1812, January 21: Jefferson to Adams
A letter from you calls up recollections very dear to my mind. It
carries me back to the times when, beset with difficulties and dangers,
we were fellow laborers in the same cause, struggling for what is most
valuable to man, his right of self-government. Laboring always at the
same oar, with some wave ever ahead threatening to overwhelm us and yet
passing harmless under our bark, we knew not how, we rode through the
storm with heart and hand, and made a happy port. . . But whither is senile garrulity leading me? Into politics, of which I have taken final leave. I think little
of them, and say less. I have given up newspapers in exchange for
Tacitus and Thucydides, for Newton and Euclid; and I find myself much
the happier.
Sometimes indeed I look back to former
occurrences, in remembrance of our old friends and fellow laborers, who
have fallen before us. Of the signers of the Declaration of
Independence I see now living not more than half a dozen on your side
of the Potomak, and, on this side, myself alone. You and I have been
wonderfully spared, and myself with remarkable health, and a
considerable activity of body and mind. I am on horseback 3. or 4.
hours of every day; visit 3. or 4. times a year a possession I have 90
miles distant, performing the winter journey on horseback. I walk
little however; a single mile being too much for me; and I live in the
midst of my grandchildren, one of whom has lately promoted me to be a
great grandfather. -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1812, February 3: Adams to Jefferson
Your Memoranda of the past, your Sense of the present and Prospect for
the Future seem to be well founded, as far as I see. But the Latter
i.e. the Prospect of the Future, will depend on the Union: and how is
that Union to be preserved? Concordia Res parvae crescunt, Discordia
Maximae dilabuntur. . . . . The
Union is still to me an Object of as much Anxiety as ever Independence
was. To this I have sacrificed my Popularity in New England and yet
what Treatment do I still receive from the Randolphs and Sheffeys of
Virginia. By the Way are not these Eastern Shore Men? My Senectutal
Loquacity has more than retaliated your .Senile Garrulity. . . .. I walk every fair day, sometimes 3 or 4 miles. Ride now and then but very rarely more than ten or fifteen
Miles. . . . I have the Start of you in Age by at least ten Years: but
you are advanced to the Rank of a Great Grandfather before me. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1813, October 28: Jefferson to Adams
According
to the reservation between us, of taking up one of the subjects of our
correspondence at a time, I turn to your letters of Aug. 16. and Sep. 2.
[.......]
For
I agree with you that there is a natural aristocracy among men. The
grounds of this are virtue and talents. Formerly bodily powers gave
place among the aristoi. But since the invention of gunpowder has armed
the weak as well as the strong with missile death, bodily strength,
like beauty, good humor, politeness and other accomplishments, has
become but an auxiliary ground of distinction. There is also an
artificial aristocracy founded on wealth and birth, without either
virtue or talents; for with these it would belong to the first class.
The natural aristocracy I consider as the most precious gift of nature
for the instruction, the trusts, and government of society. And indeed
it would have been inconsistent in creation to have formed man for the
social state, and not to have provided virtue and wisdom enough to
manage the concerns of the society. May we not even say that that form
of government is the best which provides the most effectually for a
pure selection of these natural aristoi into the offices of government?
The artificial aristocracy is a mischievous ingredient in
government, and provision should be made to prevent it's ascendancy. On
the question, What is the best provision, you and I differ; but we
differ as rational friends, using the free exercise of our own reason,
and mutually indulging it's errors. You think it best to put the
Pseudo-aristoi into a separate chamber of legislation where they may be
hindered from doing mischief by their coordinate branches, and where
also they may be a protection to wealth against the Agrarian and
plundering enterprises of the Majority of the people. I think that to
give them power in order to prevent them from doing mischief, is arming
them for it, and increasing instead of remedying the evil. For if the
coordinate branches can arrest their action, so may they that of the
coordinates. Mischief may be done negatively as well as positively. Of
this a cabal in the Senate of the U. S. has furnished many proofs. Nor
do I believe them necessary to protect the wealthy; because enough of
these will find their way into every branch of the legislation to
protect themselves. From 15. to 20. legislatures of our own, in action
for 30. years past, have proved that no fears of an equalisation of
property are to be apprehended from them.
I think the best
remedy is exactly that provided by all our constitutions, to leave to
the citizens the free election and separation of the aristoi from the
pseudo-aristoi, of the wheat from the chaff. In general they will elect
the real good and wise. In some instances, wealth may corrupt, and
birth blind them; but not in sufficient degree to endanger the society.
It
is probable that our difference of opinion may in some measure be
produced by a difference of character in those among whom we live. From
what I have seen of Massachusets and Connecticut myself, and still more
from what I have heard, and the character given of the former by
yourself, who know them so much better, there seems to be in those two
states a traditionary reverence for certain families, which has
rendered the offices of the government nearly hereditary in those
families. I presume that from an early period of your history, members
of these families happening to possess virtue and talents, have
honestly exercised them for the good of the people, and by their
services have endeared their names to them.
In coupling
Connecticut with you, I mean it politically only, not morally. For
having made the Bible the Common law of their land they seem to have
modelled their morality on the story of Jacob and Laban. But altho'
this hereditary succession to office with you may in some degree be
founded in real family merit, yet in a much higher degree it has
proceeded from your strict alliance of church and state. These families
are canonised in the eyes of the people on the common principle "you
tickle me, and I will tickle you." In Virginia we have nothing of this.
Our clergy, before the revolution, having been secured against
rivalship by fixed salaries, did not give themselves the trouble of
acquiring influence over the people. Of wealth, there were great
accumulations in particular families, handed down from generation to
generation under the English law of entails. But the only object of
ambition for the wealthy was a seat in the king's council. All their
court then was paid to the crown and it's creatures; and they
Philipised in all collisions between the king and people. Hence they
were unpopular; and that unpopularity continues attached to their
names. A Randolph, a Carter, or a Burwell must have great personal
superiority over a common competitor to be elected by the people, even
at this day.
At the first session of our legislature after the
Declaration of Independance, we passed a law abolishing entails. And
this was followed by one abolishing the privilege of Primogeniture, and
dividing the lands of intestates equally among all their children, or
other representatives. These laws, drawn by myself, laid the axe to the
root of Pseudoaristocracy.
And had another which I prepared
been adopted by the legislature, our work would have been compleat. It
was a Bill for the more general diffusion of learning. This proposed to
divide every county into wards of 5. or 6. miles square, like your
townships; to establish in each ward a free school for reading, writing
and common arithmetic; to provide for the annual selection of the best
subjects from these schools who might receive at the public expense a
higher degree of education at a district school; and from these
district schools to select a certain number of the most promising
subjects to be compleated at an University, where all the useful
sciences should be taught. Worth and genius would thus have been sought
out from every condition of life, and compleatly prepared by education
for defeating the competition of wealth and birth for public trusts.
My
proposition had for a further object to impart to these wards those
portions of self-government for which they are best qualified, by
confiding to them the care of their poor, their roads, police,
elections, the nomination of jurors, administration of justice in small
cases, elementary exercises of militia, in short, to have made them
little republics, with a Warden at the head of each, for all those
concerns which, being under their eye, they would better manage than
the larger republics of the county or state. A general call of
ward-meetings by their Wardens on the same day thro' the state would at
any time produce the genuine sense of the people on any required point,
and would enable the state to act in mass, as your people have so often
done, and with so much effect, by their town meetings.
The law
for religious freedom, which made a part of this system, having put
down the aristocracy of the clergy, and restored to the citizen the
freedom of the mind, and those of entails and descents nurturing an
equality of condition among them, this on Education would have raised
the mass of the people to the high ground of moral respectability
necessary to their own safety, and to orderly government; and would
have compleated the great object of qualifying them to select the
veritable aristoi, for the trusts of government, to the exclusion of
the Pseudalists: and the same Theognis who has furnished the epigraphs
of your two letters assures us that "oudemian pw kurnagathoi polin
hwlesan andres ["Curnis, good men have never harmed any city"]. Altho'
this law has not yet been acted on but in a small and inefficient
degree, it is still considered as before the legislature, with other
bills of the revised code, not yet taken up, and I have great hope that
some patriotic spirit will, at a favorable moment, call it up, and make
it the key-stone of the arch of our government.
With respect to
Aristocracy, we should further consider that, before the establishment
of the American states, nothing was known to History but the Man of the
old world, crouded within limits either small or overcharged, and
steeped in the vices which that situation generates. A government
adapted to such men would be one thing; but a very different one that
for the Man of these states. Here every one may have land to labor for
himself if he chuses; or, preferring the exercise of any other
industry, may exact for it such compensation as not only to afford a
comfortable subsistence, but wherewith to provide for a cessation from
labor in old age. Every one, by his property, or by his satisfactory
situation, is interested in the support of law and order. And such men
may safely and advantageously reserve to themselves a wholsome controul
over their public affairs, and a degree of freedom, which in the hands
of the Canaille of the cities of Europe, would be instantly perverted
to the demolition and destruction of every thing public and private.
The history of the last 25. years of France, and of the last 40. years
in America, nay of it's last 200. years, proves the truth of both parts
of this observation.
But even in Europe a change has sensibly
taken place in the mind of Man. Science had liberated the ideas of
those who read and reflect, and the American example had kindled
feelings of right in the people. An insurrection has consequently
begun, of science, talents and courage against rank and birth, which
have fallen into contempt. It has failed in it's first effort, because
the mobs of the cities, the instrument used for it's accomplishment,
debased by ignorance, poverty and vice, could not be restrained to
rational action. But the world will recover from the panic of this
first catastrophe. Science is progressive, and talents and enterprize
on the alert. Resort may be had to the people of the country, a more
governable power from their principles and subordination; and rank, and
birth, and tinsel-aristocracy will finally shrink into insignificance,
even there. This however we have no right to meddle with. It suffices
for us, if the moral and physical condition of our own citizens
qualifies them to select the able and good for the direction of their
government, with a recurrence of elections at such short periods as
will enable them to displace an unfaithful servant before the mischief
he meditates may be irremediable.
I
have thus stated my opinion on a point on which we differ, not with a
view to controversy, for we are both too old to change opinions which
are the result of a long life of inquiry and reflection; but on the
suggestion of a former letter of yours, that we ought not to die before
we have explained ourselves to each other.
We acted in
perfect harmony thro' a long and perilous contest for our liberty and
independance. A constitution has been acquired which, tho neither of us
think perfect, yet both consider as competent to render our
fellow-citizens the happiest and the securest on whom the sun has ever
shone. If we do not think exactly alike as to it's imperfections, it
matters little to our country which, after devoting to it long lives of
disinterested labor, we have delivered over to our successors in life,
who will be able to take care of it, and of themselves.-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1823, Sep. 4: Jefferson to AdamsI
observe your toast of mr Jay on the 4th. of July, wherein you say that
the omission of his signature to the Declaration of Independance was by
accident. our impressions as to this fact being different, I shall be
glad to have mine corrected, if wrong. Jay, you know, had been in
constant opposition to our laboring majority. our estimate, at the
time, was that he, Dickinson & Johnson of Maryland by their
ingenuity, perseverance and partiality to our English connection, had
constantly kept us a year behind where we ought to have been in our
preparations and proceedings. From about the date of the Virginia
instructions of May 15, 76 to declare Independance, Mr Jay absented
himself from Congress, and never came there again until Dec. 78. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1825, January 23: Adams to Jefferson We think ourselves possessed or at least we boast that we are so of Liberty of conscience on all subjects
and of the right of free inquiry and private judgment, in all cases and
yet how far are we from these exalted privileges in fact. There exists
I believe throughout the whole Christian world a law which makes it
blasphemy to deny or to doubt the divine inspiration of all the books
of the old and new Testaments from Genesis to Revelations. In most
countries of Europe it is punished by fire at the stake, or the rack or
the wheel: in England itself it is punished by boring through the
tongue with a red hot poker: in America it is not much better, even in
our Massachusetts which I believe upon the whole is as temperate and
moderate in religious zeal as most of the States. A law was made in the
latter end of the last century repealing the cruel punishments of the
former laws but substituting fine and imprisonment upon all those
blasphemers upon any book of the old Testament or new. Now what free
inquiry when a writer must surely encounter the risk of fine or
imprisonment for adducing any argument for investigation into the
divine authority of those books? Who would run the risk of translating
Volney.s Recherches Nouvelles? who would run the risk of
translating Dupuis? but
I cannot enlarge upon this subject, though I have it much at heart. I
think such laws a great embarassment, great obstructions to the
improvement of the human mind. Books that cannot bear examination
certainly ought not to be established as divine inspiration by penal
laws. . . . The
substance and essence of Christianity as I understand it is eternal and
unchangeable and will bear examination forever but it has been mixed
with extraneous ingredients, which I think will not bear examination
and they ought to be separated. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
