Your letter of August 3d asking information on the subject of Mr. Oliver Evans’ exclusive right to the use of what he calls his Elevators, Conveyers, and Hopper-boys, has been duly received.  My wish to see new inventions encouraged, and old ones brought again into useful notice, has made me regret the circumstances which have followed the expiration of his first patent.  I did not expect the retrospection which has been given to the reviving law.  For although the second proviso seemed not so clear as it ought to have been, yet it appeared susceptible of a just construction;  and the retrospective one being contrary to natural right, it was understood to be a rule of law that where the words of a statute admit of two constructions, the one just and the other unjust, the former is to be given them.  The first proviso takes care of those who had lawfully used Evans’ improvements under the first patent;  the second was meant for those who had lawfully erected and used them after that patent expired, declaring they “should not be liable to damages therefor.”  These words may indeed be restrained to uses already past, but as there is parity of reason for those to come, there should be parity of law.  Every man should be protected in his lawful acts, and be certain that no ex post facto law shall punish or endamage him for them.  But he is endamaged, if forbidden to use a machine lawfully erected, at considerable expense, unless he will pay a new and unexpected price for it.  The proviso says that he who erected and used lawfully should not be liable to pay damages.  But if the proviso had been omitted, would not the law, construed by natural equity, have said the same thing ?  In truth both provisos are useless.  And shall useless provisos, inserted pro majori cautela only, authorize inferences against justice ?  The sentiment that ex post facto laws are against natural right, is so strong in the United States, that few, if any, of the State constitutions have failed to proscribe them.  The federal constitution indeed interdicts them in criminal cases only ;  but they are equally unjust in civil as in criminal cases, and the omission of a caution which would have been right, does not justify the doing what is wrong.  Nor ought it to be presumed that the legislature meant to use a phrase in an unjustifiable sense, if by rules of construction it can be ever strained to what is just.  The law books abound with similar instances of the care the judges take of the public integrity.  Laws, moreover, abridging the natural right of the citizen, should be restrained by rigorous constructions within their narrowest limits.

Your letter, however, points to a much broader question whether what have received from Mr. Evans the new and proper name of Elevators, are of his invention.  Because, if they are not, his patent gives him no right to obstruct others in the use of what they possessed before.  I assume it is a Lemma;  that it is the invention of the machine itself, which is to give a patent right, and not the application of it to any particular purpose, of which it is susceptible.  If one person invents a knife convenient for pointing our pens, another cannot have a patent right for the same knife to point our pencils.  A compass was invented for navigating the sea;  another could not have a patent right for using it to survey land.  A machine for threshing wheat has been invented in Scotland;  a second person cannot get a patent right for the same machine to thresh oats, a third rye, a fourth peas, a fifth clover, &c.  A string of buckets is invented and used for raising water, ore, &c., can a second have a patent right to the same machine for raising wheat, a third oats, a fourth rye, a fifth peas, &c.?  The question then whether such a string of buckets was invented first by Oliver Evans, is a mere question of fact in mathematical history.  Now, turning to such books only as I happen to possess, I find abundant proof that this simple machinery has been in use from time immemorial.  Doctor Shaw, who visited Egypt and the Barbary coast in the years 1727-8-9, in the margin of his map of Egypt, gives us the figure of what he calls a Persian wheel, which is a string of round cups or buckets hanging on a pulley, over which they revolved, bringing up water from a well and delivering it into a trough above.  He found this used at Cairo, in a well 264 feet deep, which the inhabitants believe to have been the work of the patriarch Joseph.  Shaw’s travels, 341, Oxford edition of 1738 in folio, and the Universal History, I. 416, speaking of the manner of watering the higher lands in Egypt, says, “formerly they made use of Archimedes’ screw, thence named the Egyptian pump, but they now generally use wheels (wallowers) which carry a rope or chain of earthen pots holding about seven or eight quarts apiece, and draw the water from the canals.  There are besides a vast number of wells in Egypt, from which the water is drawn in the same manner to water the gardens and fruit trees;  so that it is no exaggeration to say, that there are in Egypt above 200,000 oxen daily employed in this labor.”  Shaw’s name of Persian wheel has been since given more particularly to a wheel with buckets, either fixed or suspended on pins, at its periphery.  Mortimer’s husbandry, I. 18, Duhamel III. II., Ferguson’s Mechanic’s plate, XIII ;  but his figure, and the verbal description of the Universal History, prove that the string of buckets is meant under that name.  His figure differs from Evans’ construction in the circumstances of the buckets being round, and strung through their bottom on a chain.  But it is the principle, to wit, a string of buckets, which constitutes the invention, not the form of the buckets, round, square, or hexagon; nor the manner of attaching them, nor the material of the connecting band, whether chain, rope, or leather.  Vitruvius, L. x. c. 9, describes this machinery as a windlass, on which is a chain descending to the water, with vessels of copper attached to it ;  the windlass being turned, the chain moving on it will raise the vessel, which in passing over the windlass will empty the water they have brought up into a reservoir.  And Perrault, in his edition of Vitruvius, Paris, 1684, folio plates 61, 62, gives us three forms of these water elevators, in one of which the buckets are square, as Mr. Evans’ are.  Bossuet, Histoire des Mathematiques, I. 86, says, “the drum wheel, the wheel with buckets and the Chapelets, are hydraulic machines which come to us from the ancients.  But we are ignorant of the time when they began to be put into use.”  The Chapelets are the revolving bands of the buckets which Shaw calls the Persian wheel, the moderns a chain-pump, and Mr. Evans elevators.  The next of my books in which I find these elevators is Wolf’s Cours de Mathematiques, I. 370, and plate I, Paris, 1747, 8vo;  here are two forms.  In one of them the buckets are square, attached to two chains, passing over a cylinder or wallower at top, and under another at bottom, by which they are made to revolve.  It is a nearly exact representation of Evans’ Elevators.  But a more exact one is to be seen in Desagulier’s Experimental Philosophy, ii. plate 34;  in the Encyclopedie de Diderot et D’Alembert, 8vo edition of Lausanne, first volume of plates in the four subscribed Hydraulique.  Norie, is one where round eastern pots are tied by their collars between two endless ropes suspended on a revolving lantern or wallower.  This is said to have been used for raising ore out of a mine.  In a book which I do not possess, L’Architecture Hidraulique de Belidor, the second volume of which is said [De la Lande’s continuation of Montuclas’ Histoire de Mathematiques iii. 711] to contain a detail of all the pumps, ancient and modern, hydraulic machines, fountains, wells, &c., I have no doubt this Persian wheel, chain pump, chapelets, elevators, by whichever name you choose to call it, will be found in various forms.  The last book I have to quote for it is Prony’s Architecture Hydraulique I., Avertissement vii., and § 648, 649, 650.  In the latter of which passages he observes that the first idea which occurs for raising water is to lift it in a bucket by hand.  When the water lies too deep to be reached by hand, the bucket is suspended by a chain and let down over a pulley or windlass.  If it be desired to raise a continued stream of water, the simplest means which offers itself to the mind is to attach to an endless chain or cord a number of pots or buckets, so disposed that, the chain being suspended on a lanthorn or wallower above, and plunged in water below, the buckets may descend and ascend alternately, filling themselves at bottom and emptying at a certain height above, so as to give a constant stream.  Some years before the date of Mr. Evans’ patent, a Mr. Martin of Caroline county in this State, constructed a drill-plough, in which he used the band of buckets for elevating the grain from the box into the funnel, which let them down into the furrow.  He had bands with different sets of buckets adapted to the size of peas, of turnip seed, &c.  I have used this machine for sowing Benni seed also, and propose to have a band of buckets for drilling Indian corn, and another for wheat.  Is it possible that in doing this I shall infringe Mr. Evans’ patent ?  That I can be debarred of any use to which I might have applied my drill, when I bought it, by a patent issued after I bought it ?

These verbal descriptions, applying so exactly to Mr. Evans’ elevators, and the drawings exhibited to the eye, flash conviction both on reason and the senses that there is nothing new in these elevators but their being strung together on a strap of leather: If this strap of leather be an invention, entitling the inventor to a patent right, it can only extend to the strap, and the use of the string of buckets must remain free to be connected by chains, ropes, a strap of hempen girthing, or any other substance except leather.  But, indeed, Mr. Martin had before used the strap of leather.

The screw of Archimedes is as ancient, at least, as the age of that mathematician, who died more than 2,000 years ago.  Diodorus Siculus speaks of it, L. I., p. 21, and L. v., p. 217, of Stevens’ edition of 1559, folio;  and Vitruvius, xii.  The cutting of its spiral worm into sections for conveying flour or grain, seems to have been an invention of Mr. Evans, and to be a fair subject of a patent right.  But it cannot take away from others the use of Archimedes’ screw with its perpetual spiral, for any purposes of which it is susceptible.

The hopper-boy is an useful machine, and so far as I know, original.

It has been pretended by some, (and in England especially,) that inventors have a natural and exclusive right to their inventions, and not merely for their own lives, but inheritable to their heirs.  But while it is a moot question whether the origin of any kind of property is derived from nature at all, it would be singular to admit a natural and even an hereditary right to inventors.  It is agreed by those who have seriously considered the subject, that no individual has, of natural right, a separate property in an acre cf land, for instance.  By an universal law, indeed, whatever, whether fixed or movable, belongs to all men equally and in common, is the property for the moment of him who occupies it, but when he relinquishes the occupation, the property goes with it.  Stable ownership is the gift of social law, and is given late in the progress of society.  It would be curious then, if an idea, the fugitive fermentation of an individual brain, could, of natural right, be claimed in exclusive and stable property.  If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself ;  but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it.  Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it.  He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine ;  as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me.  That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation.  Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property.  Society may give an exclusive right to the profits arising from them, as an encouragement to men to pursue ideas which may produce utility, but this may or may not be done, according to the will and convenience of the society, without claim or complaint from anybody.  Accordingly, it is a fact, as far as I am informed, that England was, until we copied her, the only country on earth which ever, by a general law, gave a legal right to the exclusive use of an idea.  In some other countries it is sometimes done, in a great case, and by a special and personal act, but, generally speaking, other nations have thought that these monopolies produce more embarrassment than advantage to society;  and it may be observed that the nations which refuse monopolies of invention, are as fruitful as England in new and useful devices.

Considering the exclusive right to invention as given not of natural right, but for the benefit of society, I know well the difficulty of drawing a line between the things which are worth to the public the embarrassment of an exclusive patent, and those which are not.  As a member of the patent board for several years, while the law authorized a board to grant or refuse patents, I saw with what slow progress a system of general rules could be matured.  Some, however, were established by that board.  One of these was, that a machine of which we were possessed, might be applied by every man to any use of which it is susceptible, and that this right ought not to be taken from him and given to a monopolist, because the first perhaps had occasion so to apply it.  Thus a screw for crushing plaster might be employed for crushing corn-cobs.  And a chain-pump for raising water might be used for raising wheat :  this being merely a change of application.  Another rule was that a change of material should riot give title to a patent.  As the making a ploughshare of cast rather than of wrought iron ;  a comb of iron instead of horn or of ivory, or the connecting buckets by a band of leather rather than of hemp or iron.  A third was that a mere change of form should give no right to a patent, as a high-quartered shoe instead of a low one ;  a round hat instead of a three-square ;  or a square bucket instead of a round one.  But for this rule, all the changes of fashion in dress would have been under the tax of patentees.  These were among the rules which the uniform decisions of the board had already established, and under each of them Mr. Evans’ patent would have been refused.  First, because it was a mere change of application of the chain-pump, from raising water to raise wheat.  Secondly, because the using a leathern instead of a hempen band, was a mere change of material ;  and thirdly, square buckets instead of round, are only a change of form, and the ancient forms, too, appear to have been indifferently square or round.  But there were still abundance of cases which could not be brought under rule, until they should have presented themselves under all their aspects ;  and these investigations occupying more time of the members of the board than they could spare from higher duties, the whole was turned over to the judiciary, to be matured into a system, under which every one might know when his actions were safe and lawful.  Instead of refusing a patent in the first instance, as the board was authorized to do, the patent now issues of course, subject to be declared void on such principles as should be established by the courts of law.  This business, however, is but little analogous to their course of reading, since we might in vain turn over all the lubberly volumes of the law to find a single ray which would lighten the path of the mechanic or the mathematician.  It is more within the information of a board of academical professors;  and a previous refusal of patent would better guard our citizens against harassment by lawsuits.  But England had given it to her judges, and the usual predominancy of her examples carried it to ours.

It happened that I had myself a mill built in the interval between Mr. Evans’ first and second patents.  I was living in Washington, and left the construction to the millwright.  I did not even know he had erected elevators, conveyers and hopper-boys, until I learnt it by an application from Mr. Evans’ agent for the patent price.  Although I had no idea he had a right to it by law, (for no judicial decision had then been given,) yet I did not hesitate to remit to Mr. Evans the old and moderate patent price, which was what he then asked, from a wish to encourage even the useful revival of ancient inventions.  But I then expressed my opinion of the law in a letter, either to Mr. Evans or to his agent.

I have thus, Sir, at your request, given you the facts and ideas which occur to me on this subject.  I have done it without reserve, although I have not the pleasure of knowing you personally.  In thus frankly committing myself to you, I trust you will feel it as a point of honor and candor, to make no use of my letter which might bring disquietude on myself.  And particularly, I should be unwilling to be brought into any difference with Mr. Evans, whom, however, I believe too reasonable to take offence at an honest difference of opinion.  I esteem him much, and sincerely wish him wealth and honor.  I deem him a valuable citizen, of uncommon ingenuity and usefulness.  And had I not esteemed still more the establishment of sound principles, I should now have been silent.  If any of the matter I have offered can promote that object, I have no objection to its being so used ;  if it offers nothing new, it will of course not be used at all.  I have gone with some minuteness into the mathematical history of the elevator, because it belongs to a branch of science in which, as I have before observed, it is not incumbent on lawyers to be learned;  and it is possible, therefore, that some of the proofs I have quoted may have escaped on their former arguments.  On the law of the subject I should not have touched, because more familiar to those who have already discussed it ;  but I wished to state my view of it merely in justification of myself, my name and approbation being subscribed to the act.  With these explanations, accept the assurance of my respect.

Your favor of March 27th came during my absence on a journey of some length.  It covered your “Rudiments of English Grammar,” for which I pray you to accept my thanks.  This acknowledgment of it has been delayed, until I could have time to give the work such a perusal as the avocations to which I am subject would permit.  In the rare and short intervals which these have allotted me, I have gone over with pleasure a considerable part, although not yet the whole of it.  But I am entirely unqualified to give that critical opinion of it which you do me the favor to ask.  Mine has been a life of business, of that kind which appeals to a man’s conscience, as well as his industry, not to let it suffer, and the few moments allowed me from labor have been devoted to more attractive studies, that of grammar having never been a favorite with me.  The scanty foundation, laid in at school, has carried me through a life of much hasty writing, more indebted for style to reading and memory, than to rules of grammar.  I have been pleased to see that in all cases you appeal to usage, as the arbiter of language ;  and justly consider that as giving law to grammar, and not grammar to usage.  I concur entirely with you in opposition to Purists, who would destroy all strength and beauty of style, by subjecting it to a rigorous compliance with their rules.  Fill up all the ellipses and syllepses of Tacitus, Sallust, Livy, &c., and the elegance and force of their sententious brevity are extinguished.

“ Auferre, trucidare, rapere, falsis nominibus, imperium appellant.”  “Deorurn injurias, diis curae.”  “Allieni appetens, sui profusus;  ardens in cupiditatibus; satis loquentiae, sapientiae parum.”  “Annibal peto pacem.”  “Per diem Sol non uret te, neque Luna per noctem.”  Wire-draw these expressions by filling up the whole syntax and sense, and they become dull paraphrases on rich sentiments.  We may say then truly with Quintilian, “Aliud est Grammatice, aliud Latine loqui.”  I am no friend, therefore, to what is called Purism, but a zealous one to the Neology which has introduced these two words without the authority of any dictionary.  I consider the one as destroying the nerve and beauty of language, while the other improves both, and adds to its copiousness.  I have been not a little disappointed, and made suspicious of my own judgment, on seeing the Edinburgh Reviewers, the ablest critics of the age, set their faces against the introduction of new words into the English language ;  they are particularly apprehensive that the writers of the United States will adulterate it.  Certainly so great growing a population, spread over such an extent of country, with such a variety of climates, of productions, of arts, must enlarge their language, to make it answer its purpose of expressing all ideas, the new as well as the old.  The new circumstances under which we are placed, call for new words, new phrases, and for the transfer of old words to new objects.  An American dialect will therefore be formed;  so will a West-Indian and Asiatic, as a Scotch and an Irish are already formed.  But whether will these adulterate, or enrich the English language ?  Has the beautiful poetry of Burns, or his Scottish dialect, disfigured it ?  Did the Athenians consider the Doric, the Ionian, the Æolic, and other dialects, as disfiguring or as beautifying their language ?  Did they fastidiously disavow Herodotus, Pindar, Theocritus, Sappho, Alcaeus, or Grecian writers ?  On the contrary, they were sensible that the variety of dialects, still infinitely varied, by poetical license, constituted the riches of their language, and made the Grecian Homer the first of poets, as he must ever remain, until a language equally ductile and copious shall again be spoken.

Every language has a set of terminations, which make a part of its peculiar idiom.  Every root among the Greeks was permitted to vary its termination, so as to express its radical idea in the form of any one of the parts of speech ;  to wit, as a noun, an adjective, a verb, participle, or adverb; and each of these parts of speech again, by still varying the termination, could vary the shade of idea existing in the mind.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

It was not, then, the number of Grecian roots (for some other languages may have as many) which made it the most copious of the ancient languages ;  but the infinite diversification which each of these admitted.  Let the same license be allowed in English, the roots of which, native and adopted, are perhaps more numerous and its idiomatic terminations more various than of the Greek, and see what the language would become.  Its idiomatic terminations are :—

Subst. Gener-ation—ator;  degener-acy; gener-osity—ousness—alship—alissimo;  king-dom—ling;  joy-ance ;  enjoy-er—ment ;  herb-age—alist ;  sanct-uary—imony—itude;  royal-ism;  lamb-kin;  childhood ;  bishop-ric ;  proced-ure ;  horseman-ship ;  worthi-ness.

Adj. Gener-ant—ative—ic—ical—able—ous—al;  joy-ful—less—some;  herb-y;  accous-escent—ulent;  child-ish ;  wheat-en.

Verb. Gener-ate—alize.

Part. Gener-ating—ated.

Adv. Gener-al—ly.

I do not pretend that this is a complete list of all the terminations of the two languages.  It is as much so as a hasty recollection suggests, and the omissions are as likely to be to the disadvantage of the one as the other.  If it be a full, or equally fair enumeration, the English are the double of the Greek terminations.  But there is still another source of copiousness more abundant than that of termination.  It is the composition of the root, and of every member of its family, 1, with prepositions, and 2, with other words.  The prepositions used in the composition of Greek words are :—

* * * * * * * * * * *

Now multiply each termination of a family into every preposition, and how prolific does it make each root! But the English language, beside its own prepositions, about twenty in number, which it compounds with English roots, uses those of the Greek for adopted Greek roots, and of the Latin for Latin roots.  The English prepositions, with examples of their use, are a, as in a-long, a-board, a-thirst, a-clock ;  be, as in be-lie ;  mis, as in mishap ;  these being inseparable.  The separable, with examples, are above-cited, after-thought, gain-say, before-hand, fore-thought, behind-hand, by-law, for-give, fro-ward, in-born, on-set, over-go, out-go, thorough-go, under-take, up-lift, with-stand.  Now let us see what copiousness this would produce, were it allowed to compound every root and its family with every preposition, where both sense and sound would be in its favor.  Try it on an English root, the verb “to place,” Anglo-Saxon plæce,* for instance, and the Greek and Latin roots, of kindred meaning, adopted in English, to wit, —(Greek inserted here)— and locatio, with their prepositions.

Some of these compounds would be new ;  but all present distinct meanings, and the synonisms of the three languages offer a choice of sounds to express the same meaning; add to this, that in some instances, usage has authorized the compounding an English root with a Latin preposition, as in de-place, dis-place, re-place.  This example may suffice to show what the language would become, in strength, beauty, variety, and every circumstance which gives perfection to language, were it permitted freely to draw from all its legitimate sources.

The second source of composition is of one family of roots with another.  The Greek avails itself of this most abundantly, and beautifully.  The English once did it freely, while in its Anglo-Saxon form, e.g., ——(Greek inserted here)——, book-craft, learning, ——(Greek inserted here)——, right-belief-ful, orthodox.  But it has lost by desuetude much of this branch of composition, which it is desirable however to resume.

If we wish to be assured from experiment of the effect of a judicious spirit of Neology, look at the French language.  Even before the revolution, it was deemed much more copious than the English ;  at a time, too, when they had an Academy which endeavored to arrest the progress of their language, by fixing it to a Dictionary, out of which no word was ever to be sought, used, or tolerated.  The institution of parliamentary assemblies in 1789, for which their language had no apposite terms or phrases, as having never before needed them, first obliged them to adopt the Parliamentary vocabulary of England ;  and other new circumstances called for corresponding new words;  until by the number of these adopted, and by the analogies for adoption which they have legitimated, I think we may say with truth that a Dictionnaire Neologique of these would be half as large as the dictionary of the Academy ;  and that at this time it is the language in which every shade of idea, distinctly perceived by the mind, may be more exactly expressed, than in any language at this day spoken by man.  Yet I have no hesitation in saying that the English language is founded on a broader base, native and adopted, and capable, with the like freedom of employing its materials, of becoming superior to that in copiousness and euphony.  Not indeed by holding fast to Johnson’s Dictionary;  not by raising a hue and cry against every word he has not licensed ;  but by encouraging and welcoming new compositions of its elements.  Learn from Lye and Benson what the language would now have been if restrained to their vocabularies.  Its enlargement must be the consequence, to a certain degree, of its transplantation from the latitude of London into every climate of the globe;  and the greater the degree the more precious will it become as the organ of the development of the human mind.

These are my visions on the improvement of the English language by a free use of its faculties.  To realize them would require a course of time.  The example of good writers, the approbation of men of letters, the judgment of sound critics, and of none more than of the Edinburgh Reviewers, would give it a beginning, and once begun, its progress might be as rapid as it has been in France, where we see what a period of only twenty years has effected.  Under the auspices of British science and example it might commence with hope.  But the dread of innovation there, and especially of any example set by France, has, I fear, palsied the spirit of improvement.  Here, where all is new, no innovation is feared which offers good.  But we have no distinct class of literati in our country.  Every man is engaged in some industrious pursuit, and science is but a secondary occupation, always subordinate to the main business of his life.  Few therefore of those who are qualified, have leisure to write.  In time it will be otherwise.  In the meanwhile, necessity obliges us to neologize.  And should the language of England continue stationary, we shall probably enlarge our employment of it, until its new character may separate it in name as well as in power, from the mother-tongue.

Although the copiousness of a language may not in strictness make a part of its grammar, yet it cannot be deemed foreign to a general course of lectures on its structure and character;  and the subject having been presented to my mind by the occasion of your letter, I have indulged myself in its speculation, and hazarded to you what has occurred, with the assurance of my great respect.

* Johnson derives “place” from the French “place,” an open square in a town.  But its northern parentage is visible in its syno-nime platz, Teutonic, and plattse, Belgic, both of which signify locus, and the Anglo-Saxon place, platea, vicus.

Your letter of the 3d has been duly received.  That of Mr. Eppes had before come to hand, covering your MS. on the reformation of the orthography of the plural of nouns ending in y, and ey, and on orthoepy.  A change has been long desired in English orthography, such as might render it an easy and true index of the pronunciation of words.  The want of conformity between the combinations of letters, and the sounds they should represent, increases to foreigners the difficulty of acquiring the language, occasions great loss of time to children in learning to read, and renders correct spelling rare but in those who read much.  In England a variety of plans and propositions have been made for the reformation of their orthography.  Passing over these, two of our countrymen, Dr. Franklin and Dr. Thornton, have also engaged in the enterprise;  the former proposing an addition of two or three new characters only, the latter a reformation of the whole alphabet nearly.  But these attempts in England, as well as here, have been without effect.  About the middle of the last century an attempt was made to banish the letter d from the words bridge, judge, hedge, knowledge, &c., others of that termination, and to write them as we write age, cage, sacrilege, privilege ;  but with little success.  The attempt was also made, which you mention in your second part, to drop the letter u in words of Latin derivation ending in our, and to write honor, candor, rigor, &c., instead of honour, candour, rigour.  But the u having been picked up in the passage of these words from the Latin, through the French, to us, is still preserved by those who consider it as a memorial of our title to the words.  Other partial attempts have been made by individual writers, but with as little success.  Pluralizing nouns in y, and ey, by adding s only, as you propose, would certainly simplify the spelling, and be analogous to the general idiom of the language.  It would be a step gained in the progress of general reformation, if it could prevail.  But my opinion being requested I must give it candidly, that judging of the future by the past, I expect no better fortune to this than similar preceding propositions have experienced.  It is very difficult to persuade the great body of mankind to give up what they have once learned, and are now masters of, for something to be learnt anew.  Time alone insensibly wears down old habits, and produces small changes at long intervals, and to this process we must all accommodate ourselves, and be content to follow those who will not follow us.  Our Anglo-Saxon ancestors had twenty ways of spelling the word “many.”  Ten centuries have dropped all of them and substituted that which we now use.  I now return your MS. without being able, with the gentlemen whose letters are cited, to encourage hope as to its effect.  I am bound, however, to acknowledge that this is a subject to which I have not paid much attention;  and that my doubts therefore should weigh nothing against their more favorable expectations.  That these may be fulfilled, and mine prove unfounded, I sincerely wish, because I am a friend to the reformation generally of whatever can be made better, and because it could not fail of gratifying you to be instrumental in this work.  Accept the assurance of my respect.

Dear Sir,—Since my letter of June the 27th, I am in your debt for many;  all of which I have read with infinite delight.  They open a wide field for reflection, and offer subjects enough to occupy the mind and the pen indefinitely.  I must follow the good example you have set, and when I have not time to take up every subject, take up a single one.  Your approbation of my outline to Dr. Priestley is a great gratification to me ;  and I very much suspect that if thinking men would have the courage to think for themselves, and to speak what they think, it would be found they do not differ in religious opinions as much as is supposed.  I remember to have heard Dr. Priestley say, that if all England would candidly examine themselves, and confess, they would find that Unitarianism was really the religion of all ;  and I observe a bill is now depending in parliament for the relief of Anti-Trinitarians.  It is too late in the day for men of sincerity to pretend they believe in the Platonic mysticisms that three are one, and one is three ;  and yet that the one is not three, and the three are not one ;  to divide mankind by a single letter into ——(Greek inserted here)—— and ——(Greek inserted here)——.  But this constitutes the craft, the power and the profit of the priests.  Sweep away their gossamer fabrics of factitious religion, and they would catch no more flies.  We should all then, like the Quakers, live without an order of priests, moralize for ourselves, follow the oracle of conscience, and say nothing about what no man can understand, nor therefore believe;  for I suppose belief to be the assent of the mind to an intelligible proposition.

It is with great pleasure I can inform you, that Priestley finished the comparative view of the doctrines of the philosophers of antiquity, and of Jesus, before his death;  and that it was printed soon after.  And, with still greater pleasure, that I can have a copy of his work forwarded from Philadelphia, by a correspondent there, and presented for your acceptance, by the same mail which carries, you this, or very soon after.  The branch of the work which the title announces, is executed with learning and candor;  as was everything Priestley wrote, but perhaps a little hastily;  for he felt himself pressed by the hand of death.  The Abbé Batteux had, in fact, laid the foundation of this part in his Causes Premieres, with which he has given us the originals of Ocellus and Timaeus, who first committed the doctrines of Pythagoras to writing, and Enfield, to whom the Doctor refers, had done it more copiously.  But he has omitted the important branch, which, in your letter of August the 9th, you say you have never seen executed, a comparison of the morality of the Old Testament with that of the New.  And yet, no two things were ever more unlike.  I ought not to have asked him to give it.  He dared not.  He would have been eaten alive by his intolerant brethren, the Cannibal priests.  And yet, this was really the most interesting branch of the work.

Very soon after my letter to Doctor Priestley, the subject being still in my mind, I had leisure during an abstraction from business for a day or two, while on the road, to think a little more on it, and to sketcch more fully than I had done to him, a syllabus of the matter which I thought should enter into the work.  I wrote it ta Doctor Rush, and there ended all my labor on the subject;  himself and Doctor Priestley being the only two depositories of my secret.  The fate of my letter to Priestley, after his death, was a warning to me on that of Doctor Rush;  and at my request, his family were so kind as to quiet me by returning my original letter and syllabus.  By this, you will be sensible how much interest I take in keeping myself clear of religious disputes before the public, and especially of seeing my syllabus disembowelled by the Aruspices of the modern Paganism.  Yet I enclose it to you with entire confidence, free to be perused by yourself and Mrs. Adams, but by no one else, and to be returned to me.

You are right in supposing, in one of yours, that I had not read much of Priestley’s Predestination, his no-soul system, or his controversy with Horsley.  But I have read his Corruptions of Christianity, and Early Opinions of Jesus, over and over again ;  and I rest on them, and on Middleton’s writings, especially his letters from Rome, and to Waterland, as the basis of my own faith.  These writings have never been answered, nor can be answered by quoting historical proofs, as they have done.  For these facts, therefore, I cling to their learning, so much superior to my own.

I now fly off in a tangent to another subject.  Marshall, in the first volume of his history, chapter 3, p. 180, ascribes the petition to the King, of 1774, (1 Journ. Cong. 67) to the pen of Richard Henry Lee.  I think myself certain it was not written by him, as well.  from what I recollect to have heard, as from the internal evidence of style.  His was loose, vague, frothy, rhetorical.  He was a poorer writer than his brother Arthur ;  and Arthur’s standing may be seen in his Monitor’s letters, to insure the sale of which, they took the precaution of tacking to them a new edition of the Farmer’s letters like Mezentius, who “mortua jungebat corpora vivis.”  You were of the committee, and can tell me who wrote this petition, and who wrote the address to the inhabitants of the colonies, ib. 45.  Of the papers of July, 1775, I recollect well that Mr. Dickinson drew the petition to the King, ib. 149 ;  I think Robert R. Livingston drew the address to the inhabitants of Great Britain, ib. 152.  Am I right in this ?  And who drew the address to the people of Ireland, ib. 180 ?  On these questions I ask of your memory to help mine.  Ever and affectionately yours.

DEAR SIR,—I turn with great reluctance from the functions of a private citizen to matters of State.  The swaggering on deck, as a passenger, is so much more pleasant than clambering the ropes as a seaman, and my confidence in the skill and activity of those employed to work the vessel is so entire, that I notice nothing en passant, but how smoothly she moves.  Yet I avail myself of the leisure which a visit to this place procures me, to revolve again in my mind the subject of my former letter, and in compliance with the request of yours of ——, to add some further thoughts on it.  Though intended as only supplementary to that, I may fall into repetitions, not having that with me, nor paper or book of any sort to supply the default of a memory on the wane.

The objects of finance in the United States have hitherto been very simple;  merely to provide for the support of the government on its peace establishment, and to pay the debt contracted in the Revolutionary war, a war which will be sanctioned by the approbation of posterity through all future ages.  The means provided for these objects were ample, and resting on a consumption which little affected the poor, may be said to have been sensibly felt by none.  The fondest wish of my heart ever was that the surplus portion of these taxes, destined for the payment of that debt, should, when that object was accomplished, be continued by annual or biennial re-enactments, and applied, in time of peace, to the improvement of our country by canals, roads and useful institutions, literary or others ;  and in time of war to the maintenance of the war.  And I believe that keeping the civil list within proper bounds, the surplus would have been sufficient for any war, administered with integrity and judgment.  For authority to apply the surplus to objects of improvement, an amendment of the Constitution would have been necessary.  I have said that the taxes should be continued by annual or biennial re-enactments, because a constant hold, by the nation, of the strings of the public purse, is a salutary restraint from which an honest government ought not to wish, nor a corrupt one to be permitted to be free.  No tax should ever be yielded for a longer term than that of the Congress wanting it, except when pledged for the reimbursement of a loan.  On this system, the standing income being once liberated from the Revolutionary debt, no future loan nor future tax would ever become necessary, and wars would no otherwise affect our pecuniary interests than by suspending the improvements belonging to a state of peace.  This happy consummation would have been achieved by another eight years' administration, conducted by Mr. Madison, and executed in its financial department by Mr. Gallatin, could peace have been so long preserved.  So enviable a state in prospect for our country, induced me to temporize, and to bear with national wrongs which under no other prospect ought ever to have been unresented or unresisted.  My hope was, that by giving time for reflection, and retraction of injury, a sound calculation of their own interests would induce the aggressing nations to redeem their own character by a return to the practice of right.  But our lot happens to have been cast in an age when two nations to whom circumstances have given a temporary superiority over others, the one by land, the other by sea, throwing off all restraints of morality, all pride of national character, forgetting the mutability of fortune and the inevitable doom which the laws of nature pronounce against departure from justice, individual or national, have dared to treat her reclamations with derision, and to set up force instead of reason as the umpire of nations.  Degrading themselves thus from the character of lawful societies into lawless bands of robbers and pirates, they are abusing their brief ascendency by desolating the world with blood and rapine.  Against such a banditti, war had become less ruinous than peace, for then peace was a war on one side only.  On the final and formal declarations of England, therefore, that she never would repeal her orders of council as to us, until those of France should be repealed as to other nations as well as us, and that no practicable arrangement against her impressment of our seamen could be proposed or devised, war was justly declared, and ought to have been declared.  This change of condition has clouded our prospects of liberation from debt, and of being able to carry on a war without new loans or taxes.  But although deferred, these prospects are not desperate.  We should keep forever in view the state of 1817, towards which we were advancing, and consider it as that which we must attain.  Let the old funds continue appropriated to the civil list and Revolutionary debt, and the reversion of the surplus to improvement during peace, and let us take up this war as a separate business, for which, substantive and distinct provision is to be made

That we are bound to defray its expenses within our own time, and unauthorized to burden posterity with them, I suppose to have been proved in my former letter.  I will place the question nevertheless in one additional point of view.  The former regarded their independent right over the earth;  this over their own persons.  There have existed nations, and civilized and learned nations, who have thought that a father had a right to sell his child as a slave, in perpetuity;  that he could alienate his body and industry conjointly, and á fortiori his industry separately;  and consume its fruits himself.  A nation asserting this fratricide right might well suppose they could burden with public as well as private debt their "nati natorum, et qui nascentur at illis." But we, this age, and in this country especially, are advanced beyond those notions of natural law.  We acknowledge that our children are born free;  that that freedom is the gift of nature, and not of him who begot them ;  that though under our care during infancy, and therefore of necessity under a duly tempered authority, that ears is confided to us to be exercised for the preservation and good of the child only;  and his labors during youth are given as a retribution for the charges of infancy.  As he was never the property of his father, so when adult he is sui juris, entitled himself to the use of his own limbs and the fruits of his own exertions: so far we are advanced, without mind enough, it seems to take the whole step.  We believe, or we act as if we believed, that although an individual father cannot alienate the labor of his son, the aggregate body of fathers may alienate the labor of all their sons, of their posterity, in the aggregate, and oblige them to pay for all the enterprises, just or unjust, profitable or ruinous, into which our vices, our passions, or our personal interests may lead us.  But I trust that this proposition needs only to be looked at by an American to be seen in its true point of view, and that we shall all consider ourselves unauthorized to saddle posterity with our debts, and morally bound to pay them ourselves ;  and consequently within what may be deemed the period of a generation, or the life of the majority.  In my former letter I supposed this to be a little* over twenty years.  We must raise then ourselves the money for this war, either by taxes within the year, or by loans;  and if by loans, we must repay them ourselves, proscribing forever the English practice of perpetual funding;  the ruinous consequences of which, putting right out of the question, should be a sufficient warning to a considerate nation to avoid the example.

The raising money by Tontine, more practised on the continent of Europe than in England, is liable to the same objection, of encroachment on the independent rights of posterity;  because the annuities not expiring gradually, with the lives on which they rest, but all on the death of the last survivor only, they will of course over-pass the term of a generation, and the more probably as the subjects on whose lives the annuities depend, are generally chosen of the ages, constitutions and occupations most favorable to long life.

Annuities for single lives are also beyond our powers, because the single life may pass the term of a generation.  This last practice is objectionable too, as encouraging celibacy, and the disinherison of heirs.

Of the modes which are within the limits of right, that of raising within the year its whole expenses by taxation, might be beyond the abilities of our citizens to bear.  It is, moreover, generally desirable that the public contributions should be as uniform as practicable from year to year, that our habits of industry and of expense may become adapted to them;  and that they maybe duly digested and incorporated with our annual economy.

There remains then for us but the method of limited anticipation, the laying taxes for a term of years within that of our right, which may be sold for a present sum equal to the expenses of the year;  in other words, to obtain a loan equal to the expenses of the year, laying a tax adequate to its interest, and to such a surplus as will reimburse, by growing instalments, the whole principal within the term.  This is, in fact, what has been called raising money on the sale of annuities for years.  In this way a new loan, and of course a new tax, is requisite every year during the continuance of the war;  and should that be so long as to produce an accumulation of tax beyond our ability, in time of war the resource would be an enactment of the taxes, requisite to ensure good terms, by securing the lender, with a suspension of the payment of instalments of principal and perhaps of interest also, until the restoration of peace.  This method of anticipating our taxes, or of borrowing on annuities for years, insures repayment to the lender, guards the rights of posterity, prevents a perpetual alienation of the public contributions, and consequent destitution of every resource even for the ordinary support of government.  The public expenses of England during the present reign, have amounted to the fee simple value of the whole island.  If its whole soil could be sold, farm by farm, for its present market price, it would not defray the cost of governing it during the reign of the present king, as managed by him.  Ought not then the right of each successive generation to be guaranteed against the dissipations and corruptions of those preceding, by a fundamental provision in our Constitution? And, if that has not been made, does it exist the less;  there being between generation and generation, as between nation and nation, no other law than that of nature ? And is it the less dishonest to do what is wrong, because not expressly prohibited by written law? Let us hope our moral principles are not yet in that stage of degeneracy, and that in instituting the system of finance to be hereafter pursued, we shall adopt the only safe, the only lawful and honest one, of borrowing on such short terms of reimbursement of interest and principal as will fall within the accomplishment of our own lives.

The question will be asked and ought to be looked at, what is to be the resource if loans cannot be obtained ? There is but one, "Carthago delenda est." Bank paper must be suppressed, and the circulating medium must be restored to the nation to whom it belongs.  It is the only fund on which they can rely for loans;  it is the only resource which can never fail them, and it is an abundant one for every necessary purpose.  Treasury bills, bottomed on taxes, bearing or not bearing interest, as may be found necessary, thrown into circulation will take the place of so much gold and silver, which last, when crowded, will find an efflux into other countries, and thus keep the quantum of medium at its salutary level.  Let banks continue if they please, but let them discount for cash alone or for treasury notes.  They discount for cash alone in every other country on earth except Great Britain, and her too often unfortunate copyist, the United States.  If taken in time they may be rectified by degrees, and without injustice, but if let alone till the alternative forces itself on us, of submitting to the enemy for want of funds, or the suppression of bank paper, either by law or by convulsion, we cannot foresee how it will end.  The remaining questions are mathematical only.  How are the taxes and the time of their continuance to be proportioned to the sum borrowed, and the stipulated interest ?

The rate of interest will depend on the state of the money market, and the duration of the tax on the will of the legislature.  Let us suppose that (to keep the taxes as low as possible) they adopt the term of twenty years for reimbursement, which we call their maximum;  and let the interest they last gave of 7½ per cent. be that which they must expect to give.  The problem then will stand in this form.  Given the sum borrowed (which call s,) a million of dollars for example;  the rate of interest, .075 or ⁷⁵/₁₀₀₀ (call it r—i) and the duration of the annuity or tax, twenty years, (=t,) what will be (a) the annuity or tax, which will reimburse principal and interest within the given term ? This problem, laborious and barely practicable to common arithmetic, is readily enough solved, Algebraically and with the aid of Logarithms.  The theorem applied to the case is a = tr—1x1/1—¹/_rt the solution of which gives a = $98,684.2, nearly $100,000, or one-tenth of the sum borrowed.

It may be satisfactory to see stated in figures the yearly progression of reimbursement of the million of dollars, and their interest at 7½ per cent. effected by the regular payment of ——dollars annually.  It will be as follows :

Borrowed, $1,000,000. 
Balance after          1st  payment,    $975,000
       "               2d       "        948,125
       "               3d       "        919,234
       "               4th      "        888,177
       "               5th      "        854,790
       "               6th      "        818,900
       "               7th      "        780,318 
       "               8th      "        738,841
       "               9th      "        694,254
       "              10th      "        646,324
       "              11th      "        594,800
       "              12th      "        539,410
       "              13th      "        479,866 
       "              14th      "        415,850
       "              15th      "        347,039 
       "              16th      "        273,068
       "              17th      "        193,548
       "              18th      "        108,064
       "              19th      "         16,169

If we are curious to know the effect of the same annual sum on loans at lower rates of interest, the following process will give it :

From the Logarithm of a, subtract the Logarithm r—i, and from the number of the remaining Logarithm subtract s, then subtract the Logarithm of this last remainder from the difference between the Logarithm a and Logarithm r—i as found before, divide the remainder by Logarithm r, the quotient will be t. It will be found that —— dollars will reimburse a million,

                                   Years.               Dollars.
At 7½ per cent. interest in 19.17, costing in the whole 1,917,000
   7     "          "       17.82,     "      "         1,782,000
   6½    "          "       16.67,     "      "         1,667,000
   6     "          "       15.72,     "      "         1,572,000
   5½    "          "       14.91,     "      "         1,491,000
   5     "          "       14. 2,     "      "         1,420,000
   0     "          "       10.        "      "         1,000,000

By comparing the first and the last of these articles, we see that if the United States were in possession of the circulating medium, as they ought to be, they could redeem what they could borrow from that, dollar for dollar, and in ten annual instalments;  whereas, the usurpation of that fund by bank paper, obliging them to borrow elsewhere at 7½ per cent., two dollars are required to reimburse one.  So that it is literally true that the toleration of banks of paper discount, costs the United States one-half their war taxes ;  or, in other words, doubles the expenses of every war.  Now think, but for a moment, what a change of condition that would be, which should save half our war expenses, require but half the taxes, and enthral us in debt but half the time.

Two loans having been authorized, of sixteen and seven and a half millions, they will require for their due reimbursement two millions three hundred and fifty thousand dollars of the three millions expected from the taxes lately imposed.  When the produce shall be known of the several items of these taxes, such of them as will make up this sum should be selected, appropriated, and pledged for the reimbursement of these loans.  The balance of six hundred and fifty thousand dollars, will be a provision for six and a half millions of the loan of the next year; and in all future loans, I would consider it as a rule never to be departed from, to lay a tax of one-tenth, and pledge it for the reimbursement.

In the preceding calculations no account is taken of the increasing population of the United States, which we know to be in a compound ratio of more than 3 per cent. per annum ;  nor of the increase of wealth, proved to be in a higher ratio by the increasing productiveness of the imports on consumption.  We shall be safe therefore in considering every tax as growing at the rate of 3 per cent. compound ratio annually.  I say every tax, for as to those on consumption the fact is known;  and the same growth will be found in the value of real estate, if valued annually;  or, which would be better, 3 per cent. might be assumed by the law as the average increase, and an addition of one thirty-third of the tax paid the preceding year, be annually called for.  Supposing then a tax laid which would bring in $100,000 at the time it is laid, and that it increases annually at the rate of 3 per cent. compound, its important effect may be seen in the following statement :

The 1st year 103,090, and reduces the million to $972,000
    2d   "   106,090,       "       "             938,810
    3d   "   109,273,       "       "             899,947
    4th  "   112,556,       "       "             854,896 
The 5th year 115,920, and reduces the million to $803,053
    6th  "   119,410,       "       "             743,915
    7th  "   122,990,       "       "             676,719
    8th  "   126,680,       "       "             600,793
           __________
             915,913
It yields the 9th year $130,470, and reduces it to $515,382
             10th  "    134,390,    "       "       419,646
             11th  "    138,420,    "       "       312,699
             12th  "    142,580,    "       "       193,517
             13th  "    146,850,    "       "        61,181
             14th  "    151,260, over pays,          85,491
                       _________
                      1,759,883

This estimate supposes a million borrowed at 7½ per cent.; but, if obtained from the circulation without interest, it would be reimbursed within eight years and eight months, instead of fourteen years, or of twenty years, on our first estimate.

But this view being in prospect only, should not affect the quantum of tax which the former circulation pronounces necessary.  Our creditors have a right to certainty, and to consider these political speculations as make-weights only to that, and at our risk, not theirs.  To us belongs only the comfort of hoping an earlier liberation than that calculation holds out, and the right of providing expressly that the tax hypothecated shall cease so soon as the debt it secures shall be actually reimbursed;  and I will add that to us belongs also the regret that improvident legislators should have exposed us to a twenty years' thraldom of debts and taxes, for the necessary defence of our country, where the same contributions would have liberated us in eight or nine years ;  or have reduced us perhaps to an abandonment of our rights, by their abandonment of the only resource which could have ensured their maintenance.

I omit many considerations of detail because they will occur to yourself, and my letter is too long already.  I can refer you to no book as treating of this subject fully and suitably to our circumstances.  Smith gives the history of the public debt of England, and some views adapted to that ;  and Dr. Price, in his book on annuities, has given a valuable chapter on the effects of a sinking fund.  But our business being to make every loan tax a sinking fund for itself, no general one will be wanting ;  and if my confidence is well founded that our original import, when freed from the revolutionary debt, will suffice to embellish and improve our country in peace, and defend her in war, the present may be the only occasion of perplexing ourselves with sinking funds.

Should the injunctions under which I laid you, as to my former letter, restrain any useful purpose to which you could apply it, I remove them ;  preferring public benefit to all personal considerations.  My original disapprobation of banks circulating paper is not unknown, nor have I since observed any effects either on the morals or fortunes of our citizens, which are any counterbalance for the public evils produced ;  and a thorough conviction that, if this war continues, that circulation must be suppressed, or the government shaken to its foundation by the weight of taxes, and impracticability to raise funds on them, renders duty to that paramount to the love of ease and quiet.

When I was here in May last, I left it without knowing that Francis was at school in this neighborhood.  As soon as I returned, on the present occasion, I sent for him, but his tutor informed me that he was gone on a visit to you.  I shall hope permission for him always to see me on my visits to this place, which are three or four times a year.

* A lapse of memory, not having the letter to recur to.

Dear Sir,—I owe you a thousand thanks for your favor of August 22d and its enclosures, and for Dr. Priestley’s doctrines of Heathen Philosophy compared with those of Revelation.  Your letter to Dr. Rush and the syllabus, I return enclosed with this according to your injunctions, though with great reluctance.  May I beg a copy of both ?

They will do you no harm ;  me and others much good.

I hope you will pursue your plan, for I am confident you will produce a work much more valuable than Priestley’s, though that is curious, and considering the expiring powers with which it was written, admirable.

The bill in Parliament for the relief of Anti-Trinitarians, is a great event, and will form an epoch in ecclesiastical history.  The motion was made by my friend Smith, of Clapham, a friend of the Belshams.

I should be very happy to hear that the bill is passed.

The human understanding is a revelation from its Maker which can never be disputed or doubted.  There can be no scepticism, Pyrrhonism, or incredulity, or infidelity, here.  No prophecies, no miracles are necessary to prove the celestial communication.

This revelation has made it certain that two and one make three, and that one is not three nor can three be one.  We can never be so certain of any prophecy, or the fulfilment of any prophecy, or of any miracle, or the design of any miracle, as we are from the revelation of nature, i.e., Nature’s God, that two and two are equal to four.  Miracles or prophecies might frighten us out of our wits;  might scare us to death;  might induce us to lie, to say that we believe that two and two make five.  But we should not believe it.  We should know the contrary.

Had you and I been forty days with Moses on Mount Sinai, and been admitted to behold the divine Shekinah, and there told that one was three and three one, we might not have had courage to deny it, but we could not have believed it.

The thunders, and lightnings, and earthquakes, and the transcendent splendors and glories might have overwhelmed us with terror and amazement, but we could not have believed the doctrine.  We should be more likely to say in our hearts whatever we might say with our lips,—This is chance.  There is no God, no truth.  This is all delusion, fiction, and a lie, or it is all chance.  But what is chance ?  It is motion, it is action, it is event, it is phenomenon without cause.

Chance is no cause at all, it is nothing.  And nothing has produced all this pomp and splendor.  And nothing may produce our eternal damnation in the flames of hell-fire and brimstone, for what we know, as well as this tremendous exhibition of terror and falsehood.

God has infinite wisdom, goodness and power.  He created the universe.  His duration is eternal, a parts ante and a parts post.

His presence is as extensive as space.  What is space ?  An infinite spherical vacuum.  He created this speck of dirt and the human species for his glory, and with the deliberate design of making nine-tenths of our species miserable forever, for his glory.

This is the doctrine of Christian Theologians in general, ten to one.

Now, my friend, can prophecies or miracles convince you or me, that infinite benevolence, wisdom and power, created and preserves for a time, innumerable millions, to make them miserable forever for his own glory ?

Wretch !  What is his glory ?  Is he ambitious ?  Does he want promotion ?  Is he vain-tickled with adulation ?  Exulting and triumphing in his power and the sweetness of his vengeance ?

Pardon me, my Maker, for these awful questions.  My answer to them is always ready.  I believe no such things.  My adoration of the Author of the Universe is too profound and too sincere.

The love of God and his creation, delight, joy, triumph, exultation in my own existence, though but an atom, a molecule organique in the universe, are my religion.  Howl, snarl, bite, ye Calvinistic, ye Athanasian divines, if you will.  Ye will say I am no Christian.  I say ye are no Christians, and there the account is balanced.

Yet I believe all the honest men among you are Christians, in my sense of the word.

When I was at college, I was a metaphysician, at least I thought myself such.  And such men as Locke, Hemmenway and West, thought me so too;  for we were forever disputing though in great good humor.

When I was sworn as an attorney, in 1758, in Boston, though I lived in Braintree, I was in a low state of health—thought in great danger of a consumption ;  living on milk, vegetable pudding and water.  Not an atom of meat, or a drop of spirit.  My next neighbor, my cousin, my friend Dr. Savil, was my physician.  He was anxious about me, and did not like to take the sole responsibility of my recovery.  He invited me to a ride.  I mounted my horse and rode with him to Hingham, on a visit to Dr. Ezekiel Hersey, a physician of great fame, who felt my pulse, looked in my eyes, heard Savil describe my regimen and course of medicine, and then pronounced his oracle :  “Persevere, and as sure as there is a God in Heaven you will recover.”

He was an everlasting talker, and ran out into history, philosophy, metaphysics, &c., and frequently put questions to me as if he wanted to sound me, and see if there was anything in me besides hectic fever.  I was young, and then very bashful, however saucy I may have sometimes been since.  I gave him very modest and very diffident answers.  But when I got upon metaphysics, I seemed to feel a little bolder, and ventured into something like argument with him.  I drove him up, as I thought, into a corner, from which he could not escape.  “Sir, it will follow from what you have now advanced, that the universe, as distinct from God, is both infinite and eternal.”  “Very true,” said Dr. Hersey, “your inference is just, the consequence is inevitable, and I believe the universe to be both eternal and infinite.”

Here I was brought up !  I was defeated.  I was not prepared for this answer.  This was fifty-five years ago.

When I was in England, from 1785 to 1788, I may say I was intimate with Dr. Price.  I had much conversation with him at his own house, at my house, and at the houses and tables of my friends.  In some of our most unreserved conversations, when we have been alone, he has repeatedly said to me :  “I am inclined to believe that the universe is eternal and infinite.  It seems to me that an eternal and infinite effect must necessarily flow from an eternal and infinite cause ;  and an infinite wisdom, goodness and power, that could have been induced to produce a universe in time, must have produced it from eternity.  It seems to me the effect must flow from the cause.”

Now, my friend Jefferson, suppose an eternal, self-existent being, existing from eternity, possessed of infinite wisdom, goodness and power, in absolute, total solitude, six thousand years ago, conceiving the benevolent project of creating a universe !  I have no more to say at present.

It has been long, very long, a settled opinion in my mind, that there is now, never will be, and never was but one being who can understand the universe.

And that it is not only vain, but wicked, for insects to pretend to comprehend it.

Dear Sir,—My last sheet would not admit an observation that was material to my design.

Dr. Price was inclined to think that infinite wisdom and goodness could not permit infinite power to be inactive from eternity, but that an infinite and eternal universe must have necessarily flowed from these attributes.

Plato’s system was ——(Greek inserted here)——, eternal, self-existent, &c.  His ideas, his word, his reason, his wisdom, his goodness, or in one word his “Logos” was omnipotent, and produced the universe from all eternity.  Now ! as far as you and I can understand Hersey, Price and Plato, are they not of one theory ?  Of one mind ?  What is the difference ?  I own an eternal solitude of a self-existent being, infinitely wise, powerful and good, is to me altogether incomprehensible and incredible.  I could as soon believe the Athanasian creed.

You will ask me what conclusion I draw from all this ?  I answer, I drop into myself, and acknowledge myself to be a fool.  No mind but one can see through the immeasurable system.  It would be presumption and impiety in me to dogmatize on such subjects.  My duties in my little infinitesimal circle I can understand and feel.  The duties of a son, a brother, a father, a neighbor, a citizen, I can see and feel, but I trust the Ruler with His skies.

Si quid novisti rectius, istis
Candidus imperti, si non, his utere, mecum.

This world is a mixture of the sublime and the beautiful, the base and the contemptible, the whimsical and ridiculous, (according to our narrow sense and trifling feelings).  It is an enigma and a riddle.  You need not be surprised, then, if I should descend from these heights to the most egregious trifle.  But first let me say, I asked you in a former letter how far advanced we were in the science of aristocracy since Theognis’ stallions, jacks and rams ?  Have not Chancellor Livingston and Major General Humphreys introduced an hereditary aristocracy of Merino sheep ?  How shall we get rid of this aristocracy ?  It is entailed upon us forever.  And an aristocracy of land jobbers and stock jobbers is equally and irremediably entailed upon us, to endless generations.

Now for the odd, the whimsical, the frivolous.  I had scarcely sealed my last letter to you upon Theognis’ doctrine of well-born stallions, jacks and rams, when they brought me from the post office a packet, without post mark, without letter, without name, date or place.  Nicely sealed was a printed copy of eighty or ninety pages, and in large full octavo, entitled:  Section first—Aristocracy.  I gravely composed my risible muscles and read it through.  It is from beginning to end an attack upon me by name for the doctrines of aristocracy in my three volumes of Defence, &c.  The conclusion of the whole is that an aristocracy of bank paper is as bad as the nobility of France or England.  I most assuredly will not controvert this point with this man.  Who he is I cannot conjecture.  The honorable John Taylor of Virginia, of all men living or dead, first occurred to me.

Is it Oberon ?  Is it Queen Mab, that reigns and sports with us little beings ?  I thought my books as well as myself were forgotten.  But behold !  I am to become a great man in my expiring moments.  Theognis and Plato, and Hersey and Price, and Jefferson and I, must go down to posterity together;  and I know not, upon the whole, where to wish for better company.  I wish to add Van der Kemp, who has been here to see me, after an interruption of twenty-four years.  I could and ought to add many others, but the catalogue would be too long.  I am, as ever.

P.S.  Why is Plato associated with Theognis, &c.?  Because no man ever expressed so much terror of the power of birth.  His genius could invent no remedy or precaution against it, but a community of wives;  a confusion of families;  a total extinction of all relations of father, son and brother.  Did the French Revolutionists contrive much better against the influence of birth ?

I have duly received your favor of August 27th, am sensible of the kind intentions from which it flows, and truly thankful for them.  The more so as they could only be the result of a favorable estimate of my public course.  During a long life, as much devoted to study as a faithful transaction of the trusts committed to me would permit, no subject has occupied more of my consideration than our relations with all the beings around us, our duties to them, and our future prospects.  After reading and hearing everything which probably can be suggested respecting them, I have formed the best judgment I could as to the course they prescribe, and in the due observance of that course, I have no recollections which give me uneasiness.  An eloquent preacher of your religious society, Richard Motte, in a discourse of much emotion and pathos, is said to have exclaimed aloud to his congregation, that he did not believe there was a Quaker, Presbyterian, Methodist or Baptist in heaven, having paused to give his hearers time to stare and to wonder.  He added, that in heaven, God knew no distinctions, but considered all good men as his children, and as brethren of the same family.  I believe, with the Quaker preacher, that he who steadily observes those moral precepts in which all religions concur, will never be questioned at the gates of heaven, as to the dogmas in which they all differ.  That on entering there, all these are left behind us, and the Aristides and Catos, the Penns and Tillotsons, Presbyterians and Baptists, will find themselves united in all principles which are in concert with the reason of the supreme mind.  Of all the systems of morality, ancient or modern, which have come under my observation, none appear to me so pure as that of Jesus.  He who follows this steadily need not, I think, be uneasy, although he cannot comprehend the subtleties and mysteries erected on his doctrines by those who, calling themselves his special followers and favorites, would make him come into the world to lay snares for all understandings but theirs.  These metaphysical heads, usurping the judgment seat of God, denounce as his enemies all who cannot perceive the Geometrical logic of Euclid in the demonstrations of St. Athanasius, that three are one, and one is three;  and yet that the one is not three nor the three one.  In all essential points you and I are of the same religion ;  and I am too old to go into inquiries and changes as to the unessential.  Repeating therefore, my thankfulness for the kind concern you have been so good as to express, I salute you with friendship and brotherly esteem.

Dear Sir,—Repeated inquiries on the part of Senator Tracy what has become of his book, (the MS. I last sent you,) oblige me to ask of you what I shall say to him.  I congratulate you on the brilliant affair of the Enterprise and Boxer.  No heart is more rejoiced than mine at these mortifications of English pride, and lessons to Europe that the English are not invincible at sea.  And if these successes do not lead us too far into the navy mania, all will be well.  But when are to cease the severe lessons we receive by land, demonstrating our want of competent officers ?  The numbers of our countrymen betrayed into the hands of the enemy by the treachery, cowardice or incompetence of our high officers, reduce us to the humiliating necessity of acquiescing in the brutal conduct observed towards them.  When, during the last war, I put Governor Hamilton and Major Hay into a dungeon and in irons for having themselves personally done the same to the American prisoners who had fallen into their hands, and was threatened with retaliation by Philips, then returned to New York, I declared to him I would load ten of their Saratoga prisoners (then under my care and within half a dozen miles of my house) with double irons for every American they should misuse under pretence of retaliation, and it put an end to the practice.  But the ten for one are now with them.  Our present hopes of being able to do something by land seem to rest on Chauncey.  Strange reverse of expectations that our land force should be under the wing of our little navy.  Accept the assurance of my esteem and respect.

I thank you for the communication of Mr. Jonathan Ellicot’s letter in yours of August 28th, and the information it conveys.  With respect to mine of August 13th, I do not know that it contains anything but what any man of mathematical reading may learn from the same sources;  however, if it can be used for the promotion of right, I consent to such an use of it.  Your inquiry as to the date of Martin’s invention of the drill-plough, with a leathern band and metal buckets, I cannot precisely answer;  but I received one from him in 1794, and have used it ever since for sowing various seeds, chiefly peas, turnips, and benni.  I have always had in mind to use it for wheat;  but sowing only a row at a time, I had proposed to him some years ago to change the construction so that it should sow four rows at a time, twelve inches apart, and I have been waiting for this to be done either by him or myself ;  and have not, therefore, commenced that use of it.  I procured mine at first through Colonel John Taylor of Caroline, who had been long in the use of it, and my impression was that it was not then a novel thing.  Mr. Martin is still living, I believe.  If not, Colonel Taylor, his neighbor, probably knows its date.  If the bringing together under the same roof various useful things before known, which you mention as one of the grounds of Mr. Evans’ claim, entitles him to an exclusive use of all these, either separately or combined, every utensil of life might be taken from us by a patent.  I might build a stable, bring into it a cutting-knife to chop straw, a hand-mill to grind the grain, a curry comb and brush to clean the horses, and by a patent exclude every one from ever more using these things without paying me.  The elevator, the conveyer, the hopper-boy, are distinct things, unconnected but by juxtaposition.  If no patent can be claimed for any one of these separately, it cannot be for all of them,—several nothings put together cannot make a something;—this would be going very wide of the object of the patent laws.  I salute you with esteem and respect.

Your letter of August 20th, enabled me to turn to mine of February 23d, 1798, and your former one of February 22d, 1801, and to recall to my memory the oration at Jamaica, which was the subject of them.  I see with pleasure a continuance of the same sound principles in the address to Mr. Quincy.  Your quotation from the former paper alludes, as I presume, to the term of office to our Senate;  a term, like that of the judges, too long for my approbation.  I am for responsibilities at short periods, seeing neither reason nor safety in making public functionaries independent of the nation for life, or even for long terms of years.  On this principle I prefer the Presidential term of four years, to that of seven years, which I myself had at first suggested, annexing to it, however, ineligibility forever after;  and I wish it were now annexed to the second quadrennial election of President.

The conduct of Massachusetts, which is the subject of your address to Mr. Quincy, is serious, as embarrassing the operations of the war, and jeopardizing its issue ;  and still more so, as an example of contumacy against the Constitution.  One method of proving their purpose, would be to call a convention of their State, and to require them to declare themselves members of the Union, and obedient to its determinations, or not members, and let them go.  Put this question solemnly to their people, and their answer cannot be doubtful.  One-half of them are republicans, and would cling to the Union from principle.  Of the other half, the dispassionate part would consider, 1st.  That they do not raise bread sufficient for their own subsistence, and must look to Europe for the deficiency, if excluded from our ports, which vital interests would force us to do.  2d. That they are navigating people without a stick of timber for the hull of a ship, nor a pound of anything to export in it, which would be admitted at any market.  3d. That they are also a manufacturing people, and left by the exclusive system of Europe without a market but ours.  4th. That as the rivals of England in manufactures, in commerce, in navigation, and fisheries, they would meet her competition in every point.  5th. That England would feel no scruples in making the abandonment and ruin of such a rival the price of a treaty with the producing States;  whose interest too it would be to nourish a navigation beyond the Atlantic, rather than a hostile one at our own door.  And 6th. That in case of war with the Union, which occurrences between coterminous nations frequently produce, it would be a contest of one against fifteen.  The remaining portion of the federal moiety of the State would, I believe, brave all these obstacles, because they are monarchists in principle, bearing deadly hatred to their republican fellow-citizens, impatient under the ascendency of republican principles, devoted in their attachment to England, and preferring to be placed under her despotism, if they cannot hold the helm of government here.  I see, in their separation, no evil but the example, and I believe that the effect of that would be corrected by an early and humiliating return to the Union, after losing much of the population of their country, insufficient in its own resources to feed her numerous inhabitants, and inferior in all its allurements to the more inviting soils, climates, and governments of the other States.  Whether a dispassionate discussion before the public, of the advantages and disadvantages of separation to both parties, would be the best medicine for this dialytic fever, or to consider it as sacrilege ever to touch the question, may be doubted.  I am, myself, generally disposed to indulge, and to follow reason ;  and believe that in no case would it be safer than in the present.  Their refractory course, however, will not be unpunished by the indignation of their co-States, their loss of influence with them, the censures of history, and the stain on the character of their State.  With my thanks for the paper enclosed, accept the assurance of my esteem and respect.

Dear Sir,—I have duly received your favor of September 18th, and I perceive in it the same spirit of peace which I know you have ever breathed, and to preserve which you have made many personal sacrifices.  That your efforts did much towards preventing declared war with France, I am satisfied.  Of those with England, I am not equally informed.  I have ever cherished the same spirit with all nations, from a consciousness that peace, prosperity, liberty, and morals, have an intimate connection.  During the eight years of my administration, there was not a year that England did not give us such cause as would have provoked a war from any European government.  But I always hoped that time and friendly remonstrances would bring her to a sounder view of her own interests, and convince her that these would be promoted by a return to justice and friendship towards us.  Continued impressments of our seamen by her naval commanders, whose interest it was to mistake them for theirs, her innovations on the law of nations to cover real piracies, could illy be borne ;  and perhaps would not have been borne, had not contraventions of the same law by France, fewer in number but equally illegal, rendered it difficult to single the object of war.  England, at length, singled herself, and took up the gauntlet, when the unlawful decrees of France being revoked as to us, she, by the proclamation of her Prince Regent, protested to the world that she would never revoke hers until those of France should be removed as to all nations.  Her minister too, about the same time, in an official conversation with our Chargé, rejected our substitute for her practice of impressment;  proposed no other;  and declared explicitly that no admissible one for this abuse could be proposed.  Negotiation being thus cut short, no alternative remained but war, or the abandonment of the persons and property of our citizens on the ocean.  The last one, I presume, no American would have preferred.  War was therefore declared, and justly declared;  but accompanied with immediate offers of peace on simply doing us justice.  These offers were made through Russel, through Admiral Warren, through the government of Canada, and the mediation proposed by her best friend Alexander, and the greatest enemy of Bonaparte, was accepted without hesitation.  An entire confidence in the abilities and integrity of those now administering the government, has kept me from the inclination, as well as the occasion, of intermeddling in the public affairs, even as a private citizen may justifiably do.  Yet if you can suggest any conditions which we ought to accept, and which have not been repeatedly offered and rejected, I would not hesitate to become the channel of their communication to the administration.  The revocation of the orders of council, and discontinuance of impressment, appear to me indispensable.  And I think a thousand ships taken unjustifiably in time of peace, and thousands of our citizens impressed, warrant expectations of indemnification;  such a western frontier, perhaps, given to Canada, as may put it out of their power hereafter to employ the tomahawk and scalping-knife of the Indians on our women and children ;  or, what would be nearly equivalent, the exclusive right to the lakes.  The modification, however, of this indemnification must be effected by the events of the war.  No man on earth has stronger detestation than myself of the unprincipled tyrant who is deluging the continent of Europe with blood.  No man was more gratified by his disasters of the last campaign ;  nor wished, more sincerely, success to the efforts of the virtuous Alexander.  But the desire of seeing England forced to just terms of peace with us, makes me equally solicitous for her entire exclusion from intercourse with the rest of the world, until by this peaceable engine of constraint, she can be made to renounce her views of dominion over the ocean, of permitting no other nation to navigate it but with her license, and on tribute to her;  and her aggressions on the persons of our citizens, who may choose to exercise their right of passing over that element.  Should the continental armistice issue in closing Europe against her, she may become willing to accede to just terms with us ;  which I should certainly be disposed to meet, whatever consequences it might produce on our intercourse with the continental nations.  My principle is to do whatever is right, and leave consequences to Him who has the disposal of them.  I repeat, therefore, that if you can suggest what may lead to a just peace, I will willingly communicate it to the proper functionaries.  In the meantime, its object will be best promoted by a vigorous and unanimous prosecution of the war.

I am happy in this occasion of renewing the interchange of sentiments between us, which has formerly been a source of much satisfaction to me;  and with the homage of my affectionate attachment and respect to Mrs. Logan, I pray you to accept the assurance of my continued friendship and esteem for yourself.

Since mine of August the 22d, I have received your favors of August the 16th, September the 2d, 14th, 15th, and —, and Mrs. Adams’ of September the 20th.  I now send you, according to your request, a copy of the syllabus.  To fill up this skeleton with arteries, with veins, with nerves, muscles and flesh, is really beyond my time and information.  Whoever could undertake it would find great aid in Enfield’s judicious abridgment of Brucker’s History of Philosophy, in which he has reduced five or six quarto volumes, of one thousand pages each of Latin closely printed, to two moderate octavos of English open type.

To compare the morals of the Old, with those of the New Testament, would require an attentive study of the former, a search through all its books for its precepts, and through all its history for its practices, and the principles they prove.  As commentaries, too, on these, the philosophy of the Hebrews must be inquired into, their Mishna, their Gemara, Cabbala, Jezirah, Sohar, Cosri, and their Talmud, must be examined and understood, in order to do them full justice.  Brucker, it would seem, has gone deeply into these repositories of their ethics, and Enfield, his epitomizer, concludes in these words :  “Ethics were so little understood among the Jews, that in their whole compilation called the Talmud, there is only one treatise on moral subjects.  Their books of morals chiefly consisted in a minute enumeration of duties.  From the law of Moses were deduced six hundred and thirteen precepts, which were divided into two classes, affirmative and negative, two hundred and forty-eight in the former, and three hundred and sixty-five in the latter.  It may serve to give the reader some idea of the low state of moral philosophy among the Jews in the middle age, to add that of the two hundred and forty-eight affirmative precepts, only three were considered as obligatory upon women, and that in order to obtain salvation, it was judged sufficient to fulfil any one single law in the hour of death;  the observance of the rest being deemed necessary, only to increase the felicity of the future life.  What a wretched depravity of sentiment and manners must have prevailed, before such corrupt maxims could have obtained credit !  It is impossible to collect from these writings a consistent series of moral doctrine.”  Enfield, B. 4., chapter 3.  It was the reformation of this “wretched depravity” of morals which Jesus undertook.  In extracting the pure principles which he taught, we should have to strip off the artificial vestments in which they have been muffled by priests, who have travestied them into various forms, as instruments of riches and power to themselves.  We must dismiss the Platonists and Plotinists, the Stagyrites, and Gamalielites the Eclectics, the Gnostics and Scholastics, their essences and emanations, their Logos and Demiurgos, Æons and Dæmons, male and female, with a long train of &c., &c., &c., or, shall I say at once, of nonsense.  We must reduce our volume to the simple evangelists, select, even from them, the very words only of Jesus, paring off the amphiboligisms into which they have been led, by forgetting often, or not understanding, what had fallen from him, by giving their own misconceptions as his dicta, and expressing unintelligibly for others what they had not understood themselves.  There will be found remaining the most sublime and benevolent code of morals which has ever been offered to man.  I have performed this operation for my own use, by cutting verse by verse out of the printed book, and arranging the matter which is evidently his, and which is as easily distinguishable as diamonds in a dunghill.  The result is an octavo of forty-six pages, of pure and unsophisticated doctrines, such as were professed and acted on by the unlettered Apostles, the Apostolic Fathers, and the Christians of the first century.  Their Platonizing successors, indeed, in after times, in order to legitimate the corruptions which they had incorporated into the doctrines of Jesus, found it necessary to disavow the primitive Christians, who had taken their principles from the mouth of Jesus himself, of his Apostles, and the Fathers contemporary with them.  They excommunicated their followers as heretics, branding them with the opprobrious name of Ebionites or Beggars.

For a comparison of the Grecian philosophy with that of Jesus, materials might be largely drawn from the same source.  Enfield gives a history and detailed account of the opinions and principles of the different sects.  These relate to the Gods, their natures, grades, places and powers;  the demi-Gods and Daemons, and their agency with man ;  the universe, its structure, extent and duration;  the origin of things from the elements of fire, water, air and earth ;  the human soul, its essence and derivation;  the summum bonum and finis bonorum;  with a thousand idle dreams and fancies on these and other subjects, the knowledge of which is withheld from man;  leaving but a short chapter for his moral duties, and the principal section of that given to what he owes himself, to precepts for rendering him impassible, and unassailable by the evils of life, and for preserving his mind in a state of constant serenity.

Such a canvass is too broad for the age of seventy, and especially of one whose chief occupations have been in the practical business of life.  We must leave, therefore; to others, younger and more learned than we are, to prepare this euthanasia for Platonic Christianity, and its restoration to the primitive simplicity of its founder.  I think you give a just outline of the theism of the three religions, when you say that the principle of the Hebrew was the fear, of the Gentile the honor, and of the Christian the love of God.

An expression in your letter of September the 14th, that “the human understanding is a revelation from its maker,” gives the best solution that I believe can be given of the question, “what did Socrates mean by his Daemon ?”  He was too wise to believe and too honest to pretend, that he had real and familiar converse with a superior and invisible being.  He probably considered the suggestions of his conscience, or reason, as revelations or inspirations from the Supreme mind, bestowed, on important occasions, by a special superintending Providence.

I acknowledge all the merit of the hymn of Cleanthes to Jupiter, which you ascribe to it.  It is as highly sublime as a chaste and correct imagination can permit itself to go.  Yet in the contemplation of a being so superlative, the hyperbolic flights of the Psalmist may often be followed with approbation, even with rapture; and I have no hesitation in giving him the palm over all the hymnists of every language and of every time.  Turn to the 148th psalm, in Brady and Tate’s version.  Have such conceptions been ever before expressed ?  Their version of the 15th psalm is more to be esteemed for its pithiness than its poetry.  Even Sternhold, the leaden Sternhold, kindles, in a single instance, with the sublimity of his original, and expresses the majesty of God descending on the earth, in terms not unworthy of the subject :

“ The Lord descended from above,
And underneath his feet he cast
On Cherubim and Seraphim
And on the wings of mighty winds

And bowed the heav’ns most high ;
The darkness of the sky.
Full royally he rode ;
Came flying all abroad.”—Psalm xviii, 9, 10.

The Latin versions of this passage by Buchanan and by Johnston, are but mediocres.  But the Greek of Duport is worthy of quotation, ——(A verse of Greek inserted here)——

The best collection of these psalms is that of the Octagonian dissenters of Liverpool, in their printed form of prayer;  but they are not always the best versions.  Indeed, bad is the best of the English versions;  not a ray of poetical genius having ever been employed on them.  And how much depends on this, may be seen by comparing Brady and Tate’s 15th psalm with Blacklock’s Justum et tenacem propositi virum of Horace, quoted in Hume’s history, Car. 2, ch. 65.  A translation of David in this style, or in that of Pompei’s Cleanthes, might give us some idea of the merit of the original.  The character, too, of the poetry of these hymns is singular to us;  written in monostichs, each divided into strophe and anti-strophe, the sentiment of the first member responded with amplification or antithesis in the second.

On the subject of the postscript of yours of August the 16th and of Mrs. Adams’ letter, I am silent.  I know the depth of the affliction it has caused, and can sympathize with it the more sensibly, inasmuch as there is no degree of affliction, produced by the loss of those dear to us, which experience has not taught me to estimate.  I have ever found time and silence the only medicine, and these but assuage, they never can suppress, the deep drawn sigh which recollection forever brings up, until recollection and life are extinguished together.  Ever affectionately yours.

According to the reservation between us, of taking up one of the subjects of our correspondence at a time, I turn to your letters of August the 16th and September the 2d.  The passage you quote from Theognis, I think has an ethical rather than a political object.  The whole piece is a moral exhortation, ——(Greek inserted here)——, and this passage particularly seems to be a reproof to man;  who, while with his domestic animals he is curious to improve the race, by employing always the finest male, pays no attention to the improvement of his own race, but intermarries with the vicious, the ugly, or the old, for considerations of wealth or ambition.  It is in conformity with the principle adopted afterwards by the Pythagoreans, and expressed by Ocellus in another form;  ——(Greek inserted here)—— &c., ——(Greek inserted here)——  Which, as literally as intelligibility will admit, may be thus translated :  “concerning the interprocreation of men, how, and of whom it shall be, in a perfect manner, and according to the laws of modesty and sanctity, conjointly, this is what I think right.  First to lay it down that we do not commix for the sake of pleasure, but of the procreation of children.  For the powers, the organs and desires for coition have not been given by God to man for the sake of pleasure, but for the procreation of the race.  For as it were incongruous, for a mortal born to partake of divine life, the immortality of the race being taken away, God fulfilled the purpose by making the generations uninterrupted and continuous.  This, therefore, we are especially to lay down as a principle, that coition is not for the sake of pleasure.”  But nature, not trusting to this moral and abstract motive, seems to have provided more securely for the perpetuation of the species, by making it the effect of the oestrum implanted in the constitution of both sexes.  And not only has the commerce of love been indulged on this unhallowed impulse, but made subservient also to wealth and ambition by marriage, without regard to the beauty, the healthiness, the understanding, or virtue of the subject from which we are to breed.  The selecting the best male for a harem of well-chosen females also, which Theognis seems to recommend from the example of our sheep and asses, would doubtless improve the human, as it does the brute animal, and produce a race of veritable ——(Greek inserted here)——.  For experience proves, that the moral and physical qualities of man, whether good or evil, are transmissible in a certain degree from father to son.  But I suspect that the equal rights of men will rise up against this privileged Solomon and his harem, and oblige us to continue acquiescence under the “——(Greek inserted here)——” which Theognis complains of, and to content ourselves with the accidental aristoi produced by the fortuitous concourse of breeders.  For I agree with you that there is a natural aristocracy among men.  The grounds of this are virtue and talents.  Formerly, bodily powers gave place among the aristoi.  But since the invention of gunpowder has armed the weak as well as the strong with missile death, bodily strength, like beauty, good humor, politeness and other accomplishments, has become but an auxiliary ground of distinction.  There is also an artificial aristocracy, founded on wealth and birth, without either virtue or talents;  for with these it would belong to the first class.  The natural aristocracy I consider as the most precious gift of nature, for the instruction, the trusts, and government of society.  And indeed, it would have been inconsistent in creation to have formed man for the social state, and not to have provided virtue and wisdom enough to manage the concerns of the society.  May we not even say, that that form of government is the best, which provides the most effectually for a pure selection of these natural aristoi into the offices of government ?  The artificial aristocracy is a mischievous ingredient in government, and provision should be made to prevent its ascendency.  On the question, what is the best provision, you and I differ;  but we differ as rational friends, using the free exercise of our own reason, and mutually indulging its errors.  You think it best to put the pseudo-aristoi into a separate chamber of legislation, where they may be hindered from doing mischief by their co-ordinate branches, and where, also, they may be a protection to wealth against the agrarian and plundering enterprises of the majority of the people.  I think that to give them power in order to prevent them from doing mischief, is arming them for it, and increasing instead of remedying the evil.  For if the co-ordinate branches can arrest their action, so may they that of the co-ordinates.  Mischief may be done negatively as well as positively.  Of this, a cabal in the Senate of the United States has furnished many proofs.  Nor do I believe them necessary to protect the wealthy ;  because enough of these will find their way into every branch of the legislation, to protect themselves.  From fifteen to twenty legislatures of our own, in action for thirty years past, have proved that no fears of an equalization of property are to be apprehended from them.  I think the best remedy is exactly that provided by all our constitutions, to leave to the citizens the free election and separation of the aristoi from the pseudo-aristoi, of the wheat from the chaff.  In general they will elect the really good and wise.  In some instances, wealth may corrupt, and birth blind them ;  but not in sufficient degree to endanger the society.

It is probable that our difference of opinion may, in some measure, be produced by a difference of character in those among whom we live.  From what I have seen of Massachusetts and Connecticut myself, and still more from what I have heard, and the character given of the former by yourself, (volume 1, page 111,) who know them so much better, there seems to be in those two States a traditionary reverence for certain families, which has rendered the offices of the government nearly hereditary in those families.  I presume that from an early period of your history, members of those families happening to possess virtue and talents, have honestly exer- cised them for the good of the people, and by their services have endeared their names to them.  In coupling Connecticut with you, I mean it politically only, not morally.  For having made the Bible the common law of their land, they seem to have mod- eled their morality on the story of Jacob and Laban.  But although this hereditary succession to office with you, may, in some degree, be founded in real family merit, yet in a much higher degree, it has proceeded from your strict alliance of Church and State.  These families are canonized in the eyes of the people on common principles, “you tickle me, and I will tickle you.”  In Virginia we have nothing of this.  Our clergy, before the revolution, having been secured against rivalship by fixed salaries, did not give themselves the trouble of acquiring influence over the people.  Of wealth, there were great accumulations in particular families, handed down from generation to generation, under the English law of entails.  But the only object of ambition for the wealthy was a seat in the King’s Council.  All their court then was paid to the crown and its creatures; and they Philipized in all collisions between the King and the people.  Hence they were unpopular;  and that unpopularity continues attached to their names.  A Randolph, a Carter, or a Burwell must have great personal superiority over a common competitor to be elected by the people even at this day.  At the first session of our legislature after the Declaration of Independence, we passed a law abolishing entails.  And this was followed by one abolishing the privilege of primogeniture, and dividing the lands of intestates equally among all their children, or other representatives.  These laws, drawn by myself, laid the axe to the foot of pseudo-aristocracy.  And had another which I prepared been adopted by the legislature, our work would have been complete.  It was a bill for the more general diffusion of learning.  This proposed to divide every county into wards of five or six miles square, like your townships ;  to establish in each ward a free school for reading, writing and common arithmetic;  to provide for the annual selection of the best subjects from these schools, who might receive, at the public expense, a higher degree of education at a district school;  and from these district schools to select a certain number of the most promising subjects, to be completed at an university, where all the useful sciences should be taught.  Worth and genius would thus have been sought out from every condition of life, and completely prepared by education for defeating the competition of wealth and birth for public trusts.  My proposition had, for a further object, to impart to these wards those portions of self-government for which they are best qualified, by confiding to them the care of their poor, their roads, police, elections, the nomination of jurors, administration of justice in small cases, elementary exercises of militia;  in short, to have made them little republics, with a warden at the head of each, for all those concerns which, being under their eye, they would better manage than the larger republics of the county or State.  A general call of ward meetings by their wardens on the same day through the State, would at any time produce the genuine sense of the people on any required point, and would enable the State to act in mass, as your people have so often done, and with so much effect by their town meetings.  The law for religious freedom, which made a part of this system, having put down the aristocracy of the clergy, and restored to the citizen the freedom of the mind, and those of entails and descents nurturing an equality of condition among them, this on education would have raised the mass of the people to the high ground of moral respectability necessary to their own safety, and to orderly government;  and would have completed the great object of qualifying them to select the veritable aristoi, for the trusts of government, to the exclusion of the pseudalists;  and the same Theognis who has furnished the epigraphs of your two letters, assures us that “——(Greek inserted here)——”  Although this law has not yet been acted on but in a small and inefficient degree, it is still considered as before the legislature, with other bills of the revised code, not yet taken up, and I have great hope that some patriotic spirit will, at a favorable moment, call it up, and make it the keystone of the arch of our government.

With respect to aristocracy, we should further consider, that before the establishment of the American States, nothing was known to history but the man of the old world, crowded within limits either small or overcharged, and steeped in the vices which that situation generates.  A government adapted to such men would be one thing ;  but a very different one, that for the man of these States.  Here every one may have land to labor for himself, if he chooses;  or, preferring the exercise of any other industry, may exact for it such compensation as not only to afford a comfortable subsistence, but wherewith to provide for a cessation from labor in old age.  Every one, by his property, or by his satisfactory situation, is interested in the support of law and order.  And such men may safely and advantageously reserve to themselves a wholesome control over their public affairs, and a degree of freedom, which, in the hands of the canaille of the cities of Europe, would be instantly perverted to the demolition and destruction of everything public and private.  The history of the last twenty-five years of France, and of the last forty years in America, nay of its last two hundred years, proves the truth of both parts of this observation.

But even in Europe a change has sensibly taken place in the mind of man.  Science had liberated the ideas of those who read and reflect, and the American example had kindled feelings of right in the people.  An insurrection has consequently begun, of science, talents, and courage, against rank and birth, which have fallen into contempt.  It has failed in its first effort, because the mobs of the cities, the instrument used for its accomplishment, debased by ignorance, poverty, and vice, could not be restrained to rational action.  But the world will recover from the panic of this first catastrophe.  Science is progressive, and talents and enterprise on the alert.  Resort may be had to the people of the country, a more governable power from their principles and subordination;  and rank, and birth, and tinsel-aristocracy will finally shrink into insignificance, even there.  This, however, we have no right to meddle with.  It suffices for us, if the moral and physical condition of our own citizens qualifies them to select the able and good for the direction of their government, with a recurrence of elections at such short periods as will enable them to displace an unfaithful servant, before the mischief he meditates may be irremediable.

I have thus stated my opinion on a point on which we differ, not with a view to controversy, for we are both too old to change opinions which are the result of a long life of inquiry and reflection;  but on the suggestions of a former letter of yours, that we ought not to die before we have explained ourselves to each other.  We acted in perfect harmony, through a long and perilous contest for our liberty and independence.  A constitution has been acquired, which, though neither of us thinks perfect, yet both consider as competent to render our fellow citizens the happiest and the securest on whom the sun has ever shone.  If we do not think exactly alike as to its imperfections, it matters little to our country, which, after devoting to it long lives of disinterested labor, we have delivered over to our successors in life, who will be able to take care of it and of themselves.

Of the pamphlet on aristocracy which has been sent to you, or who may be its author, I have heard nothing but through your letter.  If the person you suspect, it may be known from the quaint, mystical, and hyperbolical ideas, involved in affected, new-fangled and pedantic terms which stamp his writings.  Whatever it be, I hope your quiet is not to be affected at this day by the rudeness or intemperance of scribblers ;  but that you may continue in tranquillity to live and to rejoice in the prosperity of our country, until it shall be your own wish to take your seat among the aristoi who have gone before you.  Ever and affectionately yours.

Dear Sir,—I had not expected to have troubled you again on the subject of finance ;  but since the date of my last, I have received from Mr. Law a letter covering a memorial on that subject, which, from its tenor, I conjecture must have been before Congress at their two last sessions.  This paper contains two propositions ;  the one for issuing treasury notes, bearing interest, and to be circulated as money ;  the other for the establishment of a national bank.  The first was considered in my former letter ;  and the second shall be the subject of the present.

The scheme is for Congress to establish a national bank, suppose of thirty millions capital, of which they shall contribute ten millions in new six per cent. stock, the States ten millions, and individuals ten millions, one-half of the two last contributions to be of similar stock, for which the parties are to give cash to Congress ;  the whole, however, to be under the exclusive management of the individual subscribers, who are to name all the directors ;  neither Congress nor the States having any power of interference in its administration.  Discounts are to be at five per cent., but the profits are expected to be seven per cent.  Congress then will be paying six per cent. on twenty millions, and receiving seven per cent. on ten millions, being its third of the institution ;  so that on the ten millions cash Which they receive from the States and individuals, they will, in fact, have to pay but five per cent. interest.  This is the bait.  The charter is proposed to be for forty or fifty years, and if any future augmentations should take place, the individual proprietors are to have the privilege of being the sole subscribers for that.  Congress are further allowed to issue to the amount of three millions of notes, bearing interest, which they are to receive back in payment for lands at a premium of five or ten per cent., or as subscriptions for canals, roads, and bridges, in which undertakings they are, of course, to be engaged.  This is a summary of the case as I understand it ;  but it is very possible I may not understand it in all its parts, these schemes being always made unintelligible for the gulls who are to enter into them.  The advantages and disadvantages shall be noted promiscuously as they occur ;  leaving out the speculation of canals, etc., which, being an episode only in the scheme, may be omitted, to disentangle it as much as we can.

1.  Congress are to receive five millions from the States (if they will enter into this partnership, which few probably will), and five millions from the individual subscribers, in exchange for ten millions of six per cent. stock, one per cent. of which, however, they will make on their ten millions of stock remaining in bank, and so reduce it, in effect, to a loan of ten millions at five per cent interest, This is good ;  but

2.  They authorize this bank to throw into circulation ninety millions of dollars, (three times the capital,) which increases our circulating medium fifty per cent., depreciates proportionably the present value of a dollar, and raises the price of all future purchases in the same proportion.

3.  This loan of ten millions at five per cent., is to be once for all, only.  Neither the terms of the scheme, nor their own prudence could ever permit them to add to the circulation in the same, or any other way, for the supplies of the succeeding years of the war.  These succeeding years then are to be left unprovided for, and the means of doing it in a great measure precluded.

4.  The individual subscribers, on paying their own five millions of cash to Congress, become the depositories of ten millions of stock belonging to Congress, five millions belonging to the States, and five millions to themselves, say twenty millions, with which, as no one has a right ever to see their books, or to ask a question, they may choose their time for running away, after adding to their booty the proceeds of as much of their own notes as they shall be able to throw into circulation.

5.  The subscribers may be one, two, or three, or more individuals, (many single individuals being able to pay in the five millions,) whereupon this bank oligarchy or monarchy enters the field with ninety millions of dollars, to direct and control the politics of the nation ;  and of the influence of these institutions on our politics and into what scale it will be thrown, we have had abundant experience.  Indeed, England herself may be the real, while her friend and trustee here shall be the nominal and sole subscriber.

6.  This state of things is to be fastened on us, without the power of relief, for forty or fifty years.  That is to say, the eight millions of people now existing, for the sake of receiving one dollar and twenty-five cents apiece, at five per cent. interest, are to subject the fifty millions of people who are to succeed them within that term, to the payment of forty-five millions of dollars, principal and interest, which will be payable in the course of the fifty years.

7.  But the great and national advantage is to be the relief of the present scarcity of money, which is produced and proved by,

1.  The additional industry created to supply a variety of articles for the troops, ammunition, etc.

2.  By the cash sent to the frontiers, and the vacuum occasioned in the trading towns by that.

3.  By the late loans.

4.  By the necessity of recurring to shavers with good paper, which the existing banks are not able to take up ;  and

5.  By the numerous applications of bank charters, showing that an increase of circulating medium is wanting.

Let us examine these causes and proofs of the want of an increase of medium, one by one.

1.  The additional industry created to supply a variety of articles for troops, ammunition, etc.  Now, I had always supposed that war produced a diminution of industry, by the number of hands it withdraws from industrious pursuits for employment in arms, etc., which are totally unproductive.  And if it calls for new industry in the articles of ammunition and other military supplies, the hands are borrowed from other branches on which the demand is slackened by the war ;  so that it is but a shifting of these hands from one pursuit to another.

2.  The cash sent to the frontiers occasions a vacuum in the trading towns, which requires a new supply.  Let us examine what are the calls for money to the frontiers.  Not for clothing, tents, ammunition, arms, which are all bought in the trading towns.  Not for provisions ;  for although these are bought partly in the immediate country, bank bills are more acceptable there than even in the trading towns.  The pay of the army calls for some cash, but not a great deal, as bank notes are as acceptable with the military men, perhaps more so ;  and what cash is sent must find its way back again in exchange for the wants of the upper from the lower country.  For we are not to suppose that cash stays accumulating there forever.

3.  This scarcity has been occasioned by the late loans.  But doe