MISCELLANY by Thomas Jefferson _Reply to the Representations of Affairs in America by British Newspapers_ [before November 20, 1784] I am an officer lately returned from service & residence in the U.S. of America. I have fought & bled for that country because I thought it's cause just. From the moment of peace to that in which I left it, I have seen it enjoying all the happiness which easy government, order & industry are capable of giving to a people. On my return to my native country what has been my astonishment to find all the public papers of Europe filled with accounts of the anarchy & destractions supposed to exist in that country. I have received serious condolances from all my friends on the bitter fruits of so prosperous a war. These friends I know to be so well disposed towards America that they wished the reverse of what they repeated from the public papers. I have enquired into the source of all this misinformation & have found it not difficult to be traced. The printers on the Continent have not yet got into the habit of taking the American newspapers. Whatever they retail therefore on the subject of America, they take from the English. If your readers will reflect a moment they will recollect that every unfavourable account they have seen of the transactions in America has been taken from the English papers only. Nothing is known in Europe of the situation of the U.S. since the acknowlegement of their independance but thro' the channel of these papers. But these papers have been under the influence of two ruling motives 1. deep-rooted hatred springing from an unsuccesful attempt to injure 2. a fear that their island will be depopulated by the emigration of it's inhabitants to America. Hence no paper comes out without a due charge of paragraphs manufactured by persons employed for that purpose. According to these America is a scene of continued riot & anarchy. Wearied out with contention, it is on the verge of falling again into the lap of Gr. Br. for repose. It's citizens are groaning under the oppression of heavy taxes. They are flying for refuge to the frozen regions which still remain subject to Gr. Br. Their assemblies and congresses are become odious, in one paragraph represented as tyrranising over their constituents, & in another as possessing no power or influence at all, &c. &c. The truth is as follows without aggravation or diminution. There was a mutiny of 300 souldiers in Philadelphia soon after the peace; & Congress thinking the executive of that state did not act with proper energy to suppress & punish it they left that city in disgust. Yet in this mutiny there neither was blood shed nor a blow struck. There has lately been a riot in Charlestown, occasioned by the feuds between the whigs who had been driven from their country by the British while they possessed it, and the tories who were permitted to remain by the Americans when they recovered it. There were a few instances in other states where individuals disgusted with some articles in the peace undertook to call town meetings, published the resolves of the few citizens whom they could prevail upon to meet as if they had been the resolves of the whole town, and endeavored unsuccesfully to engage the people in the execution of their private views. It is beleived that these attempts have not been more than ten or a dozen thro' the whole 13 states & not one of them has been succesful: on the contrary where any illegal act has been committed by the demagogues they have been put under a due course of legal prosecution. The British when they evacuated New York having carried off, contrary to the express articles of the treaty of peace, a great deal of property belonging to the citizens of the U.S. & particularly to those of the state of Virginia, amounting as has been said to half a million of pounds sterling, the assembly of that state lately resolved that till satisfaction was made for this, the article respecting British debts ought not to be carried into full execution, submitting nevertheless this their opinion to Congress and declaring that if they thought otherwise, all laws obstructing the recovery of debts should be immediately repealed. Yet even this was opposed by a respectable minority in their senate who entered a protest against it in strong terms. The protest as it stands in the records follows immediately the resolutions protested against & therefore does not recite them. The English papers publish the protest without the resolutions and thus lead Europe to beleive that the resolutions had definitively decided against the paiment of British debts. Yet nothing is less true. This is a faithful history of the high sounded disturbances of America. Those who have visited that country since the peace will vouch that it is impossible for any governments to be more tranquil & orderly than they are. What were the mutiny of 300 souldiers in Philada, the riot of whigs & tories in Charlestown to the riots of London under L'd. G. Gordon, and of London & the country in general in the late elections? Where is there any country of equal extent with the U.S. in which fewer disturbances have happened in the same space of time? Where has there been an instance of an army disbanded as was that of America without receiving a shilling of the long arrearages due them or even having their accounts settled & yet disbanded peaceably? Instead of resorting as is too often the case with disbanded armies to beggary or robbery for a livelihood they returned every man to his home & resumed his axe & spade; & it is a fact as true as it is singular that on the disbanding of an army of 30,000 men in America there have been but two or three instances of any of those who composed it being brought to the bar of justice as criminals: and that you may travel from one end to the other of the continent without seeing a beggar. With respect to the people their confidence in their rulers in general is what common sense will tell us it must be, where they are of their own choice annually, unbribed by money, undebauched by feasting, & drunkenness. It would be difficult to find one man among them who would not consider a return under the dominion of Gr. Br. as the greatest of all possible miseries. Their taxes are light, as they should be with a people so lately wasted in the most cruel manner by war. They pay in proportion to their property from one half to one & a half per cent annually on it's whole value as estimated by their neighbors, the different states requiring more or less as they have been less or more ravaged by their enemies. Where any taxes are imposed they are very trifling & are calculated cheifly to bring merchants into contribution with the farmers. Against their emigration to the remaining British dominions the superior rigor of their climate, the inferiority of their soil, the nature of their governments and their being actually inhabited by their most mortal enemies the tory refugees, will be an eternal security. During the course of the war the English papers were constantly filled with accounts of their great victories, their armies were daily gaining. Yet Europe saw that they were daily losing ground in America, & formed it's idea of the truth not from what it heard but from what it saw. They wisely considered an enlargement of territory on the one side & contraction of it on the other as the best indication on which side victory really was. It is hoped that Europe will be as wise & as just now: that they will not consider the fabricated papers of England as any evidence of truth; but that they will continue to judge of causes from effects. If the distractions of America were what these papers pretend, some great facts would burst out & lay their miseries open to the eyes of all the world: no such effects appear, therefore no such causes exist. If any such existed they would appear in the American newspapers which are as free as any on earth. But none such can be found in them. These are the testimonials to which I appeal for beleif. To bring more home to every reader the reliance which may be put on the English papers let him examine, if a Frenchman, what account they give of the affairs of France, if a Dutchman, what of the United Netherl'ds., if an Irishman, what of Ireland &c. If he finds that those of his own country with which he happens to be acquainted are wickedly misrepresented, let him consider how much more likely to be so are those of a nation so hated as America. America was the great pillar on which British glory was raised: America has been the instrument for levelling that glory with the dust. A little ill humour therefore might have found excuse in our commiseration: but an apostasy from truth, under whatever misfortunes, calls up feelings of a very different order. _Answers and Observations for Demeunier's Article on the United States in the_ Encyclopedie Methodique, 1786 I. From _Answers to Demeunier's First Queries_ January 24, 1786 II. The Confederation is a wonderfully perfect instrument, considering the circumstances under are however some alterations which experience proves to be wanting. These are principally three. 1_ To establish a general rule for the admission of new states into the Union. By the Confederation no new state, except Canada, can be permitted to have a vote in Congress without first obtaining the consent of all the thirteen legislatures. It becomes necessary to agree what districts may be established into separate states, and at what period of their population they may come into Congress. The act of Congress of April 23, 1784, has pointed out what ought to be agreed on, to say also what number of votes must concur when the number of voters shall be thus enlarged. 2. The Confederation in it's eighth article, decides that the quota of money to be contributed by the several states shall be proportioned to the value of landed property in the state. Experience has shown it impracticable to come at this value. Congress have therefore recommended to the states to agree that their quotas shall be in proportion to the number of their inhabitants, counting 5 slaves however but as equal to 3 free inhabitants. I believe all the states have agreed to this alteration except Rhode island. 3. The Confederation forbids the states individually to enter into treaties of commerce, or of any other nature, with foreign nations: and it authorizes Congress to establish such treaties, with two reservations however, viz., that they shall agree to no treaty which would 1. restrain the legislatures from imposing such duties on foreigners, as natives are subjected to; or 2. from prohibiting the exportation or importation of any species of commodities. Congress may therefore be said to have a power to regulate commerce, so far as it can be effected by conventions with other nations, & by conventions which do not infringe the two fundamental reservations before mentioned. But this is too imperfect. Because till a convention be made with any particular nation, the commerce of any one of our states with that nation may be regulated by the State itself, and even when a convention is made, the regulation of the commerce is taken out of the hands of the several states only so far as it is covered or provided for by that convention or treaty. But treaties are made in such general terms, that the greater part of the regulations would still result to the legislatures. Let us illustrate these observations by observing how far the commerce of France & of England can be affected by the state legislatures. As to England, any one of the legislatures may impose on her goods double the duties which are paid other nations; may prohibit their goods altogether; may refuse them the usual facilities for recovering their debts or withdrawing their property, may refuse to receive their Consuls or to give those Consuls any jurisdiction. But with France, whose commerce is protected by a treaty, no state can give any molestation to that commerce which is defended by the treaty. Thus, tho' a state may exclude the importation of all wines (because one of the reservations aforesaid is that they may prohibit the importation of any species of commodities) yet they cannot prohibit the importation of _French_ wines particularly while they allow wines to be brought in from other countries. They cannot impose heavier duties on French commodities than on those of other nations. They cannot throw peculiar obstacles in the way of their recovery of debts due to them &c. &c. because those things are provided for by treaty. Treaties however are very imperfect machines for regulating commerce in the detail. The principal objects in the regulation of our commerce would be: 1. to lay such duties, restrictions, or prohibitions on the goods of any particular nation as might oblige that nation to concur in just & equal arrangements of commerce. 2. To lay such uniform duties on the articles of commerce throughout all the states, as may avail them of that fund for assisting to bear the burthen of public expenses. Now this cannot be done by the states separately; because they will not separately pursue the same plan. New Hampshire cannot lay a given duty on a particular article, unless Massachusetts will do the same; because it will turn the importation of that article from her ports into those of Massachusetts, from whence they will be smuggled into New Hampshire by land. But tho Massachusetts were willing to concur with N Hampshire in laying the same duty, yet she cannot do it, for the same reason, unless Rhode island will also, nor can Rhode island without Connecticut, nor Connecticut without N York, nor N York without N Jersey, & so on quite to Georgia. It is visible therefore that the commerce of the states cannot be regulated to the best advantage but by a single body, and no body so proper as Congress. Many of the states have agreed to add an article to the Confederation for allowing to Congress the regulation of their commerce, only providing that the revenues to be raised on it, shall belong to the state in which they are levied. Yet it is believed that Rhode island will prevent this also. An everlasting recurrence to this same obstacle will occasion a question to be asked. How happens it that Rhode island is opposed to every useful proposition? Her geography accounts for it, with the aid of one or two observations. The cultivators of the earth are the most virtuous citizens, and possess most of the amor patriae. Merchants are the least virtuous, and possess the least of the amor patriae. The latter reside principally in the seaport towns, the former in the interior country. Now it happened that of the territory constituting Rhode island & Connecticut, the part containing the seaports was erected into a state by itself & called Rhode island, & that containing the interior country was erected into another state called Connecticut. For tho it has a little seacoast, there are no good ports in it. Hence it happens that there is scarcely one merchant in the whole state of Connecticut, while there is not a single man in Rhode island who is not a merchant of some sort. Their whole territory is but a thousand square miles, and what of that is in use is laid out in grass farms almost entirely. Hence they have scarcely any body employed in agriculture. All exercise some species of commerce. This circumstance has decided the characters of these two states. The remedies to this evil are hazardous. One would be to consolidate the two states into one. Another would be to banish Rhode island from the union. A third to compel her submission to the will of the other twelve. A fourth for the other twelve to govern themselves according to the new propositions and to let Rhode island go on by herself according to the antient articles. But the dangers & difficulties attending all these remedies are obvious. These are the only alterations proposed to the confederation, and the last of them is the only additional power which Congress is thought to need. 21. Broils among the states may happen in the following ways: 1. A state may be embroiled with the other twelve by not complying with the lawful requisitions of Congress. 2. Two states may differ about their boundaries. But the method of settling these is fixed by the Confederation, and most of the states which have any differences of this kind are submitting them to this mode of determination; and there is no danger of opposition to the decree by any state. The individuals interested may complain, but this can produce no difficulty. 3. Other contestations may arise between two states, such as pecuniary demands, affrays among their citizens, & whatever else may arise between any two nations. With respect to these, there are two opinions. One that they are to be decided according to the 9th article of the Confederation, which says that "Congress shall be the last resort in all differences between two or more states, concerning boundary jurisdiction, _or any other cause whatever_ "; and prescribes the mode of decision, and the weight of reason is undoubtedly in favor of this opinion, yet there are some who question it. It has been often said that the decisions of Congress are impotent because the Confederation provides no compulsory power. But when two or more nations enter into compact, it is not usual for them to say what shall be done to the party who infringes it. Decency forbids this, and it is unnecessary as indecent, because the right of compulsion naturally results to the party injured by the breach. When any one state in the American Union refuses obedience to the Confederation by which they have bound themselves, the rest have a natural right to compel them to obedience. Congress would probably exercise long patience before they would recur to force; but if the case ultimately required it, they would use that recurrence. Should this case ever arise, they will probably coerce by a naval force, as being more easy, less dangerous to liberty, & less likely to produce much bloodshed. It has been said too that our governments both federal and particular want energy; that it is difficult to restrain both individuals & states from committing wrong. This is true, & it is an inconvenience. On the other hand that energy which absolute governments derive from an armed force, which is the effect of the bayonet constantly held at the breast of every citizen, and which resembles very much the stillness of the grave, must be admitted also to have it's inconveniences. We weigh the two together, and like best to submit to the former. Compare the number of wrongs committed with impunity by citizens among us, with those committed by the sovereign in other countries, and the last will be found most numerous, most oppressive on the mind, and most degrading of the dignity of man. 2. From _Observations on Demeunier's Manuscript_ OBSERVATIONS ON THE ARTICLE ETATS-UNIS PREPARED FOR THE ENCYCLOPEDIE. June 22, 1786 1. II. 17. 29. Pa 8. The Malefactors sent to America were not sufficient in number to merit enumeration as one class out of three which peopled America. It was at a late period of their history that this practice began. I have no book by me which enables me to point out the date of it's commencement. But I do not think the whole number sent would amount to 2000 & being principally men, eaten up with disease, they married seldom & propagated little. I do not suppose that themselves & their descendants are at present 4000, which is little more than one thousandth part of the whole inhabitants. Indented servants formed a considerable supply. These were poor Europeans who went to America to settle themselves. If they could pay their passage it was well. If not, they must find means of paying it. They were at liberty therefore to make an agreement with any person they chose, to serve him such a length of time as they agreed on, on condition that he would repay to the master of the vessel the expenses of their passage. If being foreigners unable to speak the language, they did not know how to make a bargain for themselves the captain of the vessel contracted for them with such persons as he could. This contract was by deed indented, which occasioned them to be called indented servants. Sometimes they were called Redemptioners, because by their agreement with the master of the vessel they could _redeem_ themselves from his power by paying their passage, which they frequently effected by hiring themselves on their arrival as is before mentioned. In some states I know that these people had a right of marrying themselves without their master's leave, & I did suppose they had that right everywhere. I did not know that in any of the states they demanded so much as a week for every day's absence without leave. I suspect this must have been at a very early period while the governments were in the hands of the first emigrants, who being mostly labourers, were narrow-minded and severe. I know that in Virginia the laws allowed their servitude to be protracted only two days for every one they were absent without leave. So mild was this kind of servitude, that it was very frequent for foreigners who carried to America money enough, not only to pay their passage, but to buy themselves a farm, it was common I say for them to indent themselves to a master for three years, for a certain sum of money, with a view to learn the husbandry of the country. I will here make a general observation. So desirous are the poor of Europe to get to America, where they may better their condition, that, being unable to pay their passage, they will agree to serve two or three years on their arrival there, rather than not go. During the time of that service they are better fed, better clothed, and have lighter labour than while in Europe. Continuing to work for hire a few years longer, they buy a farm, marry, and enjoy all the sweets of a domestic society of their own. The American governments are censured for permitting this species of servitude which lays the foundation of the happiness of these people. But what should these governments do? Pay the passage of all those who chuse to go into their country? They are not able; nor, were they able, do they think the purchase worth the price? Should they exclude these people from their shores? Those who know their situations in Europe & America, would not say that this is the alternative which humanity dictates. It is said that these people are deceived by those who carry them over. But this is done in Europe. How can the American governments prevent it? Should they punish the deceiver? It seems more incumbent on the European government, where the act is done, and where a public injury is sustained from it. However it is only in Europe that this deception is heard of. The individuals are generally satisfied in America with their adventure, and very few of them wish not to have made it. I must add that the Congress have nothing to do with this matter. It belongs to the legislatures of the several states. Ib. l. 12. "Mal-aise d' indiquer la nuance precise &c." In forming a scale of crimes & punishments, two considerations have principal weight. 1. The atrocity of the crime. 2. The peculiar circumstances of a country which furnish greater temptations to commit it, or greater facilities for escaping detection. The punishment must be heavier to counterbalance this. Was the first the only consideration, all nations would form the same scale. But as the circumstances of a country have influence on the punishment, and no two countries exist precisely under the same circumstances, no two countries will form the same scale of crimes & punishments. For example in America, the inhabitants let their horses go at large in the uninclosed lands which are so extensive as to maintain them altogether. It is easy therefore to steal them & easy to escape. Therefore the laws are obliged to oppose these temptations with a heavier degree of punishment. For this reason the stealing of a horse in America is punished more severely than stealing the same value in any other form. In Europe where horses are confined so securely that it is impossible to steal them, that species of theft need not be punished more severely than any other. In some countries of Europe, stealing fruit from trees is punished capitally. The reason is that it being impossible to lock fruit trees up in coffers, as we do our money, it is impossible to oppose physical bars to this species of theft. Moral ones are therefore opposed by the laws. This to an unreflecting American, appears the most enormous of all the abuses of power; because he has been used to see fruits hanging in such quantities that if not taken by men they would rot: he has been used to consider it therefore as of no value, as not furnishing materials for the commission of a crime. This must serve as an apology for the arrangements of crimes & punishments in the scale under our consideration. A different one would be formed here; & still different ones in Italy, Turkey, China, &c. Pa. 240. "Les officiers Americains &c." to pa 264. "qui le meritoient." I would propose to new-model this Section in the following manner. 1. Give a succinct history of the origin & establishment of the Cincinnati. 2. Examine whether in its present form it threatens any dangers to the state. 3. Propose the most practicable method of preventing them. Having been in America during the period in which this institution was formed, and being then in a situation which gave me opportunities of seeing it in all it's stages, I may venture to give M. de Meusnier materials for the 1st branch of the preceding distribution of the subject. The 2d and 3d he will best execute himself. I should write it's history in the following form. When, on the close of that war which established the independance of America, it's army was about to be disbanded, the officers, who during the course of it had gone thro the most trying scenes together, who by mutual aids & good offices had become dear to one another, felt with great oppression of mind the approach of that moment which was to separate them never perhaps to meet again. They were from different states & from distant parts of the same state. Hazard alone could therefore give them but rare & partial occasions of seeing each other. They were of course to abandon altogether the hope of ever meeting again, or to devise some occasion which might bring them together. And why not come together on purpose at stated times? Would not the trouble of such a journey be greatly overpaid by the pleasure of seeing each other again, by the sweetest of all consolations, the talking over the scenes of difficulty & of endearment they had gone through? This too would enable them to know who of them should succeed in the world, who should be unsuccessful, and to open the purses of all to every labouring brother. This idea was too soothing not to be cherished in conversation. It was improved into that of a regular association with an organized administration, with periodical meetings general & particular, fixed contributions for those who should be in distress, & a badge by which not only those who had not had occasion to become personally known should be able to recognize one another, but which should be worn by their descendants to perpetuate among them the friendships which had bound their ancestors together. Genl. Washington was at that moment oppressed with the operation of disbanding an army which was not paid, and the difficulty of this operation was increased by some two or three of the states having expressed sentiments which did not indicate a sufficient attention to their paiment. He was sometimes present when his officers were fashioning in their conversations their newly proposed society. He saw the innocence of it's origin, & foresaw no effects less innocent. He was at that time writing his valedictory letter to the states, which has been so deservedly applauded by the world. Far from thinking it a moment to multiply the causes of irritation, by thwarting a proposition which had absolutely no other basis but of benevolence & friendship, he was rather satisfied to find himself aided in his difficulties by this new incident, which occupied, & --, at the same time soothed the minds of the officers. He thought too that this institution would be one instrument the more for strengthening the federal bond, & for promoting federal ideas. The institution was formed. They incorporated into it the officers of the French army & navy by whose sides they had fought, and with whose aid they had finally prevailed, extending it to such grades as they were told might be permitted to enter into it. They sent an officer to France to make the proposition to them & to procure the badges which they had devised for their order. The moment of disbanding the army having come on before they could have a full meeting to appoint their president, the General was prayed to act in that office till their first general meeting which was to be held at Philadelphia in the month of May following. The laws of the society were published. Men who read them in their closets, unwarmed by those sentiments of friendship which had produced them, inattentive to those pains which an approaching separation had excited in the minds of the institutors, Politicians, who see in everything only the dangers with which it threatens civil society, in fine the labouring people, who, shielded by equal laws, had never seen any difference between man and man, but had read of terrible oppressions which people of their description experience in other countries from those who are distinguished by titles & badges, began to be alarmed at this new institution. A remarkable silence however was observed. Their sollicitudes were long confined within the circles of private conversation. At length however a Mr. Burke, chief justice of South Carolina, broke that silence. He wrote against the new institution; foreboding it's dangers very imperfectly indeed, because he had nothing but his imagination to aid him. An American could do no more: for to detail the real evils of aristocracy they must be seen in Europe. Burke's fears were thought exaggerations in America; while in Europe it is known that even Mirabeau has but faintly sketched the curses of hereditary aristocracy as they are experienced here, and as they would have followed in America had this institution remained. The epigraph of Burke's pamphlet was "Blow ye the trumpet in Zion." It's effect corresponded with it's epigraph. This institution became first the subject of general conversation. Next it was made the subject of deliberation in the legislative assemblies of some of the States. The governor of South Carolina censured it in an address to his Assembly. The assemblies of Massachusetts, Rhode island and Pennsylvania condemned it's principles. No circumstance indeed brought the consideration of it expressly before Congress, yet it had sunk deep into their minds. An offer having been made to them on the part of the Polish order of divine providence to receive some of their distinguished citizens into that order, they made that an occasion to declare that these distinctions were contrary to the principles of their confederation. The uneasiness excited by this institution had very early caught the notice of General Washington. Still recollecting all the purity of the motives which gave it birth, he became sensible that it might produce political evils which the warmth of these motives had masked. Add to this that it was disapproved by the mass of citizens of the Union. This alone was reason strong enough in a country where the will of the majority is the law, & ought to be the law. He saw that the objects of the institution were too light to be opposed to considerations as serious as these; and that it was become necessary to annihilate it absolutely. On this therefore he was decided. The first annual meeting at Philadelphia was now at hand. He went to that, determined to exert all his influence for it's suppression. He proposed it to his fellow officers, and urged it with all his powers. It met an opposition which was observed to cloud his face with an anxiety that the most distressful scenes of the war had scarcely ever produced. It was canvassed for several days, & at length it was no more a doubt what would be it's ultimate fate. The order was on the point of receiving it's annihilation by the vote of a very great majority of it's members. In this moment their envoy arrived from France, charged with letters from the French officers accepting with cordiality the proposed badges of union, with sollicitations from others to be received into the order, & with notice that their respectable sovereign had been pleased to recognize it, & permit his officers to wear it's badges. The prospect now changed. The question assumed a new form. After the offer made by them, & accepted by their friends, in what words could they clothe a proposition to retract it which would not cover themselves with the reproaches of levity & ingratitude? which would not appear an insult to those whom they loved? Federal principles, popular discontent, were considerations whose weight was known & felt by themselves. But would foreigners know & feel them equally? Would they so far acknowledge their cogency as to permit without any indignation the eagle & ribbon to be torn from their breasts by the very hands which had placed them there? The idea revolted the whole society. They found it necessary then to preserve so much of their institution as might continue to support this foreign branch, while they should prune off every other which would give offence to their fellow citizens; thus sacrificing on each hand to their friends & to their country. The society was to retain it's existence, it's name, it's meetings, & it's charitable funds: but these last were to be deposited with their respective legislatures; the order was to be no longer hereditary; a reformation which had been pressed even from this side of the Atlantic; it was to be communicated to no new members; the general meetings instead of annual were to be triennial only. The eagle & ribbon indeed were retained; because they were worn, & they wished them to be worn, by their friends who were in a country where they would not be objects of offence; but themselves never wore them. They laid them up in their bureaus with the medals of American Independance, with those of the trophies they had taken & the battles they had won. But through all the United States no officer is seen to offend the public eye with the display of this badge. These changes have tranquillized the American states. Their citizens do justice to the circumstances which prevented a total annihilation of the order. They feel too much interest in the reputation of their officers, and value too much whatever may serve to recall to the memory of their allies the moments wherein they formed but one people. Tho they are obliged by a prudent foresight to keep out everything from among themselves which might pretend to divide them into orders, and to degrade one description of men below another, yet they hear with pleasure that their allies whom circumstances have already placed under these distinctions, are willing to consider it as one to have aided them in the establishment of their liberties & to wear a badge which may recall to their remembrance; and it would be an extreme affliction to them if the domestic reformation which has been found necessary, if the censures of individual writers, or if any other circumstance should discourage the wearing their badge, or lessen it's reputation. This short but true history of the order of the Cincinnati, taken from the mouths of persons on the spot who were privy to it's origin & progress, & who knew it's present state, is the best apology which can be made for an institution which appeared to be, & was really, so heterogeneous to the governments in which it was erected. It should be further considered that, in America, no other distinction between man & man had ever been known, but that of persons in office exercising powers by authority of the laws, and private individuals. Among these last the poorest labourer stood on equal ground with the wealthiest millionnaire, & generally on a more favoured one whenever their rights seem to jar. It has been seen that a shoemaker, or other artisan, removed by the voice of his country from his work bench into a chair of office, has instantly commanded all the respect and obedience which the laws ascribe to his office. But of distinction by birth or badge they had no more idea than they had of the mode of existence in the moon or planets. They had heard only that there were such, & knew that they must be wrong. A due horror of the evils which flow from these distinctions could be excited in Europe only, where the dignity of man is lost in arbitrary distinctions, where the human species is classed into several stages of degradation, where the many are crushed under the weight of the few, & where the order established can present to the contemplation of a thinking being no other picture than that of God almighty & his angels trampling under foot the hosts of the damned. No wonder then that the institution of the Cincinnati should be innocently conceived by one order of American citizens, could raise in the other orders only a slow, temperate, & rational opposition, and could be viewed in Europe as a detestable parricide. The 2d & 3d branches of this subject, no body can better execute than M. de. Meusnier. Perhaps it may be curious to him to see how they strike an American mind at present. He shall therefore have the ideas of one who was an enemy to the institution from the first moment of it's conception, but who was always sensible that the officers neither foresaw, nor intended the injury they were doing to their country. As to the question then, whether any evil can proceed from the institution as it stands at present, I am of opinion there may. 1. From the meetings. These will keep the officers formed into a body; will continue a distinction between the civil & military which it would be for the good of the whole to obliterate as soon as possible; & the military assemblies will not only keep alive the jealousies & the fears of the civil government, but give ground for these fears & jealousies. For when men meet together, they will make business if they have none; they will collate their grievances, some real, some imaginary, all highly painted; they will communicate to each other the sparks of discontent; & this may engender a flame which will consume their particular, as well as the general, happiness. 2. The charitable part of the institution is still more likely to do mischief, as it perpetuates the dangers apprehended in the preceding clause. For here is a fund provided of permanent existence. To whom will it belong? To the descendants of American officers of a certain description. These descendants then will form a body, having sufficient interest to keep up an attention to their description, to continue meetings, & perhaps, in some moment, when the political eye shall be slumbering, or the firmness of their fellow-citizens realized, to replace the insignia of the order & revive all its pretensions. What good can the officers propose which may weigh against these possible evils? The securing their descendants against want? Why afraid to trust them to the same fertile soil, & the same genial climate which will secure from want the descendants of their other fellow citizens? Are they afraid they will be reduced to labour the earth for their sustenance? They will be rendered thereby both honester and happier. An industrious farmer occupies a more dignified place in the scale of beings, whether moral or political, than a lazy lounger, valuing himself on his family, too proud to work, & drawing out a miserable existence by eating on that surplus of other men's labour which is the sacred fund of the helpless poor. A pitiful annuity will only prevent them from exerting that industry & those talents which would soon lead them to better fortune. How are these evils to be prevented? 1. At their first general meeting let them distribute the funds on hand to the existing objects of their destination, & discontinue all further contributions. 2. Let them declare at the same time that their meetings general & particular shall henceforth cease. 3. Let them melt up their eagles & add the mass to the distributable fund that their descendants may have no temptation to hang them in their button holes. These reflections are not proposed as worthy the notice of M. de Meusnier. He will be so good as to treat the subject in his own way, & no body has a better. I will only pray him to avail us of his forcible manner to evince that there is evil to be apprehended even from the ashes of this institution, & to exhort the society in America to make their reformation complete; bearing in mind that we must keep the passions of men on our side even when we are persuading them to do what they ought to do. Pa. 272. "Comportera peut etre une population de thirty millions." The territories of the United States contain about a million of square miles, English. There is in them a greater proportion of fertile lands than in the British dominions in Europe. Suppose the territory of the U.S. then to attain an equal degree of population with the British European dominions, they will have an hundred millions of inhabitants. Let us extend our views to what may be the population of the two continents of North & South America supposing them divided at the narrowest part of the isthmus of Panama. Between this line and that of 50 degrees of north latitude the northern continent contains about 5 millions of square miles, and South of this line of division the Southern continent contains about 7 millions of square miles. I do not pass the 50th degree of northern latitude in my reckoning, because we must draw a line somewhere, & considering the soil & climate beyond that, I would only avail my calculation of it, as a make weight, to make good what the colder regions within that line may be supposed to fall short in their future population. Here are 12 millions of square miles then, which at the rate of population before assumed, will nourish 1200 millions of inhabitants, a number greater than the present population of the whole globe is supposed to amount to. If those who propose medals for the resolution of questions, about which nobody makes any question, those who have invited discussions on the pretended problem Whether the discovery of America was for the good of mankind? if they, I say, would have viewed it only as doubling the numbers of mankind, & of course the quantum of existence & happiness, they might have saved the money & the reputation which their proposition has cost them. The present population of the inhabited parts of the U.S. is of about 10. to the square mile; & experience has shown us, that wherever we reach that the inhabitants become uneasy, as too much compressed, and go off in great numbers to search for vacant country. Within 40 years the whole territory will be peopled at that rate. We may fix that then as the term beyond which the people of those states will not be restrained within their present limits; we may fix it too as the term of population, which they will not exceed till the whole of those two continents are filled up to that mark, that is to say, till they shall contain 120 millions of inhabitants. The soil of the country on the western side of the Mississippi, it's climate, & it's vicinity to the U.S. point it out as the first which will receive population from that nest. The present occupiers will just have force enough to repress & restrain the emigrations to a certain degree of consistence. We have seen lately a single person go & decide on a settlement in Kentucky, many hundred miles from any white inhabitant, remove thither with his family and a few neighbors, & though perpetually harassed by the Indians, that settlement in the course of 10 years has acquired 30.000 inhabitants, it's numbers are increasing while we are writing, and the state of which it formerly made a part has offered it independance. 3. To Jean Nicolas Demeunier June 26, 1786 Mr. Jefferson presents his compliments to M. de Meusnier & sends him copies of the 13th, 23d, & 24th articles of the treaty between the K. of Prussia & the United States. In the negociation with the Minister of Portugal at London, the latter objected to the 13th article. The observations which were made in answer to his objections Mr. Jefferson incloses. They are a commentary on the 13th article. Mr. de Meusnier will be so good as to return the sheet on which these observations are as Mr. Jefferson does not retain a copy of it. If M. de Meusnier proposes to mention the facts of cruelty of which he & Mr. Jefferson spoke yesterday, the 24th article will introduce them properly, because they produced a sense of the necessity of that article. These facts are 1. The death of upwards of 11,000 Americans in one prison ship (the Jersey) and in the space of 3. years. 2. General Howe's permitting our prisoners taken at the battle of Germantown and placed under a guard in the yard of the Statehouse of Philadelphia to be so long without any food furnished them that many perished with hunger. Where the bodies laid, it was seen that they had eaten all the grass round them within their reach, after they had lost the power of rising, or moving from their place. 3. The 2d fact was the act of a commandg officer; the 1st of several commanding officers, & for so long a time as must suppose the approbation of government. But the following was the act of government itself. During the periods that our affairs seemed unfavourable & theirs successful, that is to say, after the evacuation of New York, and again after the taking of Charlestown in South Carolina, they regularly sent our prisoners taken on the seas & carried to England to the E. Indies. This is so certain, that in the month of Novemb. or Decemb. 1785, Mr. Adams having officially demanded a delivery of the American prisoners sent to the East Indies, Ld. Caermarthen answered officially "that orders were issued immediately for their discharge." M. de Meusnier is at liberty to quote this fact. 4. A fact not only of the government, but of the parliament, who passed an act for that purpose in the beginning of the war, was the obliging our prisoners taken at sea to join them and fight against their countrymen. This they effected by starving & whipping them. The insult on Capt. Stanhope, which happened at Boston last year, was a consequence of this. Two persons, Dunbar & Lorthrope, whom Stanhope had treated in this manner (having particularly inflicted 24 lashes on Dunbar), meeting him at Boston, attempted to beat him. But the people interposed & saved him. The fact is referred to in that paragraph of the declaration of independance which sais "he has constrained our fellow citizens taken captive on the high seas, to bear arms against their country, to become the executioners of their friends & brethren, or to fall themselves by their hands." This was the most afflicting to our prisoners of all the cruelties exercised on them. The others affected the body only, but this the mind -- they were haunted by the horror of having perhaps themselves shot the ball by which a father or a brother fell. Some of them had constancy enough to hold out against half allowance of food & repeated whippings. These were generally sent to England & from thence to the East Indies. One of these escaped from the East Indies and got back to Paris, where he gave an account of his sufferings to Mr. Adams, who happened to be then at Paris. M. de Meusnier, where he mentions that the slave-law has been passed in Virginia, without the clause of emancipation, is pleased to mention that neither Mr. Wythe nor Mr. Jefferson were present to make the proposition they had meditated; from which people, who do not give themselves the trouble to reflect or enquire, might conclude hastily that their absence was the cause why the proposition was not made; & of course that there were not in the assembly persons of virtue & firmness enough to propose the clause for emancipation. This supposition would not be true. There were persons there who wanted neither the virtue to propose, nor talents to enforce the proposition had they seen that the disposition of the legislature was ripe for it. These worthy characters would feel themselves wounded, degraded, & discouraged by this idea. Mr. Jefferson would therefore be obliged to M. de Meusnier to mention it in some such manner as this. "Of the two commissioners who had concerted the amendatory clause for the gradual emancipation of slaves Mr. Wythe could not be present as being a member of the judiciary department, and Mr. Jefferson was absent on the legation to France. But there wanted not in that assembly men of virtue enough to propose, & talents to vindicate this clause. But they saw that the moment of doing it with success was not yet arrived, and that an unsuccessful effort, as too often happens, would only rivet still closer the chains of bondage, and retard the moment of delivery to this oppressed description of men. What a stupendous, what an incomprehensible machine is man! who can endure toil, famine, stripes, imprisonment & death itself in vindication of his own liberty, and the next moment be deaf to all those motives whose power supported him thro' his trial, and inflict on his fellow men a bondage, one hour of which is fraught with more misery than ages of that which he rose in rebellion to oppose. But we must await with patience the workings of an overruling providence, & hope that that is preparing the deliverance of these, our suffering brethren. When the measure of their tears shall be full, when their groans shall have involved heaven itself in darkness, doubtless a god of justice will awaken to their distress, and by diffusing light & liberality among their oppressors, or at length by his exterminating thunder, manifest his attention to the things of this world, and that they are not left to the guidance of a blind fatality." _Thoughts on English Prosody_ TO CHASTELLUX October 1786 Among the topics of conversation which stole off like so many minutes the few hours I had the happiness of possessing you at Monticello, the measures of English verse was one. I thought it depended like Greek and Latin verse, on long and short syllables arranged into regular feet. You were of a different opinion. I did not pursue this subject after your departure, because it always presented itself with the painful recollection of a pleasure which in all human probability I was never to enjoy again. This probability like other human calculations has been set aside by events; and we have again discussed on this side the Atlantic a subject which had occupied us during some pleasing moments on the other. A daily habit of walking in the Bois de Boulogne gave me an opportunity of turning this subject in my mind and I determined to present you my thoughts on it in the form of a letter. I for some time parried the difficulties which assailed me, but at length I found they were not to be opposed, and their triumph was complete. Error is the stuff of which the web of life is woven and he who lives longest and wisest is only able to weave out the more of it. I began with the design of converting you to my opinion that the arrangement of long and short syllables into regular feet constituted the harmony of English verse. I ended by discovering that you were right in denying that proposition. The next object was to find out the real circumstance which gives harmony to English poetry and laws to those who make it. I present you with the result. It is a tribute due to your friendship. It is due you also as having recalled me from an error in my native tongue and that, too, in a point the most difficult of all others to a foreigner, the law of its poetical numbers. _Thoughts on English Prosody_ Every one knows the difference between verse and prose in his native language; nor does he need the aid of prosody to enable him to read or to repeat verse according to its just rhythm. It is the business of the poet so to arrange his words as that, repeated in their accustomed measures they shall strike the ear with that regular rhythm which constitutes verse. It is for foreigners principally that Prosody is necessary; not knowing the accustomed measures of words, they require the aid of rules to teach them those measures and to enable them to read verse so as to make themselves or others sensible of its music. I suppose that the system of rules or exceptions which constitutes Greek and Latin prosody, as shown with us, was unknown to those nations, and that it has been invented by the moderns to whom those languages were foreign. I do not mean to affirm this, however, because you have not searched into the history of this art, nor am I at present in a situation which admits of that search. By industrious examination of the Greek and Latin verse it has been found that pronouncing certain combinations of vowels and consonants long, and certain others short, the actual arrangement of those long and short syllables, as found in their verse, constitutes a rhythm which is regular and pleasing to the ear, and that pronouncing them with any other measures, the run is unpleasing, and ceases to produce the effect of the verse. Hence it is concluded and rationally enough that the Greeks and Romans pronounced those syllables long or short in reading their verse; and as we observe in modern languages that the syllables of words have the same measures both in verse and prose, we ought to conclude that they had the same also in those ancient languages, and that we must lengthen or shorten in their prose the same syllables which we lengthen or shorten in their verse. Thus, if I meet with the word _praeteritos_ in Latin prose and want to know how the Romans pronounced it, I search for it in some poet and find it in the line of Virgil, _"O mihi praeteritos referat si Jupiter annos!:"_ where it is evident that _prae_ is long and _te_ short in direct opposition to the pronunciation which we often hear. The length allowed to a syllable is called its quantity, and hence we say that the Greek and Latin languages are to be pronounced according to quantity. Those who have undertaken to frame a prosody for the English language have taken quantity for their basis and have mounted the English poetry on Greek and Latin feet. If this foundation admits of no question, the prosody of Doctor Johnson, built upon it, is perhaps the best. He comprehends under three different feet every combination of long and short syllables which he supposes can be found in English verse, to wit: 1. a long and a short, which is the trochee of the Greeks and Romans; 2. a short and a long, which is their iambus; and 3. two short and a long, which is their anapest. And he thinks that all English verse may be resolved into these feet. It is true that in the English language some one syllable of a word is always sensibly distinguished from the others by an emphasis of pronunciation or by an accent as we call it. But I am not satisfied whether this accented syllable be pronounced longer, louder, or harder, and the others shorter, lower, or softer. I have found the nicest ears divided on the question. Thus in the word _calenture_, nobody will deny that the first syllable is pronounced more emphatically than the others; but many will deny that it is longer in pronunciation. In the second of the following verses of Pope, I think there are but two short syllables. Oh! be thou bless'd with all that Heav'n can send Long health, long youth, long pleasure, and a friend. Innumerable instances like this might be produced. It seems, therefore, too much to take for the basis of a system a postulatum which one-half of mankind will deny. But the superstructure of Doctor Johnson's prosody may still be supported by substituting for its basis accent instead of quantity; and nobody will deny us the existence of accent. In every word of more than one syllable there is some one syllable strongly distinguishable in pronunciation by its emphasis or accent. If a word has more than two syllables it generally admits of a subordinate emphasis or accent on the alternate syllables counting backwards and forwards from the principal one, as in this verse of Milton: Well if thrown out as supernumerary, where the principal accent is on _nu_, but there is a lighter one on _su_ and _ra_ also. There are some few instances indeed wherein the subordinate accent is differently arranged, as _parisyllabic_, _Constantinople_. It is difficult, therefore, to introduce words of this kind into verse. That the accent shall never be displaced from the syllable whereon usage hath established it is the fundamental law of English verse. There are but three arrangements into which these accents can be thrown in the English language which entitled the composition to be distinguished by the name of verse. That is, 1. Where the accent falls on all the odd syllables; 2. Where it falls on all the even syllables; 3. When it falls on every third syllable. If the reason of this be asked, no other can be assigned but that it results from the nature of the sounds which compose the English language and from the construction of the human ear. So, in the infinite gradations of sounds from the lowest to the highest in the musical scale, those only give pleasure to the ear which are at the intervals we call whole tones and semitones. The reason is that it has pleased God to make us so. The English poet then must so arrange his words that their established accents shall fall regularly in one of these three orders. To aid him in this he has at his command the whole army of monosyllables which in the English language is a very numerous one. These he may accent or not, as he pleases. Thus is this verse: 'Tis just resentment and becomes the brave. -- POPE the monosyllable _and_ standing between two unaccented syllables catches the accent and supports the measure. The same monosyllable serves to fill the interval between two accents in the following instance: From use obscure and subtle, but to know. --- MILTON The monosyllables _with_ and _in_ receive the accent in one of the following instances and suffer it to pass over them in the other. The tempted _with_ dishonor foul, supposed. -- MILTON Attempt _with_ confidence, the work is done. -- HOPKINS Which must be mutual _in_ proportion due. -- MILTON Too much of ornament _in_ outward shew. -- MILTON The following lines afford other proofs of this license. Yet, yet, I love -- from Abelard it came. -- POPE Flow, flow, my stream this devious way. -- SHENSTONE The Greeks and Romans in like manner had a number of syllables which might in any situation be pronounced long or short without offending the ear. They had others which they could make long or short by changing their position. These were of great avail to the poets. The following is an example: {Pollakis o polyphame, ta / me kala / kala pe / phanlai.} -- THEOCRITUS {'Ages, 'Ages Brotoloige, miai phone tei chesipleta.} -- HOM. IL. {Metsa de tem' che theoisi, to / nd metron / estin agison.} -- PHOCYL where the word Ages, being used twice, the first syllable is long in the first and short in the second instance, and the second is short in the first and long in the second instance. But though the poets have great authority over the monosyllables, yet it is not altogether absolute. The following is a proof of this: Through the dark postern of time long elaps'd. -- YOUNG It is impossible to read this without throwing the accent on the monosyllable _of_ and yet the ear is shocked and revolts at this. That species of our verse wherein the accent falls on all the odd syllables, I shall call, from that circumstance, odd or imparisyllabic verse. It is what has been heretofore called trochaic verse. To the foot which composes it, it will still be convenient and most intelligible to retain the ancient name of Trochee, only remembering that by that term we do not mean a long and a short syllable, but an accented and unac-cented one. That verse wherein the accent is on the even syllables may be called even or parisyllabic verse, and corresponds with what has been called iambic verse; retaining the term iambus for the name of the foot we shall thereby mean an unaccented and an accented syllable. That verse wherein the accent falls on every third syllable, may be called trisyllabic verse; it is equivalent to what has been called anapestic; and we will still use the term anapest to express two unaccented and one accented syllable. Accent then is, I think, the basis of English verse; and it leads us to the same threefold distribution of it to which the hypothesis of _quantity_ had led Dr. Johnson. While it preserves to us the simplicity of his classification it relieves us from the doubtfulness, if not the error, on which it was founded. OBSERVATIONS ON THE THREE MEASURES. Wherever a verse should regularly begin or end with an accented syllable, that unaccented syllable may be suppressed. Bred on plains, or born in valleys, Who would bid those scenes adieu? Stranger to the arts of malice, Who would ever courts pursue? -- SHENSTONE Ruin seize thee, ruthless king! Confusion on thy banners wait; Though, fanned by Conquest's crimson wing, They mock the air with idle state. Helm, nor haulberk's twisted mail, Nor ev'n thy virtues, Tyrant, shall avail To save thy secret soul from nightly fears. From Cambria's curse, from Cambria's tears! -- GRAY *Ye Shep* / herds! give ear / to my lay, *And take* no more heed of my sheep; They have nothing to do but to stray; I have nothing to do but to weep. -- SHENSTONE In the first example the unaccented syllable with which the imparisyllabic (odd) verse should end is omitted in the second and fourth lines. In the second example the unaccented syllable with which the parisyllabic (even) verse should begin is omitted in the first and fifth lines. In the third instance one of the unaccented syllables with which the trisyllabic (triple) verse should begin, is omitted in the first and second lines and in the first of the following line both are omitted: Under this marble, or under this sill Or under this turf, or e'en what you will Lies one who ne'er car'd, and still cares not a pin What they said, or may say, of the mortal within; But who, living or dying, serene still and free, Trusts in God that as well as he was he shall be. -- POPE An accented syllable may be prefixed to a verse which should regularly begin with an accent and added to one which should end with an accent, thus: 1. Dauntless on his native sands *The* dragon-son of Mona stands; *In* glittering arms and glory drest, High he rears his ruby crest. There the thundering strokes begin, There the press, and there the din; Talymalfra's rocky shore -- GRAY Again: There Confusion, Terror's child, Conflict fierce, and Ruin wild, Agony, that pants for breath, Despair, and honorable death. -- GRAY 2. What is this world? thy school Oh! misery! Our only lesson is to learn to suffer; And he who knows not that, was born for no*thing*. My comfort is each moment takes away A grain at least from the dead load that's on *me* And gives a nearer prospect of the grave. -- YOUNG 3. Says Richard to Thomas (and seem'd half afraid), "I'm thinking to marry thy mistress's maid; Now, because Mrs. Lucy to thee is well known, I will do't if thou bidst me, or let it alone." Said Thomas to Richard, "To speak my opin*ion*, There is not such a bitch in King George's domin*ion*; And I firmly believe, if thou knew'st her as I *do*, Thou wouldst choose out a whipping-post first to be tied *to*. She's peevish, she's thievish, she's ugly, she's old, And a liar, and a fool, and a slut, and a scold." Next day Richard hasten'd to church and was wed, And ere night had inform'd her what Thomas had said. -- SHENSTONE An accented syllable can never be either omitted or added without changing the character of the verse. In fact it is the number of accented syllables which determines the length of the verse. That is to say, the number of feet of which it consists. Imparisyllabic verse being made up of Trochees should regularly end with an unaccented syllable; and in that case if it be in rhyme both syllables of the foot must be rhymed. But most frequently the unaccented syllable is omitted according to the license before mentioned and then it suffices to rhyme the accented one. The following is given as a specimen of this kind of verse. Shepherd, wouldst thou here obtain Pleasure unalloy'd with pain? Joy that suits the rural sphere? Gentle shepherd, lend an ear. Learn to relish calm delight Verdant vales and fountains bright; Trees that nod o'er sloping hills, Caves that echo tinkling rills. If thou canst no charm disclose In the simplest bud that blows; Go, forsake thy plain and fold; Join the crowd, and toil for gold. Tranquil pleasures never cloy; Banish each tumultuous joy; All but love -- for love inspires Fonder wishes, warmer fires See, to sweeten thy repose, The blossom buds, the fountain flows; Lo! to crown thy healthful board, All that milk and fruits afford. Seek no more -- the rest is vain; Pleasure ending soon in pain: Anguish lightly gilded o'er; Close thy wish, and seek no more. -- SHENSTONE Parisyllabic verse should regularly be composed of all iambuses; that is to say, all its even syllables should be accented. Yet it is very common for the first foot of the line to be a trochee as in this verse: Ye who e'er lost an angel, pity me! Sometimes a trochee is found in the midst of this verse. But this is extremely rare indeed. The following, however, are instances of it taken from Milton. To do ought good _never_ will be our task Behests obey, _worthiest_ to be obeyed. Than self-esteem, _grounded_ on just and right Leans the huge elephant the _wisest_ of brutes! In these instances it has not a good effect, but in the following it has: This hand is mine -- _oh! what_ a hand is here! So soft, souls sink into it and are lost. When this trochee is placed at the beginning of a verse, if it be not too often repeated it produces a variety in the measure which is pleasing. The following is a specimen of the parisyllabic verse, wherein the instances of this trochee beginning the verse are noted: _Pity_ the sorrows of a poor old man, Whose trembling limbs have borne him to your door. Whose days are dwindled to the shortest span; _Oh! give_ relief, and Heaven will bless your store. These tattered clothes my poverty bespeak, These hoary locks proclaim my lengthen'd years And many a furrow in my grief-worn cheek Has been the channel to a flood of tears. Yon house, erected on the rising ground, With tempting aspect, drew me from my road; For plenty there a residence has found, And grandeur a magnificent abode. _Hard is_ the fate of the infirm and poor! Here, as I craved a morsel of their bread, A pamper'd menial drove me from the door, To seek a shelter in an humbler shed. _Oh! take_ me to your hospitable dome; _Keen blows_ the wind, and piercing is the cold; _Short is_ my passage to the friendly tomb, For I am poor, and miserably old. *Heaven sends* misfortunes; why should we repine! Tis Heaven has brought me to the state you see; And your condition may be soon like mine, The child of sorrow and of misery. -- MOSS Trisyllabic verse consists altogether of anapests, that is, of feet made up of two unaccented and one accented syllable; and it does not admit a mixture of any other feet. The following is a specimen of this kind of verse: I have found out a gift for my fair; I have found where the wood-pigeons breed; But let me that plunder forbear, She will say 'twas a barbarous deed: For he ne'er could be true, she averr'd, Who could rob a poor bird of its young; And I loved her the more when I heard Such tenderness fall from her tongue. -- SHENSTONE The following are instances of an iambus in an anapestic verse: Or under this turf, or ev'n what they will. -- POPE It never was known that circular letters. -- SWIFT They are extremely rare and are deformities, which cannot be admitted to belong to the verse, notwithstanding the authority of the writers from whom they are quoted. Indeed, the pieces from which they are taken are merely pieces of sport on which they did not mean to rest their poetical merit. But to what class shall we give the following species of verse? "God save great Washington." It is triple verse, but the accent is on the first syllable of the foot instead of the third. Is this an attempt at dactylian verse? or shall we consider it still as anapestic, wherein either the two unaccented syllables which should begin the verse are omitted; or else the two which should end it are, in reciting, transposed to the next verse to complete the first anapest of that, as in Virgil in the following instance, the last syllable of the line belongs to the next, being amalgamated with that into one. I am not able to recollect another instance of this kind of verse and a single example cannot form a class. It is not worth while, therefore, to provide a foreigner with a critical investigation of its character. OF ELISION. The vowels only suffer elision except that "v" is also omitted in the word over and "w" in will, "h" in have. This is actually made in most cases, as it was with the Greeks. Sometimes, however, it is neglected to be done, and in those cases the reader must make it for himself, as in the following examples: Thou yet _mightest_ act the friendly part And lass _unnoticed_ from malignant right And _fallen_ to save his injur'd land Impatient for _it is_ past the promis'd hour. He _also against_ the house of God was bold Anguish and doubt and fear and sorr_ow_ _and_ pain Of Phlegma with _the_ _he_roic race was joined Damasco, or Maroc_co_, _or_ Trebisond All her _original_ brightness, nor appear'd _Open or_ understood must be resolv'd. OF SYNECPHONESIS. Diphthongs are considered as forming one syllable. But vowels belonging to different syllables are sometimes forced to coalesce into a diphthong if the measure requires it. Nor is this coalescence prevented by the intervention of an "h," a "w" or a liquid. In this case the two syllables are run into one another with such rapidity as to take but the time of one. The following are examples: And wish th_e_ _a_venging fight B_e_ _i_t so, for I submit, his doom is fair. When wint'ry winds deform the plent_eo_us year Droop'd their fair leaves, nor knew th_e_ _u_nfriendly soil The rad_ia_nt morn resumed her orient pride While born to bring the Muse's happ_ie_r days A patr_io_t's hand protects a poet's lays Ye midnight lamps, ye cur_iou_s homes That eagle gen_iu_s! had he let fall -- Fair fancy wept; and ech_oi_ng sighs confest The sounding forest fluct_ua_tes in the storm Thy greatest infl_ue_nce own Iss_ue_ing from out the portals of the morn What groves nor streams bestow a virt_uou_s mind With man_y_ _a_ proof of recollected love. With kind concern our pit_yi_ng eyes o'erflow Lies yet a little embr_yo_ unperceiv'd -- Now Marg_are_t's curse is fall'n upon our heads And ev_en_ _a_ Shakespeare to her fame be born When min_era_l fountains vainly bear O how self-fettered was my grov_eli_ng soul! To ev_ery_ sod which wraps the dead And beam protection on a wand_eri_ng maid Him or his children, ev_il_ _he_ may be sure Love unlibid_inou_s resigned, nor jealousy And left t_o_ _he_rself, if evil thence ensue. Big swell'd my heart and own'd the p_owe_rful maid Proceeding, runs low bell_owi_ng round the hills Thy cherishing, thy hon_ouri_ng, and thy love With all its shad_owy_ shapes is shown The shepherd's so civil y_ou_ _ha_ve nothing to fear. The elision of a vowel is often actually made where the coalescence before noted be more musical. Perhaps a vowel should never suffer elision when it is followed by a vowel or where only an "h," a "w" or a liquid intervenes between that and a next vowel, or in other words there should never be an elision where synecphonesis may take place. Consider the following instances: Full of the dear ecstatic pow'r, and sick Dare not th' infectious sigh; thy pleading look While ev'ning draws her crimson curtains round And fright the tim'rous game Fills ev'ry nerve, and pants in ev'ry vein. Full of the dear ecstatic power, and sick Dare not the infectious sigh; thy pleading look While evening draws her crimson curtains round And fright the timorous game Fills every nerve, and pants in every vein. The pronunciation in these instances with the actual elision is less agreeable to my ear than by synecphonesis. OF RULES FOR THE ACCENT. Accent deciding the measure of English verse as quantity does that of the Latin, and rules having been formed for teaching the quantity of the Latins it would be expected that rules should also be offered for indicating to foreigners the accented syllable of every word in English. Such rules have been attempted. Were they to be so completely formed as that the rules and their necessary exceptions would reach every word in the language, they would be too great a charge on the memory and too complicated for use either in reading or conversation. In the imperfect manner in which they have been hitherto proposed they would lead into infinite errors. It is usage which has established the accent of every word, or rather I might say it has been caprice or chance, for nothing can be more arbitrary or less consistent. I am of opinion it is easier for a foreigner to learn the accent of every word individually, than the rules which would teach it. This his dictionary will teach him, if, when he recurs to it for the meaning of a word, he will recollect that he should notice also on which syllable is its accent. Or he may learn the accent by reading poetry, which differs our language from Greek and Latin, wherein you must learn their prosody in order to read their poetry. Knowing that with us the accent is on every odd syllable or on every even one or on every third, he has only to examine of which of these measures the verse is to be able to read it correctly. But how shall he distinguish the measure to which the verse belongs? If he can find in the piece any one word the accent of which he already knows, that word will enable him to distinguish if it be parisyllabic or imparisyllabic. Let us suppose, for example, he would read the following piece: How sleep the brave, who sink to rest, By all their country's wishes blest! When Spring, with dewy fingers cold, Returns to deck their hallowed mould, She there shall dress a _sweeter_ sod Than Fancy's feet have ever trod. By fairy hands their knell is rung; By forms unseen their dirge is sung; There Honor comes, a pilgrim gray, To bless the turf that wraps their clay; And Freedom shall a while repair, To dwell a weeping hermit there! -- COLLINS He finds the word _sweeter_, the accent of which he has already learned to be on the first syllable, sweet. He observes that that is an even syllable, being the sixth of the line. He knows then that it is parisyllabic verse and from that he can accent the whole piece. If he does not already know the accent of a single word he must look in his dictionary for some one, and that will be a key to the whole piece. He should take care not to rely on the first foot of any line, because, as has been before observed, that is often a trochee even in the parisyllabic verse. Without consulting his dictionary at all, or knowing a single accent, the following observation will enable him to distinguish between these two species of verse when they are in rhyme. An odd number of syllables with a single rhyme, or an even number with a double rhyme, prove the verse to be imparisyllabic. An even number of syllables with a single rhyme, or an odd number with a double one, prove it to be parisyllabic, _e_. _g_.: Learn by this unguarded lover When your secret sighs prevail Not to let your tongue discover Raptures that you should conceal. -- CUNNINGHAM He sung and hell consented To hear the poet's prayer Stern Proserpine relented And gave him back the fair. -- POPE If in thus examining the seat of the accent he finds it is alternately on an odd and an even syllable, that is to say, on the third, sixth, ninth, twelfth syllables, the verse is trisyllabic. With her how I stray'd amid fountains and bowers! Or loiter'd behind, and collected the flowers! Then breathless with arduor my fair one pursued, And to think with what kindness my garland she view'd! But be still, my fond heart! this emotion give o'er; Fain wouldst thou forget thou must love her no more. -- SHENSTONE It must be stated that in this kind of verse we should count backward from the last syllable, if it be a single rhyme, or the last but one if it be double; because one of the unaccented syllables which should begin the verse is so often omitted. This last syllable in the preceding example should be the twelfth. When the line is full it is accented of course. Consulting the dictionary, therefore, we find in the first line the ninth syllable accented; in the second, the sixth; in the third line the accented syllables there being alternately odd and even, to wit, the third, sixth, ninth and twelfth, we know the verse must be trisyllabic. The foreigner then first determining the measure of the verse, may read it boldly. He will commit a few errors, indeed; let us see what they are likely to be. In imparisyllabic verse none, because that consists of trochees invariably; if an unaccented syllable happens to be prefixed to the verse, he will discover it by the number of syllables. In parisyllabic verse, when a trochee begins the verse, he will pronounce that foot wrong. This will perhaps happen once in ten lines; in some authors more, in others less. In like manner he will pronounce wrong the trochee in the middle of the line. But this he will encounter once in some hundreds of times. In the trisyllabic verse he can never commit an error if he counts from the end of the line. These imperfections are as few as a foreigner can possibly expect in the beginning; and he will reduce their number in proportion as he acquires by practice a knowledge of the accents. The subject of accent cannot be quitted till we apprise him of another imperfection which will show itself in his reading, and which will be longer removing. Though there be accents on the first, the second or the third syllables of the foot, as has been before explained, yet is there subordination among these accents, a modulation in their tone of which it is impossible to give a precise idea in writing. This is intimately connected with the sense; and though a foreigner will readily find to what words that would give distinguished emphasis, yet nothing but habit can enable him to give actually the different shades of emphasis which his judgment would dictate to him. Even natives have very different powers as to this article. This difference exists both in the organ and the judgment. Foote is known to have read Milton so exquisitely that he received great sums of money for reading him to audiences who attended him regularly for that purpose. This difference, too, enters deeply into the merit of theatrical actors. The foreigner, therefore, must acquiesce under a want of perfection which is the lot of natives in common with himself. We will proceed to give examples which may explain what is here meant, distinguishing the accents into four shades by these marks '''' ''' '' ' the greater number of marks denoting the strongest accents. Oh when the growling winds contend and all The sounding forest fluctuates in the storm To sink in warm repose, and hear the din Howl o'er the steady battlements, delights Above the luxury of vulgar sleep. -- ARMSTRONG Life's cares are comforts; such by heav'n design'd He that has none, must make them or be wretched Cares are employments; and without employ The soul is on a rack, the rack of rest. -- YOUNG O! lost to virtue, lost to manly thought, Lost to the noble sallies of the soul! Who think it solitude, to be alone. Communion sweet! communion large and high! Our reason, guardian angel, and our God! Then nearest these, when others most remote; And all, ere long, shall be remote, but these. -- YOUNG By nature's law, what may be, may be now; There's no prerogative in human hours. In human hearts what bolder thought can rise, Than man's presumption on to-morrow's dawn? Where is to-morrow? In another world. For numbers this is certain; the reverse Is sure to none; and yet on this perhaps, This peradventure, infamous for lies, As on a rock of adamant, we build Our mountain hopes; spin out eternal schemes. As we the fatal sisters could outspin, And, big with life's futurities, expire. -- YOUNG Cowards die many times before their deaths: The valiant never taste of death but once. Of all the wonders that I yet have heard, It seems to me most strange that men should fear, Seeing that death, a necessary end, Will come when it will come. I cannot tell what you and other men Think of this life, but for my single self, I had as lief not be as live to be In awe of such a thing as I myself. I was born free as Caesar, so were you; We both have fed as well, and we can both Endure the winter's cold as well as he. The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces, The solemn temples, the great globe itself, Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve, And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, Leave not a rack behind. I am far from presuming to give this accentuation as perfect. No two persons will accent the same passage alike. No person but a real adept would accent it twice alike. Perhaps two real adepts who should utter the same passage with infinite perfection yet by throwing the energy into different words might produce very different effects. I suppose that in those passages of Shakespeare, for example, no man but Garrick ever drew their full tone out of them, if I may borrow an expression from music. Let those who are disposed to criticise, therefore, try a few experiments themselves. I have essayed these short passages to let the foreigner see that the accent is not equal; that they are not to be read monotonously. I chose, too, the most pregnant passages, those wherein every word teems with latent meaning, that he might form an idea of the degrees of excellence of which this art is capable. He must not apprehend that all poets present the same difficulty. It is only the most brilliant passages. The great mass, even of good poetry, is easily enough read. Take the following examples, wherein little differences in the enunciation will not change the meaning sensibly. Here, in cool grot and mossy cell, We rural fays and faeries dwell; Though rarely seen by mortal eye, When the pale Moon, ascending high, Darts through yon lines her quivering beams, We frisk it near these crystal streams. Her beams, reflected from the wave, Afford the light our revels crave; The turf, with daisies broider'd o'er, Exceeds, we wot, the Parian floor; Nor yet for artful strains we call, But listen to the water's fall. Would you then taste our tranquil scene, Be sure your bosoms be serene: Devoid of hate, devoid of strife, Devoid of all that poisons life: And much it 'vails you, in their place To graft the love of human race. And tread with awe these favor'd bowers, Nor wound the shrubs, nor bruise the flowers; So may your path with sweets abound; So may your couch with rest be crown'd! But harm betide the wayward swain, Who dares our hallow'd haunts profane! -- SHENSTONE To fair Fidele's grassy tomb Soft maids and village hinds shall bring Each opening sweet, of earliest bloom, And rifle all the breathing Spring. No wailing ghost shall dare appear To vex with shrieks this quiet grove, But shepherd lads assemble here, And melting virgins own their love. No wither'd witch shall here be seen, No goblins lead their nightly crew; The female fays shall haunt the green, And dress thy grave with pearly dew; The red-breast oft at evening hours Shall kindly lend his little aid, With hoary moss, and gather'd flowers, To deck the ground where thou art laid. When howling winds, and beating rain, In tempests shake thy sylvan cell; Or 'midst the chase on every plain, The tender thought on thee shall dwell. Each lonely scene shall thee restore, For thee the tear be duly shed; Belov'd, till life can charm no more And mourn'd, till Pity's self be dead. -- COLLINS OF THE LENGTH OF VERSE Having spoken of feet which are only the constituent part of verse, it becomes necessary to say something of its larger divisions, and even of the verse itself. For what is a verse? This question naturally occurs, and it is not sufficiently answered by saying it is a whole line. Should the printer think proper to print the following passage in this manner: {Os eipon oy paidos orezato phaidimos Ektor. aps d' o pais pros kolpon eyzonoio tithenes eklinthe iachon, patros philoy opsin atychtheis, tarbesas chalkon te ide lophon ippiochaiten, deinon ap akrotates korythos neyonta noesas ek d' egelasse pater te philos kai potnia meter. aytik' apo kratos koryth' eileto phaidimos Ektor, kai ten men katetheken epi chthoni pamphanoosan aytar o g' on philon yion epei kyse pele te chersin, eipen epeyxamenos Dii t' alloisin te theoisi Zey alloi te theoi, dote de kai tonde genesthai paid' emon, os kai ego per, ariprepea Troessin, ode bien t' agathon kai 'Ilioy iphi anassein kai pote tis eipoi, 'patros g' ode pollon ameinon' ek polemoy anionta pheroi d' enara brotoenta kteinas deion andra, chareie de frena meter. Os eipon alochoio philes en chersin etheke paid' eon e d' ara min keodei dexato kolpo dakryoen gelasasa posis d' eleese noesas, cheiri te min katerexen epos t' ephat' ek t' onomaze} it would still be verse; it would still immortalize its author were every other syllable of his compositions lost. The poet then does not depend on the printer to give a character to his work. He has studied the human ear. He has discovered that in any rhythmical composition the ear is pleased to find at certain regular intervals a pause where it may rest, by which it may divide the composition into parts, as a piece of music is divided into bars. He contrives to mark this division by a pause in the sense or at least by an emphatical word which may force the pause so that the ear may feel the regular return of the pause. The interval then between these regular pauses constitutes a verse. In the morsel before cited this interval comprehends six feet, and though it is written in the manner of prose, yet he who can read it without pausing at every sixth foot, like him who is insensible to the charm of music, who is insensible of love or of gratitude, is an unfavored son of nature to whom she has given a faculty fewer than to others of her children, one source of pleasure the less in a world where there are none to spare. A well-organized ear makes the pause regularly whether it be printed as verse or as prose. But not only the organization of the ear but the character of the language have influence in determining the length of the verse. Otherwise the constitution of the ear being the same with all nations the verse would be of the same length in all languages, which is not the case. But the difference in language occasions the ear to be pleased with a difference of interval in the pause. The language of Homer enabled him to compose in verse of six feet; the English language cannot bear this. They may be of one, two, three, four, or five feet, as in the following examples: One foot. Turning Burning Changing Ranging I mourn I sigh I burn I die Let us part -- Let us part Will you break My poor heart? Two feet. Flow'ry mountains Mossy fountains Shady woods Crystal floods To me the rose No longer glows Ev'ry plant Has lost its scent. Prithee Cupid no more Hurl thy darts at threescore To thy girls and thy boys Give thy pains and thy joys. Three feet. Farewell fear and sorrow Pleasure till to-morrow. Yes, ev'ry flow'r that blows I passed unheeded by Till this enchanting rose Had fix'd my wand'ring eye. -- CUNNINGHAM The rose though a beautiful red Looks faded to Phyllis's bloom; And the breeze from the bean-flower bed To her breath's but a feeble perfume; A lily I plucked in full pride Its freshness with hers to compare, And foolishly thought till I try'd The flow'ret was equally fair. -- CUNNINGHAM Four feet. From the dark tremendous cell Where the fiends of magic dwell Now the sun hath left the skies Daughters of Enchantment, rise! -- CUNNINGHAM Come Hope, and to my pensive eye Thy far foreseeing tube apply Whose kind deception steals us o'er The gloomy waste that lies before. -- LANGHORNE `Mongst lords and fine ladies we shepherds are told The dearest affections are barter'd for gold That discord in wedlock is often their lot While Cupid and Hymen shake hands in a cot. -- CUNNINGHAM Here the parisyllabic alone bears one foot more. Oh liberty! thou goddess heav'nly bright Profuse of bliss, and pregnant with delight, Eternal pleasures in thy presence reign, And smiling Plenty leads thy wanton train; Eas'd of her load subjection grows more light, And Poverty looks cheerful in thy sight; Thou mak'st the gloomy face of nature gay Giv'st beauty to the sun, and pleasure to the day. -- ADDISON The last line furnishes an instance of six feet, usually called an Alexandrian; but no piece is ever wholly in that measure. A single line only is tolerated now and then, and is never a beauty. Formerly it was thought that the language bore lines of seven feet in length, as in the following: `Tis he whose ev'ry thought and deed by rules of virtue moves; Whose gen'rous tongue disdains to speak the thing his heart disproves Who never did a slander forge his neighbor's fame to wound; Nor listen to a false report by malice whisper'd round. -- PSALM 15 But a little attention shows that there is as regular a pause at the fourth foot as at the seventh, and as verse takes its denomination from the shortest regular intervals, this is no more than an alternate verse of four and of three feet. It is, therefore, usually written as in the following stanzas of the same piece: Who to his plighted vows and trust Has ever firmly stood And, though he promise to his loss, He makes his promise good. The man who by this steady course Has happiness ensur'd When earth's foundations shake, will stand By Providence secur'd. We may justly consider, therefore, verses of five feet as the longest the language sustains, and it is remarkable that not only this length, though the extreme, is generally the most esteemed, but that it is the only one which has dignity enough to support blank verse, that is, verse without rhyme. This is attempted in no other measure. It constitutes, therefore, the most precious part of our poetry. The poet, unfettered by rhyme, is at liberty to prune his diction of those tautologies, those feeble nothings necessary to introtrude the rhyming word. With no other trammel than that of measure he is able to condense his thoughts and images and to leave nothing but what is truly poetical. When enveloped in all the pomp and majesty of his subject he sometimes even throws off the restraint of the regular pause: Of Man's first disobedience, and the fruit Of that forbidden tree, whose mortal taste Brought death into the world, and all our woe, With loss of Eden, till one greater Man Restore us, and regain the blissful seat, Sing, heavenly Muse! that on the sacred top Of Oreb, or of Sinai, didst inspire That shepherd, who first taught the chosen seed, In the beginning, how the Heavens and Earth Rose out of Chaos. Then stay'd the fervid wheels, and in his hand He took the golden compasses, prepared In God's eternal store, to circumscribe This universe, and all created things One foot he centred, and the other turn'd Round, through the vast profundity obscure And said, "Thus far extend." There are but two regular pauses in this whole passage of seven verses. They are constantly drowned by the majesty of the rhythm and sense. But nothing less than this can authorize such a license. Take the following proof from the same author: Again, God said, "Let there be firmament Amid the waters, and let it divide The waters from the waters;" and God made The firmament. -- MILTON 7:261 And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. And God made the firmament. -- GENESIS 1:6 I have here placed Moses and Milton side by side, that he who can may distinguish which verse belongs to the poet. To do this he will not have the aid either of the sentiment, diction or measure of poetry. The original is so servilely copied that though it be cut into pieces of ten syllables, no pause is marked between these portions. What proves the excellence of blank verse is that the taste lasts longer than that for rhyme. The fondness for the jingle leaves us with that for the rattles and baubles of childhood, and if we continue to read rhymed verse at a later period of life it is such only where the poet has had force enough to bring great beauties of thought and diction into this form. When young any composition pleases which unites a little sense, some imagination, and some rhythm, in doses however small. But as we advance in life these things fall off one by one, and I suspect we are left at last with only Homer and Virgil, perhaps with Homer alone. He like Hope travels on nor quits us when we die. Having noted the different lengths of line which the English poet may give to his verse it must be further observed that he may intermingle these in the same verse according to his fancy. The following are selected as examples: A tear bedews my Delia's eye, To think yon playful kid must die; From crystal spring, and flowery mead, Must, in his prime of life, recede! She tells with what delight he stood, To trace his features in the flood; Then skipp'd aloof with quaint amaze, And then drew near again to gaze. -- SHENSTONE Full many a gem of purest ray serene The dark unfathomed caves of ocean bear; Full many a flower is born to blush unseen, And waste its sweetness on the desert air. Some village Hampden, that, with dauntless breast, The little tyrant of his fields withstood, Some mute inglorious Milton here may rest, Some Cromwell, guiltless of his country's blood. -- GRAY There shall my plaintive song recount Dark themes of hopeless woe, And faster than the drooping fount I'll teach mine eyes to flow. There leaves, in spite of Autumn green Shall shade the hallow'd ground, And Spring will there again be seen To call forth flowers around. -- SHENSTONE O Health! capricious maid! Why dost thou shun my peaceful bower, Where I had hope to share thy power, And bless thy lasting aid? -- SHENSTONE The man whose mind, on virtue bent Pursues some greatly good intent With undivided aim Serene beholds the angry crowd Nor can their clamors fierce and loud His stubborn purpose tame. Ye gentle Bards! give ear, Who talk of amorous rage, Who spoil the lily, rob the rose, Come learn of me to weep your woes: "O sweet! O sweet Anne Page!" -- SHENSTONE Too long a stranger to repose, At length from Pain's abhorred couch I rose And wander'd forth alone, To court once more the balmy breeze, And catch the verdure of the trees, Ere yet their charms were flown. -- SHENSTONE O thou, by Nature taught To breathe her genuine thought, In numbers warmly pure, and sweetly strong; Who first, on mountains wild, In Fancy, loveliest child, Thy babe, and Pleasure's, nursed the powers of song! -- COLLINS 'Twas in a land of learning, The Muse's favorite city, Such pranks of late Were play'd by a rat, As -- tempt one to be witty. -- SHENSTONE Yet stay, O stay! celestial Pow'rs! And with a hand of kind regard Dispel the boisterous storm that low'rs Destruction on the fav'rite bard; O watch with me his last expiring breath And snatch him from the arms of dark oblivious death. -- GRAY What is grandeur, what is power? Heavier toil, superior pain. What the bright reward we gain? The grateful memory of the good. Sweet is the breath of vernal shower, The bee's collected treasures sweet, Sweet music's melting fall, but sweeter yet The still small voice of gratitude. Methinks I hear, in accents low, The sportive, kind reply: Poor moralist! and what art thou? A solitary fly! Thy joys no glittering female meets, No hive hast thou of hoarded sweets, No painted plumage to display; On hasty wings thy youth is flown; Thy sun is set, thy spring is gone -- We frolic while 'tis May. -- GRAY Then let me rove some wild and heathy scene; Or find some ruin, 'midst its dreary dells, Whose walls more awful nod By thy religious gleams. Or, if chill blustering winds, or driving rain, Prevent my willing feet, be mine the hut, That, from the mountain's side, Views wilds, and swelling floods. -- COLLINS Though the license to intermingle the different measures admits an infinitude of combinations, yet this becomes less and less pleasing in proportion as they depart from that simplicity and regularity of which the ear is most sensible. When these are wholly or nearly neglected, as in the lyric pieces, the poet renounces one of the most fascinating charms of his art. He must then look well to his matter and supply in sublimity or other beauties the loss of regular measure. In effect these pieces are seldom read twice. TRAVEL JOURNALS _A Tour to some of the Gardens of England_ _[Memorandums made on a tour to some of the gardens in England, described by Whateley in his book on gardening.]_ While his descriptions, in point of style, are models of perfect elegance and classical correctness, they are as remarkable for their exactness. I always walked over the gardens with his book in my hand, examined with attention the particular spots he described, found them so justly characterized by him as to be easily recognized, and saw with wonder, that his fine imagination had never been able to seduce him from the truth. My inquiries were directed chiefly to such practical things as might enable me to estimate the expense of making and maintaining a garden in that style. My journey was in the months of March and April, 1786. _Chiswick._ -- Belongs to Duke of Devonshire. A garden about six acres; -- the octagonal dome has an ill effect, both within and without: the garden shows still too much of art. An obelisk of very ill effect; another in the middle of a pond useless. _Hampton-Court._ -- Old fashioned. Clipt yews grown wild. _Twickenham._ -- Pope's original garden, three and a half acres. Sir Wm. Stanhope added one and a half acre. This is a long narrow slip, grass and trees in the middle, walk all round. Now Sir Wellbore Ellis's. Obelisk at bottom of Pope's garden, as monument to his mother. Inscription, "Ah! Editha, matrum optima, mulierum amantissima, Vale." The house about thirty yards from the Thames: the ground shelves gently to the water side; on the back of the house passes the street, and beyond that the garden. The grotto is under the street, and goes out level to the water. In the centre of the garden a mound with a spiral walk round it. A rookery. _Esher-Place._ -- The house in a bottom near the river; on the other side the ground rises pretty much. The road by which we come to the house forms a dividing line in the middle of the front; on the right are heights, rising one beyond and above another, with clumps of trees; on the farthest a temple. A hollow filled up with a clump of trees, the tallest in the bottom, so that the top is quite flat. On the left the ground descends. Clumps of trees, the clumps on each hand balance finely -- most lovely mixture of concave and convex. The garden is of about forty-five acres, besides the park which joins. Belongs to Lady Frances Pelham. _Claremont._ -- Lord Clive's. Nothing remarkable. _Paynshill._ -- Mr. Hopkins. Three hundred and twenty-three acres, garden and park all in one. Well described by Whateley. Grotto said to have cost pound 7,000. Whateley says one of the bridges is of stone, but both now are of wood, the lower sixty feet high: there is too much evergreen. The dwelling-house built by Hopkins, ill-situated: he has not been there in five years. He lived there four years while building the present house. It is not finished; its architecture is incorrect. A Doric temple, beautiful. _Woburn._ -- Belongs to Lord Peters. Lord Loughborough is the present tenant for two lives. Four people to the farm, four to the pleasure garden, four to the kitchen garden. All are intermixed, the pleasure garden being merely a highly-ornamented walk through and round the divisions of the farm and kitchen garden. _Caversham._ -- Sold by Lord Cadogan to Major Marsac. Twenty-five acres of garden, four hundred acres of park, six acres of kitchen garden. A large lawn, separated by a sunk fence from the garden, appears to be part of it. A straight, broad gravel walk passes before the front and parallel to it, terminated on the right by a Doric temple, and opening at the other end on a fine prospect. This straight walk has an ill effect. The lawn in front, which is pasture, well disposed with clumps of trees. _Wotton._ -- Now belongs to the Marquis of Buckingham, son of George Grenville. The lake covers fifty acres, the river five acres, the basin fifteen acres, the little river two acres -- equal to seventy-two acres of water. The lake and great river are on a level, they fall into the basin five feet below, and that again into the little river five feet lower. These waters lie in form of an xxx: the house is in middle of open side, fronting the angle. A walk goes round the whole, three miles in circumference, and containing within it about three hundred acres: sometimes it passes close to the water, sometimes so far off as to leave large pasture grounds between it and the water. But two hands to keep the pleasure grounds in order; much neglected. The water affords two thousand brace of carp a year. There is a Palladian bridge, of which, I think, Whateley does not speak. _Stowe._ -- Belongs to the Marquis of Buckingham, son of George Grenville, and who takes it from Lord Temple. Fifteen men and eighteen boys employed in keeping pleasure grounds. Within the walk are considerable portions separated by inclosures and used for pasture. The Egyptian pyramid is almost entirely taken down by the late Lord Temple, to erect a building there, in commemoration of Mr. Pitt, but he died before beginning it, and nothing is done to it yet. The grotto and two rotundas are taken away. There are four levels of water, receiving it one from the other. The basin contains seven acres, the lake below that ten acres. Kent's building is called the temple of Venus. The inclosure is entirely by ha-ha. At each end of the front line there is a recess like the bastion of a fort. In one of these is the temple of Friendship, in the other the temple of Venus. They are seen the one from the other, the line of sight passing, not through the garden, but through the country parallel to the line of the garden. This has a good effect. In the approach to Stowe, you are brought a mile through a straight avenue, pointing to the Corinthian arch and to the house, till you get to the arch, then you turn short to the right. The straight approach is very ill. The Corinthian arch has a very useless appearance, inasmuch as it has no pretension to any destination. Instead of being an object from the house, it is an obstacle to a very pleasing distant prospect. The Grecian valley being clear of trees, while the hill on each side is covered with them, is much deepened to appearance. _Leasowes, in Shropshire._ -- Now the property of Mr. Horne by purchase. One hundred and fifty acres within the walk. The waters small. This is not even an ornamented farm -- it is only a grazing farm with a path round it, here and there a seat of board, rarely anything better. Architecture has contributed nothing. The obelisk is of brick. Shenstone had but three hundred pounds a year, and ruined himself by what he did to this farm. It is said that he died of the heart-aches which his debts occasioned him. The part next the road is of red earth, that on the further part gray. The first and second cascades are beautiful. The landscape at number eighteen, and prospect at thirty-two, are fine. The walk through the wood is umbrageous and pleasing. The whole arch of prospect may be of ninety degrees. Many of the inscriptions are lost. _Hagley, now Lord Wescot's._ -- One thousand acres: no distinction between park and garden -- both blended, but more of the character of garden. Eight or nine laborers keep it in order. Between two and three hundred deer in it, some few of them red deer. They breed sometimes with the fallow. This garden occupying a descending hollow between the Clent and Witchbury hills, with the spurs from those hills, there is no level in it for a spacious water. There are, therefore, only some small ponds. From one of these there is a fine cascade; but it can only be occasionally, by opening the sluice. This is in a small, dark, deep hollow, with recesses of stone in the banks on every side. In one of these is a Venus predique, turned half round as if inviting you with her into the recess. There is another cascade seen from the portico on the bridge. The castle is triangular, with a round tower at each angle, one only entire; it seems to be between forty and fifty feet high. The ponds yield a great deal of trout. The walks are scarcely gravelled. _Blenheim._ -- Twenty-five hundred acres, of which two hundred is garden, one hundred and fifty water, twelve kitchen garden, and the rest park. Two hundred people employed to keep it in order, and to make alterations and additions. About fifty of these employed in pleasure grounds. The turf is mowed once in ten days. In summer, about two thousand fallow deer in the park, and two or three thousand sheep. The palace of Henry II. was remaining till taken down by Sarah, widow of the first Duke of Marlborough. It was on a round spot levelled by art, near what is now water, and but a little above it. The island was a part of the high road leading to the palace. Rosamond's bower was near where is now a little grove, about two hundred yards from the palace. The well is near where the bower was. The water here is very beautiful, and very grand. The cascade from the lake, a fine one; except this the garden has no great beauties. It is not laid out in fine lawns and woods, but the trees are scattered thinly over the ground, and every here and there small thickets of shrubs, in oval raised beds, cultivated, and flowers among the shrubs. The gravelled walks are broad -- art appears too much. There are but a few seats in it, and nothing of architecture more dignified. There is no one striking position in it. There has been a great addition to the length of the river since Whateley wrote. _Enfield Chase._ -- One of the four lodges. Garden about sixty acres. Originally by Lord Chatham, now in the tenure of Dr. Beaver, who married the daughter of Mr. Sharpe. The lease lately renewed -- not in good repair. The water very fine; would admit of great improvement by extending walks, &c., to the principal water at the bottom of the lawn. _Moor Park._ -- The lawn about thirty acres. A piece of ground up the hill of six acres. A small lake. Clumps of spruce firs. Surrounded by walk -- separately inclosed -- destroys unity. The property of Mr. Rous, who bought of Sir Thomas Dundas. The building superb; the principal front a Corinthian portico of four columns; in front of the wings a colonnade, Ionic, subordinate. Back front a terrace, four Corinthian pilasters. Pulling down wings of building; removing deer; wants water. _Kew._ -- Archimedes' screw for raising water. A horizontal shaft made to turn the oblique one of the screw by a patent machinery of this form: _The pieces separate._ A is driven by its shank into the horizontal axis of the wheel which turns the machine. B is an intermediate iron to connect the motion of A and C. C is driven by its shank into the axis of the screw. D is a cross axis, the ends, _a_ and _b_, going into the corresponding holes _a_ and _b_ of the iron A, and the ends, _c_ and _d_, going into the corresponding holes _c_ and _d_ of the iron B. E is another cross axis, the ends, _e_ and _f_, going into the corresponding holes _e_ and _f_ of the iron B, and the ends, _g_ and _h_, going into the corresponding holes _g_ and _h_ of the iron C. _Memorandums on a Tour from Paris to Amsterdam, Strasburg, and back to Paris_ March 3, 1788 _Amsterdam._ -- Joists of houses placed, not with their sides horizontally and perpendicularly, but diamond wise, thus: xxx first, for greater strength; second, to arch between with brick, thus: xxx Windows opening so that they admit air and not rain. The upper sash opens on a horizontal axis, or pins in the centre of the sides, the lower sash slides up xxx. Manner of fixing a flag staff on the mast of a vessel: _a_ is the bolt on which it turns; _b_ a bolt which is taken in and out to fasten it or to let it down. When taken out, the lower end of the staff is shoved out of its case, and the upper end being heaviest brings itself down: a rope must have been previously fastened to the butt end, to pull it down again when you want to raise the flag end. Dining tables letting down with single or double leaves, so as to take the room of their thickness only with a single leaf when open, thus: xxx or thus: xxx double-leaves open: xxx shut, thus: xxx or thus: xxx shut: xxx Peat costs about one doit each, or twelve and a half stivers the hundred. One hundred make seven cubic feet, and to keep a tolerably comfortable fire for a study or chamber, takes about six every hour and a half. A machine for drawing light _empty_ boats over a dam at Amsterdam. It is an axis in peritrochio fixed on the dam. From the dam each way is a sloping stage, the boat is presented to this, the rope of the axis made fast to it, and it is drawn up. The water on one side of the dam is about four feet higher than on the other. The camels used for lightening ships over the Pampus will raise the ships eight feet. There are beams passing through the ship's sides, projecting to the off side of the camel and resting on it; of course that alone would keep the camel close to the ship. Besides this, there are a great number of windlasses on the camels, the ropes of which are made fast to the gunwale of the ship. The camel is shaped to the ship on the near side, and straight on the off one. When placed along side, water is let into it so as nearly to sink it; in this state it receives the beams, &c., of the ship, and then the water is pumped out. Wind saw mills. See the plans detailed in the moolen book which I bought. A circular foundation of brick is raised about three or four feet high, and covered with a curb or sill of wood, and has little rollers under its sill which make it turn easily on the curb. A hanging bridge projects at each end about fifteen or twenty feet beyond the circular area, thus: (illustration omitted) horizontally, and thus: (illustration omitted) in the profile to increase the play of the timbers on the frame. The wings are at one side, as at _a_; there is a shelter over the hanging bridges, but of plank with scarce any frame, very light. A bridge across a canal formed by two scows, which open each to the opposite shore and let boats pass. A lanthern over the street door, which gives light equally into the antechamber and the street. It is a hexagon, and occupies the place of the middle pane of glass in the circular top of the street door. A bridge on a canal, turning on a swivel, by which means it is arranged along the side of the canal so as not to be in the way of boats when not in use. When used, it is turned across the canal. It is, of course, a little more than double the width of the canal. Hedges of beach, which, not losing the old leaf till the new bud pushes it off, has the effect of an evergreen as to cover. Mr. Ameshoff, merchant at Amsterdam. The distribution of his aviary is worthy of notice. Each kind of the large birds has its coop eight feet wide and four feet deep; the middle of the front is occupied by a broad glass window, on one side of which is a door for the keeper to enter at, and on the other a little trap-door for the birds to pass in and out. The floor strewed with clean hay. Before each coop is a court of eight by sixteen feet, with wire in front and netting above, if the fowls be able to fly. For such as require it, there are bushes of evergreen growing in their court for them to lay their eggs under. The coops are frequently divided into two stories: the upper for those birds which perch, such as pigeons, &c., the lower for those which feed on the ground, as pheasants, partridges, &c. The court is in common for both stories, because the birds do no injury to each other. For the water-fowl there is a pond of water passing through the courts, with a movable separation. While they are breeding they must be separate, afterwards they may come together. The small birds are some of them in a common aviary, and some in cages. The Dutch wheel-barrow is in this form: (illustration omitted) which is very convenient for loading and unloading. Mr. Hermen Hend Damen, merchant-broker of Amsterdam, tells me that the emigrants to America come from the Palatinate down the Rhine, and take shipping from Amsterdam. Their passage is ten guineas if paid here, and eleven if paid in America. He says they might be had in any number to go to America, and settle lands as tenants on half stocks or metairies. Perhaps they would serve their employer one year as an indemnification for the passage, and then be bound to remain on his lands seven years. They would come to Amsterdam at their own expense. He thinks they would employ more than fifty acres each; but _quaere_, especially if they have fifty acres for their wife also? _Hodson._ -- The best house. Stadhonderian, his son, in the government. Friendly, but old and very infirm. _Hope._ -- The first house in Amsterdam. His first object England; but it is supposed he would like to have the American business also, yet he would probably make our affairs subordinate to those of England. _Vollenhoven._ -- An excellent old house; connected with no party. _Sapportus._ -- A broker, very honest and ingenuous, well-disposed; acts for Hope, but will say with truth what he can do for us. The best person to consult with as to the best house to undertake a piece of business. He has brothers in London in business. Jacob Van Staphorst tells me there are about fourteen millions of florins, new money, placed in loans in Holland every year, being the savings of individuals out of their annual revenue, &c. Besides this, there are every year reimbursements of old loans from some quarter or other to be replaced at interest in some new loan. 1788. March 16th. Baron Steuben has been generally suspected of having suggested the first idea of the self-styled Order of Cincinnati. But Mr. Adams tells me, that in the year 1776 he had called at a tavern in the State of New York to dine, just at the moment when the British army was landing at Frog's Neck. Generals Washington, Lee, Knox and Parsons, came to the same tavern. He got into conversation with Knox. They talked of ancient history -- of Fabius, who used to raise the Romans from the dust; of the present contest, &c.; and General Knox, in the course of the conversation, said he should wish for some ribbon to wear in his hat, or in his button hole, to be transmitted to his descendants as a badge and a proof that he had fought in defence of their liberties. He spoke of it in such precise terms, as showed he had revolved it in his mind before. Mr. Adams says he and Knox were standing together in the door of the tavern, and does not recollect whether General Washington and the others were near enough to hear the conversation, or were even in the room at that moment. Baron Steuben did not arrive in America till above a year after that. Mr. Adams is now fifty-three years old, _i.e._ nine years more than I am. It is said this house will cost four tons of silver, or forty HOPE'S HOUSE, NEAR HARLAEM. thousand pounds sterling. The separation between the middle building and wings in the upper story has a capricious appearance, yet a pleasing one. The right wing of the house (which is the left in the plan) extends back to a great length, so as to make the ground plan in the form of an L. The parapet has a pannel of wall, and a pannel of ballusters alternately, which lighten it. There is no portico, the columns being backed against the wall of the front. March 30th, 31st. _Amsterdam. Utrecht. Nimeguen._ The lower parts of the low countries seem partly to have been gained from the sea, and partly to be made up of the plains of the Yssel, the Rhine, the Maese and the Schelde united. To Utrecht nothing but plains are seen, a rich black mould, wet, lower than the level of the waters which intersect it; almost entirely in grass; few or no farm-houses, as the business of grazing requires few laborers. The canal is lined with country houses, which bespeak the wealth and cleanliness of the country; but generally in an uncouth state, and exhibiting no regular architecture. After passing Utrecht, the hills north-east of the Rhine come into view, and gather in towards the river, till at Wyck Dursted they are within three or four miles, and at Amelengen they join the river. The plains, after passing Utrecht, become more sandy; the hills are very poor and sandy, generally waste in broom, sometimes a little corn. The plains are in corn, grass, and willow. The plantations of the latter are immense, and give it the air of an uncultivated country. There are now few chateaux; farm-houses abound, built generally of brick, and covered with tile or thatch. There are some apple-trees, but no forest; a few inclosures of willow wattling. In the gardens are hedges of beach, one foot apart, which, not losing its old leaves till they are pushed off in the spring by the young ones, gives the shelter of evergreens. The Rhine is here about three hundred yards wide, and the road to Nimeguen passing it a little below Wattelingen, leaves Hetern in sight on the left. On this side, the plains of the Rhine, the Ling, and the Waal unite. The Rhine and Waal are crossed on vibrating boats, the rope supported by a line of seven little barks. The platform by which you go on to the ferry-boat is supported by boats. The view from the hill at Cress is sublime. It commands the Waal, and extends far up the Rhine. That also up and down the Waal from the Bellevue of Nimeguen, is very fine. The chateau here is pretended to have lodged Julius Caesar. This is giving it an antiquity of at least eighteen centuries, which must be apocryphal. Some few sheep to-day, which were feeding in turnip patches. April 1st. _Cranenburg. Cleves. Santen. Reynberg. Hoogstraat._ The transition from ease and opulence to extreme poverty is remarkable on crossing the line between the Dutch and Prussian territories. The soil and climate are the same; the governments alone differ. With the poverty, the fear also of slaves is visible in the faces of the Prussian subjects. There is an improvement, however, in the physiognomy, especially could it be a little brightened up. The road leads generally over the hills, but sometimes through skirts of the plains of the Rhine. These are always extensive and good. They want manure, being visibly worn down. The hills are almost always sandy, barren, uncultivated, and insusceptible of culture, covered with broom and moss; here and there a little indifferent forest, which is sometimes of beach. The plains are principally in corn; some grass and willow. There are no chateaux, nor houses that bespeak the existence even of a middle class. Universal and equal poverty overspreads the whole. In the villages, too, which seem to be falling down, the over-proportion of women is evident. The cultivators seem to live on their farms. The farm-houses are of mud, the better sort of brick; all covered over with thatch. Cleves is little more than a village. If there are shops or magazines of merchandise in it, they show little. Here and there at a window some small articles are hung up within the glass. The goose-berry beginning to leaf. April 2d. Passed the Rhine at _Essenberg._ It is there about a quarter of a mile wide, or five hundred yards. It is crossed in a scow with sails. The wind being on the quarter, we were eight or ten minutes only in the passage. Duysberg is but a village in fact, walled in; the buildings mostly of brick. No new ones, which indicate a thriving state. I had understood that near that were remains of the encampment of Varus, in which he and his legions fell by the arms of Arminius (in the time of Tiberius I think it was), but there was not a person to be found in Duysberg who could understand either English, French, Italian, or Latin. So I could make no inquiry. From _Duysberg_ to _Dusseldorf_ the road leads sometimes over the hills, sometimes through the plains of the Rhine, the quality of which are as before described. On the hills, however, are considerable groves of oak, of spontaneous growth, which seem to be of more than a century; but the soil being barren, the trees, though high, are crooked and knotty. The undergrowth is broom and moss. In the plains is corn entirely. As they are become rather sandy for grass, there are no inclosures on the Rhine at all. The houses are poor and ruinous, mostly of brick, and scantling mixed. A good deal of grape cultivated. _Dusseldorf._ The gallery of paintings is sublime, particularly the room of Vanderwerff. The plains from Dusseldorf to Cologne are much more extensive, and go off in barren downs at some distance from the river. These downs extend far, according to appearance. They are manuring the plains with lime. A gate at the Elector's chateau on this road in this form (illustration omitted). We cross at Cologne on a pendulum boat. I observe the hog of this country (Westphalia), of which the celebrated ham is made, is tall, gaunt, and with heavy lop ears. Fatted at a year old, would weigh one hundred or one hundred and twenty pounds. At two years old, two hundred pounds. Their principal food is acorns. The pork, fresh, sells at two and a half pence sterling the pound. The hams, ready made, at eight and a half pence sterling the pound. One hundred and six pounds of this country is equal to one hundred pounds of Holland. About four pounds of fine Holland salt is put on one hundred pounds of pork. It is smoked in a room which has no chimney. Well-informed people here tell me there is no other part of the world where the bacon is smoked. They do not know that we do it. Cologne is the principal market of exportation. They find that the small hog makes the sweetest meat. _Cologne_ is a sovereign city, having no territory out of its walls. It contains about sixty thousand inhabitants; appears to have much commerce, and to abound with poor. Its commerce is principally in the hands of Protestants, of whom there are about sixty houses in the city. They are extremely restricted in their operations, and otherwise oppressed in every form by the government, which is Catholic, and excessively intolerant. Their Senate, some time ago, by a majority of twenty-two to eighteen, allowed them to have a church; but it is believed this privilege will be revoked. There are about two hundred and fifty Catholic churches in the city. The Rhine is here about four hundred yards wide. This city is in 51 degrees latitude, wanting about 6'. Here the vines begin, and it is the most northern spot on the earth on which wine is made. Their first grapes came from Orleans, since that from Alsace, Champagne, &c. It is thirty-two years only since the first vines were sent from Cassel, near Mayence, to the Cape of Good Hope, of which the Cape wine is now made. Afterwards new supplies were sent from the same quarter. That I suppose is the most southern spot on the globe where wine is made, and it is singular that the same vine should have furnished two wines as much opposed to each other in quality as in situation. I was addressed here by Mr. Damen, of Amsterdam, to Mr. Jean Jaques Peuchen, of this place, Merchant. April 4th. _Cologne. Bonne. Andernach. Coblentz._ I saw many walnut trees to-day in the open fields. It would seem as if this tree and wine required the same climate. The soil begins now to be reddish, both on the hills and in the plains. Those from Cologne to Bonne extend about three miles from the river on each side; but a little above Bonne they become contracted, and continue from thence to be from one mile to nothing, comprehending both sides of the river. They are in corn, some clover and rape, and many vines. These are planted in rows three feet apart both ways. The vine is left about six or eight feet high, and stuck with poles ten or twelve feet high. To these poles they are tied in two places, at the height of about two and four feet. They are now performing this operation. The hills are generally excessively steep, a great proportion of them barren; the rest in vines principally, sometimes small patches of corn. In the plains, though rich, I observed they dung their vines plentifully; and it is observed here, as elsewhere, that the plains yield much wine, but bad. The good is furnished from the hills. The walnut, willow, and apple tree beginning to leaf. _Andernach_ is the port on the Rhine to which the famous millstones of Cologne are brought; the quarry, as some say, being at Mendich, three or four leagues from thence. I suppose they have been called Cologne millstones, because the merchants of that place having the most extensive correspondence, have usually sent them to all parts of the world. I observed great collections of them at Cologne. This is one account. April 5. _Coblentz. Nassau._ Another account is, that these stones are cut at Triers and brought down the Moselle. I could not learn the price of them at the quarry; but I was shown a grindstone of the same stone, five feet diameter, which cost at Triers six florins. It was of but half the thickness of a millstone. I supposed, therefore, that two millstones would cost about as much as three of these grindstones, _i. e._ about a guinea and a half. This country abounds with slate. The best Moselle wines are made about fifteen leagues from hence, in an excessively mountainous country. The first quality (without any comparison) is that made on the mountain of Brownberg, adjoining to the village of Dusmond; and the best crops is that of the Baron Breidbach Burrhesheim, grand chambellan et grand Baillif de Coblentz. His Receveur, of the name of Mayer, lives at Dusmond. The last fine year was 1783, which sells now at fifty louis the foudre, which contains six aumes of one hundred and seventy bottles each, equal about one thousand one hundred and ten bottles. This is about twenty-two sous Tournois the bottle. In general, the Baron Burresheim's crops will sell as soon as made, say at the vintage, for one hundred and thirty, one hundred and forty, and one hundred and fifty ecus the foudre (the ecu is one and a half florin of Holland), say two hundred. 2. Vialen is the second quality, and sells new at one hundred and twenty ecus the foudre. 3. Crach-Bispost is the third, and sells for about one hundred and five ecus. I compared Crach of 1783 with Baron Burrhesheim's of the same year. The latter is quite clear of acid, stronger, and very sensibly the best. 4. Selting, which sells at one hundred ecus. 5. Kous-Berncastle, the fifth quality, sells at eighty or ninety. After this there is a gradation of qualities down to thirty ecus. These wines must be five or six years old before they are quite ripe for drinking. One thousand plants yield a foudre of wine a year in the most plentiful vineyards. In other vineyards, it will take two thousand or two thousand and five hundred plants to yield a foudre. The culture of one thousand plants costs about one louis a year. A day's labor of a man is paid in winter twenty kreitzers (_i. e._ one-third of a florin), in summer twenty-six; a woman's is half that. The red wines of this country are very indifferent, and will not keep. The Moselle is here from one hundred to two hundred yards wide; the Rhine three hundred to four hundred. A jessamine in the Count de Moustier's garden in leaf. In the Elector of Treves' palace at _Coblentz_, are large rooms very well warmed by warm air conveyed from an oven below, through tubes which open into the rooms. An oil and vinegar cruet in this form: (illustration omitted) At Coblentz we pass the river on a pendulum boat, and the road to Nassau is over tremendous hills, on which is here and there a little corn, more vines, but mostly barren. In some of these barrens are forests of beach and oak, tolerably large, but crooked and knotty; the undergrowth beach brush, broom, and moss. The soil of the plains, and of the hills where they are cultivable, is reddish. Nassau is a village the whole rents of which should not amount to more than a hundred or two guineas. Yet it gives the title of Prince to the house of Orange to which it belongs. April 6th. _Nassau. Schwelbach. Wisbaden. Hocheim. Frankfort._ The road from Nassau to Schwelbach is over hills, or rather mountains, both high and steep; always poor, and above half of them barren in beach and oak. At Schwelbach there is some chesnut. The other parts are either in winter grain, or preparing for that of the spring. Between Schwelbach and Wisbaden we come in sight of the plains of the Rhine, which are very extensive. From hence the lands, both high and low, are very fine, in corn, vines, and fruit trees. The country has the appearance of wealth, especially in the approach to Frankfort. April 7th. _Frankfort._ Among the poultry, I have seen no turkies in Germany till I arrive at this place. The Stork, or Crane, is very commonly tame here. It is a miserable, dirty, ill-looking bird. The Lutheran is the reigning religion here, and is equally intolerant to the Catholic and Calvinist, excluding them from the free corps. April 8th. _Frankfort. Hanau._ The road goes through the plains of the Maine, which are mulatto, and very fine. They are well cultivated till you pass the line between the republic and the landgraviate of Hesse, when you immediately see the effect of the difference of government, notwithstanding the tendency which the neighborhood of such a commercial town as Frankfort has to counteract the effects of tyranny in its vicinities, and to animate them in spite of oppression. In Frankfort all is life, bustle, and motion; in Hanau the silence and quiet of the mansions of the dead. Nobody is seen moving in the streets; every door is shut; no sound of the saw, the hammer, or other utensil of industry. The drum and fife is all that is heard. The streets are cleaner than a German floor, because nobody passes them. At Williamsbath, near Hanau, is a country seat of the Landgrave. There is a ruin which is clever. It presents the remains of an old castle. The ground plan is in this form: (illustration omitted) The upper story in this: (illustration omitted) A circular room of thirty-one and a half feet diameter within. The four little square towers at the corners finish at the floor of the upper story, so as to be only platforms to walk out on. Over the circular room is a platform also, which is covered by the broken parapet which once crowned the top, but is now fallen off some parts, whilst the other parts remain. I like better, however, the form of the ruin at Hagley, in England, which was thus (illustration omitted). There is a centry box here, covered over with bark, so as to look exactly like the trunk of an old tree. This is a good idea; and may be of much avail in a garden. There is a hermitage in which is a good figure of a hermit in plaster, colored to the life, with a table and book before him, in the attitude of reading and contemplation. In a little cell is his bed; in another his books, some tools, &c.; in another his little provision of firewood, &c. There is a monument erected to the son of the present landgrave, in the form of a pyramid, the base of which is eighteen and a half feet. The side declines from the perpendicular about twenty-two and a half degrees. An arch is carried through it both ways so as topresent a door in each side. In the middle of this, at the crossing of the two arches, is a marble monument with this inscription: "ante tempus." He died at twelve years of age. Between Hanau and Frankfort, in sight of the road, is the village of Bergen, where was fought the battle of Bergen in the war before last. Things worth noting here are: 1. A folding ladder. 2. Manner of packing china cups and saucers, the former in a circle within the latter. 3. The marks of different manufactures of china, to wit: Dresden with two swords. Hecks with a wheel with Frankendaal with xxx (for Charles Theodore), and a xxx over it. Berlin with xxx 4. The top rail of a wagon supported by the washers on the ends of the axle-trees. April 10th. _Frankfort. Hocheim. Mayence._ The little tyrants round about having disarmed their people, and made it very criminal to kill game, one knows when they quit the territory of Frankfort by the quantity of game which is seen. In the Republic, everybody being allowed to be armed, and to hunt on their own lands, there is very little game left in its territory. The hog hereabouts resembles extremely the little hog of Virginia. Round like that, a small head, and short upright ears. This makes the ham of Mayence so much esteemed at Paris. We cross the Rhine at Mayence on a bridge one thousand eight hundred and forty feet long, supported by forty-seven boats. It is not in a direct line, but curved up against the stream; which may strengthen it if the difference between the upper and lower curve be sensible, if the planks of the floor be thick, well jointed together, and forming sectors of circles, so as to act on the whole as the stones of an arch. But it has by no means this appearance. Near one end, one of the boats has an axis in peritrochio, and a chain, by which it may be let drop down stream some distance, with the portion of the floor belonging to it, so as to let a vessel through. Then it is wound up again into place, and to consolidate it the more with the adjoining parts, the loose section is a little higher, and has at each end a folding stage, which folds back on it when it moves down, and when brought up again into place, these stages are folded over on the bridge. This whole operation takes but four or five minutes. In the winter the bridge is taken away entirely, on account of the ice. And then everything passes on the ice, through the whole winter. April 11th. _Mayence. Rudesheim. Johansberg. Markebrom._ The women do everything here. They dig the earth, plough, saw, cut and split wood, row, tow the batteaux, &c. In a small but dull kind of batteau, with two hands rowing with a kind of large paddle, and a square sail, but scarcely a breath of wind, we went down the river at the rate of five miles an hour, making it three and a half hours to Rudesheim. The floats of wood which go with the current only, go one mile and a half an hour. They go night and day. There are five boat-mills abreast here. Their floats seem to be about eight feet broad. The Rhine yields salmon, carp, pike, and perch, and the little rivers running into it yield speckled trout. The plains from Maintz to Rudesheim are good and in corn; the hills mostly in vines. The banks of the river are so low that, standing up in the batteau, I could generally see what was in the plains. Yet they are seldom overflowed. A TOWER AT RUDESHEIM. Though they begin to make wine as has been said, at Cologne, and continue it up the river indefinitely, yet it is only from Rudesheim to Hocheim that wines of the very first quality are made. The river happens there to run due east and west, so as to give its hills on that side a southern aspect. And even in this canton, it is only Hocheim, Johansberg, and Rudesheim, that are considered as of the very first quality. Johansberg is a little mountain (berg signifies mountain), whereon is a religious house, about fifteen miles below Mayence, and near the village of Vingel. It has a southern aspect, the soil a barren mulatto clay, mixed with a good deal of stone, and some slate. This wine used to be but on a par with Hocheim and Rudesheim; but the place having come to the Bishop of Fulda, he improved its culture so as to render it stronger; and since the year 1775, it sells at double the price of the other two. It has none of the acid of the Hocheim and other Rhenish wines. There are about sixty tons made in a good year, which sell, as soon as of a drinkable age, at one thousand franks each. The tun here contains seven and a-half aumes of one hundred and seventy bottles each. Rudesheim is a village of about eighteen or twenty miles below Mayence. Its fine wines are made on the hills about a mile below the village, which look to the south, and on the middle and lower parts of them. They are terraced. The soil is gray, about one-half of slate and rotten stone, the other half of barren clay, excessively steep. Just behind the village also is a little spot, called Hinder House, belonging to the Counts of Sicken and Oschstein, whereon each makes about a ton of wine of the very first quality. This spot extends from the bottom to the top of the hill. The vignerons of Rudesheim dung their wines about once in five or six years, putting a one-horse tumbrel load of dung on every twelve feet square. One thousand plants yield about four aumes in a good year. The best crops are, The Chanoines of Mayence, who make . . . . 15 pieces of 7 1/2 aumes. Le Comte de Sicken . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 " " Le Comte d'Oschstein . . . . . . . . . . . 9 " " L'Electeur de Mayence . . . . . . . . . . 6 " " Le Comte de Meternisch . . . . . . . . . . 6 " " Monsieur de Boze . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 " " M. Ackerman, baliff et aubergiste des 3 couronnes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 " " M. Ackerman le fils, aubergiste a la couronne 5 " " M. Lynn, aubergiste de l'ange . . . . . . 5 " " Baron de Wetzel . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 " " Convent de Mariahousen, des religieuses Benedictines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 " " M. Johan Yung . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 " " M. de Rieden . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 " " --- 92 These wines begin to be drinkable at about five years old. The proprietors sell them old or young, according to the prices offered, and according to their own want of money. There is always a little difference between different casks, and therefore when you choose and buy a single cask, you pay three, four, five or six hundred florins for it. They are not at all acid, and to my taste much preferable to Hocheim, though but of the same price. Hocheim is a village about three miles above Mayence, on the Maine, where it empties into the Rhine. The spot whereon the good wine is made is the hill side from the church down to the plain, a gentle slope of about a quarter of a mile wide, and extending half a mile towards Mayence. It is of south-western aspect, very poor, sometimes gray, sometimes mulatto, with a moderate mixture of small broken stone. The wines are planted three feet apart, and stuck with sticks about six feet high. The wine, too, is cut at that height. They are dunged once in three or four years. One thousand plants yield from one to two aumes a year: they begin to yield a little at three years old, and continue to one hundred years, unless sooner killed by a cold winter. Dick, keeper of the Rothen-house tavern at Frankfort, a great wine merchant, who has between three and four hundred tons of wine in his cellars, tells me that Hocheim of the year 1783, sold, as soon as it was made, at ninety florins the aume, Rudesheim of the same year, as soon as made, at one hundred and fifteen florins, and Markebronn seventy florins. But a peasant of Hocheim tells me that the best crops of Hocheim in the good years, when sold new, sell but for about thirty-two or thirty-three florins the aume; but that it is only the poorer proprietors who sell new. The fine crops are, Count Ingleheim about . . . 10 tuns.} Baron d'Alberg . . . . . . 8 " } All of these keep till about Count Schimbon . . . . . . 14 " } fifteen years old, before they The Chanoines of Mayence. . 18 " } sell, unless they are offered Counsellor Schik de Vetsler 15 " } a very good price sooner. Convent of Jacobsberg . . . 8 " } The Chanoine of Fechbach . 10 " } The Carmelites of Frankfort.. 8 " } Who only sell by the bottle in their own tavern in Frankfort. The Bailiff of Hocheim.......11 " } Who sells at three or four years old. Zimmerman, a bourgeois....... 4 " } These being poor, sell new. Feldman, a carpenter......... 2 " } Markebronn (bronn signifies a spring, and is probably of affinity with the Scotch word, burn) is a little canton in the same range of hills, adjoining to the village of Hagenheim, about three miles above Johansberg, subject to the elector of Mayence. It is a sloping hill side of southern aspect, mulatto, poor, and mixed with some stone. This yields wine of the second quality. April 12th. _Mayence. Oppenheim. Dorms. Manheim._ On the road between Mayence and Oppenheim are three cantons, which are also esteemed as yielding wines of the second quality. These are Laudenheim, Bodenheim, and Nierstein. Laudenheim is a village about four or five miles from Mayence. Its wines are made on a steep hill side, the soil of which is gray, poor and mixed with some stone. The river there happens to make a short turn to the south-west, so as to present its hills to the south-east. Bodenheim is a village nine miles, and Nierstein another about ten or eleven miles from Mayence. Here, too, the river is north-east and south-west, so as to give the hills between these villages a south-east aspect; and at Thierstein, a valley making off, brings the face of the hill round to the south. The hills between these villages are almost perpendicular, of a vermilion red, very poor, and having as much rotten stone as earth. It is to be observed that these are the only cantons on the south side of the river which yield good wine, the hills on this side being generally exposed to the cold winds, and turned from the sun. The annexed bill of prices current, will give an idea of the estimation of these wines respectively. With respect to the grapes in this country, there are three kinds in use for making white wine, (for I take no notice of the red wines, as being absolutely worthless.) 1. The Klemperien, of which the inferior qualities of Rhenish wines are made, and is cultivated because of its hardness. The wines of this grape descend as low as one hundred florins the tun of eight aumes. 2. The Rhysslin grape, which grows only from Hocheim down to Rudesheim. This is small and delicate, and therefore succeeds only in this chosen spot. Even at Rudesheim it yields a fine wine only in the little spot called Hinder House, before mentioned; the mass of good wines made at Rudesheim, below the village, being of the third kind of grape, which is called the Orleans grape. To Oppenheim the plains of the Rhine and Maine are united. From that place we see the commencement of the Berg-strasse, or mountains which separate at first the plains of the Rhine and Maine, then cross the Neckar at Heidelberg, and from thence forms the separation between the plains of the Neckar and Rhine, leaving those of the Rhine about ten or twelve miles wide. These plains are sometimes black, sometimes mulatto, always rich. They are in corn, potatoes, and some willow. On the other side again, that is, on the west side, the hills keep at first close to the river. They are about one hundred and fifty, or two hundred feet high, sloping, red, good, and mostly in vines. Above Oppenheim, they begin to go off till they join the mountains of Lorraine and Alsace, which separate the waters of the Moselle and Rhine, leaving to the whole valley of the Rhine about twenty or twenty-five miles breadth. About Worms these plains are sandy, poor, and often covered only with small pine. April 13th. _Manheim._ There is a bridge over the Rhine here, supported on thirty-nine boats, and one over the Neckar on eleven boats. The bridge over the Rhine is twenty-one and a half feet wide from rail to rail. The boats are four feet deep, fifty-two feet long, and nine feet eight inches broad. The space between boat and boat is eighteen feet ten inches. From these data the length of the bridge should be 9ft. 8in. + 18ft. 10in. x 40 = 1140 feet. In order to let vessels pass through, two boats well framed together, with their flooring, are made to fall down stream together. Here, too, they make good ham. It is fattened on round potatoes and Indian corn. The farmers smoke what is for their own use in their chimneys. When it is made for sale, and in greater quantities than the chimney will hold, they make the smoke of the chimney pass into an adjoining loft, or apartment, from which it has no issue; and here they hang their hams. An economical curtain bedstead. (Illustration omitted) The bedstead is seven feet by four feet two inches. From each leg there goes up an iron rod three-eighths of an inch in diameter. Those from the legs at the foot of the bed meeting at top as in the margin, and those from the head meeting in like manner, so that the two at the foot form one point, and the two at the head another. On these points lays an oval iron rod, whose long diameter is five feet, and short one three feet one inch. There is a hole through this rod at each end, by which it goes on firm on the point of the upright rods. Then a nut screws it down firmly. Ten breadths of stuff two feet ten inches wide, and eight feet six inches long, form the curtains. There is no top nor vallons. The rings are fastened within two and a half or three inches of the top on the inside, which two and a half or three inches stand up, and are an ornament somewhat like a ruffle. I have observed all along the Rhine that they make the oxen draw by the horns. A pair of very handsome chariot horses, large, bay, and seven years old, sell for fifty louis. One pound of beef sells for eight kreitzers, (_i. e._ eight sixtieths of a florin;) one pound of mutton or veal, six kreitzers; one pound of pork, seven and a half kreitzers; one pound of ham, twelve kreitzers; one pound of fine wheat bread, two kreitzers; one pound of butter, twenty kreitzers; one hundred and sixty pounds of wheat, six francs; one hundred and sixty pounds of maize, five francs; one hundred and sixty pounds of potatoes, one franc; one hundred pounds of hay, one franc; a cord of wood (which is 4 4 and 6 feet), seven francs; a laborer by the day receives twenty-four kreitzers, and feeds himself. A journee or arpent of land (which is eight by two hundred steps), such as the middling plains of the Rhine, will sell for two hundred francs. There are more soldiers here than other inhabitants, to wit: six thousand soldiers and four thousand males of full age of the citizens, the whole number of whom is reckoned at twenty thousand. April 14th. _Manheim. Dossenheim. Heidelberg. Schwetzingen. Manheim._ The elector placed, in 1768, two males and five females of the Angora goat at Dossenheim, which is at the foot of the Bergstrasse mountains. He sold twenty-five last year, and has now seventy. They are removed into the mountains four leagues beyond Dossenheim. Heidelberg is on the Neckar just where it issues from the Bergstrasse mountains, occupying the first skirt of plain which it forms. The chateau is up the hill a considerable height. The gardens lie above the chateau, climbing up the mountain in terraces. This chateau is the most noble ruin I have ever seen, having been reduced to that state by the French in the time of Louis XIV., 1693. Nothing remains under cover but the chapel. The situation is romantic and pleasing beyond expression. It is on a great scale much like the situation of Petrarch's chateau, at Vaucluse, on a small one. The climate, too, is like that of Italy. The apple, the pear, cherry, peach, apricot, and almond, are all in bloom. There is a station in the garden to which the chateau re-echoes distinctly four syllables. The famous ton of Heidelberg was new built in 1751, and made to contain thirty foudres more than the ancient one. It is said to contain two hundred and thirty-six foudres of one thousand two hundred bottles each. I measured it, and found its length external to be twenty-eight feet ten inches; its diameter at the end twenty feet three inches; the thickness of the staves seven and a half inches; thickness of the hoops seven and a half inches; besides a great deal of external framing. There is no wine in it now. The gardens at Schwetzingen show how much money may be laid out to make an ugly thing. What is called the English quarter, however, relieves the eye from the straight rows of trees, round and square basins, which constitute the great mass of the garden. There are some tolerable morsels of Grecian architecture, and a good ruin. The Aviary, too, is clever. It consists of cells of about eight feet wide, arranged round, and looking into a circular area of about forty or fifty feet diameter. The cells have doors both of wire and glass, and have small shrubs in them. The plains of the Rhine on this side are twelve miles wide, bounded by the Bergstrasse mountains. These appear to be eight hundred or a thousand feet high; the lower part in vines, from which is made what is called the vin de Nichar; the upper in chesnut. There are some cultivated spots however, quite to the top. The plains are generally mulatto, in corn principally; they are planting potatoes in some parts, and leaving others open for maize and tobacco. Many peach and other fruit trees on the lower part of the mountain. The paths on some parts of these mountains are somewhat in the style represented in the margin (illustration omitted). _Manheim. Kaeferthal. Manheim._ Just beyond Kaeferthal is an extensive, sandy waste, planted in pine, in which the elector has about two hundred sangliers, tamed. I saw about fifty; the heavies I am told, would weigh about three hundred pounds. They are fed on round potatoes, and range in the forest of pines. At the village of Kaeferthal is a plantation of rhubarb, begun in 1769 by a private company. It contains twenty arpens or jourries, and its culture costs about four or five hundred francs a year; it sometimes employs forty or fifty laborers at a time. The best age to sell the rhubarb at is the fifth or sixth year, but the sale being dull, they keep it sometimes to the tenth year; they find it best to let it remain in the ground. They sell about two hundred kentals a year at two or three francs a pound, and could sell double that quantity from the ground if they could find a market. The apothecaries of Francfort and of England are the principal buyers. It is in beds, resembling lettice-beds; the plants four, five or six feet apart. When dug, a thread is passed through every piece of root, and it is hung separate in a kind of rack; when dry it is rasped; what comes off is given to the cattle. April 15. _Manheim. Spire. Carlsruhe._ The valley preserves its width, extending on each side of the river about ten or twelve miles, but the soil loses much in its quality, becoming sandy and lean, often barren and overgrown with pine thicket. At Spire is nothing remarkable. Between that and Carlsruhe we pass the Rhine in a common skow with oars, where it is between three and four hundred yards wide. Carlsruhe is the residence of the Margrave of Baden, a sovereign prince. His chateau is built in the midst of a natural forest of several leagues diameter, and of the best trees I have seen in these countries: they are mostly oak, and would be deemed but indifferent in America. A great deal of money has been spent to do more harm than good to the ground -- cutting a number of straight allies through the forest. He has a pheasantry of the gold and silver kind, the latter very tame, but the former excessively shy. A little inclosure of stone, two and a half feet high and thirty feet diameter, in which are two tamed beavers. There is a pond of fifteen feet diameter in the centre, and at each end a little cell for them to retire into, which is stowed with boughs and twigs with leaves on them, which is their principal food. They eat bread also; -- twice a week the water is changed. They cannot get over this wall. Some cerfs of a peculiar kind, spotted like fawns, the horns remarkably long, small and sharp, with few points. I am not sure there were more than two to each main beam, and if I saw distinctly, there came out a separate and subordinate beam from the root of each. Eight angora goats -- beautiful animals -- all white. This town is only an appendage of the chateau, and but a moderate one. It is a league from Durlach, half way between that and the river. I observe they twist the flues of their stoves in any form for ornament merely, without smoking, as thus, _e. g._ (illustration omitted) April 16. _Carlsruhe. Rastadt. Scholhoven. Bischofheim. Kehl. Strasburg._ The valley of the Rhine still preserves its breadth, but varies in quality; sometimes a rich mulatto loom, sometimes a poor sand, covered with small pine. The culture is generally corn. It is to be noted, that through the whole of my route through the Netherlands and the valley of the Rhine, there is a little red clover every here and there, and a great deal of grape cultivated. The seed of this is sold to be made into oil. The grape is now in blossom. No inclosures. The fruit trees are generally blossoming through the whole valley. The high mountains of the Bergstrasse, as also of Alsace, are covered with snow. Within this day or two, the every-day dress of the country women here is black. Rastadt is a seat also of the Margrave of Baden. Scholhoven and Kehl are in his territory, but not Bischofheim. I see no beggars since I entered his government, nor is the traveller obliged to ransom himself every moment by a chausiee gold. The roads are excellent, and made so, I presume, out of the coffers of the prince. From Cleves till I enter the Margravate of Baden, the roads have been strung with beggars -- in Hesse the most, and the road tax very heavy. We pay it cheerfully, however, through the territory of Francfort and thence up the Rhine, because fine gravelled roads are kept up; but through the Prussian, and other parts of the road below Francfort, the roads are only as made by the carriages, there not appearing to have been ever a day's work employed on them. At Strasburgh we pass the Rhine on a wooden bridge. At _Brussels and Antwerp_, the fuel is pit-coal, dug in Brabant. Through all Holland it is turf. From Cleves to Cologne it is pit-coal brought from England. They burn it in open stoves. From thence it is wood, burnt in close stoves, till you get to Strasburg, where the open chimney comes again into use. April 16th, 17th, 18th. _Strasburg._ The vin de paille is made in the neighborhood of Colmar, in Alsace, about ------- from this place. It takes its name from the circumstance of spreading the grapes on straw, where they are preserved till spring, and then made into wine. The little juice then remaining in them makes a rich sweet wine, but the dearest in the world, without being the best by any means. They charge nine florins the bottle for it in the taverns of Strasburg. It is the caprice of wealth alone which continues so losing an operation. This wine is sought because dear; while the better wine of Frontignan is rarely seen at a good table because it is cheap. _Strasburg. Saverne. Phalsbourg._ As far as Saverne the country is in waiving hills and hollows; red, rich enough; mostly in small grain, but some vines; a little stone. From Saverne to Phalsbourg we cross a considerable mountain, which takes an hour to rise it. April 19th. _Phalsbourg. Fenestrange. Moyenvic. Nancy._ Asparagus to-day at Moyenvic. The country is always either mountainous or hilly; red, tolerably good, and in small grain. On the hills about Fenestrange, Moyenvic, and Nancy, are some small vineyards where a bad wine is made. No inclosures. Some good sheep, indifferent cattle, and small horses. The most forest I have seen in France, principally of beech, pretty large. The houses, as in Germany, are of scantling, filled in with wicker and mortar, and covered either with thatch or tiles. The people, too, here as there, are gathered in villages. Oxen plough here with collars and hames. The awkward figure of their mould-board leads one to consider what should be its form. The offices of the mould-board are to receive the sod after the share has cut under it, to raise it gradually, and to reverse it. The fore-end of it then, should be horizontal to enter under the sod, and the hind end perpendicular to throw it over; the intermediate surface changing gradually from the horizontal to the perpendicular. It should be as wide as the furrow, and of a length suited to the construction of the plough. The following would seem a good method of making it: Take a block, whose length, breadth and thickness, is that of your intended mould-board, suppose two and a half feet xxx long and eight inches broad and thick. Draw the lines _a d_ and _c d_, figure 1, with a saw, the toothed edge of which is straight, enter at _a_ and cut on, guiding the hind part of the saw on the line _a b_, and the fore part on the line _a d_, till the saw reaches the points _c_ and _d_, then enter it at _c_ and cut on, guiding it by the lines _c b_ and _c d_ till it reaches the points _b_ and _d_. The quarter, _a b c d_, will then be completely cut out, and the diagonal from _d_ to _b_ laid bare. The piece may now be represented as in figure 2. Then saw in transversely at every two inches till the saw reaches the line _c e_, and the diagonal _b d_, and cut out the pieces with an adze. The upper surface will thus be formed. With a gauge opened to eight inches, and guided by the lines _c e_, scribe the upper edge of the board from _d b_, cut that edge perpendicular to the face of the board, and scribe it of the proper thickness. Then form the underside by the upper, by cutting transversely with the saw and taking out the piece with an adze. As the upper edge of the wing of the share rises a little, the fore end of the board, _b c_, will rise as much from a strict horizontal position, and will throw the hind end, _e d_, exactly as much beyond the perpendicular, so as to promote the reversing of the sod. The women here, as in Germany, do all sorts of work. While one considers them as useful and rational companions, one cannot forget that they are also objects of our pleasures; nor can they ever forget it. While employed in dirt and drudgery, some tag of a ribbon, some ring, or bit of bracelet, earbob or necklace, or something of that kind, will show that the desire of pleasing is never suspended in them. It is an honorable circumstance for man, that the first moment he is at his ease, he allots the internal employments to his female partner, and takes the external on himself. And this circumstance, or its reverse, is a pretty good indication that a people are, or are not at their ease. Among the Indians, this indication fails from a particular cause: every Indian man is a soldier or warrior, and the whole body of warriors constitute a standing army, always employed in war or hunting. To support that army, there remain no laborers but the women. Here, then, is so heavy a military establishment, that the civil part of the nation is reduced to women only. But this is a barbarous perversion of the natural destination of the two sexes. Women are formed by nature for attentions, not for hard labor. A woman never forgets one of the numerous train of little offices which belong to her. A man forgets often. April 20th. _Nancy. Toule. Void. Ligny en Barrois. Bar le Duc. St. Dizier._ Nancy itself is a neat little town, and its environs very agreeable. The valley of the little branch of the Moselle, on which it is, is about a mile wide: the road then crossing the head-waters of the Moselle, the Maes, and the Marne, the country is very hilly, and perhaps a third of it poor and in forests of beech: the other two-thirds from poor up to middling, red, and stony. Almost entirely in corn, now and then only some vines on the hills. The Moselle at Toule is thirty or forty yards wide: the Maese near Void about half that: the Marne at St. Dizier about forty yards. They all make good plains of from a quarter of a mile to a mile wide. The hills of the Maese abound with chalk. The rocks coming down from the tops of the hills, on all the road of this day, at regular intervals like the ribs of an animal, have a very irregular appearance. Considerable flocks of sheep and asses, and, in the approach to St. Dizier, great plantations of apple and cherry trees; here and there a peach tree, all in general bloom. The roads through Lorraine are strung with beggars. April 21st. _St. Dizier. Vitry le Fransais. Chalons sur Marne. Epernay._ The plains of the Marne and Sault uniting, appear boundless to the eye till we approach their confluence at Vitry, where the hills come in on the right; after that the plains are generally about a mile, mulatto, of middling quality, sometimes stony. Sometimes the ground goes off from the river so sloping, that one does not know whether to call it high or low land. The hills are mulatto also, but whitish, occasioned by the quantity of chalk which seems to constitute their universal base. They are poor, and principally in vines. The streams of water are of the color of milk, occasioned by the chalk also. No inclosures, some flocks of sheep; children gathering dung in the roads. Here and there a chateau; but none considerable. April 22d. _Epernay._ The hills abound with chalk. Of this they make lime, not so strong as stone lime, and therefore to be used in greater proportion. They cut the blocks into regular forms also, like stone, and build houses of it. The common earth too, well impregnated with this, is made into mortar, moulded in the form of brick, dried in the sun, and houses built of them which last one hundred or two hundred years. The plains here are a mile wide, red, good, in corn, clover, Luzerne, St. Foin. The hills are in vines, and this being precisely the canton where the most celebrated wines of Champagne are made, details must be entered into. Remember, however, that they will always relate to the white wines, unless where the red are expressly mentioned. The reason is that their red wines, though much esteemed on the spot, are by no means esteemed elsewhere equally with their white; nor do they merit equal esteem. A Topographical sketch of the position of the wine villages, the course of the hills, and consequently the aspect of the vine-yards. _Soil_, meagre, mulatto clay, mixed with small broken stone, and a little hue of chalk. Very dry. _Aspect_, may be better seen by the annexed diagram. The xxx wine of Aij is made from _a_ to _b_, those of Dizy from _b_ to _c_, Auvillij _d_ to _e_, Cumieres _e_ to _f_, Epernay _g_ to _h_, Perij _i_ to _k_. The hills are generally about two hundred and fifty feet high. The good wine is made only in the middle region. The lower region, however, is better than the upper; because this last is exposed to cold winds, and a colder atmosphere. _Culture._ The vines are planted two feet apart. Afterwards they are multiplied (provignes). When a stock puts out two shoots they lay them down, spread them open and cover them with earth, so as to have in the end about a plant for every square foot. For performing this operation they have a hook, of this shape, (illustration omitted) and nine inches long, which, being stuck in the ground, holds down the main stock, while the laborer separates and covers the new shoot. They leave two buds above the ground. When the vine has shot up high enough, they stick it with split sticks of oak, from an inch to an inch and a half square, and four feet long, and tie the vine to its stick with straw. These sticks cost two florins the hundred, and will last forty years. An arpent, one year with another, in the fine vineyards, gives twelve pieces, and in the inferior vineyards twenty-five pieces, of two hundred bottles each. An arpent of the first quality sells for three thousand florins, and there have been instances of seven thousand two hundred florins. The arpent contains one hundred verges, of twenty-two pieds square. The arpent of inferior quality sells at one thousand florins. They plant the vines in a hole about a foot deep, and fill that hole with good mould, to make the plant take. Otherwise it would perish. Afterwards, if ever they put dung, it is very little. During wheat harvest there is a month or six weeks that nothing is done in the vineyard, that is to say, from the 1st of August to the beginning of vintage. The vintage commences early in September, and lasts a month. A day's work of a laborer in the busiest season is twenty sous, and he feeds himself: in the least busy season it is fifteen sous. Corn lands are rented from four florins to twenty-four; but vine lands are never rented. The three fasons (or workings) of an arpent cost fifteen florins. The whole year's expense of an arpent is worth one hundred florins. _Grapes._ -- The bulk of their grapes are purple, which they prefer for making even white wine. They press them very lightly, without treading or permitting them to ferment at all, for about an hour; so that it is the beginning of the running only which makes the bright wine. What follows the beginning is of a straw color, and therefore not placed on a level with the first. The last part of the juice, produced by strong pressure, is red and ordinary. They choose the bunches with as much care, to make wine of the very first quality, as if to eat. Not above one-eighth of the whole grapes will do for this purpose. The white grape, though not so fine for wine as the red, when the red can be produced, and more liable to rot in a moist season, yet grows better if the soil be excessively poor, and therefore in such a soil is preferred, or rather, is used of necessity, because there the red would not grow at all. _Wine._ -- The white wines are either mousseux, sparkling, or non-mousseux, still. The sparkling are little drunk in France, but are almost alone known and drunk in foreign countries. This makes so great a demand, and so certain a one, that it is the dearest by about an eighth, and therefore they endeavor to make all sparkling if they can. This is done by bottling in the spring, from the beginning of March till June. If it succeeds, they lose abundance of bottles, from one-tenth to one-third. This is another cause increasing the price. To make the still wine, they bottle in September. This is only done when they know from some circumstance that the wine will not be sparkling. So if the spring bottling fails to make a sparkling wine, they decant it into other bottles in the fall, and it then makes the very best still wine. In this operation, it loses from one-tenth to one-twentieth by sediment. They let it stand in the bottles in this case forty-eight hours, with only a napkin spread over their mouths, but no cork. The best sparkling wine, decanted in this manner, makes the best still wine, and which will keep much longer than that originally made still by being bottled in September. The sparkling wines lose their briskness the older they are, but they gain in quality with age to a certain length. These wines are in perfection from two to ten years old, and will even be very good to fifteen. 1766 was the best year ever known. 1775 and 1776 next to that. 1783 is the last good year, and that not to be compared with those. These wines stand icing very well. _Aij._ M. Dorsay makes one thousand and one hundred pieces, which sell, as soon as made, at three hundred florins, and in good years four hundred florins, in the cask. I paid in his cellar, to M. Louis, his homme d'affaires, for the remains of the year 1783, three florins ten sous the bottle. Sparkling Champagne, of the same degree of excellence, would have cost four florins, (the piece and demiqueue are the same; the feuillette is one hundred bottles.) M. le Duc makes four hundred to five hundred pieces. M. de Villermont, three hundred pieces. M. Janson, two hundred and fifty pieces. All of the first quality, red and white in equal quantities. _Auvillaij._ The Benedictine monks make one thousand pieces, red and white, but three-fourths red, both of the first quality. The king's table is supplied by them. This enables them to sell at five hundred and fifty florins the piece. Though their white is hardly as good as Dorsay's, their red is the best. L'Abbatiale, belonging to the bishop of the place, makes one thousand to twelve hundred pieces, red and white, three-fourths red, at four hundred to five hundred and fifty florins, because neighbors to the monks. _Cumieres_ is all of the second quality, both red and white, at one hundred and fifty to two hundred florins the piece. _Epernay._ Madame Jermont makes two hundred pieces at three hundred florins. M. Patelaine, one hundred and fifty pieces. M. Mare, two hundred pieces. M. Chertems, sixty pieces. M. Lauchay, fifty pieces. M. Cousin (Aubergiste de l'hotel de Rohan a Epernay), one hundred pieces. M. Pierrot, one hundred pieces. Les Chanoines regulieres d'Epernay, two hundred pieces. Mesdames les Ursulines religieuses, one hundred pieces. M. Gilette, two hundred pieces. All of the first quality; red and white in equal quantities. _Pierrij._ M. Casotte makes five hundred pieces. M. de la Motte, three hundred pieces. M. de Failli, three hundred pieces. I tasted his wine of 1779, one of the good years. It was fine, though not equal to that of M. Dorsay, of 1783. He sells it at two florins ten sous to merchants, and three florins to individuals. Les Seminaristes, one hundred and fifty pieces. M. Hoquart, two hundred pieces. All of the first quality; white and red in equal quantities. At Cramont, also, there are some wines of the first quality made. At Avisi also, and Aucy, Le Meni, Mareuil, Verzis-Verzenni. This last place belongs to the Marquis de Sillery. The wines are carried to Sillery, and there stored, whence they are called Vins de Sillery, though not made at Sillery. All these wines of Epernay and Pierrij sell almost as dear as M. Dorsay's, their quality being nearly the same. There are many small proprietors who might make wine of the first quality, if they would cull their grapes, but they are too poor for this. Therefore, the proprietors before named, whose names are established, buy of the poorer ones the right to cull their vineyards, by which means they increase their quantity, as they find about one-third of the grapes will make wines of the first quality. The lowest-priced wines of all are thirty florins the piece, red or white. They make brandy of the pumice. In very bad years, when their wines become vinegar, they are sold for six florins the piece, and made into brandy. They yield one-tenth brandy. White Champagne is deemed good in proportion as it is silky and still. Many circumstances derange the scale of wines. The proprietor of the best vineyard, in the best year, having bad weather come upon him while he is gathering his grapes, makes a bad wine, while his neighbor, holding a more indifferent vineyard, which happens to be ingathering while the weather is good, makes a better. The M. de Casotte at Pierrij formerly was the first house. His successors, by some imperceptible change of culture, have degraded the quality of their wines. Their cellars are admirably made, being about six, eight or ten feet wide, vaulted, and extending into the ground, in a kind of labyrinth, to a prodigious distance, with an air-hole of two feet diameter every fifty feet. From the top of the vault to the surface of the earth, is from fifteen to thirty feet. I have nowhere seen cellars comparable to these. In packing their bottles, they lay on their side; then cross them at each end, they lay laths, and on these another row of bottles, heads and points; and so on. By this means, they can take out a bottle from the top, or where they will. April 23d. _Epernay. Chateau Thieray. St. Jean. Meaux. Vergalant. Paris._ From Epernay to St. Jean the road leads over hills, which in the beginning are indifferent, but get better towards the last. The plains, wherever seen, are inconsiderable. After passing St. Jean, the hills become good, and the plains increase. The country about Vergalant is pretty. A skirt of a low ridge which runs in on the extensive plains of the Marne and Seine, is very picturesque. The general bloom of fruit trees proves there are more of them than I had imagined from travelling in other seasons, when they are less distinguishable at a distance from the forest trees. _Travelling notes for Mr. Rutledge and Mr. Shippen_ June 3, 1788 _General Observations._ -- On arriving at a town, the first thing is to buy the plan of the town, and the book noting its curiosities. Walk round the ramparts when there are any, go to the top of a steeple to have a view of the town and its environs. When you are doubting whether a thing is worth the trouble of going to see, recollect that you will never again be so near it, that you may repent the not having seen it, but can never repent having seen it. But there is an opposite extreme too, that is, the seeing too much. A judicious selection is to be aimed at, taking care that the indolence of the moment have no influence in the decision. Take care particularly not to let the porters of churches, cabinets, &c., lead you through all the little details of their profession, which will load the memory with trifles, fatigue the attention, and waste that and your time. It is difficult to confine these people to the few objects worth seeing and remembering. They wish for your money, and suppose you give it the more willingly the more they detail to you. When one calls in the taverns for the _vin du pays_, they give what is natural and unadulterated and cheap: when _vin etrangere_ is called for, it only gives a pretext for charging an extravagant price for an unwholsome stuff, very often of their own brewery. The people you will naturally see the most of will be tavern keepers, _valets de place_, and postilions. These are the hackneyed rascals of every country. Of course they must never be considered when we calculate the national character. _Objects of attention for an American._ -- 1. Agriculture. Everything belonging to this art, and whatever has a near relation to it. Useful or agreeable animals which might be transported to America. Species of plants for the farmer's garden, according to the climate of the different States. 2. Mechanical arts, so far as they respect things necessary in America, and inconvenient to be transported thither ready-made, such as forges, stone quarries, boats, bridges, (very especially,) &c., &c. 3. Lighter mechanical arts, and manufactures. Some of these will be worth a superficial view; but circumstances rendering it impossible that America should become a manufacturing country during the time of any man now living, it would be a waste of attention to examine these minutely. 4. Gardens, peculiarly worth the attention of an American, because it is the country of all others where the noblest gardens may be made without expense. We have only to cut out the superabundant plants. 5. Architecture worth great attention. As we double our numbers every twenty years, we must double our houses. Besides, we build of such perishable materials, that one half of our houses must be rebuilt in every space of twenty years, so that in that time, houses are to be built for three-fourths of our inhabitants. It is, then, among the most important arts; and it is desirable to introduce taste into an art which shows so much. 6. Painting. Statuary. Too expensive for the state of wealth among us. It would be useless, therefore, and preposterous, for us to make ourselves connoisseurs in those arts. They are worth seeing, but not studying. 7. Politics of each country, well worth studying so far as respects internal affairs. Examine their influence on the happiness of the people. Take every possible occasion for entering into the houses of the laborers, and especially at the moments of their repast; see what they eat, how they are clothed, whether they are obliged to work too hard; whether the government or their landlord takes from them an unjust proportion of their labor; on what footing stands the property they call their own, their personal liberty, &c., &c. 8. Courts. To be seen as you would see the tower of London or menagerie of Versailles, with their lions, tigers, hyenas, and other beast of prey, standing in the same relation to their fellows. A slight acquaintance with them will suffice to show you that, under the most imposing exterior, they are the weakest and worst part of mankind. Their manners, could you ape them, would not make you beloved in your own country, nor would they improve it could you introduce them there to the exclusion of that honest simplicity now prevailing in America, and worthy of being cherished. _The Anas. 1791 -- 1806_ SELECTIONS _Explanations of the 3. volumes bound in marbled paper_ February 4, 1818 In these 3 vols will be found copies of the official opinions given in writing by me to Genl. Washington, while I was Secretary of State, with sometimes the documents belonging to the case. Some of these are the rough draughts, some press-copies, some fair ones. In the earlier part of my acting in that office I took no other note of the passing transactions: but, after awhile, I saw the importance of doing it, in aid of my memory. Very often therefore I made memorandums on loose scraps of paper, taken out of my pocket in the moment, and laid by to be copied fair at leisure, which however they hardly ever were. These scraps therefore, ragged, rubbed, & scribbled as they were, I had bound with the others by a binder who came into my cabinet, did it under my own eye, and without the opportunity of reading a single paper. At this day, after the lapse of 25 years, or more, from their dates, I have given to the whole a calm revisal, when the passions of the time are past away, and the reasons of the transactions act alone on the judgment. Some of the informations I had recorded are now cut out from the rest, because I have seen that they were incorrect, or doubtful, or merely personal or private, with which we have nothing to do. I should perhaps have thought the rest not worth preserving, but for their testimony against the only history of that period which pretends to have been compiled from authentic and unpublished documents. Could these documents, all, be laid open to the public eye, they might be compared, contrasted, weighed, & the truth fairly sifted out of them, for we are not to suppose that every thing found among Genl. Washington's papers is to be taken as gospel truth. Facts indeed of his own writing & inditing, must be believed by all who knew him; and opinions, which were his own, merit veneration and respect; for few men have lived whose opinions were more unbiassed and correct. Not that it is pretended he never felt bias. His passions were naturally strong; but his reason, generally, stronger. But the materials from his own pen make probably an almost insensible part of the mass of papers which fill his presses. He possessed the love, the veneration, and confidence of all. With him were deposited suspicions & certainties, rumors & realities, facts & falsehoods, by all those who were, or who wished to be thought, in correspondence with him, and by the many Anonymi who were ashamed to put their names to their slanders. From such a Congeries history may be made to wear any hue, with which the passions of the compiler, royalist or republican, may chuse to tinge it. Had Genl. Washington himself written from these materials a history of the period they embrace, it would have been a conspicuous monument of the integrity of his mind, the soundness of his judgment, and its powers of discernment between truth & falsehood; principles & pretensions. But the party feelings of his biographer, to whom after his death the collection was confided, has culled from it a composition as different from what Genl. Washington would have offered, as was the candor of the two characters during the period of the war. The partiality of this pen is displayed in lavishments of praise on certain military characters, who had done nothing military, but who afterwards, & before he wrote, had become heroes in party, altho' not in war; and in his reserve on the merits of others, who rendered signal services indeed, but did not earn his praise by apostatising in peace from the republican principles for which they had fought in war. It shews itself too in the cold indifference with which a struggle for the most animating of human objects is narrated. No act of heroism ever kindles in the mind of this writer a single aspiration in favor of the holy cause which inspired the bosom, & nerved the arm of the patriot warrior. No gloom of events, no lowering of prospects ever excites a fear for the issue of a contest which was to change the condition of man over the civilized globe. The sufferings inflicted on endeavors to vindicate the rights of humanity are related with all the frigid insensibility with which a monk would have contemplated the victims of an auto da fe. Let no man believe that Genl. Washington ever intended that his papers should be used for the suicide of the cause, for which he had lived, and for which there never was a moment in which he would not have died. The abuse of these materials is chiefly however manifested in the history of the period immediately following the establishment of the present constitution; and nearly with that my memorandums begin. Were a reader of this period to form his idea of it from this history alone, he would suppose the republican party (who were in truth endeavoring to keep the government within the line of the Constitution, and prevent it's being monarchised in practice) were a mere set of grumblers, and disorganisers, satisfied with no government, without fixed principles of any, and, like a British parliamentary opposition, gaping after loaves and fishes, and ready to change principles, as well as position, at any time, with their adversaries. But a short review of facts omitted, or uncandidly stated in this history will shew that the contests of that day were contests of principle, between the advocates of republican, and those of kingly government, and that, had not the former made the efforts they did, our government would have been, even at this early day, a very different thing from what the successful issue of those efforts have made it. The alliance between the states under the old articles of confederation, for the purpose of joint defence against the aggression of Great Britan, was found insufficient, as treaties of alliance generally are, to enforce compliance with their mutual stipulations: and these, once fulfilled, that bond was to expire of itself, & each state to become sovereign and independant in all things. Yet it could not but occur to every one that these separate independencies, like the petty States of Greece, would be eternally at war with each other, & would become at length the mere partisans & satellites of the leading powers of Europe. All then must have looked forward to some further bond of union, which would ensure internal peace, and a political system of our own, independant of that of Europe. Whether all should be consolidated into a single government, or each remain independant as to internal matters, and the whole form a single nation as to what was foreign only, and whether that national government should be a monarchy or republic, would of course divide opinions according to the constitutions, the habits, and the circumstances of each individual. Some officers of the army, as it has always been said and believed (and Steuben and Knox have even been named as the leading agents) trained to monarchy by military habits, are understood to have proposed to Genl. Washington to decide this great question by the army before it's disbandment, and to assume himself the crown, on the assurance of their support. The indignation with which he is said to have scouted this parricid proposition, was equally worthy of his virtue and his wisdom. The next effort was (on suggestion of the same individuals, in the moment of their separation) the establishment of an hereditary order, under the name of the Cincinnati, ready prepared, by that distinction, to be engrafted into the future frame of government, & placing Genl. Washington still at their head. The General (* 1) wrote to me on this subject, while I was in Congress at Annapolis, and an extract from my answer is inserted in 5. Marshall's hist. pa. 28. He afterwards called on me at that place, on his way to a meeting of the society, and after a whole evening of consultation he left that place fully determined to use all his endeavors for it's total suppression. But he found it so firmly riveted in the affections of the members that, strengthened as they happened to be by an adventitious occurrence of the moment, he could effect no more than the abolition of it's hereditary principle. He called again on his return, & explained to me fully the opposition which had been made, the effect of the occurrence from France, and the difficulty with which it's duration had been limited to the lives of the present members. Further details will be found among my papers, in his and my letters, and some in the _Encyclop. Method. Dictionnaire d'Econ. politique_, communicated by myself to M. Meusnier, it's author, who had made the establishment of this society the ground, in that work, of a libel on our country. The want of some authority, which should procure justice to the public creditors, and an observance of treaties with foreign nations, produced, some time after, the call of a convention of the States at Annapolis. Altho' at this meeting a difference of opinion was evident on the question of a republican or kingly government, yet, so general thro' the states, was the sentiment in favor of the former, that the friends of the latter confined themselves to a course of obstruction only, and delay, to every thing proposed. They hoped that, nothing being done, and all things going from bad to worse, a kingly government might be usurped, and submitted to by the people, as better than anarchy, & wars internal and external the certain consequences of the present want of a general government. The effect of their manoeuvres, with the defective attendance of deputies from the states, resulted in the measure of calling a more general convention, to be held at Philadelphia. At this the same party exhibited the same practices, and with the same views of preventing a government of concord, which they foresaw would be republican, and of forcing, thro' anarchy, their way to monarchy. But the mass of that convention was too honest, too wise, and too steady to be baffled or misled by their manoeuvres. One of these was, a form of government proposed by Colo. Hamilton, which would have been in fact a compromise between the two parties of royalism & republicanism. According to this, the Executive & one branch of the legislature were to be during good behavior, i. e. for life, and the Governors of the states were to be named by these two permanent organs. This however was rejected, on which Hamilton left the Convention, as desperate, & never returned again until near it's final conclusion. These opinions & efforts, secret or avowed, of the advocates for monarchy, had begotten great jealously thro' the states generally: and this jealousy it was which excited the strong oppositon to the conventional constitution; a jealousy which yielded at last only to a general determination to establish certain amendments as barriers against a government either monarchical or consolidated. In what passed thro' the whole period of these conventions, I have gone on the information of those who were members of them, being absent myself on my mission to France. (* 1) See his lre., Apr. 8, 84. I returned from that mission in the 1st. year of the new government, having landed in Virginia in Dec. 89. & proceeded to N. York in March 90. to enter on the office of Secretary of State. Here certainly I found a state of things which, of all I had ever contemplated, I the least expected. I had left France in the first year of its revolution, in the fervor of natural rights, and zeal for reformation. My conscientious devotion to these rights could not be heightened, but it had been aroused and excited by daily exercise. The President received me cordially, and my Colleagues & the circle of principal citizens, apparently, with welcome. The courtesies of dinner parties given me as a stranger newly arrived among them, placed me at once in their familiar society. But I cannot describe the wonder and mortification with which the table conversations filled me. Politics were the chief topic, and a preference of kingly, over republican, government, was evidently the favorite sentiment. An apostate I could not be; nor yet a hypocrite: and I found myself, for the most part, the only advocate on the republican side of the question, unless, among the guests, there chanced to be some member of that party from the legislative Houses. Hamilton's financial system had then past. It had two objects. 1st as a puzzle, to exclude popular understanding & inquiry. 2dly, as a machine for the corruption of the legislature; for he avowed the opinion that man could be governed by one of two motives only, force or interest: force he observed, in this country, was out of the question; and the interests therefore of the members must be laid hold of, to keep the legislature in unison with the Executive. And with grief and shame it must be acknoleged that his machine was not without effect. That even in this, the birth of our government, some members were found sordid enough to bend their duty to their interests, and to look after personal, rather than public good. It is well known that, during the war, the greatest difficulty we encountered was the want of money or means, to pay our souldiers who fought, or our farmers, manufacturers & merchants who furnished the necessary supplies of food & clothing for them. After the expedient of paper money had exhausted itself, certificates of debt were given to the individual creditors, with assurance of payment, so soon as the U. S. should be able. But the distresses of these people often obliged them to part with these for the half, the fifth, and even a tenth of their value; and Speculators had made a trade of cozening them from the holders, by the most fraudulent practices and persuasions that they would never be paid. In the bill for funding & paying these, Hamilton made no difference between the original holders, & the fraudulent purchasers of this paper. Great & just repugnance arose at putting these two classes of creditors on the same footing, and great exertions were used to pay to the former the full value, and to the latter the price only which he had paid, with interest. But this would have prevented the game which was to be played, & for which the minds of greedy members were already tutored and prepared. When the trial of strength on these several efforts had indicated the form in which the bill would finally pass, this being known within doors sooner than without, and especially than to those who were in distant parts of the Union, the base scramble began. Couriers & relay horses by land, and swift sailing pilot boats by sea, were flying in all directions. Active part[n]ers & agents were associated & employed in every state, town and country neighborhood, and this paper was bought up at 5/ and even as low as 2/ in the pound, before the holder knew that Congress had already provided for it's redemption at par. Immense sums were thus filched from the poor & ignorant, and fortunes accumulated by those who had themselves been poor enough before. Men thus enriched by the dexterity of a leader, would follow of course the chief who was leading them to fortune, and become the zealous instruments of all his enterprises. This game was over, and another was on the carpet at the moment of my arrival; and to this I was most ignorantly & innocently made to hold the candle. This fiscal maneuvre is well known by the name of the Assumption. Independantly of the debts of Congress, the states had, during the war, contracted separate and heavy debts; and Massachusetts particularly in an absurd attempt, absurdly conducted, on the British post of Penobscot: and the more debt Hamilton could rake up, the more plunder for his mercenaries. This money, whether wisely or foolishly spent, was pretended to have been spent for general purposes, and ought therefore to be paid from the general purse. But it was objected that nobody knew what these debts were, what their amount, or what their proofs. No matter; we will guess them to be 20. millions. But of these 20. millions we do not know how much should be reimbursed to one state, nor how much to another. No matter; we will guess. And so another scramble was set on foot among the several states, and some got much, some little, some nothing. But the main object was obtained, the phalanx of the treasury was reinforced by additional recruits. This measure produced the most bitter & angry contests ever known in Congress, before or since the union of the states. I arrived in the midst of it. But a stranger to the ground, a stranger to the actors on it, so long absent as to have lost all familiarity with the subject, and as yet unaware of it's object, I took no concern in it. The great and trying question however was lost in the H. of Representatives. So high were the feuds excited by this subject, that on it's rejection, business was suspended. Congress met and adjourned from day to day without doing any thing, the parties being too much out of temper to do business together. The Eastern members particularly, who, with Smith from South Carolina, were the principal gamblers in these scenes, threatened a secession and dissolution. Hamilton was in despair. As I was going to the President's one day, I met him in the street. He walked me backwards & forwards before the President's door for half an hour. He painted pathetically the temper into which the legislature had been wrought, the disgust of those who were called the Creditor states, the danger of the secession of their members, and the separation of the states. He observed that the members of the administration ought to act in concert, that tho' this question was not of my department, yet a common duty should make it a common concern; that the President was the center on which all administrative questions ultimately rested, and that all of us should rally around him, and support with joint efforts measures approved by him; and that the question having been lost by a small majority only, it was probable that an appeal from me to the judgment and discretion of some of my friends might effect a change in the vote, and the machine of government, now suspended, might be again set into motion. I told him that I was really a stranger to the whole subject; not having yet informed myself of the system of finances adopted, I knew not how far this was a necessary sequence; that undoubtedly if it's rejection endangered a dissolution of our union at this incipient stage, I should deem that the most unfortunate of all consequences, to avert which all partial and temporary evils should be yielded. I proposed to him however to dine with me the next day, and I would invite another friend or two, bring them into conference together, and I thought it impossible that reasonable men, consulting together coolly, could fail, by some mutual sacrifices of opinion, to form a compromise which was to save the union. The discussion took place. I could take no part in it, but an exhortatory one, because I was a stranger to the circumstances which should govern it. But it was finally agreed that, whatever importance had been attached to the rejection of this proposition, the preservation of the union, & and of concord among the states was more important, and that therefore it would be better that the vote of rejection should be rescinded, to effect which some members should change their votes. But it was observed that this pill would be peculiarly bitter to the Southern States, and that some concomitant measure should be adopted to sweeten it a little to them. There had before been propositions to fix the seat of government either at Philadelphia, or at Georgetown on the Potomac; and it was thought that by giving it to Philadelphia for ten years, and to Georgetown permanently afterwards, this might, as an anodyne, calm in some degree the ferment which might be excited by the other measure alone. So two of the Potomac members (White & Lee, but White with a revulsion of stomach almost convulsive) agreed to change their votes, & Hamilton undertook to carry the other point. In doing this the influence he had established over the Eastern members, with the agency of Robert Morris with those of the middle states, effected his side of the engagement, and so the assumption was passed, and 20. millions of stock divided among favored states, and thrown in as pabulum to the stock-jobbing herd. This added to the number of votaries to the treasury and made its Chief the master of every vote in the legislature which might give to the government the direction suited to his political views. I know well, and so must be understood, that nothing like a majority in Congress had yielded to this corruption. Far from it. But a division, not very unequal, had already taken place in the honest part of that body, between the parties styled republican and federal. The latter being monarchists in principle, adhered to Hamilton of course, as their leader in that principle, and this mercenary phalanx added to them ensured him always a majority in both houses: so that the whole action of the legislature was now under the direction of the treasury. Still the machine was not compleat.The effect of the funding system, & of the assumption, would be temporary. It would be lost with the loss of the individual members whom it had enriched, and some engine of influence more permanent must be contrived, while these myrmidons were yet in place to carry it thro' all opposition. This engine was the Bank of the U.S. All that history is known; so I shall say nothing about it. While the government remained at Philadelphia, a selection of members of both houses were constantly kept as Directors, who, on every question interesting to that institution, or to the views of the federal head, voted at the will of that head; and, together with the stockholding members, could always make the federal vote that of the majority. By this combination, legislative expositions were given to the constitution, and all the administrative laws were shaped on the model of England, & so passed. And from this influence we were not relieved until the removal from the precincts of the bank, to Washington. Here then was the real ground of the opposition which was made to the course of administration. It's object was to preserve the legislature pure and independant of the Executive, to restrain the administration to republican forms and principles, and not permit the constitution to be construed into a monarchy, and to be warped in practice into all the principles and pollutions of their favorite English model. Nor was this an opposition to Genl. Washington. He was true to the republican charge confided to him; & has solemnly and repeatedly protested to me, in our private conversations, that he would lose the last drop of his blood in support of it, and he did this the oftener, and with the more earnestness, because he knew my suspicions of Hamilton's designs against it; & wished to quiet them. For he was not aware of the drift, or of the effect of Hamilton's schemes. Unversed in financial projects & calculations, & budgets, his approbation of them was bottomed on his confidence in the man. But Hamilton was not only a monarchist, but for a monarchy bottomed on corruption. In proof of this I will relate an anecdote, for the truth of which I attest the God who made me. Before the President set out on his Southern tour in April 1791. he addressed a letter of the 4th. of that month, from Mt. Vernon to the Secretaries of State, Treasury & War, desiring that, if any serious and important cases should arise during his absence, they would consult & act on them, and he requested that the Vice-president should also be consulted. This was the only occasion on which that officer was ever requested to take part in a Cabinet question. Some occasion for consultation arising, I invited those gentlemen (and the Attorney genl. as well as I remember) to dine with me in order to confer on the subject. After the cloth was removed, and our question agreed & dismissed, conversation began on other matters and, by some circumstance, was led to the British constitution, on which Mr. Adams observed "purge that constitution of it's corruption, and give to it's popular branch equality of representation, and it would be the most perfect constitution ever devised by the wit of man." Hamilton paused and said, "purge it of it's corruption, and give to it's popular branch equality of representation, & it would become an _impracticable_ government: as it stands at present, with all it's supposed defects, it is the most perfect government which ever existed." And this was assuredly the exact line which separated the political creeds of these two gentlemen. The one was for two hereditary branches and an honest elective one: the other for a hereditary king with a house of lords & commons, corrupted to his will, and standing between him and the people. Hamilton was indeed a singular character. Of acute understanding, disinterested, honest, and honorable in all private transactions, amiable in society, and duly valuing virtue in private life, yet so bewitched & perverted by the British example, as to be under thoro' conviction that corruption was essential to the government of a nation. Mr. Adams had originally been a republican. The glare of royalty and nobility, during his mission to England, had made him believe their fascination a necessary ingredient in government, and Shay's rebellion, not sufficiently understood where he then was, seemed to prove that the absence of want and oppression was not a sufficient guarantee of order. His book on the American constitutions having made known his political bias, he was taken up by the monarchical federalists, in his absence, and on his return to the U.S. he was by them made to believe that the general disposition of our citizens was favorable to monarchy. He here wrote his Davila, as a supplement to the former work, and his election to the Presidency confirmed his errors. Innumerable addresses too, artfully and industriously poured in upon him, deceived him into a confidence that he was on the pinnacle of popularity, when the gulph was yawning at his feet which was to swallow up him and his deceivers. For, when Genl. Washington was withdrawn, these energumeni of royalism, kept in check hitherto by the dread of his honesty, his firmness, his patriotism, and the authority of his name now, mounted on the Car of State & free from controul, like Phaeton on that of the sun, drove headlong & wild, looking neither to right nor left, nor regarding anything but the objects they were driving at; until, displaying these fully, the eyes of the nation were opened, and a general disbandment of them from the public councils took place. Mr. Adams, I am sure, has been long since convinced of the treacheries with which he was surrounded during his administration. He has since thoroughly seen that his constituents were devoted to republican government, and whether his judgment is re-settled on it's ancient basis, or not, he is conformed as a good citizen to the will of the majority, and would now, I am persuaded, maintain it's republican structure with the zeal and fidelity belonging to his character. For even an enemy has said "he is always an honest man, & often a great one." But in the fervor of the fury and follies of those who made him their stalking horse, no man who did not witness it, can form an idea of their unbridled madness, and the terrorism with which they surrounded themselves. The horrors of the French revolution, then raging, aided them mainly, and using that as a raw head and bloody bones they were enabled by their stratagems of X. Y. Z. in which this historian was a leading mountebank, their tales of tub-plots, Ocean massacres, bloody buoys, and pulpit lyings, and slanderings, and maniacal ravings of their Gardiners, their Osgoods and Parishes, to spread alarm into all but the firmest breasts. Their Attorney General had the impudence to say to a republican member that deportation must be resorted to, of which, said he, "you republicans have set the example," thus daring to identify us with the murderous Jacobins of France. These transactions, now recollected but as dreams of the night, were then sad realities; and nothing rescued us from their liberticide effect but the unyielding opposition of those firm spirits who sternly maintained their post, in defiance of terror, until their fellow citizens could be aroused to their own danger, and rally, and rescue the standard of the constitution. This has been happily done. Federalism & monarchism have languished from that moment, until their treasonable combinations with the enemies of their country during the late war, their plots of dismembering the Union & their Hartford convention, has consigned them to the tomb of the dead: and I fondly hope we may now truly say "we are all republicans, all federalists," and that the motto of the standard to which our country will forever rally, will be "federal union, and republican government;" and sure I am we may say that we are indebted, for the preservation of this point of ralliance, to that opposition of which so injurious an idea is so artfully insinuated & excited in this history. Much of this relation is notorious to the world, & many intimate proofs of it will be found in these notes. From the moment, where they end, of my retiring from the administration, the federalists got unchecked hold of Genl. Washington. His memory was already sensibly impaired by age, the firm tone of mind for which he had been remarkable, was beginning to relax, it's energy was abated; a listlessness of labor, a desire for tranquillity had crept on him, and a willingness to let others act and even think for him. Like the rest of mankind, he was disgusted with atrocities of the French revolution, and was not sufficiently aware of the difference between the rabble who were used as instruments of their perpetration, and the steady & rational character of the American people, in which he had not sufficient confidence. The opposition too of the republicans to the British treaty, and zealous support of the federalists in that unpopular, but favorite measure of theirs, had made him all their own. Understanding moreover that I disapproved of that treaty, & copiously nourished with falsehoods by a malignant neighbor of mine, who ambitioned to be his correspondent, he had become alienated from myself personally, as from the republican body generally of his fellow citizens; & he wrote the letters to Mr. Adams, and Mr. Carroll, over which, in devotion to his imperishable fame, we must forever weep as monuments of mortal decay. _Conversations with the President_ 1792. Feb. 28. I was to have been with him long enough before 3. o clock (which was the hour & day he received visits) to have opened to him a proposition for doubling the velocity of the post riders, who now travel about 50. miles a day, & might without difficulty go 100. and for taking measures (by way-bills) to know where the delay is, when there is any. I was delayed by business, so as to have scarcely time to give him the outlines. I ran over them rapidly, & observed afterwards that I had hitherto never spoke to him on the subject of the post office, not knowing whether it was considered as a revenue law, or a law for the general accommodation of the citizens; that the law just passed seemed to have removed the doubt, by declaring that the whole profits of the office should be applied to extending the posts & that even the past profits should be refunded by the treasury for the same purpose: that I therefore conceived it was now in the department of the Secretary of State: that I thought it would be advantageous so to declare it for another reason, to wit, that the department of treasury possessed already such an influence as to swallow up the whole Executive powers, and that even the future Presidents (not supported by the weight of character which himself possessed) would not be able to make head against this department. That in urging this measure I had certainly no personal interest, since, if I was supposed to have any appetite for power, yet as my career would certainly be exactly as short as his own, the intervening time was too short to be an object. My real wish was to avail the public of every occasion during the residue of the President's period, to place things on a safe footing. -- He was now called on to attend his company, & he desired me to come and breakfast with him the next morning. Feb. 29. I did so, & after breakfast we retired to his room, & I unfolded my plan for the post-office, and after such an approbation of it as he usually permitted himself on the first presentment of any idea, and desiring me to commit it to writing, he, during that pause of conversation which follows a business closed, said in an affectionate tone, that he had felt much concern at an expression which dropt from me yesterday, & which marked my intention of retiring when he should. That as to himself, many motives obliged him to it. He had through the whole course of the war, and most particularly at the close of it uniformly declared his resolution to retire from public affairs, & never to act in any public office; that he had retired under that firm resolution, that the government however which had been formed being found evidently too inefficacious, and it being supposed that his aid was of some consequence towards bringing the people to consent to one of sufficient efficacy for their own good, he consented to come into the convention, & on the same motive, after much pressing, to take a part in the new government and get it under way. That were he to continue longer, it might give room to say, that having tasted the sweets of office he could not do without them: that he really felt himself growing old, his bodily health less firm, his memory, always bad, becoming worse, and perhaps the other faculties of his mind showing a decay to others of which he was insensible himself, that this apprehension particularly oppressed him, that he found morever his activity lessened, business therefore more irksome, and tranquility & retirement become an irresistible passion. That however he felt himself obliged for these reasons to retire from the government, yet he should consider it as unfortunate if that should bring on the retirement of the great officers of the government, and that this might produce a shock on the public mind of dangerous consequence. I told him that no man had ever had less desire of entering into public offices than myself; that the circumstance of a perilous war, which brought every thing into danger, & called for all the services which every citizen could render, had induced me to undertake the administration of the government of Virginia, that I had both before & after refused repeated appointments of Congress to go abroad in that sort of office, which if I had consulted my own gratification, would always have been the most agreeable to me, that at the end of two years, I resigned the government of Virginia, & retired with a firm resolution never more to appear in public life, that a domestic loss however happened, and made me fancy that absence, & a change of scene for a time might be expedient for me, that I therefore accepted a foreign appointment limited to two years, that at the close of that, Dr. Franklin having left France, I was appointed to supply his place, which I had accepted, & tho' I continued in it three or four years, it was under the constant idea of remaining only a year or two longer; that the revolution in France coming on, I had so interested myself in the event of that, that when obliged to bring my family home, I had still an idea of returning & awaiting the close of that, to fix the aera of my final retirement; that on my arrival here I found he had appointed me to my present office, that he knew I had not come into it without some reluctance, that it was on my part a sacrifice of inclination to the opinion that I might be more serviceable here than in France, & with a firm resolution in my mind to indulge my constant wish for retirement at no very distant day: that when therefore I received his letter written from Mount Vernon, on his way to Carolina & Georgia, (Apr. 1. 1791) and discovered from an expression in that that he meant to retire from the government ere long, & as to the precise epoch there could be no doubt, my mind was immediately made up to make that the epoch of my own retirement from those labors, of which I was heartily tired. That however I did not believe there was any idea in either of my brethren in the administration of retiring, that on the contrary I had perceived at a late meeting of the trustees of the sinking fund that the Secretary of the Treasury had developed the plan he intended to pursue, & that it embraced years in it's view. -- He said that he considered the Treasury department as a much more limited one going only to the single object of revenue, while that of the Secretary of State embracing nearly all the objects of administration, was much more important, & the retirement of the officer therefore would be more noticed: that tho' the government had set out with a pretty general good will of the public, yet that symptoms of dissatisfaction had lately shewn themselves far beyond what he could have expected, and to what height these might arise in case of too great a change in the administration, could not be foreseen. I told him that in my opinion there was only a single source of these discontents. Tho' they had indeed appeared to spread themselves over the war department also, yet I considered that as an overflowing only from their real channel which would never have taken place if they had not first been generated in another department, to wit that of the treasury. That a system had there been contrived, for deluging the states with paper money instead of gold & silver, for withdrawing our citizens from the pursuits of commerce, manufactures, buildings, & other branches of useful industry, to occupy themselves & their capitals in a species of gambling, destructive of morality, & which had introduced it's poison into the government itself. That it was a fact, as certainly known as that he & I were then conversing, that particular members of the legislature, while those laws were on the carpet, had feathered their nests with paper, had then voted for the laws, and constantly since lent all the energy of their talents, & instrumentality of their offices to the establishment & enlargement of this system: that they had chained it about our necks for a great length of time, & in order to keep the game in their hands had from time to time aided in making such legislative constructions of the constitution as made it a very different thing from what the people thought they had submitted to; that they had now brought forward a proposition, far beyond every one ever yet advanced, & to which the eyes of many were turned as the decision which was to let us know whether we live under a limited or an unlimited government. -- He asked me to what proposition I alluded? I answered to that in the Report on manufactures which, under colour of giving _bounties_ for the encouragement of particular manufactures, meant to establish the doctrine that the power given by the Constitution to collect taxes to provide for the _general welfare_ of the U.S., permitted Congress to take everything under their management which _they_ should deem for the _public welfare_, & which is susceptible of the application of money: consequently that the subsequent enumeration of their powers was not the description to which resort must be had, & did not at all constitute the limits of their authority: that this was a very different question from that of the bank, which was thought an incident to an enumerated power: that therefore this decision was expected with great anxiety: that indeed I hoped the proposition would be rejected, believing there was a majority in both houses against it, and that if it should be, it would be considered as a proof that things were returning into their true channel; & that at any rate I looked forward to the broad representation which would shortly take place for keeping the general constitution on it's true ground, & that this would remove a great deal of the discontent which had shewn itself. The conversation ended with this last topic. It is here stated nearly as much at length as it really was, the expressions preserved where I could recollect them, and their substance always faithfully stated. July 10. 1792. My lre of ---- to the President, directed to him at Mt Vernon, had not found him there, but came to him here. He told me of this & that he would take an occasion of speaking with me on the subject. He did so this day. He began by observing that he had put it off from day to day because the subject was painful, to wit his remaining in office which that letter sollicited. He said that the decln he had made when he quitted his military command of never again acting in public was sincere. That however when he was called on to come forward to set the present govmt in motion, it appeared to him that circumstances were so changed as to justify a change in his resoln: he was made to believe that in 2 years all would be well in motion & he might retire. At the end of two years he found some things still to be done. At the end of the 3d year he thought it was not worth while to disturb the course of things as in one year more his office would expire & he was decided then to retire. Now he was told there would still be danger in it. Certainly if he thought so, he would conquer his longing for retirement. But he feared it would be said his former professions of retirement had been mere affectation, & that he was like other men, when once in office he could not quit it. He was sensible too of a decay of his hearing perhaps his other faculties might fall off & he not be sensible of it. That with respect to the existing causes of uneasiness, he thought there were suspicions against a particular party which had been carried a great deal too far, there might be _desires_, but he did not believe there were _designs_ to change the form of govmt into a monarchy. That there might be a few who wished it in the higher walks of life, particularly in the great cities but that the main body of the people in the Eastern states were as steadily for republicanism as in the Southern. That the pieces lately published, & particularly in Freneau's paper seemed to have in view the exciting opposition to the govmt. That this had taken place in Pennsylve as to the excise law, accdg to informn he had recd from Genl Hand that they tended to produce a separation of the Union, the most dreadful of all calamities, and that whatever tended to produce anarchy, tended of course to produce a resort to monarchical government. He considered those papers as attacking him directly, for he must be a fool indeed to swallow the little sugar plumbs here & there thrown out to him. That in condemning the admn of the govmt they condemned him, for if they thought there were measures pursued contrary to his sentiment, they must conceive him too careless to attend to them or too stupid to understand them. That tho indeed he had signed many acts which he did not approve in all their parts, yet he had never put his name to one which he did not think on the whole was eligible. That as to the bank which had been an act of so much complaint, until there was some infallible criterion of reason, a difference of opinion must be tolerated. He did not believe the discontents extended far from the seat of govmt. He had seen & spoken with many people in Maryld & Virginia in his late journey. He found the people contented & happy. He wished however to be better informed on this head. If the discontent were more extensive than he supposed, it might be that the desire that he should remain in the government was not general. My observns to him tended principally to enforce the topics of my lre. I will not therefore repeat them except where they produced observns from him. I said that the two great complaints were that the national debt was unnecessarily increased, & that it had furnished the means of corrupting both branches of the legislature. That he must know & everybody knew there was a considerable squadron in both whose votes were devoted to the paper & stock-jobbing interest, that the names of a weighty number were known & several others suspected on good grounds. That on examining the votes of these men they would be found uniformly for every treasury measure, & that as most of these measures had been carried by small majorities they were carried by these very votes. That therefore it was a cause of just uneasiness when we saw a legislature legislating for their own interests in opposition to those of the people. He said not a word on the corruption of the legislature, but took up the other point, defended the assumption, & argued that it had not increased the debt, for that all of it was honest debt. He justified the excise law, as one of the best laws which could be past, as nobody would pay the tax who did not chuse to do it. With respect to the increase of the debt by the assumption I observed to him that what was meant & objected to was that it increased the debt of the general govmt and carried it beyond the possibility of paiment. That if the balances had been settled & the debtor states directed to pay their deficiencies to the creditor states, they would have done it easily, and by resources of taxation in their power, and acceptable to the people, by a direct tax in the South, & an excise in the North. Still he said it would be paid by the people. Finding him really approving the treasury system I avoided entering into argument with him on those points. Bladensbg. Oct. 1. This morning at Mt Vernon I had the following conversation with the President. He opened it by expressing his regret at the resolution in which I appeared so fixed in the lre I had written him of retiring from public affairs. He said that he should be extremely sorry that I should do it as long as he was in office, and that he could not see where he should find another character to fill my office. That as yet he was quite undecided whether to retire in March or not. His inclinations led him strongly to do it. Nobody disliked more the ceremonies of his office, and he had not the least taste or gratification in the execution of it's functions. That he was happy at home alone, and that his presence there was now peculiarly called for by the situation of Majr Washington whom he thought irrecoverable & should he get well he would remove into another part of the country which might better agree with him. That he did not believe his presence necessary: that there were other characters who would do the business as well or better. Still however if his aid was thought necessary to save the cause to which he had devoted his life principally he would make the sacrifice of a longer continuance. That he therefore reserved himself for future decision, as his declaration would be in time if made a month before the day of election. He had desired Mr. Lear to find out from conversation, without appearing to make the inquiry, whether any other person would be desired by any body. He had informed him he judged from conversations that it was the universal desire he should continue, & the expectation that those who expressed a doubt of his continuance did it in the language of apprehension, and not of desire. But this, says he, is only from the north, it may be very different in the South. I thought this meant as an opening to me to say what was the sentiment in the South from which quarter I came. I told him that as far as I knew there was but one voice there which was for his continuance. That as to myself I had ever preferred the pursuits of private life to those of public, which had nothing in them agreeable to me. I explained to him the circumstances of the war which had first called me into public life, and those following the war which had called me from a retirement on which I had determd. That I had constantly kept my eye on my own home, and could no longer refrain from returning to it. As to himself his presence was important, that he was the only man in the U.S. who possessed the confidce of the whole, that govmt was founded in opinion & confidence, and that the longer he remained, the stronger would become the habits of the people in submitting to the govmt. & in thinking it a thing to be maintained. That there was no other person who would be thought anything more than the head of a party. He then expressed his concern at the difference which he found to subsist between the Sec. of the Treasury & myself, of which he said he had not been aware. He knew indeed that there was a marked difference in our political sentiments, but he had never suspected it had gone so far in producing a personal difference, and he wished he could be the mediator to put an end to it. That he thought it important to preserve the check of my opinions in the administration in order to keep things in their proper channel & prevent them from going too far. That as to the idea of transforming this govt into a monarchy he did not believe there were ten men in the U.S. whose opinions were worth attention who entertained such a thought. I told him there were many more than he imagined. I recalled to his memory a dispute at his own table a little before we left Philada, between Genl. Schuyler on one side & Pinkney & myself on the other, wherein the former maintained the position that hereditary descent was as likely to produce good magistrates as election. I told him that tho' the people were sound, there were a numerous sect who had monarchy in contempln. That the Secy of the Treasury was one of these. That I had heard him say that this constitution was a shilly shally thing of mere milk & water, which could not last, & was only good as a step to something better. That when we reflected that he had endeavored in the convention to make an English constn of it, and when failing in that we saw all his measures tending to bring it to the same thing it was natural for us to be jealous: and particular when we saw that these measures had established corruption in the legislature, where there was a squadron devoted to the nod of the treasury, doing whatever he had directed & ready to do what he should direct. That if the equilibrium of the three great bodies Legislative, Executive, & judiciary could be preserved, if the Legislature could be kept independant, I should never fear the result of such a government but that I could not but be uneasy when I saw that the Executive had swallowed up the legislative branch. He said that as to that interested spirit in the legislature, it was what could not be avoided in any government, unless we were to exclude particular descriptions of men, such as the holders of the funds from all office. I told him there was great difference between the little accidental schemes of self interest which would take place in every body of men & influence their votes, and a regular system for forming a corps of interested persons who should be steadily at the orders of the Treasury. He touched on the merits of the funding system, observed that there was a difference of opinion about it some thinking it very bad, others very good. That experience was the only criterion of right which he knew & this alone would decide which opn was right. That for himself he had seen our affairs desperate & our credit lost, and that this was in a sudden & extraordinary degree raised to the highest pitch. I told him all that was ever necessary to establish our credit, was an efficient govmt & an honest one declaring it would sacredly pay our debts, laying taxes for this purpose & applying them to it. I avoided going further into the subject. He finished by another exhortation to me not to decide too positively on retirement, & here we were called to breakfast. Feb. 7. 1793. I waited on the President with letters & papers from Lisbon. After going through these I told him that I had for some time suspended speaking with him on the subject of my going out of office because I had understood that the bill for intercourse with foreign nations was likely to be rejected by the Senate in which case the remaining business of the department would be too inconsiderable to make it worth while to keep it up. But that the bill being now passed I was freed from the considerations of propriety which had embarrassed me. That &c. (nearly in the words of a letter to Mr. T. M. Randolph of a few days ago) and that I should be willing, if he had taken no arrangemts. to the contrary to continue somewhat longer, how long I could not say, perhaps till summer, perhaps autumn. He said so far from taking arrangements on the subject, he had never mentioned to any mortal the design of retiring which I had expressed to him, till yesterday having heard that I had given up my house & that it was rented by another, thereupon he mentd. it to Mr. E. Randolph & asked him, as he knew my retirement had been talked of, whether he had heard any persons suggested in conversations to succeed me. He expressed his satisfn at my change of purpose, & his apprehensions that my retirement would be a new source of uneasiness to the public. He said Govr. Lee had that day informed of the genl. discontent prevailing in Virga of which he never had had any conception, much less sound informn: That it appeared to him very alarming. He proceeded to express his earnest wish that Hamilton & myself could coalesce in the measures of the govmt, and urged here the general reasons for it which he had done to me on two former conversns. He said he had proposed the same thing to Ham. who expresd his readiness, and he thought our coalition would secure the general acquiescence of the public. I told him my concurrence was of much less importce than he seemed to imagine; that I kept myself aloof from all cabal & correspondence on the subject of the govmt & saw & spoke with as few as I could. That as to a coalition with Mr. Hamilton, if by that was meant that either was to sacrifice his general system to the other, it was impossible. We had both no doubt formed our conclusions after the most mature consideration and principles conscientiously adopted could not be given up on either side. My wish was to see both houses of Congr. cleansed of all persons interested in the bank or public stocks; & that a pure legislature being given us, I should always be ready to acquiesce under their determns even if contrary to my own opns, for that I subscribe to the principle that the will of the majority honestly expressed should give law. I confirmed him in the fact of the great discontents to the South, that they were grounded on seeing that their judgmts & interests were sacrificed to those of the Eastern states on every occn. & their belief that it was the effect of a corrupt squadron of voters in Congress at the command of the Treasury, & they see that if the votes of those members who had an interest distinct from & contrary to the general interest of their constts had been withdrawn, as in decency & honesty they should have been, the laws would have been the reverse of what they are in all the great questions. I instanced the new assumption carried in the H. of Repr. by the Speaker's votes. On this subject he made no reply. He explained his remaing. in office to have been the effect of strong solicitations after he returned here declaring that he had never mentd. his purpose of going out but to the heads of depnts & Mr. Madison; he expressed the extreme wretchedness of his existence while in office, and went lengthily into the late attacks on him for levees &c -- and explained to me how he had been led into them by the persons he consulted at New York, and that if he could but know what the sense of the public was, he would most cheerfully conform to it. Aug 6. 1793. The President calls on me at my house in the country, and introduces my letter of July 31. announcing that I should resign at the close of the next month. He again expressed his repentance at not having resigned himself, and how much it was increased by seeing that he was to be deserted by those on whose aid he had counted: that he did not know where he should look to find characters to fill up the offices, that mere talents did not suffice for the departmt of state, but it required a person conversant in foreign affairs, perhaps acquainted with foreign courts, that without this the best talents would be awkward & at a loss. He told me that Colo. Hamilton had 3. or 4. weeks ago written to him, informg him that private as well as public reasons had brought him to the determination to retire, & that he should do it towards the close of the next session. He said he had often before intimated dispositions to resign, but never as decisively before: that he supposed he had fixed on the latter part of next session to give an opportunity to Congress to examine into his conduct; that our going out at times so different increased his difficulty, for if he had both places to fill at one he might consult both the particular talents & geographical situation of our successors. He expressed great apprehensions at the fermentation which seemed to be working in the mind of the public, that many descriptions of persons, actuated by different causes appeared to be uniting, what it would end in he knew not, a new Congress was to assemble, more numerous, perhaps of a different spirit; the first expressions of their sentiments would be important: if I would only stay to the end of that it would relieve him considerably. I expressed to him my excessive repugnance to public life, the particular uneasiness of my situation in this place where the laws of society oblige me always to move exactly in the circle which I know to bear me peculiar hatred, that is to say the wealthy aristocrats, the merchants connected closely with England, the new created paper fortunes; that thus surrounded, my words were caught, multiplied, misconstrued, & even fabricated & spread abroad to my injury, that he saw also that there was such an opposition of views between myself & another part of the admn as to render it peculiarly unpleasing, and to destroy the necessary harmony. Without knowg the views of what is called the Republican party here, or havg any communication with them, I could undertake to assure him from my intimacy with that party in the late Congress, that there was not a view in the Republican party as spread over the U S. which went to the frame of the government, that I believed the next Congress would attempt nothing material but to render their own body independant, that that party were firm in their dispositions to support the government: that the manoeuvres of Mr. Genet might produce some little embarrassment, but that he would be abandoned by the Republicans the moment they knew the nature of his conduct, and on the whole no crisis existed which threatened anything. He said he believed the views of the Republican party were perfectly pure, but when men put a machine into motion it is impossible for them to stop it exactly where they would chuse or to say where it will stop. That the constn we have is an excellent one if we can keep it where it is, that it was indeed supposed there was a party disposed to change it into a monarchical form, but that he could conscientiously declare there was not a man in the U S. who would set his face more decidedly against it than himself. Here I interrupted him by saying "no rational man in the U S. suspects you of any other disposn, but there does not pass a week in which we cannot prove declns dropping from the monarchical party that our governmt is good for nothing, it is a milk & water thing which cannot support itself, we must knock it down & set up something of more energy." -- He said if that was the case he thought it a proof of their insanity, for that the republican spirit of the Union was so manifest and so solid that it was astonishg how any one could expect to move them. He returned to the difficulty of naming my successor, he said Mr. Madison would be his first choice, but that he had always expressed to him such a decision against public office that he could not expect he would undertake it. Mr. Jay would prefer his present office. He sd that Mr. Jay had a great opinion of the talents of Mr. King, that there was also Mr. Smith of S. Carola: E. Rutledge &c. but he observed that name whom he would some objections would be made, some would be called speculators, some one thing, some another, and he asked me to mention any characters occurrg to me. I asked him if Govr. Johnson of Maryld. had occurred to him? He said he had, that he was a man of great good sense, an honest man, & he believed clear of speculations, but this says he is an instance of what I was observing, with all these qualifications Govr. Johnson, from a want of familiarity with foreign affairs, would be in them like a fish out of water, everything would be new to him, & he awkward in everything. I confessed to him that I had considered Johnson rather as fit for the Treasury department. Yes, says he, for that he would be the fittest appointment that could be made; he is a man acquainted with figures, & having as good a knowledge of the resources of this country as any man. I asked him if Chancr. Livingston had occurred to him? He said yes, but he was from N. York, & to appoint him while Hamilton was in & before it should be known he was going out, would excite a newspaper conflagration, as the ultimate arrangement would not be known. He said McLurg had occurred to him as a man of first rate abilities, but it is said that he is a speculator. He asked me what sort of a man Wolcott was. I told him I knew nothing of him myself; I had heard him characterized as a cunning man. I asked him whether some person could not take my office par interim, till he should make an apptment? as Mr. Randolph for instance. Yes, says he, but there you would raise the expectation of keeping it, and I do not know that he is fit for it nor what is thought of Mr. Randolph. I avoided noticing the last observation, & he put the question to me directly. I then told him that I went into society so little as to be unable to answer it: I knew that the embarrassments in his private affairs had obliged him to use expedts which had injured him with the merchts & shop-keepers & affected his character of independance; that these embarrassments were serious, & not likely to cease soon. He said if I would only stay in till the end of another quarter (the last of Dec.) it would get us through the difficulties of this year, and he was satisfied that the affairs of Europe would be settled with this campaign; for that either France would be overwhelmed by it, or the confederacy would give up the contest. By that time too Congress will have manifested it's character & view. I told him that I had set my private affairs in motion in a line which had powerfully called for my presence the last spring, & that they had suffered immensely from my not going home; that I had now calculated them to my return in the fall, and to fail in going then would be the loss of another year, & prejudicial beyond measure. I asked him whether he could not name Govr. Johnson to my office, under an express arrangement that at the close of the session he should take that of the treasury. He said that men never chose to descend: that being once in a higher department he would not like to go into a lower one (* 2). And he concluded by desiring that I would take 2. or 3. days to consider whether I could not stay in till the end of another quarter, for that like a man going to the gallows, he was willing to put it off as long as he could: but if I persisted, he must then look about him & make up his mind to do the best he could: & so he took leave. He asked me whether I could not arrange my affairs by going home. I told him I did not think the public business would admit of it; that there was never a day now in which the absence of the Secretary of state would not be inconvenient to the public. (* 2) He asked me whether I could not arrange my affairs by going home. I told him I did not think the public business would admit of it; that there was never a day now in which the absence of the Secretary of state would not be inconvenient to the public. _"Liberty warring on herself"_ Aug. 20. 1793. We met at the President's to examine by paragraphs the draught of a letter I had prepared to Gouverneur Morris on the conduct of Mr. Genet. There was no difference of opinion on any part of it, except on this expression. "An attempt to embroil both, to add still another nation to the enemies of his country, & to draw on both a reproach, which it is hoped will never stain the history of either, that of _liberty warring on herself._" H. moved to strike out these words "that of liberty warring on herself." He urged generally that it would give offence to the combined powers, that it amounted to a declaration that they were warring on liberty, that we were not called on to declare that the cause of France was that of liberty, that he had at first been with them with all his heart, but that he had long since left them, and was not for encouraging the idea here that the cause of France was the cause of liberty in general, or could have either connection or influence in our affairs. Knox accordg to custom jumped plump into all his opinions. The Pr. with a good deal of positiveness declared in favor of the expression, that he considered the pursuit of France to be that of liberty, however they might sometimes fail of the best means of obtaining it, that he had never at any time entertained a doubt of their ultimate success, if they hung well together, & that as to their dissensions there were such contradictory accts. given that no one could tell what to believe. I observed that it had been supposed among us all along that the present letter might become public; that we had therefore 3. parties to attend to, -- 1. France, 2. her enemies, 3. the people of the U S. That as to the enemies of France it ought not to offend them, because the passage objected to only spoke of an attempt to make the U S. a _free nation_, war on France, a _free nation_, which would be liberty warring on herself, and therefore a true fact. That as to France, we were taking so harsh a measure (desiring her to recall her minister) that a precedent for it could scarcely be found, that we knew that minister would represent to his government that our Executive was hostile to liberty, leaning to monarchy & would endeavor to parry the charges on himself, by rendering suspicious the source from which they flowed. That therefore it was essential to satisfy France not only of our friendship to her, but our attachment to the general cause of liberty, & to hers in particular. That as to the people of the U S. we knew there were suspicions abroad that the Executive in some of it's parts was tainted with a hankering after monarchy, an indisposition towards liberty & towards the French cause; & that it was important by an explicit declaration to remove these suspicions & restore the confidence of the people in their govmt. R. opposed the passage on nearly the same ground with H. He added that he thought it had been agreed that this correspondence should contain no expressions which could give offence to either party. I replied that it had been my opinion in the beginng of the correspondence that while we were censuring the conduct of the French minister, we should make the most cordial declarations of friendship to them: that in the first letter or two of the correspondence I had inserted expressions of that kind, but that himself & the other two gentlemen had struck them out; that I thereupon conformed to their opinions in my subseqt. letters, and had carefully avoided the insertion of a single term of friendship to the French nation, and the letters were as dry & husky as if written between the generals of two enemy nations. That on the present occasion how ever it had been agreed that such expressions ought to be inserted in the letter now under considn, & I had accordly charged it pretty well with them. That I had further thought it essential to satisfy the French & our own citizens of the light in which we viewed their cause, and of our fellow feeling for the general cause of liberty, and had ventured only four words on the subject, that there was not from beginning to end of the letter one other expression or word in favor of liberty, & I should think it singular at least if the single passage of that character should be struck out. -- The President again spoke. He came into the idea that attention was due to the two parties who had been mentd. France & the U S. That as to the former, thinking it certain their affairs would issue in a government of some sort, of considerable freedom, it was the only nation with whom our relations could be counted on: that as to the U S. there could be no doubt of their universal attachmt to the cause of France, and of the solidity of their republicanism. He declared his strong attachment to the expression, but finally left it to us to accommodate. It was struck out, of course, and the expressions of affection in the context were a good deal taken down. _Conversations with Aaron Burr_ Jan. 26. 1804. Col. Burr the V. P. calls on me in the evening, having previously asked an opportunity of conversing with me. He began by recapitulating summarily that he had come to N. Y. a stranger some years ago, that he found the country in possn of two rich families, (the Livingstons & Clintons) that his pursuits were not political & he meddled not. When the crisis, however of 1800 came on they found their influence worn out, & solicited his aid with the people. He lent it without any views of promotion. That his being named as a candidate for V. P. was unexpected by him. He acceded to it with a view to promote my fame & advancement and from a desire to be with me, whose company and conversation had always been fascinating to him. That since those great families had become hostile to him, and had excited the calumnies which I had seen published. That in this Hamilton had joined and had even written some of the pieces against him. That his attachment to me had been sincere and was still unchanged, altho many little stories had been carried to him, & he supposed to me also, which he despised, but that attachments must be reciprocal or cease to exist, and therefore he asked if any change had taken place in mine towards him; that he had chosen to have this conversn with myself directly & not through any intermediate agent. He reminded me of a letter written to him about the time of counting the votes (say Feb. 1801) mentioning that his election had left a chasm in my arrangements, that I had lost him from my list in the admn. &c. He observed he believed it would be for the interest of the republican cause for him to retire; that a disadvantageous schism would otherwise take place; but that were he to retire, it would be said he shrunk from the public sentence, which he never would do; that his enemies were using my name to destroy him, and something was necessary from me to prevent and deprive them of that weapon, some mark of favor from me, which would declare to the world that he retired with my confidence. I answered by recapitulating to him what had been my conduct previous to the election of 1800. That I never had interfered directly or indirectly with my friends or any others, to influence the election either for him or myself; that I considered it as my duty to be merely passive, except that, in Virginia I had taken some measures to procure for him the unanimous vote of that state, because I thought any failure there might be imputed to me. That in the election now coming on, I was observing the same conduct, held no councils with anybody respecting it, nor suffered any one to speak to me on the subject, believing it my duty to leave myself to the free discussion of the public; that I do not at this moment know, nor have ever heard who were to be proposed as candidates for the public choice, except so far as could be gathered from the newspapers. That as to the attack excited against him in the newspapers, I had noticed it but as the passing wind; that I had seen complaints that Cheetham, employed in publishing the laws, should be permitted to eat the public bread & abuse its second officer: that as to this, the publishers of the laws were appd by the Secy. of the state witht. any reference to me; that to make the notice general, it was often given to one republican & one federal printer of the same place, that these federal printers did not in the least intermit their abuse of me, tho' receiving emoluments from the govmts and that I have never thot it proper to interfere for myself, & consequently not in the case _of_ the Vice president. That as to the letter he referred to, I remembered it, and believed he had only mistaken the date at which it was written; that I thought it must have been on the first notice of the event of the election of S. Carolina; and that I had taken that occasion to mention to him that I had intended to have proposed to him one of the great offices, if he had not been elected, but that his election in giving him a higher station had deprived me of his aid in the administration. The letter alluded to was in fact mine to him of Dec. 15. 1800. I now went on to explain to him verbally what I meant by saying I had lost him from my list. That in Genl. Washington's time it had been signified to him that Mr. Adams, the V. President, would be glad of a foreign embassy; that Genl. Washington mentd. it to me, expressed his doubts whether Mr. Adams was a fit character for such an office, & his still greater doubts, indeed his conviction that it would not be justifiable to send away the person who, in case of his death, was provided by the constn to take his place; that it would moreover appear indecent for him to be disposing of the public trusts in apparently buying off a competitor for the public favor. I concurred with him in the opinion, and, if I recollect rightly, Hamilton, Knox, & Randolph were consulted & gave the same opinions. That when Mr. Adams came to the admn, in his first interview with me he mentioned the necessity of a mission to France, and how desirable it would have been to him if he could have got me to undertake it; but that he conceived it would be wrong in him to send me away, and assigned the same reasons Genl Washington had done; and therefore he should appoint Mr. Madison &c. That I had myself contemplated his (Colo. Burr's) appointment to one of the great offices; in case he was not elected V. P. but that as soon as that election was known, I saw it could not be done for the good reasons which had led Genl W. & Mr. A. to the same conclusion, and therefore in my first letter to Colo. Burr after the issue was known, I had mentioned to him that a chasm in my arrangements had been produced by this event. I was thus particular in rectifying the date of this letter, because it gave me an opportunity of explaining the grounds on which it was written which were indirectly an answer to his present hints. He left the matter with me for consideration & the conversation was turned to indifferent subjects. I should here notice that Colo. Burr must have thot that I could swallow strong things in my own favor, when he founded his acquiescence in the nominn as V. P. to his desire of promoting my honor, the being with me whose company & conversn had always been fascinating to him &c. I had never seen Colo. Burr till he came as a member of Senate. His conduct very soon inspired me with distrust. I habitually cautioned Mr. Madison against trusting him too much. I saw afterwards that under Genl W.'s and Mr. A.'s admns, whenever a great military appmt or a diplomatic one was to be made, he came post to Philada to shew himself & in fact that he was always at market, if they had wanted him. He was indeed told by Dayton in 1800 he might be Secy. at war; but this bid was too late. His election as V. P. was then foreseen. With these impressions of Colo. Burr there never had been an intimacy between us, and but little association. When I destined him for a high appmt, it was out of respect for the favor he had obtained with the republican party by his extraordinary exertions and successes in the N. Y. election in 1800. 1806. April 15. About a month ago, Colo. Burr called on me & entered into a conversation in which he [mentioned] that a little before my coming into office I had written to him a letter intimating that I had destined him for a high employ, had he not been placed by the people in a different one; that he had signified his willingness to resign as V. President to give aid to the admn in any other place; that he had never asked an office however; he asked aid of nobody, but could walk on his own legs, & take care of himself; that I had always used him with politeness, but nothing more: that he aided in bringing on the present order of things, that he had supported the admn, & that he could do me much harm: he wished however to be on differt. ground: he was now disengaged from all particular business, willing to engage in something, should be in town some days, if I should have anything to propose to him. I observed to him that I had always been sensible that he possessed talents which might be employed greatly to the advantage of the public, & that as to myself I had a confidence that if he were employed he would use his talents for the public good: but that he must be sensible the public had withdrawn their confidence from him & that in a government like ours it was necessary to embrace in its admn as great a mass of public confidce as possible, by employing those who had a character with the public, of their own, & not merely a secondary one through the Exve. He observed that if we believed a few newspapers it might be supposed he had lost the public confidence, but that I knew how easy it was to engage newspapers in anything. I observed that I did not refer to that kind of evidence of his having lost the public confidence, but to the late presidential election, when, tho' in possn of the office of V. P. there was not a single voice heard for his retaining it. That as to any harm he could do me, I knew no cause why he should desire it, but at the same time I feared no injury which any man could do me: that I never had done a single act, or been concerned in any transaction, which I feared to have fully laid open, or which could do me any hurt if truly stated: that I had never done a single thing with a view to my personal interest, or that of any friend, or with any other view than that of the greatest public good: that therefore no threat or fear on that head would ever be a motive of action with me. He has continued in town to this time; dined with me this day week & called on me to take leave 2. or 3. days ago. I did not commit these things to writing at the time but I do it now, because in a suit between him & Cheetham, he has had a deposn of Mr. Bayard taken, which seems to have no relation to the suit nor to any other object but to calumniate me. Bayard pretends to have addressed to me, during the pending of the Presidl election in Feb. 1801, through Genl. Saml. Smith, certain condns on which my election might be obtained, & that Genl. Smith after conversing with me gave answers from me. This is absolutely false. No proposn of any kind was ever made to me on that occasion by Genl. Smith, nor any answer authorized by me. And this fact Genl. Smith affirms at this moment. For some matters connected with this see my notes of Feb. 12. & 14. 1801 made at the moment. But the following transactions took place about the same time, that is to say while the Presidential election was in suspense in Congress, which tho' I did not enter at the time they made such an impression on my mind that they are now as fresh as to their principal circumstances as if they had happened yesterday. Coming out of the Senate chamber one day I found Gouverneur Morris on the steps. He stopped me & began a conversn on the strange & portentous state of things then existing, and went on to observe that the reasons why the minority of states were so opposed to my being elected were that they apprehended that 1. I should turn all federalists out of office. 2. put down the navy. 3. wipe off the public debt & 4. That I need only to declare, or authorize my friends to declare, that I would not take these steps, and instantly the event of the election would be fixed. I told him that I should leave the world to judge of the course I meant to pursue by that which I had pursued hitherto; believing it to be my duty to be passive & silent during the present scene; that I should certainly make no terms, should never go into the office of President by capitulation, nor with my hands tied by any conditions which should hinder me from pursuing the measures which I should deem for the public good. It was understood that Gouverneur Morris had entirely the direction of the vote of Lewis Morris of Vermont, who by coming over to M. Lyon would have added another vote & decided the election. About the same time, I met with Mr. Adams walking in the Pensylve avenue. We conversed on the state of things. I observed to him, that a very dangerous experiment was then in contemplation, to defeat the Presidential election by an act of Congress declaring the right of the Senate to naming a President of the Senate, to devolve on him the govmt during any interregnum: that such a measure would probably produce resistance by force & incalculable consequences which it would be in his power to prevent by negativing such an act. He seemed to think such an act justifiable & observed it was in my power to fix the election by a word in an instant, by declaring I would not turn out the federal officers, not put down the navy, nor sponge the National debt. Finding his mind made up as to the usurpation of the government by the President of the Senate I urged it no further, observed the world must judge as to myself of the future by the past, and turned the conversation to something else. About the same time Dwight Foster of Massachusetts called on me in my room one night & went into a very long conversation on the state of affairs the drift of which was to let me understand that the fears above-mentioned were the only obstacles to my election, to all of which I avoided giving any answer the one way or the other. From this moment he became most bitterly & personally opposed to me, & so has ever continued. I do not recollect that I ever had any particular conversn with Genl. Saml. Smith on this subject. Very possibly I had however, as the general subject & all its parts were the constant themes of conversation in the private _tete a tetes_ with our friends. But certain I am that neither he, nor any other republican ever uttered the most distant hint to me about submitting to any conditions or giving any assurances to anybody; and still more certainly was neither he nor any other person ever authorized by me to say what I would or would not do. See a very exact statement of Bayard's conduct on that occasion in a piece among my notes of 1801. which was published by G. Granger with some alterations in the papers of the day under the signature of .... _Notes on Professor Ebeling's Letter of July 30, 1795_ Professor Ebeling mentioning the persons in America from whom he derives information for his wbe useful for him to know how far he may rely on their authority. President Stiles, an excellent man, of very great learning, but remarkable for his credulity. Dr. Willard. } Dr. Barton } Dr. Ramsay } Mr. Barlow } All these are men of respectable characters worthy of confidence as to any facts they may state, and rendered, by their good sense, good judges of them. Mr. Morse. } Mr. Webster. } Good authorities for whatever relates to the Eastern states, & perhaps as far South as the Delaware. But South of that their information is worse than none at all, except as far as they quote good authorities. They both I believe took a single journey through the Southern parts, merely to acquire the right of being considered as eye-witnesses. But to pass once along a public road thro' a country, & in one direction only, to put up at it's taverns, and get into conversation with the idle, drunken individuals who pass their time lounging in these taverns, is not the way to know a country, it's inhabitants, or manners. To generalize a whole nation from these specimens is not the sort of information which Professor Ebeling would wish to compose _his work_ from. Fenno's Gazette of the U.S. } Webster's Minerva. } Columbian centinel. } To form a just judgment of a country from it's newspapers the character of these papers should be known, in order that proper allowances & corrections may be used. This will require a long explanation, without which, these particular papers would give a foreigner a very false view of American affairs. The people of America, before the revolution-war, being attached to England, had taken up, without examination, the English ideas of the superiority of their constitution over every thing of the kind which ever had been or ever would be tried. The revolution forced them to consider the subject for themselves, and the result was an universal conversion to republicanism. Those who did not come over to this opinion, either left us, & were called Refugees, or staid with us under the name of tories; & some, preferring profit to principle took side with us and floated with the general tide. Our first federal constitution, or confederation as it was called, was framed in the first moments of our separation from England, in the highest point of our jealousies of independance as to her & as to each other. It formed therefore too weak a bond to produce an union of action as to foreign nations. This appeared at once on the establishment of peace, when the pressure of a common enemy which had hooped us together during the war, was taken away. Congress was found to be quite unable to point the action of the several states to a common object. A general desire therefore took place of amending the federal constitution. This was opposed by some of those who wished for monarchy to wit, the Refugees now returned, the old tories, & the timid whigs who prefer tranquility to freedom, hoping monarchy might be the remedy if a state of complete anarchy could be brought on. A Convention however being decided on, some of the monocrats got elected, with a hope of introducing an English constitution, when they found that the great body of the delegates were strongly for adhering to republicanism, & for giving due strength to their government under that form, they then directed their efforts to the assimilation of all the parts of the new government to the English constitution as nearly as was attainable. In this they were not altogether without success;insomuch that the monarchical features of the new constitution produced a violent opposition to it from the most zealous republicans in the several states. For this reason, & because they also thought it carried the principle of a consolidation of the states farther than was requisite for the purpose of producing an union of action as to foreign powers, it is still doubted by some whether a majority of the people of the U.S. were not against adopting it. However it was carried through all the assemblies of the states, tho' by very small majorities in the largest states. The inconveniences of an inefficient government, driving the people as is usual, into the opposite extreme, the elections to the first Congress run very much in favor of those who were known to favor a very strong government. Hence the anti-republicans appeared a considerable majority in both houses of Congress. They pressed forward the plan therefore of strengthening all the features of the government which gave it resemblance to an English constitution, of adopting the English forms & principles of administration, and of forming like them a monied interest, by means of a funding system, not calculated to pay the public debt, but to render it perpetual, and to make it an engine in the hands of the executive branch of government which, added to the great patronage it possessed in the disposal of public offices, might enable it to assume by degrees a kingly authority. The biennial period of Congress being too short to betray to the people, spread over this great continent, this train of things during the first Congress, little change was made in the members to the second. But in the mean time two very distinct parties had formed in Congress; and before the third election, the people in general became apprised of the game which was playing for drawing over them a kind of government which they never had in contemplation. At the 3d. election therefore a decided majority of Republicans were sent to the lower house of Congress; and as information spread still farther among the people after the 4th. election the anti-republicans have become a weak minority. But the members of the Senate being changed but once in 6. years, the completion of that body will be much slower in it's assimilation to that of the people. This will account for the differences which may appear in the proceedings & spirit of the two houses. Still however it is inevitable that the Senate will at length be formed to the republican model of the people, & the two houses of the legislature, once brought to act on the true principles of the Constitution, backed by the people, will be able to defeat the plan of sliding us into monarchy, & to keep the Executive within Republican bounds, notwithstanding the immense patronage it possesses in the disposal of public offices, notwithstanding it has been able to draw into this vortex the judiciary branch of the government & by their expectancy of sharing the other offices in the Executive gift to make them auxiliary to the Executive in all it's views instead of forming a balance between that & the legislature as it was originally intended and notwithstanding the funding phalanx which a respect for public faith must protect, tho it was engaged by false brethren. Two parties then do exist within the U.S. They embrace respectively the following descriptions of persons. The Anti-republicans consist of 1. The old refugees & tories. 2. British merchants residing among us, & composing the main body of our merchants. 3. American merchants trading on British capital. Another great portion. 4. Speculators & Holders in the banks & public funds. 5. Officers of the federal government with some exceptions. 6. Office-hunters, willing to give up principles for places. A numerous & noisy tribe. 7. Nervous persons, whose languid fibres have more analogy with a passive than active state of things. The Republican part of our Union comprehends 1. The entire body of landholders throughout the United States. 2. The body of labourers, not being landholders, whether in husbanding or the arts. The latter is to the aggregate of the former party probably as 500 to one; but their wealth is not as disproportionate, tho' it is also greatly superior, and is in truth the foundation of that of their antagonists. Trifling as are the numbers of the Anti-republican party, there are circumstances which give them an appearance of strength & numbers. They all live in cities, together, & can act in a body readily & at all times; they give chief employment to the newspapers, & therefore have most of them under their command. The Agricultural interest is dispersed over a great extent of country, have little means of inter-communication with each other, and feeling their own strength & will, are conscious that a single exertion of these will at any time crush the machinations against their government. As in the commerce of human life, there are commodities adapted to every demand, so there are newspapers adapted to the Antirepublican palate, and others to the Republican. Of the former class are the Columbian Centinel, the Hartford newspaper, Webster's Minerva, Fenno's Gazette of the U.S., Davies's Richmond paper &c. Of the latter are Adams's Boston paper, Greenleaf's of New York, Freneau's of New Jersey, Bache's of Philadelphia, Pleasant's of Virginia &c. Pleasant's paper comes out twice a week, Greenleaf's & Freneau's once a week, Bache's daily. I do not know how often Adams's. I shall according to your desire endeavor to get Pleasant's for you for 1794, & 95. and will have it forwarded through 96 from time to time to your correspondent at Baltimore. While on the subject of authorities and information, the following works are recommended to Professor Ebeling. Minot's history of the insurrection in Massachusetts in 1786. 8'vo. Mazzei. Recherches historiques et politiques sur les E. U. de l'Amerique. 4 vol. 8'vo. This is to be had from Paris. The author is an exact man. The article `Etats Unis de l'Amerique' in the Dictionnaire d'Economie politique et diplomatique, de l'Encyclopedie methodique. This article occupies about 90. pages, is by De Meusnier, and his materials were worthy of confidence, except so far as they were taken from the Abbe Raynal. Against these effusions of an imagination in delirio it is presumed Professor Ebeling needs not be put on his guard. The earlier editions of the Abbe Raynal's work were equally bad as to both South & North America. A gentleman however of perfect information as to South America, undertook to reform that part of the work, and his changes & additions were for the most part adopted by the Abbe in his latter editions. But the North-American part remains in it's original state of worthlessness. _A Memorandum (Services to My Country)_ [_c_. 1800] I have sometimes asked myself whether my country is the better for my having lived at all? I dot know that it is. I have been the instrument of doing the following things; but they would have been done by others; some of them, perhaps, a little better. The Rivanna had never been used for navigation; scarcely an empty canoe had ever passed down it. Soon after I came of age, I examined its obstructions, set on foot a subscription for removing them, got an Act of Assembly passed, and the thing effected, so as to be used completely and fully for carrying down all our produce. The Declaration of Independence. I proposed the demolition of the church establishment, and the freedom of religion. It could only be done by degrees; to wit, the Act of 1776, c. 2, exempted dissenters from contributions to the church, and left the church clergy to be supported by voluntary contributions of their own sect; was continued from year to year, and made perpetual 1779, c. 36. I prepared the act for religious freedom in 1777, as part of the revisal, which was not reported to the Assembly till 1779, and that particular law not passed till 1785, and then by the efforts of Mr. Madison. The act putting an end to entails. The act prohibiting the importation of slaves. The act concerning citizens, and establishing the natural right of man to expatriate himself, at will. The act changing the course of descents, and giving the inheritance to all the children, &c., equally, I drew as part of the revisal. The act for apportioning crimes and punishments, part of the same work, I drew. When proposed to the legislature, by Mr. Madison, in 1785, it failed by a single vote. G. K. Taylor afterwards, in 1796, proposed the same subject; avoiding the adoption of any part of the diction of mine, the text of which had been studiously drawn in the technical terms of the law, so as to give no occasion for new questions by new expressions. When I drew mine, public labor was thought the best punishment to be substituted for death. But, while I was in France, I heard of a society in England, who had successfully introduced solitary confinement, and saw the drawing of a prison at Lyons, in France, formed on the idea of solitary confinement. And, being applied to by the Governor of Virginia for the plan of a Capitol and Prison, I sent him the Lyons plan, accompanying it with a drawing on a smaller scale, better adapted to our use. This was in June, 1786. Mr. Taylor very judiciously adopted this idea, (which had now been acted on in Philadelphia, probably from the English model) and substituted labor in confinement, to the public labor proposed by the Committee of revisal; which themselves would have done, had they been to act on the subject again. The public mind was ripe for this in 1796, when Mr. Taylor proposed it, and ripened chiefly by the experiment in Philadelphia; whereas, in 1785, when it had been proposed to our assembly, they were not quite ripe for it. In 1789 and 1790, I had a great number of olive plants, of the best kind, sent from Marseilles to Charleston, for South Carolina and Georgia. They were planted, and are flourishing; and, though not yet multiplied, they will be the germ of that cultivation in those States. In 1790, I got a cask of heavy upland rice, from the river Denbigh, in Africa, about lat. 9 degrees 30' North, which I sent to Charleston, in hopes it might supersede the culture of the wet rice, which renders South Carolina and Georgia so pestilential through the summer. It was divided, and a part sent to Georgia. I know not whether it has been attended to in South Carolina; but it has spread in the upper parts of Georgia, so as to have become almost general, and is highly prized. Perhaps it may answer in Tennessee and Kentucky. The greatest service which can be rendered any country is, to add an useful plant to its culture; especially, a bread grain; next in value to bread is oil. Whether the act for the more general diffusion of knowledge will ever be carried into complete effect, I know not. It was received by the legislature with great enthusiasm at first; and a small effort was made in 1796, by the act to establish public schools, to carry a part of it into effect, viz., that for the establishment of free English schools; but the option given to the courts has defeated the intention of the act. _A Memorandum (Rules of Etiquette)_ [_c_. November, 18031] I. In order to bring the members of society together in the first instance, the custom of the country has established that residents shall pay the first visit to strangers, and, among strangers, first comers to later comers, foreign and domestic; the character of stranger ceasing after the first visits. To this rule there is a single exception. Foreign ministers, from the necessity of making themselves known, pay the first visit to the ministers of the nation, which is returned. II. When brought together in society, all are perfectly equal, whether foreign or domestic, titled or untitled, in or out of office. All other observances are but exemplifications of these two principles. I. 1st. The families of foreign ministers, arriving at the seat of government, receive the first visit from those of the national ministers, as from all other residents. 2d. Members of the Legislature and of the Judiciary, independent of their offices, have a right as strangers to receive the first visit. II. 1st. No title being admitted here, those of foreigners give no precedence. 2d. Differences of grade among diplomatic members, gives no precedence. 3d. At public ceremonies, to which the government invites the presence of foreign ministers and their families, a convenient seat or station will be provided for them, with any other strangers invited and the families of the national ministers, each taking place as they arrive, and without any precedence. 4th. To maintain the principle of equality, or of pele mele, and prevent the growth of precedence out of courtesy, the members of the Executive will practice at their own houses, and recommend an adherence to the ancient usage of the country, of gentlemen in mass giving precedence to the ladies in mass, in passing from one apartment where they are assembled into another. _Epitaph [1826]_ could the dead feel any interest in Monuments or other remembrances of them, when, as Anacreon says {Olige de keisomestha Konis, osteon lythenton} the following would be to my Manes the most gratifying. On the grave a plain die or cube of 3.f without any mouldings, surmounted by an Obelisk of 6.f height, each of a single stone: on the faces of the Obelisk the following inscription, & not a word more `Here was buried Thomas Jefferson Author of the Declaration of American Independance of the Statute of Virginia for religious freedom & Father of the University of Virginia.' because by these, as testimonials that I have lived, I wish most to be remembered. to be of the coarse stone of which my columns are made, that no one might be tempted hereafter to destroy it for the value of the materials. my bust by Ciracchi, with the pedestal and truncated column on which it stands, might be given to the University if they would place it in the Dome room of the Rotunda. on the Die of the Obelisk might be engraved `Born Apr. 2. 1743. O.S. Died ___ ' .