a matter of duty --

TITLE: To Gideon Granger.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 332.
EDITION: Ford ed., ix, 456.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1814

No knowledge can be more satisfactory to a man than that of his own frame, its parts, their functions and actions. --

TITLE: To Thomas Cooper.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 390.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1814

I fear nothing for our liberty from the assaults of force; but I have seen and felt much, and fear more from English books, English prejudices, English manners, and the apes, the dupes, and designs among our professional crafts. When I look around me for security against these seductions, I find it in the wide spread of our agricultural citizens, in their unsophisticated minds, their independence and their power, if called on, to crush the Humists [Tories] of our cities, and to maintain the principles which severed us from England. --

TITLE: To Horatio G. Spafford.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 335.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1814

You surprise me with the account you give of the strength of family distinction still existing in Massachusetts. With us it is so totally extinguished, that not a spark of it is to be found but working in the hearts of some of our old tories; but all bigotries hang to one another, and this in the Eastern States hangs, as I suspect, to that of the priesthood. Here youth, beauty, mind and manners, are more valued than a pedigree. --

TITLE: To John Adams.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 305.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1814

Armstrong is presumptuous, obstinate and injudicious. --

TITLE: To J. W. Eppes.
EDITION: Ford ed., ix, 484.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1814

Our men are so happy at home that they will not hire themselves to be shot at for a shilling a day. Hence we can have no standing armies for defence, because we have no paupers to furnish the materials. --

TITLE: To Thomas Cooper.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 379.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1814

The wise proposition of the Secretary of War for filling our ranks with regulars, and putting our militia into an effective form, seems to be laid aside. --

TITLE: To M. Correa.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 406.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: Dec. 1814

The Greeks and Romans had no standing armies, yet they defended themselves. The Greeks by their laws, and the Romans by the spirit of their people, took care to put into the hands of their rulers no such engine of oppression as a standing army. Their system was to make every man a soldier, and oblige him to repair to the standard of his country whenever that was reared. This made them invincible; and the same remedy will make us so. --

TITLE: To Thomas Cooper.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 379.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1814

The crisis of the abuses of banking is arrived. The banks have pronounced their own sentence of death. Between two and three hundred millions of dollars of their promissory notes are in the hands of the people, for solid produce and property sold, and they formally declare they will not pay them. This is an act of bankruptcy, of course, and will be so pronounced by any court before which it shall be brought. But cui bono? The laws can only uncover their insolvency, by opening to its suitors their empty vaults. Thus by the dupery of our citizens, and tame acquiescence of our legislators, the nation is plundered of two or three hundred millions of dollars, treble the amount of debt contracted in the Revolutionary war, and which, instead of redeeming our liberty, has been expended on sumptuous houses, carriages, and dinners. A fearful tax! if equalized on all; but overwhelming and convulsive by its partial fall. --

TITLE: To Thomas Cooper.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 381.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: Sep. 1814

Everything predicted by the enemies of banks, in the beginning, is now coming to pass. We are to be ruined now by the deluge of bank paper, as we were formerly by the old Continental paper. It is cruel that such revolutions in private fortunes should be at the mercy of avaricious adventurers, who, instead of employing their capital, if any they have, in manufactures, commerce, and other useful pursuits, make it an instrument to burthen all the interchanges of property with their swindling profits, profits which are the price of no useful industry of theirs. Prudent men must be on their guard in this game of Robin's alive, and take care that the spark does not extinguish in their hands. I am an enemy to all banks discounting bills or notes for anything but coin. But our whole country is so fascinated by this Jack-lantern wealth, that they will not stop short of its total and fatal explosion. ⁴³ --

TITLE: To Dr. Thomas Cooper.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 295.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: Jan. 1814

I am too desirous of tranquillity to bring such a nest of hornets on me as the fraternity of banking companies. --

TITLE: To Joseph C. Cabell.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 300.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1814

Everything predicted by the enemies of banks, in the beginning, is now coming to pass. We are to be ruined now by the deluge of bank paper, as we were formerly by the old Continental paper. It is cruel that such revolutions in private fortunes should be at the mercy of avaricious adventures, who, instead of employing their capital, if they have any, in manufactures, commerce, and other useful pursuits, make it an instrument to burden all the interchanges of property with their swindling profits, profits which are the price of no useful industry of theirs. Prudent men must be on their guard in this game of Robin's alive, and take care that the spark does not extinguish in their hands. I am an enemy to all banks discounting bills or notes for anything but coin. But our whole country is so fascinated by this Jack-lantern wealth, that they will not stop short of its total and fatal explosion. --

TITLE: To Thomas Cooper.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 295.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: Jan. 1814

Already there is so much of their trash afloat that the great holders of it show vast anxiety to get rid of it. They perceive that now, as in the Revolutionary war, we are engaged in the old game of Robin's alive. They are ravenous after lands and stick at no price. In the neighborhood of Richmond, the seat of that sort of sensibility, they offer twice as much now as they would give a year ago. --

TITLE: To President Madison.
EDITION: Ford ed., ix, 453.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: Feb. 1814

I wish I could see Congress get into a better train of finance. Their banking projects are like dosing dropsy with more water. [* * *] Their new bank, if not abortive at its birth, will not last through one campaign; and the taxes proposed cannot be paid. --

TITLE: To William Short.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 400.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: Nov. 1814

The evils they [the banks] have engendered are now upon us, and the question is how we are to get out of them? Shall we build an altar to the old paper money of the Revolution, which ruined individuals but saved the republic, and burn on that all the bank charters, present and future, and their notes with them? For these [Col 2] are to ruin both republic and individuals. This cannot be done. The mania is too strong. It has seized by its delusions and corruptions, all the members of our governments, general, special and individual. --

TITLE: To John Adams.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 305.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: Jan. 1814

I think it impossible but that the whole system must blow up before the year is out; and thus a tax of three or four hundred millions will be levied on our citizens who had found it a work of so much time and labor to pay off a debt of eighty millions which had redeemed them from bondage. --

TITLE: To President Madison.
EDITION: Ford ed., ix, 453.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: Feb. 1814

I see that this infatuation of banks must take its course, until actual ruin shall awaken us from its delusions. Until the gigantic banking propositions of this winter had made their appearance in the different Legislatures. I had hoped that the evil might still be checked; but I see now that it is desperate, and that we must fold our arms and go to the bottom with the ship. --

TITLE: To Joseph C. Cabell.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 300.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: Jan. 1814

The failure of our banks will occasion embarrassment for awhile, although it restores to us a fund which ought never to have been surrendered by the nation, and which now, prudently used, will carry us through all the fiscal difficulties of the war. --

TITLE: To President Madison.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 386.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: Sep. 1814

The banks have discontinued themselves. We are now without any medium; and necessity, as well as patriotism, and confidence, will make us all eager to receive treasury notes, if founded on specific taxes. Congress may now borrow of the public, and without interest, all the money they may want, to the amount of a competent circulation, by merely issuing their own promissory notes, of proper denominations for the larger purposes of circulation, but not for the small. Leave that door open for the entrance of metallic money. --

TITLE: To Thomas Cooper.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 382.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: Sep. 1814

Providence seems, indeed, by a special dispensation, to have put down for us, without a struggle, that very paper enemy which the interest of our citizens long since required ourselves to put down, at whatever risk. The work is done. The moment is pregnant with futurity, and if not seized at once by Congress, I know not on what shoal our bark is next to be stranded. --

TITLE: To Thomas Cooper.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 382.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: Sep. 1814

The crush will be tremendous; very different from that brought on by our paper money. That rose and fell so gradually that it kept all on their guard, and affected severely only early or longwinded contracts. Here the contract of yesterday crushes in an instant the one or the other party. The banks stopping payment suddenly, all their mercantile and city debtors do the same; and all, in short, except those in the country, who, possessing property, will be good in the end. But this resource will not enable them to pay a cent on the dollar. --

TITLE: To Thomas Cooper.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 381.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: Sep. 1814

The paper interest is now defunct. Their gossamer castles are dissolved, and they can no longer impede and overawe the salutary measures of the government. Their paper was received on a belief that it was cash on demand. Themselves have declared it was nothing, and such scenes are now to take place as will open the eyes of credulity and of insanity itself to the dangers of a paper medium, abandoned to the discretion of avarice and of swindlers. It is impossible not to deplore our past follies, and their present consequences, but let them at least be warnings against like follies in future. --

TITLE: To Thomas Cooper.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 382.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: Sep. 1814

From the establishment of the United States Bank to this day, I have preached against this system, and have been sensible no cure could be hoped, but in the catastrophe now happening. --

TITLE: To Thomas Cooper.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 381.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1814

I have ever been the enemy of banks, not of those discounting for cash, but of those foisting their own paper into circulation, and thus banishing our cash. My zeal against those institutions was so warm and open at the establishment of the Bank of the United States, that I was derided as a maniac by the tribe of bank-mongers, who were seeking to filch from the public their swindling and barren gains. --

TITLE: To John Adams.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 305.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: Jan. 1814

I am an enemy to all banks discounting bills or notes for anything but coin. --

TITLE: To Dr. Thomas Cooper.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 295.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: Jan. 1814

The mania [* * *] has seized, by its delusions and corruptions, all the members of our governments, general, special, and individual. --

TITLE: To John Adams.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 306.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: Jan. 1814

This infatuation of banks is a torrent which it would be a folly for me to get in the way of. I see that it must take its course, until actual ruin shall awaken us from its delusions. --

TITLE: To Joseph C. Cabell.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 300.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: Jan. 1814

The State Legislature should be immediately urged to relinquish the right of establishing banks of discount. Most of them will comply, on patriotic principles, under the convictions of the moment and the non-complying may be crowded into concurrence by legitimate devices. --

TITLE: To Thomas Cooper.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 382.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: Sep. 1814

I do not remember the conversation between us which you mention [* * *] on your proposition to vest in Congress the exclusive power of establishing banks. My opposition to it must have been grounded, not on taking the power from the States, but on leaving any vestige of it in ex [Col 2] istence, even in the hands of Congress, because it would only have been a change of the organ of abuse. --

TITLE: To John Adams.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 305.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: Jan. 1814

It is cruel that such revolutions in private fortunes should be at the mercy of avaricious adventurers, who instead of employing their capital, if any they have, in manufactures, commerce, and other useful pursuits, make it an instrument to burden all the interchanges of property with their swindling profits, profits which are the price of no useful industry of theirs. --

TITLE: To Dr. Thomas Cooper.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 295.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1814

Our circulating paper of the last year was estimated at two hundred millions of dollars. The new banks now petitioned for, to the several Legislatures, are for about sixty millions additional capital, and of course one hundred and eighty millions of additional circulation, nearly doubling that of the last year, and raising the whole mass to near four hundred millions, or forty for one, of the wholesome amount of circulation for a population of eight millions circumstanced as we are, and you remember how rapidly our money went down after our forty for one establishment in the Revolution. I doubt if the present trash can hold as long. I think the three hundred and eighty millions must blow all up in the course of the present year, or certainly it will be consummated by the reduplication to take place of course at the legislative meetings of the next winter. Should not prudent men, who possess stock in any moneyed institution, either draw and hoard the cash now while they can, or exchange it for canal stock, or such other as being bottomed on immovable property will remain unhurt by the crush? --

TITLE: To John Adams.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 306.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: Jan. 1814

Two hundred millions in actual circulation and two hundred millions more likely to be legitimated by the legislative sessions of this winter, will give us about forty times the wholesome circulation for eight millions of people. When the new emissions get out, our legislatures will see, what they otherwise cannot believe, that it is possible to have too much money. --

TITLE: To President Madison.
EDITION: Ford ed., ix, 453.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: Feb. 1814

I had not supposed there was a family in this State [Virginia] not possessing a Bible, and wishing without having the means to procure one. When, in earlier life, I was intimate with every class, I think I never was in a house where that was the case. However, circumstances may have changed, and the [Bible] Society, I presume, have evidence of the fact. I, therefore, enclose you cheerfully, an order [* * *] for fifty dollars, for the purposes of the Society. --

TITLE: To Samuel Greenhow.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 308.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1814

There never was a more pure and sublime system of morality delivered to man than is to be found in the four Evangelists. --

TITLE: To Samuel Greenhow.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 309.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1814

All bigotries hang to one another. --

TITLE: To John Adams.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 305.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1814

Blackstone and Hume have made tories of all England, and are making tories of those young Americans whose native feelings of independence do not place them above the wily sophistries of a Hume or a Blackstone. These two books, but especially the former, have done more towards the suppression of the liberties of man, than all the million of men in arms of Bonaparte, and the millions of human lives with the sacrifice of which he will stand loaded before the judgment seat of his Maker. --

TITLE: To Horatio G. Spafford.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 335.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1814

Bonaparte was a lion in the field only. In civil life, a cold-blooded, calculating, unprincipled usurper, without a virtue; no statesman, knowing nothing of commerce, political economy, or civil government, and supplying ignorance by bold presumption. I had supposed him a great man until his entrance into the Assembly des cinq cens, [Col 2] eighteen Brumaire (an. 8.) From that date, however, I set him down as a great scoundrel only. --

TITLE: To John Adams.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 352.
EDITION: Ford ed., ix, 461.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: July. 1814

The Attila of the age dethroned, the ruthless destroyer of ten millions of the human race, whose thirst for blood appeared unquenchable, the great oppressor of the rights and liberties of the world, shut up within the circle of a little island of the Mediterranean, and dwindled to the condition of an humble and degraded pensioner on the bounty of those he had most injured. How miserable, how meanly, has he closed his inflated career! What a sample of the bathos will his history present! He should have perished on the swords of his enemies, under the walls of Paris. --

TITLE: To John Adams.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 352.
EDITION: Ford ed., ix, 461.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: July. 1814

That Bonaparte is an unprincipled tyrant, who is deluging the continent of Europe with blood, there is not a human being, not even the wife of his bosom who does not see. --

TITLE: To Thomas Leiper.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 283.
EDITION: Ford ed., ix, 445.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: Jan. 1814

There cannot, I think, be a doubt as to the line we wish drawn between Bonaparte's successes and those of Alexander. Surely none of us wish to see Bonaparte conquer Russia, and lay thus at his feet the whole continent of Europe. This done, England would be but a breakfast: and although I am free from the visionary fears which the votaries of England have affected to entertain. because I believe he cannot effect the conquest of Europe; yet put all Europe into his hands, [Col 2] and he might spare such a force, to be sent in British ships, as I would as lief not have to encounter, when I see how much trouble a handful of soldiers in Canada has given us. No. It cannot be to our interest that all Europe should be reduced to a single monarchy. The true line of interest for us, is, that Bonaparte should be able to effect the complete exclusion of England from the whole continent of Europe, in order, by this peaceable engine of constraint to make her renounce her views of dominion over the ocean, of permitting no other nation to navigate it but with her license, and on tribute to her, and her aggressions on the persons of our citizens who may choose to exercise their right of passing over that element. And this would be effected by Bonaparte succeeding so far as to close the Baltic against her. This success I wished him the last year, this I wish him this year; but were he again advanced to Moscow, I should again wish him such disasters as would prevent his reaching St. Petersburg. And were the consequences even to be the longer continuance of our war, I would rather meet them than see the whole force of Europe wielded by a single hand. --

TITLE: To Thomas Lieper.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 283.
EDITION: Ford ed., ix, 445.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: Jan. 1814

I have gone into this explanation [* * *] because I am willing to trust to your discretion the explaining me to our honest fellow laborers, and the bringing them to pause and reflect, if any of them have not sufficiently reflected on the extent of the success we ought to wish to Bonaparte, with a view to our own interests only; and even were we not men, to whom nothing human should be indifferent. But is our particular interest to make us insensible to all sentiments of morality? Is it then become criminal, the moral wish that the torrents of blood this man is shedding in Europe, the sufferings of so many human beings, good as ourselves, on whose necks he is trampling, the burnings of ancient cities, devastations of great countries, the destruction of law and order, and demoralization of the world, should be arrested, even if it should place our peace a little further distant? No. You and I cannot differ in wishing that Russia, and Sweden, and Denmark, and Germany, and Spain, and Portugal, and Italy, and even England, may retain their independence. --

TITLE: To Thomas Leiper.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 283.
EDITION: Ford ed., ix, 446.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: Jan. 1814

It is cruel that we should have been forced to wish any success to such a destroyer of the human race. Yet while it was our interest and that of humanity that he should not subdue Russia, and thus lay all Europe at his feet, it was desirable to us that he should so far succeed as to close the Baltic to our enemy, and force him, by the pressure of internal distress, into a disposition to return to the paths of justice towards us. --

TITLE: To John Clarke.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 308.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: Jan. 1814

I am mortified to be told that, in the United States of America, the sale of a book ⁵⁴ can become a subject of inquiry, and of criminal inquiry too, as an offence against religion; that a [Col 2] question like this can be carried before the civil magistrate. Is this then our freedom of religion? And are we to have a censor whose imprimatur shall say what books May be sold, and what we may buy? And who is thus to dogmatize religious opinions for our citizens? Whose foot is to be the measure to which ours are all to be cut or stretched? Is a priest to be our inquisitor, or shall a layman, simple as ourselves, set up his reason as the rule for what we are to read, and what we must believe? It is an insult to our citizens to question whether they are rational beings or not, and blasphemy against religion to suppose it cannot stand the test of truth and reason. If M. de Becourt's book be false in its facts, disprove them; if false in its reasoning, refute it. But, for God's sake, let us freely hear both sides, if we choose. I know little of its contents, having barely glanced over here and there a passage, and over the table of contents. From this, the Newtonian philosophy seemed the chief object of attack, the issue of which might be trusted to the strength of the two combatants; Newton certainly not needing the auxiliary arm of the government, and still less the Holy Author of our religion, as to what in it concerns Him. I thought the work would be very innocent, and one which might be confided to the reason of any man; not likely to be much read if let alone, but, if persecuted, it will be generally read. Every man in the United States will think it a duty to buy a copy, in vindication of his right to buy, and to read what he pleases. --

TITLE: To M. Dufief.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 340.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1814

I have been just reading the new constitution of Spain. One of its fundamental bases is expressed in these words: “The Roman Catholic religion, the only true one, is, and always shall be, that of the Spanish nation. The government protects it by wise and just laws, and prohibits the exercise of any other whatever.” Now I wish this presented to those who question what you may sell, ⁵⁵ or we may buy with a request to strike out the words, “Roman Catholic, ” and to insert the denomination of their own religion. This would ascertain the code of dogmas which each wishes should domineer over the opinions of all others, and be taken, like the Spanish religion, under the “protection of wise and just laws.” It would show to what they wish to reduce the liberty for which one generation has sacrificed life and happiness. It would present our boasted freedom of religion as a thing of theory only, and not of practice, as what would be a poor exchange for the theoretic thraldom, but practical freedom of Europe. --

TITLE: To M. Dufief.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 340.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1814

Botany I rank with the most valuable sciences, whether we consider its subjects as furnishing the principal subsistence of life to man and beast, delicious varieties for our tables, refreshments from our orchards, the adornments of our flower borders, shade and perfume of our groves, materials for our buildings, or medicaments for our bodies. To the gentleman it is certainly more interesting than mineralogy (which I by no means, however, undervalue), and is more at hand for his amusement; and to a country family it constitutes a great portion of their social entertainment. No country gentleman should be without what amuses every step he takes into his fields. --

TITLE: To Thomas Cooper.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 390.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1814

-- BOTTA'S (C.), History. -- See History.

The Vandalism of our enemy has triumphed at Washington over science as well as the arts, by the destruction of the public library with the noble edifice in which it was deposited. Of this transaction, as of that of Copenhagen, the world will entertain but one sentiment. They will see a nation suddenly withdrawn from a great war, full armed and full handed, taking advantage of another whom they had recently forced into it, unarmed, and unprepared, to indulge themselves in acts of barbarism which do not belong to a civilized age. When Van Ghent destroyed their shipping at Chatham, and De Ruyter rode triumphantly up the Thames, he might in like manner, by the acknowledgment of their own historians, have forced all their [Col 2] ships up to London Bridge, and there have burned them, the Tower, and city, had these examples been then set. London, when thus menaced, was near a thousand years old, Washington is but in its teens. --

TITLE: To S. H. Smith.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 383.
EDITION: Ford ed., ix, 485.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: Sep. 1814

While I resided at Paris, knowing that the portraits of Columbus and Americus Vespucius were in the gallery of Medici at Florence, I took measures for engaging a good artist to take and send me copies of them. I considered it as even of some public concern that our country should not, be witho