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CHAPTER XIV.

Poplar Forest. Mr. Jefferson's sentiments towards Great Britain. Let ter to Mr. Law. National debt of England. Letter to Dr. Rush. Renewal of intercourse with Mr. Adams. Letter to Destutt Tracy. Thoughts on the federal and state governments. Separation. Correspondence with Mr. Adams. Letter to Mr. Maury—to the President. Common law of England. On his return to public life. Thoughts on manufactures. On the party divisions of the United States. General Washington. Letter to Madame de Staël. On a navy. Publication of his letters to Dr. Priestley. Explanation to Mr. Adams.

1813.

WHILE Mr. Jefferson held the opinion expressed in the preceding chapter, that it was the fixed purpose of the British government to assert the same supremacy on the ocean which they had actually maintained in the strait which separates their Island from France, it is not surprising that the belief should have given a keener edge to his resentment and ill-will, already sufficiently excited by provocations ancient and recent. These sentiments he was at no pains to disguise, and they accordingly furnished one of the themes of party reproach against him. It was a favourite theme too with his enemies, partly because it gave more colour to their imputation of his blind devotion to the interests of France, even in preference to those of his own country, and partly because it was certain to bring upon him the ill-will of a numerous and weighty class of the community, composed of those natives of Great Britain who were domiciliated in the United States, and who, for the most part, possessed of

intelligence and wealth, and still attached to the land of their birth, exercised great influence on public opinion in all the principal towns, and largely contributed to the support of the federal newspapers. Though he bore the calumnies of the press with more patience than most men, yet he was not insensible to them; and knowing the accusation of his subserviency to French policy to be absurd, and of hatred to England to be overcharged and unjust, he was at some pains to disabuse the public mind on these points, in the only mode in which he ever permitted himself to address it, by expressing his real sentiments to his correspondents. In this way he thought that truth would gradually obtain diffusion, and eventually acquire its proverbial ascendancy.

In a letter of January 16, 1811, to Mr. Law of Washington, an English gentleman who had held a distinguished rank in the East Indies, but had been many years a resident in the United States, he makes a full exposition of his feelings towards Great Britain; and even those who persist in questioning his sincerity, must admit that these are the sentiments which he wished others to think he possessed, and of course those which he thought most consonant to truth and justice.

"No man," he remarks, "was more sensible than myself of the just value of the friendship of that country. There are between us so many of those circumstances which naturally produce and cement kind dispositions, that if they could have forgiven our resistance to their usurpations, our connexions might have deen durable, and have insured duration to both our governments. I wished, therefore, a cordial friendship with theirs, and I spared no occasion of manifesting this in our correspondence and intercourse with them; not disguising, however, my desire of friendship with their enemy also." He says that he perceived friendly symptoms during Addington's administration, and while

Fox was in power; but that every other administration since the Revolution had been wanton in their injuries and insults, and manifested hatred. That, instead of cultivating the good-will of the government, whose principles are those of the great mass of the nation, they had allied themselves with a faction here, not a tenth of the people. He treats the charge of personal enmity towards England, as a mere newspaper calumny, unworthy of serious notice. England," he remarks, "never did me a personal injury, other than in open war, and for numerous individuals there I have great esteem and friendship; and I must have had a mind far below the duties of my station, to have felt either national partialities or antipathies in conducting the affairs confided to me. My affections were first for my own country, and then, generally, for all mankind; and nothing but minds placing themselves above the passions, in the functionaries of this country, could have preserved us from the war to which their provocations have been constantly urging us." He speaks of the numerous classes in England who are interested in war, and whom the ministry must court, to keep their places. He anticipates great danger from what he calls "the crush of her internal structure." "Her monied interest, created by her paper system, and now constituting a baseless mass of wealth equal to that of the owners of the soil, must disappear with that system; and the medium for paying great taxes thus failing, her navy must be without support." He adverts to her attempts to subject other nations to tribute on the ocean, and says that while it is desirable that she should have a fair share of the power on that element, the dominion she claims will be resisted by every nation ad internecionem."

This opinion of the ruinous effects of the national debt of Great Britain, which was entertained by Mr. Jefferson, in common with many others, appears not sufficiently to dis

criminate between the case of a nation in debt and an individual. Yet there are important points of difference between them. When an individual's expenses regularly exceed his income, and he continues to borrow to make up the deficiency, he must in time be inevitably ruined, be his estate what it may. He is able to obtain the funds of other people only by pledging his property, and he every year consumes a part of his principal until he consumes the whole. But in the case of national debts, if they have been contracted with the subjects of the nation, as is the English public debt, it is widely different. The money which is thus lent consists of the accumulations of individual industry and frugality—no one lends to the government what he needs for his own support, but only that which he has saved out of the excess of his income over his expenditure, and for which he prefers receiving a small annual sum of interest, more advantageous to him than any other mode of using it. The money, therefore, which is thus spent by the nation, is in fact part of its former savings. It was made by the nation before it was spent; whereas in the case of the individual, it was spent before it was made by the consumer. In both cases, indeed, the national wealth is diminished by a useless or wasteful expenditure; but while this waste may ruin the individual, it can never ruin the nation, or even make it poorer, further than to stop its further accumulation. It is true the nation is burdened with the payment of the annual interest, but that annual interest is received by a part of the nation; and though this burden may very materially affect the comforts of those who contribute to bear it, and change the distribution of the national wealth, it does not affect the amount of that wealth; and as its existence does not materially affect the means or strength of a country, so neither would its extinction, whether by payment or the sponge, impair or augment its resources. Thus, by way of illustration

let us suppose the government to be guilty of bad faith, and refuse to pay its creditors; it will then of course have occasion for so much less of tax: and although the creditors cannot pay, as they previously did, any part of the tax, yet as they also receive no interest, which, in the whole class of creditors, must greatly exceed what they pay as tax, the rest of the nation, which gains precisely as much as they lose, can make up the deficiency; and the means, which the country before possessed, of maintaining an army and navy, after paying its creditors, would remain, though the fortunes of the fundholders should be annihilated. The nation would then be in the situation of a rich landed proprietor, whose income exceeding his expenses, he had lent the excess to another; and when, if that other proved a bankrupt or a swindler, and he of course lost the whole debt, he would still be possessed of the estate from which his former income had been derived, with its former means of profitable surplus undiminished, which he might either spend, or lend, or otherwise dispose of. And if we further suppose that the debtor derived most of his means of paying the interest from the creditor himself by gaming, horse-racing, and other modes of contribution, then he saves as much by ceasing to lose these sums as is equivalent to the interest he had previously received: and he forms a yet closer parallel with the case of a government supporting a wasteful expenditure. The very common predictions of the effect of the stoppage of the Bank of England were equally fallacious, both as to the institution itself and its effect on the nation.

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His domestic habits at this period are noticed in a letter to Dr. Rush. My present course of life admits less reading than I wish. From breakfast or noon at latest, to dinner, I am mostly on horseback, attending to my farm, or other concerns, which I find healthful to my body, mind and

VOL. II.

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