The very actions [on] which Mr. Pickering arraigns [me] have been such as the great majority of my fellow citizens have approved. The approbation of Mr. Pickering, and of those who thought with him [the Federalists] , I had no right to expect. --

TITLE: To Martin VanBuren.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 363.
EDITION: Ford ed., x, 306.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1824

If no action is to be deemed virtuous for which malice can imagine a sinister motive, then there never was a virtuous action; no, not even in the life of our Saviour Himself. But He has taught us to judge the tree by its fruit, and to leave motives to Him who can alone see into them. --

TITLE: To Martin Van Buren.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 363.
EDITION: Ford ed., x, 307
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1824

Fortune had disjointed our first affections, and placed us in opposition in every point. This separated us for awhile. But on the first intimation through a friend, we re-embraced with cordiality, recalled our ancient feelings and dispositions, and everything was forgotten but our first sympathies. -- I bear ill-will to no human being. --

TITLE: To James Monroe.
EDITION: Ford ed., x, 298.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1824

Your affectionate mother requests that I would address to you, as a namesake, something which might have a favorable influence on the course of life you have to run. Few words are necessary, with good dispositions on your part. Adore God; reverence and cherish your parents; love your neighbor as yourself, and your country more than life. Be just; be true; murmur not at the ways of Providence -- and the life into which you may have entered will be one of eternal and ineffable bliss. And if to the dead it is permitted to care for the things of this world, every action of your life will be under my regard. Farewell. --

TITLE: To Thomas Jefferson Grotjan.
EDITION: Ford ed., x, 287.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1824

Far from arrogating the office of advice, no one will more passively acquiesce in it than myself. --

TITLE: To John H. Pleasants.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 346.
EDITION: Ford ed., x, 304.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1824

I resign myself cheerfully to the managers of the ship, and the more

TITLE: To Edward Livingston.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 342.
EDITION: Ford ed., x, 300.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1824

The authority of the people is a necessary foundation for a constitution. --

TITLE: To John H. Pleasants.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 345.
EDITION: Ford ed., x, 302.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1824

It is a dangerous lesson to say to the people “whenever your functionaries exercise unlawful authority over you, if you do not go into actual resistance, it will be deemed acquiescence and confirmation.” How long had we acquiesced under usurpations of the British parliament? Had that confirmed them in right, and made our Revolution a wrong? Besides no authority has yet decided whether this resistance must be instantaneous: when the right to resist ceases, or whether it has yet ceased? --

TITLE: To John Hambden Pleasants.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 345.
EDITION: Ford ed., x, 302.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1824

Barbarism [* * *] will in time, I trust, disappear from the earth. --

TITLE: To William Ludlow.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 377.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1824

I hope a crusade will be kept up against the duty on books until those

TITLE: To Jared Sparks.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 335.
EDITION: Ford ed., X, 293.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1824

After the severe chastisement given by Mr. Walsh in his American Register to English scribblers, which they well deserved, and I was delighted to see, I hoped there would be an end of this intercrimination, and that both parties would prefer the course of courtesy and conciliation, and I think their considerate writers have since shown that disposition, and that it would prevail if equally cultivated by us. Europe is doing us full justice; why then detract from her? --

TITLE: To Charles Jared Ingersoll.
EDITION: Ford ed., x, 325.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1824

Lord Bottetourt was an honourable man.

TITLE: Conversation with Daniel Webster.
EDITION: Ford ed., x, 330.
PLACE: [none given]
DATE: 1824

My rule of life has been never to harass the public with fendings and provings of personal slanders. [* * *] I have ever trusted to the justice and consideration of my fellow citizens, and have no reason to repent it, or to change my course. --

TITLE: To Martin Van Buren.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 372.
EDITION: Ford ed., x, 315.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1824

Of the two questions of the tariff and public improvements, the former, perhaps, is not yet at rest, and the latter will excite boisterous discussions. It happens that both these measures fall in with the western interests, and it is their secession from the agricultural States which gives such strength to the manufacturing and consolidating parties, on these two questions. The latter is the most dreaded, because thought to amount to a determination in the Federal government to assume all powers non-enumerated as well as enumerated in the Constitution, and by giving a loose to construction, make the text say whatever will relieve them from the bridle of the States. These are difficulties for your day; I shall give them the slip. --

TITLE: To Richard Rush.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 380.
EDITION: Ford ed., x, 322.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1824

The idea which you present of the progress of society from its rudest state to that it has now attained, seems conformable to what May be probably conjectured. Indeed, we have under our eyes tolerable proofs of it. Let a philosophic observer commence a journey from the savages of the Rocky Mountains, eastwardly to our seacoast. These he would observe in the earliest stages of association living under no law but that of nature, subsisting and covering themselves with the flesh and skins of wild beasts. He would next find those on our frontiers in the pastoral state, raising domestic animals to supply the defects of hunting. Then succeed our semi-barbarous citizens, the pioneers of the advance of civilization, and so in his progress he would meet the gradual shades of improving man until he would reach his, as yet, most improved state in our seaport towns. This, in fact, is equivalent to a survey, in time, of the progress of man from the infancy of creation to the present day. I am eighty-one years of age, born where I now live, in the first range of mountains in the interior of our country. And I have observed this march of civilization advancing from the sea coast, passing over us like a cloud of light, increasing our knowledge and improving our condition, insomuch as that we are at this time more advanced in civilization here than the seaports were when I was a boy. And where this progress will stop no one can say. Barbarism has, in the meantime, been receding before the steady step of amelioration; and will in time, I trust, disappear from the earth. You seem to think that this advance has brought on us too complicated a state of society, and that we should gain in happiness by treading back our steps a little way. I think, myself, that we have more machinery of government than is necessary, too many parasites living on the labor of the industrious. I believe it might be much simplified to the relief of those who maintain it. Your experiment seems to have this in view. A society of seventy

TITLE: To William Ludlow.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 377.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1824

-- I thank you for your pamphlet on the climate of the west, and have read it with great satisfaction. Although it does not yet establish a satisfactory theory, it is an additional step towards it. Mine was perhaps the first attempt, not to form a theory, but to bring together the few facts then known, and suggest them to public attention. They were written between forty and fifty years ago, before the close of the Revolutionary war, when the western country was a wilderness, untrodden but by the foot of the savage or the hunter. It is now flourishing in population and science, and after a few years more of observation and collection of facts, they will doubtless furnish a theory of solid foundation. Years are requisite for this, steady attention to the thermometer, to the plants growing there, the times of their leafing and flowering, its animal inhabitants, beasts, birds, reptiles, and insects; its prevalent winds, quantities or rain and snow. temperature of fountains, and other indexes of climate. We want this indeed for all the [Col 2] States, and the work should be repeated once or twice in a century, to show the effect of clearing and culture towards changes of climate. My Notes give a very imperfect idea of what our climate was, half a century ago, at this place [Monticello] , which being nearly central to the State may be taken for its medium. Latterly, after seven years of close and exact observation, I have prepared an estimate of what it is now, which may some day be added to the former work; and I hope something like this is doing in the other States, which, when all shall be brought together, may produce theories meriting confidence. --

TITLE: To Lewis M. Beck.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 375.
PLACE: [none given]
DATE: 1824

In the disposition of these unfortunate people, there are two rational objects to be distinctly kept in view. First. The establishment of a colony on the coast of Africa, which may introduce among the aborigines the arts of cultivated life and the blessings of civilization and science. By doing this, we may make to them some retribution for [Col 2] the long course of injuries we have been committing on their population. And considering that these blessings will descend to the “nati natorum et qui nascentur ab illis”, we shall in the long run have rendered them perhaps more good than evil. To fulfil this object, the colony of Sierra Leone promises well, and that of Mesurado adds to our prospect of success. Under this view the Colonization Society is to be considered as a missionary society, having in view, however, objects more humane, more justifiable, and less aggressive on the peace of other nations than the others of that appellation. The second object, and the most interesting to us, as coming home to our physical and moral characters, to our happiness and safety, is to provide an asylum to which we can, by degrees, send the whole of that population from among us, and establish them under our patronage and protection, as a separate, free and independent people, in some country and climate friendly to human life and happiness. That any place on the coast of Africa should answer the latter purpose, I have ever deemed entirely impossible. And without repeating the other arguments which have been urged by others, I will appeal to figures only, which admit no controversy. ⁸⁵ --

TITLE: To Jared Sparks.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 332.
EDITION: Ford ed., x, 290.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1824

There is, I think, a way in which [the removal of the slaves to another country] can be done; that is by emancipating the after-born, leaving them, on due compensation, with their mothers, until their services are worth their maintenance. and then putting them to industrious occupations until a proper age for deportation. This was the result of my reflections on the subject five and forty years ago, and I have never yet been able to conceive any other practicable plan. It was sketched in the “Notes on Virginia”. The estimated value of the new-born infant is so low (say twelve dollars and fifty cents) that it would probably be yielded by the owner gratis, and would thus reduce the six hundred millions of dollars, the first head of expense, to thirty-seven millions and a half; leaving only the expenses of nourishment while with the mother, and of transportation. --

TITLE: To Jared Sparks.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 333.
EDITION: Ford ed., x, 291.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1824

From what fund are these expenses to be furnished? Why not from that of the lands which have been ceded by the very States now needing this relief? And ceded on no consideration, for the most part, but that of the general good of the whole. These cessions already constitute one-fourth of the States of the Union. It may be said

TITLE: To Jared Sparks.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 334.
EDITION: Ford ed., x, 291.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1824

In the plan sketched in the “Notes on Virginia”, no particular place of asylum was specified; because it was thought possible that in the revolutionary state of America, then commenced, events might open to us some one within practicable distance. This has now happened. Santo Domingo has become independent, and with a population of that color only; and if the public papers are to be credited, their Chief offers to pay their passage, to receive them as free citizens, and to provide them employment. This leaves, then, for the general confederacy, no expense but that of nurture with the mother for a few years, and would call, of course, for a very moderate appropriation of the vacant lands. [* * *] In this way no violation of private right is proposed. --

TITLE: To Jared Sparks.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 334.
EDITION: Ford ed., x, 292.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1824
See Colony, Slaves.

I was glad to find in your book a formal contradiction of the judiciary usurpation of legislative powers; for such the judges have usurped in their repeated decisions, that Christianity is a part of the common law. The proof of the contrary, which you have adduced, is incontrovertible; to wit, that the common law existed while the Anglo-Saxons were yet Pagans, at a time when they had never heard the name of Christ pronounced, or knew that such a character had ever existed. But it may amuse you, to show when, and by what means, they stole this law in upon us. In a case of quare impedit in the Year Book 34, H. 6, folio 38 (anno 1458.) a question was made, how far the ecclesiastical law was to be respected in a common law court? And Prisot, Chief Justice, gives his opinion in these words: “A tiel leis qu'ils de seint eglise ont en ancien scripture, covient à nous à donner credence; car ceo common ley sur quels touts manners leis sont fondés. Et auxy, Sir, nous sumus oblègés de conustre lour ley de saint eglisse; et semblablement its sont obligés de consustre nostre ley. Et, Sir, si poit apperer or à nous que l'evesque ad fait come un ordinary fera en tiel cas, adong nous devons cee adjuger bon, ou auterment nemy,” æc. See S. C. Fitzh. Abr. Qu. imp. 89, Bro. Abr. Qu. imp. 12. Finch in his first book c. 3, is the first afterwards who quotes this case and mistakes it thus: “To such laws of the church as have warrant in holy scripture, our law giveth credence.” And cites Prisot; mistranslating “ancien scripture, ” into “holy scripture.” Whereas Prisot palpably says, “to such laws as those of holy church have in ancient writing, it is proper for us to give credence,” to wit, to their ancient written laws. This was in 1613, a century and a half after the dictum of Prisot. Wingate, in 1658, erects this false translation into a maxim of the common law, copying the words of Finch, but citing Prisot, Wing. Max. 3. And Sheppard, title, “Religion,” in 1675, copies the same mistranslation, quoting the Y. B. Finch and Wingate. Hale expresses it in these words: “Christianity is parcel of the laws of England.” 1 Ventr. 293, 3 Keb. 607. But he quotes no authority. By these echoings and re-echoings from one to another, it had become so established in 1728, that in the case of the King vs. Woolston, 2 Stra. 834, the court would not suffer it to be debated, whether to write against Christianity was punishable in the temporal court at common law? Wood, therefore, 409, ventures still to vary the phrase, and say, that all blasphemy and profaneness are offences by the common law; and cites 2 Stra. Then Blackstone, in 1763, iv. 59, repeats the words of Hale, that “Christianity is part of the laws of England,” citing Ventris and Strange. And finally, Lord Mansfield, with a little qualification, in Evans' case, in 1767, says, that “the essential principles of revealed religion are part of the common law.” Thus ingulphing Bible, Testament and all into the common law, without citing any authority. And thus we find this chain of authorities, hanging link by link, one [Col 2] upon another, and all ultimately on one and the same hook, and that a mistranslation of the words “ancien scripture,” used by Prisot. Finch quotes Prisot; Wingate does the same. Sheppard quotes Prisot, Finch and Wingate. Hale cites nobody. The court in Woolston's case, cites Hale. Wood cites Woolston's case. Blackstone quotes Woolston's case and Hale. And Lord Mansfield, like Hale, ventures it on his own authority. Here I might defy the best-read lawyer to produce another scrip of authority for this judiciary forgery; and I might go on further to show, how some of the Anglo-Saxon priests interpolated into the text of Alfred's laws, the 20th, 21st, 22d, and 23d chapters of Exodus, and the 15th, of the Acts of the Apostles, from the 23d to the 29th verses. But this would lead my pen and your patience too far. What a conspiracy this between Church and State! --

TITLE: To John Cartwright.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 359.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1824

Those who read Prisot's opinion with a candid view to understand and not to chicane it, cannot mistake its meaning. The reports in the Year-Books were taken very short. The opinions of the judges were written down sententiously, as notes or memoranda, and not with all the development which they probably used in developing them. Prisot's opinion, to be fully expressed, should be thus paraphrased: “To such laws as those holy church have recorded, and preserved in their ancient books and writings, it is proper for us to give credence; for so is, or so says the Common Law, or law of the land, on which all manner of other laws rest for their authority, or are founded; that is to say, the Common Law, or the law of the land common to us all, and established by the authority of us all, is that from which is derived the authority of all other special and subordinate branches of law, such as the canon law, law merchant, law maritime, law of gavelkind, Borough English, corporation laws, local customs and usages, to all of which the common law requires its judges to permit authority in the special or local cases belonging to them. The evidence of these laws is preserved in their ancient treatises, books and writings, in like manner as our common law itself is known, the text of its original enactments having been long lost, and its substance only preserved in ancient and traditionary writings. And if it appears, from their ancient books, writings and records, that the bishop, in this case, according to the rules prescribed by these authorities, has done what an ordinary would have done in such case, then we should adjudge it good, otherwise not.” To decide this question, they would have to turn to the ancient writings and records of the canon law, in which they would find evidence of the laws of advowsons, quare impedit, the duties of bishops and ordinaries, for which terms Prisot could never have meant to refer them to the Old or New Testament, les saincts scriptures, where surely they would not be found. A license which should permit “ancien scrip

TITLE: To Edward Everett.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 381.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1824

The term “common law,” although it has more than one meaning, is perfectly definite, secundum subjectam materiem. Its most probable origin was on the conquest of the Heptarchy by Alfred, and the amalgamation of their several codes of law into one, which became common to them all. The authentic text of these enactments has not been preserved; but their substance has been committed to many ancient books and writings, so faithfully as to have been deemed genuine from generation to generation, and obeyed as such by all. We have some fragments of them collected by Lambard, Wilkins and others, but abounding with proofs of their spurious authenticity. Magna Charta is the earliest statute, the text of which has come down to us in an authentic form, and thence downward we have them entire. We do not know exactly when the common law and statute law, the lex scripta et non scripta, began to be contra-distinguished, so as to give a second acceptation to the former term; whether before, or after Prisot's day, at which time we know that nearly two centuries and a half of statutes were in preservation. In later times, on the introduction of the chancery branch of law, the term common law began to be used in a third sense as the correlative of chancery law. --

TITLE: To Edward Everett.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 382.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1824

A government held together by the bands of reason only, requires much compromise of opinion; that things even salutary should not be crammed down the throats of dissenting brethren, especially when they may be put into a form to be willingly swallowed, and that a great deal of indulgence is necessary to strengthen habits of harmony and fraternity. --

TITLE: To Edward Livingston.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 343.
EDITION: Ford ed., x, 301.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1824

Those who formerly usurped the name of federalists, which in fact, they never were, have now openly abandoned it, and are as openly marching by the road of construction, in a direct line to that consolidation which was always their real object. They, almost to a man, are in possession of one branch of the government, and appear to be very strong in yours. The three great questions of amendment now before you, will give the measure of their strength. I mean, 1st, the limitation of the term of the Presidential service; 2nd, the placing the choice of President effectually in the hands of the people; 3rd, the giving to Congress the power of internal improvement, on condition that each State's federal proportion of the moneys so expended shall be employed within the State. The friends of consolidation would rather take these powers by construction than accept them by direct investiture of the States. Yet, as to internal improvement particularly, there is probably not a State in the Union which would not grant the power on the condition proposed, or which would grant it without that. [* * *] If I can see these three great amendments prevail, I shall consider it as a renewed extension of the term of our lease, shall live in more confidence and die in more hope. --

TITLE: To Robert J. Garnett.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 336.
EDITION: Ford ed., x, 294.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: Feb. 1824

The real friends of the Constitution in its federal form, if they wish it to be immortal, should be attentive, by amendments, to make it keep pace with the advance of the age in science and experience. Instead of this, the European governments [Col 2] have resisted reformation, until the people, seeing no other resource, undertake it themselves by force, their only weapon, and work it out through blood, desolation and long-continued anarchy. Here it will be by large fragments breaking off, and refusing reunion, but on condition of amendment, or perhaps permanently. --

TITLE: To Robert J. Garnett.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 336.
EDITION: Ford ed., x, 295.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1824

I think your book has deduced the constitution of the English nation from its rightful root, the Anglo-Saxon. It is really wonderful that so many able and learned men should have failed in their attempts to define it with correctness. No wonder, then, that [Thomas] Paine, who thought more than he read, should have credited the great authorities who have declared, that the will of parliament is the constitution of England. So Marbois, before the French Revolution, observed to me, that the Almanac Royal was the constitution of France. Your derivation of it from the Anglo-Saxons, seems to be made on legitimate principles. Having driven out the former inhabitants of that part of the island called England, they become aborigines as to you, and your lineal ancestors. They, doubtless, had a constitution; and although they have not left it in a written formula, to the precise text of which you may always appeal, yet they have left fragments of their history and laws, from which it may be inferred with considerable certainty. What ever their history and laws show to have been practiced with approbation, we may presume was permitted by their constitution; whatever was not so practiced, was not permitted. And, although this constitution was violated and set at naught by Norman force, yet force cannot change right. A perpetual claim was kept up by the nation, by their perpetual demand of a restoration of their Saxon laws; which shows they were never relinquished by the will of the nation. In the pullings and haulings for these ancient rights, between the nation, and its kings of the races of Plantagenets, Tudors and Stuarts, there was sometimes gain, and sometimes loss, until the final re-conquest of their rights from the Stuarts. The destitution and expulsion of this race broke the thread [Col 2] of pretended inheritance, extinguished all regal usurpations, and the nation reentered into all its rights; and although in their Bill of Rights they specifically reclaimed some only, yet the omission of the others was no renunciation of the right to assume their exercise also, whenever occasion should occur. The new King received no rights or powers, but those expressly granted to him. It has ever appeared to me, that the difference between the whig and the tory of England is, that the whig deduces his rights from the Anglo-Saxon source and the tory from the Norman. And Hume, the great apostle of toryism, says, in so many words (note AA to chapter 42), that, in the reign of the Stuarts, “it was the people who encroached upon the sovereign, not the sovereign who attempted, as is pretended, to usurp upon the people.” This supposes the Norman usurpations to be rights in his successors. And again (C. 159), “the commons established a principle, which is noble in itself, and seems specious, but is belied by all history and experience, that the people are the origin of all just power.” And where else will this degenerate son of science, this traitor to his fellow men, find the origin of just powers, if not in the majority of the society? Will it be in the minority? Or in an individual of that minority? Our Revolution commenced on more favorable ground. It presented us an album on which we were to write what we pleased. We had no occasion to search into musty records, to hunt up royal parchments, or to investigate the laws and institutions of a semi-barbarous ancestry. We appealed to those of nature, and found them engraved on our hearts. Yet, we did not avail ourselves of all the advantages of our position. We had never been permitted to exercise self-government. When forced to assume it, we were novices in its science. Its principles and forms had entered little into our former education. We established some, although not all its important principles. --

TITLE: To John Cartwright.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 355.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1824

Our Revolution [* * *] presented us an album on which we were free to write what we pleased. [* * *] Yet we did not avail ourselves of all the advantages of our position. We had never been permitted to exercise self-government. When forced to assume it, we were novices in its science. Its principles and forms had entered little into our former education. We established, however, some although not all its important principles. The constitutions of most of our States assert that all power is inherent in the people; that they may exercise it by themselves, in all cases to which they think themselves competent (as in electing their functionaries executive and legislative, and deciding by a jury of themselves, in all judiciary cases in which any fact is involved), or they may act by representatives, freely and equally chosen; that it is their right and duty to be at all times armed; that they are entitled to freedom of person, freedom of religion, freedom of property, and freedom of the press. In the structure of our legislatures, we think experience has proved the benefit of subjecting questions to two separate bodies of deliberants; but in constituting these natural right has been mistaken, some making one of these bodies, and some both, the representatives of property instead of persons; whereas the double deliberation might be as well obtained without any violation of true principle, either by requiring a greater age in one of the bodies, or by electing a proper number of representatives of persons, dividing them by lots into two chambers, and renewing the division at frequent intervals, in order to break up all cabals. --

TITLE: To John Cartwright.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 356.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1824

Virginia was not only the first of the American States, but the first

TITLE: To John Hambden Pleasants.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 344.
EDITION: Ford ed., x, 302.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1824

Virginia was not only the first of the States, but, I believe I May say, the first of the nations of the earth, which assembled its wise men peaceably together to form a fundamental constitution, to commit it to writing, and place it among their archives, where everyone should be free to appeal to its text. But this act was very imperfect. The other States, as they proceeded successively to the same work, made successive improvements: and several of them, still further corrected by experience, have, by conventions, still further amended their first forms. Virginia has gone on so far with its premiere ebauche; but is now proposing a convention for amendment. --

TITLE: To John Cartwright.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 357.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1824

To our convention no special authority had been delegated by the people to form a permanent Constitution, over which their successors in legislation should have no powers of alteration. They had been elected for the ordinary purposes of legislation only, and at a time when the establishment of a new government had not been proposed or contemplated. Although, therefore, they gave to this act the title of a constitution, yet it could be no more than an act of legislation, subject, as their other acts were, to alteration by their successors. --

TITLE: To John Hambden Pleasants.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 344.
EDITION: Ford ed., x, 302.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1824

A baseless and malicious attack on Mr. Crawford has produced from him so clear, so incontrovertible, and so temperate a justification of himself as to have added much to the strength of his interest: The question will ultimately be, as I suggested in a former letter to you, between Crawford and Adams, with this in favor of Crawford that, although many States have a different first favorite, he is the second with nearly all, and that if it goes into the Legislature he will surely be elected. --

TITLE: To Richard Rush.
EDITION: Ford ed., x, 305.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: June. 1824

Rights and powers can only belong to per [Col 2] sons, not to things, not to mere matter, unendowed with will. The dead are not even things. The particles of matter which composed their bodies make part now of the bodies of other animals, vegetables, or minerals, of a thousand forms. To what, then, are attached the rights and powers they held while in the form of men? A generation May bind itself as long as its majority continues in life; when that has disappeared, another majority is in place, holds all the rights and powers their predecessors once held, and May change their laws and institutions to suit themselves. --

TITLE: To John Cartwright,
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 359.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1824
See Earth.

The Declaration of Independence was written in a house on the north side of Chestnut Street, Philadelphia, between Third and Fourth, not a corner house. Heiskell's tavern, which has been pointed out as the house, is not the true one. --

TITLE: From Daniel Webster's Conversation with Jefferson.
EDITION: Ford ed., x, 327.
PLACE: [none given]
DATE: 1824

The appellation of aristocrats and democrats is the true one expressing the essence of all [political parties] . --

TITLE: To H. Lee.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 376.
EDITION: Ford ed., x, 318.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1824

I received a letter from some friend of yours who chose to be anonymous, suggesting that your situation might be bettered, and the government advantaged by availing itself of your services in some line. I immediately wrote to a friend whose situation enabled him to attend to this. I have received no answer but hope it is kept in view. I am long since withdrawn from the political world, think little, read less, and know all but nothing of what is going on; but I have not forgotten the past, nor those who were fellow laborers in the gloomy hours of federal ascendency when the spirit of republicanism was beaten down, its votaries arraigned as criminals, and such threats denounced as posterity would never believe. [Col 2] My means of service are slender; but such as they are, if you can make them useful to you in any solicitation, they shall be sincerely employed. --

TITLE: To William Duane.
EDITION: Ford ed., x, 276.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1824

The eclat of Lafayette's visit has almost merged the Presidential question on which nothing scarcely is said in our papers. That question will lie ultimately between Crawford and Adams; but, at the same time, the vote of the people will be so distracted by subordinate candidates, that possibly they may make no election, and let it go to the House of Representatives. There, it is thought, Crawford's chance is best. --

TITLE: To Richard Rush.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 380.
EDITION: Ford ed., x, 322.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: Oct. 1824

In the Presidential election I am entirely passive. [* * *] Both favorites are republican, both will administer the government honestly. --

TITLE: To Thomas Leiper.
EDITION: Ford ed., x, 299.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1824

The basis of our [Virginia] Constitution is in opposition to the principle of equal political rights, refusing to all but freeholders any participation in the natural right of self-government. [* * *] However nature May by mental or physical disqualifications have marked infants and the weaker sex for the protection rather than the direction of government, yet among the men who either pay or fight for their country, no line of right can be drawn. --

TITLE: To John Hambden Pleasants.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 345.
EDITION: Ford ed., x, 303.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1824

I consider ethics, as well as religion, as supplements to law in the government of man. --

TITLE: To Mr. Woodward.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 339.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1824

The best general key for the solution of questions of power between our governments, is the fact that “every foreign and federal power is given to the Federal Government, and to the States every power purely domestic.” I recollect but one instance of control vested in the Federal, over the State authorities, in a matter purely domestic, which is that of metallic tenders. The Federal is, in truth, our foreign government, which department alone is taken from the sovereignty of the separate States. --

TITLE: To Robert J. Garnett.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 336.
EDITION: Ford ed., x, 295.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1824

The radical idea of the character of the Constitution of our government, which I have adopted as a key in cases of doubtful construction, is, that the whole field of government is divided into two departments, domestic and foreign (the States in their mutual relations being of the latter); that the former department is reserved exclusively to the respective States within their own limits, and the latter assigned to a separate set of functionaries, constituting what may be called the foreign branch, which, instead of a federal basis, is established as a distinct government quoad hoc, acting as the domestic branch does on the citizens directly and coercively; that these departments have distinct directories, coordinate and equally independent and supreme, each in its own sphere of action. Whenever a doubt arises to which of these branches a power belongs, I try it by this test. I recollect no case where a question simply between citizens of the same State, has been transferred to the foreign [Col 2] department, except that of inhibiting tenders but of metallic money, and ex post facto legislation. --

TITLE: To Edward Livingston.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 342.
EDITION: Ford ed., x, 300.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1824

With respect to our State and Federal governments, I do not think their relations correctly understood by foreigners. ¹⁸⁹ They generally suppose the former subordinate to the latter. But this is not the case. They are coordinate departments of one simple and integral whole. To the State governments are reserved all legislation and administration, in affairs which concern their own citizens only, and to the Federal Government is given whatever concerns foreigners, or the citizens of other States; these functions alone being made Federal. The one is the domestic, the other the foreign branch of the same government; neither having control over the other, but within its own department. There are one or two exceptions only to this partition of power. --

TITLE: To John Cartwright.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 358.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1824

Force cannot change right. --

TITLE: To John Cartwright.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 355.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1824

Difference of opinion was never, with me, a motive of separation from a friend. In the trying times of Federalism, I never left a friend. Many left me, have since returned and been received with open arms. --

TITLE: To President Monroe.
EDITION: Ford ed., x, 298.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1824

Your age of eighty-four and mine of eighty-one years insure us a speedy meeting. We may then commune at leisure, and more fully, on the good and evil which, in the course of our long lives, we have both witnessed. --

TITLE: To John Cartwright.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 361.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1824

Can one generation bind another, and all others, in succession forever? I think not. The Creator has made the earth for the living, not the dead. Rights and

TITLE: To John Cartwright.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 359.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1824

I willingly acquiesce in the institutions of my country, perfect or imperfect; and think it a duty to leave their [Col 2] modifications to those who are to live under them, and are to participate of the good or evil they may produce. The present generation has the same right of self-government which the past one has exercised for itself. --

TITLE: To John H. Pleasants.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 346.
EDITION: Ford ed., x, 303.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1824

I think, myself, that we have more machinery of government than is necessary, too many parasites living on the labor of the industrious. I believe it might be much simplified to the relief of those who maintain it. --

TITLE: To William Ludlow.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 378.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1824

Although I decline all newspaper controversy, yet when falsehoods have been advanced, within the knowledge of no one so much as myself, I have sometimes deposited a contradiction in the hands of a friend, which, if worth preservation, may, when I am no more, nor those whom I might offend, throw light on history, and recall that into the path of truth. --

TITLE: To Martin Van Buren.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 372.
EDITION: Ford ed., x, 315.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1824

With respect to the European combinations against the rights of man, I join an honest Irishman of my neighborhood in his Fourth of July toast: “The Holy Alliance, -- to Hell the whole of them.” --

TITLE: To Thomas Leiper.
EDITION: Ford ed., x, 298.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1824

When we consider the extensive and deep-seated opposition to this assumption [power of Internal Improvements] , the conviction entertained by so many, that this deduction of powers by elaborate construction prostrates the rights reserved to the States, the difficulties with which it will rub along in the course of its exercise; that changes of majorities will be changing the system backwards and forwards, so that no undertaking under it will be safe; that there is not a State in the Union which would not give the power willingly, by way of amendment, with some little guard, perhaps, against abuse; I cannot but think it would be the wisest course to ask an express grant of the powers. [* * *] This would render its exercise smooth and acceptable to all and insure to it all the facilities which the States could contribute, to prevent that kind of abuse which all will fear, because all know it is so much practiced in public bodies, I mean the bartering of votes. It would reconcile everyone, if limited by the proviso, that the federal proportion of each State should be expended within the State. With this single security against partiality and corrupt bargaining, I suppose there is not a State, perhaps not a man in the Union, who would not consent to add this to the powers of the General Government. --

TITLE: To Edward Livingston.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 343.
EDITION: Ford ed., x, 300.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1824

I feel much alarmed at the prospect of seeing General Jackson President. He is one of the most unfit men I know of for such a place. He has had very little respect for laws or constitutions, and is, in fact, an able military chief. His passions are terrible. When I was President of the Senate he was a Senator; and he could never speak on account of the rashness of his feelings. I have seen him attempt it repeatedly, and as often choke with rage. His passions are no doubt cooler now; he has been much tried since I knew him, but he is a dangerous man. --

TITLE: Daniel Webster's Interview with Jefferson.
EDITION: Ford ed., x, 331.
PLACE: [none given]
DATE: 1824

A threatening cloud has very suddenly darkened [General Jackson's] horizon. A letter has become public, written by him when Colonel Monroe first came into office, advising him to make up his administration without regard to party. (No suspicion has been entertained of any indecision in his political principles, and this evidence of it threatens a revolution of opinion respecting him. ²⁵³ ) The solid republicanism of Pennsylvania, his principal support, is thrown into great fermentation by

TITLE: To Richard Rush.
EDITION: Ford ed., x, 304.
PLACE: [none given]
DATE: 1824

I think we have more machinery of government than is necessary, too many parasites living on the [Col 2] labor of the industrious. --

TITLE: To William Ludlow.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 378.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1824
See Economy.

Of him we may truly say, as was said of Germanicus, “fruitur famâ sui”. --

TITLE: To Edward Everett.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 381.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1824

I hope Congress is prepared to go through with their compliment [to Lafayette] worthily; that they do not mean to invite him merely to dine; that provision should be made for his expenses here, which you know he cannot afford, and that they will not send him back empty-handed. This would place us under indelible disgrace in Europe. Some three or four good townships in Missouri, or Louisiana or Alabama, &c., should be in readiness for him, and may restore his family to the opulence which his virtues have lost to them. --

TITLE: To President Monroe.
EDITION: Ford ed., x, 294.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1824

I joy, my friends, in your joy, inspired by the visit of this our ancient and distinguished leader and benefactor. His deeds in the War of Independence you have heard and read. They are known to you and embalmed in your memories and in the pages of faithful history. His deeds in the peace which followed that war, are perhaps not known to you; but I can attest them. When I was stationed in his country, for the purpose of cementing its friendship with ours and of advancing our mutual interests, this friend of both was my most powerful auxiliary and advocate. He made our cause his own, as in truth it was that of his native country also. His influence and connections there were great. All doors of all departments were open to him at all times; to me only formally and at appointed times. In truth I only held the nail, he drove it. Honor him, then, as your benefactor in peace as well as in war. --

TITLE: Speech at Charlottesville Dinner.
EDITION: D. L. J. 391.
PLACE: [none given]
DATE: 1824

What a history have we to run over from the evening that yourself, Monsieur Berman, and other patriots settled, in my house in Paris, the outlines of the constitution you wished! And to trace it through all the disastrous chapters of Robespierre, Barras, Bonaparte, and the Bourbons! These things, however, are for our meeting. --

TITLE: To Marquis de Lafayette.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 378.
EDITION: Ford ed., x, 320.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1824

I have received [* * *] your letter [* * *] giving the welcome assurance that you will visit the neighborhood which, during the march of our enemy near it, was covered by his shield from his robberies and ravages. In passing the line of your former march you will experience pleasing recollections of the good you have done. My neighbors of our academical village have expressed to you [* * *] their hope that you will accept manifestations of their feelings, simple indeed, but as cordial as any you will have received. It will be an additional honor to the University of the State that you will have been its first guest. --

TITLE: To Marquis de Lafayette.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 378.
EDITION: Ford ed., x, 320.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1824

You will have seen by our papers the delirium into which our citizens are thrown by a visit from General Lafayette. He is making a triumphant progress through the States, from town to town, with acclamations of welcome, such as no crowned head ever received. It will have a good effect in favor of the General with the people in Europe, but probably a different one with their sovereigns. Its effect here, too, will be salutary as to ourselves, by rallying us together and strengthening the habit of considering our country as one and indivisible, and I hope we shall close it with something more solid for him than dinners and balls. The eclat of this visit has almost merged the presidential question, on which nothing scarcely is said in our papers. --

TITLE: To Richard Rush.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 380.
EDITION: Ford ed., x, 322.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: Oct. 1824

I recollect no case where a question simply between citizens of the same State, has been transferred to the foreign department, except that of inhibiting tenders but of metallic money, and ex post facto legislation. --

TITLE: To Edward Livingston.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 342.
EDITION: Ford ed., x, 300.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1824 ²⁹⁴

In the structure of our legislatures, we think experience has proved the benefit of subjecting questions to two separate bodies of deliberants; but in constituting these, natural right has been mistaken, some making one of these bodies, and some both, the representatives of property instead of persons; whereas the double deliberation might be as well obtained without any violation of true principle, either by requiring a greater age in one of the bodies, or by electing a proper number of representatives of persons, dividing them by lots into two chambers, and renewing the division at frequent intervals, in order to break up all cabals. --

TITLE: To John Cartwright.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 357.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1824

I receive Mr. Livingston's question through you with kindness, and answer it without hesitation. He may be assured I have not a spark of unfriendly feeling towards him. In all the earlier scenes of life, we thought and acted together. We differed in opinion afterwards on a single point. Each maintained his opinion, as he had a right, and acted on it as he ought. But why brood over a single difference, and forget all our previous harmonies? --

TITLE: To President Monroe.
EDITION: Ford ed., x, 298.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1824

It was with great pleasure I learned that the good people of New Orleans had restored you again to the councils of our country. I did not doubt the aid it would bring to the remains of our old school in Congress, in which your early labors had been so useful. --

TITLE: To Edward Livingston.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 342.
EDITION: Ford ed., x, 299.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1824

A generation may bind itself as long as its majority continues in life; when that has disappeared, another majority is in place, holds all the rights and powers [Col 2] their predecessors once held, and may change their laws and institutions to suit themselves. --

TITLE: To John Cartwright.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 359.
PLACE: Monticello ,
DATE: 1824
See Generations.

The letter to Mazzei has been a precious theme of crimination for federal malice. It was a long letter of business in which was inserted a single paragraph only of political information as to the state of our country. In this information there was not one word which would not then have been, or would not now be approved by every republican in the United States, looking back to those times, as you will see by a faithful copy now enclosed of the whole of what that letter said on the subject of the United States, or of its government. This paragraph, extracted and translated, got into a Paris paper at a time when the persons in power there were laboring under very general disfavor, and their friends were eager to catch even at straws to buoy them up. To them, therefore, I have always imputed the interpolation of an entire paragraph additional to mine, which makes me charge my own country with ingratitude and injustice to France. There was not a word in my letter respecting France, or any of the proceedings or relations between this country and that. Yet this interpolated paragraph has been the burden of federal calumny, has been constantly quoted by them, made the subject of unceasing and virulent abuse, and is still quoted, [* * *] as if it were genuine, and really written by me. And even Judge Marshall makes history descend from its dignity, and the ermine from its sanctity, to exaggerate, to record and to sanction this forgery. In the very last note of his book [Life of Washington ] he says, “a letter from Mr. Jefferson to Mr. Mazzei, an Italian, was published in Florence, and republished in the Moniteur, with very severe strictures on the conduct of the United States”. And instead of the letter itself, he copies what he says are the remarks of the editor, which are an exaggerated commentary on the fabricated paragraph itself, and silently leaves to his reader to make the ready inference that these were the sentiments of the letter. Proof is the duty of the affirmative side. A negative cannot be positively proved. But, in defect of impossible proof of what was not in the original letter, I have its press-copy still in my possession. It has been shown to several and is open to anyone who wishes to see it. I have presumed only that the interpolation was done in Paris. But I never saw the letter in either its Italian or French dress, and it May have been done here, with the commentary handed down to posterity by the Judge. The genuine paragraph, retranslated through Italian and French into English, as it appeared here in a federal paper, besides the mutilated hue [Col 2] which these translations and retranslations of it produced generally, gave a mistranslation of a single word, which entirely perverted its meaning, and made it a pliant and fertile text of misrepresentation of my political principles. The original, speaking of an Anglican, monarchical and aristocratical party, which had sprung up since he had left us, states their object to be “to draw over us the substance, as they had already done the forms of the British Government”. Now the “forms” here meant, were the levees, birthdays, the pompous cavalcade to the State house on the meeting of Congress, the formal speech from the throne, the procession of Congress in a body to reecho the speech in an answer, &c., &c. But the translator here, by substituting form, in the singular number, for forms in the plural, made it mean the frame or organization of our government, or its form of legislative, executive and judiciary authorities, coordinate and independent; to which form it was to be inferred that I was an enemy. In this sense they always quoted it, and in this sense Mr. Pickering still quotes it and countenances the inference. --

TITLE: To Martin Van Buren.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 365.
EDITION: Ford ed., x, 308.
PLACE: [none given]
DATE: 1824

Hamilton frankly avowed that he considered the British constitution, with all the corruptions of its administration, as the most perfect model of government which had ever been devised by the wit of man; professing however, at the same time, that the spirit of this country was so fundamentally republican that it would be visionary to think of introducing monarchy here, and that, therefore, it was the duty of its administrators to conduct it on the principles their constituents had elected. --

TITLE: To Martin Van Buren.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 371.
EDITION: Ford ed., x, 314.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1824

When on my return from Europe, I joined the government in March, 1790, at New York, I was much astonished, indeed, at the mimicry I found established of royal forms and ceremonies, and more alarmed at the unexpected phenomenon, by the monarchical sentiments I heard expressed and openly maintained in every company, executive and judiciary ( General Washington alone excepted), and by a great part of the Legislature, save only some members who had been of the old Congress, and a very few of recent introduction. I took occasion, at various times, of expressing to General Washington my disappointment at these symptoms of a change of principle, and that I thought them encouraged by the forms and ceremonies which I found prevailing, not at all in character with the simplicity of republican government, and looking as if wishfully to those of European courts. His general explanations to me were, that when he arrived at New York to enter on the executive administration of the new government, he observed to those who were to assist him, that placed as he was in an office entirely new to him, unacquainted with the forms and ceremonies of other governments, still less apprised of those which might be properly established here, and himself perfectly indifferent to all forms, he wished them to consider and prescribe what they should be; and the task was assigned particularly to General Knox, a man of parade, and to Colonel Humphreys, who had resided sometime at a foreign court. They, he said, were the authors of the present regulations, and that others were proposed so highly

TITLE: To Martin Van Buren.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 367.
EDITION: Ford ed., x, 310.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1824

The forms which I had censured in my letter to Mazzei were perfectly understood by General Washington, and were those which he himself but barely tolerated. He had furnished me a proper occasion for proposing their reformation, and my opinion not prevailing, he knew I could not have meant any part of the censure for him. --

TITLE: To Martin Van Buren.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 368.
EDITION: Ford ed., x, 311.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1824

I know nothing more moral, more sublime, more worthy of your preservation than David's description of the good man, in 15th Psalm. --

TITLE: To Isaac Englebrecht.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 337.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1824

The appellation of aristocrats and democrats is the true one expressing the essence of all [parties] . --

TITLE: To H. Lee.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 376.
EDITION: Ford ed., x, 318.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1824

A paper which shall be governed by the spirit of Mr. Madison's celebrated report [on the Virginia Resolutions] cannot be false to the rights of all classes. --

TITLE: To H. Lee.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 376.
EDITION: Ford ed., x, 318.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1824

Difference of opinion was never, with me, a motive of separation from a friend. --

TITLE: To President Monroe.
EDITION: Ford ed., x, 298.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1824

I respect the right of free opinion too much to urge an uneasy pressure of [my own] opinion on [others] . Time and advancing science will ripen us all in its course, and reconcile all to wholesome and necessary changes. --

TITLE: To Samuel Kerchival.
EDITION: Ford ed., x, 320.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1824

In a republican nation, whose citizens are to be led by reason and persuasion, and not by force, the art of reasoning becomes of first importance. In this line antiquity has left us the finest models for imitation; and he who studies and imitates them most nearly, will nearest approach the perfection of the art. Among these I should consider the speeches of Livy, Sallust and Tacitus as preeminent specimens of logic, taste, and that sententious brevity which, using not a word to spare, leave not a moment for inattention to the hearer. Amplification is the vice of modern oratory. It is an insult to an assembly of reasonable men, disgusting and revolting instead of persuading. Speeches measured by the hour die with the hour. --

TITLE: To David Harding.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 347.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1824

Paine thought more than he read. --

TITLE: To John Cartwright.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 355.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1824

I think we have more machinery of government than is necessary, too many parasites living on the labor of the industrious. --

TITLE: To William Ludlow.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 378.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1824

[It is] an amalgamation of name but not of principle. Tories are tories still, by whatever name they may be called. --

TITLE: To Martin Van Buren.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 373.
EDITION: Ford ed., x, 316.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1824

I am no believer in the amalgamation of parties, nor do I consider it as either desirable or useful for the public; but only that, like religious differences, a difference in politics should never be permitted to enter into social intercourse, or to disturb its friendships, its charities, or justice. In that form, they are censors of the conduct of each other, and useful watchmen for the public. --

TITLE: To H. Lee.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 376.
EDITION: Ford ed., x, 317.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1824

The appellation of aristocrats and democrats is the true one expressing the essence of all [political parties] . --

TITLE: To H. Lee.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 376.
EDITION: Ford ed., x, 318.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1824

Men by their constitutions are naturally divided into two parties: 1. Those who fear and distrust the people, and wish to draw all powers from them into the hands of the higher classes. 2. Those who identify themselves with the people, have confidence in them, cherish and consider them as the most honest and safe, although not the most wise depositary of the public interests. In every country these two parties exist, and in every one where they are free to think, speak and write, they will declare themselves. Call them, therefore, liberals and serviles, Jacobins and ultras, whigs and tories, republicans and federalists, aristocrats and democrats, or by whatever name you please, they are the same parties still, and pursue the same object. The last appellation of aristocrats and democrats is the true one expressing the essence of all. --

TITLE: To H. Lee.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 376.
EDITION: Ford ed., x, 317.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1824

The permanence of our Union hanging on the harmony of Pennsylvania and Virginia, I hope that will continue as long as our government continues to be a blessing to mankind. --

TITLE: To Thomas Leiper.
EDITION: Ford ed., x, 299.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1824

I could not have believed that for so many years, and to such a period of advanced age, Mr. Pickering could have nourished passions so vehement and viperous. It appears that for thirty years past, he has been industriously collecting materials for vituperating the characters he had marked for his hatred; some of whom, certainly, if enmities towards him had ever existed, had forgotten them all, or buried them in the grave with themselves. As to myself, there never had been anything personal between us, nothing but the general opposition of party sentiment; and our personal intercourse [Col 2] had been that of urbanity, as himself says. But it seems he has been all this time brooding over an enmity which I had never felt, and that with respect to myself, as well as others, he has been writing far and near, and in every direction, to get hold of original letters, where he could, copies, where he could not, certificates and journals, catching at every gossiping story he could hear of in any quarter, supplying by suspicions what he could find nowhere else, and then arguing on this motley farrago as if established on gospel evidence. [* * *] He arraigns me on two grounds, my actions and my motives. The very actions, however, which he arraigns, have been such as the great majority of my fellow citizens have approved. The approbation of Mr. Pickering and of those who thought with him, I had no right to expect. My motives he chooses to ascribe to hypocrisy, to ambition, and a passion for popularity. Of these the world must judge between us. It is no office of his or mine. To that tribunal I have ever submitted my actions and motives, without ransacking the Union for certificates, letters, journals and gossiping tales to justify myself and weary them. [* * *] If no action is to be deemed virtuous for which malice can imagine a sinister motive, then there never was a virtuous action; no, not even in the life of our Saviour himself. But He has taught us to judge the tree by its fruit and to leave motives to Him who can alone see into them. [* * *] I leave to its fate the libel of Mr. Pickering, with the thousands of others like it, to which I have given no other answer than a steady course of similar action [* * *] . --

TITLE: To Martin Van Buren.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 362.
EDITION: Ford ed., x, 305.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1824
See Declaration of Independence.

In one sentiment of [your] speech I particularly concur, -- “if we have a doubt relative to any power, we ought not to exercise it”. --

TITLE: To Edward Livingston.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 343.
EDITION: Ford ed., x, 300.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1824

Hume, the great apostle of toryism, says [in his History of England, c. 159] “the Commons established a principle, which is noble in itself, and seems specious, but is belied by all history and experience, that the people are the origin of all just power”. And where else will this degenerate son of science, this traitor to his fellow men, find the origin of just power, if not in the majority of the society? Will it be in the minority? Or in an individual of that minority? --

TITLE: To John Cartwright.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 356.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1824

All power is inherent in the people. --

TITLE: To John Cartwright.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 357.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1824

Actual property has been lawfully vested in [negroes] and who can lawfully take it from the possessors? --

TITLE: To Jared Sparks.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 333.
EDITION: Ford ed., x, 290.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1824

It is not wisdom alone, but public confidence in that wisdom, which can support an administration. --

TITLE: To President Monroe.
EDITION: Ford ed., x, 316.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1824

I have learned to be less confident in the conclusions of human reason, and give more credit to the [Col 2] honesty of contrary opinions. --

TITLE: To Edward Livingston.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 342.
EDITION: Ford ed., x, 300.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1824

Things even salutary should not be crammed down the throats of dissenting brethren, es [Col 2] pecially when they may be put into a form to be willingly swallowed. ⁴¹⁴ --

TITLE: To Edward Livingston.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 343.
EDITION: Ford ed., x, 301.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1824

I consider [* * *] religion a supplement to law in the government of men. --

TITLE: To Mr. Woodward.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 339.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1824

In the structure of our Legislatures, we think experience has proved the benefit of [Col 2] subjecting questions to two separate bodies of deliberants; but in constituting these, natural right has been mistaken, some making one of these bodies, and some both, the representatives of property instead of persons; whereas the double deliberation might be as well obtained without any violation of true principle, either by requiring a greater age in one of the bodies, or by electing a proper number of representatives of persons, dividing them by lot into two chambers, and renewing the division at frequent intervals, in order to break up all cabals. --

TITLE: To John Cartwright.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 357.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1824

Rights and powers can only belong to persons, not to things, not to mere matter, unendowed with will. --

TITLE: To John Cartwright.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 359.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1824

Nothing is unchangeable but the inherent and inalienable rights of man. --

TITLE: To John Cartwright.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 359.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1824

I have received a copy of your mathematical principles of natural philosophy, which I have looked into with all the attention which the rust of age and long continued avocations of a very different character permit me to exercise. I think them entirely worthy of approbation, both as to matter and method, and for their brevity as a text book; and I remark particularly the clearness and precision with which the propositions are enounced and, in the demonstrations, the easy form in which ideas are presented to the mind, so as to be almost intuitive and self-evident. Of Cavallo's book, which you say you are enjoined to teach [in William and Mary College] , I have no knowledge, having never seen it; but its character is, I think, that of mere mediocrity; and, from my personal acquaintance with the man, I should expect no more. He was heavy, capable enough of understanding what he had read, and with memory to retain it, but without the talent of digestion or improvement. But, indeed, the English generally have been very stationary in latter times, and the French on the contrary, so active and successful, particularly in preparing elementary books, in the mathematical and natural sciences, that those who wish for instruction, without caring from what nation they get it, resort universally to the latter language. Besides the earlier and invaluable works of Euler and Bezont, we have latterly that of Lacroix in mathematics, of Legendre in geometry, Lavoisier in chemistry, the elementary works of Haüy in physics, Biot in experimental physics and physical astronomy, Dumeril in natural history, to say nothing of many detached essays of Monge and others, and the transcendent labors of Laplace. I am informed by a highly instructed person recently from Cambridge. that the mathematicians of that institution, sensible of being in the rear of those of the continent, and ascribing the cause much to their too long-continued preference of the geometrical over the analytical methods,

TITLE: To Patrick K. Rodgers.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 327.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1824

I have received the copy of your System of Universal Science. [* * *] It will be a monument of the learning of the author and of the [Col 2] analyzing powers of his mind. [* * *] These analytical views indeed must always be ramified according to their object. Yours is on the great scale of a methodical encyclopedia of all human sciences, taking for the basis of their distribution, matter, mind, and the union of both. Lord Bacon founded his first great division on the faculties of the mind which have cognizance of these sciences. It does not seem to have been observed by any one that the origination of this division was not with him. It had been proposed by Charron, more than twenty years before, in his book de la Sagesse. B. 1, c. 14, and an imperfect ascription of the sciences to these respective faculties was there attempted. This excellent moral work was published in 1600. Lord Bacon is said not to have entered on his great work until his retirement from public office in 1621. Where sciences are to be arranged in accommodation to the schools of an university, they will be grouped to coincide with the kindred qualifications of professors in ordinary. For a library, which was my object, their divisions and subdivisions will be made such as to throw convenient masses of books under each separate head. Thus, in the library of a physician, the books of that science, of which he has many, will be subdivided under many heads; and those of law, of which he has few, will be placed under a single one. The lawyer, again, will distribute his law books under many subdivisions, his medical under a single one. Your idea of making the subject matter of the sciences the basis of their distribution, is certainly more reasonable than that of the faculties to which they are addressed. [* * *] Were I to re-compose my tabular view of the sciences, I should certainly transpose a certain branch. The naturalists, you know, distribute the history of nature into three kingdoms or departments: zoology, botany, mineralogy. Ideology, or mind, however, occupies so much space in the field of science, that we might perhaps erect it into a fourth kingdom or department. But, inasmuch as it makes a part of the animal construction only, it would be more proper to subdivide zoology into physical and moral. The latter including ideology, ethics, and mental science generally, in my catalogue, considering ethics, as well as religion, as supplements to law in the government of man, I had them in that sequence. But certainly the faculty of thought belongs to animal history, is an important portion of it, and should there find its place. --

TITLE: To Mr. Woodward.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 338.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1824

The present generation has the same right of self-government which the past one has exercised for itself. --

TITLE: To John H. Pleasants.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 346.
EDITION: Ford ed., x, 303.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1824

When forced to assume self-government, we were novices in its science. Its principles and forms had entered little into our former education. We established however some, although not all its important principles. --

TITLE: To John Cartwright.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 356.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1824

The qualifications for self-government

TITLE: To Edward Everett.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 341.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1824

My rule of life has been never to harass the public with fendings and provings of personal slanders. --

TITLE: To Martin Van Buren.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 372.
EDITION: Ford ed., x, 315.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1824

Actual property has been lawfully vested in that form [negroes] and who can lawfully take it from the possessors? --

TITLE: To Jared Sparks.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 333.
EDITION: Ford ed., x, 290.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1824

The separation of infants from their mothers would produce some scruples of humanity. But this would be straining at a gnat, and swallowing a camel. --

TITLE: To Jared Sparks.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 335.
EDITION: Ford ed., x, 293.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1824

Who could estimate its blessed effects? I leave this to those who will live to see their accomplishment, and to enjoy a beatitude forbidden to my age. But I leave it with this admonition, -- to rise and be doing. A million and a half are within our control; but six millions (which a majority of those now living will see them attain), and one million of these fighting men, will say, “we will not go”. --

TITLE: To Jared Sparks.
EDITION: Washington ed. vi, 335.
EDITION: Ford ed., x, 292.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1824

A difference in politics should never be permitted to enter into social intercourse, or to disturb its friendships, its charities or justice. --

TITLE: To H. Lee.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 376.
EDITION: Ford ed., x, 317.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1824

A society of seventy families, the number you name, may very possibly be governed as a single family, subsisting on their common industry, and holding all things in common. Some regulators of the family you still must have, and it remains to be seen at what period of your increasing population your simple regulations will cease to be sufficient to preserve order, peace, and justice. The experiment is interesting; I shall not live to see its issue, but I wish it success equal to your hopes. --

TITLE: To William Ludlow.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 378.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1824

The Spanish Colonies cannot reasonably expect us to sink ourselves uselessly and even injuriously for them by a quixotic encounter of the whole world in arms. Were it Spain alone I should have no fear. But Russia is said to have seventy ships of the line; France approaching that number, and what should we be in fronting such a force? It is not for the interest of Spanish America that our Republic should be blotted out of the map, and to the rest of the world it would be an act of treason. --

TITLE: To President Monroe.
EDITION: Ford ed., x, 316.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: July. 1824

To the State governments are reserved all legislation and administration, in affairs which concern their own citizens only. --

TITLE: To John Cartwright.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 358.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1824

I recollect but one instance of control vested in the Federal over the State authorities, in a matter purely domestic, which is that of metallic tenders. --

TITLE: To Robert J. Garnett.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 336.
EDITION: Ford ed., x, 295.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1824

If the Federal and State governments should claim each the same subject of power, where is the common umpire to decide ultimately between them? In cases of little importance or urgency, the prudence of both parties will keep them aloof from the questionable ground; but if it can neither be avoided nor compromised, a convention of the States must be called, to ascribe the

TITLE: To John Cartwright.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 358.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1824
See Federal Government.

Congress has done nothing remarkable except the passing a tariff bill by squeezing majorities, very revolting to a great portion of the people of the States, among whom it is believed it would not have received a vote but of the manufacturers themselves. It is considered as a levy on the labors and efforts of the other classes of industry to support that of manufactures, and I wish it may not draw on our surplus, and produce retaliatory impositions from other nations. --

TITLE: To Richard Rush.
EDITION: Ford ed., x, 304.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1824

Of the two questions of the tariff and public improvements, the former, perhaps, is not yet at rest, and the latter will excite boisterous discussions. It happens that both these measures fall in with the western interests, and it is their secession from the agricultural States which gives such strength to the manufacturing and consolidating parties, on these two questions. The latter is the most dreaded, because thought to amount to a determination in the Federal Government to assume all powers non-enumerated as well as enumerated in the Constitution, and by giving a loose to construction, make the text say whatever will relieve them from the bridle of the States. These are all difficulties for your

TITLE: To Richard Rush.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 380.
EDITION: Ford ed., x, 322.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1824

It has ever appeared to me, that the difference between the whig and the tory of England is, that the whig deduces his rights from the Anglo-Saxon source, and the tory from the Norman. --

TITLE: To John Cartwright.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 356.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1824

Cherish every measure which may foster our brotherly Union and perpetuate a constitution of government, destined to be the primitive and precious model of what is to change the condition of man over the globe. --

TITLE: To Edward Livingston.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 344.
EDITION: Ford ed., x, 301.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1824

There are some novelties in [the University of Virginia] . Of that of a professorship of the principles of government, you express your approbation. They will be founded in the rights of man. That of agriculture, I am sure, you will approve; and that also of Anglo-Saxon. As the histories and laws left us in that type and dialect, must be the text books of the reading of the learners, they will imbibe with the language their free principles of government. --

TITLE: To John Cartwright.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 361.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1824

A man is not qualified for a professor, knowing nothing but merely his own profession. He should be otherwise well educated as to the sciences generally; able to converse understandingly with the scientific men with whom he is associated, and to assist in the councils of the faculty on any subject of science on which they may have occasion to deliberate. Without this, he will incur their contempt, and bring disreputation on the institution. --

TITLE: To Joseph C. Cabell.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 331.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1824