duce and property sold, and they formally declare they will not pay them. This is an act of bankruptcy of course, and will be so pronounced by any court before which it shall be brought. But cui bono? The law can only uncover their insolvency, by opening to its suitors their empty vaults. Thus by the dupery of our citizens, and tame acquiescence of our legislators, the nation is plundered of two or three hundred millions of dollars, treble the amount of debt contracted in the Revolutionary war, and which, instead of redeeming our liberty, has been expended on sumptuous houses, carriages and dinners. A fearful tax! if equalized on all; but overwhelming and convulsive by its partial fall. The crush will be tremendous; very different from that brought on by our paper money. That rose and fell so gradually that it kept all on their guard, and affected severely only early or longwinded contracts. Here the contract of yesterday crushes in an instant the one or the other party. The banks stopping payments suddenly, all their mercantile and city debtors do the same; and all, in short, except those in the country, who, possessing property, will be good in the end. But this resource will not enable them to pay a cent on the dollar. From the establishment of the United States Bank, to this day, I have preached against this system, but have been sensible no cure could be hoped but in the catastrophe now happening. The remedy was to let banks drop gradually at the expiration of their charters, and for the State governments to relinquish the power of establishing others. This would not, as it should not, have given the power of establishing them to Congress. But Congress could then have issued treasury notes payable within a fixed period, and founded on a specific tax, the proceeds of which, as they came in, should be exchangeable for the notes of that particular emission only. This depended, it is true, on the will of the State legislatures, and would have brought on us the phalanx of paper interest. But that interest is now defunct. Their gossamer castles are dissolved, and they can no longer impede and overawe the salutary measures of the Government. Their paper was received on a belief that it was cash on demand. Themselves have declared it was nothing, and such scenes are now to take place as will open the eyes of credu. lity and of insanity itself, to the dangers of a paper medium abandoned to the discretion of avarice and of swindlers. It is impossible not to deplore our past follies, and their present consequences, but let them at least be warnings against like follies in future. The banks have discontinued themselves. We are now without any medium; and necessity, as well as patriotism and confidence, will make us all eager to receive treasury notes, if founded on specific taxes. Congress may now borrow of the public, and without interest, all the money they may want, to the amount of a competent circulation, by merely issuing their own promissory notes, of proper denominations, for the larger purposes of circulation, but not for the small. Leave that door open for the entrance of metallic money. And, to give readier credit to their bills, without obliging themselves to give cash for them on demand, let their collectors be instructed to do so, when they have cash; thus, in some measure, performing the functions of a bank, as to their own notes. Providence seems, indeed, by a special dispensation, to have put down for us, without a struggle, that very paper enemy which the interest of our citizens long since required ourselves to put down, at whatever risk. The work is done. The moment is pregnant with futurity, and if not seized at once by Congress, I know not on what shoal our bark is next to be stranded. The State legislatures should be immediately urged to relinquish the right of establishing banks of discount. Most of them will comply on patriotic principles, under the convictions of the moment; and the non-complying may be crowded into concurrence by legitimate devices."

Several letters on scientific topics are scattered through the correspondence of the year. In one, he gives a long series of reasons for adhering to the Linnæan classification in natural history, instead of changing to that of Blumenbach and Cuvier; in another, a formula and explanation of Lord Napier's theorem for the solution of right-angled spherical triangles, etc., etc. Among his literary opinions we find him declaring the Edinburgh Review" unrivalled in merit," and that if it should be "continued by the same talents, information, and principles," it "would become a real Encyclopedia, justly taking its station in our libraries with the most valuable depositories of human knowledge." Its antagonist, the Quarterly, “appeared to him a pigmy against a giant." In a letter to the compiler of the "American Speaker," he declared that he thought Eugene Aram's defence of himself "the finest thing' "which the English language had produced." He considered the speeches of Aram, of Carnot in 1803 on the proposition to declare Bonaparte consul for life, and of Logan to Lord Dunmore, "as worthily standing in a line with those of Scipio and Hannibal in Livy, and of Cato and Cæsar in Sallust." He spoke in his usual contemptuous vein of Plato, in a letter to Mr. Adams, and the latter expressed his hearty concurrence.

Receiving from the Chevalier De Onis a copy of the new Constitution of Spain, he complained of its establishing a state religion, but said there was one provision in it "which would immortalize its inventors "-that which " after a certain epoch, disfranchised every citizen who could not read and write." This was proportioning the remedy to the disease. Mr. Jefferson never proposed or considered such a qualification for voting desirable in his own country.

Before dropping this summary of the miscellaneous letters of the year, we will quote one addressed to an individual of that class of good persons who every now and then feel that they have a special "call" to attempt the religious conversion of some very eminent man-especially an eminent man suspected of heterodox views. Mr. Jefferson was both suspected and accused in that direction; and being a favorite with the

1 Because the Linnæan had obtained general consent, which another might find it impossible to do; and because it furnished a sufficient groundwork for supplementary insertions as new productions were discovered.

body of his countrymen, he received a double share of this kind of attention. The following letter carries its own explanation of circumstances:

To MR. MILES KING.

MONTICELLO, September 26, 1814.

SIR:

I duly received your letter of August 20th, and I thank you for it, because I believe it was written with kind intentions, and a personal concern for my future happiness. Whether the particular revelation which you suppose to have been made to yourself were real or imaginary, your reason alone is the competent judge. For dispute as long as we will on religious tenets, our reason at last must ultimately decide, as it is the only oracle which God has given us to determine between what really comes from him and the phantasms of a disordered or deluded imagination. When he means to make a personal revelation, he carries conviction of its authen. ticity to the reason he has bestowed as the umpire of truth. You believe you have been favored with such a special communication. Your reason, not mine, is to judge of this; and if it shall be his pleasure to favor me with a like admonition, I shall obey it with the same fidelity with which I would obey his known will in all cases. Hitherto I have been under the guidance of that portion of reason which he has thought proper to deal out to me. I have followed it faithfully in all important cases, to such a degree at least as leaves me without uneasiness; and if on minor occasions I have erred from its dictates, I have trust in him who made us what we are, and know it was not his plan to make us always unerring. He has formed us moral agents. Not that, in the perfection of his state, he can feel pain or pleasure in anything we may do; he is far above our power; but that we may promote the happiness of those with whom he has placed us in society, by acting honestly towards all, benevolently to those who fall within our way, respecting sacredly their rights, bodily and mental, and cherishing especially their freedom of conscience, as we value our own. I must ever believe that religion substantially good which pro duces an honest life, and we have been authorized by one whom you and I equally respect, to judge of the tree by its fruit. Our particular principles of religion are a subject of accountability to our God alone. I inquire after no man's, and trouble none with mine; nor is it given to us in this life to know whether yours or mine, our friends or our foes, are exactly the right. Nay, we have heard it said that there is not a Quaker or a Baptist, a Presbyterian or an Episcopalian, a Catholic or a Protestant in heaven; that, on entering that gate, we leave those badges of schism behind, and find ourselves united in those principles only in which God has united us all. Let us not be uneasy then, about the different roads we may pursue, as believing them the shortest, to that our last abode; but, following the guidance of a good conscience, let us be happy in the hope that by these different paths we shall all meet in the end. And that you and I may there meet and embrace, is my earnest prayer. And with this assurance I salute you with brotherly esteem and respect.

These appeals were oftener made, or rather meditated to be made, in person. The former residents of Monticello have recollections of several visits from fervent neophytes and zealous brethren bent on this errand-and occasionally came a

tough old polemic, to do battle like Christian with Apollyon, yet not choosing, like Christian, the Valley of Humiliation as the theatre of the combat. Whatever the species, they all found courteous welcome at Monticello-and were never prohibited from attempting to perform their self-assigned task. But they invariably encountered something for which they were not prepared. Brought face to face with an aged and dignified statesman, whose every word bespoke knowledge, reflection, and moral elevation, these well-meaning people discovered that it was not so easy to deliver an uninvited homily to such a man in his own house. They generally contented themselves with a modest hint-stayed to dinner, and perhaps over night, well pleased guests-and when they departed warmly shook the hand of their entertainer, and ever afterwards spoke kindly of him.

Mr. Jefferson's continued views on the subject of negro slavery, are made very fully to appear, in a letter addressed this year to Edward Coles. It presents no change of opinionsnothing new on the subject-but as it exhibits many of his views in connection-as it has not been published in either edition of Mr. Jefferson's Works, and as we know it to be authentic, (having seen the original), we give it a place at full length in the Appendix.'

It is rather entertaining to observe in the customary correspondence between Jefferson and John Adams, in 1814, the old head of the "French Party," in the United States, denouncing the imperial captive of St. Helena, in the most burning language of aversion and scorn,' and the old head of the "English Party” putting in extenuations for Napoleon generally, and particularly as compared with "John Bull," whom Mr. Adams declared to be a "greater tyrant and miser usurper"-"quite as unfeeling,

1 See APPENDIX, No. 27.

2 Mr. Jefferson is habitually unsparing and sometimes unquestionably unjust to Napoleon, particularly in this letter. Napoleon not only embodied the political ideas for which Jefferson had no toleration, but he had been the direct means of overthrowing that form of a constitution in his country which Jefferson had fondly hoped would ripen into substance and reality. The Republican chief had charity for those hereditary monarchs, whom he believed to be honest and well-meaning men, but none whatever for those who overthrew freer governments and climbed to a throne. And at this period Napoleon's civic ability (most scornfully characterized by Jefferson), was comparatively little known-remained completely obfuscated by the glare of his military achievements. Lastly, Jefferson could not forgive one whom he thought only less guilty than the rulers of England in aggressions on the United States, and in unnecessarily keeping in operation that train of causes which produced the existing war between England and the

latter.

3 We find this so printed in the Cong. Ed. of Mr. Jefferson's works-but the word "miser" is probably a typographical error.

as unprincipled, more powerful "-and "who had shed more blood than Bonaparte."

Mr. Jefferson made the following allusion to the situation of the agriculturists of Virginia, and to his own pecuniary affairs, in a letter to Mr. Short, November 28th.

"These are my views of the war. They embrace a great deal of sufferance, trying privations, and no benefit but that of teaching our enemy that he is never to gain by wanton injuries on us. To me this state of things brings a sacrifice of all tranquillity and comfort through the residue of life. For although the debility of age disables me from the services and sufferings of the field, yet, by the total annihilation in value of the produce which was to give me subsistence and independence, I shall be like Tantalus, up to the shoulders in water, yet dying with thirst. We can make indeed enough to eat, drink and clothe ourselves; but nothing for our salt, iron, groceries and taxes, which must be paid in money. For what can we raise for the market? Wheat? we can only give it to our horses, as we have been doing ever since harvest. Tobacco? it is not worth the pipe it is smoked in. Some say Whisky; but all mankind must become drunkards to consume it. But although we feel, we shall not flinch. We must consider now, as in the Revolutionary war, that although the evils of resistance are great, those of submission would be greater. We must meet, therefore, the former as the casualties of tempests and earthquakes, and like them necessarily resulting from the constitution of the world."

We have omitted for a long period to chronicle his elections to honorary memberships in foreign and domestic societies. In 1814, he was elected a member of the New York Historical Society, of the American Antiquarian Society, and of the Agronomic Society of Bavaria.' His favorite American Philosophical Society had continued to reëlect him its president, in spite of his desire to retire. In November 1814, he kindly but peremptorily signified that he could no longer "consent to hold honors without requital which justly belonged to others." His resignation was accepted, and he was succeeded by his cherished friend, Dr. Wistar.

On learning the destruction of the Congressional library by the British at Washington, he wrote to Samuel H. Smith.

DEAR SIR:

MONTICELLO, September 21, 1814.

I presume it will be among the early objects of Congress to re-commence their collection. This will be difficult while the war continues, and intercourse with

We have seen a large collection of diplomas, in almost every language of Europe, conferring degrees, honorary memberships, etc., on him-also numerous medals awarded to him on various occasions.