Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson Volume IV Part 25

And I too, my dear Sir, like the wood-cutter of Ida, should doubt where to begin, were I to enter the forest of opinions, discussions, and contentions which have occurred in our day. I should say with Theocritus,

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But I shall not do it. The _summum bonum_ with me is now truly epicurean, ease of body and tranquillity of mind; and to these I wish to consign my remaining days. Men have differed in opinion, and been divided into parties by these opinions, from the first origin of societies; and in all governments, where they have been permitted freely to think and to speak. The same political parties which now agitate the United States, have existed through all time. Whether the power of the people, or that of the

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should prevail, were questions which kept the States of Greece and Rome in eternal convulsions; as they now schismatize every people whose minds and mouths are not shut up by the gag of a despot. And in fact, the terms of whig and tory belong to natural, as well as to civil history. They denote the temper and const.i.tution of mind of different individuals. To come to our own country, and to the times when you and I became first acquainted: we well remember the violent parties which agitated the old Congress, and their bitter contests. There you and I were together, and the Jays, and the d.i.c.kinsons, and other anti-independents were arrayed against us. They cherished the monarchy of England, and we the rights of our countrymen. When our present government was in the mew, pa.s.sing from Confederation to Union, how bitter was the schism between the Feds and Antis. Here you and I were together again. For although, for a moment, separated by the Atlantic from the scene of action, I favored the opinion that nine States should confirm the const.i.tution, in order to secure it, and the others hold off, until certain amendments, deemed favorable to freedom, should be made. I rallied in the first instant to the wiser proposition of Ma.s.sachusetts, that all should confirm, and then all instruct their delegates to urge those amendments. The amendments were made, and all were reconciled to the government. But as soon as it was put into motion, the line of division was again drawn. We broke into two parties, each wis.h.i.+ng to give the government a different direction; the one to strengthen the most popular branch, the other the more permanent branches, and to extend their permanence. Here you and I separated for the first time: and as we had been longer than most others on the public theatre, and our names therefore were more familiar to our countrymen, the party which considered you as thinking with them, placed your name at their head; the other, for the same reason, selected mine. But neither decency nor inclination permitted us to become the advocates of ourselves, or to take part personally in the violent contests which followed. We suffered ourselves, as you so well expressed it, to be pa.s.sive subjects of public discussion. And these discussions, whether relating to men, measures, or opinions, were conducted by the parties with an animosity, a bitterness, and an indecency, which had never been exceeded. All the resources of reason and of wrath were exhausted by each party in support of its own, and to prostrate the adversary opinions; one was upbraided with receiving the anti-federalists, the other the old tories and refugees, into their bosom. Of this acrimony, the public papers of the day exhibit ample testimony, in the debates of Congress, of State legislatures, of stump-orators, in addresses, answers, and newspaper essays; and to these, without question, may be added the private correspondences of individuals; and the less guarded in these, because not meant for the public eye, not restrained by the respect due to that, but poured forth from the overflowings of the heart into the bosom of a friend, as a momentary eas.e.m.e.nt of our feelings.

In this way and in answers to addresses, you and I could indulge ourselves. We have probably done it, sometimes with warmth, often with prejudice, but always, as we believed, adhering to truth. I have not examined my letters of that day. I have no stomach to revive the memory of its feelings. But one of these letters, it seems, has got before the public, by accident and infidelity, by the death of one friend to whom it was written, and of his friend to whom it had been communicated, and by the malice and treachery of a third person, of whom I had never before heard, merely to make mischief, and in the same Satanic spirit, in which the same enemy had intercepted and published, in 1776, your letter animadverting on d.i.c.kinson's character. How it happened that I quoted you in my letter to Doctor Priestley, and for whom, and not for yourself, the strictures were meant, has been explained to you in my letter of the 15th, which had been committed to the post eight days before I received yours of the 10th, 11th, and 14th. That gave you the reference which these asked to the particular answer alluded to in the one to Priestley. The renewal of these old discussions, my friend, would be equally useless and irksome. To the volumes then written on these subjects, human ingenuity can add nothing new, and the rather, as lapse of time has obliterated many of the facts. And shall you and I, my Dear Sir, at our age, like Priam of old, gird on the

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Shall we, at our age, become the athletes of party, and exhibit ourselves, as gladiators, in the arena of the newspapers? Nothing in the universe could induce me to it. My mind has been long fixed to bow to the judgment of the world, who will judge by my acts, and will never take counsel from me as to what that judgment shall be. If your objects and opinions have been misunderstood, if the measures and principles of others have been wrongfully imputed to you, as I believe they have been, that you should leave an explanation of them, would be an set of justice to yourself. I will add, that it has been hoped that you would leave such explanations as would place every saddle on its right horse, and replace on the shoulders of others the burdens they s.h.i.+fted to yours.

But all this, my friend, is offered merely for your consideration and judgment, without presuming to antic.i.p.ate what you alone are qualified to decide for yourself. I mean to express my own purpose only, and the reflections which have led to it. To me, then, it appears, that there have been differences of opinion and party differences, from the first establishment of governments to the present day, and on the same question which now divides our own country: that these will continue through all future time: that every one takes his side in favor of the many, or of the few, according to his const.i.tution, and the circ.u.mstances in which he is placed: that opinions, which are equally honest on both sides, should not affect personal esteem or social intercourse: that as we judge between the Claudii and the Gracchi, the Wentworths and the Hampdens of past ages, so, of those among us whose names may happen to be remembered for a while, the next generations will judge, favorably or unfavorably, according to the complexion of individual minds, and the side they shall themselves have taken: that nothing new can be added by you or me to what has been said by others, and will be said in every age in support of the conflicting opinions on government: and that wisdom and duty dictate an humble resignation to the verdict of our future peers. I doing this myself, I shall certainly not suffer moot questions to affect the sentiments of sincere friends.h.i.+p and respect, consecrated to you by so long a course of time, and of which I now repeat sincere a.s.surances,

Th: Jefferson.

LETTER CXII.--TO JOHN ADAMS, August 22, 1813

TO JOHN ADAMS.

Monticello, August 22, 1813.

Dear Sir,

Since my letter of June the 27th, I am in your debt for many; all of which I have read with infinite delight. They open a wide field for reflection, and offer subjects enough to occupy the mind and the pen indefinitely. I must follow the good example you have set; and when I have not time to take up every subject, take up a single one. Your approbation of my outline to Dr. Priestley is a great gratification to me; and I very much suspect that if thinking men would have the courage to think for themselves, and to speak what they think, it would be found they do not differ in religious opinions, as much as is supposed. I remember to have heard Dr. Priestley say, that if all England would candidly examine themselves, and confess, they would find that Unitarianism was really the religion of all: and I observe a bill is now depending in parliament for the relief of Anti-Trinitarians. It is too late in the day for men of sincerity to pretend they believe in the Platonic mysticisms that three are one, and one is three; and yet that the one is not three, and the three are not one: to divide mankind by a single letter into

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But this const.i.tutes the craft, the power, and the profit of the priests. Sweep away their gossamer fabrics of fact.i.tious religion, and they would catch no more flies. We should all then, like the Quakers, live without an order of priests, moralize for ourselves, follow the oracle of conscience, and say nothing about what no man can understand, nor therefore believe; for I suppose belief to be the a.s.sent of the mind to an intelligible proposition.

It is with great pleasure I can inform you, that Priestley finished the comparative view of the doctrines of the philosophers of antiquity, and of Jesus, before his death; and that it was printed soon after. And with still greater pleasure, that I can have a copy of his work forwarded from Philadelphia, by a correspondent there, and presented for your acceptance, by the same mail which carries you this, or very soon after.

The branch of the work which the t.i.tle announces, is executed with learning and candor, as was every thing Priestley wrote: but perhaps a little hastily; for he felt himself pressed by the hand of death. The Abbe Batteux had, in fact, laid the foundation of this part in his 'Causes Premieres'; with which he has given us the originals of Ocellus and Timzeus, who first committed the doctrines of Pythagoras to writing: and Enfield, to whom the Doctor refers, had done it more copiously. But he has omitted the important branch, which, in your letter of August the 9th, you say you have never seen executed, a comparison of the morality of the Old Testament with that of the New. And yet, no two things were ever more unlike. I ought not to have asked him to give it. He dared not. He would have been eaten alive by his intolerant brethren, the Cannibal priests. And yet, this was really the most interesting branch of the work.

Very soon after my letter to Doctor Priestley, the subject being still in my mind, I had leisure, during an abstraction from business for a day or two, while on the road, to think a little more on it, and to sketch more fully than I had done to him, a syllabus of the matter which I thought should enter into the work. I wrote it to Doctor Rush; and there ended all my labor on the subject; himself and Doctor Priestley being the only depositories of my secret. The fate of my letter to Priestley, after his death, was a warning to me on that of Doctor Rush; and at my request, his family were so kind as to quiet me by returning my original letter and syllabus. By this you will be sensible how much interest I take in keeping myself clear of religious disputes before the public; and especially of seeing my syllabus disembowelled by the Aruspices of the modern Paganism. Yet I enclose it to you with entire confidence, free to be perused by yourself and Mrs. Adams, but by no one else; and to be returned to me.

You are right in supposing, in one of yours, that I had not read much of Priestley's Predestination, his no-soul system, or his controversy with Horsley. But I have read his Corruptions of Christianity, and Early Opinions of Jesus, over and over again; and I rest on them, and on Middleton's writings, especially his letters from Rome, and to Waterland, as the basis of my own faith. These writings have never been answered, nor can be answered by quoting historical proofs, as they have done. For these facts, therefore, I cling to their learning, so much superior to my own.

I now fly off in a tangent to another subject. Marshall, in the first volume of his history, chapter 3, p. 180, ascribes the pet.i.tion to the King, of 1774, (1 Journ. Cong. 67) to the pen of Richard Henry Lee. I think myself certain, it was not written by him, as well from what I recollect to have heard, as from the internal evidence of style. He was loose, vague, frothy, rhetorical. He was a poorer writer than his brother Arthur; and Arthur's standing may be seen in his Monitor's Letters, to insure the sale of which, they took the precaution of tacking to them a new edition of the Farmer's Letters; like Mezentius, who '_mortua jungebat corpora vivis_.' You were of the committee, and can tell me who wrote this pet.i.tion; and who wrote the Address to the Inhabitants of the Colonies, ib. 45. Of the papers of July 1775, I recollect well that Mr. d.i.c.kinson drew the pet.i.tion to the King, ib.

149; I think Robert R. Livingston drew the Address to the Inhabitants of Great Britain, ib. 152. Am I right in this? And who drew the Address to the People of Ireland, ib. 180? On these questions, I ask of your memory to help mine. Ever and affectionately yours,

Th: Jefferson.

LETTER CXIII.--TO JOHN W. EPPES, November 6, 1813

TO JOHN W. EPPES.

Monticello, November 6, 1813.

Dear Sir,

I had not expected to have troubled you again on the subject of finance; but since the date of my last, I have received from Mr. Law a letter covering a memorial on that subject, which, from its tenor, I conjecture must have been before Congress at their two last sessions. This paper contains two propositions; the one for issuing treasury notes, bearing interest, and to be circulated as money; the other for the establishment of a national bank. The first was considered in my former letter; and the second shall be the subject of the present.

The scheme is for Congress to establish a national bank, suppose of thirty millions capital, of which they shall contribute ten millions in new six per cent, stock, the States ten millions, and individuals ten millions, one half of the two last contributions to be of similar stock, for which the parties are to give cash to Congress: the whole, however, to be under the exclusive management of the individual subscribers, who are to name all the directors; neither Congress nor the States having any power of interference in its administration. Discounts are to be at five per cent., but the profits are expected to be seven per cent.

Congress then will be paying six per cent, on twenty millions, and receiving seven per cent, on ten millions, being its third of the inst.i.tution: so that on the ten millions cash which they receive from the States and individuals, they will, in fact, have to pay but five per cent, interest. This is the bait. The charter is proposed to be for forty or fifty years, and if any future augmentations should take place, the individual proprietors are to have the privilege of being the sole subscribers for that. Congress are further allowed to issue to the amount of three millions of notes, bearing interest, which they are to receive back in payment for lands at a premium of five or ten per cent., or as subscriptions for ca.n.a.ls, roads, and bridges, in which undertakings they are, of course, to be engaged. This is a summary of the scheme, as I understand it: but it is very possible I may not understand it in all its parts, these schemes being always made Unintelligible for the gulls who are to enter into them. The advantages and disadvantages shall be noted promiscuously as they occur; leaving out the speculation of ca.n.a.ls, &c. which, being an episode only in the scheme, may be omitted, to disentangle it as much as we can.

1. Congress are to receive five millions from the States (if they will enter into this partners.h.i.+p, which few probably will), and five millions from the individual subscribers, in exchange for ten millions of six per cent, stock, one per cent, of which, however, they will make on their ten millions of stock remaining in bank, and so reduce it, in effect, to a loan of ten millions at five per cent, interest. This is good: but

2. They authorize this bank to throw into circulation ninety millions of dollars, (three times the capital), which increases our circulating medium fifty per cent., depreciates proportionably the present value of the dollar, and raises the price of all future purchases in the same proportion.

3. This loan of ten millions at five per cent., is to be once for all, only. Neither the terms of the scheme, nor their own prudence could ever permit them to add to the circulation in the same, or any other way, for the supplies of the succeeding years of the war. These succeeding years then are to be left unprovided for, and the means of doing it in a great measure precluded.

4. The individual subscribers, on paying their own five millions of cash to Congress, become the depositories of ten millions of stock belonging to Congress, five millions belonging to the States, and five millions to themselves, say twenty millions, with which, as no one has a right ever to see their books, or to ask a question, they may choose their time for running away, after adding to their booty the proceeds of as much of their own notes as they shall be able to throw into circulation.

5. The subscribers may be one, two, or three, or more individuals, (many single individuals being able to pay in the five millions,) whereupon this bank oligarchy or monarchy enters the field with ninety millions of dollars, to direct and control the politics of the nation; and of the influence of these inst.i.tutions on our politics, and into what scale it will be thrown, we have had abundant experience. Indeed, England herself may be the real, while her friend and trustee here shall be the nominal and sole subscriber.

6. This state of things is to be fastened on us, without the power of relief, for forty or fifty years. That is to say, the eight millions of people now existing, for the sake of receiving one dollar and twenty-five cents apiece at five per cent, interest, are to subject the fifty millions of people who are to succeed them within that term, to the payment of forty-five millions of dollars, princ.i.p.al and interest, which will be payable in the course of the fifty years.

7. But the great and national advantage is to be the relief of the present scarcity of money, which is produced and proved by,

1. The additional industry created to supply a variety of articles for the troops, ammunition, he.

2. By the cash sent to the frontiers, and the vacuum occasioned in the trading towns by that.

3. By the late loans.

4. By the necessity of recurring to shavers with good paper, which the existing banks are not able to take up; and

5. By the numerous applications for bank charters, showing that an increase of circulating medium is wanting.

Let us examine these causes and proofs of the want of an increase of medium, one by one.

1. The additional industry created to supply a variety of articles for troops, ammunition, &c. Now I had always supposed that war produced a diminution of industry, by the number of hands it withdraws from industrious pursuits, for employment in arms &c. which are totally unproductive. And if it calls for new industry in the articles of ammunition and other military supplies, the hands are borrowed from other branches on which the demand is slackened by the war; so that it is but a s.h.i.+fting of these hands from one pursuit to another.

2. The cash sent to the frontiers occasions a vacuum in the trading towns, which requires a new supply. Let us examine what are the calls for money to the frontiers. Not for clothing, tents, ammunition, arms, which are all bought in the trading towns. Not for provisions; for although these are bought partly in the intermediate country, bank-bills are more acceptable there than even in the trading towns. The pay of the army calls for some cash; but not a great deal, as bank-notes are as acceptable with the military men, perhaps more so; and what cash is sent must find its way back again, in exchange for the wants of the upper from the lower country. For we are not to suppose that cash stays acc.u.mulating there for ever.

3. This scarcity has been occasioned by the late loans. But does the government borrow money to keep it in their coffers? Is it not instantly restored to circulation by payment for its necessary supplies? And are we to restore a vacuum of twenty millions of dollars by an emission of ninety millions?

4. The want of medium is proved by the recurrence of individuals with good paper to brokers at exorbitant interest; and

5. By the numerous applications to the State governments for additional banks; New York wanting eighteen millions, Pennsylvania ten millions, &c. But say more correctly, the speculators and spendthrifts of New York and Pennsylvania, but never consider them as being the States of New York and Pennsylvania. These two items shall be considered together.