I have troubled you with these details, because you are in the place where they may be used for the public service, if they admit of such use, and because the order of assembly, which you mention, shows they are sensible of the necessity of preserving such of these laws as relate to our landed property; and a little further consideration will perhaps convince them that it is better to do the whole work once for all, than to be recurring to it by piece-meal, as particular parts of it shall be required, and that too perhaps when the materials shall be lost. You are the best judge of the weight of these observations, and of the mode of giving them any effect they may merit. Adieu affectionately.
TO JAMES MADISON
Monticello, March 6, 1796.Dear Sir,I wrote you February the 21st, since which I have received yours of the same day. Indeed, mine of that date related only to a single article in yours of January the 31st and February the 7th. I do not at all wonder at the condition in which the finances of the United States are found. Hamilton's object from the beginning, was to throw them into forms which should be utterly undecypherable. I ever said he did not understand their condition himself, nor was able to give a clear view of the excess of our debts beyond our credits, nor whether we were diminishing or increasing the debt. My own opinion was, that from the commencement of this government to the time I ceased to attend to the subject, we had been increasing our debt about a million of dollars annually. If Mr. Gallatin would undertake to reduce this chaos to order, present us with a clear view of our finances, and put them into a form as simple as they will admit, he will merit immortal honor. The accounts of the United States ought to be, and may be made as simple as those of a common farmer, and capable of being understood by common farmers.
Disapproving, as I do, of the unjustifiable largess to the demands of the Count de Grasse, I will certainly not propose to rivet it by a second example on behalf of M. de Chastellux's son. It will only be done in the event of such a repetition of the precedent, as will give every one a right to share in the plunder. It is, indeed, surprising you have not yet received the British treaty in form. I presume you would never receive it were not your co-operation on it necessary. But this will oblige the formal notification of it to you.
My salutations to Mrs. Madison, friendly esteem to Mr. Giles, Page, &c. I am, with sincere affection, yours.
P. S. Have you considered all the consequences of your proposition respecting post roads? I view it as a source of boundless patronage to the executive, jobbing to members of Congress and their friends, and a bottomless abyss of public money. You will begin by only appropriating the surplus of the post office revenues; but the other revenues will soon be called into their aid, and it will be a source of eternal scramble among the members, who can get the most money wasted in their State; and they will always get most who are meanest. We have thought, hitherto, that the roads of a State could not be so well administered even by the State legislature as by the magistracy of the county, on the spot. How will they be when a member of New Hampshire is to mark out a road for Georgia? Does the power to establish post roads, given you by the Constitution, mean that you shall make the roads, or only select from those already made, those on which there shall be a post? If the term be equivocal, (and I really do not think it so,) which is the safest construction? That which permits a majority of Congress to go to cutting down mountains and bridging of rivers, or the other, which if too restricted may be referred to the States for amendment, securing still due measures and proportion among us, and providing some means of information to the members of Congress tantamount to that ocular inspection, which, even in our county determinations, the magistrate finds cannot be supplied by any other evidence? The fortification of harbors was liable to great objection. But national circumstances furnished some color. In this case there is none. The roads of America are the best in the world except those of France and England. But does the state of our population, the extent of our internal commerce, the want of sea and river navigation, call for such expense on roads here, or are our means adequate to it? Think of all this, and a great deal more which your good judgment will suggest, and pardon my freedom.
TO WILLIAM B. GILES
March 19, 1796.I know not when I have received greater satisfaction than on reading the speech of Dr. Leib, in the Pennsylvania Assembly. He calls himself a new member. I congratulate honest republicanism on such an acquisition, and promise myself much from a career which begins on such elevated ground. We are in suspense here to see the fate and effect of Mr. Pitt's bill against democratic societies. I wish extremely to get at the true history of this effort to suppress freedom of meeting, speaking, writing and printing. Your acquaintance with Sedgwick will enable you to do it. Pray get the outlines of the bill he intended to have brought in for this purpose. This will enable us to judge whether we have the merit of the invention; whether we were really beforehand with the British minister on this subject; whether he took his hint from our proposition, or whether the concurrence in the sentiment is merely the result of the general truth that great men will think alike and act alike, though without intercommunication. I am serious in desiring extremely the outlines of the bill intended for us. From the debates on the subject of our seamen, I am afraid as much harm as good will be done by our endeavors to arm our seamen against impressments. It is proposed to register them and give them certificates. But these certificates will be lost in a thousand ways; a sailor will neglect to take his certificate; he is wet twenty times in a voyage; if he goes ashore without it, he is impressed; if with it, he gets drunk, it is lost, stolen from him, taken from him, and then the want of it gives authority to impress, which does not exist now. After ten years' attention to the subject, I have never been able to devise anything effectual, but that the circumstance of an American bottom be made ipso facto, a protection for a number of seamen proportioned to her tonnage; that American captains be obliged, when called on by foreign officers, to parade the men on deck, which would show whether they exceeded their own quota, and allow the foreign officer to send two or three persons aboard and hunt for any suspected to be concealed. This, Mr. Pinckney was instructed to insist upon with Great Britain; to accept of nothing short of it; and, most especially, not to agree that a certificate of citizenship should be requirable from our seamen; because it would be made a ground for the authorized impressment of them. I am still satisfied that such a protection will place them in a worse situation than they are at present. It is true, the British minister has not shown any disposition to accede to my proposition: but it was not totally rejected: and if he still refuses, lay a duty of one penny sterling a yard on British oznaburgs, to make a fund for paying the expenses of the agents you are obliged to employ to seek out our suffering seamen. I congratulate you on the arrival of Mr. Ames and the British treaty. The newspapers had said they would arrive together. We have had a fine winter. Wheat looks well. Corn is scarce and dear. Twenty-two shillings here, thirty shillings in Amherst. Our blossoms are but just opening. I have begun the demolition of my house, and hope to get through its re-edification in the course of the summer. We shall have the eye of a brick-kiln to poke you into, or an octagon to air you in. Adieu affectionately.
TO COLONEL MONROE
Monticello, March 21, 1796.Dear Sir,I wrote you on the 2d instant, and now take the liberty of troubling you, in order to have the enclosed letter to M. Gautier safely handed to him. I will thank you for information that it gets safely to hand, as it is of considerable importance to him, to the United States, to the State of Virginia, and to myself, by conveying to him the final arrangement of the accounts of Grand and Company with all those parties.
* * * * * * * *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 Elsworth Chief Justice, and Chase one of the judges, is doubtless communicated to you. My friendly respects to Mrs. Monroe. Adieu affectionately.
TO JAMES MADISON
Monticello, March 27, 1796.Dear Sir,I am much pleased with Mr. Gallatin's speech in Bache's paper of March the 14th. It is worthy of being printed at the end of the Federalist, as the only rational commentary on the part of the Constitution to which it relates. Not that there may not be objections, and difficult ones, to it, and which I shall be glad to see his answers to; but if they are never answered, they are more easily to be gulped down than those which lie to the doctrines of his opponents, which do in fact annihilate the whole of the powers given by the Constitution to the Legislature. According to the rule established by usage and common sense, of construing one part of the instrument by another, the objects on which the President and Senate may exclusively act by treaty are much reduced, but the field on which they may act with the sanction of the Legislature, is large enough; and I see no harm in rendering their sanction necessary, and not much harm in annihilating the whole treaty-making power, except as to making peace. If you decide in favor of your right to refuse co-operation in any case of treaty, I should wonder on what occasion it is to be used, if not in one where the rights, the interest, the honor and faith of our nation are so grossly sacrificed; where a faction has entered into a conspiracy with the enemies of their country to chain down the Legislature at the feet of both; where the whole mass of your constituents have condemned this work in the most unequivocal manner, and are looking to you as their last hope to save them from the effects of the avarice and corruption of the first agent, the revolutionary machinations of others, and the incomprehensible acquiescence of the only honest man who has assented to it. I wish that his honesty and his political errors may not furnish a second occasion to exclaim, "curse on his virtues, they have undone his country." Cold weather, mercury at twenty degrees in the morning. Corn fallen at Richmond to twenty shillings; stationary here; Nicholas sure of his election; R. Jouett and Jo. Monroe in competition for the other vote of the county. Affection to Mrs. M. and yourself. Adieu.
TO JAMES MADISON
Monticello, April 19, 1796.Dear Sir,Yours of the 4th instant came to hand the day before yesterday. I have turned to the conventional history, and enclose you an exact copy of what is there on the subject you mentioned. I have also turned to my own papers, and send you some things extracted from them, which show that the recollection of the President has not been accurate, when he supposed his own opinion to have been uniformly that declared in his answer of March the 30th. The records of the Senate will vouch for this. My respects to Mrs. Madison. Adieu affectionately.
[The papers referred to in the preceding.]Extract, verbatim, from last page but one and the last page"Mr. King suggested that the journals of the Convention should be either destroyed, or deposited in the custody of the President. He thought, if suffered to be make public, a bad use would be made of them by those who would wish to prevent the adoption of the Constitution.
"Mr. Wilson preferred the second expedient. He had at one time liked the first best; but as false suggestions may be propagated, it should not be made impossible to contradict them.
"A question was then put on depositing the journals and other papers of the Convention in the hands of the President, on which New Hampshire, aye, Massachusetts, aye, Connecticut, aye, New Jersey, aye, Pennsylvania, aye, Delaware, aye, Maryland, no, Virginia, aye, North Carolina, aye, South Carolina, aye, and Georgia, aye. This negative of Maryland was occasioned by the language of the instructions to the Deputies of that State, which required them to report to the State the proceedings of the Convention.
"The President having asked what the Convention meant should be done with the journals, &c., whether copies were to be allowed to the members, if applied for, it was resolved nem. con. that he retain the journal and other papers subject to the order of the Congress, if ever formed under the Constitution."
"The members then proceeded to sign the instrument," &c.
"In the Senate, February 1, 1791.
"The committee, to whom was referred that part of the speech of the President of the United States, at the opening of the session, which relates to the commerce of the Mediterranean, and also the letter from the Secretary of State, dated the 20th of January, 1791, with the papers accompanying the same, reported: whereupon,
"Resolved, That the Senate do advise and consent, that the President of the United States take such measures as he may think necessary for the redemption of the citizens of the United States, now in captivity at Algiers, provided the expense shall not exceed forty thousand dollars, and also, that measures be taken to confirm the treaty now existing between the United States and the Emperor of Morocco."
The above is a copy of a resolve of the Senate, referred to me by the President, to propose an answer to, and I find immediately following this, among my papers, a press copy, from an original written fairly in my own hand, ready for the President's signature, and to be given in to the Senate, of the following answer:
"Gentlemen of the Senate,
"I will proceed to take measures for the ransom of our citizens in captivity at Algiers, in conformity with your resolution of advice of the 1st instant, so soon as the moneys necessary shall be appropriated by the Legislature, and shall be in readiness.
"The recognition of our treaty with the new Emperor of Morocco requires also previous appropriation and provision. The importance of this last to the liberty and property of our citizens, induces me to urge it on your earliest attention."