What institution is insusceptible of abuse in wicked hands? --

TITLE: To L. H. Girardin.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 440.
EDITION: Ford ed., ii, 151.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1815

Nothing is more incumbent on the old, than to know when they should get out of the way, and relinquish to younger successors the honors they can no longer earn, and the duties they can no longer perform. --

TITLE: To John Vaughan.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 417.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1815

The magnanimity of Alexander's conduct on the first capture of Paris still magnified everything we had believed of him; but how he will come out of his present trial remains to be seen. That the sufferings which France had inflicted on other countries justified severe reprisals, cannot be questioned; but I have not yet learned what crimes of Poland, Saxony, Belgium, Venice, Lombardy and Genoa, had merited for them, not merely a temporary punishment, but that of permanent subjugation and a destitution of independence and self-government. The fable of AEsop of the lion dividing the spoils, is, I fear, becoming true history, and the moral code of Napoleon and the English government a substitute for that of Grotius, of Puffendorf, and even of the pure doctrine of the great author of our holy religion. --

TITLE: To Dr. George Logan.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 497.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: Oct. 1815

I had [* * *] formed the most favorable opinion of the virtues of Alexander, and considered his partiality to this country as a prominent proof of them. --

TITLE: To Dr. George Logan.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 497.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1815

The less we have to do with the amities or enmities of Europe the better. --

TITLE: To Thomas Leiper.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 465.
EDITION: Ford ed., ix, 520.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1815

To state the difference between the classes of society and the lines of demarcation which separated them [in Virginia] would be difficult. The law admitted none except as to our twelve counsellors. Yet in a country insulated from the European world, insulated from its sister colonies, with whom there was scarcely any intercourse, little visited by foreigners, and having little matter to act upon within itself, certain families had risen to splendor by wealth and the preservation of it from generation to generation under the law of entails; some had produced a series of men of talents; families in general had remained stationary on the grounds of their forefathers, for there was no emigration to the westward in those days; the wild Irish, who had gotten possession of the valley between the Blue Ridge and North Mountain, forming

TITLE: To William Wirt.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 484.
EDITION: Ford ed., ix, 473.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1815

To supply the want of men, nothing more wise or efficient could have been imagined than what you proposed. It would have filled our ranks with regulars, and that, too, by throwing a just share of the burthen on the purses of those whose persons are exempt either by age or office; and it would have rendered our militia, like those of the Greeks and Romans, a nation of warriors. --

TITLE: To James Monroe.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 408.
EDITION: Ford ed., ix, 497.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: Jan. 1815

Nothing wiser can be devised than what the Secretary of War ( Monroe ) proposed in his report at the commencement of Congress. It would have kept our regular army always of necessity full, and by classing our militia according to ages, would have put them into a form ready for

TITLE: To W. H. Crawford.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 418.
EDITION: Ford ed., ix, 502.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: Feb. 1815

The occasion and proper office of a bill of attainder is this: When a person charged with a crime withdraws from justice, or resists it by force, either in his own or a foreign country, no other recourse of bringing him to trial or punishment being practicable, a special act is passed by the legislature adapted to the particular case. This prescribes to him a sufficient time to appear and submit to a trial by his peers; declares that his refusal to appear shall be taken as a confession of guilt, as in the ordinary case of an offender at the bar refusing to plead, and pronounces the sentence which would have been rendered on his confession or conviction in a court of law. No doubt that these acts of attainder have been abused in England as instruments of vengeance by a successful over a defeated party. But what institution is insusceptible of abuse in wicked hands? --

TITLE: To L. H. Girardin.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 440.
EDITION: Ford ed., ii, 151.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1815

The depreciation of bank paper swells nominal prices, without furnishing any stable index of value. I will endeavor briefly to give you an idea of this state of things by an outline of its history.

In 1781 we had 1 bank, its capital $1,000,000.

In 1791 we had 6 banks, their capital $13,135,000.

In 1794 we had 17 banks, their capital $18,642,000.

In 1796 we had 24 banks, their capital $20,472,000.

In 1803 we had 34 banks, their capital $29,112,000.

In 1804 we had 66 banks, their amount of capital not known.

And at this time we have probably one hundred banks, with capital amounting to one hundred millions of dollars, on which they are authorized by law to issue notes to three times that amount, so that our circulating medium may now be estimated at from two to three hundred millions of dollars, on a population of eight and a half millions. The banks were able for awhile, to keep this trash at par with metallic money, or rather to depreciate the metals to a par with their paper, by keeping deposits of cash sufficient to exchange for such of their notes as they were called on to pay in cash. But the circumstances of the war draining away all our specie, all these banks have stopped payment, but with a promise to resume specie exchanges whenever circumstances shall produce a return of the metals. Some of the most prudent and honest will possibly do this; but the mass of them never will nor can. Yet, having no other medium, we take their paper, of necessity, for purposes of the instant, but never to lay by us. The government is now issuing treasury notes for circulation, bottomed on solid funds, and bearing interest. The banking confederacy (and the merchants bound to them by their debts) will endeavor to crush the credit of these notes; but the country is eager for them, as something they can trust to, and so soon as a convenient quantity of them can get into circulation, the bank notes die. --

TITLE: To Jean Baptiste Say.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 434.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: March. 1815

The fatal possession of the whole circulating medium by our banks, the excess of those institutions, and their present discredit, cause all our difficulties. --

TITLE: To W. H. Crawford.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 419.
EDITION: Ford ed., ix, 503.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: Feb. 1815

The dominion of the banks must be broken, or it will break us. --

TITLE: To James Monroe.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 409.
EDITION: Ford ed., ix, 498.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: Jan. 1815

A parcel of mushroom banks have set up in every State, have filled the country with their notes, and have thereby banished all our specie. A twelvemonth ago they all declared they could not pay cash for their own notes, and notwithstanding this act of bankruptcy, this trash has of necessity been passing among us, because we have no other medium of exchange, and is still taken and passed from hand to hand, as you remember the old Continental money to have been in the Revolutionary war; every one getting rid of it as quickly as he can, by laying it out in property of any sort at double, treble and manifold higher prices. [* * *] A general crush is daily expected when this trash will be lost in the hands of the holders. This will take place the moment some specie returns

TITLE: To Phillip Mazzei.
EDITION: Ford ed., ix, 524.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: Aug. 1815

We are undone if this banking mania be not suppressed. Aut Carthago, aut Roma delenda est. --

TITLE: To Albert Gallatin.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 498.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: Oct. 1815

Knowing well that the Bank mania still possessed the great body of our countrymen, it was not expected that any radical cure of that could be at once effected. We must go further wrong, probably to a ne plus ultra before we shall be forced into what is right. Something will be obtained however, if we can excite, in those who think, doubt first, reflection next, and conviction at last. --

TITLE: To Joseph C. Cabell.
EDITION: Ford ed., ix, 499.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1815

There is before the Assembly [of Virginia] a petition of a Captain Miller, which I have at heart, because I have great esteem for the petitioner as an honest and useful man. He is about to settle in our country, and to establish a brewery, in which art I think him as skilful a man as has ever come to America. I wish to see this beverage become common instead of the whisky which kills one-third of our citizens, and ruins their families. He is staying with me until he can fix himself, and I should be thankful for information from time to time of the progress of his petition. --

TITLE: To Charles Yancey.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 515.
EDITION: Ford ed., x, 2.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1815

Colonel Richard Bland was the most learned and logical man of those who took prominent lead in public affairs, profound in constitutional lore, a most ungraceful speaker (as were Peyton Randolph and Robinson, in a remarkable degree.) He wrote the first pamphlet on the nature of the connection with Great Britain which had any pretension to accuracy of view on that subject, but it was a singular one. He would set out on sound principles, pursue them logically till he found them leading to the precipice which he had to leap, start back alarmed, then resume his ground, go over it in another direction, be led again by the correctness of his reasoning to the same place, and again back out, and try other processes to reconcile right and wrong, but finally left his reader and himself bewildered between the steady index of the compass in their hand, and the phantasm to which it seemed to point. Still there was more sound matter in his pamphlet than in the celebrated “Farmer's Letters,”

TITLE: To William Wirt.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 485.
EDITION: Ford ed., ix, 474.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1815

Bonaparte's hatred of us is only a little less than that he bears to England, and England to us. Our form of government is odious to him, as a standing contrast between republican and despotic rule; and as much from that hatred, as from ignorance in political economy, he had excluded intercourse between us and his people, by prohibiting the only articles they wanted from us, cotton and tobacco. --

TITLE: To Thomas Leiper.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 464.
EDITION: Ford ed., ix, 520.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: June. 1815

It is not possible Bonaparte should love us; and of that our commerce had sufficient proof during his power. Our military achievements, indeed, which he is capable of estimating, may in some degree, moderate the effect of his aversions; and he may, perhaps, fancy that we are to become the natural enemies of England, as England herself has so steadily endeavored to make us, and as some of our own over-zealous patriots would be willing to proclaim; and in this view, he may admit a cold toleration of some intercourse and commerce between the two nations. He has certainly had time to see the folly of turning the industry of France from the cultures for which nature has so highly endowed her, to those of sugar, cotton, tobacco, and others, which the same creative power has given to other climates; and, on the whole, if he can conquer the passions of his tyrannical soul, if he has understanding enough to pursue from motives of interest, what no moral motives lead him to, the tranquil happiness and prosperity of his country, rather than a ravenous thirst for human blood, his return may become of more advantage than injury to us. --

TITLE: To John Adams.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 458.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: June. 1815

Bonaparte has been the author of more misery and suffering to the world, than any being who ever lived before him. After destroying the liberties of his country, he has exhausted all its resources, physical and moral, to indulge his own maniac ambition, his own tyrannical and overbearing spirit. His sufferings cannot be too great. --

TITLE: To Albert Gallatin.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 499.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: Oct. 1815

Bonaparte's restless spirit leaves no hope of peace to the world. --

TITLE: To Thomas Leiper.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 464.
EDITION: Ford ed., ix, 520.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1815

I view Bonaparte as a political engine only, and a very wicked one; you, I believe, as both political and religious, and obeying, as an instrument, an Unseen Hand. I still deprecate his becoming sole lord of the continent of Europe, which he would have been, had he reached in triumph the gates of St. Petersburg. The establishment in our day of another. Roman Empire, spreading vassalage and depravity over the face of the globe, is not, I hope, within the purposes of Heaven. --

TITLE: To Thomas Leiper.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 463.
EDITION: Ford ed., ix, 519.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: June. 1815

Here you will find reioicings on the [restoration] of Bonaparte, and by a strange quid pro quo, not by the party hostile to liberty, but by its zealous friends. In this they see nothing but the scourge reproduced for the back of England. They do not permit themselves to see in it the blast of all the hopes of mankind, and that however it May jeopardize England, it gives to her self-defence the lying countenance again of being the sole champion of the rights of man, to which in all other nations she is most adverse. --

TITLE: To M. Dupont de Nemours.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 457.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: May. 1815

-- You despair of your country, and so do I. A military despotism is now fixed upon it permanently, especially if the son of the tyrant should have virtues and talents. What a treat it would be to me, to be with you, and to learn from you all the intrigues, apostacies and treacheries which have produced this last death's blow to the hopes of France. For, although not in the will, there was in the imbecility of the Bourbons a foundation of hope that the patriots of France might obtain a moderate representative government. --

TITLE: To M. Dupont de Nemours.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 457.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: May. 1815

The new treaty of the allied powers declares that the French nation shall not have Bonaparte, and shall have Louis XVIII. for their ruler. They are all then as great rascals as Bonaparte himself. While he was in the wrong, I wished him exactly as much success as would answer our purposes, and no more. Now that they are in the wrong and he in the right, he shall have all my prayers for success, and that he may dethrone every man of them. --

TITLE: To Thomas Leiper.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 467.
EDITION: Ford ed., ix, 522.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: June. 1815

As far as we can judge from appearances, Bonaparte, from being a mere military usurper, seems to have become the choice of his nation; and the allies in their turn, the usurpers and spoliators of the European world. The rights of nations to self-government being my polar star, my partialities are steered by it, without asking whether it is a Bonaparte or an Alexander towards whom the helm is directed. --

TITLE: To M. Correa.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 480.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: June. 1815

No man more severely condemned Bonaparte than myself during his former career, for his unprincipled enterprises on the liberty of his own country, and the independence of others. But the allies having now taken up his pursuits, and he arrayed himself on the legitimate side, I also am changed as to him. He is now fighting for the independence of nations, of which his whole life hitherto had been a continued violation, and he has now my prayers as sincerely for success as he had before for his overthrow. He has promised a free government to his own country, and to respect the rights of others; and although his former conduct does

TITLE: To Phillip Mazzei.
EDITION: Ford ed., ix, 525.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: Aug. 1815

At length Bonaparte has got on the right side of a question. From the time of his entering the legislative hall to his retreat to Elba, no man has execrated him more than myself. I will not except even the members of the Essex Junto; although for very different reasons; I, because he was warring against the liberty of his own country, and independence of others; they, because he was the enemy of England, the Pope and the Inquisition. But at length, and as far as we can judge, he seems to have become the choice of his nation. At least, he is defending the cause of his nation, and that of all mankind, the rights of every people to independence and self-government. He and the allies have now changed sides. They are parcelling out among themselves, Poland, Belgium, Saxony, Italy, dictating a ruler and government to France, and looking askance at our republic, the splendid libel on their governments, and he is fighting for the principles of national independence of which his whole life hitherto has been a continued violation. He has promised a free government to his own country, and to respect the rights of others; and although his former conduct inspires little confidence in his promises, yet we had better take the chance of his word for doing right, than the certainty of the wrong which his adversaries are doing and avowing. If they succeed ours is only the boon of the Cyclops to Ulysses, of being the last devoured. ⁵³ --

TITLE: To John Adams.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 490.
EDITION: Ford ed., ix, 529.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: Aug. 1815

I see in Bonaparte's expulsion of the Bourbons, a valuable lesson to the world, as showing that its ancient dynasties may be changed for their misrule. Should the allied powers presume to dictate a ruler and government to France, and follow the example he had set of parcelling and usurping to themselves their neighbor nations, I hope he will give them another lesson in vindication of the rights of independence and self-government, which himself had hitherto so much abused, and that in this contest he will wear down the maritime power of England to limitable and safe dimensions. So far, good. It cannot be denied, on the other hand, that his successful perversion of the force (committed to him for vindicating the rights and liberties of his country) to usurp its government, and to enchain it under an hereditary despotism, is of baneful effect in encouraging future usurpations, and deterring those under oppression from rising to redress themselves. --

TITLE: To Thomas Leiper.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 464.
EDITION: Ford ed., ix, 519.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1815

If adversity should have taught him wisdom, of which I have little expectation, he may yet render some service to mankind, by teaching the ancient dynasties that they can be changed for misrule, and by wearing down the maritime power of England to limitable and safe dimensions. --

TITLE: To John Adams.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 458.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: June. 1815

Although we neither expected, nor wished any act of friendship from Bonaparte, and always detested him as a tyrant, yet he gave employment to much of the force of the nation who was our common enemy. So far, his downfall was illy timed for us; it gave to England an opportunity to turn full-handed on us, when we were unprepared. No matter, we can beat her on our own soil, leaving the laws of the ocean to be settled by the maritime powers of Europe, who are equally oppressed and insulted by the usurpations of England on that element. --

TITLE: To W. H. Crawford.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 418.
EDITION: Ford ed., ix, 502.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: Feb. 1815

The unprincipled tyrant of the land is

TITLE: To Cæsar A. Rodney.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 448.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1815

I cannot live without books. --

TITLE: To John Adams.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 460.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1815

A new trial of the Bourbons has proved to the world their incompetence to the functions of the stations they have occupied; and the recall of the usurper has clothed him with the semblance of a legitimate autocrat. --

TITLE: To John Adams.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 458.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: June. 1815

We always counted on you as the main pillar of their. [University of Virginia measures] support. --

TITLE: To Joseph C. Cabell.
EDITION: Ford ed., ix, 500.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1815

The affectionate harmony of our Cabinet is among the sweetest of my recollections. --

TITLE: To Cæsar Rodney.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 448.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1815

Cannibals are not to be found in the wilds of America only, but are revelling on the blood of every living people --

TITLE: To Charles Clas.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 413.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1815

The citizens of a country like ours will never have unemployed capital. Too many enterprises are open, offering high profits, to permit them to lend their capitals on a regular and moderate interest. They are too enterprising and sanguine themselves not to believe they can do better with it. --

TITLE: To President Madison.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 393.
EDITION: Ford ed., ix, 491.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1815

Dabney Carr, [* * *] mover of the proposition of March, 1773, for Committees of Correspondence, the first fruit of which was the call of an American Congress, merits honorable mention in your history, if any proper occasion offers. --

TITLE: To Mr. Girardin.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 411.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1815

-- Landon Carter's speeches, like his writings, were dull, vapid, verbose, egotistical, smooth as the lullaby of the nurse, and commanding, like that, the repose only of the hearer. --

TITLE: To William Wirt.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 486.
EDITION: Ford ed., ix, 474.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1815

Whether we shall engage in every war of Europe, to protect the mere agency of our merchants and shipowners in carrying on the commerce of other nations, even were these merchants and shipowners to take the side of their country in the contest, instead of that of the enemy, is a question of deep and serious consideration. --

TITLE: To John Adams.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 460.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: June. 1815

How can expedition be expected from a body which we have saddled with an hundred lawyers, whose trade is talking. --

TITLE: To Thomas Leiper.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 466.
EDITION: Ford ed., ix, 521.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1815
See Debate, Lawyers.

Nor among the incidents of the war, will we forget your services. [* * *] Your capture of York and Fort George first turned the tide of success in our favor; and the subsequent campaigns sufficiently wiped away the disgrace of the first. --

TITLE: To General Dearborn.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 450.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1815

If it were justifiable to look to your own happiness only, your resolution to retire from all public business could not but be approved. But you are too young to ask a discharge as yet, and the public councils too much needing the wisdom of our ablest citizens, to relinquish their claim on you. And surely none needs your aid more than your own State. --

TITLE: To General Dearborn.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 451.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: March. 1815

We are not in a world ungoverned by the laws and the power of a Superior Agent. Our efforts are in His hand, and directed by it; and He will give them their effect in His own time. ¹³⁸ --

TITLE: To David Barrow.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 456.
EDITION: Ford ed., ix, 516.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1815

That a continuance of the Embargo for two months longer would have prevented our war, [* * *] I have constantly maintained. --

TITLE: To Thomas Leiper.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 465.
EDITION: Ford ed., ix, 521.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1815

The emigrations from the Eastern States are what I have long counted on. The religious and political tyranny of those in power with you, cannot fail to drive the oppressed to milder associations of men, where freedom of mind is allowed in fact as well as in pretense. --

TITLE: To Dr. B. Waterhouse.
EDITION: Ford ed., ix, 533.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1815

We know that the government of England, maintaining itself by corruption at home, uses the same means in other countries of which she has any jealousy, by subsidizing agitators and traitors among themselves to distract and paralyze them. She sufficiently manifests that she has no disposition to spare ours. --

TITLE: To Governor Plumer.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 415.
PLACE: [none given]
DATE: 1815
See Hartford Convention.

Have you no statesmen who can look forward two or three score years? It is but forty years since the battle of Lexington. One-third of those now living saw that day, when we were about two millions of people, and have lived to see this, when we are ten millions. One-third of those now living who see us at ten millions, will live another forty years, and see us forty millions; and looking forward only through such a portion of time as has passed since you and I were scanning Virgil together (which I believe is near three score years), we shall be seen to have a population of eighty millions, and of not more than double the average density of the present. What may not such a people be worth to England as customers and friends? And what might she not apprehend from such a nation as enemies? --

TITLE: To James Maury.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 467.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1815

A friendly, a just, and a reasonable conduct on the part of the British might make us the main pillar of their prosperity and existence. But their deep-rooted hatred to us seems to be the means which Providence permits to lead them to their final catastrophe. “Nullam enim in terris gentem esse, nullum infestiorem populum, nomini Romani,” said the General who erased Capua from the list of powers. What nourishment and support would not England receive from an hundred millions of industrious descendants, whom some of her people now born will live to see here? What their energies are, she has lately tried. And what has she not to fear from an hundred millions of such men, if she continues her maniac course of hatred and hostility to them? I hope in God she will change. --

TITLE: To Cæsar A. Rodney.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 448.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: March. 1815

The English can do us, as enemies, more harm than any other nation; and in peace and in war, they have more means of disturbing us internally. Their merchants established among us, the bonds by which our own are chained to their feet, and the banking combinations interwoven with the whole, have shown the extent of their control, even during a war with her. They are the workers of all the embarrassments our finances have experienced during the war. Declaring themselves bankrupt, they have been able still to chain the government to a dependence on them, and had the war continued, they would have reduced us to the inability to command a single dollar. They dared to proclaim that they would not pay their obligations, yet our government could not venture to avail themselves of this opportunity of sweeping their paper from the circulation, and substituting their own notes bottomed on specific taxes for redemption, which every one would have eagerly taken and trusted, rather than the baseless trash of bankrupt companies; our government, I say, have still been overawed from a contest with them, and has even countenanced and strengthened their influence, by proposing new establishments, with authority to swindle yet greater sums from our citizens. This is the British influence to which I am an enemy, and which we must subject to our government, or it will subject us to that of Britain. --

TITLE: To Cæsar A. Rodney.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 449.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: March. 1815

Her ministers have been weak enough to believe from the newspapers that Mr. Madison and myself are personally her enemies. Such an idea is unworthy a man of sense; as we should have been unworthy our [Col 2] trusts could we have felt such a motive of public action. No two men in the United States have more sincerely wished for cordial friendship with her; not as her vassals or dirty partisans, but as members of coequal States, respecting each other, and sensible of the good as well as the harm each is capable of doing the other. On this ground, there was never a moment we did not wish to embrace her. But repelled by their aversions, feeling their hatred at every point of contact, and justly indignant at its supercilious manifestations, that happened which has happened, that will follow which must follow, in progressive ratio, while such dispositions continue to be indulged. I hope they will see this, and do their part towards healing the minds and cooling the temper of both nations. --

TITLE: To Mr. Maury.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 468.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1815
See Friendship with England.

I consider the government of England as totally without morality, insolent beyond bearing, inflated with vanity and ambition, aiming at the exclusive dominion of the sea, lost in corruption, of deep-rooted hatred towards us, hostile to liberty wherever it endeavors to show its head, and the eternal disturber of the peace of the world. --

TITLE: To Thomas Leiper.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 463.
EDITION: Ford ed., ix, 510.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: June. 1815

England has steadily endeavored to make us her natural enemies. --

TITLE: To John Adams.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 459.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1815

Your pamphlet is replete with sound views, some of which will doubtless be adopted. Some may be checked by difficulties. None more likely to be so than the proposition to amend the Constitution, so as to authorize Congress to tax exports. The provision against this in the framing of that instrument, was a sine qua non with the States of peculiar productions, as rice, indigo, cotton and tobacco, to which may now be added sugar. A jealousy prevailing that to the few States producing these articles, the justice of the others might not be a sufficient protection in opposition to their interest, they moored themselves to this anchor. Since the hostile dispositions lately manifested by the Eastern States, they would be less willing than before to place themselves at their mercy; and the rather, as the Eastern States have no exports which can be taxed equivalently. It is possible, however, that this difficulty might be got over; but the subject looking forward beyond my time, I leave it to those to whom its burdens and benefits will belong, adding only my prayers for whatever may be best for our country. --

TITLE: To Andrew G. Mitchell.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 483.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1815

The British ministers found some hopes [of success in the war] on the state of our finances. It is true that the excess of our banking institutions, and their present discredit, have shut us out from the best source of credit we could ever command with certainty. But the foundations of credit still remain to us, and need but skill which experience will soon produce, to marshal them into an order which may carry us through any length of war. --

TITLE: To Marquis de Lafayette.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 425.
EDITION: Ford ed., ix, 508.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1815
See Banks and Debt.

The sufferings of France, I sincerely deplore, and what is to be their term? The will of the Allies. There is no more moderation, forbearance, or even honesty in theirs, than in that of Bonaparte. They have proved that their object, like his, is plunder. They, like him, are shuffling nations together, or into their own hands, as if all were right which they feel a power to do. In the exhausted state in which Bonaparte has left France, I see no period to her sufferings, until this combination of robbers fall together by the ears. The French may then rise up and choose their side. And I trust they will finally establish for themselves a government of rational and well-tempered liberty. So much science cannot be lost; so much light shed over them can never fail to produce to them some good, in the end. --

TITLE: To Albert Gallatin.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 500.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: Oct. 1815

It is impossible that France should rest under her present oppressions and humiliations. She

TITLE: To M. Dupont de Nemours.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 508.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1815

I grieve for France; although it cannot be denied that by the afflictions with which she wantonly [Col 2] and wickedly overwhelmed other nations, she has merited severe reprisals. For it is no excuse to lay the enormities to the wretch who led to them. --

TITLE: To Albert Gallatin.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 499.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: Oct. 1815

I had persuaded myself [in 1804] that a nation, distant as we are from the contentions of Europe, avoiding all offences to other powers, and not over-hasty in resenting offence from them, doing justice to all, faithfully fulfilling the duties of neutrality, performing all offices of amity, and administering to their interests by the benefits of our commerce, that such a nation, I say, might expect to live in peace, and consider itself merely as a member of the great family of mankind; that in such case it might devote itself to whatever it could best produce, secure of a peaceable exchange of surplus for what could be more advantageously furnished by others, as takes place between one country and another of France. But experience has shown that continued peace depends not merely on our own justice and prudence, but on that of others also; that when forced into war, the interception of exchanges which must be made across a wide ocean, becomes a powerful weapon in the hands of an enemy domineering over that element, and to the other distresses of war adds the want of all those necessaries for which we have permitted ourselves to be dependent on others, even arms and clothing. This fact, therefore, solves the question by reducing it to its ultimate form, whether profit or preservation is the first interest of a State? We are consequently become manufacturers to a degree incredible to those who do not see it, and who only consider the short period of time during which we have been driven to them by the suicidal policy of England. --

TITLE: To J. B. Say.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 430.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: March. 1815

No one feels more indignation than myself when reflecting on the insults and injuries of that country to this. But the interests of both require that these should be left to history, and in the meantime be smothered in the living mind. I have, indeed, little personal concern in it. Time is drawing her curtain on me. But I should make my bow with more satisfaction, if I had more hope of seeing our countries shake hands together cordially. --

TITLE: To James Maury.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 469.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: June. 1815

If the British adopt a course of friendship with us, the commerce of one hundred millions of people, which some now born will live to see will maintain them forever as a great unit of the European family. But if they go on checking, irritating, injuring, and hostilizing us, they will force on us the motto “Carthago delenda est”. And some Scipio Americanus will leave to posterity the problem of conjecturing where stood once the ancient and splendid city of London. [* * *] I hope the good sense of both parties will concur in travelling rather the paths of peace, of affection, and reciprocations of interests. --

TITLE: To C. F. Gray.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 439.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1815

What is the price we ask for our friendship? Justice, and the comity usually observed between nation and nation. Would there not be more of dignity in this, more character and satisfaction, than in her teasings and harrassings, her briberies and intrigues, to sow party discord among us, which can never have more effect here than the opposition within herself has there; which can never obstruct the begetting children, the efficient source of growth; and by nourishing a deadly hatred, will only produce and hasten events which both of us, in moments of sober reflection, should deplore and deprecate? One half of the attention employed in decent observances towards our Government, would be worth more to her than all the Yankee duperies played off upon her, at a great expense on her part of money and meanness, and of nourishment to the vices and treacheries of the Henrys and Hulls of both nations. --

TITLE: To James Maury.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 468.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1815

There is not a nation on the globe with whom I have more earnestly wished a friendly intercourse on equal conditions. On no other would I hold out the hand of friendship to any. I know that their creatures represent me as personally an enemy to England. But fools only can believe this, or those who think me a fool. I am an enemy to her insults and injuries. I am an enemy to the flagitious principles of her administration, and to those which govern her conduct towards other nations. But would she give to morality some place in her political code, and especially should she exercise decency, and at least neutral passions towards us, there is not, I repeat [Col 2] it, a people on earth with whom I would sacrifice so much to be in friendship. --

TITLE: To CÆSAR A. Rodney.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 449.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: March. 1815

I congratulate you sincerely on your safe return to your own country, and without knowing your own wishes, mine are that you would never leave it again. I know you would be useful to us at Paris, and so you would anywhere; but nowhere so useful as here. --

TITLE: To Albert Gallatin.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 498.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1815

Our militia are heroes when they have heroes to lead them. --

TITLE: To W. H. Crawford.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 420.
EDITION: Ford ed., ix, 504.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1815

No campaign is as yet opened. No generals have yet an interest in shifting their own incompetence on you. ²⁰⁹ --

TITLE: To James Monroe.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 410.
EDITION: Ford ed., ix, 499.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1815

Experience had just begun to elicit those among our officers who had talents for war, and under the guidance of these one campaign would have planted our standard on the walls of Quebec, and another on those of Halifax. --

TITLE: To F. C. Gray.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 438.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1815

Our second and third campaigns [* * *] more than redeemed the disgraces of the first, and proved that although a republican government is slow to move, yet, when once in motion, its momentum becomes irresistible. --

TITLE: To F. C. Gray.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 438.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1815

I hope our courts will never countenance the sweeping pretensions which have been set up under the words “general defence and public welfare”. These words only express the motives which induced the Convention to give to the ordinary legislature certain specified powers which they enumerate, and which they thought [Col 2] might be trusted to the ordinary legislature, and not to give them the unspecified also; or why any specification? They could not be so awkward in language as to mean, as we say, “all and some”. And should this construction prevail, all limits to the Federal Government are done away. This opinion, formed on the first rise of the question, I have never seen reason to change, whether in or out of power; but, on the contrary, find it strengthened and confirmed by five and twenty years of additional reflection and experience: and any countenance given to it by any regular organ of the government, I should consider more ominous than anything which has yet occurred. --

TITLE: To Spencer Roane.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 494.
EDITION: Ford ed., ix, 531.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1815

I do not say that all who met at Hartford were under the same motive of money, nor were those of France.

TITLE: To Marquis Lafayette.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 425.
EDITION: Ford ed., ix, 509.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1815

The paradox with me is how any friend to the union of our country can, in conscience, contribute a cent to the maintenance of any one who perverts the sanctity of his desk to the open inculcation of rebellion, civil war, dissolution of the government, and the miseries of anarchy. --

TITLE: To Governor Plumer.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 414.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1815

If they could have induced the government to some effort of suppression, or even to enter into discussion with them, it would have given them some importance, have brought them into some notice. But they have not been able to make themselves even a subject of conversation, either of public or private societies. A silent contempt has been the sole notice they excite; consoled, indeed, some of them, by the palpable favors of Philip [England] . --

TITLE: To Marquis Lafayette.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 426.
EDITION: Ford ed., ix, 509.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1815

When England took alarm lest France, become republican, should recover energies dangerous to her, she employed emissaries with means to engage incendiaries and anarchists in the disorganization of all government here. These, assuming exaggerated zeal for republican government and the rights of the people, crowded their inscriptions into the Jacobin societies, and overwhelming by their majorities the honest and enlightened patriots of the original institution, distorted its objects, pursued its genuine founders under the name of Brissotines and Girondists unto death, intrigued themselves into the municipality of Paris, controlled by terrorism the proceedings of the legislature, in which they were faithfully aided by their constipendaries there, the Dantons and Marats of the Mountain, murdered their King, septembrized the nation, and thus accomplished their stipulated task of demolishing liberty and government with it. England now fears the rising force of this republican nation, and by the same means is endeavoring to effect the same course of miseries and destruction here; it is impossible where one sees like courses of events commence, not [Col 2] to ascribe them to like causes. We know that the government of England, maintaining itself by corruption at home, uses the same means in other countries of which she has any jealousy, by subsidizing agitators and traitors among ourselves to distract and paralyze them. She sufficiently manifests that she has no disposition to spare ours. We see in the proceedings of Massachusetts, symptoms which plainly indicate such a course, and we know as far as such practices can ever be dragged into light, that she has practiced, and with success, on leading individuals of that State. Nay, further, we see those individuals acting on the very plan which our information had warned us was settled between the parties. These elements of explanation history cannot stantly subject to his own will. The crime, of combining with the oppressors of the earth to extinguish the last spark of human hope, that here, at length, will be preserved a model government, securing to man his rights and the fruits of his labor, by an organization constantly subject to his own will. The crime indeed, if accomplished, would immortalize its perpetrators, and their names would descend in history with those of Robespierre and his associates, as the guardian genii of despotism, and demons of human liberty. --

TITLE: To Governor Plumer.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 414.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1815

But the British ministers hoped more in their Hartford convention [than in the disordered condition of our finances] . Their fears of republican France being now done, away, they are directed to republican America, and they are playing the same game for disorganization here, which they played in your country. The Marats, the Dantons and Robespierres of Massachusetts are in the same pay, under the same orders, and making the same efforts to anarchise us, that their prototypes in France did there. --

TITLE: To Marquis de Lafayette.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 425.
EDITION: Ford ed., ix, 508.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1815

No event, more than this, has shown the placid character of our Constitution. Under any other, their treasons would have been punished by the halter. We let them live as laughing stocks for the world, and punish them by the torment of eternal contempt. --

TITLE: To Dr. B. Waterhouse.
EDITION: Ford ed., ix, 532.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1815

I do not mean to say that all who are acting with these men are under the same motives. I know some of them personally to be incapable of it. Nor was that the case with the disorganizers and assassins of Paris. Delusions there, and party perversions here, furnish unconscious assistants to the hired actors in these atrocious scenes. But I have never entertained one moment's fear on this subject. The people of this country enjoy too much happiness to risk it for nothing; and I have never doubted that whenever the incendiaries of Massachusetts should venture openly to raise the standard of separation, its citizens would rise in mass and do justice themselves to their own parricides. --

TITLE: To Governor Plumer.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 415.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1815

You ask some account of Mr. Henry's mind, information and manners in 1759-60, when I first became acquainted with him. We met at Nathan Dandridges, in Hanover, about the Christmas of that winter, and passed perhaps a fortnight together at the revelries of the neighborhood and season. His manners had something of the coarseness of the society he had frequented; his passion was fiddling, dancing and pleasantry. He excelled in the last and it attached every one to him. The occasion perhaps, as much as his idle disposition, prevented his engaging in any conversation which might give the measure either of his mind or information. Opportunity was not wanting, because Mr. John Campbell was there, who had married Mrs. Spotswood, the sister of Colonel Dandridge. He was a man of science, and often introduced conversations on scientific subjects. Mr. Henry had a little before broke up his store, or rather it had broken him up and within three months after he came to Williamsburg for his license, and told me, I think, he had read law not more than six weeks. --

TITLE: To William Wirt.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 487.
EDITION: Ford ed., ix, 475.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1815

Botta [* * *] has put his own speculations and reasonings into the mouths of persons whom he names, but who, you and I know, never made such speeches. In this he has followed the example of the ancients, who

TITLE: To John Adams.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 489.
EDITION: Ford ed., ix, 527.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1815

On the subject of the history of the American Revolution, you ask who shall write it? Who can write it? And who will ever be able to write it? Nobody; except merely its external facts; all its councils, designs, and discussions having been conducted by Congress with closed doors, and with no members, as far as I know, having even made notes of them. These, which are the life and soul of history, must forever be unknown. --

TITLE: To John Adams.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 489.
EDITION: Ford ed., ix, 527.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1815

Honesty and interest are as intimately connected in the public as in the private code of morality. --

TITLE: To Mr. Maury.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 468.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1815

Peace and happiness are preferable to that false honor which, by eternal wars, keeps the [European] people in eternal labor, want and wretchedness. --

TITLE: To President Madison.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 452.
EDITION: Ford ed., ix, 511.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1815

That it may be for the benefit of your children and their descendants to remove to a country where, for enterprise and talents, so many avenues are open to fortune and fame, I have little doubt. But I should be afraid to affirm that, at your time of life, and with habits formed on the state of society in France, a change for one so entirely different would be for your personal happiness. --

TITLE: To Jean Baptiste Say.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 436.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1815

Our particular and separate grievance is only the impressment of our citizens. We must sacrifice the last dollar and drop of blood to rid us of that badge of slavery. --

TITLE: To W. H. Crawford.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 418.
EDITION: Ford ed., ix, 502.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: Feb. 1815

No provision being made [in the treaty of peace] against the impressment of our seamen, it is in fact but an armistice, to be terminated by the first act of impressment committed on an American citizen. --

TITLE: To W. H. Crawford.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 420.
EDITION: Ford ed., ix, 504.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1815

I presume that, having spared to the pride of England her formal acknowledgment of the atrocity of impress [Col 2] ment in an article of the treaty, she will concur in a convention for relinquishing it. Without this, she must understand that the present is but a truce, determinable on the first act of impressment of an American citizen, committed by an officer of hers. --

TITLE: To President Madison.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 453.
EDITION: Ford ed., ix, 512.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: March. 1815

On that point [impressment] we have thrown away the scabbard, and the moment an European war brings England back to this practice, adds us again to her enemies. --

TITLE: To Mr. Maury.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 467.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1815

The braking and beating hemp, which has been always done by hand, is so slow, so laborious, and so much complained of by our laborers, that I had given it up and purchased and manufactured cotton for their shirting. The advanced price of this, however, makes it a serious item of expense; and, in the meantime, a method of removing the difficulty of preparing hemp occurred to me, so simple and so cheap, that I return to its culture and manufacture. To a person having a threshing machine, the addition of a hemp-brake will not cost more than twelve or fifteen dollars. You know that the first mover in that machine is a horizontal horse-wheel with cogs on its upper face. On these is placed a wallower and shaft, which give motion to the threshing apparatus. On the opposite side of this same wheel I place another wallower and shaft, through which, and near its outer end, I pass a cross-arm of sufficient strength, projecting on each side fifteen inches in this form:

Nearly under the cross-arm is placed a very strong hemp-brake, much stronger and heavier than those for the hand. Its head block particu [Col 2] larly is massive, and four feet high, and near its upper end in front, is fixed a strong pin (which we may call its horn); by this the cross-arm lifts and lets fall the brake twice in every revolution of the wallower. [* * *] Something of this kind has been so long wanted by the cultivators of hemp, that as soon as I can speak of its effect with certainty I shall probably describe it anonymously in the public papers, in order to forestall the prevention of its use by some interloping patentee. --

TITLE: To George Fleming.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 506.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1815

As to what is to be said of myself, I of course am not the judge. But my sincere wish is that the faithful historian, like the able surgeon, would consider me in his hands, while living, as a dead subject, that the same judgment may now be expressed

TITLE: To L. H. Girardin.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 455.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1815

Did you ever know an instance of one who could write in a foreign language with the elegance of a native? Cicero wrote Commentaries of his own Consulship in Greek; they perished unknown, while his native

TITLE: To Dupont de Nemours.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 509.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1815

The question whether the judges are invested with exclusive authority to decide on the constitutionality of a law, has been heretofore a subject of consideration with me in the exercise of official duties. Certainly there is not a word in the Constitution which has given that power to them more than to the Executive or Legislative branches. Questions of property, of character and of crime being ascribed to the judges, through a definite course of legal proceeding, laws involving such questions belong, of course, to them; and as they decide on them ultimately and without appeal, they of course decide for themselves. The constitutional validity of the law or laws again prescribing Executive action, and to be administered by that branch ultimately and without appeal, the Executive must decide for themselves also, whether, under the Constitution, they are valid or not. So also as to laws governing the proceedings of the Legislature, that body must judge for itself the constitutionality of the law, and equally without appeal or control from its coordinate branches. And, in general, that branch which is to act ultimately, and without appeal, on any law, is the rightful expositor of the validity of the law, uncontrolled by the opinions of the other coordinate authorities. --

TITLE: To W. H. Torrance.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 461.
EDITION: Ford ed., ix, 517.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1815

It may be said that contradictory decisions may arise in such case, and produce inconvenience. This is possible, and is a necessary failing in all human proceedings. Yet the prudence of the public functionaries, and authority of public opinion, will generally produce accommodation. Such an instance of difference occurred between the judges of England (in the time of Lord Holt) and the House of Commons, but the prudence of those bodies prevented inconvenience from it. So in the cases of Duane and of William Smith, of South Carolina, whose characters of citizenship stood precisely on the same ground, the judges in a question of meum and tuum which came before them, decided that Duane was not a citizen; and in a question of membership, the House of Representatives, under the same words of the same provision, adjudged William Smith to be a citizen. This is what I believe myself to be sound. --

TITLE: To W. H. Torrance.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 462.
EDITION: Ford ed., ix, 518.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1815

There is another opinion entertained by some men of such judgment and information as to lessen my confidence in my own. That is, that the Legislature alone is the exclusive expounder of the sense of the Constitution, in every part of it whatever. And they allege in its support, that this

TITLE: To W. H. Torrance.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 462.
EDITION: Ford ed., ix, 518.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1815

A full measure of liberty is not now perhaps to be expected by your nation, nor am I confident they are prepared to preserve it. More than a generation will be requisite, under the administration of reasonable laws favoring the progress of knowledge in the general mass of the people, and their habituation to an independent security of person and property, before they will be capable of estimating the value of freedom, and the necessity of a sacred adherence to the principles on which it rests for preservation. Instead of that liberty which takes root and growth in the progress of reason, if recovered by mere force or accident, it becomes, with an unprepared people, a tyranny still, of the many, the few, or the one. --

TITLE: To Marquis Lafayette.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 421.
EDITION: Ford ed., ix, 505.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: Feb. 1815

I have for fifty years bathed my feet in cold water every morning, [Col 2] and having been remarkably exempted from colds (not having had one in every seven years of my life on an average), I have supposed it might be ascribed to that practice. --

TITLE: To Mr. Maury.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 472.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1815

If you will except the bringing into power and importance those who were enemies to himself as well as to the principles of republican government, I do not recollect a single measure of the President which I have not approved. Of those under him, and of some very near him, there have been many acts of which we have all disapproved, and he more than we. --

TITLE: To Thomas Leiper.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 465.
EDITION: Ford ed., ix, 521.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1815

My friendship for Mr. Madison, my confidence in his wisdom and virtue, and my approbation of all his measures, and especially of his taking up at length the gauntlet against England, is known to all with whom I have ever conversed or corresponded on these measures. --

TITLE: To Thomas Leiper.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 465.
EDITION: Ford ed., ix, 521.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1815

The manners of every nation are the standard of orthodoxy within itself. But these standards being arbitrary, reasonable people in all allow free toleration for the manners, as for the religion of others. --

TITLE: To Jean Baptiste Say.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 433.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1815

We are become manufacturers to a degree incredible to those who do not see it, and who only consider the short period of time during which we have been driven to them by the suicidal policy of England. --

TITLE: To Jean Baptiste Say.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 431.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: March. 1815

The prohibiting duties we lay on all articles of foreign manufacture which prudence requires us to establish at home, with the patriotic determination of every good citizen to use no foreign article which can be made within ourselves, without regard to difference of price, secures us against a relapse into foreign dependency. --

TITLE: To Jean Baptiste Say.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 431.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: March. 1815

It is our business to manufacture for ourselves whatever we can, to keep our markets open for what we can spare or want. --

TITLE: To Thomas Leiper.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 465.
EDITION: Ford ed., ix, 520.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1815
See Markets.

I presume, like the rest of us in the country, you are in the habit of household manufacture, and that you will not, like too many, abandon it on the return of peace, to enrich our late enemy, and to nourish foreign agents in our bosom, whose baneful influence and intrigues cost us so much embarrassment and dissension. --

TITLE: To George Fleming.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 506.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: Dec. 1815

The interruption of our intercourse with England has rendered us one essential service in planting, radically and firmly, coarse manufactures among us. I make in my family two thousand yards of cloth a year, which I formerly bought from England, and it only employs a few women, children and invalids, who could do little on the farm. The State generally does the same, and allowing ten yards to a person, this amounts to ten millions of yards; and if we are about the medium degree of manufacturers in the whole Union, as I believe we are, the whole will amount to one hundred millions of yards a year, which will soon reimburse us the expenses of the war. --

TITLE: To Mr. Maury.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 471.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1815

Our domestic manufactures [* * *] have taken such deep root [* * *] [that they] never again can be shaken. --

TITLE: To Marquis Lafayette.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 427.
EDITION: Ford ed., ix, 511.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1815

We owe to the past follies and wrongs of the British the incalculable advantage of being made independent of them for every material manufacture. These have taken such root in our private families especially, that nothing now can ever extirpate them. --

TITLE: To W. H. Crawford.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 420.
EDITION: Ford ed., ix, 504.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: Feb. 1815

Oh Massachusetts! how have I lamented the degradation of your apostasy! Massachusetts, with whom I went in pride in 1776, whose vote was my vote on every public question, and whose principles were then the standard of whatever was free or fearless. But she was then under the counsels of the two Adamses; while Strong, her present leader, was promoting petitions for submission to British power and British usurpation. While under her present counsels, she must be contented to be nothing; as having a vote, indeed, to be counted, but not respected. But should the State, once more, buckle on her republican harness, we shall receive her again as a sister, and recollect her wanderings among the crimes only of the parricide party, which would have basely sold what their fathers so bravely won from the same enemy. Let us look forward, then, to the act of repentance, which, by dismissing her venal traitors, shall be the signal of return to the bosom, and to the principles of her brethren; and, if her late humiliation can just give her modesty enough to suppose that her southern brethren are somewhat on a par with her in wisdom, in information, in patriotism, in bravery, and even in honesty, although not in psalm-singing, she will more justly estimate her own relative momentum in the Union. With her ancient principles, she would really be great, if she did not think herself the whole. --

TITLE: To General Dearborn.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 451.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: March. 1815

Our militia are heroes when they have heroes to lead them on. --

TITLE: To W. H. Crawford.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 420.
EDITION: Ford ed., ix, 504.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1815

We have no metallic measure of values at present, while we are overwhelmed with bank paper. The depreciation of this swells nominal prices, without furnishing any stable index of real value. --

TITLE: To Jean Baptiste Say.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 434.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: March. 1815

We are now without any common measure of the value of property, and private fortunes are up or down at the will of the worst of our citizens. Yet there is no hope of relief from the Legislatures who have immediate control over this subject. As little seems to be known of the principles of political economy as if nothing had ever been written or practiced on the subject, or as was known in old times, when the Jews had their rulers under the hammer. It is an evil, therefore, which we must make up our minds to meet and to endure as those of hurricanes, earthquakes and other casualties. --

TITLE: To Albert Gallatin.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 499.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: Oct. 1815

Money is the nerve of war. --

TITLE: To Albert Gallatin.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 498.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1815

I fear, from the experience of the last twenty-five years, that morals do not of necessity advance hand in hand with the sciences. --

TITLE: To M. Correa.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 480.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1815

The method of estimating heights [of mountains] by the barometer, is convenient and useful, as being ready, and furnishing an approximation to truth. Of what degree of accuracy it is susceptible we know not as yet; no certain theory being established for ascertaining the density and weight of that portion of the column of atmosphere contiguous to the mountain; from the weight of which, nevertheless, we are to infer the height of the mountain. The most plausible seems to be that which supposes the mercury of barometer divided into horizontal lamina of equal thickness; and a similar column of the atmosphere into lamina of equal weights. The former divisions give a set of arithmetical, the latter of geometrical progressionals, which being the character, of logarithms and their numbers, the tables of these furnish ready computations, needing, however, the corrections which the state of the thermometer calls for. It is probable that in taking heights in the vicinity of each other in this way, there may be no considerable error, because the passage between them may be quick and repeated. The height of a mountain from its base, thus taken, merits, therefore, a very different degree of credit from that of its height above the level of the sea, where that is distant. According, for example, to the theory above mentioned, the height of Monticello from its base is 580 feet, and its base 610 feet 8 inches, above the level of the ocean; the former, from [Col 2] other facts, I believe to be near the truth; but a knowledge of the different falls of water from hence to the tide-water at Richmond, a distance of seventy-five miles, enables us to say that the whole descent to that place is but 170 or 180 feet. From thence to the ocean may be a distance of one hundred miles; it is all tide-water, and through a level country. I know not what to conjecture as the amount of descent, but certainly not 435 feet, as that theory would suppose, nor the quarter part of it. I do not know by what rule General Williams made his computations. He reckons the foot of the Blue Ridge, twenty miles from here, but 100 feet above the tide-water at Richmond. We know the descent, as before observed, to be at least 170 feet from hence, to which is to be added that from the Blue Ridge to this place, a very hilly country, with constant and great waterfalls. His estimate, therefore, must be much below truth. Results so different prove that for distant comparisons of height, the barometer is not to be relied on according to any theory yet known. While, therefore, we give a good degree of credit to the results of operations between the summit of a mountain and its base, we must give less to those between its summit and the level of the ocean. --

TITLE: To Capt. A. Partridge.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 495.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1815

We wish the happiness and prosperity of every nation. --

TITLE: To Madame de Stael.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 482.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1815

Not in our day, but at no distant one, we may shake a rod over the heads of all, which may make the stoutest of them tremble. But I hope our wisdom will grow with our power, and teach us, that the less we use our power the greater it will be. --

TITLE: To Thomas Leiper.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 465.
EDITION: Ford ed., ix, 520.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1815
See Policy.

Put down the banks, and if this country could not be carried through the longest war against her most powerful

TITLE: To Albert Gallatin.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 498.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: Oct. 1815

Although a century of British experience has proved to what a wonderful extent the funding on specific redeeming taxes enables a nation to anticipate in war the resources of peace, and although the other nations of Europe have tried and trodden every path of force or folly in fruitless quest of the same object, yet we still expect to find in juggling tricks and banking dreams, that money can be made out of nothing, and in sufficient quantities to meet the expenses of a heavy war by sea and land. It is said, indeed, that money cannot be borrowed from our merchants as from those of England. But it can be borrowed from our people. They will give you all the necessaries of war they produce, if, instead of the bankrupt trash they are now obliged to receive for want of any other, you will give them a paper promise funded on a specific pledge, and of a size for common circulation. But you say the merchants will not take this paper. What the people take the merchants must take, or sell nothing. All these doubts and fears prove only the extent of the dominion which the banking institutions have obtained over the minds of our citizens, and especially of those inhabiting cities or other banking places; and this [Col 2] dominion must be broken, or it will break us. But [* * *] we must make up our minds to suffer yet longer before we can get right. The misfortune is, that in the meantime, we shall plunge ourselves in unextinguishable debt, and entail on our posterity an inheritance of eternal taxes, which will bring our government and people into the condition of those of England, a nation of pikes and gudgeons, the latter bred merely as food for the former. --

TITLE: To James Monroe.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 409.
EDITION: Ford ed., ix, 497.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: Jan. 1815

The government is now issuing Treasury notes for circulation, bottomed on solid funds and bearing interest. The banking confederacy (and the merchants bound to them by their debts) will endeavor to crush the credit of these notes; but the country is eager for them, as something they can trust to, and as soon as a convenient quantity of them can get into circulation the bank notes die. --

TITLE: To Jean Baptiste Say.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 434.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1815

The war, had it proceeded, would have upset our government; and a new one, whenever tried, will do it. And so it must be while our money, the nerve of war, is much or little, real or imaginary, as our bitterest enemies choose to make it. --

TITLE: To Albert Gallatin.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 498.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: Oct. 1815

Treasury notes of small as well as high denomination, bottomed on a tax which would redeem them in ten years, would place at our disposal the whole circulating medium of the United States; a fund of credit sufficient to carry us through any probable length of war. A small issue of such paper is now commencing. It will immediately supersede the bank paper; nobody receiving that now but for the purposes of the day, and never in payments which are to lie by for any time. In fact, all the banks having declared they will not give cash in exchange for their own notes, these circulate merely because there is no other medium of exchange. As soon as the treasury notes get into circulation, the others will cease to hold any competition with them. I trust that another year will confirm this experiment, and restore this fund to the public, who ought never more to permit its being filched from them by private speculators and disorganizers of the circulation. --

TITLE: To W. H. Crawford.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 419.
EDITION: Ford ed., ix, 503.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: Feb. 1815

I wish that all nations may recover and retain their independence; that those which are overgrown may not advance beyond safe measures of power, that a salutary balance may be ever maintained among nations, and that our peace, commerce and friendship, may be sought and cultivated by all. --

TITLE: To Thomas Leiper.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 464.
EDITION: Ford ed., ix, 520.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1815

Notwithstanding all the French and British atrocities, which will forever disgrace the present era of history, their shameless prostration of all the laws of morality which constitute the security, the peace and comfort of man -- notwithstanding the waste of human life, and measure of human suffering which they have inflicted on [Col 2] the world -- nations hitherto in slavery have desired through all this bloody mist a glimmering of their own rights have dared to open their eyes, and to see that their own power will suffice for their emancipation. Their tyrants must now give them more moderate forms of government, and they seem now to be sensible of this themselves. Instead of the parricide treason of Bonaparte in employing the means confided to him as a republican magistrate to the overthrow of that republic, and establishment of a military despotism in himself and his descendants, to the subversion of the neighboring governments, and erection of thrones for his brothers, his sisters and sycophants, had he honestly employed that power in the establishment and support of the freedom of his own country, there is not a nation in Europe which would not at this day have had a more rational government, one in which the will of the people should have had a moderating and salutary influence. The work will now be longer, will swell more rivers with blood, produce more sufferings and more crimes. But it will be consummated; and that it may be will be the theme of my constant prayers while I shall remain on the earth beneath, or in the heavens above. --

TITLE: To William Bentley.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 503.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1815

Frigates and seventy-fours are a sacrifice we must make, heavy as it is, to the prejudices of a part of our citizens. They have, indeed, rendered a great moral service, which has delighted me as much as any one in the United States. But they have had no physical effect sensible to the enemy; and now, while we must fortify them in our harbors, and keep armies to defend them, our privateers are bearding and blockading the enemy in their own seaports. --

TITLE: To James Monroe.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 409.
EDITION: Ford ed., ix, 498.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: Jan. 1815

Through the whole period of the war, we have beaten them [the British] single-handed at sea, and so thoroughly established our superiority over them with equal force, that they retire from that kind of contest, and never suffer their frigates to cruise singly. The Endymion would never have engaged the frigate President, but knowing herself blocked by three frigates and a razee, who, though somewhat slower sailers, would get up before she could be taken. --

TITLE: To Marquis de Lafayette.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 424.
EDITION: Ford ed., ix, 508.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1815

I am glad we closed our war with the eclat of the action at New Orleans. --

TITLE: To Marquis Lafayette.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 427.
EDITION: Ford ed., ix, 510.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1815

Peace was indeed desirable; yet it would not have been as welcome without the successes of New Orleans. These last have established truths too important not to be valued; that the people of Louisiana are sincerely attached to the Union; that their city can be defended; that the Western States make its defence their peculiar concern; that the militia are brave; that their deadly aim countervails the manœuvring skill of the enemy; that we have officers of natural genius now starting forward from the mass; and that putting together all our conflicts, we can beat the British by sea and by land, with equal numbers. --

TITLE: To General Dearborn.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 450.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1815

The affair of New Orleans was fraught with useful lessons to ourselves, our enemies, and our friends, and will powerfully influence our future relations with the nations of Europe. It will show them we mean to take no part in their wars, and count no odds when engaged in our own. --

TITLE: To President Madison.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 453.
EDITION: Ford ed., ix, 512.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1815

It may be thought that useless blood was spilt at New Orleans, after the treaty of peace had been actually signed. I think it had many valuable uses. It proved the fidelity of the Orleanese to the United States. It proved that New Orleans can be defended both by land and water; that the Western country will fly to its relief (of which ourselves had doubted before); that our militia are heroes when they have heroes to lead them on; and that, when unembarrassed by field evolutions, which they do not understand, their skill in the fire-arm, and deadly aim, give them advantage over regulars. --

TITLE: To W. H. Crawford.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 420.
EDITION: Ford ed., ix, 504.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1815
See Federalists.

A truth now and then projecting into the ocean of newspaper lies, serves like headlands to correct our course. Indeed, my scepticism as to everything I see in a newspaper, makes me indifferent whether I ever see one. --

TITLE: To James Monroe.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 407.
EDITION: Ford ed., ix, 4