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CHAPTER XVIII.

Letters to Mr. Adams. The people of Kentucky-Spanish AmericaCondolence with Mr. Adams. Letter to Mr. Walsh. Dr. Franklin. Mr. Jefferson's domestic habits. Letter to Mr. Adams. Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence-his doubts vindicated. Letter to Judge Roane. Relative powers of the federal and state judicial departments. The question of permitting Slavery in Missouri. Letter to Mr. Adams-Neologisms-Matter and Spirit.

1818-1820.

MR. JEFFERSON from this time, and during the greater part of this year, was engaged in superintending the buildings attached to the central college, as the plan which had been adopted by the visitors, at his suggestion, admitted of further enlargement according to their means.

In answer to a letter of introduction which Mr. Adams had given Dr. Holley, the late President of Transylvania University, he observes: "I am glad he has gone to Kentucky. Rational christianity will thrive more rapidly there than here. They are freer from prejudices than we are, and bolder in grasping at truth. The time is not distant, though neither you nor I shall see it, when we shall be but a secondary people to them. Our greediness for wealth and fantastical expense have degraded, and will degrade, the minds of our maritime citizens. These are the peculiar vices of commerce." He adds: "My repugnance to the writing table becomes daily and hourly more deadly and insurmountable. In place of this has come on a canine appetite for reading; and I indulge it, because I see in it a relief against

the tædium senectutis; a lamp to lighten my path through the dreary wilderness of time before me, whose bourn I see not. Losing daily all interest in the things around us, something else is necessary to fill the void. With me it is reading, which occupies the mind, without the labour of producing ideas from my own stock."

He repeats his auguries about Spanish America. "I enter into all your doubts as to the event of the revolution of South America. They will succeed against Spain; but the dangerous enemy is within their own breasts. Ignorance and superstition will chain their minds and bodies under religious and military despotism. I do believe it would be better for them to obtain freedom by degrees only; because that would by degrees bring on light and information, and qualify them to take charge of themselves understandingly; with more certainty, if in the meantime under so much control as may keep them at peace with one another."* His concluding remarks are not in conformity to the religious opinions commonly imputed to him. " But these," he remarks, "are speculations, my friend, which we may as well deliver over to those who are to see their development. We shall only be lookers on from the clouds above, as now we look down on the labours, the hurry and bustle of the ants and bees. Perhaps in that super-mundane region, we may be amused with seeing the fallacy of our own guesses, and even the nothingness of those labours which have filled and agitated our own time here."

The same intimation of his belief in a future state is expressed to Mr. Adams, in a letter of condolence on the death

* The forebodings of these cautious and experienced statesmen have been as yet but too truly verified. After repeated revolutions of civil power in nearly all of them, they seem to be as far as ever from a state of stable tranquillity; and, in the science of government, not even to have fearnt the elementary distinction between force and right.

of Mrs. Adams, which deserves to be cited for its elegance, as well as because it indicates an important point of his faith.

Monticello, November 13, 1818.

"The public papers, my dear friend, announce the fatal event of which your letter of October the 20th had given me ominous foreboding. Tried myself in the school of affliction, by the loss of every form of connexion which can rive the human heart, I know full well, and feel what you have lost, what you have suffered, are suffering, and have yet to endure. The same trials have taught me that for ills so immeasurable, time and silence are the only medicine. I will not, therefore, by useless condolences, open afresh the sluices of your grief, nor, although mingling sincerely my tears with yours, will I say a word more where words are vain, but that it is of some comfort to us both, that the time is not very distant at which we are to deposit in the same cerement our sorrows and suffering bodies, and to ascend in essence to an extatic meeting with the friends we have loved and lost, and whom we shall still love and never lose again. God bless and support you under your heavy affliction. "TH. JEFFERSON."

Mr. Walsh, of Philadelphia, having written to Mr. Jefferson to make inquiry of him concerning the injurious imputations which had been occasionally thrown out against Dr. Franklin for too much subserviency to the French court, and a want of zeal in the protection of the fisheries, and other rights of his country at the treaty of peace, Mr. Jefferson does not hesitate in bearing testimony to his fidelity and integrity. It is understood that the diligent researches of Mr. Sparks while in Europe, confirmed Mr. Jefferson's evidence, and, it is to be hoped, put at rest for ever all attempts to cast a

shade of moral obliquity on one whose genius, both for science and letters, practical wisdom, and active services in the revolution, threw more lustre on his country abroad than did those of any other individual.

"Dr. Franklin," he says, "had many political enemies, as every character must, which, with decision enough to have opinions, has energy and talents to give them effect. These enemies were chiefly in Pennsylvania and Massachusetts. In the former, they were merely of the proprietary party. In the latter, they did not commence until the revolution, and then sprung chiefly from personal animosities, which, spreading by little and little, became at length of some extent." He considers Dr. Lee to have been the chief source of the calumnies against him. "As to the charge of subservience to France, besides the evidence of his friendly colleagues, [Mr. Izard, Mr. Jay, Silas Dean, and Mr. Laurens,] two years of my own service with him at Paris, daily visits, and the most friendly and confidential conversations, convince me it had not a shadow of foundation. He possessed the confidence of that government in the highest degree, insomuch that it may truly be said that they were more under his influence than he under theirs. The fact is, that his temper was so amiable and conciliatory, his conduct so rational, never urging impossibilities, or even things unreasonably inconvenient to them; in short, so moderate and attentive to their difficulties, as well as our own, that what his enemies called subserviency, I saw was only that reasonable disposition which, sensible that advantages are not all to be on one side, yielding what is just and liberal, is the more certain of obtaining liberality and justice. Mutual confidence produces, of course, mutual influence, and this was all which subsisted between Dr. Franklin and the government of France."

It appears from a letter written at this time by Jefferson, in answer to the inquiries of a correspondent, that he was in

the enjoyment of a green old age.

He lived temperately,

chiefly on vegetables, using animal food rather as a condiment than nourishment, and drinking nothing stronger than malt liquor, cider, and French wines. That he used no spectacles in the day, heard pretty well, and had never lost a tooth from age. That his habit was to bathe his feet every morning in cold water, to which he ascribes his remarkable exemption from catarrhs. That he walked little, but rode without fatigue six or eight miles a day, and sometimes thirty or forty. That he had been "blessed with organs of digestion which accepted and concocted without ever murmuring, whatever the palate choosed to consign to them." He says he was a hard student until he entered on the business of life, and then retired, and at the age of seventysix he was still a hard student. This picture of himself would answer with very small exceptions for the remaining seven years of his life.

In June of this year he received the following letter from Mr. Adams, on the subject of the North Carolina Declaration of Independence.

"Dear Sir,

May I enclose you one of the greatest curiosities, and one of the deepest mysteries that ever occurred to me; it is in the Essex Register of June the 5th, 1819. It is entitled, from the Raleigh Register, Declaration of Independence.' How is it possible that this paper should have been concealed from me to this day? Had it been communicated to me in the time of it, I know, if you do not know, that it would have been printed in every whig newspaper upon the continent. You know that if I had possessed it, I would havė made the Hall of Congress echo and re-echo with it fifteen months before your Declaration of Independence. What a poor, ignorant, malicious, short-sighted, crapulous mass is

!