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extent profitable to the inventor. Nobody wishes more than I do that ingenuity should receive a liberal encouragement. (To Oliver Evans, 1807. C. V., 75.)

PATRONAGE.-One thing I will say that as to the future, interferences with elections, whether of the State or general government, by officers of the latter, should be denied cause of removal; because the constitutional remedy by the elective principle beF. VII., comes nothing, if it may be smothered by the patronage of the general government. (To Thomas McKean, 1801. 486.)

PATRONAGE.-See Offices.

PEACE. It should be our endeavor to cultivate the peace and friendship of every nation, even of that which has injured us most, when we shall have carried our point against her. Never was so much false arithmetic employed on any subject, as that which has been employed to persuade nations that it is Were the money which it has cost their interest to go to war. to gain, at the close of a long war, a little town, or a little territory, the right to cut wood here, or to catch fish there, expended in improving what they already possess, in making roads, opening rivers, building ports, improving the arts and finding employment for their idle poor, it would render them much stronger, much wealthier and happier. This I hope will be our wisdom. (From "Notes on Virginia," 1782. F. III., 279.)

PEACE. We love and we value peace; we know its blessings from experience. We abhor the follies of war and are not united in its distresses and calamities. (To the United States Commissioner at Spain, 1793. F. VI., 338.)

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PEACE. As to myself I love peace, and I am anxious that we should give the world still another useful lesson, by showing to them other modes of punishing injuries than by war, which is as much a punishment to the punisher as to the sufferer. I love therefore Mr. Clarke's proposition of cutting off all communication with the nation which has conducted itself so atrociously. If it does, we will meet This you will say may bring on war. it like men; but it may not bring on war, and then the experi

ment will have been a happy one. (To Tench Coxe, 1794. F. VI., 508.)

PEACE. In the course of this conflict (referring to the Napoleonic wars) let it be our endeavor, as it is our interest and desire, to cultivate the friendship of the belligerent nations by every act of justice and of incessant kindness; to receive their armed vessels with hospitality from the distresses of the sea, but to administer the means of annoyance to none; to establish in our harbors such a police as may maintain law and order; to restrain our citizens from embarking individually in a war in which their country takes no part; to punish severely those persons, citizen or alien, who shall usurp the cover of our flag for vessels not entitled to it, infecting thereby with suspicion those of real Americans, and committing us into controversies for the redress of wrongs not our own; to exact from every nation the observance, toward our vessels and citizens, of those principles and practices which all civilized people acknowledge; to merit the character of a just nation, and maintain that of an independent one, preferring every consequence to insult and habitual wrong. * * Separated by a wide ocean from the nations of Europe, and from the political interests which entangle them together, with productions and wants which render our commerce and friendship useful to them and theirs to us, it cannot be the interest of any to assail us, nor ours to disturb them. We should be most unwise, indeed, were we to cast away the singular blessings of the position in which nature has placed us, the opportunity she has endowed us with of pursuing at a distance from foreign contentions, the paths of industry, peace and happiness; of cultivating general friendship, and of bringing collisions of interest to the umpirage of reason rather than of force. How desirable then must it be, in a government like ours, to see its citizens adopt individually the views, the interests, and the conduct which their country should pursue, divesting themselves of those passions and partialities which tend to lessen useful friendships, and to embarrass and embroil us in the calamitous scenes of Europe. (Third Annual Message to Congress, 1803. F. VIII., 272.)

PEACE.-Unmeddling with the affairs of other nations, we presume not to prescribe or censure their course. Happy, could we be permitted to pursue our own in peace, and to employ all our means in improving the condition of our citizens. Whether this will be permitted, is more doubtful now than at any preceding time. We have borne patiently a great deal of wrong, on the consideration that if nations go to war for every degree of injury, there would never be peace on earth. But when patience has begotten false estimates of its motives, when wrongs are pressed because it is believed they will be borne, resistance becomes morality. (To Madame de Stael, 1807. C. V., 133.)

PEACE. We have, therefore, remained in peace, suffering frequent injuries, but, on the whole, multiplying, improving, prospering beyond all example. It is evident to all, that in spite of great losses much greater gains have ensued. When these gladiators shall have worried each other into ruin or reason, instead of lying among the dead on the bloody arena, we shall have acquired a growth and strength which will place us hors d'insulte. Peace then has been our principle, peace is our interest, and peace has saved the world this only plant of free and rational government now existing in it. If it can still be preserved, we shall soon see the final extinction of our national debt, and liberation of our revenues for the defence and improvement of our country. * **However, therefore, we may have been reproached for pursuing our Quaker system, time will affix the stamp of wisdom on it, and the happiness and prosperity of our citizens will attest its merit. And this, I believe, is the only legitimate object of government, and the first duty of governors, and not the slaughter of men and devastation of the countries placed under their care, in pursuit of a fantastic honor, unallied to virtue or happiness; or in gratification of the angry passions, or the pride of administrators, excited by personal incidents, in which their citizens have no concern. Some merit will be ascribed to the converting such times of destruction into times of growth and strength for us. (To Kosciusko, 1811. C. V., 585.)

PEACE. When peace becomes more losing than war, we may prefer the latter on principles of pecuniary calculation. But for us to attempt, by war, to reform all Europe, and bring them back to principles of morality and a respect for the equal rights of nations, would show us to be only maniacs of another character. We should, indeed, have the merit of the good intentions as well as of the folly of the hero of La Mancha. (To Mr. Wirt. C. V., 595.)

PEACE SPIRIT.-No country perhaps was ever so thoroughly against war as ours. These dispositions pervade every description of its citizens, whether in or out of office. They cannot perhaps suppress their affections or their wishes, but they will suppress the effects of them so as to preserve a fair neutrality. Indeed we shall be more useful (to France) than as parties by the protection which our flag will give to the supplies of provision. In this spirit let all your assurances be given to the government with which you reside. (Instructions to the United States Minister to France, 1793. F. VI., 217.)

THE PEOPLE.-I am myself persuaded that the good sense of the people will always be found to be the best army. They may be led astray for a moment, but will soon correct themselves. The people are the only censors of their governors; and even their errors will tend to keep these to the true principles of their institution. To punish their errors too severely would be to suppress the only safeguard to public liberty. (To Edward Carrington, 1787. F. IV., 359.)

PETITIONS. For ourselves, we have exhausted every mode of application which our invention could suggest as proper and promising. We have decently remonstrated with Parliament; they have added new injuries to the old. We have wearied our King with applications; he has not deigned to answer us. We have appealed to the native honor and justice of the British nation. Their efforts in our favor have hitherto been ineffectual. What then remains to be done? That we commit our injuries to the evenhanded justice of the Being who doth no wrong, earnestly beseeching him to illuminate the counsels, and prosper the endeavors of those to whom America hath confided her

hopes, that through their wise direction we may again see reunited the blessings of liberty, property, and harmony with Great Britain. (From an address to Governor Dunmore of

Virginia, 1775. F. I., 459.)

PHILOSOPHERS.-I am satisfied there is an order of geniuses above that obligation (of government) and therefore exempted from it; nobody can conceive that nature ever intended to throw away a Newton upon the occupation of a crown. It would have been a prodigality for which even the conduct of Providence might have been arraigned, had he been by birth annexed to what was so far below him. Co-operating with nature in her ordinary economy we should dispose of and employ the geniuses of men according to their several orders and degrees. I doubt not there are in your country many persons equal to the task of conducting government; but you should consider that the world has but one Rittenhouse and that it never had one before. (To David Rittenhouse, 1778. F. II., 163.)

PLATO.-Education is chiefly in the hands of persons who, from their profession, have an interest in the reputation and dreams of Plato. They give the tone while at school, and few in their after years have occasion to revise their college opinions. But fashion and authority apart, and bringing Plato to the test of reason, take from him his sophisms, futilities and incomprehensibilities, and what remains? In truth, he is one of the race of genuine sophists, who has escaped the oblivion of his brethren, first, by the elegance of his diction, but chiefly, by the adoption and incorporation of his whimsies into the body of artificial Christianity. His foggy mind is forever presenting the semblances of objects which, half seen through a mist, can be defined neither in form nor dimensions. Yet this, which should have consigned him to early oblivion, really procured him immortality of fame and reverence. The Christian priesthood, finding the doctrines of Christ levelled to every understanding, and too plain to need explanation, saw in the mysticism of Plato materials with which they might build up an artificial system, which might, from its indistinctness, admit