The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, Vol. 6 (of 9)

Should the injunctions under which I laid you, as to my former letter, restrain any useful purpose to which you could apply it, I remove them; preferring public benefit to all personal considerations. My original disapprobation of banks circulating paper is not unknown, nor have I since observed any effects either on the morals or fortunes of our citizens, which are any counterbalance for the public evils produced; and a thorough conviction that, if this war continues, that circulation must be suppressed, or the government shaken to its foundation by the weight of taxes, and impracticability to raise funds on them, renders duty to that paramount to the love of ease and quiet.

When I was here in May last, I left it without knowing that Francis was at school in this neighborhood. As soon as I returned, on the present occasion, I sent for him, but his tutor informed me that he was gone on a visit to you. I shall hope permission for him always to see me on my visits to this place, which are three or four times a year.

JOHN ADAMS TO THOMAS JEFFERSON

Quincy, September 14, 1813.

Dear Sir,—I owe you a thousand thanks for your favor of August 22d and its enclosures, and for Dr. Priestley's doctrines of Heathen Philosophy compared with those of Revelation. Your letter to Dr. Rush and the syllabus, I return enclosed with this according to your injunctions, though with great reluctance. May I beg a copy of both?

They will do you no harm; me and others much good.

I hope you will pursue your plan, for I am confident you will produce a work much more valuable than Priestley's, though that is curious, and considering the expiring powers with which it was written, admirable.

The bill in Parliament for the relief of Anti-Trinitarians, is a great event, and will form an epoch in ecclesiastical history. The motion was made by my friend Smith, of Clapham, a friend of the Belshams.

I should be very happy to hear that the bill is passed.

The human understanding is a revelation from its Maker which can never be disputed or doubted. There can be no scepticism, Pyrrhonism, or incredulity, or infidelity, here. No prophecies, no miracles are necessary to prove the celestial communication.

This revelation has made it certain that two and one make three, and that one is not three nor can three be one. We can never be so certain of any prophecy, or the fulfilment of any prophecy, or of any miracle, or the design of any miracle, as we are from the revelation of nature, i. e., Nature's God, that two and two are equal to four. Miracles or prophecies might frighten us out of our wits; might scare us to death; might induce us to lie, to say that we believe that two and two make five. But we should not believe it. We should know the contrary.

Had you and I been forty days with Moses on Mount Sinai, and been admitted to behold the divine Shekinah, and there told that one was three and three one, we might not have had courage to deny it, but we could not have believed it.

The thunders, and lightnings, and earthquakes, and the transcendent splendors and glories might have overwhelmed us with terror and amazement, but we could not have believed the doctrine. We should be more likely to say in our hearts whatever we might say with our lips,—This is chance. There is no God, no truth. This is all delusion, fiction, and a lie, or it is all chance. But what is chance? It is motion, it is action, it is event, it is phenomenon without cause.

Chance is no cause at all, it is nothing. And nothing has produced all this pomp and splendor. And nothing may produce our eternal damnation in the flames of hell-fire and brimstone, for what we know, as well as this tremendous exhibition of terror and falsehood.

God has infinite wisdom, goodness and power. He created the universe. His duration is eternal, a parte ante and a parte post.

His presence is as extensive as space. What is space? An infinite spherical vacuum. He created this speck of dirt and the human species for his glory, and with the deliberate design of making nine-tenths of our species miserable forever, for his glory.

This is the doctrine of Christian Theologians in general, ten to one.

Now, my friend, can prophecies or miracles convince you or me, that infinite benevolence, wisdom and power, created and preserves for a time, innumerable millions, to make them miserable forever for his own glory?

Wretch! what is his glory? Is he ambitious? Does he want promotion? Is he vain-tickled with adulation? Exulting and triumphing in his power and the sweetness of his vengeance?

Pardon me, my Maker, for these awful questions. My answer to them is always ready. I believe no such things. My adoration of the Author of the Universe is too profound and too sincere.

The love of God and his creation, delight, joy, triumph, exultation in my own existence, though but an atom, a molecule organique in the universe, are my religion. Howl, snarl, bite, ye Calvinistic, ye Athanasian divines, if you will. Ye will say I am no Christian. I say ye are no Christians, and there the account is balanced.

Yet I believe all the honest men among you are Christians, in my sense of the word.

When I was at college, I was a metaphysician, at least I thought myself such. And such men as Lock, Hemenway and West, thought me so too; for we were forever disputing though in great good humor.

When I was sworn as an Attorney, in 1758, in Boston, though I lived in Braintree, I was in a low state of health—thought in great danger of a consumption; living on milk, vegetable pudding and water. Not an atom of meat, or a drop of spirit. My next neighbor, my cousin, my friend Dr. Savil, was my physician. He was anxious about me, and did not like to take the sole responsibility of my recovery. He invited me to a ride. I mounted my horse and rode with him to Hingham, on a visit to Dr. Ezekiel Hersey, a physician of great fame, who felt my pulse, looked in my eyes, heard Savil describe my regimen and course of medicine, and then pronounced his oracle: "Persevere, and as sure as there is a God in Heaven you will recover."

He was an everlasting talker, and ran out into history, philosophy, metaphysics, &c., and frequently put questions to me as if he wanted to sound me, and see if there was anything in me besides hectic fever. I was young, and then very bashful, however saucy I may have sometimes been since. I gave him very modest and very diffident answers. But when I got upon metaphysics, I seemed to feel a little bolder, and ventured into something like argument with him. I drove him up, as I thought, into a corner, from which he could not escape. "Sir, it will follow from what you have now advanced, that the universe, as distinct from God, is both infinite and eternal." "Very true," said Dr. Hersey, "your inference is just, the consequence is inevitable, and I believe the universe to be both eternal and infinite."

Here I was brought up! I was defeated. I was not prepared for this answer. This was fifty-five years ago.

When I was in England, from 1785 to 1788, I may say I was intimate with Dr. Price. I had much conversation with him at his own house, at my house, and at the houses and tables of my friends. In some of our most unreserved conversations, when we have been alone, he has repeatedly said to me: "I am inclined to believe that the universe is eternal and infinite. It seems to me that an eternal and infinite effect must necessarily flow from an eternal and infinite cause; and an infinite wisdom, goodness and power, that could have been induced to produce a universe in time, must have produced it from eternity. It seems to me the effect must flow from the cause."

Now, my friend Jefferson, suppose an eternal, self-existent being, existing from eternity, possessed of infinite wisdom, goodness and power, in absolute, total solitude, six thousand years ago, conceiving the benevolent project of creating a universe! I have no more to say at present.

It has been long, very long, a settled opinion in my mind, that there is now, never will be, and never was but one being who can understand the universe.

And that it is not only vain, but wicked, for insects to pretend to comprehend it.

JOHN ADAMS TO THOMAS JEFFERSON

Quincy, September 15, 1813.

Dear Sir,—My last sheet would not admit an observation that was material to my design.

Dr. Price was inclined to think that infinite wisdom and goodness could not permit infinite power to be inactive from eternity, but that an infinite and eternal universe must have necessarily flowed from these attributes.

Plato's system was "αγαθος" was eternal, self-existent, &c. His ideas, his word, his reason, his wisdom, his goodness, or in one word his "Logos" was omnipotent, and produced the universe from all eternity. Now! as far as you and I can understand Hersey, Price and Plato, are they not of one theory? Of one mind? What is the difference? I own an eternal solitude of a self-existent being, infinitely wise, powerful and good, is to me altogether incomprehensible and incredible. I could as soon believe the Athanasian creed.

You will ask me what conclusion I draw from all this? I answer, I drop into myself, and acknowledge myself to be a fool. No mind but one can see through the immeasurable system. It would be presumption and impiety in me to dogmatize on such subjects. My duties in my little infinitessimal circle I can understand and feel. The duties of a son, a brother, a father, a neighbor, a citizen, I can see and feel, but I trust the Ruler with his skies.

Si quid novisti rectius, istisCandidus imperti, si non, his utere, mecum.

This world is a mixture of the sublime and the beautiful, the base and the contemptible, the whimsical and ridiculous, (according to our narrow sense and trifling feelings.) It is an enigma and a riddle. You need not be surprised, then, if I should descend from these heights to the most egregious trifle. But first let me say, I asked you in a former letter how far advanced we were in the science of aristocracy since Theognis' Stallions, Jacks and Rams? Have not Chancellor Livingston and Major General Humphreys introduced an hereditary aristocracy of Merino Sheep? How shall we get rid of this aristocracy? It is entailed upon us forever. And an aristocracy of land jobbers and stock jobbers is equally and irremediably entailed upon us, to endless generations.

Now for the odd, the whimsical, the frivolous. I had scarcely sealed my last letter to you upon Theognis' doctrine of well-born Stallions, Jacks and Rams, when they brought me from the Post Office a packet, without post mark, without letter, without name, date or place. Nicely sealed was a printed copy of eighty or ninety pages, and in large full octavo, entitled: Section first—Aristocracy. I gravely composed my risible muscles and read it through. It is from beginning to end an attack upon me by name for the doctrines of aristocracy in my three volumes of Defence, &c. The conclusion of the whole is that an aristocracy of bank paper is as bad as the nobility of France or England. I most assuredly will not controvert this point with this man. Who he is I cannot conjecture. The honorable John Taylor of Virginia, of all men living or dead, first occurred to me.

Is it Oberon? Is it Queen Mab, that reigns and sports with us little beings? I thought my books as well as myself were forgotten. But behold! I am to become a great man in my expiring moments. Theognis and Plato, and Hersey and Price, and Jefferson and I, must go down to posterity together; and I know not, upon the whole, where to wish for better company. I wish to add Vanderkemp, who has been here to see me, after an interruption of twenty-four years. I could and ought to add many others, but the catalogue would be too long. I am, as ever.

P. S. Why is Plato associated with Theognis, &c.? Because no man ever expressed so much terror of the power of birth. His genius could invent no remedy or precaution against it, but a community of wives; a confusion of families; a total extinction of all relations of father, son and brother. Did the French Revolutionists contrive much better against the influence of birth?

TO MR. WM. CANBY

Monticello, September 18, 1813.

Sir,—I have duly received your favor of August 27th, am sensible of the kind intentions from which it flows, and truly thankful for them. The more so as they could only be the result of a favorable estimate of my public course. During a long life, as much devoted to study as a faithful transaction of the trusts committed to me would permit, no subject has occupied more of my consideration than our relations with all the beings around us, our duties to them, and our future prospects. After reading and hearing everything which probably can be suggested respecting them, I have formed the best judgment I could as to the course they prescribe, and in the due observance of that course, I have no recollections which give me uneasiness. An eloquent preacher of your religious society, Richard Motte, in a discourse of much emotion and pathos, is said to have exclaimed aloud to his congregation, that he did not believe there was a Quaker, Presbyterian, Methodist or Baptist in heaven, having paused to give his hearers time to stare and to wonder. He added, that in heaven, God knew no distinctions, but considered all good men as his children, and as brethren of the same family. I believe, with the Quaker preacher, that he who steadily observes those moral precepts in which all religions concur, will never be questioned at the gates of heaven, as to the dogmas in which they all differ. That on entering there, all these are left behind us, and the Aristides and Catos, the Penns and Tillotsons, Presbyterians and Baptists, will find themselves united in all principles which are in concert with the reason of the supreme mind. Of all the systems of morality, ancient or modern, which have come under my observation, none appear to me so pure as that of Jesus. He who follows this steadily need not, I think, be uneasy, although he cannot comprehend the subtleties and mysteries erected on his doctrines by those who, calling themselves his special followers and favorites, would make him come into the world to lay snares for all understandings but theirs. These metaphysical heads, usurping the judgment seat of God, denounce as his enemies all who cannot perceive the Geometrical logic of Euclid in the demonstrations of St. Athanasius, that three are one, and one is three; and yet that the one is not three nor the three one. In all essential points you and I are of the same religion; and I am too old to go into inquiries and changes as to the unessential. Repeating, therefore, my thankfulness for the kind concern you have been so good as to express, I salute you with friendship and brotherly esteem.

TO GENERAL DUANE

Monticello, September 18, 1813.

Dear Sir,—Repeated inquiries on the part of Senator Tracy what has become of his book, (the MS. I last sent you,) oblige me to ask of you what I shall say to him. I congratulate you on the brilliant affair of the Enterprise and Boxer. No heart is more rejoiced than mine at these mortifications of English pride, and lessons to Europe that the English are not invincible at sea. And if these successes do not lead us too far into the navy mania, all will be well. But when are to cease the severe lessons we receive by land, demonstrating our want of competent officers? The numbers of our countrymen betrayed into the hands of the enemy by the treachery, cowardice or incompetence of our high officers, reduce us to the humiliating necessity of acquiescing in the brutal conduct observed towards them. When, during the last war, I put Governor Hamilton and Major Hay into a dungeon and in irons for having themselves personally done the same to the American prisoners who had fallen into their hands, and was threatened with retaliation by Philips, then returned to New York, I declared to him I would load ten of their Saratoga prisoners (then under my care and within half a dozen miles of my house) with double irons for every American they should misuse under pretence of retaliation, and it put an end to the practice. But the ten for one are now with them. Our present hopes of being able to do something by land seem to rest on Chauncey. Strange reverse of expectations that our land force should be under the wing of our little navy. Accept the assurance of my esteem and respect.

TO MR. ISAAC M'PHERSON

Monticello, September 18, 1813.

Sir,—I thank you for the communication of Mr. Jonathan Ellicot's letter in yours of August 28th, and the information it conveys. With respect to mine of August 13th, I do not know that it contains anything but what any man of mathematical reading may learn from the same sources; however, if it can be used for the promotion of right, I consent to such an use of it. Your inquiry as to the date of Martin's invention of the drill plough, with a leathern band and metal buckets, I cannot precisely answer; but I received one from him in 1794, and have used it ever since for sowing various seeds, chiefly peas, turnips, and benni. I have always had in mind to use it for wheat; but sowing only a row at a time, I had proposed to him some years ago to change the construction so that it should sow four rows at a time, twelve inches apart; and I have been waiting for this to be done either by him or myself; and have not, therefore, commenced that use of it. I procured mine at first through Col. John Taylor of Caroline, who had been long in the use of it, and my impression was that it was not then a novel thing. Mr. Martin is still living, I believe. If not, Colonel Taylor, his neighbor, probably knows its date. If the bringing together under the same roof various useful things before known, which you mention as one of the grounds of Mr. Evans' claim, entitles him to an exclusive use of all these, either separately or combined, every utensil of life might be taken from us by a patent. I might build a stable, bring into it a cutting-knife to chop straw, a hand-mill to grind the grain, a curry comb and brush to clean the horses, and by a patent exclude every one from ever more using these things without paying me. The elevator, the conveyer, the hopper-boy, are distinct things, unconnected but by juxtaposition. If no patent can be claimed for any one of these separately, it cannot be for all of them,—several nothings put together cannot make a something;—this would be going very wide of the object of the patent laws. I salute you with esteem and respect.

TO MR. JAMES MARTIN

Monticello, September 20, 1813.

Sir,—Your letter of August 20th, enabled me to turn to mine of February 23d, 1798, and your former one of February 22d, 1801, and to recall to my memory the oration at Jamaica, which was the subject of them. I see with pleasure a continuance of the same sound principles in the address to Mr. Quincy. Your quotation from the former paper alludes, as I presume, to the term of office to our Senate; a term, like that of the judges, too long for my approbation. I am for responsibilities at short periods, seeing neither reason nor safety in making public functionaries independent of the nation for life, or even for long terms of years. On this principle I prefer the Presidential term of four years, to that of seven years, which I myself had at first suggested, annexing to it, however, ineligibility forever after; and I wish it were now annexed to the 2d quadrennial election of President.

The conduct of Massachusetts, which is the subject of your address to Mr. Quincy, is serious, as embarrassing the operations of the war, and jeopardizing its issue; and still more so, as an example of contumacy against the Constitution. One method of proving their purpose, would be to call a convention of their State, and to require them to declare themselves members of the Union, and obedient to its determinations, or not members, and let them go. Put this question solemnly to their people, and their answer cannot be doubtful. One half of them are republicans, and would cling to the Union from principle. Of the other half, the dispassionate part would consider, 1st. That they do not raise bread sufficient for their own subsistence, and must look to Europe for the deficiency, if excluded from our ports, which vital interests would force us to do. 2d. That they are navigating people without a stick of timber for the hull of a ship, nor a pound of anything to export in it, which would be admitted at any market. 3d. That they are also a manufacturing people, and left by the exclusive system of Europe without a market but ours. 4th. That as the rivals of England in manufactures, in commerce, in navigation, and fisheries, they would meet her competition in every point. 5th. That England would feel no scruples in making the abandonment and ruin of such a rival the price of a treaty with the producing States; whose interest too it would be to nourish a navigation beyond the Atlantic, rather than a hostile one at our own door. And 6th. That in case of war with the Union, which occurrences between coterminous nations frequently produce, it would be a contest of one against fifteen. The remaining portion of the Federal moiety of the State would, I believe, brave all these obstacles, because they are monarchists in principle, bearing deadly hatred to their republican fellow-citizens, impatient under the ascendency of republican principles, devoted in their attachment to England, and preferring to be placed under her despotism, if they cannot hold the helm of government here. I see, in their separation, no evil but the example, and I believe that the effect of that would be corrected by an early and humiliating return to the Union, after losing much of the population of their country, insufficient in its own resources to feed her numerous inhabitants, and inferior in all its allurements to the more inviting soils, climates, and governments of the other States. Whether a dispassionate discussion before the public, of the advantages and disadvantages of separation to both parties, would be the best medicine for this dialytic fever, or to consider it as sacrilege ever to touch the question, may be doubted. I am, myself, generally disposed to indulge, and to follow reason; and believe that in no case would it be safer than in the present. Their refractory course, however, will not be unpunished by the indignation of their co-States, their loss of influence with them, the censures of history, and the stain on the character of their State. With my thanks for the paper enclosed, accept the assurance of my esteem and respect.

TO DOCTOR LOGAN

Monticello, October 3, 1813.

Dear Sir,—I have duly received your favor of September 18th, and I perceive in it the same spirit of peace which I know you have ever breathed, and to preserve which you have made many personal sacrifices. That your efforts did much towards preventing declared war with France, I am satisfied. Of those with England, I am not equally informed. I have ever cherished the same spirit with all nations, from a consciousness that peace, prosperity, liberty, and morals, have an intimate connection. During the eight years of my administration, there was not a year that England did not give us such cause as would have provoked a war from any European government. But I always hoped that time and friendly remonstrances would bring her to a sounder view of her own interests, and convince her that these would be promoted by a return to justice and friendship towards us. Continued impressments of our seamen by her naval commanders, whose interest it was to mistake them for theirs, her innovations on the law of nations to cover real piracies, could illy be borne; and perhaps would not have been borne, had not contraventions of the same law by France, fewer in number but equally illegal, rendered it difficult to single the object of war. England, at length, singled herself, and took up the gauntlet, when the unlawful decrees of France being revoked as to us, she, by the proclamation of her Prince Regent, protested to the world that she would never revoke hers until those of France should be removed as to all nations. Her minister too, about the same time, in an official conversation with our Chargé, rejected our substitute for her practice of impressment; proposed no other; and declared explicitly that no admissible one for this abuse could be proposed. Negotiation being thus cut short, no alternative remained but war, or the abandonment of the persons and property of our citizens on the ocean. The last one, I presume, no American would have preferred. War was therefore declared, and justly declared; but accompanied with immediate offers of peace on simply doing us justice. These offers were made through Russel, through Admiral Warren, through the government of Canada, and the mediation proposed by her best friend Alexander, and the greatest enemy of Bonaparte, was accepted without hesitation. An entire confidence in the abilities and integrity of those now administering the government, has kept me from the inclination, as well as the occasion, of intermeddling in the public affairs, even as a private citizen may justifiably do. Yet if you can suggest any conditions which we ought to accept, and which have not been repeatedly offered and rejected, I would not hesitate to become the channel of their communication to the administration. The revocation of the orders of council, and discontinuance of impressment, appear to me indispensable. And I think a thousand ships taken unjustifiably in time of peace, and thousands of our citizens impressed, warrant expectations of indemnification; such a Western frontier, perhaps, given to Canada, as may put it out of their power hereafter to employ the tomahawk and scalping-knife of the Indians on our women and children; or, what would be nearly equivalent, the exclusive right to the lakes. The modification, however, of this indemnification must be effected by the events of the war. No man on earth has stronger detestation than myself of the unprincipled tyrant who is deluging the continent of Europe with blood. No one was more gratified by his disasters of the last campaign; nor wished, more sincerely, success to the efforts of the virtuous Alexander. But the desire of seeing England forced to just terms of peace with us, makes me equally solicitous for her entire exclusion from intercourse with the rest of the world, until by this peaceable engine of constraint, she can be made to renounce her views of dominion over the ocean, of permitting no other nation to navigate it but with her license, and on tribute to her; and her aggressions on the persons of our citizens who may choose to exercise their right of passing over that element. Should the continental armistice issue in closing Europe against her, she may become willing to accede to just terms with us; which I should certainly be disposed to meet, whatever consequences it might produce on our intercourse with the continental nations. My principle is to do whatever is right, and leave consequences to Him who has the disposal of them. I repeat, therefore, that if you can suggest what may lead to a just peace, I will willingly communicate it to the proper functionaries. In the meantime, its object will be best promoted by a vigorous and unanimous prosecution of the war.