Inquiry Into the Origin and Course of Political Parties in the United States Part 17

The fruits of this warfare against the Democratic party and its principles are familiar to politicians and observers of our times. The Bank of the United States, after filling the country with distress and ruin, itself perished; the proposed system of internal improvements by the Federal Government was happily broken down by his opponents before it involved the country in inextricable embarra.s.sments, and the Protective System, after being finally overthrown in England, from which country we had copied it, was abandoned here also, and consigned by the judgment of the people to the same oblivion with its kindred delusions.

The promotion of internal improvements by the General Government was an a.s.sumption of power by Congress, against which, from its first inception till its substantial overthrow, the Democratic party interposed a steady, persevering, and inflexible resistance. The general character of the abuse, its origin, progress, and extirpation through Democratic agencies, are fully presented in another part of this work.[40] Here the probable effect upon the national treasury of arresting the practice will alone be noticed.

[40] Referring to the Memoirs of the writer. See Introduction. Eds.

In his annual message to Congress, December, 1834, President Jackson says:--

"When the bill authorizing a subscription on the part of the United States for stock in the Maysville and Lexington Turnpike Companies pa.s.sed the two Houses, there had been reported, by the committees of internal improvements, bills containing appropriations for such objects, exclusive of those for the c.u.mberland Road and for harbors and light-houses, to the amount of about one hundred and six millions of dollars. In this amount was included authority to the Secretary of the Treasury to subscribe to the stock of different companies to a great extent, and the residue was princ.i.p.ally for the direct construction of roads by this Government. In addition to those projects, which had been presented to the two Houses, under the sanction and recommendation of their respective committees on internal improvements, there were then still pending before the committees, and in memorials to Congress, presented but not referred, different projects for works of a similar character, the expense of which cannot be estimated with certainty but must have exceeded one hundred millions of dollars."

The same message contained also the following suggestions:--

"From attempts to appropriate the national funds to objects which are confessedly of a local character, we cannot I trust have any thing further to apprehend. My views in regard to the expediency of making appropriations for works which are claimed to be of a national character, and prosecuted under State authority, a.s.suming that Congress have the right to do so, were stated in my annual message to Congress in 1830, and also in that containing my objections to the Maysville Road Bill.

"So thoroughly convinced am I that no such appropriations ought to be made by Congress, until a suitable const.i.tutional provision is made upon the subject, and so essential do I regard the point to the highest interests of our country, that I could not consider myself as discharging my duty to my const.i.tuents in giving the executive sanction to any bill containing such an appropriation. If the people of the United States desire that the public treasury shall be resorted to for the means to prosecute such works, they will concur in an amendment of the Const.i.tution prescribing a rule by which the national character of the works is to be tested, and by which the greatest practicable equality of benefits may be secured to each member of the Confederacy.

The effects of such a regulation would be most salutary in preventing unprofitable expenditures, in securing our legislation from the pernicious consequences of a scramble for the favors of Government, and in repressing the spirit of discontent which must inevitably arise from an unequal distribution of treasures which belong alike to all."

These declarations of President Jackson that he would approve no bill containing appropriations even for objects of a national character, until an amendment of the Const.i.tution was adopted placing such expenditures upon an equal footing towards all the States, were reiterated in his Maysville veto. My election to the Presidency, and the knowledge that I cordially approved, and was determined to sustain, the ground taken in those two state papers upon the subject of internal improvements, with the large Democratic vote in Congress, always opposed upon principle to such grants, effectually closed the doors of the national treasury against them for seven years.

All similar applications, save for harbor and river appropriations, were thus driven, as was antic.i.p.ated, to the State legislatures. The money expended for such improvements, when authorized by the States, were chargeable upon the treasuries of the States, to be collected by direct taxation. When made by incorporated companies under authority derived from the States they were at the expense of their stockholders. All must be sensible of the salutary check which these circ.u.mstances are calculated to exert by increasing the circ.u.mspection and prudence with which such expenses are incurred; and yet what immense amounts of money have been irrecoverably sunk upon such works, and what widespread embarra.s.sments have they at times created in the financial affairs of the country, through the headlong enterprise and adventurous spirit of our people!

We have only to imagine a transfer of the seat of these operations to the halls of Congress to estimate the sums that would have been drawn out of the National Treasury and carried to the States to be, for the most part, expended upon local objects,--the scenes of log-rolling and intrigue to which such scrambles would have given rise, and the utter unscrupulousness of the applications that would thus have been produced.

What millions upon millions of the public funds would have been worse than uselessly expended during the twenty-seven years that have elapsed since the Democratic party, through their venerable and fearless President, took the first effectual step to break up the practice! The one hundred millions for which bills had been reported, and the other hundred millions of applications pending before Congress when the Maysville veto was interposed, according to the President's message, furnish ample data upon which to found our calculations. No sum would seem to be too large at which to place the probable amount of our national debt if the plans of their political opponents had in this regard been crowned with complete success. In view of such an event who will be bold enough, with the subsequent experience of the country before him, to place even a conjectural estimate upon that amount or upon the extent to which valuable improvements, through individual enterprise or under State authority, would have been postponed or arrested forever by a further prosecution of the policy into which such persevering efforts were made to lead the Federal Government. For preservation from such prodigality and debt, and from the corruptions that would have followed in their train, we are plainly and undeniably indebted to the successful enforcement of the principles of the Democratic party.

[A s.p.a.ce was here reserved in the original Ma.n.u.script for an intended notice of the advantages derived to the country from the establishment of the Independent Treasury; a measure proposed by Mr. Van Buren in the first year of his Presidency and in his first communication to Congress, and supported by the Democratic party.

In consequence, however, of the interruptions to which this work was subjected (and which are referred to in the Introduction), the contemplated addition to it was never supplied.--EDITORS.]

The measures of which I have spoken as the cherished policy of the old Federal party and its successors taken as a whole were justly described by Jefferson, in his much-abused letter to Mazzei, as "a contrivance invented for the purpose of corruption and for a.s.similating us in all respects to the rotten as well as the sound parts of the British Const.i.tution." A persuasion of their practical usefulness in some respects entered more or less into the motives of the leaders on the occasions both of their creation and of their attempted resuscitation; but that they were by both regarded princ.i.p.ally as elements of political strength, and adopted as means by which to build up and sustain an overshadowing money power in the country, through which the Democratic spirit of the people might be kept in check, is at least equally certain. Doubtless both of those political leaders honestly believed such a check to be necessary to the public good. With Hamilton this faith had from the beginning const.i.tuted an integral part of his political system. Clay had been, in his youth, too much a man of the people to avow such a belief, but that he became a convert to it in after-life I have no doubt. But the Democratic spirit of the country did not stand in need of any such restraint as that which they designed to place upon its course.

I have thus adverted to some of the advantages the country has derived from the action of the Democratic party, to which must be added the benefits conferred on the States by an extension of kindred principles to the administration of the local governments. If its opponents are asked for a statement of their contributions to the public welfare when in power and by their efforts to defeat the measures of the Democratic party, or to name a great measure of which they were the authors and which has stood the test of experience, or one in the establishment of which they have been prevented by factious or partisan opposition, but which would now be received with favor by the people, or a principle advocated by them for the administration of the Government, in which they have been defeated but which would now be so received, or an unsound one set up by their opponents which they have successfully resisted,--what must be the replies to questions so simple yet so comprehensive and important! Can it, on the other hand, be now denied that notwithstanding the conceded capacities of their leaders, and their possession of superior facilities for the acquisition and favorable exercise of political power, their time and their resources have been mainly employed in efforts to establish principles and build up systems which have been to all appearance irrevocably condemned by the people, and in unavailing efforts to defeat measures and principles which, after a full experience, have proved acceptable to them, and through the influence and operation of which the country has been gradually raised to great power and unexampled prosperity.

The course of events to which I have referred has had the effect of breaking up as a national organization the party so long opposed to the Democratic party, leaving the latter the only political a.s.sociation co-extensive in its power and influence with the Union,--and the sole survivor of all its national compet.i.tors. Of the eleven Presidents elected since its accession to power in the Federal Government, including the one in whose election it achieved its first national triumph, nine were avowed supporters of the cause it sustained, and eight its exclusive candidates. During the sixty years which will, at the end of the present Presidential term, have pa.s.sed away since the occurrence of that great event, the chief magistracy of this country has been in the hands of professed supporters of its principles, with the exception only of four years and one month.

Born of the spirit which impelled our early colonists to forsake the abodes of civilization to establish among savages and in the wilderness the sacred right of opinion, which encouraged and sustained them in all their wanderings and sufferings and perils, and which finally conducted the survivors through a long and b.l.o.o.d.y war to liberty and independence, and representing the feelings and opinions of a majority of the people, it has labored zealously and, in the main, successfully, to give effect to those by which that momentous struggle was produced, to realize its promises, to maintain the sanct.i.ty of the Const.i.tution, and to uphold "that equality of political rights" which Hamilton, though he could not find it in his judgment to favor, yet truly described as "the foundation of pure Republicanism."

For the signal success of its beneficent and glorious mission the country is indebted to the virtue and intelligence of the men of whom this great party has from time to time been composed,--much to the ability, industry, and devoted patriotism of James Madison; largely to the iron will, fearlessness, and uprightness of Andrew Jackson; and more conspicuously still to the genius, the honest and firm heart, and spirit-stirring pen of its founder, Thomas Jefferson, who stands, in my estimation, as a faithful republican, pure patriot, and wise and accomplished statesman, unequaled in the history of man. His opinions deliberately formed on important public questions, do not appear to have undergone material change or modification, except perhaps in the case of the issue raised in respect to the necessity of an amendment of the Const.i.tution to justify the admission of Louisiana into the Union.

Certain it is that he never entertained one which he could justly be accused of having concealed or recanted to propitiate power or to promote his own popularity, or which he was not on all suitable occasions prompt to avow and to defend. The presence of this n.o.ble spirit, and a readiness to encounter any sacrifice necessary to its free indulgence, were manifest in every crisis of his eventful life; nor were his last moments on earth without an impressive exhibition of its continued ascendency, even when reason and sense were pa.s.sing away.

APPENDIX.

FROM THOMAS JEFFERSON,

TO MARTIN VAN BUREN.

MONTICELLO, June 29, 1824.

DEAR SIR,--I have to thank you for Mr. Pickering's elaborate Philippic against Mr. Adams, Gerry, Smith, and myself; and I have delayed the acknowledgment until I could read it and make some observations on it.

I could not have believed that, for so many years, and to such a period of advanced age, he could have nourished pa.s.sions so vehement and viperous. It appears, that for thirty years past, he has been industriously collecting materials for vituperating the characters he had marked for his hatred; some of whom, certainly, if enmities towards him had ever existed, had forgotten them all, or buried them in the grave with themselves. As to myself, there never had been any thing personal between us, nothing but the general opposition of party sentiment; and our personal intercourse had been that of urbanity, as himself says. But it seems he has been all this time brooding over an enmity which I had never felt, and yet that with respect to myself as well as others, he has been writing far and near, and in every direction, to get hold of original letters, where he could, copies, where he could not, certificates and journals, catching at every gossiping story he could hear of in any quarter, supplying by suspicions what he could find nowhere else, and then arguing on this motley farrago, as if established on gospel evidence. And while expressing his wonder that "at the age of eighty-eight, the strong pa.s.sions of Mr.

Adams should not have cooled;" that on the contrary "they had acquired the mastery of his soul" (p. 100); that "where these were enlisted, no reliance could be placed on his statements" (p. 104); "the facility and little truth with which he could represent facts and occurrences, concerning persons who were the objects of his hatred" (p. 3); that "he is capable of making the grossest misrepresentations, and, from detached facts, and often from bare suspicions, of drawing unwarrantable inferences, if suited to his purpose at the instant" (p. 174); while making such charges, I say, on Mr. Adams, instead of his "_ecce h.o.m.o_"

(p. 100), how justly might we say to him, "_mutato nomine, de te fabula narratur_." For the a.s.siduity and industry he has employed in his benevolent researches after matter of crimination against us, I refer to his pages 13, 14, 34, 36, 46, 71, 79, 90, bis. 92, 93, bis. 101, ter.

104, 116, 118, 141, 143, 146, 150, 151, 153, 168, 171, 172. That Mr.

Adams' strictures on him, written and printed, should have excited some notice on his part, was not perhaps to be wondered at. But the sufficiency of his motive for the large attack on me may be more questionable. He says (p. 4), "of Mr. Jefferson I should have said nothing, but for his letter to Mr. Adams, of October 12th, 1823." Now the object of that letter was to soothe the feelings of a friend, wounded by a publication which I thought an "outrage on private confidence." Not a word or allusion in it respected Mr. Pickering, nor was it suspected that it would draw forth his pen in justification of this infidelity, which he has, however, undertaken in the course of his pamphlet, but more particularly in its conclusion.

He arraigns me on two grounds, my actions and my motives. The very actions, however, which he arraigns, have been such as the great majority of my fellow citizens have approved. The approbation of Mr.

Pickering, and of those who thought with him, I had no right to expect.

My motives he chuses to ascribe to hypocrisy, to ambition, and a pa.s.sion for popularity. Of these the world must judge between us. It is no office of his or mine. To that tribunal I have ever submitted my actions and motives, without ransacking the Union for certificates, letters, journals, and gossiping tales, to justify myself and weary them. Nor shall I do this on the present occasion, but leave still to them these antiquated party diatribes, now newly revamped and paraded as if they had not been already a thousand times repeated, refuted, and adjudged against him, by the nation itself. If no action is to be deemed virtuous for which malice can imagine a sinister motive, then there never was a virtuous action; no, not even in the life of our Saviour himself. But he has taught us to judge the tree by its fruit, and to leave motives to him who can alone see into them.

But whilst I leave to its fate the libel of Mr. Pickering, with the thousands of others like it, to which I have given no other answer than a steady course of similar action, there are two facts or fancies of his which I must set to rights. The one respects Mr. Adams, the other myself. He observes that my letter of October 12th, 1823, acknowledges the receipt of one from Mr. Adams, of September 18th, which, having been written a few days after Cunningham's publication, he says was no doubt written to apologize to me for the pointed reproaches he had uttered against me in his confidential letters to Cunningham. And thus having "no doubt" of his conjecture, he considers it as proven, goes on to suppose the contents of the letter (19, 22), makes it place Mr. Adams at my feet suing for pardon, and continues to rant upon it, as an undoubted fact. Now, I do most solemnly declare, that so far from being a letter of apology, as Mr. Pickering so undoubtingly a.s.sumes, there was not a word nor allusion in it respecting Cunningham's publication.

The other allegation, respecting myself, is equally false. In page 34, he quotes Doctor Stuart as having, twenty years ago, informed him that General Was.h.i.+ngton, "when he became a private citizen," called me to account for expressions in a letter to Mazzei, requiring, in a tone of unusual severity, an explanation of that letter. He adds of himself, "in what manner the latter humbled himself and appeased the just resentment of Was.h.i.+ngton, will never be known, as some time after his death the correspondence was not to be found, and a diary for an important period of his Presidency was also missing." The diary being of transactions during his Presidency, the letter to Mazzei not known here until some time _after he became a private citizen_, and the pretended correspondence of course after that, I know not why this lost diary and supposed correspondence are brought together here, unless for insinuations worthy of the letter itself. The correspondence could not be found, indeed, because it had never existed. I do affirm that there never pa.s.sed a word, written or verbal, directly or indirectly, between General Was.h.i.+ngton and myself on the subject of that letter. He would never have degraded himself so far as to take to himself the imputation in that letter on the "Samsons in combat." The whole story is a fabrication, and I defy the framers of it, and all mankind, to produce a scrip of a pen between General Was.h.i.+ngton and myself on the subject, or any other evidence more worthy of credit than the suspicions, suppositions and presumptions of the two persons here quoting and quoted for it. With Doctor Stuart I had not much acquaintance. I supposed him to be an honest man, knew him to be a very weak one, and, like Mr.

Pickering, very p.r.o.ne to antipathies, boiling with party pa.s.sions, and under the dominion of these readily welcoming fancies for facts. But come the story from whomsoever it might, it is an unqualified falsehood.

This letter to Mazzei has been a precious theme of crimination for Federal malice. It was a long letter of business, in which was inserted a single paragraph only of political information as to the state of our country. In this information there was not one word which would not then have been, or would not now be approved by every Republican in the United States, looking back to those times; as you will see by a faithful copy now enclosed of the whole of what that letter said on the subject of the United States, or of its government. This paragraph, extracted and translated, got into a Paris paper at a time when the persons in power there were laboring under very general disfavor, and their friends were eager to catch even at straws to buoy them up. To them, therefore, I have always imputed the interpolation of an entire paragraph additional to mine, which makes me charge my own country with ingrat.i.tude and injustice to France. There was not a word in my letter respecting France, or any of the proceedings or relations between this country and that. Yet this interpolated paragraph has been the burthen of Federal calumny, has been constantly quoted by them, made the subject of unceasing and virulent abuse, and is still quoted, as you see, by Mr. Pickering, page 33, as if it were genuine, and really written by me.

And even Judge Marshall makes history descend from its dignity, and the ermine from its sanct.i.ty, to exaggerate, to record, and to sanction this forgery. In the very last note of his book, he says, "a letter from Mr.

Jefferson to Mr. Mazzei, an Italian, was published in Florence, and republished in the 'Moniteur,' with very severe strictures on the conduct of the United States." And instead of the letter itself, he copies what he says are the remarks of the editor, which are an exaggerated commentary on the fabricated paragraph itself, and silently leaves to his reader to make the ready inference that these were the sentiments of the letter. Proof is the duty of the affirmative side. A negative cannot be positively proved. But, in defect of impossible proof of what was not in the original letter, I have its press-copy still in my possession. It has been shown to several, and is open to any one who wishes to see it. I have presumed only, that the interpolation was done in Paris. But I never saw the letter in either its Italian or French dress, and it may have been done here, with the commentary handed down to posterity by the Judge. The genuine paragraph, retranslated through Italian and French into English, as it appeared here in a Federal paper, besides the mutilated hue which these translations and retranslations of it produced generally, gave a mistranslation of a single word, which entirely perverted its meaning, and made it a pliant and fertile text of misrepresentation of my political principles. The original, speaking of an Anglican, monarchical, and aristocratical party, which had sprung up since he had left us, states their object to be "to draw over us the substance, as they had already done the _forms_ of the British Government." Now the forms here meant, were the levees, birthdays, the pompous cavalcade to the state house on the meeting of Congress, the formal speech from the throne, the procession of Congress in a body to reecho the speech in an answer, &c., &c. But the translator here, by subst.i.tuting _form_ in the singular number, for _forms_ in the plural, made it mean the frame or organization of our government, or its _form_ of legislative, executive, and judiciary authorities coordinate and independent; to which _form_ it was to be inferred that I was an enemy.

In this sense they always quoted it, and in this sense Mr. Pickering still quotes it, pages 34, 35, 38, and countenances the inference. Now General Was.h.i.+ngton perfectly understood what I meant by these forms, as they were frequent subjects of conversation between us. When, on my return from Europe, I joined the government in March, 1790, at New York, I was much astonished, indeed, at the mimicry I found established of royal forms and ceremonies, and more alarmed at the unexpected phenomenon, by the monarchical sentiments I heard expressed and openly maintained in every company, and among others by the high members of the government, executive and judiciary, (General Was.h.i.+ngton alone excepted,) and by a great part of the legislature, save only some members who had been of the old Congress, and a very few of recent introduction. I took occasion, at various times, of expressing to General Was.h.i.+ngton my disappointment at these symptoms of a change of principle, and that I thought them encouraged by the forms and ceremonies which I found prevailing, not at all in character with the simplicity of Republican government, and looking as if wishfully to those of European courts. His general explanations to me were that when he arrived at New York, to enter on the executive administration of the new government, he observed to those who were to a.s.sist him, that, placed as he was in an office entirely new to him, unacquainted with the forms and ceremonies of other governments, still less apprized of those which might be properly established here, and himself perfectly indifferent to all forms, he wished them to consider and prescribe what they should be; and the task was a.s.signed particularly to General Knox, a man of parade, and to Colonel Humphreys, who had resided some time at a foreign court. They, he said, were the authors of the present regulations, and that others were proposed so highly strained that he absolutely rejected them. Attentive to the difference of opinion prevailing on this subject, when the term of his second election arrived he called the heads of departments together, observed to them the situation in which he had been at the commencement of the government, the advice he had taken and the course he had observed in compliance with it; that a proper occasion had now arrived of revising that course, of correcting in it any particulars not approved in experience, and he desired us to consult together, agree on any changes we should think for the better, and that he should willingly conform to what we should advise. We met at my office. Hamilton and myself agreed at once that there was too much ceremony for the character of our government, and particularly, that the parade of the installation at New York ought not to be copied on the present occasion; that the President should desire the Chief Justice to attend him at his chambers, that he should administer the oath of office to him in the presence of the higher officers of the government, and that the certificate of the fact should be delivered to the Secretary of State to be recorded. Randolph and Knox differed from us, the latter vehemently; they thought it not advisable to change any of the established forms, and we authorized Randolph to report our opinions to the President. As these opinions were divided, and no positive advice given as to any change, no change was made. Thus the _forms_ which I had censured in my letter to Mazzei were perfectly understood by General Was.h.i.+ngton, and were those which he himself but barely tolerated. He had furnished me a proper occasion for proposing their reformation, and, my opinion not prevailing, he knew I could not have meant any part of the censure for him.

Mr. Pickering quotes, too (page 34), the expression in the letter of "the men who were Samsons in the field, and Solomons in the council, but who had had their heads shorn by the harlot England;" or, as expressed in their re-translation, "the men who were Solomons in council, and Samsons in combat, but whose hair had been cut off by the wh.o.r.e England." Now this expression also was perfectly understood by General Was.h.i.+ngton. He knew that I meant it for the Cincinnati generally, and that, from what had pa.s.sed between us at the commencement of that inst.i.tution, I could not mean to include him. When the first meeting was called for its establishment, I was a member of the Congress then sitting at Annapolis. General Was.h.i.+ngton wrote to me, asking my opinion on that proposition, and the course, if any, which I thought Congress would observe respecting it. I wrote him frankly my own disapprobation of it; that I found the members of Congress generally in the same sentiment; that I thought they would take no express notice of it, but that in all appointments of trust, honor, or profit, they would silently pa.s.s by all candidates of that order, and give an uniform preference to others. On his way to the first meeting in Philadelphia, which I think was in the spring of 1784, he called on me at Annapolis. It was a little after candle-light, and he sat with me till after midnight, conversing, almost exclusively, on that subject. While he was feelingly indulgent to the motives which might induce the officers to promote it, he concurred with me entirely in condemning it; and when I expressed an idea that if the hereditary quality were suppressed, the inst.i.tution might perhaps be indulged during the lives of the officers now living, and who had actually served, "no," he said, "not a fibre of it ought to be left, to be an eye-sore to the public, a ground of dissatisfaction, and a line of separation between them and their country;" and he left me with a determination to use all his influence for its entire suppression. On his return from the meeting he called on me again, and related to me the course the thing had taken. He said that from the beginning, he had used every endeavor to prevail on the officers to renounce the project altogether, urging the many considerations which would render it odious to their fellow citizens, and disreputable and injurious to themselves; that he had at length prevailed on most of the old officers to reject it, although with great and warm opposition from others, and especially the younger ones, among whom he named Colonel W. S. Smith as particularly intemperate. But that, in this state of things, when he thought the question safe, and the meeting drawing to a close, Major L'Enfant arrived from France, with a bundle of eagles, for which he had been sent there, with letters from the French officers who had served in America, praying for admission into the order, and a solemn act of their king permitting them to wear its ensign. This, he said, changed the face of matters at once, produced an entire revulsion of sentiment, and turned the torrent so strongly in an opposite direction that it could be no longer withstood; all he could then obtain was a suppression of the hereditary quality. He added that it was the French applications, and respect for the approbation of the king, which saved the establishment in its modified and temporary form. Disapproving thus of the inst.i.tution as much as I did, and conscious that I knew him to do so, he could never suppose I meant to include him among the Samsons in the field, whose object was to draw over us the _form_, as they made the letter say, of the British Government, and especially its aristocratic member, an hereditary house of lords. Add to this, that the letter saying that "two out of the three branches of legislature were against us" was an obvious exception of him; it being well known that the majorities in the two branches, of Senate and Representatives, were the very instruments which carried, in opposition to the old and real Republicans, the measures which were the subjects of condemnation in this letter. General Was.h.i.+ngton then, understanding perfectly what and whom I meant to designate, in both phrases, and that they could not have any application or view to himself, could find, in neither, any cause of offence to himself; and therefore neither needed, nor ever asked any explanation of them from me. Had it even been otherwise, they must know very little of General Was.h.i.+ngton, who should believe to be within the laws of his character what Doctor Stuart is said to have imputed to him. Be this, however, as it may, the story is infamously false in every article of it. My last parting with General Was.h.i.+ngton was at the inauguration of Mr. Adams, in March, 1797, and was warmly affectionate; and I never had any reason to believe any change on his part, as there certainly was none on mine. But one session of Congress intervened between that and his death, the year following, in my pa.s.sage to and from which as it happened to be not convenient to call on him, I never had another opportunity; and as to the cessation of correspondence observed during that short interval, no particular circ.u.mstance occurred for epistolary communication, and both of us were too much oppressed with letter-writing, to trouble, either the other, with a letter about nothing.

The truth is that the Federalists, pretending to be the exclusive friends of General Was.h.i.+ngton, have ever done what they could to sink his character, by hanging theirs on it, and by representing as the enemy of Republicans him who, of all men, is best ent.i.tled to the appellation of the father of that republic which they were endeavoring to subvert, and the Republicans to maintain. They cannot deny, because the elections proclaimed the truth, that the great body of the nation approved the republican measures. General Was.h.i.+ngton was himself sincerely a friend to the republican principles of our const.i.tution. His faith, perhaps, in its duration, might not have been as confident as mine; but he repeatedly declared to me that he was determined it should have a fair chance for success; and that he would lose the last drop of his blood in its support, against any attempt which might be made to change it from its republican form. He made these declarations the oftener because he knew my suspicions that Hamilton had other views, and he wished to quiet my jealousies on this subject. For Hamilton frankly avowed that he considered the British Const.i.tution, with all the corruptions of its administration, as the most perfect model of government which had ever been devised by the wit of man; professing however, at the same time, that the spirit of this country was so fundamentally republican, that it would be visionary to think of introducing monarchy here, and that, therefore, it was the duty of its administrators to conduct it on the principles their const.i.tuents had elected.

General Was.h.i.+ngton, after the retirement of his first cabinet, and the composition of his second, entirely Federal, and at the head of which was Mr. Pickering himself, had no opportunity of hearing both sides of any question. His measures, consequently, took more the hue of the party in whose hands he was. These measures were certainly not approved by the Republicans; yet were they not imputed to him, but to the counsellors around him; and his prudence so far restrained their impa.s.sioned course and bias, that no act of strong mark, during the remainder of his administration, excited much dissatisfaction. He lived too short a time after, and too much withdrawn from information, to correct the views into which he had been deluded; and the continued a.s.siduities of the party drew him into the vortex of their intemperate career, separated him still farther from his real friends, and excited him to actions and expressions of dissatisfaction, which grieved them, but could not loosen their affections from him. They would not suffer this temporary aberration to weigh against the immeasurable merits of his life; and although they tumbled his seducers from their places, they preserved his memory embalmed in their hearts, with undiminished love and devotion; and there it forever will remain embalmed, in entire oblivion of every temporary thing which might cloud the glories of his splendid life. It is vain, then, for Mr. Pickering and his friends to endeavor to falsify his character, by representing him as an enemy to Republicans and republican principles, and as exclusively the friend of those who were so; and had he lived longer, he would have returned to his ancient and unbiased opinions, would have replaced his confidence in those whom the people approved and supported, and would have seen that they were only restoring and acting on the principles of his own first administration.

I find, my dear Sir, that I have written you a very long letter, or rather a history. The civility of having sent me a copy of Mr.

Pickering's diatribe, would scarcely justify its address to you. I do not publish these things, because my rule of life has been never to hara.s.s the public with feedings and provings of personal slanders; and least of all would I descend into the arena of slander with such a champion as Mr. Pickering. I have ever trusted to the justice and consideration of my fellow citizens, and have no reason to repent it, or to change my course. At this time of life too, tranquillity is the _summum bonum_. But although I decline all newspaper controversy, yet, when falsehoods have been advanced, within the knowledge of no one so much as myself, I have sometimes deposited a contradiction in the hands of a friend, which, if worth preservation, may, when I am no more, nor these whom it might offend, throw light on history, and recall that into the path of truth. And, if of no other value, the present communication may amuse you with anecdotes not known to every one.

I had meant to have added some views on the amalgamation of parties, to which your favor of the 8th has some allusion; an amalgamation of name, but not of principle. Tories are tories still, by whatever name they may be called. But my letter is already too unmercifully long, and I close it here with a.s.surances of my great esteem and respectful consideration.

TH. JEFFERSON.

[_Enclosed in the above._]

EXTRACT OF A LETTER FROM TH. JEFFERSON, TO PHILIP MAZZEI,

April 24, 1796.

"The aspect of our politics has wonderfully changed since you left us.

In place of that n.o.ble love of liberty and republican Government which carried us triumphantly through the war, an Anglican, Monarchical and Aristocratical party has sprung up, whose avowed object is to draw over us the substance as they have already done the forms of the British government. The main body of our citizens, however, remain true to their republican principles. The whole landed interest is republican, and so is a great ma.s.s of talent. Against us are the Executive, the Judiciary, two out of three branches of the legislature, all the officers of the government, all who want to be officers, all timid men who prefer the calm of despotism to the boisterous sea of liberty, British merchants, and Americans trading on British capitals, speculators, and holders in the banks and public funds,--contrivance invented for the purpose of corruption, and for a.s.similating us in all things to the rotten as well as the sound parts of the British model. It would give you a fever were I to name to you the apostates who have gone over to these heresies; men who were Samsons in the field, and Solomons in the council, but who have had their heads shorn by the harlot England. In short, we are likely to preserve the liberty we have obtained only by unremitting labors and perils. But we shall preserve them; and our ma.s.s of weight and wealth on the good side is so great as to leave no danger that force will ever be attempted against us. We have only to awake and snap the Liliputian cords with which they have been entangling us during the first sleep which succeeded our labors."