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his talents and indefatigableness to extricate them. We have had only middling performances to oppose to him. In truth when he comes forward, there is nobody but yourself who can meet him. His adversaries having begun the attack, he has the advantage of answering them, and remains unanswered himself. A solid reply might yet completely demolish what was too feebly attacked, and has gathered strength from the weakness of the attack. The merchants were certainly (except those of them who are English) as open-mouthed at first against the treaty, as any. But the general expression of indignation has alarmed them for the strength of the government. They have feared the shock would be too great, and have chosen to tack about and support both treaty and government, rather than risk the government. Thus it is, that Hamilton, Jay, &c. in the boldest act they ever ventured on to undermine the government, have the address to screen themselves, and direct the hue and cry against those who wished to drag them into light. A bolder party-stroke was never struck. For it certainly is an attempt of a party, who find they have lost their majority in one branch of the legislature, to make a law by the aid of the other branch and of the executive, under color of a treaty, which shall bind up the hands of the adverse branch from ever restraining the commerce of their patron nation. There appears a pause at present in the public senti ment, which may be followed by a revulsion. This is the effect of the desertion of the merchants, of the President's chiding answer to Boston and Richmond, of the writings of Curtius and Camillus, and of the quietism into which people naturally fall after first sensations , are over. For God's sake take up your pen, and give a fundamental reply to Curtius and Camillus."

To J. MONROE.-"The British treaty has been formally, at length, laid before Congress. All America is a tiptoe to see what the House of Representatives will decide on it. We conceive the constitutional doctrine to be, that though the President and Senate have the general power of making treaties, yet wherever they include in a treaty matters confided by the constitution to the three branches of legislature, an act of legislation will be requisite to confirm these articles, and that the House of Representatives, as one branch of the legislature, are perfectly free to pass the act or to refuse it, governing themselves by their own judgment whether it is for the good of their constituents to let the treaty go into effect or not, On the precedent now to be set will depend the future construction of our constitution, and whether the powers of legislation shall be transferred from the President, Senate, and House of Representatives, to the President and Senate, and Piamingo or any other Indian, Algerine, or other chief. It is fortunate that the first decision is to be in a case so palpably atrocious, as to have been predetermined

by all America. The appointment of Ellsworth Chief Justice, and Chase one of the judges, is doubtless communicated to you."

To J. MONROE." The campaign of Congress has closed. Though the Anglomen have in the end got their treaty through, and so far have triumphed over the cause of republicanism, yet it has been to them a dear-bought victory. It has given the most radical shock to their party which it has ever received: and there is no doubt, they would be glad to be replaced on the ground they possessed the instant before Jay's nomination extraordinary. They see that nothing can support them but the colossus of the President's merits with the people, and the moment he retires, that his successor, if a monocrat, will be overborne by the republican sense of his constituents; if a republican, he will of course give fair play to that sense, and lead things into the channel of harmony between the governors and governed. In the mean time, patience."

To J. MONROE.-" Congress have risen. You will have seen by their proceedings the truth of what I always observed to you, that one man outweighs them all in influence over the people, who have supported his judgment against their own and that of their representatives. Republicanism must lie on its oars, resign the vessel to its pilot, and themselves, to the course he thinks best for them. I had always conjectured, from such facts as I could get hold of, that our public debt was increasing about a million of dollars a year. You will see by Gallatin's speeches that the thing is proved. You will see farther, that we are completely saddled and bridled, and that the bank is so firmly mounted on us that we must go where they will guide."

To P. MAZZEI, (in Europe.)" The aspect of our politics has wonderfully changed since you left us. In place of that noble love of liberty and republican government which carried us triumphantly through the war, an Anglican monachical and aristocratical party has sprung up, whose avowed object is to draw over us the substance, as they have already done the forms, of the British government. The main body of our citizens, however, remain true to their republican principles: the whole landed interest is republican, and so is a great mass of talents. Against us are the executive, the judiciary, two out of three branches of the legislature, all the officers of the government, all who want to be officers, all timid men who prefer the calm of despotism to the boisterous sea of liberty, British merchants and Americans trading on British capitals, speculators and holders in the banks and public funds, a contrivance invented for the purposes of corruption, and for assimilating us in all things to the rotten as well as the sound parts of the British model. It would give you a fever were I to name to you the apostates who have gone over to these heresies, men who were Samsons in the field and Solo

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mops in the council, but who have had their heads shorn by the harlot England. In short, we are likely to preserve the liberty we have obtained only by unremitting labors and perils. But we shall preserve it; and our mass of weight and wealth on the good side is so great, as to leave no danger that force will ever be attempted against us. We have only to awake and snap the Lilliputian cords with which they have been entangling us during the first sleep which succeeded our labors.

"I begin to feel the effects of age. My health has suddenly broken down, with symptoms which give me to believe I shall not have much to encounter of the tedium vito. While it remains, however, my heart will be warm in its friendships, and among these, will always foster the affections with which I am, Dear Sir, your friend and servant."

The last of the above letters is somewhat celebrated in the political history of the dark ages of our Republic. The circumstances which have given it notoriety, aside from its remarkable merits as an epistolary essay, are these. It was written to an Italian, an intimate and confidential friend of Mr. Jefferson, who had passed some years in the United States, in the vicinity of Monticello. It was a long letter of business, in which was the single paragraph only of political matter, inserted above. This paragraph was extracted, published in a Florence paper, republished in the Moniteur of Paris, and an additional sentence interpolated, which made Mr. Jefferson charge his own country with ingratitude and injustice to the French nation. This was at a time when the dominant party in France were laboring under very general disfavor, and their friends were eager to catch at every circumstance to buoy them up. The sentence respecting France was an entire fabrication. There was not a word in the whole letter relating to France, or any of the proceedings or relations between this country and that. In this interpolated form, it was copied into the newspapers of the United States, made a subject of exaggerated commentary by the editors, and a never failing source of crimination and calumny against Mr. Jefferson and the republican party. In the genuine letter, of which the author retained a press-copy, and of which the controverted paragraph is given entire, 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 the times in which it was written. Instead of being libeled, and made a theme of reprobation, it should be written in sunbeams, in eternal honor of the author, and engraved upon the

heart of every American, in everlasting testimony against that period, of which it presents so terrible yet faithful a portrait.

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A great handle was made of this letter to produce a rupture between the writer and General Washington. Besides the interpolated sentence, and the mutilated hue which the translations through Italian and French into English, gave the whole paragraph, a mistranslation of a single word entirely perverted its meaning, and made it a pliant text of copious misrepresentations of the author. The word 'forms' in the first sentence, was rendered form, so as to make Mr. Jefferson express hostility to the present frame or organization of government. Whereas the forms' there meant, were the levees, birth-days, the pompous cavalcade to the capitol on the meeting of Congress, the formal speech from the throne, the procession of Congress to re-echo the speech in an answer, &c. &c. Of all these, it is true, the writer of that letter was an avowed, an implacable enemy, and intended, on that occasion, to express his unqualified reprehension. Now General Washington perfectly understood what was meant by these forms, as they had been frequent subjects of conversation between him and Mr. Jefferson. On these occasions he always joined in condemning them, explained the circumstances by which the aristocrats had inveigled him into them, and afterwards took measures to prevent their repetition. When the term of his second election arrived, he called the heads of departments together, observed that a proper occasion was now offered, of revising the ceremonies established, and desired them, by consulting together, to agree on such changes as they should think pro. per. Hamilton concurred with Mr. Jefferson at once, that there was too much ceremony for the character of our government, and particularly, that the parade of the installation at New-York ought not to be copied; that the President should desire the Chief Justice to attend him at his chambers, and administer the oath of office to him in the presence of the higher officers of the government. Randolph and Knox differed from them; the latter vehemently. As the opinions of the Cabinet were divided, and no positive decision given, no change was made.

The phrase 'Samsons in the field,' it was always said, was intended to include Gen. Washington under the general charge of apostacy. But himself never so understood it. He knew that it was meant for the officers of the Cincinnati generally, and that, from what had

passed between him and Mr. Jefferson at the commencement of the institution, it was not intended to include him. So far from his having called the author to an account, as has been gravely published, for these expressions in the letter to Mazzei, there never pas sed a word, written or verbal, directly or indirectly, between them on the subject; and their last parting, which was at the inauguration of Mr. Adams in '97, was warmly affectionate. General Washington never would have incurred such a degradation as to have appropriated to himself the imputation in that letter on the 'Samsons in combat."*

Unwearied stratagems were used to alienate the President from his late Secretary of State. The latter was represented as industriously engaged in promoting the opposition to the government. But if there was any one thing for which he was remarkable, it was his singular forbearance in this respect. It is an extraordinary fact in Mr. Jefferson's life, that he never wrote a paragraph for the newspapers. The only channel of communication which he employed, for making known his sentiments abroad, was that of private correspondence; and he always restrained it to those on whose fidelity he could sacredly rely against a public divulgation. It would be difficult to assign a motive for his singular caution on this head, unless it were an immeasurable desire for tranquillity. Every public inducement would certainly have constrained him to a different course; for he had declared, that were it left to himself to decide, whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, he should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.' Much as he idolized the freedom of the press, as the only safeguard of the public liberty, and preservative against human error, he never appropriated to his own use any portion of its efficacy; not even for the purposes of self-defence, against the unparalleled torrent of obloquy with which he was assailed for thirty years. This curious fact, which would not have been credited by the past generation, appears in many of his letters, and particularly in one to General Washington, written at this period.

"I have formerly mentioned to you, that from a very early period of my life, I had laid it down as a rule of conduct never to write a word for the public papers. From this, I have never departed in a

* Letter to Martin Van Buren, 1824.

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