Thoughts on Government and Selected Letters

Opinions Of Philosophers

409

«0<rni uomo si fa centro di tutte le combinazioni del globo."

Beccaria.

« The ambitious deceive themselves, when they propose an end to their ambition ; for that end, when attained, becomes a

means." Rochefgucg/uliL.

" Experience evinces that the happiest dispositions are not proof against the allurements of power, which has no charms but as it leads on to new advances. Authority endures not the very idea of restraint ; nor does it cease to struggle, till it has beaten down every boundary." De_Lohne,..

Hobbes, Mandeville, Rochefoucauld, have drawn still more detestable pictures ; and _Rqusseau, in his Inequalities among Mankind, gives a description of a civilized heart, too black and horrible to be transcribed.*

Even our amiable friends, those benevolent Christian philoso- phers, Dr. Price and Dr. Priestley, acquaint us that they are con- strained to believe human nature no better than it should be. The latter says, there is no power on earth but has grown exorbitant when it has met with no control. >

The former : " Such are the principles that govern human VY£ nature ; such the weakness and folly of men ; such their love of domination, selfishness, and depravity, that none of them can be raised to an elevation above others, without the utmost danger. The constant experience of the world has verified this, and proved that nothing intoxicates the human mind so much as power. In the establishment, therefore, of civil government, it would be preposterous to rely on the discretion of any men. A people will never oppress themselves or invade their own rights ; but if they trust the arbitrary will of a body or succession of men, they trust enemies."

Shall we say that all these philosophers were ignorant of hu- man nature ? With all my soul, I wish it were in my power to quote any passages in history or philosophy, which might demon- strate all these satires on our species to be false. But the pheno- mena are all in their favor ; and the only question to be raised with them is, whether the cause is wickedness, weakness, or insanity ?

In all events, we must agree, that human nature is not fit to y

VOL. IV

* " Heaven's Sovereign saves all beings but himself That hideous sight, a naked human heart."

Night Thoughts. Narcissa.

35

(J. A.)

410 ON GOVERNMENT.

be trusted with M. Turgot's system, of all authority in a single assembly.

A single assembly will never be a steady guardian of the laws, if Machlayel is right when he says : " Men are never good but through necessity. On the contrary, when good and evil are left to their choice, and they can practise the latter with impunity, they will not fail to throw every thing into disorder and con- fusion.1 Hunger and poverty may make men industrious, but laws only can make them good ; for, if men were so of them- selves, there would be no occasion for laws ; but, as the case is far otherwise, they are absolutely necessary. After the Tarquins were dead, who had been such a check upon the nobility, some other expedient was wanting that might have the same effect ; so that, after much confusion and disorder, and many danger- ous contests between the patricians and plebeians, certain offi- cers, called tribunes, were created for the security of the latter ; who, being vested with such privileges and authority as ena- bled them to become arbiters betwixt those two estates, effect- ually curbed the insolence of the former." Or, in the language of Dr. Franklin, the people insisted upon hitching a yoke of cattle behind the wagon, to draw up hill, when the patricians before should attempt to go too fast ; or, in the style of Harring- ton, the commons, finding the patricians disposed to divide the cake unequally, demanded the privilege of choosing.

If Harrington's authority is not of great weight with some men, the reasons he assigns in support of his judgment are often eternal and unanswerable by any man. In his Oceana, he says : " Be the interest of popular government right reason, a man does not look upon reason as it is right or wrong in itself, but as it makes for him or against him. Wherefore, unless you can show such orders of a government as, like those of God in nature, shall be able to constrain this or that creature to shake off that inclination which is more peculiar to it, and take up that which regards the common good or interest ; all this is to no more end, than to persuade every man in a popular government not to carve for himself of that which he desires most, but to be man- nerly at the public table, and give the best from himself to decency and the common interest. But that such orders may be

1 So great is the depravity of the human heart, that ministers, who only can know it, are in charity to mankind bound to keep it a secret, &c. (J. A.)

OPINIONS OF PHILOSOPHERS. 411

established, as may, nay must, give the upper hand in all cases to common right or interest, notwithstanding the nearness of that which sticks to every man in private, and this in a way of equal certainty and facility, is known even to girls ; being no other than those which are of common practice with them in divers cases. For example, — two of them have a cake yet undivided, which was given between them. That each of them, therefore, might have that which is due, ' divide,' says one, ' and I will choose; or let me divide, and you shall choose.' If this be but once agreed upon, it is enough ; for the divident, dividing unequally loses, in regard that the other takes the better half; wherefore, she divides equally, and so both have right. And thus, what great philosophers are disputing upon in vain, is brought to light by two harmless girls ; even the whole mystery of a com- monwealth, which lies only in dividing and choosing."

Now, if all authority is to be collected into one central assem- bly, it will have the whole power of division and choice ; and we may easily conjecture what division and choice it will be. It will soon have possession of all the cakes, loaves, and fishes.

Harrington proceeds ;_ " Nor has God, if his works in nature be understood, left so much to mankind to dispute upon, as who shall divide and who choose, but distributed them forever into two orders ; whereof the one has the natural right of dividing, and the other of choosing. For example,- — a commonwealth is but a civil society of men. Let us take any number of men, as twenty, and immediately make a commonwealth. Twenty men, if they be not all idiots, perhaps if they be, can never come so together but there will be such a difference in them, that about a thud will be wiser, or, at least less foolish, than all the rest. These, upon acquaintance, though it be but small, will be discovered, and (as stags that have the largest heads) lead the herd. Foi*, while the six, discoursing and arguing one with another, show the eminence of their parts, the fourteen dis- cover things that they never thought on, or are cleared in divers truths which had formerly perplexed them. Wherefore, in matter of common concernment, difficulty, or danger, they hang upon then lips as children upon their fathers ; and the influence thus acquired by the six, the eminence of whose parts are found to be a stay and comfort to the fourteen, is the authority of the fathers — auctorUas patrum. Wherefore, this can be no other than a

412 ON GOVERNMENT.

natural aristocracy, diffused by God throughout the whole body of mankind, to this end and purpose ; and, therefore, such as the people have not only a natural, but a positive obligation to make use of as their guides ; as where the people of Israel are com- manded to take wise men, and understanding, and known among their tribes, to be made rulers over them. The six then approved of, as in the present case, are the senate ; not by hereditary right, or in regard to the greatness of their estates only, which would tend to such power as might force or draw the people ; but by election for their excellent parts, which tends to the ad- vancement of the influence of their virtue or authority, that leads the people. Wherefore, the office of the senate is not to be commanders, but counsellors of the people ; and that which is proper to counsellors, is first to debate, and afterwards to give advice in the business whereon they have debated ; whence the decrees of the senate are never laws, nor so called — senaius consulta ; and these, being maturely framed, it is their duty to propose to the people. Wherefore, the senate is no more than the debate of the commonwealth. But to debate is to discern, or put a difference between things, that, being alike, are not the same ; or it is separating and weighing this reason against that, and that reason against this ; which is dividing:

" The senate, then, having divided, who shall choose ? Ask the girls ; for, if she that divided must have chosen also, it had been little worse for the other, in case she had not divided at all, but kept the whole cake to herself; in regard that, being to choose too, she divided accordingly.

" Wherefore, if the senate have any further power than to divide, the commonwealth can, never be equal. But, in a com- monwealth consisting" of a single council, there is no other to choose than that which divided. Whence it is, that such a council fails not to scramble, that is, to be factious ; there being no other dividing of the cake, in that case, but among themselves ; nor is there any other remedy, but to have another council to choose. The wisdom of the few may be the light of mankind ; but the interest of the few is not the profit of mankind, nor of a commonwealth. Wherefore, seeing we have granted interest to be reason, they must not choose, lest it put out their light. But as the coun- cil dividing consists of the wisdom of the commonwealth, so the assembly or council choosing should consist of the interest

OPINIONS OF PHILOSOPHERS. 413

of the commonwealth ; as the wisdom of the commonwealth is in the aristocracy, so the interest of the commonwealth is in the whole body of the people. And whereas this, in case the com- monwealth consist of a whole nation, is too unwieldy a body to be assembled, this council is to consist of such a representa- tive as may be equal, and so constituted as it can never contract any other interest than that of the whole people. But, in the present case, the six dividing, and the fourteen choosing, must of necessity take in the whole interest of the twenty. Dividing V and choosing, in the language of a commonwealth, is debating and resolving; and whatsoever, upon debate of the senate, is proposed to the people, and resolved by them, is enacted by the authority of the fathers, and by the power of the people — aucto- ritate patrum et jussu populi ; which concurring make a law."

Upon these principles, and to establish a method of enacting laws that must of necessity be wise and equal, the people of most of the United States of America agreed upon that division of the legislative power into two houses, the house of represent- atives and the senate, which have given so much disgust to M. Turgot. Harrington will show us equally well the propriety and necessity of the other branch, the governor. But, before we pro- ceed to that, it may be worth while to observe the similitude between this passage and some of those sentiments and expres- sions of Swift, which were quoted in a former letter ; and there is in the Idea of a Patriot King; written by his friend, Lord Bolingbroke, a passage to the same purpose, so nobly expressed, that I cannot forbear the pleasure of transcribing it. " It seems to me that, in order to maintain the moral system of the uni- verse at a certain point, far below that of ideal perfection, (for we are made capable of conceiving what we are not capable of attaining,) it has pleased the Author of Nature to mingle, from time to time, among the societies of men a few, and but a few of those on whom he has been graciously pleased to confer a larger proportion of the ethereal spirit, than in the ordinary course of his providence he bestows on the sons of men. These are they who engross almost the whole reason of the species. Born to direct, to guide, and to preserve, if they retire from the world their splendor accompanies them, and enlightens even the darkness of their retreat. If they take a part in public life, the effect is never indifferent. They either appear the instruments

35*

414 ON GOVERNMENT.

of Divine vengeance, and their course through the world is marked by desolation and oppression, by poverty and servitude ; or they are the guardian angels of the country they inhabit, studious to avert the most distant evil, and to procure peace, plenty, and the greatest of human blessings, liberty."

If there is, then, in society such a natural aristocracy as these great writers pretend, and as all history and experience demon- strate, formed partly by genius, partly by birth, and partly by riches, how shall the legislator avail himself of their influence for the equal benefit of the public? and how, on the other hand, shall he prevent them from disturbing the public happiness ? I answer, by arranging them all, or at least the most conspicuous of them, together in one assembly, by the name of a senate ; by separating them from all pretensions to the executive power, and by controlling in the legislative their ambition and avarice, by an assembly of representatives on one side, and by the exe- cutive authority on the other. Thus you will have the benefit of their wisdom, without fear of their passions. If among them there are some of Lord Bolingbroke's guardian angels, there will be some of his instruments of Divine vengeance too. The latter will be here restrained by a threefold tie, — by the execu- tive power, by the representative assembly, and by their peers in the senate. But if these were all admitted into a single popular assembly, the worst of them might in time obtain the ascendency of all the rest. In such a single assembly, as has been observed before, almost the whole of this aristocracy will make its ap- pearance, being returned members of it by the election of the people. These will be one class. There will be another set of members, of middling rank and circumstances, who will justly value themselves upon their independence, their integrity, and unbiased affection to their country, and will pique themselves upon being under no obligation. But there will be a third class, every one of whom will have his leader among the members of the first class, whose character he will celebrate, and whose voice he will follow ; and this party, after a course of time, will be the most numerous. The question then will be, whether this aristocracy in the house will unite or divide? and it is too obvious, that destruction to freedom must be the consequence equally of their union or of their division. If they unite gene- rally in all things, as much as they certainly will in respecting

OPINIONS OF PHILOSOPHERS. 415

each other's wealth, birth, and parts, and conduct themselves with prudence, they will strengthen themselves by insensible degrees, by playing into each other's hands more wealth and popularity, until they become able to govern elections as they please, and rule the people at discretion. An independent mem- ber will be their aversion ; all their artifices will be employed to destroy his popularity among his constituents, and bring in a disciple of their own in his place.

But if they divide, each party will, in a course of time, have the whole house, and consequently the whole state, divided into two factions, which will struggle in words, in writing, and at last in arms, until Csesar or Pompey must be emperor, and entail an endless line of tyrants on the nation. But long before this catastrophe, and indeed through every scene of the drama, the laws, instead of being permanent, and affording constant pro- tection to the lives, liberties, and properties of the citizens, will be alternately the sport of contending factions, and the mere vibrations of a pendulum. From the beginning to the end it will be a government of men, now of one set, and then of another; but never a government of laws.

CHAPTER V. WRITERS ON GOVERNMENT.

CHAPTER V.

Writers On Government. Machiavel

WRITERS ON GOVERNMENT.

MACHIAVEL.

Discourses upon the First Decade of Livy.

I

The whole chapter is very much to the purpose, but the fol- lowing paragraphs more particularly so : —

Mil

"According to some authors, there are but three sorts of govern- ment, namely, — monarchy or principality, aristocracy, and demo- cracy ; and that those who intend to erect a new state, must have recourse to some one of these which they like best. Others, and, as many think, with more judgment, say there are six sorts; three of which are very bad, and the other three good in them- selves, but liable to be so corrupted that they may become the worst. The three good sorts have been just now mentioned. The other three proceed from these ; and every one of them bears such a resemblance to that on which it respectively depends, that the transition from one to the other is short and easy ; for mo- narchy often degenerates into tyranny, aristocracy into oligarchy, and democracy into licentious anarchy and confusion. So that, whoever sets up any one of the former three sorts of govern- ment, may assure himself it will not be of any long duration ; for no precaution will be sufficient to prevent its falling into the other that is analogous to it, on account of the affinity which there seems to be in this case betwixt perfection and imper- fection.

" This variety of governments among mankind appears to have been the effect of chance. For in the beginning of the world, the inhabitants being few, they some time lived separate from each other, like beasts ; but afterwards, as they multiplied, they began to unite for their mutual defence, and put themselves under the protection of such as were most eminent amongst

* Book i. c. 2.

MACHIAVEL. 417

them for courage and strength, whom they engaged to obey and acknowledge as their chiefs. Hence arose the distinction betwixt honest and dishonest, just and unjust. For when any one injured his benefactor, his ingratitude excited a sort of fellow- feeling and indignation in others, as well as kindness and respect for those that behaved differently ; and, as they considered that they might, some time or other, perhaps, be treated in the same manner themselves, if proper measures were not taken to prevent it, they thought fit to make laws for the reward of good men, and the punishment of offenders. This first gave rise to justice in the world; and from this consideration it came to pass in process of time, that, in the election of a new chief, they had not so much regard to courage and bodily strength, as to wisdom and integrity. But, afterwards, as this kind of government gradu- ally became hereditary, instead of elective, the heirs of these chieftains soon began to degenerate from the virtue of then- ancestors, and to behave themselves as if they thought the main duty of a prince consisted in surpassing all other men in luxury, extravagance, effeminacy, and every sort of voluptuousness ; by which, beginning to be odious to their subjects, they, in turn, became fearful of them, and quickly passing from distrust to the commission of offences, there sprung up at once a tyranny. This first occasioned combinations and conspiracies for the de- struction of princes ; not amongst the weak and pusillanimous part of their subjects ; but among such as, being more eminent for their generosity, magnanimity, riches, and birth, could not endure any longer to submit to the shameful life of such sovereigns.

"The multitude, therefore, swayed by the authority of the nobles, rose in arms against their prince ; and, being freed from Q his yoke, they transferred their allegiance to their deliverers, who, being thoroughly disgusted at monarchy, changed the form of government, and took it into their own hands. At first, they conducted both themselves and the state according to the plan they had formed, preferring the common good to any particular advantage ; and behaving, in private as well as public affairs, with assiduity and moderation, whilst the remembrance of then- past sufferings continued fresh upon their minds. But this authority afterwards devolving upon their sons, who had not known changes of fortune, nor experienced evil, these began to grow so dissatisfied with that sort of civil equality, that they a 2

w

418 ON GOVERNMENT.

cast off all restraint, and giving themselves up to rapine, ambi- tion, and lust, soon changed the government again from aristo- cracy into an oligarchy. Their administration, however, becom- ing as insupportable, in a while, as the tyranny of the other had formerly been, the people naturally began to look out for some deliverer ; and, having fixed upon a leader, they put themselves under his banners, and destroyed the oligarchy. But when they had done this, and came to reflect upon the oppressions they sustained under a tyrant, they resolved never to be again go- verned by any one man, and therefore agreed to set up a popular government ; which was constituted in such a manner, that no authority was vested either in a prince or in a powerful few.

" Now, as all new establishments are held in some degree of reverence and veneration at first, this form subsisted for some time ; though no longer than those people lived who had been the founders of it ; for, after their death, their descendants dege- nerated into licentiousness, and such a contempt for all authority and distinction, that, every man living after his own caprice, there was nothing to be seen but confusion and violence. So that, either by the advice of some good and respectable man, 'or com- pelled by the absolute necessity of providing a remedy for these disorders and enormities, they at last determined once more to submit to the dominion of one. From which state they fell again in time, through the same gradations, and from the above-men- tioned causes into misrule and licentiousness.

"And this is the rotation to which all states are subject; never- theless, they cannot often revert to the same kind of government, because it is not possible that they should so long exist as to undergo many of these mutations. For it frequently happens that, when a state is laboring under such convulsions, and is destitute both of strength and counsel, it falls a prey to some other neighboring community or nation, that is better governed ; otherwise, it might go the round of the several above-mentioned revolutions to infinity.

"All these sorts of government, then, in my opinion, are infirm and insecure ; the three former from the usual shortness of their duration, and the three latter from the malignity of their own principles. The wisest legislators, therefore, being aware of these defects, never established any one of them in particular, but contrived another, that partakes of them all, consisting of a

MACHIAVEL. 419

prince, lords, and commons, which they looked upon as more firm and stable, because every one of these members would be a ff check upon the other; and of those legislators, Lycurgus cer- tainly merits the highest praise, who constituted an establish- ment of this kind in Sparta, which lasted above eight hundred years, to his own great honor, as well as the tranquillity of the citizens.

" Very different was the fate of the government established by Solon at Athens, which, being a simple democracy only, was of so short continuance, that it gave way to the tyranny of Pisis- tratus before the death of the legislator. And though, indeed, the heirs of that tyrant were expelled about forty years after, and the Athenians not only recovered their liberty, but reestablished Solon's laws and plan of government ; yet they did not main- tain it above one hundred years, notwithstanding they made several new regulations to restrain the insolence of the nobles and the licentiousness of the commons, the necessity of which Solon had not foreseen. So that, for want of tempering his de- mocracy with a share of aristocracy and princely power, it was of short duration in comparison of the constitution of Sparta.

" But, to return to Rome. Though that city had not a Lycur- gus to model its constitution at first, in such a manner as might preserve its liberty for a long course of time ; yet, so many were the accidents which happened in the contests betwixt the patri- cians and plebeians, that chance effected what the lawgiver had not provided for ; so that if it was not lucky at the beginning, it became so after a while ; for though the first laws were deficient, yet they were not absolutely out of the right road to lead to its future perfection ; since not only Romulus, but all the rest of the kings that succeeded him, made many and good laws, and such as were well calculated for the support of liberty. But, as it was their intention to found a monarchy, and not a republic ; when that city had shaken off the yoke of a tyrant, there seemed to be many provisions still wanting for the further maintenance of its freedom. And though the kings finally lost their power, by the ways and means above mentioned, yet those who had chiefly contributed to it, immediately created two consuls to supply the place of royalty ; by which it came to pass, that the name alone, and not the authority of princes was extinguished ; so that the supreme power being lodged only in the consuls and senate, the

420 ON GOVERNMENT.

government consisted of no more than two of the three estates, which we have spoken of before, that is, of royalty and aristo- cracy ; it remained, therefore, still necessary to admit the people into some share of the government ; and the patricians growing so insolent in time, (as I shall show hereafter,) that the plebeians could no longer endure it, the latter took arms, and obliged them to relinquish part of their authority, lest they should lose the whole. On the other hand, the consuls and senators still retained so much power in the commonwealth as enabled them to support their rank and dignity with honor. This struggle gave birth to certain officers, called tribunes of the people ; after the creation of whom, that state became more firm and compact, every one of the three degrees above mentioned having its proper share in the government. And so propitious was fortune to it, that although it was changed from a monarchy into an aristocracy, and afterwards into a democracy, by the steps and for the reasons already assigned, yet the royal power was never entirely abolished and given to the patricians, nor that of the patricians wholly to the plebeians. On the contrary, the author- ity of the three estates being duly proportioned and mixed together, made it a perfect commonwealth. And this was owing in a great measure, if not altogether, to the dissensions that happened betwixt the patricians and plebeians, as shall be sjiown more at large in the following chapters. /

Algernon Sidney

" Some small numbers of men, living within the precincts of one city, have, as it were, cast into a common stock, the right which they had of governing themselves and children, and, by common consent, joining in one body, exercised such power over every single person as seemed beneficial to the whole ; and this, men call perfect democracy. Others chose rather to be governed by a select number of such as most excelled in wisdom and virtue ; and this, according to the signification of the word, was called aristocracy. When one man excelled all others, the go- vernment was put into his hands under the name of monarchy. But the wisest, best, and by far the greatest part of mankind, rejecting these simple species, did form governments, mixed or composed of the three, as shall be proved hereafter, which com-

SIDNEY. 421

monly received their respective denomination from the great part that prevailed, and did deserve praise or blame, as they were well or ill proportioned." p^ 22, § K f ''' >

" The best governments of the world have been composed of ' monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy."

"As for democracy, I believe i,t can suit only with the conve- nience of a small town, accompanied with such circumstances as are seldom found. But this no way obliges men to run into the other extreme, inasmuch as the variety of forms, between mere democracy and absolute monarchy, is almost infinite. And if I should undertake to say, there never was a good government in the world that did not consist "of the three simple species of monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy, I think I might make it good. This at the least is certain, that the government of the Hebrews, instituted by God, had a judge, the great sanhedrim, and general assemblies of the people. Sparta had two kings, a senate of twenty-eight chosen men and the like assemblies. All the Dorian cities had a chief magistrate, a senate, and occasional assemblies. The cities of Ionia, Athens, and others, had an Archon, the Areopagi, &c, and all judgments concerning mat- ters of the greatest importance, as well as the election of magis- trates, were referred to the people. Rome, in the beginning, had a king and a senate, while the election of kings and judgments upon appeals remained in the people ; afterwards, consuls repre- senting kings and vested with equal power, a more numerous senate, and more frequent meetings of the people. Venice has at this day a duke, the senate of the pregadi, and the great assembly of the nobility, which is the whole city ; the rest of the inhabitants being only incolce, not cives ; and those of the other cities or countries are their subjects, and do not participate in the government.

" Genoa is governed in like manner. Lucca not unlike to them. Germany is at this day governed by an emperor, the princes or great lords in their several precincts ; the cities by their own magistrates ; and by general diets, in which the whole power of the nation resides, and where the emperor, princes, nobility, and cities have their places in person, or by their depu- ties. All the northern nations which, upon the dissolution of the Roman empire, possessed the best provinces that had com- posed it, were under that form, which is usually called the

VOL. IV. 36

422

ON GOVERNMENT.

Gothic polity. They had king, lords, commons, diets, assem- blies of estates, cortes, and parliaments, in which the sovereign powers of those nations did reside, and by which they were exer- cised. The like was practised in Hungary, Bohemia, Sweden, Denmark, Poland ; and, if things are changed in some of those places within a few years, they must give better proofs of having gained by the change, than are yet seen in the world, before I think myself obliged to change my opinion.

" Some nations, not liking the name of king, have given such a power as kings enjoyed in other places to one or more magis- trates, either limited to a certain time, or left to be perpetual, as best pleased themselves ; others, approving the name, made the dignity purely elective. Some have in their elections principally regarded one family as long as it lasted; others considered f ■> q nothing but the fitness of the person, and reserved to themselves a liberty of taking where they pleased. Some have permitted the crown to be hereditary as to its ordinary course ; but restrained the power, and instituted officers to inspect the pro- ceedings of kings, and to take care that the laws were not vio- lated. Of this sort were t the Ephori of Sparta, the Manes du Palais, and afterwards the constable of France, the justiciar in Aragon, the reichshofmeeter in Denmark, the high steward in England ; and in all places, such assemblies as are beforemen- tioned under several names, who had the power of the whole nation, &c." p. 138, ch. ii. § 16.

" It is confessed, that a pure democracy can never be good, unless for a small town, &c." p. 147, § 18.

"As to popular government in the strictest sense, that is, pure democracy, where the people in themselves, and by themselves, perform all that belongs to government, I know of no such thing ; and, if it be in the world, have nothing to say for it.

" If it be said that those governments in which the democrati- cal part governs most, do more frequently err in the choice of men, or the means of preserving that purity of manners which is required for the well-being of a people, than those wherein aris- tocracy prevails, I confess it, and that in Rome and Athens, the best and wisest men did for the most part incline to aristocracy. Xenophon, Plato, Aristotle, Thucydides, Livy, Tacitus, Cicero, and others were of this sort. But if our author there seek patrons for his absolute monarchy, he will find none but Pha-

MONTESQUIEU. 423

laris, Agathocles, Dionysius, Catiline, Cethegus, Lentulus, with the corrupted crew of mercenary rascals who did, or endeavored to set them up ; these are they, quibus ex honesto nulla est spes ; they abhor the dominion of the laiv, because it curbs their vices, and make themselves subservient to the lusts of a man who may nourish them." p. 161, ch. ii. § 19.

" Being no way concerned in the defence of democracy, &c, I may leave our knight, like Don Quixote, fighting against the phantasms of his own brain, and saying what he pleases against such governments as never were, unless in such a place as San. Marino, near Sinigaglia, in Italy, where a hundred clowns go- vern a barbarous rock that no man invades, and relates nothing to our question." p. 165, § 21. r^T'

The republic of San Marino, next to that of Millingen in Swit- ft zerland, is the smallest republic in Europe. The limits of it extend no farther than the base of the mountain on which it is seated. Its insignificance is its security. No neighboring prince ever thought it worth his while to destroy the independency of such a beehive.*

" However, more ignorance cannot be expressed, than by giv- ing the name of democracy to those governments that are com- posed of the three simple species, as we have proved that all the good ones have ever been ; for, in a strict sense, it can only suit with those where the people retain to themselves the adminis- tration of the supreme power; and more largely, when the popular part, as in Athens, greatly overbalances the other two, and the denomination is taken from the prevailing part." p. 258.

Montesquieu

Spirit of Laws.-\ — Of the Constitution of England.

" In every government there are three sorts of power, — the legislative ; the executive, in respect to things dependent on the law of nations; and the executive, in regard to things that depend on the civil law.

" By virtue of the first, (that is, the legislative power,) the prince or magistrate enacts temporary or perpetual laws, and

* See Blainvitte's Travels, vol. ii. p. 227 ; Addison's Remarks on Several Parts ' of Italy.

f Book 11, c. vi.

424 ON GOVERNMENT.

amends or abrogates those that have been already enacted. By the second, he makes peace or war, sends or receives embassies, establishes the public security, and provides against invasions. By the third, he punishes criminals, or determines the disputes that arise between individuals. The latter we shall call the judiciary power, and the other simply the executive power of the state.

" The political liberty of the citizen, is a tranquillity of mind, arising from the opinion each person has of his safety. In order .to have this liberty, it is requisite the government be so consti- tuted, as that one citizen need not be afraid of another citizen.

" When the legislative and executive powers are united in the

same person, or in the same body of magistrates, there can be no

3 / Z- liberty ; because apprehensions may arise, lest the same monarch

or senate, or the same senate should enact tyrannical laws, to

execute them in a tyrannical manner.

"Again, there is no liberty, if the power of judging be not separated from the legislative and executive powers. Were it joined with the legislative, the life and liberty of the citizens would be exposed to arbitrary control ; for the judge would then be legislator. Were it joined to the executive power, the judge might behave with all the violence of an oppressor.

" There would be an end of every thing {tout seroit perdu) were the same man, or the same body, whether of princes, of the nobles, or of the people, to exercise those three powers, — that of enacting laws, that of executing the public resolutions, and that of judging the crimes or differences of individuals.

"Most kingdoms in Europe enjoy a moderate government; because the prince who is invested with the two first powers, leaves the third to his subjects. In Turkey, where these three powers are united in the sultan's person, the subjects groan under the weight of a most frightful oppression. In the repub- lics of Italy, where these three powers are united, there is less liberty than in our monarchies. Hence their government is obliged to have recourse to as violent methods for its support as even that of the Turks ; witness the state inquisitors at Venice, and the lion's mouth, into which every informer may at all hours throw his written accusations. What a situation must the poor citizen be in under those poor republics ! The same body of magistrates are possessed, as executors of the laws, of

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MONTESQUIEU. 425

the whole power they have given themselves in quality of legislators. They may plunder the state by their general deter- minations; and, as they have likewise the judiciary power in then* hands, every private citizen may be ruined by their parti- cular decisions. The whole power is here united in one body ; and, though there is no external pomp that indicates a despotic sway, yet the people feel the effects of it every moment.

" Hence it is, that many of the princes of Europe, whose aim has been levelled at arbitrary power, have constantly set out with uniting in their own persons all the branches of magistracy, and all the great offices of state.

" I allow, indeed, that the mere hereditary aristocracy of the Italian republics does not answer1 exactly to the despotic power of the eastern princes. The number of magistrates sometimes softens the power of the magistracy; the whole body of the nobles clo not always concur in the same designs ; and different tribunals are erected, that temper each other. Thus, at Venice, the legislative power is in the council, the executive in the pre- gadi, and the judiciary in the quarantia. But the mischief is, that these different tribunals are composed of magistrates all belonging to the same body, which constitutes almost one and the same power.

" The judiciary power ought not to be given to a standing senate ; it should be exercised by persons taken from the body of the people, as at Athens, at certain times of the year, and pursuant to a form and manner prescribed by law, in order to erect a tribunal that should last only as long as necessity re- quires.

" By this means, the power of judging, a power so terrible to mankind, not being annexed to any particular state or profes- sion, becomes, as it were, invisible. People have not then the judges continually present to their view. They fear the office, but not the magistrate.

" In accusations of a deep or criminal nature, it is proper the person accused should have the privilege of choosing, in some measure, his judges, in concurrence with the law; or, at least, he should have a right to except against so great a number, that the remaining part may be deemed his own choice. The other two powers may be given rather to magistrates, or permanent bodies, because they are not exercised on any private subject;

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426 ON GOVERNMENT.

one being no more than the general will of the state, and the other the execution of that general will.

"But, though the tribunals ought not to be fixed, yet the judgments ought, and to such a degree as to be always conform- able to the exact letter of the law. Were they to be the private opinion of the judge, people would then live in society without knowing exactly the obligations it lays them under.

" The judges ought, likewise, to be in the same station as the accused, or, in other words, his peers, to the end that he may not imagine he is fallen into the hands of persons inclined to treat him with rigor.

" If the legislative leaves the executive power in possession of a right to imprison those subjects who can give security for their good behavior, there is an end of liberty ; unless they are taken up in order to answer, without delay, to a capital crime ; in this case they are really free, being subject only to the power of the law.

" But should the legislative think itself in danger, by some secret conspiracy against the state, or by a correspondence with a foreign enemy, it might authorize the executive power, for a short and limited tirrie, to imprison suspected persons, who, in that case, would lose their liberty only for a while, to preserve it for ever. And this is the only reasonable method that can be substituted to the tyrannical magistracy of the Ephori, and to the state inquisitors of Venice, who are also despotical.

"As, in a free state, every man, who is supposed a free agent, - t-y ought to be his own governor ; so the legislative power should

reside in the whole body of the people. But since this is impos- sible in large states, and in small ones is subject to many incon- veniences, it is fit the people should execute by their represent- atives, what they cannot execute by themselves.

" The inhabitants of a particular town are much better ac- quainted with its wants and interests than with those of other places; and are better judges of the capacity of their neighbors than of that of the rest of their countrymen. The members, there- fore, of the legislature should not be chosen from the general body of the nation ; but it is proper that, in every considerable place, a representative should be elected by the inhabitants.

" The great advantage of representatives is, their being capa- ble of discussing affairs; for this the people collectively are

HARRINGTON. 427

extremely unfit, which is one of the greatest inconveniences of a democracy.

" It is not at all necessary that the representatives, who have received a general instruction from their electors, should wait to be particularly instructed on every affair, as is practised in the diets of Germany. True it is that, by this way of proceeding, the speeches of the deputies might, with greater propriety, be called the voice of the nation. But, on the other hand, this would throw them into infinite delays ; would give each deputy a power of controlling the assembly ; and, on the most urgent and press- ing occasions, the springs of the nation might be stopped by a single caprice."

Harrington

In searching for the principles of government, we may divide them into two kinds ; the principles of authority and the princi- ples of power. The first are virtues of the mind and heart, such alTwisdom, prudence, courage, patience, temperance, justice, &c. The second are the goods of fortune, such as riches, extraction, knowledge, and reputation. I rank knowledge among the goods of fortune, because it is the effect of education, study, and travel, which are either accidents, or usual effects of riches or birth, and is by no means necessarily connected with wisdom or virtue ; but, as it is universally admired and respected by the people, it is clearly a principle of power. The same may be said of reputation, which, abstracted from all consideration whether it is merited or not, well, or ill-founded, is another source of power.

Riches will hold the first place, in civilized societies, at least, among the principles of power, and will often prevail, not only over all the principles of authority, but over all the advantages of birth, knowledge, and fame. For, as Harrington says, " Men are hung upon riches ; not of choice, as upon the other, but of necessity, and by the teeth. Forasmuch as he who wants bread, is his servant that will feed him ; and if a man thus ' feeds a whole people, they are under his empire." It already appears, that there must be in every society of men superiors and infe- riors, because God has laid in the constitution and course of nature the foundations of the distinction. And, indeed, as Har-

i//

428 ON GOVERNMENT.

rington says, "an army may as. well consist of soldiers without officers, or of officers without soldiers, as a commonwealth con- sist of a people without a gentry, or of a gentry without a people."

" Let states take heed," says Lord Bacon, " how their nobility and gentlemen multiply too fast, for that makes the common subject grow to be a peasant and base swain driven out of heart, and, in effect, but a gentleman's ' laborer. How shall the plough, then, be kept in the hands of the owners, and not mere hirelings ? how shall the country attain to the character' which Virgil gives of ancient Italy, Terra potens armis, atque ubere gleba? how, but by the balance of dominion or property?"

Notwithstanding M. Turgot's aversion to balances, Harring- ton discovered, and made out, as Toland, his biographer, informs us, that " empire follows the balance of property, whether lodged in one, a few, or many hands." A noble discovery, of which the honor solely belongs to him, as much as the circulation of the (/ blood to Harvey, printing to Laurence Coster, or the invention of guns, compasses, or optic glasses to the several authors. If this balance is not the foundation of all politics, as Toland asserts, it is of so much importance, that no man can be thought a master of the subject, without having well weighed it. M. Turgot, it is plain, had not the least idea of it.

" Tillage," says Harrington, " bringing up a good soldiery, brings up a good commonwealth ; for, where the owner of the plough comes to have the sword too, he will use it in defence of his own. Whence it has happened, that the people of England, in proportion to their property, have been always free ; and the genius of this nation has ever had some resemblance with that of ancient Italy, which was wholly addicted to commonwealths, and where Rome came to make the greatest account of her rustic tribes, and to call her consuls from the plough. For, in the way of parliaments, which was the government of this realm, men of country lives have been still entrusted with the greatest affairs, and the people have constantly had an aversion to the ways of the court. Ambition, loving to be gay and to fawn, has been a gallantry looked upon as having something in it of the livery ; and husbandry, or the country way of life, though of a grosser spinning, as the best stuff of a commonwealth, according to Aris- totle, such a one being the most obstinate assertress of her

/»•■»?

HARRINGTON. 429

liberty, and the least subject to innovation or turbulency. Com- i ~_ monwealths, upon which the city life has had the stronger influ- / ence, as Athens, have seldom or never been quiet; but, at the best are found to have injured their own business by overdoing it. Whence, the Urban tribes of Rome, consisting of the turba forensis, and libertins, that had received their freedom by manu- mission, were of no reputation in comparison of the rustics. A commonwealth, consisting of but one city, would doubtless be stormy, in regard that ambition would be every man's trade ; but where it consists of a country, the plough in the hands of the owner finds him a better calling, and produces the most innocent and steady genius of a commonwealth.

" Domestic empire is founded upon dominion, and dominion is property, real or personal ; that is to say, in lands, or in money and goods. Lands, or the parcels of a territory, are held by the proprietor or proprietors of it in some proportion ; and such, (except it be in a city that has little or no land, and whose reve- nue is in trade,) as is the proportion or balance of dominion or property in land, such is the nature of the empire. If one man be sole landlord of a territory, or overbalance the people — for example, three parts in four — he is grand signior; for so the Turk is called from his property; and his empire is absolute monarchy. If the few, as a nobility and clergy, be landlords, or overbalance the people to the like proportion, it makes the Gothic balance, and the empire is mixed monarchy, as that of Spain, Poland, and once of England ; and if the whole people be landlords, or hold the lands so divided among them, that no one man, or number of men, within the compass of the few, or aris- tocracy, overbalance them, the empire is a commonwealth.

" If force be interposed in any of these three cases, it must either frame the government to the foundation, or the founda- p tion to the government ; or, holding the government not accord- ing to the balance, it is not natural, but violent ; and, therefore, if it be at the devotion of a prince, it is tyranny ; if, at the devo- tion of the few, oligarchy ; or if in the power of the people, anarchy. Each of which confusions, the balance standing other- wise, is but of short continuance, because against the nature of the balance ; which not destroyed, destroys that which opposes it." Oceana, p. 37.

Here, it would be entertaining to apply these observations to

430 ON GOVERNMENT.

the force of fleets and armies, &c., applied by Great Britain in the late contest with America. The balance of land, especially in New England, where the force was first applied, was neither in the king nor a nobility, but immensely in favor of the people. The intention of the British politicians was to alter this balance, " frame the foundation to the government, by bringing the lands more and more into the hands of the governors, judges, counsel- lors, &c. &c, who were all to be creatures of a British ministry." We have seen the effects. The balance destroyed that which opposed it.

Harrington proceeds. — "Bui there are certain other confu- sions, which being rooted in the balance, are of longer continu- ance and of worse consequence ; as, first, where a nobility holds half the property, or about that proportion, and the people the other half; in which case, without altering the balance, there is no remedy, but the one must eat out the other ; as the people did the nobility in Athens, and the nobility the people in Rome. Secondly, when a prince holds about half the dominion, and the people the other half, which was the case of the Roman empe- rors, (planted partly upon their military colonies, and partly upon the senate and the people,) the government becomes a very shambles, both of the princes and the people. It being unlawful in Turkey that any should possess land but the grand signior, the balance is fixed by the law, and that empire firm. Nor, though the kings often fell, was the throne of England known to shake, until the statute of alienations broke the pillars, by giving way to the nobility to sell their estates. While Lacedasmon held to the division of land made by Lycurgus, it was immovable ; but, breaking that, could stand no longer. This kind of law, fixing the balance in lands, is called agrarian, and was first introduced by God himself, who divided the land of Canaan to his people by lot.

" The public sword, without a hand tothold it, is but cold iron. The hand which holds this sword is the militia of a nation ; and the militia of a nation is either an army in the field, or ready for the field upon occasion. But an army is a beast that has a great belly, and must be fed ; wherefore this will come to what pastures you have, and what pastures you have will come to the balance of property, without which the public sword is but a name. He that can graze this beast with the great belly, as the

V

HARRINGTON. 431

Turk does his timariots, may well deride him that imagines he received his power by covenant. But if the property of the nobility, stocked with their tenants and retainers, be the pasture of that beast, the ox knows his master's crib ; and it is impossi- ble for a king, in such a constitution, to reign otherwise than by covenant ; or, if he breaks it, it is words that come to blows.

"Aristotle is full of this balance in divers places, especially ip '?? where he says that immoderate wealth, as where one man, or the few, have greater possessions than the equality or the frame of the commonwealth will bear, is an occasion of sedition, which ends, for the greater part, in monarchy ; and that, for this cause, the ostracism has been received in divers places, as in Argos and Athens ; but that it were better to prevent the growth in the beginning, than, when it has got head, to seek the remedy of such an evil.

" Machiavel, not perceiving that if a commonwealth be galled * . by the gentry, it is by their overbalance, speaks of the gentry as hostile to popular governments, and of popular governments as hostile to the gentry ; which can never be proved by any one example, unless in civil war ; seeing that, even in Switzerland, the gentry are not only safe, but in honor. But the balance, as I have laid it down, though unseen by Machiavel, is that which interprets him, where he concludes, — 'That he who will go about to make a commonwealth where there be many gen- tlemen, unless he first destroys them, undertakes an impossi- bility. And that he who goes about to introduce monarchy, where the .condition of the people is equal, shall never bring it to pass, unless he cull out such of them as are the most turbulent and ambitious, and make them gentlemen or noblemen, not in name, but in effect ; that is, by enriching them with lands, cas- tles, and treasures, that may gain them power among the rest, and bring in the rest to dependence upon them ; to the end that they, maintaining their ambition by the prince, the prince may maintain his power by them.'

" Wherefore, as in this place I agree with Machiavel, that a / vf h nobility or gentry overbalancing a popular government, is the utter bane and destruction of it, so I shall show in another, that a nobility or gentry, in a popular government, not overbalancing it, is thevery life and soul of it.

" The public sword, or right of the militia, be the government

432 ON GOVERNMENT.

what it will, or let it change how it can, is inseparable from the overbalance in dominion.

" The balance of dominion * in land is the natural cause of empire ; and this is the principle which makes politics a science undeniable throughout, and the most demonstrable of any what- ever. If a man, having one hundred pounds a year, may keep one servant, or have one man at his command, then, having one hundred times so much, he may keep one hundred servants ; and this multiplied by a thousand, he may have one hundred thou- sand men at his command. Now, that the single person or nobility of any country in Europe, that had but half so many men at command, would be king or prince, is that which I think no man will doubt. But ' No money, no Swiss.'(£ The reason why a single person or the nobility, that has one hundred thou- sand men, or half so many, at command, will have the govern- ment, is, that the estate in land, whereby they are able to main- tain so many, in any European territory, must overbalance the rest that remains to the people, at least three parts in four. Now, for the same reason, if the people hold three parts in four of the territory, it is plain there can neither be any single person or nobility able to dispute the government with them. In this case, therefore, except force be interposed, they govern them- selves. So that by this computation of the balance of property or dominion in the land, you have, according to the threefold foundation of property, the root or generation of the threefold kind of government or empire, t If one man be sole landlord of a territory, or overbalance the whole people, three parts in four, or thereabouts, he is grand signior ; for so the Turk, not from his empire, but his property, is called ; and the empire, in this case, is absolute monarchy, rra the few, or a nobility, or a nobility with a clergy, be landlords to such a proportion as overbalances the people in the like manner, they may make whom they please king ; or, if they be not pleased with their king, down with him, and set up whom they like better ; a Henry IV. or VII., a Guise, a Montfort, a Nevil, or a Porter, should they find that best for their own ends and purposes ; for, as not the balance of the king, but that of the nobility, in this case, is the cause of the government, so not the estate of the prince or captain, but his

* Prerogative of Popular Government, c. iii. p. 226.

HARRINGTON. 433

virtue or ability, or fitness for the ends of the nobility, acquires i that command or office. This for aristocracy or mixed monarchy. But if the whole people be landlords, or hold the land so divi- ded among them, that no one man or number of men, within the compass of the few or aristocracy overbalance them, it is a commonwealth. Such is the branch in the root, or the balance of property naturally producing empire."

Then follows a curious account of the laws in Israel against usury, and in Lacedaemon against trade, &c, which are well worth studying.

" That which, introducing two estates, causes division, or makes a commonwealth unequal, is not that she has a nobility, without which she is deprived of her most special ornament, and weakened in her conduct, but when the nobility only is capable of magistracy or of the senate ; and where this is so ordered, she is unequal, as Rome. But where the nobility is no otherwise capable of magistracy, nor of the senate, than by elec- tion of the people, the commonwealth consists but of one order, and is equal, as Lacedasmon or Venice. I? Where the nobility holds half the property, or about that proportion, and the people the other half, the shares of the land may be equal ; but, in regard the nobility have much among few, and the people little among many, the few will not be contented to have authority, which is all their proper share in a commonwealth, but will be bringing the people under power, which is not their proper share in a commonwealth ; wherefore this commonwealth must needs be unequal ; and, except by altering the balance, as the Athen- ians did by the rescission of debts, or as the Romans went about to do, by an agrarian, it be brought to such an equality that the whole power be in the people, and there remain no more than authority in the nobility, there is no remedy, but the one with perpetual feuds will eat out the other, as the people did the nobility in Athens, and the nobility the people in Rome. Where the carcass is, there will be the eagles also ; where the riches are, there will be the power. So if a few be as rich as all the rest, a few will have as much power as all the rest ; in which case the commonwealth is unequal, and there can be no end of staving and tailing till it be brought to equality." p. 254.

" The estates, be they one, or two, or three, are such as was VOL. IV. 37 b 2

I"'

434

ON GOVERNMENT.

t

V

said by virtue of the balance upon which the government must naturally depend," exemplified in France, &c.

"All government is of three kinds, — a government of servants, a government of subjects, or a government of citizens. The first is absolute monarchy, as that of Turkey ; the second, aristocrat- ical monarchy, as that of France ; the third, a commonwealth, as Israel, Rome, Holland. Of these, the government of servants is harder to be conquered and the easier to be held. The govern- ment of subjects is the easier to be conquered and the harder to be held. The government of citizens is both the hardest to be conquered and the hardest to be held.

" The reason why a government of servants is hard to be con- quered, is, that they are under a perpetual discipline and com- mand. Why a government of subjects is easily conquered, is on account of the factions of the nobility.

" The reasons why a government of citizens, where the com- monwealth is equal, is hardest to be conquered, are, that the invader of such a society must not only trust to his own strength, inasmuch as, the commonwealth being equal, he must needs find them united ; but in regard that such citizens, being all soldiers, or trained up to their arms, which they use not for the defence of slavery, but of liberty, a condition not in this world to be bettered, they have, more especially upon this occasion, the highest soul of courage, and, if their territory be of any extent, the vastest body of a well-disciplined militia that is possible in nature. Wherefore an example of such a one, overcome by the arms of a monarch, is not to be found in the world." p. 256.

In the art of lawgiving, chap. i. he enlarges still farther upon this subject ; and instances Joseph's purchase of all the lands of the Egyptians for Pharaoh, whereby they became servants to Pharaoh ; and he enlarges on the English balance, &c.

In America, the balance is nine tenths on the side of the peo- ple. Indeed, there is but one order ; and our senators have influence chiefly by the principles of authority, and very little by those of power ; but this must be postponed.

N?j

CHAPTER VI. OPINIONS OF HISTORIANS.

CHAPTER VI.

Opinions Of Historians

My design is more extensive than barely to show the imper- fection of M. Turgot's idea. This might be done in a few- words and a very short process of reasoning; bnt I wish to assemble together the opinions and reasonings of philosophers, politicians, and historians, who have taken the most extensive views of men and societies, whose characters are deservedly revered, and whose writings were in the contemplation of those who framed the American constitutions. It will not be con- tested that all these characters are united in Polybius, who, in a fragment of his sixth book, translated by Edward Spelman, at the end of his translation of the Roman Antiquities of Dionysius Halic amass en sis, says,- — ^ ?

" It is customary, with those who professedly treat this sub- ject, to establish three sorts of government, — kingly government, aristocracy, and democracy. Upon which one may very pro- perly ask them, whether they lay these down as the only forms of government, or as the best ; for in both cases they seem to be in an error; since it is manifest that the best form of govern- ment is that which is compounded of alt three. This is founded not only in reason, but also in experience, Lycurgus having set the example of this form of government in the institution of the Lacedaemonian commonwealth." . . .

" Six kinds of government must be allowed, — kingly govern- ment and monarchy, aristocracy and oligarchy, democracy and the government of the multitude. . . .

" Lycurgus concluded that every form of government that is simple, by soon degenerating into that vice that is allied to it, must be unstable. The vice of kingly government is monarchy ; Y/J~~ that of aristocracy, oligarchy ; that of democracy, rage and vio- lence ; into which, in process of time, all of them must degene- rate. " Lycurgus, to avoid these inconveniences, formed his government not of one sort, but united in one all the advanta- ges and properties of the best governments ; to the end that no

Yn

f

Mil

436 ON GOVERNMENT.

branch of it, by swelling beyond its due bounds, might degene- rate into the vice which is congenial to it; and that, while each of them were mutually acted upon by opposite powers, no one part might incline any way, or outweigh the rest ; but that the commonwealth being equally poised and balanced, like a ship " or f a ivagon" acted upon by contrary powers, might long remain in the same situation ; /while the king was restrained from excess by the fear of the people, who had a proper share in the com- monwealth ; and, on the other side, the people did not dare to disregard the king, from their fear of the senate, who, being all elected for their virtue, would always incline to the justest side ; by which means, that branch which happened to be oppressed became always superior, and, by the accessional weight of the senate, outbalanced the other. This system preserved the Lace- daemonians in liberty longer than any other people we have heard of ever enjoyed it.

"All the three principal orders of government were found in the Roman commonwealth ; every thing was constituted and administered with that equality and propriety by these three, that it was not possible, even for a Roman citizen, to assert posi- tively, whether the government, in the whole, was aristocratical, democratical, or monarchical. For, when we cast our eyes on the power of the consuls, the government appeared entirely mo- narchical and kingly; when on that of the senate, aristocratical; and when any one considered the power of the people, it ap- peared plainly democratical.

" The consuls, when they are at Rome, and before they take the field, have the administration of all public affairs ; for all other magistrates obey them, except the tribunes of the people. They introduce ambassadors into the senate. They also pro- pose to the senate those subjects of debate that require im- mediate despatch ; and are solely intrusted with the execution of their decrees. To them belongs the consideration of all public affairs of which the people have cognizance ; whom they are to assemble upon all occasions, and lay before them the decrees of the senate, then pursue the resolutions of the majority. They have almost an absolute power in every thing that relates either to the preparations of war, or to the conduct of it in the field ; for they may give what orders they please to their allies, and appoint the tribunes ; they may raise forces, and enlist those

POLYBIUS. 437

who are proper for the service. They also have power, when in the field, of punishing any who serve under them ; and of expending as much as they please of the public money, being always attended by a quaestor for that purpose, whose duty it is to yield a ready obedience to all their commands. So that whoever casts his eyes on this branch may with reason affirm, that the government is merely monarchical and kingly.

" The» senate have, in the first place, the command of the k • / - / public money. For they have the conduct of all receipts and disbursements ; since the quaestors cannot issue money for any particular service without a decree of the senate, except those sums they pay by the direction of the consuls. The senate have also the power over all disbursements made by the censors, every fifth year, in erecting and repairing public buildings ; takes cognizance of all crimes committed in Italy, such as treasons, conspiracies, poisonings, and assassinations ; sends embassies out of Italy to reconcile differences, use exhortations, signify commands, admit alliances, or declare war; determines when ambassadors come to Rome, in what manner they are to be treated, and the answer to be given them. For these reasons, when a foreigner comes to Rome, in the absence of the consuls, the government appears to him purely aristocratical.

" There is still a share in the government left for the people, and that the most considerable. They only have the power of distributing honors and punishments, to which alone both mo- narchies and commonwealths, and, in a word, all human institu- tions, owe their stability. For, wherever the difference between rewards and punishments is not understood, or injudiciously applied, there nothing can be properly administered, since the worthy and unworthy are equally honored !

" They often take cognizance of those causes where the fine is considerable, if the criminals are persons who have exercised great employments ; but in capital cases they alone have juris- diction ; and a custom prevails with them, to give those who are tried for their lives a power of departing openly to voluntary banishment.

" They have the power of conferring the magistracy upon those they think worthy of it, which is the most honorable reward ' of merit any government can bestow.

" They have the power of rejecting and confirming laws, and 37*

f ' ?**"

f

Y^f.

f-Yif

438 ON GOVERNMENT.

determine concerning peace and war, alliances, accommodations, and conventions.

" So that, from hence again, one may with reason assert, that the people have the greatest share in the government, and that the commonwealth is democratical.

" These orders, into which the commonwealth is divided, have the power to oppose, assist, and balance each other, as occasion may require. •

" Though the consul, at the head of his army in the field, seems to have an absolute power to carry every thing he proposes into execution ; yet he still stands in need of the people and senate, and without their assistance can effect nothing ; for, neither corn, clothes, nor pay can be furnished to the army with- out the consent of the senate ; who have also the power of send- ing another general to succeed him, as soon as the year is expired, or of continuing him in the command. Again, they may either magnify and extol, or obscure and extenuate, the victories of the generals ; for these cannot celebrate their triumphs, unless the senate consents to it, and furnishes the necessary expense.

"As the power of putting an end to the war is in the people, the generals are under a necessity of having then approbation, who have the right of ratifying and annulling all accommoda- tions and conventions. It is to the people that the generals, after the expiration of their command, give an account of their conduct ; so that it is by no means safe for them to disregard the favor either of the senate or of the people.

" The senate is under a necessity of showing a regard to the people, and of aiming at their approbation ; as, not having the power to punish crimes of the first magnitude with death, unless the people confirm the previous decree. If a law is proposed, by which part of the power of the senate is to be taken away, their dignities abolished, or even their fortunes diminished, the people have it in their power either to receive or reject it. If one of the tribunes of the people opposes the passing of a decree, the senate are so far from being able to enact it, that it is not even in their power to consult or assemble at all. For all these rea- sons, the senate stands in awe of the people.

" The people, also, are subject to the power of the senate, and under an obligation of cultivating the good-will of all the sena- tors, who have many opportunities both of prejudicing and ad-

POLYBIUS. 439

vantaging individuals. Judges are appointed out of the senate in most causes that relate to contracts, public or private. There are many rivers, ports, gardens, mines, and lands, and many- works relating to erecting and repairing public buildings, let out by the censors, under the care of the senate ; all these are under- taken by the people ; some are purchasers, others partners, some sureties for the contracts. All these things are under the control of the senate, which has power to give time, to mitigate, and, if any thing has happened to render the performance of the contract impracticable, to cancel it. The people, thus dependent on the senate, and apprehending the uncertainty of the occasions in which they may stand in need of their favor, dare not resist or oppose their will.

" In like manner, they are not easily brought to obstruct the ^1 designs of the consuls ; because all of them in general, and every one in particular, become subject to their authority, when in the field.

" Such being the power of each order to hurt and assist each other, their union is adapted to all contingencies, and it is not possible to invent a more perfect system. When the common Fear of a foreign enemy compels them to act in concert, such is the strength of the government, that nothing necessary is omit- ted, or comes too late, since all vie with each other in directing then- thoughts to the public good, and then endeavors to carry their designs into execution. The commonwealth, from the peculiar frame of it, becomes irresistible, and attains whatever it proposes.

" When, in consequence of victory, they live in prosperity and affluence, enjoying their good fortune free from the fear of a foreign enemy, they grow, through ease and flattery, insolent and proud ; their commonwealth is then chiefly observed to relieve itself. For, when any branch of it becomes ambitious, and, swelling beyond its bounds, aims at unwarrantable power, being subject to the control of the other two, it cannot run into any excess of power or arrogance ; but all three must remain in the terms prescribed by the constitution."

Thus, my dear sir, you see that Polybius's opinion of different orders, checks, and balances, in a commonwealth, is very dif- ferent from that of M. Turgot. The Roman constitution formed the noblest people and the greatest power that has ever existed.

440 ON GOVERNMENT.

But if all the powers of the consuls, senate, and people had been centred in a single assembly of the people, collectively or repre- sentatively, will any man pretend to believe that they would have been long free, or ever great ?

The distribution of power was, however, never accurately or judiciously made in that constitution. The executive was never sufficiently separated from the legislative, nor had these powers a control upon each other denned with sufficient accuracy. The executive had not power to interpose and decide between the people and the senate.

As we advance, we may see cause to differ widely from the judgment of Polybius, 'that it is impossible to invent a more perfect system of government? We may be convinced that the constitution of England, if its balance is seen to play, in practice, according to the principles of its theory ; that is to say, if the people are fairly and fully represented, so as to have the power of dividing or choosing, of drawing up hilt or down, instead of being disposed of by a few lords, is a system much \j more perfect. The constitutions of several of the United States, it is hoped, will prove themselves improvements both upon the Roman, the Spartan, and the English commonwealths.

The generation and corruption of governments, which may, in other words, be called the progress and course of human passions in society, are subjects which have engaged the attention of the greatest writers ; and whether the essays they have left us were copied from history, or wrought out of their own conjectures and reasonings, they are very much to our purpose, to show the utility and necessity of different orders of men, and of an equilibrium of powers and privileges. They demonstrate the corruptibility of every species of simple government, by which I mean a power without a check, whether in one, a few, or many. It might be sufficient to show this tendency in simple democracy alone, for such is the government of one assembly, whether of the people collectively or representatively ; but, as the generation and corruption of all kinds of government have a similitude with one another, and proceed from the same qualities in human nature, it will throw the more light upon our subject, the more particularly we examine it. I shall confine myself chiefly to the writings of Plato, Polybius, and Sir Thomas Smith.

Polybius thinks it manifest, both from reason and experience,

POLYBIUS. 441

that the best form of government is not simple, but compounded, because of the tendency of each of the simple forms to degene- rate. Even democracy, in which it is an established custom to worship the gods, honor their parents, respect the elders, and obey the laivs, has a strong tendency to change into a govern- ment where the multitude have a power of doing whatever they desire, and where insolence and contempt of parents, elders, gods, and laws soon succeed.

"From whence do governments originally spring? From the P-^fl weakness of men, and the consequent necessity to associate ; / and he who excels in strength and courage, gains the command and authority over the rest ', as among inferior animals, who are not influenced by opinion, the strongest are, by common consent, allowed to be masters. This is monarchy. . But when the nation, by living together, acquire some tincture of honor and justice, gra- titude, duty, and their opposites ; and the monarch countenances these moral qualities, and treats everyone according to his merit, they are' no longer afraid of violence, but submit to him, and unite in supporting his government, although he may again be- come weak and advanced in years. By this means, a monarch insensibly becomes a king, that is, when the power is transferred from courage and strength to reason. This is the origin of true kingly government ; for the people preserve the command, not only to them, but to their descendants, being persuaded, that those who have received their birth and education from such men will resemble them also in their principles. But if they are dissatisfied with their descendants, they then choose magistrates and kings with regard only to superior sense and reason, and not to bodily strength and courage ; having, by experience, been convinced of the difference between them. Those who were once chosen, and t invested with the royal dignity, grew old in the enjoyment of it, possessed themselves of a territory, surrounded it with walls, f and fortified advantageous posts ; thus consulting the security of their subjects, and supplying them with plenty of provisions, differing little in their clothes or table from the people with whom they passed their lives, they continued blameless and un- envied. But their posterity, succeeding to the government by right of inheritance, and finding every thing provided for security and support, they were led by superfluity to indulge their appe- tites, and to imagine that it became princes to appear in a dif-

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442 ON GOVERNMENT.

ferent dress, to eat in a more luxurious manner, and enjoy, with- out contradiction, the forbidden pleasures of love. The first produced envy, the other resentment and hatred. By which means kingly government degenerated into tyranny.

"At the same time a foundation was laid, and a conspiracy formed, for the destruction of those who exercised it ; the accom- plices of which were, not men of inferior rank, but persons of the most generous, exalted, and enterprising spirit ; for such men can least bear the insolence of those in power. The people, having these to lead them, and uniting against their rulers, kingly government and monarchy were extirpated, and aristocracy be- gan to be established.

" For the people, as ' an immediate acknowledgment to those who had destroyed monarchy, chose these leaders for their go- vernors, and left all their concerns to them. These, at first, pre- ferred the advantage of the public to all other considerations, and administered all affairs, both public and private, with care and vigilance. But their sons, having succeeded them in the same power, unacquainted with evils, strangers to civil equality and liberty, educated from their infancy in the splendor of the power and dignities of their parents, some giving themselves up to ava- rice, others to intemperance, and others to the abuse of women, by this behavior changed the aristocracy into an oligarchy.

" Their catastrophe became the same with that of the tyrants ; for, if any person, observing the general envy and hatred which these rulers have incurred, has the courage to say or do any thing against them, he finds the whole body of the people in- spired with the same passions they were before possessed with against the tyrant, and ready to assist him. Thereupon, they put some of them to death, and banish others; but dare not, after that, appoint a king to govern them, being still afraid of the injustice of the first. Neither dare they intrust the govern- ment with any number of men, having still before their eyes the errors which those had before committed. So that, having no hope but in themselves, they convert the government from an oligarchy to a democracy, and take upon themselves the care and charge of public affairs.

"And as long as any are living who felt the power and domi- nion of the few, they acquiesce under the present establishment, and look upon equality and liberty as the greatest of blessings.

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443

But when a new race of men grows up, these, no longer regard- ing equality and liberty, from being accustomed to them, aim at a greater share of power than the rest, particularly those of the greatest fortunes, who, grown now ambitious, and being unable to attain the power they aim at by their own merit, dissipate their wealth in alluring and corrupting the people by every method ; and when, to serve their wild ambition, they have once taught them to receive bribes and entertainments, from that mo- ment the democracy is at an end, and changes to force and violence. For the people, accustomed to live at the expense of others, and to place their hopes of a support in the fortunes of their neighbors, if headed by a man of a great and enterprising spirit, will then have recourse to violence, and, getting together, will murder, banish, and divide among themselves the lands of their adversaries, till, grown wild with rage, they again find a master and a monarch.

" This is the rotation of governments, and this the order of nature, by which they are changed, transformed, and return to the same, point of the circle.

"Lycurgus observing that all this was founded on necessity and the laws of nature, concluded that every form of government that is simple, by soon degenerating into that vice that is allied to it, and naturally attends it, must be unstable. For as rust is the natural bane of iron, and worms of wood, by which they are sure to be destroyed, so there is a certain vice implanted by tin hand of nature in every simple form of government, and by her ordained to accompany it. The vice of kingly government is monarchy ; that of aristocracy, oligarchy ; and of democracy, rage and violence ; into which all of them, in process of time, must necessarily degenerate. To avoid which, Lycurgus united in one all the advantages of the best governments, to the end that no branch of it, by swelling beyond its bounds, might degenerate into the vice that is congenial to it, and that, while each was mutually acted, upon by opposite powers, no one part might outweigh the rest. uThe Romans arrived at the same end by the same means."

Polybius, you perceive, my dear sir, is more charitable in his representation of human nature than Hobbes, Mandeville, Roche- foucauld, Machiavel, Beccaria, Rousseau, De Lolme, or even than our friend Dr. Price. He candidly supposes that the first kingly

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444 ON GOVERNMENT.

government will be wisely and honestly administered, during the life of the father of his people ; that the first aristocracy will be conducted with caution and moderation, by the band of patriots to whom is due the glory of the expulsion of the tyrant ; and that the people, for a generation at least, who have deposed the oligarchy, will behave with decorum.

But perhaps it might be more exactly true and natural to say, that the king, the aristocracy, and the people, as soon as ever they felt themselves secure in the possession of their power, would begin to abuse it.

In M. Target's single assembly, those who should think them- selves most distinguished by blood and education, as well as for- tune, would be most ambitious ; and if they found an opposition among their constituents to their elections, would immediately have recourse to entertainments, secret intrigues, and every popu- lar art, and even to bribes, to increase then parties. This would oblige their competitors, though they might be infinitely better men, either to give up their pretensions, or to imitate these dan- gerous practices. There is a natural and unchangeable incon- venience in all popular elections. There are always competi- tions, and the candidates have often merits nearly equal. The virtuous and independent electors are often divided ; this natu- rally causes too much attention to the most profligate and unprincipled, who will sell or give away their votes for other considerations than wisdom and virtue. So that he who has the deepest purse, or the fewest scruples about using it, will gene- rally prevail.

It is from the natural aristocracy in a single assembly that the first danger is to be apprehended in the present state of manners injVmerica ; and with "a balance of landed property in the hands of the people, so decided in their favor, the progress to degene- racy, corruption, rage, and violence, might not be very rapid ; nevertheless it would begin with the first elections, and grow faster or slower every year.

Rage and violence would soon appear in the assembly, and from thence be communicated among the people at large.

The only remedy is to throw the rich and the proud into one group, in a separate assembly, and there tie their hands ; if you give them scope with the people at large or their representatives, they will destroy all equality and liberty, with the consent and

DIONYSIUS. 445

acclamations of the people themselves. They will have much / more power, mixed with the representatives, than separated from them. In the first case, if they unite, they will give the law and govern all ; if they differ, they will divide the state, and go to a decision by force. But placing them alone by themselves, the society avails itself of all their abilities and virtues ; they become a solid check to the representatives themselves, as well as to the executive power, and you disarm them entirely of the power to do mischief.

Dionysius Of Halicarnassus

t

Dionysius Halicarnassensis, in his seventh book, has given us an excellent speech in the senate, made by Manlius Valerius, M ^aWjoA a man venerable for his age and wisdom, and remarkable for his constant friendship for the people. _—

" If any of you, fathers, are alarmed with an apprehension that ■ you will introduce a pernicious custom into the commonwealth, if you grant the people a power of giving their suffrages against the patricians, and entertain an opinion that the tribunitian power, if considerably strengthened, will prove of no advantage, let them learn that their opinion is erroneous, and their imagi- nation contrary to sound reasoning. For if any measure can tend to preserve this commonwealth, to assure both her liberty and power, and to establish a perpetual union and harmony in all things, the most effectual will be to give the people a share in the government ; and the most advantageous thing to us will be, not to have a simple and unmixed form of government ; neither a monarchy, an oligarchy, nor a democracy, but a constitution tempered with all of them ; for each of these forms, when simple, very easily deviates into abuse and excess ; but when all of them are e^ualh/jmixedj that part which happens to innovate and to exceed the customary bounds, is always restrained by another that is sober, and adheres to the established order. Thus mo- narchy, when it becomes cruel and insolent, and begins to pur- sue tyrannical measures, is subverted by an oligarchy, consisting of good men ; and an oligarchy, composed of the best men, which is your form of government, when, elated with riches and dependents, it pays no regard to justice or to any other virtue, is destroyed by a wise people. And in a democracy, when the

VOL. IV. 38

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446 ON GOVERNMENT.

people, from being modest in their deportment, and observant of the laws, begin to run into disorders and excesses, they are forced to return to their duty by the power with which, upon those occasions, the best man of the commonwealth is invested.

" You, fathers, have used all possible precautions to prevent monarchical power from degenerating into tyranny ; for, instead of a single person, you have invested two with the supreme power ; and though you committed this magistracy to them, not for an indefinite time, but only for a year, you nevertheless appointed three hundred patricians, the most respectable both for their virtue and their age, of whom this senate is composed, to watch over their conduct ; but you do not seem hitherto to have appointed any to watch over your own, and to keep you within proper bounds. As for yourselves, I am as yet under no apprehensions, lest you should suffer your minds to be corrupted by great and accumulated prosperity, who have lately delivered your country from a long tyranny ; and, through continual and lasting wars, have not as yet had leisure to grow insolent and luxurious. But with regard to your successors, when I consider how great alterations length of time brings with it, I am afraid, lest the men of power in the senate should innovate, and silently transform our constitution to a monarchical tyranny.

Whereas, if you admit the people to a share in the government, no mischief can spring from the senate ; but the man who aims at greater power than the rest of his fellow citizens, and has formed a faction in the senate of all who are willing to partake of his councils and his crimes, (for those who deliberate concerning public affairs ought to foresee every thing that is probable,) this great, this awful person, I say, when called upon by the tribunes to appear before the people, must give an account both of his actions and thoughts to this people, inconsiderable as they are, and so much his inferiors ; and, if found guilty, suffer the punishment he deserves. And, lest the people themselves, when vested with so great a power, should grow wanton, and, seduced by the worst of demagogues, become dangerous to the best citi- zens, (for the multitude generally give birth to tyranny,) some person of consummate prudence, created dictator by yourselves, will guard against this evil, and not allow them to run into excess ; and being invested with absolute power, and subject to no account, will cut off the infected part of the commonwealth,

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Dionysius

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and not suffer that which is not yet infected to be vitiated; reform the laws ; excite the citizens to virtue, and appoint such magistrates as he thinks will govern with the greatest prudence. And having effected these things within the space of six months, he will again become a private man, without receiving any other reward for these actions than that of bein^ honored for havinsr performed them.

" Induced, therefore, by these considerations, and convinced that this is the most perfect form of government, debar the peo- ple from nothing ; but as you have granted them a power of choosing the annual magistrates who are to preside over the commonwealth, of confirming and repealing laws, of declaring war, and making peace, which are the greatest and most import- ant affairs that come under the consideration of our government, not one of which you have submitted to the absolute determina- tion of the senate, allow them, in like manner, the power of try- ing offenders, particularly such as are accused of crimes against the state, of raising a sedition, of aiming at tyranny, of concert- ing measures with our enemies to betray the commonwealth, or of any other crimes of the like nature; for the more formidable vou render the transgression of the laws and the alteration of discipline, by appointing many inspectors and many guards over the insolent and the ambitious, the more will your constitution be improved."

It is surprising that Valerius should talk of an equal mixture of monarchical, aristocratical, and democratical powers, in a commonwealth where they were so unequally mixed as they were in Rome. There can be no equal mixture without a nega- tive in each branch of the legislature. But one example of an equal mixture has ever existed in Europe, and that is in England. The consuls in Rome had no negative ; the people had a nega- tive, but a very unequal one, because they had not the same time and opportunity for cool deliberation. The appointment of tri- bunes was a very inadequate remedy. What match for a Roman senate was a single magistrate seated among them? His abilities could not be equal ; his firmness could not always be depended on. But, what is worse, he was liable to be intimi- dated, flattered, and bribed. It is really astonishing that such people as Greeks and Romans should ever have thought four or five ephori, or a single tribune, or a college of ten tribunes, an

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adequate representation of themselves. If Valerius had proposed that the consul should have been made an integral part of the legislature, and that the Roman people should choose another council of two or three hundred, equally representing them, to be another integral- part, he would then have seen that the ap- pointment of a dictator could never, in any case, become neces- i sary.

PLATO.

Plato has given us the most accurate detail of the natural vicissitudes of manners and principles, the usual progress of the passions in society, and revolutions of governments into one another.

In the fourth book of his Republic, he describes his perfect commonwealth, where kings are philosophers, and philosophers kings; where the whole city might be in the happiest condition, and not any one tribe remarkably happy beyond the rest ; in one word, where the laics govern^ and justice is established ; where the guardians of the laws are such in reality, and preserve the constitution instead of destroying it, and promote the happiness of the whole city, not their own particularly ; where the state is one, not many ; where there are no parties of the poor and the rich at war with each other; where, if any descendant of the guardians be vicious, he is dismissed to the other classes, and if any descendant of the others be worthy, he is raised to the rank of the guardians ; where education, the grand point to be at- tended to, produces good geniuses, and good geniuses, partaking of such education, produce still better than the former ; where / >7£ the children, receiving from their infancy an education agreeable to the laws of the constitution, grow up to be worthy men, and observant of the laws ; where the system, both of laws and educa- tion, is contrived to produce the virtues of fortitude, temperance, wisdom, and justice, in the whole city, and in all the individual citizens ; where, if among the rulers or guardians of the laws, there be one surpassing the rest, it may be called a monarchy, or kingly government ; if there be several, an aristocracy.

Although there is but one principle of virtue, those of vice are infinite ; of which there are four which deserve to be mentioned. There are as many species of soul as there are of republics, — five of each. That which is above described is one.

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PLATO. 449

In the eighth book of his Republic he describes the other four, and the revolutions from one to another. The first he calls the ■> *.

Cretan or Spartan, or the ambitious 1 republic ; the second oli- garchy ;2 the third democracy ; and the fourth tyranny, the last disease of a city.

"As republics are generated by the manners of the people, to which, as into a current, all other things are drawn, of necessity there must be as many species of men as of republics. We have b ,\ \ already, in the fourth book, gone over that which we have pro- ' nounced to be good and just. We are now to go over the contentious and ambitious man, who is formed according to the Spartan republic ; and then him resembling an oligarchy ; then the democratic ; and then the tyrannic man ; that we may con- template the most unjust man, and set him in opposition to the most just, that our inquiry may be completed ! The ambitious republic is first to be considered. It is indeed difficult for a city constituted in this manner, that is, like Sparta, to be changed ; but, as every thing which is generated is liable to corruption, even such a constitution as this will not remain forever, but be dis- solved."

I shall pass over all the astrological and mystical whimsies which we meet with so often in Plato, interspersed among the most sublime wisdom and profound knowledge, and insert only what is intelligible. The amount of what he says in this place about numbers and music is, that mistakes will insensibly be made in the choice of persons for guardians of the laws; and by these guardians, in the rewards and promotion of merit. " They will not always expertly distinguish the several species J of genius, — the golden, the silver, the brazen, and the iron. Whilst iron shall be mixed with silver, and brass with gold, dis- similitude and discord arise, and generate war, and enmity, and sedition. When sedition is risen, two of the species of genius, 3 the iron and brazen, will be carried away after gain, and the acquisition of lands and houses, gold and silver. But the golden and silver geniuses, as they are not in want, but naturally rich,

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"H re ino t<ov nolhov £7iouvovfiei>Tj.

" That which is praised by many." *

2 2u%vo)v yifiovaa xaxiov.

" Full of many evils." 38 * C 2

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will lead the soul towards virtue and the original constitution. Thus divided, drawing contrary ways, and living in a violent manner, will not this republic be in the middle, between aris- tocracy and oligarchy, imitating, in some things, the former republic, and in others oligarchy ? They will honor their rulers ; their military will abstain from agriculture and mechanic arts ; they will have Common meals, gymnastic exercises, and contests of war, as in the former republic ; but they will be afraid to bring wise men into the magistracy, because they have no longer any such as are truly simple and inflexible, but such as are of a mixed kind, more forward and rough, more fitted by their natural genius for war than peace, esteeming tricks and stratagems. Such as these shall desire wealth, and hoard up gold and silver, as those who live in oligarchies. While they spare their own, they will love to squander the substance of others upon then pleasures. They will fly from the law as children from a father, who have been educated not by persuasion but by force. Such a republic, mixed of good and ill, will be most remarkable for the prevalence of the contentious and ambitious spirit."

" What now shall the man be, correspondent to this republic ? He will be arrogant and rough towards inferiors, mild towards equals, but extremely submissive to governors ; fond of dignity and the magistracy, but thinking that political management and military performances, not eloquence, nor any such thing, should entitle him to them. While young, he may despise money ; but the older he grows, the more he will value it, because he is of a covetous temper, and not sincerely affected to virtue and reason. Such an ambitious youth resembles such a city, and is formed somehow in this manner: — His father, a worthy man in an ill-regulated city, shuns honors, and magistracies, and law-suits, and all public business, that, as he can do no good, he may have no trouble. The son hears his mother venting her indignation, and complaining that she is neglected among other women, be- cause her husband is not in the magistracy, nor attentive to the making of money; that he is unmanly and remiss, and such other things as wives are apt to whine about concerning hus- bands. The domestics, too, privately say the same things to the sons, stimulating them to be more of men than then father, and more attentive to their money. When they go abroad, they hear the same things, and see that those who mind their own

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PLATO. 451

affairs are called simple, and such as mind not their affairs are commended. The young man, comparing the conduct, speeches, and pursuits of his father with those of other men, the one watering the rational part of his soul, and the other the concu- piscible and irascible, he delivers up the government within him- self to a middle power, that which is irascible and fond of con- tention, and so he becomes a haughty and ambitious man."

We have now the second republic, and the second man.

" This second republic will be succeeded by oligarchy, founded on men's valuations, in which the rich bear rule, and the poor have no share in the government. The change from the ambi- tious republic to oligarchy is made by that treasury which every one has filled with gold. For, first of all, they and their wives find out methods of expense, and to this purpose strain and dis- obey the laws, one observing and rivalling another, the generality become of this kind ; and, proceeding to greater desires of mak- ing money, the more honorable they account this to be, the more will virtue be thought dishonorable. Virtue is so different from wealth, that they always weigh against each other. Whilst wealth and the wealthy are held in honor in the city, both virtue and the good must be more dishonored, and what is honored is pursued, and what is dishonored is neglected. Instead, then, of ambitious men, they will become lovers of gain. The rich they praise and admire, and bring into the magistracy ; but the poor man they despise. They then make laws, marking out the bound- ary of the constitution, and regulating the quantity of oligarchic power according to the quantity of wealth; more to the more wealthy, and less to the less. So that he who hath not the valu- ation settled by law is to have no share in the government.

" What think you of this constitution ? If we should appoint pilots according to then valuation, but never intrust a ship with a poor man, though better skilled in Ms art, we should make very bad navigation. Again, such a city is not one, but of necessity two ; one, consisting of the poor, and the other of the rich, dwelling in one place, and always plotting against one another. They are, moreover, incapable to wage war, because of the necessity they are under, either of employing the armed multitude, and of dreading them more than the enemy, or to appear in battle, truly oligarchic, and at the same time be unwil- ling to advance money for the public service, through a natural disposition of covetousness.

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" In such a government almost all are poor, except the govern- ors ; and where there are poor, there are somewhere concealed thieves and pursecutters and sacrilegious persons, and workers of all other evils ; these the magistracy with diligence and force restrains ; these are drones in a city, with dangerous stings.

" This is oligarchy. Now let us consider the man who resem- bles it. The change from the ambitious to the oligarchic man is chiefly in this manner, — the ambitious man has a son who emu- lates his father and follows his steps ; afterwards he dashes on the city, as on a rock, wasting his substance in the office of a general or some other principal magistracy ; then falling into courts of justice, destroyed by sycophants, stripped of his digni- ties, disgraced, and losing all his substance. When he has thus suffered and lost his substance, in a terror he pushes headlong from the throne of his soul that ambitious disposition ; and, being humbled by his poverty, turns to the making of money, lives sparingly and meanly, and applying to work, scrapes together substance. He then seats in that throne the avaricious disposition, and makes it a mighty king within himself, decked out with Persian crowns, bracelets, and sceptres. Having placed the virtuous and ambitious disposition low on the ground, he reasons on nothing but how lesser substance shall be made greater, admires and honors nothing but riches and rich people. This is the change from an ambitious youth to a covetous one, and this is the oligarchic man.

" Democracy is next to be considered, in what manner it arises, and what kind of man it produces when arisen. The change from oligarchy to democracy is produced through the insatiable desire of becoming as rich as possible. As those who are govern- ors in it govern on account of their possessing great riches, they will be unwilling to restrain by law such of the youth as are dissolute, from having the liberty of squandering and wasting their substance ; that so, by purchasing the substance of such persons, and lending them on usury, they may still become richer, and be held in greater honor. While they neglect educa- tion, and suffer the youth to grow licentious, they sometimes lay under a necessity of becoming poor, such as are of no ungene- rous disposition. These sit in the city, some of them in debt, others in contempt, hating and conspiring against those who possess their substance, and with others very desirous of a

PLATO. 453

-?n

change. But the money-catchers, still brooding over it, and drawing to themselves exorbitant usury, fill the city with drones and poor. They neglect every thing but making of money, and make no more account of virtue than the poor do. When these governors and their subjects meet on the road, at public shows, in military marches, as fellow-soldiers or sailors, or in common dangers, the poor are by no means contemned by the rich. A robust fellow, poor and sunburnt, beside a rich man, bred up in the shade, swollen with flesh, and panting for breath, and in agony in battle, thinks it is through his own and his fellows' fault that such men grow rich, and says, Our rich men are good for nothing. The city soon grows into sedition between the oli- garchic and democratic parties ; and the poor prevailing over the rich, kill some and banish others, and share the places in the republic and the magistracies equally among the remainder, and for the most part the magistracies are disposed in it by lot. In what manner do these live, and what sort of republic is this ? A democracy. The city is full of all freedom of action and speech, and liberty to do in it what any one inclines. Every one will regulate his own method of life in whatever way he pleases. In such a republic will arise men of all lands. This is the finest of all republics, variegated like a robe with all lands of ■? ? / flowers, and diversified with all sorts of manners. The multi- tude, it is likely, judge this republic the best, like children and women gazing at variegated things. In truth, it contains all kinds of republics, and it appears necessary for any one, who wants to constitute a city, as we do at present, to come to a democratic city, as to a general fair of republics, and choose the form that he fancies ; he will not be in want of njodels. Is not this a sweet and divine manner of life for the present ? To be under no necessity to govern, although you were able to govern ; nor to be subject, unless you incline ; nor to be engaged in war when others are ; nor to live in peace when others do so, unless you be desirous of peace ; and though there be a law restraining you from governing or administering justice, to govern neverthe- less, and administer justice if you incline ? Have you not ob- served, in such a republic, men condemned to death or banish- ment continuing still, or returning like heroes, and walking up and down openly, as if no one observed them ? Is not this indulgence of the city very generous, in magnificently despising

*"5?

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all care of education and discipline, and in not regarding from what sort of pursuits one comes to act in public affairs, but honoring him, if he only say he is well affected towards the mul- titude ? These things, and such as these, are to be found in a democracy ; and it would be a pleasant sort of republic, anarchi- cal and variegated, distributing a certain equality to all alike, without distinction,

" Let us consider now the character of a democratical man, and how he arises out of that parsimonious one who, under the oligarchy, was trained up by his father in his manners. Such a one by force governs his own pleasures, which are expensive, and tend not to making money, and are called unnecessary. Eating, so far as conduces to preserve life, health, and a good habit of body, is a pleasure of the necessary kind ; but the desire of these things beyond these purposes, is capable of being curbed in youth; and, being hurtful to the body and to the soul, with reference to her attaining wisdom and temperance, may be called unnecessary. In the same manner we shall say of venereal desires and others. We just now denominated a drone the man who was full of such desires and pleasures ; but the oligarchic man, him who was under the necessary ones. The democratic appears to arise from the oligarchic man in this manner. ^ When a young man, bred up without proper instruction, and in a parsimonious manner, comes to taste the honey of the drones, and associates with those vehement and terrible creatures, who are able to procure pleasures every way diversified, from every quar- ter ; thence imagine there is the beginning of a change in him, from the oligarchic to the democratic. And as the city was changed by the assistance of an alliance from without, with one party of it, with which it was of ldn, shall not the youth be changed in the same manner, by the assistance of one species of desires from without to another within him, which resembles it, and is akin to it ? By all means. If any assistance be given to the oligarchic party within him, by his father or the others of his family admonishing and upbraiding him, then truly arises sedi- tion and opposition and a fight within him with himself. Some- times the democratic party yields to the oligarchic ; some of the desires are destroyed, others retire on the rise of a certain modesty in the soul of the youth, and he is again rendered somewhat decent. Again, when some desires retire, there are others akin

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, PLATO. 455

to them which grow up, and, through inattention to the father's instructions, become both many and powerful, draw towards intimacies, and generate a multitude. They seize the citadel of the soul of the youth, finding it evacuated of noble learning and pursuits and of true reasoning, which are the best watch- men and guardians in the understandings of men beloved of the gods ; and then false and boastful reasonings and opinions, rushing up in their stead, possess the same place in this person. These false and boastful reasonings, denominating modesty to be stupidity ; temperance, unmanliness ; moderation, rusticity ; decent expense, iEiberality ; thrust them all out disgracefully, expel them their territories, and introduce insolence and anarchy, luxury and impudence, in triumph, with encomiums and ap- plauses, shining with a great retinue, and crowned with crowns. Insolence they denominate education ; anarchy, liberty ; luxury, magnificence; and impudence, manhood. In this manner, a youth bred up with the necessary desires, changes into the licen- tiousness and remissness of the unnecessary and unprofitable pleasures ; his life is not regulated by any order, but deeming it pleasant, free, and happy, he puts all laws whatever on a level ; ■like the city, he is fine and variegated, and many men and women too would desire to imitate his life, as he hath in him a great many patterns of republics and of manners.

" It remains that we go over the most excellent republic, which is tyranny, and the most excellent man, who is the tyrant. The change is from democracy to tyranny, as from oligarchy to demo- cracy. An insatiable desire of riches, and a neglect of other tilings, through attention to making money, destroys oligarchy ; and an insatiable thirst of liberty destroys democracy. When a city is under a democracy, and is thirsting after liberty, and hap- pens to have bad cup-bearers, and grows drunk with an insuffi- ciently diluted draught of it, it punishes even the governors, if they will not be entirely tame, and afford a deal of liberty, accusing them as corrupted, and leaning towards oligarchy. Such as are obedient to magistrates are abused, as willing slaves and good for nothing. Magistrates who resemble sub- jects, and subjects who resemble magistrates, are commended and honored, both in public and private ; in such a city they of necessity soon go to the highest pitch of liberty, and this inbred anarchy descends into private families. The father resembles

456 ON GOVERNMENT. #

the child, and is afraid of his sons. The sons accustom them- selves to resemble the father, and neither revere nor stand in awe of their parents. Strangers are equalled with citizens. The teacher fears and flatters the scholars, and the scholars despise their teachers and tutors. The youth resemble the more ad- vanced in years, and rival them in words and deeds. The old men, sitting down with the young, are full of merriment and pleasantry, mimicking the youth, that they may not appear to be morose and despotic. The slaves are no less free than those who purchase them ; and wives have a perfect equality and liberty with their husbands, and husbands with their wives. The sum of all these things, collected together, makes the souls of the citi- zens so delicate, that if any one bring near to them any thing of slavery, they are filled with indignation, and cannot endure it ; and at length they regard not the laws, written or unwritten, that no one whatever, by any manner of means, may become their master. This is that government so beautiful and youthful, whence tyranny springs. But any thing in excess, in animal or vegetable bodies, in seasons or in republics, is wont to occasion a mighty change to the reverse ; and excessive liberty seems to change into nothing but excessive slavery, both with a private person and a city. Thus licentiousness destroys the democracy. " Out of no other republic is tyranny constituted but out of democracy ; and out of the most excessive liberty, the greatest and most savage slavery. The race of idle and profuse men, one part of which was more brave, and were leaders, the other more cowardly, and followers, we compared to drones, the one with, and the other without stings. These two springing up in a repub- lic, raise disturbance, as phlegm and bile in a natural body. Let us divide a democratic city into three, as it really is ; for one such species as the above grows through licentiousness in it, no less than in the oligarchic, but is much more fierce. In oligarchy, because it is not in places of honor, but is debarred from the magistracies, it is unexercised, and does not become strong ; but in a democracy this is the presiding party, excepting a few; and now it says and does the most outrageous things. Some other party is now always separated from the multitude ; and while the whole are somehow in pursuit of gain, such as are the most temperate become the wealthiest, and have the greatest quantity of honey ; hence the greatest quantity of honey, and what comes

PLATO. 457

with the greatest ease, is pressed out of these by the drones. Such wealthy people are the pasture of the drones. The people who mind their own affairs, and meddle not with any others, who have not much property, but yet are the most numerous and the most prevalent in democracy, whenever it is fully assem- bled, would be a third species ; but it will not often fully assem- ble, if it does not get some share of the honey. It does, however, always get a share, for their leaders rob those who have sub- stance, and give it to the people, that they may have the most themselves. These, then, who are thus despoiled, are obliged to defend themselves, saying and doing all they can among the people. Others, then, give them occasion to form designs against the people, and so they become oligarchic, even although they should have no inclination to introduce a change of government ; thence they go to accusations, lawsuits, and contests, one with another, the leaders slandering and the drones stinging.

" The people are wont always to set some one in a conspicuous manner over themselves, to cherish him, and greatly to increase his power. Whenever a tyrant rises, it is from this root, and from nothing else, that he blossoms. What, then, is the begin- ning of a change, from a president into a tyrant ? The wolf in the temple of Arcadia, dedicated to Lycaean Jupiter, had this inscription: " That whoever tasted human entrails, mixed with ty<P other sacrifices, necessarily became a wolf." In the same man- ner, he who, being president of the people, and receiving an ex- tremely submissive multitude, abstaineth not from kindred blood, but unjustly accusing them, and bringing them into courts of justice, stains himself with bloodshed, and banishes and slays, and proposes the abolition of debts, and division of lands, must not such a one either be destroyed by his enemies, or exercise tyranny, and from being a man become a wolf? He now be- comes seditious towards those who have substance, and when he fails, he goes against his enemies with open force, and becomes an accomplished tyrant ; and if they be unable to expel him, or put him to death by an accusation before the city, they conspire to cut him off privately, by a violent death. On this account, all those who mount up to tyranny, invent the celebrated tyran- nical demand of the people, certain guards for their persons, that the assistance of the people may be secured to them. The people, afraid of his safety, but secure as to their own, grant

VOL. IV. 39

458 ON GOVERNMENT.

them. Then those who have substance, and the crime of hating the people, fly ; and if any one of them is caught he is put to death. This president of a city, thus not behaving like a truly great man, tumbles down many others, and sits in his chair a consummate tyrant, instead of a president of a city.

" Consider, now, the happiness of the man and the city in which such a mortal arises. In the first days, he smiles and salutes every one he meets; says he is no tyrant; promises many things, both in private and in public ; frees from debts ; distributes lands, both to the people in general, and those about him ; affects to be mild, and of the patriot spirit, towards all. But when he has reconciled to himself some of his foreign enemies, and tranquil- lity is restored, he raises wars, that the people may want a leader, and that, being rendered poor by the payment of taxes, they may be under a necessity of becoming intent on a daily sustenance, and less ready to conspire against him. If he suspects any of them, who are of free spirits, will not allow him to govern, in order to have some pretext for destroying them, he exposes them to the enemy. On these accounts, a tyrant is always under a necessity of raising war. While he is doing these things, he must become more hateful to his citizens. Some of those who have been pro- moted along with Mm, and are in power, speak out freely, both to him and among themselves, finding fault with the transactions. It behoves the tyrant, then, to cut off all those who are of a more manly spirit, if he means to govern, till he leave no one, friend or foe, worth any thing. He must carefully observe who is courageous, magnanimous, wise, rich, and of necessity he must be an enemy to all these, and lay snares, until he cleanse the city of them. Thus he must live with wicked people, and be hated by them too, or not live at all. The more he is hated, the more guards he will want. But the worthy men being de- stroyed, the worst must be his guards. What a blessed posses- sion ! But this army of the tyrant, so beautiful, so numerous, and multiform, must be maintained. If there be any sacred things in the city, these they will spend, and the people obliged to pay the lighter taxes. When these fail, he and his drunken com- panions and associates, male and female, shall be maintained out of the paternal inheritance ; and the people who have made the tyrant shall nourish him. If the people be enraged, and say that they did not make him to be slaves to his slaves, but that

PLATO. 459

they might be set at liberty from the rich in the city, who are now called good and worthy men, and order him and his com- panions to be gone out of the city, as a father drives out of his house his son, with his tumultuary, drunken companions ; then, indeed, the people shall know what a beast they are themselves, and what a beast they have generated, hugged, and bred up. While they are the weaker, they attempt to drive out the stronger. The tyrant will strip them of their armor. The people, defend- ing themselves against the smoke of slavery, have fallen into the fire of despotism ; instead of that excessive and unseasonable liberty, embracing the most rigorous and wretched slavery of bondmen. Thus, to speak modestly, we have sufficiently shown how tyranny arises out of democracy, and what it is after it is risen. ^r-^^L

" The tyrannical man, himself, remains yet to be considered, in lh~j what manner he arises out of the democratic, and what kind of man he is, and whether he is wretched or happy. Of those pleasures and desires which are not necessary, some are repug- nant to law. These, indeed, appear to spring up in every one ; but, being chastised by the laws and the better desires, along with reason, they either forsake some men altogether, or are less in number and feeble ; in others they are in greater number and more powerful. These lawless desires are such as are excited in sleep, when the rational part of the soul which governs it is asleep, and the part which is brutal and savage, being filled with meats and drunkenness, frisks about, and, pushing away sleep, wants to go and accomplish its practices. In such a one, it dares to do every thing, as being loosed and disengaged from all mo- desty and discretion ; for it scruples not the embraces, as it ima- gines, of gods, men, or beasts ; nor to kill any one ; in one word, is wanting in no folly nor impudence. There is in every one a certain species of desires, which is terrible, savage, and irregular, even in some who seem to us to be entirely moderate.

" Recollect, now, what kind of man we said the democratic one was ; educated from his infancy under a parsimonious father, who valued the avaricious desires alone ; but being afterwards conversant with those who are more refined, running into their manner, and all sort of insolence, from a detestation of his father's parsimony. However, having a better natural temper than those who corrupt him, and being drawn opposite ways, he

460 ON GOVERNMENT.

settles into a manner in the middle of both, and participating moderately, as he imagines, of each of them, he leads a life neither illiberal nor licentious, becoming a democratic man from an aristocratic. His son is educated in his manners ; but the same things happening to him as to his father, he is drawn into all kinds of licentiousness, which is termed, however, by those who draw him off, the most complete liberty. His father, the do- mestics, and others, are aiding to those desires which are in the middle. But when the tyrant-makers have no hopes of retain- ing the youth in their power any other way, they contrive to excite in him a certain love, which presides over the indolent desires, and such as minister readily to their pleasures ; and when other desires make a noise about him, full of their odors and perfumes, and crowns and wines, and the pleasures of the most dissolute kind, then, truly, he is surrounded with madness as a life-guard, and that president of the soul rages with frenzy, till he kills all modesty, is cleansed of temperance, and filled with additional madness. This is the formation of a tyrannical man. After this, there are feastings among them, and revellings, banqueting, and mistresses, and all such things as may be ex- pected where the tyrant's love, drunkenness, and madness govern all in the soul. After this, there is borrowing and pillaging of substance, and searching for every thing which they are able, by rage and frenzy, deceit and violence, to carry off; pilfering and beguiling parents. When the substance of father and mother fails, he will break into houses, rob in the streets, rifle temples. Those desires which heretofore were only loose from their slavery in sleep, when he was yet under the laws and his father, when under democratic government, now, when he is tyrannized over by his passions, shall be equally loose when he is awake, and from no horrid slaughter or deed shall he abstain ; but the tyrant within him, living without any restraint of law and government, shall lead him on to every mad attempt. Such as these establish as tyrant the man who among them hath himself most of the > "*-■ tyrant, and in greatest strength, within his own soul. If the city relucts, he shall bring in other young people, and chastise his formerly beloved mother and father country J as the Cretans say. But liberty and true friendship the tyrannic disposition never tasted. Let us finish then our worst man. He will be awake such as we described him asleep, and he who appears the most

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PLATO. 461

wicked, shall really be the most wretched ; as many men, as many minds; as city is to city, in regard to virtue and happiness, so will man be to man ; kingly government is the best, and tyranny is the worst. No city is more wretched than that which is under tyranny, nor any more happy than that under regal power. Both the city and the tyrant shall be slavish, poor, timorous; and you will find more lamentations and groans, weepings and torments, than in any other city. We should not merely conjecture about matters of such importance, but most thoroughly inquire into them,, by reasoning of this kind, for the inquiry is concerning the most im- portant matter, a good life and a bad.

" Such private men as are rich, and possess many slaves, have this resemblance at least of tyrants, that they rule over many. If they live securely, and are not afraid of then domestics, it is because the whole city gives assistance to each particular man. But if a god should lift* a man, his wife, and children, with fifty slaves, out of the city, and let them down in a desert, in what kind of fear would he be about himself, his wife, and children, lest they should be destroyed by the domestics !

" Such, and much worse is the tyrant in his tyrannical city ; envious, faithless, cowardly, unjust, unfriendly, unholy, and a sink and breeder of all wickedness.

" Now tell me which is the first and which the last, as to hap- piness, the regal, the ambitious, the oligarchic, the democratic, and the tyrannic man and city. The best and justest is the hap piest."

Let me add to the researches of Polybius and Plato, concern- ing the mutability of governments, those of Sir Thomas Smith, who, as he tells us, on the twenty-eighth of March, 1565, in the seventh of Elizabeth and fifty -first year of his age, was ambassa- dor from that queen to the court of France, and then published, f- The Commonwealth of England," not as Plato made his republic, Xenophon his kingdom of Persia, or Sir Thomas More his Utopia, feigned commonwealths, such as never were nor shall be, vain imaginations, fantasies of philosophers, but as England stood and was governed at that day.

In his seventh chapter and the two following he gives us his opinion of the origin of a kingdom, an aristocracy and demo- cracy. The third he supposes to grow naturally out of the second, and the second out of the first, which originated in patri-

39*

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462 ON GOVERNMENT.

archal authority. But as there is nothing remarkable, either in favor of our system or against it, I should not have quoted the book in this place, but for the sake of its title. The constitution of England is in truth a republic, and has been ever so con- sidered by foreigners, and by the most learned and enlightened Englishmen, although the word commonwealth has become unpopular and odious, since the unsuccessful and injudicious attempts to abolish monarchy and aristocracy, between the years 1640 and 1660.

Let me proceed then to make a few observations upon the Discourses of Plato and Polybius, and show how forcibly they prove the necessity of permanent laws, to restrain the passions and vices of men, and to secure to the citizens the blessings of society, in the peaceable enjoyment of their lives, liberties, and properties ; and the necessity of different orders of men, with various and opposite powers, prerogaljves, and privileges, to watch over one another, to balance each other, and to compel each other at all times to be real guardians of the laws.

Every citizen must look up to the laws, as his master, his guardian, and his friend ; and whenever any of his fellow-citi- zens, whether magistrates or subjects, attempt to deprive him of his right, he must appeal to the laws ; if the aristocracy encroach, he must appeal to the democracy ; if they are divided, he must appeal to the monarchical power to decide between them, by joining with that which adheres to the laws ; if the democracy is on the scramble for power, he must appeal to the aristocracy and the monarchy, which by uniting may restrain it. If the regal authority presumes too far, he must appeal to the other two. Without three divisions of power, stationed to watch each other, and compare each other's conduct with the laws, it will be impossible that the laws should at all times preserve then author- ity and govern all men.

Plato has sufficiently asserted the honor of the laws and the necessity of proper guardians of them ; but has nowhere deline- ated the various orders of guardians, and the necessity of a balance between them. He has, nevertheless, given us premises from whence the absolute necessity of such orders and equipoises may be inferred ; he has shown how naturally every simple spe- cies of government degenerates. The aristocracy, or ambitious republic, becomes immediately an oligarchy. What shall be

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done to prevent it ? Place two guardians of the laws to watch the aristocracy, — one, in the shape of a king, on one side of it ; another, in the shape of a democratical assembly, on the other side. The aristocracy become an oligarchy, changes into a democracy. How shall it be prevented ? By giving the natural aristocracy in society its rational and just weight, and by giving it a regal power to appeal to, against the madness of the people. Democracy becomes a tyranny. How shall this be prevented ? By giving it an able, independent ally, in an aristocratical assem- bly, with whom it may unite against the unjust and illegal designs of any one man.

LOCKE.

Chimerical systems of legislation are neither new nor uncom- mon, even among men of the most resplendent genius and extensive learning. It would not be too bold to say, that some parts of Plato and Sir Thomas More are as wild as the ravings of Bedlam. A philosopher may be perfect master of Descartes and Leibnitz, may pursue his own inquiries into metaphysics to any length, may enter into the inmost recesses of the human mind, and make the noblest discoveries for the benefit of his spe- cies ; nay, he may defend the principles of liberty and the rights of mankind with great abilities and success ; and, after all, when called upon to produce a plan of legislation, he may astonish the world with a signal absurdity. Mr. Locke, in 1663, was em- ployed to trace out a plan of legislation for Carolina ; and he gave the whole authority, executive and legislative, to the eight proprietors, the Lords Berkley, Clarendon, Albemarle, Craven, and Ashley ; and Messieurs Carteret, Berkley, and Colleton, and their heirs. This new oligarchical sovereignty created at once three orders of nobility ; barons,1 with twelve thousand acres of land ; caciques, with twenty-four thousand, &c. ; and landgraves, with eighty thousand. Who did this legislator think would live under his government ? * He should have first created a

1 Here are slight errors. The barony was a geographical division, and not a title. There were no barons in Mr. Locke's plan ; arid the landgraves had forty- eight, and not eighty, thousand acres assigned them.

*. " It cannot be imagined that Mr. Locke considered this as the best plan of government, but that he was employed to lay out a plan of legislation, and was under the necessity of forming such a one as would best suit the oligarchical

464 ON GOVERNMENT.

new species of beings to govern, before he instituted such a government.

Milton

A man may be a greater poet than Homer, and one of the most learned men in the world ; he may spend his life in defence of liberty, and be at the same time one of the most irreproacha- ble moral characters ; and yet, when called upon to frame a con- stitution of government, he may demonstrate to the world that he has reflected very little on the subject. There is a great hazard in saying all this of John Milton ; but truth and the rights of mankind demand it. In his " Ready and Easy Way to Esta- blish a Free Commonvjealtli" this great author says, " I doubt not but all ingenuous and knowing men will easily agree with me, that a free commonwealth, without single person or house of I lords, is by far the best government, if it can be had ; . . .

" For the ground and basis of every just and free government, is a general council of ablest men chosen by the people to con- sult of public affairs, from time to time, for the common good. In this grand council must the sovereignty, not transferred, but delegated only, and, as it were, deposited, reside ; with this cau- tion, they must have the forces by sea and land committed to them for preservation of the common peace and liberty ; must raise and manage the public revenue, at least with some inspect- ors deputed for satisfaction of the people how it is employed ; must make or propose civil laws, treat of commerce, peace, or war with foreign nations ; and, for the carrying on some particu- lar affairs with more secrecy and expedition, must elect, as they have already, out of their own number and others, a council of state.

"And although it may seem strange at first hearing, by reason that men's minds are prepossessed with the notion of successive parliaments, I affirm that the grand or general council, being well

views of the proprietors. A similar plan was formed by the late Lord Egmont for the settling the island of St. John, by which his nobles had almost an arbi- trary power of punishing their dependents. And this being made by his lord- ship an inducement to an acquaintance of mine to go thith er and carry with him a number of settlers, he answered that he had not, for his own part, any objec- tion in possessing the power of whipping and scourging those who might be under him, but he doubted whether he should be able to get anybody to submit to it."

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chosen, should be perpetual ; for so their business is, or may be, and ofttimes urgent; the opportunity of affairs gained or lost in a moment. The day of council cannot be set as the day of a festival ; but must be ready always to prevent or answer all occasions. By this continuance they will become every way skilfullest, best provided of intelligence from abroad, best ac- quainted with the people at home and the people with them. The ship of the commonwealth is always under sail ; they sit at the stern, and if they steer well, what need is there to change them, it being rather dangerous ? Add to this, that the grand council is both foundation and main pillar of the whole state ; and to move pillars and foundations, not faulty, cannot be safe for the building. I see not, therefore, how we can be advan- taged by successive and transitory parliaments ; but that they are much likelier continually to unsettle, rather than to settle a free government ; to breed commotions, changes, novelties, and uncertainties ; to bring neglect upon present affairs and opportu- nities, while all minds are in suspense with expectation of a new assembly, and the assembly, for a good space, taken up with the new settling of itself. . . . But if the ambition of such as think themselves injured, that they also partake not of the government, and are impatient till they be chosen, cannot brook the perpetuity of others chosen before them ; or if it be feared that long continu- ance of power may corrupt sincerest men, the known expedient _ o a is, that annually, (or if the space be longer, so much perhaps the f> ' better,) the third part of senators may go out," &c.

Can one read, without shuddering, this wild reverie of the divine, immortal Milton ? If no better systems of government had been proposed, it would have been no -wonder that the peo- ple of England recalled the royal family, with all their errors, follies, and crimes about them. Had Milton's scheme been adopted, England would have been a scene of revolutions, car- nage, and horror, from that time to this, or its liberties would have been at this hour the liberties of Poland, or the island would have been a province of France. What ! a single assembly to I govern England ? an assembly of senators for life too ? What ! did Milton's ideas of liberty and free government extend no further than exchanging one house of lords for another, and making it supreme and perpetual ? What ! Cromwell, Ireton, Lambert, Ludlow, Waller, and five hundred others of all sects d 2

466 ON GOVERNMENT.

and parties, one quarter of them mad with enthusiasm, another with ambition, a third with avarice, and a fourth of them honest men, a perpetual council to govern such a country ! It would have been an oligarchy of decemvirs on the first day of its sitting ; it would have instantly been torn with all the agitations of Venice, between the aristocracy and oligarchy, in the assembly itself. If, by ballots and rotations and a thousand other contri- vances, it could have been combined together, it would have stripped the people of England of every shadow of liberty, and grown in the next generation a lazy, haughty, ostentatious group of palatines ; but if they had fallen into divisions, they would have deluged the nation in blood, till one despot would have ruled the whole. John Milton was as honest a man as his nation ever bred, and as great a friend of liberty ; but his great- ness most certainly did not consist in the knowledge of the nature of man and of government, if we are to judge from this performance, or from " The Present Means and Brief Delineation of a Free Commonwealth" in his letter to General Monk.

HUME.

Americans in this age are too enlightened to be bubbled out of their liberties, even by such mighty names as Locke, Milton, Turgot, or Hume ; they know that popular elections of one essential branch of the legislature, frequently repeated,* are the only possible means of forming a free constitution, or of pre- serving the government of laws from the domination of men, or of preserving their lives, liberties, or properties in security ; they know, though Locke • and Milton did not, that when popular elections are given up, liberty and free government must be given up. Upon this principle, they cannot approve the plan of Mr. Hume, in his " Idea of a Perfect Commonivealth.,ir*i Let all the freeholders of twenty pounds a year in the county, and all the householders worth five hundred pounds in the town parishes, meet annually in the parish church, and choose, by ballot, some freeholder of the county for their member, whom we shall call the county representative. Let the hundred county representatives, two days after their election, meet in the county town, and

* " Not less frequently than for every session."

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HUME. 467

choose by ballot, from their own body, ten county magistrates and one senator. There are, therefore, in the whole common- wealth, one hundred senators, eleven hundred county magis- trates, and ten thousand county representatives ; for we shall bestow on all senators the authority of county magistrates, and on all county magistrates the authority of county representatives. Let the senators meet in the capital, and be endowed with the whole executive power of the commonwealth ; the power of peace and war, of giving orders to generals, admirals, and am- bassadors, and, in short, all the prerogatives of a British king, except his negative. Let the county representatives meet in their particular counties, and possess the whole legislative power of the commonwealth ; the greater number of counties deciding the question ; and where these are equal, let the senate have the casting vote. Every new law must first be debated in the senate ; and, though rejected by it, if ten senators insist and protest, it must be sent down to the counties. The senate, if they please, may join to the copy of the law their reasons for receiving or rejecting it," &c.

The senate, by the ballot of Venice or Malta, are to choose a protector, who represents the dignity of the commonwealth, and presides in the senate ; two secretaries of state and a council of state, a council of religion and learning, a council of trade, a council of laws, a council of war, a council of the admiralty — each of five persons, all senators ; and seven commissioners of the treasury.

If you compare this plan, as well as those of Locke and Mil- ton, with the principles and examples, you will soon form a judgment of them ; it is not my design to enlarge upon them. That of Hume is a complicated aristocracy, and would soon behave like all other aristocracies. It is enough to say that the representatives of the people may by the senators be deprived of a voice in the legislature ; because the senate have their choice of sending the laws down, either to the county magistrates or county representatives. It is an ingenious device, to be sure, to get rid of the people and their representatives ; besides that the delays and confusions would be endless, in sending the laws to be debated in as many separate commonwealths as there are counties. But the two decisive objections are, — 1. Letting the nobility or senate into the management of the executive power ;

468 ON GOVERNMENT.

and 2. Taking the eyes of the people off from their represent- atives in the legislature. The liberty of the people depends entirely on the constant and direct communication between them and the legislature, by means of their representatives.

The improvements to be made in the English constitution lie entirely in the house of commons. If county members were abolished,1 and representatives proportionally and frequently chosen in small districts, and if no candidate could be chosen but an established, long-settled inhabitant of that district, it would be impossible to corrupt the people of England, and the house of commons might be an immortal guardian of the national liberty. Instead of projects to abolish kings and lords, if the house of commons had been attended to, wild wars would not have been engaged in, nor countless millions thrown away, nor would there have remained an imperfection, perhaps, in the English constitution. Let the people take care of the balance, and especially their part of it. But the preservation of their peculiar part of it will depend still upon the existence and inde- pendence of the other two. The instant the other branches are destroyed, their own branch, their own deputies, become their tyrants.

1 " Why the county members should be abolished is not easy to say." S.

" The patriotic party which attempted to reform the constitution, thought the county members ought to be increased, and not abolished." H.

The preceding comments are illustrative of the difference which exists be- tween the English and American way of viewing similar questions. To the former, the county representation is indicative of the popular sentiment. To the latter, it signifies an unequal rule of representation. That this is the reason of the author's objection is plain, from his proposal of a substitute, in "representatives proportionally chosen," &c.

CHAPTER VII. ANCIENT DEMOCRATICAL REPUBLICS.

CHAPTER VII.

Ancient Democratical Republics. Carthage

ANCIENT DEMOCRATICAL REPUBLICS.

CARTHAGE.

In order to show the theory of Socrates, as reported by Plato, in a clearer light, and to be convinced that he has not exagger- ated in his description of the mutability in the characters of men and' the forms of government, we should look into the history of those ancient republics from whence he drew his observations and reasonings. Although it is probable that Greece was his principal theatre, yet we may reasonably suppose that Carthage and a multitude of other republics in Italy, besides that of Rome, were not unknown to him.

The history of Greece should be to our countrymen what is called in many families on the continent a boudoir, an octagonal apartment in a house, with a full-length mirror on every side, and another in the ceiling. The use of it is, when any of the young ladies, or young gentlemen if you will, are at any time a little out of humor, they may retire to a place where, in whatever direction they turn their eyes, they see their own faces and figures multiplied without end. By thus beholding their own beautiful persons, and seeing, at the same time, the deformity brought upon them by their anger, they may recover their tempers and their charms together. A few short sketches of the ancient republics will serve to show, not only that the orders we defend were common to all of them ; but that the prosperity and dura- tion of each was in proportion to the care taken to balance them ; and that they all were indebted, for their frequent seditions, the rise and progress of corruption, and their decline and fall, to the imperfection of their orders, and their defects in the balance.

As there are extant no writings of any Carthaginian philoso- pher, statesman, or historian, we have no exact information con- cerning the form of their commonwealth, but what appears in a few hints of Greek and Roman authors. Their commerce and riches, their empire of the sea, and extensive dominion of two

VOL. IV. 40

3 '*

470 ON GOVERNMENT.

thousand miles on the sea coast, their obstinate military contests with Rome, and the long duration of their government, prove both that their population and power were very great, and their constitution good ; especially as, for the space of five hundred years, then tranquillity was never interrupted by sedition, nor their liberties attempted by the ambition of any of their citizens.

The national character was military, as well as commercial ; and, although they were avaricious, they were not effeminate.

The monarchical power was in two suffetes, the aristocratical in the senate, and the democratical was held by the people in a body. These are said to have been nicely balanced, but we know not in what manner. The chief magistrates were annually elected by the people. The senators were elected too, and, although it is not certain, it is most probable, by the people; but it appears that three qualifications were indispensable in every senator, — birth, merit, and wealth. This last requisite rendered commerce honorable, even in the first of the patricians and senators themselves, and animated the commercial genius of the nation. This government, thus far, resembles those of the States of America, more 'than any other of the ancient repub- lics, perhaps more than any of the modern ; but when we inquire for the balance, it is not to be found. The suffetes had not more authority than Roman consuls ; they had but a part of the exe- cutive, and none of the legislative power. Much of the execu- tive and all the legislative was in the senate and people. The balance, then, could only be between these two. Now, it is im- possible to balance two assemblies without introducing a third power ; one or other will be most powerful, and, whichever it is, will continually scramble till it gets the whole. In fact, the people here had the whole as much as in any of our states ; so that, while the citizens were uncorrupted and gave their votes honestly for suffetes and senators, all went well. And it is ex- tremely remarkable that, with all their acknowledged eagerness for money, this people were so many centuries untainted with luxury and venality, and preserved their primitive frugality of manners and integrity in elections. As to the Roman accusa- tions of insincerity, there is no more reason to believe them, than there would be to believe a Carthaginian who should retort the reproach. This, as well as other instances, may lead us to doubt the universality of the doctrine, that commerce corrupts manners.

CARTHAGE. 471

There was another remarkable institution, that the senate should always be unanimous ; and if any one senator insisted upon his own opinion again sti all the rest, there could be no decision, but by an appeal to the people. This, again, gave a strong demo- cratical cast to the constitution. Such a tendency could only be balanced by the laws, which, requiring a large fortune for every senator and public officer, in order to support his dignity, and • f/ Y secure him against the temptations to corruption, confined the choice to the first . families and abilities united. This was liable to great objection ; because great abilities might often be pos- sessed by men of obscure original and smaller property, who were thereby excluded. To this law, nevertheless, may be ascribed the duration of the republic.

Another remarkable check, which was, perhaps, the model I from whence the Venetian inquisition was copied, was a com- ' * mittee of one hundred and four members of the senate appointed to watch the ambition of the great families. To this body all their admirals and generals were required to render an account of their conduct at the end of every year.

Out of this body were elected a sub-committee of five, who had very great power. Their office was for life ; and they filled up their own vacancies out of the one hundred and four, and all the vacancies, even in the one hundred and four, out of the senate ; they had the supreme tribunal of criminal jurisdiction. This power must have been terrible to all, — to the people, senate, and suffetes ; yet it was the check which preserved the state from sedition and convulsions. It grew unpopular ; and the law which at last made it annual and elective, probably laid the foundation of the ruin of the commonwealth, by changing the balance, and introducing the dominatio plebis. The balances in this, the most democratical republic of antiquity, contrived by the people them- selves to temper their own power, are extremely remarkable. The suffetes represented, tike the consuls at Rome, the majesty of the commonwealth, and had a share of executive authority ; the council of five had criminal jurisdiction and inquisitorial power; the one hundred and four were a body chosen out of the senate, by the five, for their support ; then comes the senate at large ; and, last of all, the people at large. Here are five orders completely distinct, besides the necessary legal qualifica- tion of great wealth ; yet all these checks, although they pre-

472 ON GOVERNMENT.

served the state five hundred years, could not prolong its period above seven hundred; because, after all, the balance was not natural nor effectual. The executive power was not separated from the legislative ; nor the different parts of the legislature properly divided or balanced. Both the executive and judicial power were chiefly in legislative hands.

The noble families, thus secured in possession both of legisla- tive and executive power, could not be restrained by all the liga- ments which had been contrived to preserve the equipoise between them and the people. They divided into two factions, with the family of Hanno at the head of one, and that of Barcas of the other. They first attacked the council of five, whose power was unpopular, as well as odious to the nobles ; then easily procured a law to make it annually elective, or, in other words, an instru- ment always in the hands of the prevailing faction, as such a small body, so changeable, must ever be ; and, lastly, overturned the constitution. The Romans had all the advantage of these dissensions in the war, by which they finally destroyed their rival power so effectually, that scarce a trace of it remains to be seen, even in ruins. Their virtues were not extinguished to the last ; and some of the greatest examples of patriotism and heroism were exhibited even in their expiring agonies.

Athens

Cecrops, an Egyptian, conducted a colony that settled in Athens, and first engaged the wandering shepherds and hunters of Attica to unite in villages of husbandmen. Although the government of Egypt was an absolute monarchy, he found it necessary to establish his own upon a more limited plan.

The two rival families of Perseus and Pelops, anciently con- tended for the dominion of the Grecian peninsula. The fortune of the descendants of the latter prevailed, and their superior pros- perity led them to persecute their enemies. The descendants of Hercules, who was a son of Jupiter by Alcmena, of the line of Perseus, were stripped of all their possessions, and driven into exile. After a series of misfortunes, Temenus, Cresphontes, and Aristodemus, descendants in the fifth degree from Hercules, con- ducted an expedition into Greece and conquered the whole country.

ATHENS. 473

The governments of the little states of Greece in the first ages, though of no very regular and certain constitution, were all / 7 o limited monarchies. When, therefore, the Heraclides possessed themselves of Peloponnesus, they established everywhere that hereditary limited monarchy, which was the only government assimilated to the ideas and temper of the age, and an equality among themselves. Those vigorous principles of aristocracy, f and some traces of the spirit of democracy, which had always ,; / i existed in the Grecian governments, began to ferment ; and, in i the course of a few ages, monarchy was everywhere abolished. The very name of king was proscribed ; a republic was thought the only government to which it became men to submit ; and the term tyrant was introduced to denote those who, in opposi- tion to these new political principles, acquired monarchical authority. Absolute monarchy was unknown as a legal consti- /'( tution. The title of king implied a superiority of lawful dignity and authority in one person, above all others, for their benefit, not a right of absolute power. Legislation was never within their prerogative.

A distinction of families into those of higher and lower rank obtained very early throughout Greece, and nowhere more than at Athens, where, by the constitution of Theseus, the Eupa- tridse, or nobly born, formed a distinct order of the state with great privileges. Afterwards wealth became the principal crite- rion of rank, which amounted probably to the same thing, as the nobly born were generally most wealthy. Every citizen in every Grecian state was bound to military service, as in modern times, among the feudal kingdoms. It was natural that the rich should serve on horseback ; and this was the origin of knighthood both in ancient and modern nations. Where the noble or the rich held all the power, they called their own government aristocracy, or government of the better sort, or optimacy, government of the best sort. The people allowed the appellation of aristocracy only to those governments, where persons, elected by themselves for their merit, held the principal power. Democracy signified a government by all the freemen of the state or the people at large, i y j" forming in assembly the legal, absolute sovereign. But as this, above all others, was subject to irregularity, confusion, and absurdity, when unchecked by some balancing power lodged in fewer hands, it was called ochlocracy, or mob rule. Most of the

40*

474 ON GOVERNMENT.

Grecian states had some mixture of two or more of these forms. The mixture of oligarchy and democracy, in which the former was superior, yet the latter sufficed to secure liberty and equal right to the people, might, according to Aristotle, be called aristocracy. That mixture where the democratic power pre- vailed, yet was in some degree balanced by authority lodged in steadier hands, is distinguished by that great author by the name of polity. An equal mixture of all three was never known in Greece, and, therefore, never obtained a distinct name in that language.

A war happened between the Athenians and Peloponnesians ; the armies were encamped near each other, and the Delphian oracle was consulted. The answer of the Pythoness implied, that the Peloponnesians would be victorious, provided they did not kill the Athenian king. Codrus, disguising himself like a clown, with a fagot on his shoulder and a fork in his hand, determined to devote his life, entered the enemy's camp, and was killed. The Peloponnesian chiefs finding the body to be Codrus, and fearing the prophecy, withdrew their forces, and a peace ensued. Medon, the eldest son of Codrus, was lame ; and bodily ability was held in so high rank in popular esteem, that his younger brother disputed the succession. Each had a power- ful party ; but the dispute brought forward a third, which was for abolishing the royalty, and having no king but Jupiter. Fatal dissensions were apprehended, when a declaration of the oracle was procured in favor of Medon ; and it was amicably accom- modated that Medon should be first magistrate, with the title of archon, but not king. Although the honor was to be hereditary, and the archon to be accountable to the assembly of the people for his administration, it was agreed that a colony should be sent to Asia Minor, under Nelius and Androclus, younger sons of Codrus. The most restless spirits joined in the migration, and no further materials for history remain for several generations.

From the period where Homer's history ceases, to that in which the first prose historians lived, a space of two hundred and fifty years, there is little light to be obtained. Twelve archons are named, who followed Medon by hereditary succession, and filled up three hundred years. On the death of Alcmason, Cha- rops was raised to the archonship, upon condition of holding it for ten years only. Six archorts followed Charops, by appoint-

ATHENS. 475

ment, for ten years ; but on the expiration of the archonship of Eryxias, it was resolved that the office should be annual, and that there should be nine persons to execute it. They had not all equal dignity, nor the same functions ; one represented the majesty of the state, and was usually called the archon ; the second had the title of king, and was head of the church ; the polemarch was third, and chief of military affairs. The other six had the title of thesmothetes ; they presided as judges in 2 '/ r ordinary courts of justice. The nine together formed the coun- cil of state. Here methinks I see the Polish nobles running down the king, or those of Venice the doge, and dividing the spoils of his prerogative among themselves. Legislation was in the assembly of the people ; but the whole administration, civil, military, religious, and judiciary, was with the archons, who were commonly appointed by lot ; but sometimes the assembly of the people interfered, and exercised the power of naming them. From the appointment of annual archons there was nothing but intestine troubles. That weight which, from earliest times, a P few principal families possessed among the Attic people, and which was in a great degree confirmed to them by the constitu- tion of Theseus, remained, amid all the turbulence of democracy, to a late period. Among those families the Alcmaeonides, claim- ing some connection by blood with the perpetual archons and kings of the ancient Neleid line, were of great fame. Megacles, head of this family, was archon when Cylon, a man of a very ancient and powerful family, attempted to acquire the sove- reignty of his country. He seized the citadel of Athens, with some troops he received from Theagenes, tyrant of Megara, whose daughter he had married. His vanity was excited not only by his birth and marriage, but his personal merit, having been victor in a chariot race at the Olympic games. The people ran to arms under their archons, and laid siege to the citadel. Cylon fled, and his party fled to the altars. They were promised pardon, but condemned and executed. This was an atrocious infidelity, and made the actors in it as odious, as it rendered Cylon and his party again popular and powerful.

The miseries of a fluctuating jurisprudence became insuffera- ble, and all parties united at last in the resolution to appoint a lawgiver. Draco was raised to this important office ; a man whose morals and integrity recommended him to the people, but

476 ON GOVERNMENT.

whose capacity was equal to no improvement in the political constitution, and to no greater invention for reforming the judica- tures, than that of inflicting capital punishments in all offences ; and the knowing ones had no other remedy than to get the ora- cle to pronounce that the laws of Draco were written in blood ; an expression which struck the imagination and touched the heart, and, therefore, soon rendered this system unpopular.1

Salamis, perceiving the divisions at Athens, revolted, and allied itself to Megara. Several attempts to recover it having failed, the lower people, in opposition to their chiefs, carried a law, making it capital to propose a renewal of the enterprise. Solon, of an ancient royal family, who had hitherto pursued nothing but literature and poetry, perceiving that this rash act of the populace began to give general disgust and repentance, especially to the young Athenians, ventured to lead the people to repeal it. He caused it to be reported that he was mad, and for some time kept his house ; in this retirement he composed a poem, such as he thought would excite the multitude; then watching his opportunity, during an assembly of the people, he ran into the Agora like one frantic, mounted on a rock, and read his poem to the people. Some of his friends, who were in the secret, were present, and ready to wonder and applaud. The enthusiasm spread, the law was repealed, and an expedition sent under Solon's friends, which, being skilfully conducted, recovered the island. But the party of Cylon were still clamorous against the partisans of Megacles, for their breach of faith. Solon per- suaded the accused to submit to a trial. They were condemned to banishment ; but this punishment not being sufficient to appease the deity, the bones of those who had been executed were removed beyond the mountains.

During these troubles Salamis was retaken. Superstition now gained the ascendant ; phantoms and omens were seen, and expiations and purifications were necessary. Epimenides, a Cretan philosopher, of great reputation for religious knowledge,

1 Yet it seems clear that he discriminated in the moral nature of offences.

" The few fragments of the Draconian tables which have reached us, far from exhibiting indiscriminate cruelty, introduce, for the first time, into the Athenian law, mitigating distinctions in respect to homicide ; founded on the variety of concomitant circumstances." Grote, Hist, of Gh'eece, vol. iii. p. 102.

It is difficult also to account for the popularity the author of so unpopular a system is reputed to have enjoyed till his death.

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ATHENS. 477

and an intimate friend of Solon, was invited to superintend the religion of Athens. Epimenides was the ostensible director, but Solon concerted with him the various improvements in jurispru- dence. By means of religious pomp, ceremony, sacrifices, and processions, he amused the people into some degree of order and suspension of their factions ; but the tranquillity was not likely to be lasting. Three political parties existed, — one for demo- cracy, composed of the landholders of the mountains ; another for an aristocracy of the rich, consisting of the possessors of the plain ; a third preferred a mixture of oligarchy and democracy, consisting of the inhabitants of the coast, and the most disin- terested men. There was another division of the people, into the parties of the rich and the poor. Dangerous convulsions were so apprehended, that many sober men thought the esta- blishment of a tyranny, in one, necessary to prevent greater evils. Solon's reputation for wisdom and integrity was universal ; and, as he had friends in all parties, they procured the place of archon, with power to reform the constitution. His first object was to reconcile the rich with the poor ; this he accomplished by lower- ing the interest "without annulling the debt,1 and by taking from the creditor the exorbitant powers over the person and family of the debtor. He found such a predilection for democracy in the minds of the citizens, that he preserved to every free Athenian his equal vote in the assembly of the people, which he made supreme in all cases, legislative, executive, and judicial. He had not, probably, tried the experiment of a democracy in his own family, before l>e attempted it in the city, according to the advice of Lycurgus ; but was obliged to establish such a government as the people would bear, not that which he thought the best, as he said himself.

As the laws of Solon were derived from Crete and Egypt, were afterwards adopted by the Romans as their model, and have by them been transmitted to all Europe, they are a most interesting subject of inquiry ; but it is not possible to ascertain

1 The extent to which he went in his interference between the debtor and creditor, is a subject which, like almost every other connected with these times, has been much disputed. But the better opinion is, that the statement in the text is below the truth. He diminished the weight of the money of account more than a quarter part, and probably annulled, directly or indirectly, the mortgages on all lands. It may be doubted whether any more radical measure was ever adopted in legislation.

478

ON GOVERNMENT.

f"

f

(V.

/

exactly which were his, which were those of Epimenides or Theseus, or what was, in fact, the constitution of Athens. The first inquiry is, who were citizens? By a poll that was taken in the time of Pericles, they were found to be fourteen thousand persons. By another, in the time of Demetrius Phale- reus, they were twenty-one thousand. At the same time, there were ten thousand freemen, consisting of foreigners and freed slaves, and four hundred thousand souls in actual bondage, who had no vote in the assembly of the people. The persons, there- fore, who shared the power being not a tenth part of the nation,1 were excused from labor, in agriculture as well as manufactures, and had time for education ; they were paid, too, for attendance on public affairs, which enabled the poorer citizens to attend their duty. This is one circumstance which rendered a govern- ment so popular practicable for a time. Another was, the divi- sion of Attica into tribes and boroughs, or districts, like the American counties, towns, and parishes, or- the shires, hundreds, and tithings of England. The tribes, at first, were four, after- wards ten. Each tribe had its presiding magistrate, called phy- larchus, analogous to trie English Sheriff; and each borough, of which there were one hundred and seventy-four, its demarchus, like a constable or headborough. As the title of king was pre- served to the high-priest, so the "person presiding over the religion of each tribe was called philobasileus, king's friend, and was always appointed from among the nobly born, eupatridce. /fFhus religion was always in the hands of the aristocratical part of the community. As the oracles and priests were held by the people in so much sacred veneration, the placing them, with all their splendid shows and rites, always in the power of the aristocrati- cal families, or persons of best education, was as great a check to the democracy as can well be imagined. It should be here recollected, too, that almost all these eupatridce, or nobles, among the Greeks, were believed to be descended from the gods, nearly or remotely. Nobility, as well as royalty, was believed of

1 This subject has been since very carefully examined by Boeckh, in his work on The Public Economy of Athens, and he makes the mnnber of citizens of Attica twenty thousand, in a population of half a million. Clinton comes to the same result. Fast. Hell. vol. ii. appendix, p. 477.

There are about the same number of citizens at this time, 1851, in Boston, with a population of one hundred and forty thousand ; and the proportion is smaller there than in other parts of Massachusetts, and the free States generally.

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ATHENS. 479

divine right, because the gods and goddesses had condescended to familiar intercourse with women and men, on purpose to beget persons of a ) superior order to rule among nations. The superiority of priests and nobles was assumed and conceded with more consistency than it is in Poland, Switzerland, and Venice ; and they must have had a proportional influence with the people.

Another check to this " authority in one centre," the nation, 1 established byJBqloil, was countenanced by precedent introduced by Theseus, who divided the Attic people into three ranks. All magistrates were taken exclusively out of the first. Solon, by a new division, made four ranks, determined by property, and con- fined all magistracies to the first three. By this regulation, he excluded all those who had no will of their own, and were de- pendent on others ; but by still allowing to the fourth, who were more numerous than all the others, their equal votes in the assem- bly of the people, he put all power into hands the least capable of properly using it ; and, accordingly, these, by uniting, altered the constitution at their pleasure, and brought on the ruin of the na- tion. By these precautions, however, we see the anxiety of Solon to avail himself of every advantage of birth, property, and religion, which the people would respect, to balance the sovereign demo- cracy. With the same view, he instituted a senate of one hun- dred persons out of each of the four tribes;1 and this great coun- /f/ , cil, to which he committed many of the powers of the archons, he hoped would have a weight which all the archons together had not been able to preserve. It was afterwards increased to

1 The precise manner in which this body was formed is not clearly under- stood, and it has therefore given rise to much discussion. Niebuhr and some later writers maintain that the four Ionic tribes were exclusively of the class of Eupatridse, in which case, the senate must have been purely aristocratic, and made still more so by the property qualifications superinduced by Solon. The weight of authority must be conceded to be against this construction. But, whether this be correct or not, the effect of an exclusive distinction granted to a well-defined portion of the community was very certainly in the end to create, if it did not merely confirm, an aristocracy. To form an idea of the effect of it, we have only to imagine what would now be the case had a similar exception been made in favor of the first Puritan families of Massachusetts, or of the Dutch race in New York, or of the Quakers in Pennsylvania. That this must have been a consequence at Athens is clear, from the fact, that one of the first steps taken by Cleisthenes, the real founder of the democracy, was to do away with the confined division of the Ionic tribes, and to form the more extended one mentioned in the text, by which the nature of the senate was completely altered, and it was subjected to popular influences.

(ma

480 ON GOVERNMENT.

five hundred, when the tribes were increased to ten, fifty out of each, and was then called the council of five hundred. They were appointed annually by lot ; but certain legal qualifications were required, as well as a blameless life. The members of each tribe, in turn, for thirty-five days, had superior dignity and addi- tional powers, with the title of prytanes, from whence the hall was called Prytaneium. The prytanes were by turns presidents, had the custody of the seal, and the keys of the treasury and citadel, for one day. The whole assembly formed the council of state of the commonwealth, and had the constant charge of its political affairs ; the most important of which was the prepara- tion of business for the assembly of the people, in which nothing was to be proposed which 'had not first been approved here. /This was Solon's law ; and, if it had been observed, w'ould have formed a balance of such importance, that the commonwealth would have lasted longer and been more steady. But factious demagogues were often found to remind the people, that all authority was collected into one centre, and that the sovereign assembly was that centre ; and a popular assembly being in all ages as much disposed, when unchecked by an absolute negative, to overleap the bounds of law and constitution as the nobles or a king, the laws of Solon were often spurned, and the people demanded and took all power, whenever they thought proper.

Sensible that the business of approving and rejecting magis- trates, receiving accusations, catalogues of fines, enacting laws, giving audience to ambassadors, and discussions of religion, would very often be uninteresting to many even of the most judicious and virtuous citizens ; that every man's business is no man's ; Solon1 ordained it criminal in any one not to take a side in civil disturbances. Qertain times were stated for the meeting of the general assembly ; all gates were shut but that which led to it ; fines were imposed for non-attendance ; and a small pay allowed by the public to those who attended punctually at the hour. Nine proedri were appointed from the council; from whom the moderator, epistates, was appointed, too, by lot, with whom sat eleven nomophylaces, whose duty it was to explain the tendency of any motions contrary to the spirit of the constitu-

1 Mr. Grote, in his late work on Greece, assigns a different cause for this regulation, — the necessity of bringing such disturbances to an end as soon as possible, by the active interposition of the whole community.

ATHENS. 481

tion. The prytanes, too, had distinct and considerable powers in the assembly. When any change in the law was judged necessary by the people, another court, consisting of a thousand persons, called nomothetce,1 were directed to consider of the best ^ mode of alteration, and prepare a bill ; after all, five syndics were appointed to defend the old law before the new one could be enacted. A law, passed without having been previously pub- lished, conceived in ambiguous terms, or contrary to any former law, subjected the proposer to penalties. It was usual to repeal the old law before a new one was proposed, and this delay was an additional security to the constitution.

The regular manner of enacting a law was this : a bill was prepared by the council ; any citizen might, by petition or me- morial, make a proposition to the prytanes, whose duty it was to present it to the council; if approved by them, it became a proboidema; and, being written on a tablet, was exposed for several days for public consideration, and at the next assembly read to the people ; then proclamation was made by a crier : " Who of those above fifty years of age chooses to speak ? " When these had made their orations, any other citizen, not dis- qualified by law, for having fled from his colors in battle, being deeply indebted to the public, or convicted of any crime, had an opportunity to speak. But the prytanes had a general power to enjoin silence on any man, subject, no doubt, to the judgment of the assembly. Without this, debates might be endless. When the debate was finished, the crier, at the command of the proedri, proclaimed that the question waited the determination of the people, which was given by holding up the hand. In some un- common cases, particularly of impeachments, the votes were given privately, by casting pebbles into urns. The proedri ex- examined the votes and declared the majority. The prytanes dismissed the assembly. Every one of these precautions demon- "~ strated Solon's conviction of the necessity of balances to such an assembly, though they were found by experience to be all ineffectual.

1 Many -writers consider this court as one of the conservative checks upon the popular will devised by Solon. In fact, it became the lever by which to shake the whole system. It is scarcely possibly that a sagacious lawgiver could have made so great a mistake. The probability would seem to favor the idea, founded on the language of Aristotle, that Cleisthenes made some changes in the forma- tion of the court which let in the democratic influence.

VOL. IV. 41 E 2

482 ON . GOVERNMENT.

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From the same solicitude for balances against the turbulence of democracy, he restored the court of Areopagus, improved its constitution, and increased its power. He composed it of those who had held with reputation the office of archon and admitted them into this dignity and authority for life. The experience, the reputation, and permanency of these Areopagites must have been a very powerful check. From the Areopagus alone, no ap- peal lay to the people ; yet if they chose to interfere, no balanc- ing power existed to resist their despotic will. The constitution authorized the Areopagus to stop the judicial decrees of the assembly of the people ; annul an acquittal, or grant a pardon ; to direct all draughts on the public treasury ; to punish impiety, immorality, and disorderly conduct ; to superintend the educa- tion of youth ; punish idleness ; to inquire by what means men of no property or employment maintained themselves. The court sat in the night, without light,1 that the members might / be less liable to prejudice. Pleaders were confined to simple narration of facts and application of laws, without ornaments of speech or address to the passions. Its reputation for wisdom and justice was so high, that Cicero said, the commonwealth of Athens could no more be governed without the court of Areopa- gus, than the world without the providence of God.

The urgent necessity for balances to a sovereign assembly, in which all authority, legislative, executive, and judicial, was col- lected into one centre, induced Solon, though in so small a state, to make his constitution extremely complicated. No less than ten courts of judicature, four for criminal causes, and six for civil, besides the Areopagus and general assembly, were esta- blished at Athens. In conformity to his own saying, celebrated among those of the seven wise men, that " the most perfect go- vernment is that where an injury to any one is the concern of all," he directed that, in all the ten courts, causes should be decided by a body of men, like our juries, taken from among the people; the archons only presiding like our judges. As the archons were appointed by lot, they were often but indifferent lawyers, and chose two persons of experience to assist them. These, in time, became regular constitutional officers, by the name of Paredri, assessors. The jurors were paid for their ser-

r . I * This statement depends upon authority comparatively modern, and some-

what questionable.

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ATHENS.

483

vice, and appointed by lot. This is the glory of Solon's laws. It is that department which ought to belong to the people at large ; they are most competent for this ; and the property, liberty, equality, and security of the citizens, all require that they alone should possess it. Itinerant judges, called the Forty, were appointed to go through the counties, to determine assaults, and civil actions under a certain sum.

Every freeman was bound to military service. The multitude of slaves made this necessary, as well as practicable. Rank and property gave no other distinction than that of serving on horse- back.

The fundamental principle of Solon's government was the most like M. Turgot's idea of any we have seen. Did this pre- vent him from establishing different orders and balances ? Did it not render necessary a greater variety of orders, and more complicated checks, than any in America? Yet all were insuffi- cient, for want of the three checks, absolute and independent. Unless three powers have an absolute veto, or negative, to every law, the constitution can never be long preserved ; and this prin- ciple we find verified in the subsequent history of Athens, not- withstanding the oath he had the address and influence to per- suade all the people to take, that they would change none of his institutions for ten years. Sqon__after his departure, the three parties of the highlands, lowlands, and coasts began to show themselves afresh. These were, in fact, the party of the rich, who wanted all power in their own hands, and to keep the people in absolute subjection, like the nobles in Poland, Venice, Genoa, Bern, Soleure, &c. ; the democratical party, who wanted to abolish the council of five hundred, the Areopagus, the ten courts of judicature, and every other check, and who, with furious zeal for equality, were the readiest instruments of despotism; and the party of judicious and moderate men, who, though weaker than either of the others, were the only balance between them. This last party, at this time, was supported by the pow- erful family of the Alcmseonides, of whom Megacles, the chief, had greatly increased the wealth and splendor of his house, by marrying the daughter of the tyrant of Sicyon, and had acquired fame by victories in the Olympian, Pythian, and Isthmian games. The head of the oligarchic party was Lycurgus, not the Spartan lawgiver. The democratical party was led by Pisis-

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484 ON GOVERNMENT.

tratus, claiming descent from Codrus and Nestor, with great abilities, courage, address, and reputation for military conduct in several enterprises. Upon Solon's return, after an absence of ten years, he found prejudices deeply rooted ; attachment to their three leaders dividing the whole people. He was too old to direct the storm. The factions continued their manoeuvres ; and at length Pisistratus, by an artifice, became master of the com- monwealth. Wounding himself and his horses, he drove his chariot violently into the Agora, where the assembly of the people was held, and, in a pathetic speech, declared " that he had been waylaid as he was going into the country ; that it was for being the man of the people that he had thus suffered ; that it was no longer safe for any man to be a friend of the poor ; it was not safe for him to live in Attica, unless they would take him under their protection." Ariston, one of his partisans, moved for a guard of fifty men, to defend the person of the friend of the people, the martyr for their cause. In spite of the utmost opposition of Solon, though Pisistratus was his friend, this point was carried. Pisistratus, with his guards, seized the citadel ; and, his opponents forced into submission or exile, he became the first man, and from this time is called the Tyrant of Athens ; a term which meant a citizen of a republic, who by any means obtained a sovereignty over his fellow-citizens. Many of them were men of virtue, and governed by law, after being raised to the dignity by the consent of the people ; so that the term tyrant was arbi- trarily used by the ancients, sometimes to signify a lawful ruler, and sometimes an usurper.

Pisistratus, of whom Solon said, " Take away his ambition, cure him of his lust of reigning, and there is not a man of more virtue, or a better citizen," changed nothing in the constitution. The laws, assembly, council, courts of justice, and magistrates, all remained ; he himself obeyed the summons of the Areopagus, upon the charge of murder. Solon trusted to his old age against the vengeance of the tyrant, and treated him in all com- panies with very imprudent freedoms of speech. But Pisistratus carried all his points with the people ; and had too much sense to regard the venerable legislator, or to alter his system. He returned his reproaches with the highest respect ; and gained upon him, according to some authors, to condescend to live with him in great familiarity, and assist him in his administration.

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ATHENS. 485

Others say that Solon, after having long braved the tyrant's resentment, and finding the people lost to all sense of their dan- ger, left Athens and never returned.

Solon died at the age of eighty, two years after the usurpation. The usurper soon fell. The depressed rival chiefs, Megacles and Lycurgus, uniting their parties, expelled him ; but the confede- rated rivals could not agree. Megacles proposed a coalition with Pisistratus, and offered him his daughter in marriage. The con- dition was accepted ; but the people in assembly must be gained. To this end they dressed a fine girl with all the ornaments and armor of Minerva, and drove into the city, heralds proclaiming before them, " O Athenians, receive Pisistratus, whom Minerva honoring above all men, herself conducts into your citadel." The people believed the maid to be a goddess, worshipped her, and received Pisistratus again into the tyranny.

Is this government, or the waves of the sea ?

But Pisistratus was soon obliged to retire to Eretria, and leave the party of Megacles masters of Athens. He strengthened his connections ; and in the eleventh year of this his second banish- ment, he returned to Attica with an army, and was joined by his ^ ( friends. The party of Megacles met him with another army, ill disciplined and commanded, from the city, were attacked by sur- prise and defeated. Pisistratus proclaimed that none need fear i who would return peaceably home. The known honor, human- ity, and clemency of his character, procured him confidence ; his enemies fled, and he entered the city without opposition. He made no fundamental change in the constitution, though, as head of a party, he had the principal influence. He depended upon a large fortune of his own and a good understanding with Thebes and Argos to support him in it. He died in peace, and left his son successor to his influence.QtBbth his sons, Hippias and Hipparchus, were excellent characters ; and arts, agriculture, gardening, and literature, as well as wisdom and virtue, were singularly cultivated by the whole race of these tyrants. Har- modius and Aristogiton, however, conspired the death both of Hippias and Hipparchus ; the latter was killed, and Hippias was led to severities. Many Athenians were put to death. Hippias, /, to strengthen his interest with foreign powers, married his only daughter to the son of the Tyrant of Lampsacus. Her epitaph shows that the title of tyrant was not then a term of reproach, —

41* '

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486 ON GOVERNMENT.

" This dust covers Archedice, daughter of Hippias, in his time the first of the Greeks. Daughter, sister, wife, and mother of tyrants, her mind was never elated to arrogance."

The opposite party were watchful to recover Athens, and to increase their interest with the other Grecian states for that end. The temple of Delphi was burnt. The Alcmaeonides, to ingra- tiate themselves with the oracle, the Amphictyons, and all Greece, rebuilt it with Parian marble, instead of Porine stone, as they had contracted to do, without asking any additional price. The consequence was, that whenever the Lacedaemonians con- sulted the oracle, the answer always concluded with an admoni- tion to give liberty to Athens. At length the oracle was obeyed ; and, after some variety of fortune, the Alcmaeonides, aided by Cleomenes the Spartan, prevailed, and Hippias retired to Si- geium.

It was one maxim of the Spartans, constantly to favor aristo- cratical power; or rather, wherever they could, to establish an , oligarchy. For in every Grecian city there were always an aris- f tocratical, oligarchical, and democratical faction. Whenever the Grecian states had a war with one another, or a sedition within themselves, the Lacedaemonians were ready to interfere as me- diators. They conducted the business generally with great cau- tion, moderation, and sagacity ; but never lost sight of their view to extend the influence of their state ; nor of their favorite measure for that end, the encouragement of aristocratical power, or rather oligarchical ; for a few principal families, indebted to Lacedaemon for their preeminence, and unable to retain it with- out her assistance, were the best instruments for holding the state in alliance. This policy they now proposed to follow at Athens. Cleisthenes, son of Megacles, head of the Alcmaeonides, was the first person of the commonwealth. Having no great abilities,1 a party was formed against him under Isagoras, with whom most of the principal people joined. The party of Cleisthenes was among the lower sort, who being all powerful in the general assembly, he made by their means some alterations in the con- stitution favoring his own influence. Cleisthenes was now

1 The tendency among modern scholars who have pursued their investiga- tions into the nature of the institutions of Greece with extraordinary industry, is to consider Cleisthenes as the real author of the democratic system of ancient Athens. He scarcely could have been a man of " no great abilities."

Grote, Hist, of Greece, vol. iv. p. 186.

ATHENS. 487

Tyrant of Athens, as much as Pisistratus had been. In the contests of Grecian factions, the alternative was generally vic- tory, exile, or death ; the inferior party, therefore, resorted some- times to harsh expedients. Isagoras and his adherents applied to Lacedasmon. Cleomenes, violent in his temper, entered with zeal into the cause of Isagoras, and sent a herald to Athens, by whom he imperiously denounced banishment against Cleisthenes and his party, on the old pretence of criminality for the execu- tion of the partisans of Cylon. Cleisthenes obeyed. Exalted by this proof of a dread of Spartan power, Cleomenes went to Athens with a small military force, and banished seven hundred Q-c families at once.

Such was Athenian liberty.

TTewas then proceeding to change the constitution to suit the views of Spartan ambition, by dissolving the council of five hundred, and committing the whole power to a new council of three hundred, all partisans of Isagoras. Athens was not so far humbled. The five hundred resisted, and excited the people, who flew to arms, and besieged Cleomenes and Isagoras in the citadel ; who the third day surrendered, upon condition that the Lacedaemonians might depart in safety. Isagoras went with them. Many of his party were executed, and Cleisthenes and the exiled families returned ; but conscious of their danger from their hostile fellow-citizens in concert with Lacedsemon, they sent to solicit an alliance with Artaphernes, the satrap of Persia. The answer was, If they would give earth and water to Darius they might be received, otherwise they must depart. The am- bassadors, considering the imminent danger of their country and party, consented to these humiliating terms. W-Although Athens was distracted with domestic factions, and pressed with the fear of an attack from Cleomenes, the conduct of her ambassadors, in acknowledging subjection to the Persian king, in hopes of his protection, was highly reprobated upon their return ; and it does ■* ' not appear that Persian assistance was further desired. Yet the danger which hung over Athens was very great. Cleomenes, bent on revenge, formed a confederacy against them, of the The- bans, Corinthians, and Chalcidians. These could not agree, and the Athenians gained some advantages of two of them.

Cleomenes then pretended that Sparta had acted irreligiously in expelling Hippias, who ought to be restored ; because, when

488 ON GOVERNMENT.

he was besieged in the citadel at Athens, he had discovered a collusion between the Delphic priests and the Alcmseonides. Sparta was willing to restore Hippias ; but Corinth, their ally, was not. Hippias, despairing of other means, now in his turn applied to Persia, and brought upon his country the Persian war; from which it was delivered by Miltiades, at the battle of Mara- thon. Miltiades became the envy of the Alcmseonid family. Xanthippus, one of the principal men of Athens, who had mar- ried a daughter of Megacles, the great opponent of Pisistratus, conducted a capital accusation against him. He was condemned ,, in a fine of fifty talents, more than he was worth. His wound,

which prevented him from attending the trial, mortified, and he died in prison. In order to brand the family of Pisistratus, the fame of Harmodius and Aristogiton was now cried up. They had assassinated Hipparchus from mere private revenge ; but they were now called asserters of public liberty. The tyranni- cide, as it was called, was celebrated by songs, statues, ceremo- nies, and religious festivals.

It must be acknowledged that every example of a government, which has a large mixture of democratical power, exhibits some- thing to our view which is amiable, noble, and I had almost said, divine. In every state hitherto mentioned, this observation is verified. What is contended for, is, that the people in a body cannot manage the executive power, and, therefore, that a simple democracy is impracticable ; and that their share of the legisla- tive power must be always tempered with two others, in order to enable them to preserve it, as well as to correct its rapid tendency to abuse. Without this, they are but a transient glare of glory, which passes away like a flash of lightning, or like a momentary appearance of a goddess to an ancient hero, which, by revealing but a glimpse of celestial beauties, only excited ' regret that he had ever seen them.

The republic of Athens, the schoolmistress of the whole civil- ized world for more than three thousand years, in arts, eloquence, and philosophy, as well as in politeness and wit, was, for a short period of her duration, the most democratical commonwealth of Greece. Unfortunately her history, between the abolition of her kings and the time of Solon, has not been circumstantially preserved. During this period, the people seem to have endea- vored to collect all authority into one centre, and to have avoided

ATHENS. 489

a composition of orders and balances as carefully as M. Turgot. But that centre was a group of nobles, not the nation. Their government consisted in a single assembly of nine archons chosen annually by the people. But even here was a check ; for by law the archons must all be chosen out of the nobility. But this form of government had its usual effects, in introducing anarchy, and such a general profligacy of manners, that the peo- ple could at length be restrained from even the most ordinary crimes by nothing short of the last punishment. Draco accord- ingly proposed a law, by which death should be inflicted on every violation of the law. Humanity shuddered at so shocking a severity ! and the people chose rather that all offences should go unpunished, than that a law thus written in blood, as they termed it both in horror and contempt, should be executed.

Confusions increased, and divided the nation into three fac- tions ; and their miseries became so extreme, that they offered Solon an absolute monarchy. He had too much sense, as well as virtue, to accept it ; but employed his talents in new-model- ling the government. Sensible, from experience, of the fatal effects of a government too popular, he wished to introduce an aristocracy, moderated like that of Sparta ; but thought the habits and prejudices of the people too strong to bear it. The archons he continued ; but, to balance their authority, he erected a senate of four hundred, to be chosen by ballot of the people.1 He also revived the court of Areopagus, which had jurisdiction in criminal cases, and the care of religion. He excluded from the executive or the magistracy all the citizens who were not possessed of a certain fortune ; but vested the sovereignty in a legislative assembly of the people, in which all had a right to vote. In this manner Solon attempted a double balance. The Areopagus was to check the executive in the hands of the archons ; and the senate of four hundred, the fickleness and fire of the people. Every one must see that these devices would have been no effectual control in either case ; yet they were bet- ter than none. It was very right that the people should have all

1 This is declared by Wachsmuth not to be sustained by any authority, as it certainly conflicts with the statement "made a few pages back, (p. 480,) that they were chosen by lot. Dr. Thirlwall, on the other hand, maintains that they were elected. The truth is,~that" very little is known of the constitution of Solon's senate. Wachsmuth, Historical Antiquities of the Greeks, translated by E. Wool- rych, vol. i. p. 378 ; Thirlwall, History of Greece, vol. ii. p. 42.

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490 ON GOVERNMENT.

elections ; but democratical prejudices were so inveterate, that he was obliged not only to make them, assembled in a body, an essential branch of the legislature, but to give them cognizance of appeals from all the superior courts. Solon himself, in his heart, must have agreed with Anacharsis, that this constitution was but a cobweb to bind the poor, while the rich would easily break through it. Pisistratus soon proved it, by bribing a party, procuring himself a guard, demolishing Solon's whole system before his eyes, and establishing a single tyranny. The tyrant was expelled several times by the opposition, but as often brought back, and he finally transmitted his monarchy to his sons. One of these was assassinated by Harmodius and Aristogiton ; and the other was driven into banishment by the opposition, aided by the neighboring state, Sparta. He fled to the Persians, excited Darius against his country, and was lolled at Marathon.

These calamities in spued the people with such terrors of a single tyrant, that, instead of thinking to balance effectually their "orders," they established the ostracism, to prevent any man from becoming too popular. A check indeed, but a very injudi- cious one ; for it only banished their best men. History nowhere furnishes so frank a confession of the people themselves, of their own infirmities and unfitness for managing the executive branch of government, or an unbalanced share of the legislature, as this institution. The language of it is, " We know ourselves so well, that we dare not trust our own confidence and affections, our own admiration and gratitude for the greatest talents and sub- limest virtues. We know our heads will be turned, if we suffer such characters to live among us, and we shall always make them kings." What more melancholy spectacle can be con- ceived even in imagination, than that inconstancy which erects statues to a patriot or a hero one year, banishes him the next, and the thud erects fresh statues to his memory ? 1

Such a constitution of government, and the education of youth which follows necessarily from it, always produce such characters as Cleon and Alcibiades ; mixtures of good qualities enough to acquire the confidence of a party, and bad ones enough

1 Mr. Grote's defence of the ostracism as a conservative feature of the govern- ment^ on the grounds recited in the text, is deserving of consideration on account of its ingenuity, even if it do not create entire conviction of its soundness.

History of Greece, vol. ill. pp. 200-215.

ATHENS. 491

to lead them to destruction ; whose lives show the miseries and final catastrophe of such imperfect polity.

From the example of Athens, it is clear that the government of a single assembly of archons, chosen by the people, was found intolerable ; that, to remedy the evils of it, Solon established four several orders, — an assembly of the people, an assembly of four hundred, an assembly of archons, and the Areopagus ; that he endeavored to balance one singly by another, instead of form- ing his balance out of three branches. Thus, these attempts at an equilibrium were ineffectual ; produced a never-ending fluctu- ation in the national councils ; continual factions, massacres, proscriptions, banishment, and death of the best citizens. And the history of the Peloponnesian war, by Thucydides, informs us how the raging flames at last burnt out.

The people in each of the United States, have, after all, more real authority than they had in Athens.1 Planted, as they are, over large dominions, they cannot meet in one assembly, and, therefore, are not exposed to those tumultuous commotions, like the raging waves of the sea, which always agitated the ecclesia at Athens. They have all elections of governor and senators, as well as representatives, so prudently guarded, that there is scarce a possibility of intrigue. The property required in a representative, senator, or even a governor, is so small, that mul- titudes have equal pretensions to be chosen. No election is con- fined to any order of nobility, or to any great wealth ; yet the legislature is so divided into three branches, that no law can be passed in a passion, nor any inconsistent with the constitution.

1 " There was no want, at Athens, of well-conceived and strict regulations ; but what is the use of provident measures, where the spirit of the administration is bad '? Men have at all times been unjust, and covetous, and unprincipled, and above all, the Greeks distinguished themselves for the uncontrolled gratification of their own desires, and their contempt for the happiness of others. If any competent judge of moral actions will contemplate their character without j)reju- dice, and unbiased by their high intellectual endowments, he Avill find that their private life was unstable, and devoid of virtue ; that their public life was a tissue of restless intrigues and passions ; and, what was the worst of all, that there existed, to a far greater degree than in the Christian world, a want of moral principle, and a harshness and cruelty in the popular mind. The display of noble actions, it is true, has ceased, and will never re-appear with the same brilliancy ; but the principles of the majority of mankind have been elevated, even if we allow that some distinguished individuals in ancient times were as pure as the most exalted characters in modern days ; and in this general eleva- tion consists the progress of mankind." Boeckh's Public Economy of Athens, translated by Lewis, p. 194.

492 ON GOVERNMENT.

The executive is excluded from the two legislative assemblies ; and the judiciary power is independent, as well as separate from all. This will be a fair trial, whether a government so popular can preserve itself. If it can, there is reason to hope for all the equality, all the liberty, and eveiy other good fruit of an Athe- nian democracy, without any of its ingratitude, levity, convul- sions, or factions.

The Policy Of Antalcidas

In the year 1774, a certain British officer, then at Boston, was often heard to say : " I wish I were parliament ; I would not send a ship or troop to this country ; but would forthwith pass a statute, declaring every town in North America a free, sove- reign, and independent commonwealth. This is what they all desire, and I would indulge them. I should soon have the plea- sure to see them all at war with one another, from one end of the continent to the other." This was a gentleman of letters, and perhaps had learned his politics from Antalcidas, whose opinion concerning the government of a single assembly is very remarkable. But the Greek and the Briton would both have found their artifices in America ineffectual. The Americans are very far from being desirous of such multiplications and divi- sions of states, and know too well the mischiefs that would follow from them. Yet such a spirit among the people would, in a course of time, be the natural and inevitable effect of M. Turgot's system of government.

It is not very certain whether Antalcidas was a Spartan or not. If he was, he had violated the law of Lycurgus by travel, had resided long in Persia, and maintained an intercourse and cor- respondence with several noble families. He was bold, subtle, insinuating, eloquent ; but his vices and corruption were equal to his address. f The stern Spartan senate thought him a proper instrument to execute an insidious commission at a profligate court. The institutions of his own country, Sparta, were the objects of his ridicule ; but those of the democratical states of Greece, of his sovereign contempt. The ancient maxim of some of the Greeks, " That every thing is lawful to a man in the service of his country" was now obsolete, and had given way to a purer morality ; but Antalcidas was probably one of those philosophers

ANTALCIDAS. 493

who thought every thing lawful to a man which could serve his private interest. The Spartan senate never acted upon a prin- ciple much better ; and therefore might, upon this occasion, have given their ambassador the instruction which he pretended, namely, — to offer "to resign all pretensions to the Greek cities in Asia, which they would acknowledge to be dependencies of the Persian empire; and to declare all the cities and islands, small and great, totally independent of each other." These articles, in consequence of which there would not be any repub- lic powerful enough to disturb the tranquillity of Persia, were more advantageous to them than the most insolent courtier would have ventured to propose. The ambassador was rewarded by a magnificent present ; and the terms of peace transmitted to court, to be ratified by Artaxerxes. The negotiation, however, languished, and the war was carried on with violence for several ^ years ; and all the art, activity, and address of Antalcidas were put to the trial before he obtained the ratification. The treaty was at last completed : " That all the republics, small and great, should enjoy the independent government of their own hereditary laws; and whatever people rejected these conditions, so evidently 1 1 y- calculated for preserving the public tranquillity, must expect the utmost indignation of the Great King, who, in conjunction with the republic of Sparta, would make war on their perverse and dangerous obstinacy, by sea and land, with ships and money."

Antalcidas, and Tiribazus, the Persian satrap, with whom he had concerted the treaty, had foreseen that, as Thebes must resign her authority over the inferior cities of Bceotia ; as Argos must withdraw her garrison from Corinth, aud leave that capital in the power of the aristocratic or Lacedaemonian faction ; and as Athens must abandon the fruits of her recent victories, there might be an opposition made to the treaty by these three states. To guard against which, they had provided powerful armaments by sea and land, which, with Spartan and Persian threats, so intimidated all, that all at last submitted.

This peace of Antalcidas forms a disgraceful era in the history of Greece. Their ancient confederacies were dissolved ; the smaller towns were loosened from all connection with the large cities ; all were weakened by being disunited. What infamy to the magistrates of Sparta, and their intriguing, unprincipled am- bassador ! But Athens, Thebes, and Argos, by the friendship of

VOL. IV. 42

494

ON GOVERNMENT.

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the democratical cities and confederacies, had become powerful, and excited their haughty jealousy. The article which declared the smaller cities independent was peculiarly useful to the views of Sparta ; it represented them as the patrons of liberty among the free. The stern policy of Sparta had crushed in all her second- ary towns the hope of independence. The authority of Athens, Thebes, Argos, and all the democratical confederacies, was less imperious ; the sovereign and subject were more nearly on a footing of equality ; and the Spartans knew, that '.' men are disposed to reject the just rights of their equals, rather than revolt against the tyranny of their masters ; " their own slaves and citizens had furnished them with constant proof of this.

But Sparta, by this masterpiece of roguery, meant, not only still to hold all her own subordinate cities in subjection, not merely to detach the inferior communities from her rivals, but to add them to her own confederacy. To this end, by her emissa- ries, she intrigued in all the subordinate cities. How ? by pro- moting liberty, popular government, or proper mixtures of a well- ordered commonwealth ? By no means ; but by supporting the aristocratical factions in all of them ; fomenting animosities among the people against each other, and especially against their capitals. Complaints occasioned by these cabals, were referred to the Spartan senate, which had acquired the reputation of the patron of the free, the weak, and the injured, and which always decided in its own favor. But the ambition of Spartans, cool and cunning as it was, had not patience to remain long satisfied with such legal usurpations ; they determined to mix the terror of their- arms with the seduction of policy.

Before we proceed to an account of their operations, we must develop a little more fully the policy of Antalcidas. Besides the free republics of Attica, Thebes, and Argos, which consisted of several cities, governed by their first magistrate, senate, and people, in which the subordinate cities always complained of the inordinate influence of the capital, there were several republics reputed still more popular, because they were governed by single assemblies, like Biscay, the Grisons, Appenzel, Underwald, Glarus, &c. These republics consisted of several towns, each governed by its own first magistrate, council, and people ; but confederated together, under the superintendence of a single diplomatical as- sembly, in which certain common laws were agreed on, and cer-

ANTALCIDAS. 495

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tain common magistrates appointed, by deputies from each town. These confederacies are the only examples of governments by a single assembly which were known in Greece. Antalcidas knew that each of these towns was discontented with the administra- tion of the common assembly, and that all, in their hearts, wished for independence. It was to this foible of the people that he addressed that policy, in his Persian treaty, by which he reduced to atoms, as if it had been a rope of sand, every democratical city and confederacy, and every one in which democracy and aristocracy were mixed, throughout all Greece.

The first victim of this ambitious policy was Arcadia, in the centre of Peloponnesus, whose principal town was Mantinea. Arcadia was a fertile and beautiful valley, surrounded by lofty mountains. The scattered villages of shepherds, inhabiting these hills and vales, had grown into cities, by the names of Tegea, Stymphalis, Hersea, Orchomenus, and Mantinea. The inhabit- ants were distinguished by their innocence, and the simplicity of their manners ; but, whenever they had been obliged from necessity, to engage in war, they had displayed such vigor, energy, and intrepidity, as made their alliance very desirable. The dangerous neighborhood of Sparta had obliged them to fortify their towns and maintain garrisons; but jealousies arose between Tegea and Mantinea, and emulations to be the capital. The year after the treaty of Antalcidas, ambassadors were sent by the Spartan senate to the assembly at Mantinea, to com- mand them to demolish the walls of their proud city, and return to their peaceful villages. The reasons assigned were, that the Mantineans had discovered their hatred to Sparta, envied her prosperity, rejoiced in her misfortunes, and, in the late war had furnished some corn to the Argives. The Mantineans received the proposal with indignation ; the ambassadors retired in disgust. The Spartans proclaimed war, demanded the aid of their allies, and marched a powerful army under their king, Agesipolis, and invaded the territory. After the most destructive ravages of the country, and a long siege of Mantinea, they were not able to subdue the spirit of this people, until they turned the course of the river Ophis, and laid the walls of the city under water ; these, being of raw bricks, dissolved and fell. The inhabitants, intimi- dated, offered to demolish the walls, and follow Sparta in peace and war, upon condition they might be allowed to continue and

496 ON GOVERNMENT.

live in the city. Agesipolis replied, that, while they lived together in one city, their numbers exposed them to the delusions of sedi- tious demagogues, whose address and eloquence seduced the multitude from their true interest, and destroyed the influence of their superiors in rank, wealth, and wisdom, on whose attach- ment alone the Lacedaemonians could depend; and, therefore, that they must destroy then: houses in the city, separate into four communities, and return to those villages which their ancestors had inhabited. The terror of an immediate assault made it necessary to comply ; and the Spartans made a mighty merit of suffering sixty of the most zealous partisans of democracy to fly, unmurdered, from their country.

The little republic of Phlius, too, like every other where a balance is not known and preserved, was distracted by parties. The popular party prevailed, and banished their opponents, the friends of aristocracy. The Spartans threatened, and the ruling party permitted the exiles to return; but not meeting with re- spectful treatment enough, they complained ; and the Spartans, under Agesilaus, appointed commissioners to try and condemn to death the obnoxious leaders of the people in Phlius. This odious office was executed with such unexampled severity, as ter- rified those who survived into "an invariable attachment to Sparta.

The confederacy of Olynthus was next attempted. A number of towns, of which Olynthus was the principal, between two rivers, had been incorporated or associated together, and had grown into some power and greater hopes. This was enough to arouse the jealousy of Sparta! They sent four or five succes- sive armies, under their ablest kings, to take the part of the aris- tocratical faction, and conquer this league. Such was the spirit and resources of this little spot, that they defended themselves for four or five campaigns, and then were forced to submit.

In consequence of the peace of Antalcidas, Thebes had been torn with aristocratic and democratic factions, and Sparta joined the latter, which ultimately produced long and obstinate wars, and the exalted characters of Pelopidas and Epaminondas, who, with all their virtues, were not able finally to establish the inde- pendency of their country, though both perished in the attempt ; Epaminondas, to the last, refusing to the several communities of Boeotia then hereditary laws and government, although he was one of the democratical party.

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ANTALCIDAS. 497

Sparta, in the next place, sent a detachment to support the partisans of aristocracy in Argolis, Achaia, and Arcadia, but was compelled by Pelopidas and Epaminondas to evacuate those countries ; but Epaminondas supported aristocratic government. As soon as he retired, the Arcadians complained against him, that a people, who knew by their own experience the nature of aristocracy, should have confirmed that severe form of govern- ment in an allied or dependent province. The multitude in Thebes condemned the proceedings of Epaminondas, and sent commissioners and a body of mercenaries into Achaia, who assisted the populace to dissolve the aristocracy, to banish or put to death the nobles, and institute a democracy. The foreign troops were scarcely departed, when the exiles, who were very numerous and powerful, returned, and, after a desperate and bloody struggle, recovered their ancient influence. The leaders of the populace were now, in their turn, put to death or expelled ; the aristocracy reestablished ; and the magistrates craved the protection of Sparta, which was readily granted.

It would be endless to pursue the consequences of the peace of Antalcidas. Uninterrupted contests and wars in every demo- cratlcal state in Greece ; aristocratical and democratical factions eternally disputing for superiority, mutually banishing and butch- ering each other ; proscriptions, assassinations (of which even Pelopidas was not innocent), treacheries, cruelties without num- ber and without end. But no man, no party, ever thought of introducing an effectual balance, by creating a king with an equal power, to balance the other two. The Romans began to think of this expedient, but it was reserved for England to be the first to reduce it to practice.

Would M. Turgot have said, that if Thebes, Athens, Argos, and the Achaean, Arcadian, and Olynthian leagues, had been each of them governed by a legislature composed of a king, senate, and assembly, with equal authority, and each a decisive negative, that the cause of liberty, in all Greece, would have been thus crumbled to dust by such a paltry trick of Antalcidas ? Would the childish humor of separating into as many states as towns have ever been indulged or permitted ? Most certainly not. And if the power of negotiation and treaties and the whole executive had been in one man, could the perfidious ambassa- dors of Sparta and the other states have intrigued and embroiled every thing as they did ?

42* F2

498 ON GOVERNMENT.

Achaia

The Achaeans, whose republic became so famous in later times, inhabited a long but narrow strip of land upon the Corinthian Gulf, which was destitute of harbors, and, as its shores were rocky, of navigation and commerce ; but the impar- tial and generous spirit of their laws, if we are to credit Polvjoius and their other panegyrists, was some compensation for the natural disadvantages of their situation and territory. They admitted strangers into their community on equal terms with the ancient citizens ; and, as they were the first, and, for a long time, the only republic of Greece which had such liberality, it is not strange that they should have enjoyed the praises of all foreigners. In all other states of Greece, in which the people had any share in government, there were constant complaints that one powerful capital domineered over the inferior towns and villages, like Thebes in Bceotia, Athens in Attica. In Laconia, Lycurgus avoided this inconvenience by two popular assemblies, one for Sparta, and one for the country ; but in Achaia there was no commercial town, and all were nearly equal, having com- mon laws and institutions, and common weights and measures. Helice, which is distinguished by Homer as the most considera- ble town of Achaia, was the place of assembly of the congress, until it was swallowed up in an earthquake ; then iEgae became the seat of congress, which annually appointed presidents in rota- tion, and generals, who were responsible to the congress, as the members of congress were to the cities they represented. This is said to have been an excellent system of government, because it checked the ambition of Achaia, while it maintained its inde- pendence. And Polybius is full of the praises of this people for their "virtue ancTprobity in all their negotiations, which had acquired them the good opinion of the whole world, and pro- cured them to be chosen arbitrators between the Lacedaemo- nians and Thebans ; for their wise councils and good disposi- tions ; for their equality and liberty, which is in the utmost per- fection among them ; for their laws and institutions ; for their moderation and freedom from ambition," &c. Yet whoever reads his own history, will see evident proofs, that much of this is the fond partiality of a patriot for his country ; and that they

ACHAIA. 499

had neither the moderation he ascribes to them, nor the excellent government. Better indeed than the other republics of Greece it might be ; and its congress, as a diplomatic assembly, might have governed its foreign affairs very well, if the cities represented in it had been well constituted of a mixture of three independent powers ; but it is plain they were not ; and were in a continual struggle between their first magistrates, nobles, and people, for superiority, which occasioned their short duration and final ruin.

As this example deserves to be fully examined by every Ame- 1 / rican, let us explain it a little more particularly.

Atreus, King of Argos and Mycena?, was the son of Pelops, and father of Agamemnon, who was the father of Orestes, who was the father of Tisamenus. Pelops, after whom Pelopon- nesus was named, was the son of Tantalus, a king of Phrygia ; and Tantalus was the son of Jupiter by the nymph Plota.

Tisamenus, flying from Sparta, upon the return of the Hera- clidse, governed in Achaia, and was the first king of that people. The dominion by him there founded was continued, in a rightful succession, down to Gyges. Notwithstanding his descent from Jupiter, his government was probably like that of Alcinous in Phaeacia, — twelve archons presided over the twelve cities, who, each in his district, was the first magistrate; and all able to make out, some way or other, their connection with some of the ancient families, who were all alike honorably descended, at least, from an inferior god or goddess. Tisamenus made the thirteenth, and was first among equals at least. The sons of Gyges not governing by law, but despotically, the monarchy was abolished and reduced "to a popular state ; probably it was only an aristocracy of the twelve archons.. These hints at the gene- alogy of these kings are to show how intimately theology was intermixed with politics in every Grecian state and city ; and, at the same time, to show that the whole force of superstition, although powerful enough to procure crowns to these persons, yet, for want of the balance we contend for, was not sufficient to restrain the passions of the nobles, and prevent revolutions almost as rapid as the motion of a wheel. Nothing has ever been found to supply the place of the balance of three powers. The abolition of this limited monarchy was not effected by the people for the purpose of introducing democracy or a mixed government ; but by the nobles, for the sake of establishing an

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500 ON GOVERNMENT.

aristocracy. The new government, consequently, was a con- federation of twelve archons, 'each ruling as first magistrate in a separate city, with his council and people, as an independent state. The twelve archons met in a general assembly, some- times in person, and sometimes by proxy, to consult o£ general affairs and guard against general dangers. This whole state could not be larger than another Biscay, and each city must have been less than a merindade, and its general assembly like the junta-general. Yet such is the passion for independence, that this little commonwealth or confederacy of commonwealths could not hold together. The general assembly was neglected ; the cities became independent. Some were conquered by foreigners, and some lost their liberties by domestic tyrants ; that is, by their first magistrates assuming arbitrary power. Polybius discovers as much affection for this little republic as Rousseau did for Geneva, and is very loth to confess its faults. He colors over the revolutions they underwent for a course of ages, by saying, that " though their affairs were governed accord- V » ing to the diversity 01 times and occurrences, all possible endea- vors were used to preserve the form of a popular state. The commonwealth was composed of twelve cities, which are in being at this day, Olenus and Helice only excepted, which were swallowed up by the sea in an earthquake that happened not long before the battle of Leuctra ; which cities are Patra, Dyma, Phara, Tryteea, Leontium, iEgira, Pellene, iEgium, Bura, Cerau- nia, Olenus, and Helice. After the death of Alexander, and since the Olympiad we have mentioned, these cities fell into dangerous dissensions, chiefly by the artifices of the Macedonian princes, when every city apart meditated on nothing but its own private profit and ends, to the prejudice and destruction of its neighbors ; and this gave occasion to Demetrius and Cassander, and afterwards to Antigonus Gonatus, to put garrisons in some of their cities ; and others were invaded and governed by tyrants, who, in those days, were very numerous in Greece. But about the one hundred and twenty-fourth Olympiad, when Pyrrhus invaded Italy, these people began to see the error of their dissen- sions, and labored to return to their former union. Those who gave the first example were Dyma, Patra, and Phara. Five years afterwards, iEgium, having cast out the garrison that was placed over it, was received into the confederacy. Bura followed

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ACHAIA. 501

the example, having first killed the tyrant ; and soon after Cerau- nia did the like ; for Iseas, their tyrant, considering how that those of iEgium had expelled their garrison, and that he who governed in Bura was already slain by the practices of Marcus and the Achaians, and that it would be his lot to have them all quickly for enemies, resigned the dominion, after having first stipulated with the Achaians for indemnity for what was passed, and so the city was incorporated into the union of the Acha- ians

" The cities, then, we have mentioned continued for the space of five-and -twenty years to preserve their form of government unchanged, choosing in their general assembly two praetors (or presidents) and a secretary. Afterwards, they concluded to have but one praetor only, who should be charged with the manage- ment of their affairs ; and the first who enjoyed that dignity was Marcus the Carian, who, after four years of his administra- tion, gave place to Aratus the Sicyonian, who, at the age of twenty years, after he had by his virtue and resolution rescued his country from tyranny, joined it to the commonwealth of the Achaians ; so great a veneration had he from his youth for the manners and institutions of that people. Eight years after, he was a second time chosen prastor, and won Aero- Corinth, which Antigonus had fortified with a garrison, whereby Aratus freed all Greece from no small apprehension. When he had restored liberty to Corinth, he united it to the Achaians, together with the city of Megara, which he got by intelligence during his prae- torship. ... In a word, Aratus, who, in a short space, brought many and great things to pass, made it manifest, by his councils and actions, that his greatest aim was the expulsion of the Macedonians out of Peloponnesus, to suppress tyranny, and assert the liberty of his country. So that, during the whole reign of Antigonus Gonatus, Aratus constantly opposed all his designs and enterprises, as he did the ambition of the iEtolians, to raise themselves on the ruins of their neighbor states. And, as in all the transactions of his administration he gave singular evi- dence of a steady mind and firm resolution, all his attempts suc- ceeded accordingly, notwithstanding many states confederated to hinder the union, and to destroy the commonwealth of the Achaians. I

"After the death of Antigonus, the Achaians entered into a

502 ON GOVERNMENT.

league with the JEtolians, and generously assisted them in then- war against Demetrius ; so that the ancient hatred between these two people seemed for the present extinguished, and the desire of concord began by degrees to grow in the minds of the ^Eto- lians. Demetrius died, when many great and noble occasions were given to the Achaians, of finishing the project they had conceived ; for the tyrants who reigned in Peloponnesus, having lost the support of Demetrius, who greatly favored them, began now to despair ; and, on the other hand, being awed by Aratus, who admonished them to quit their governments, on promise of great honors and rewards to such as voluntarily resigned, and threatening others with hostility who refused ; whereupon, they resolved to despoil themselves of their dignities, restore their people to liberty, and incorporate them with the Achaians. As to Lysidas, the Megalopolitan, he, wisely foreseeing what was likely to come to pass, frankly renounced his dominion during the life of Demetrius, and was received into the general confede- racy of rights and privileges with the whole nation. Aristoma- chus, tyrant of the Argives, Xeno, of the Hermionians, and Cleonymus, of the Phliasians, resigning their authority at the time we mentioned, were likewise received into the alliance of the Achaians.

" In the mean time, the iEtolians began to conceive jealousies at the growing greatness and extraordinary success of the Acha- ians, and basely entered into a league with Antigonus, who at that time governed Macedon, and with Cleomenes, King of the Lacedaemonians."

These three powers, Macedonia, Lacedaemon, and iEtolia, were to invade Achaia on all sides ; but the great political abili- ties of Aratus^defeated the enterprise. " He considered that An- tigonus was a man of experience, and willing enough to make alliances; and that princes have naturally neither friends nor enemies, but measure amities and enmities by the rules of interest. He therefore endeavored after a good understanding with that prince, and determined to propose the joining the forces of the Achaians to his." He proposed to cede him some towns; and the alliance was formed, and the Cleomenic war commenced. In the prosecution of it, Cleomenes and his Spar- tans displayed the utmost ferocity and cruelty, particularly at iEgium, where " he put in practice so many outrages and cruelties

ACHAIA. 503

of war, that he left not so much as any appearance that it had been ever a peopled place." 1 There is great reason to suspect that the Achaians were not less guilty of cruelty ; for Polybius professes to follow the account given by Aratus himself, in a history which that praetor wrote of Achaia, who may be well suspected of partiality ; and Polybius himself was the son of Lycortas of Megalopolis, who perfected and confirmed the con- federacy of the Achaians, and he discovers throughout his history a strong attachment to this people. If the history of Clearchus was extant, we might possibly see that the Achaians, the Spar- tans, and Macedonians were equally liable to the accusation of inhumanity. Mantinea was subjected to unspeakable calami- ties as well as ^Egium ; but Polybius endeavors to cover this over with a veil by abusing Clearchus, accusing him of depart- ing from the dignity of history, and writing tragedies, by repre- senting women with dishevelled hair and naked breasts, embrac- ing each other with melting lamentations and tears, and com- plaints of men, women, and children, dragged away promiscu- ously. He attempts to justify the punishment of this city, by charging it with treacherously betraying itself into the hands of the Spartans, and massacring the Achaian garrison. But this was no more than the usual effect of the continual revolutions in the Greek cities, from democracy to aristocracy, from that to monarchy, and back again through the whole circle.

In every one of these cities there were three parties, — a mo- narchical party, who desired to be governed by a king, or tyrant, as he was then called ; an aristocratical party, who wished to elect an oligarchy ; and a democratical party, who were zealous for bring- ing all to a level. Each faction was for collecting all authority into one centre in its own way ; but, unfortunately, there was no party who thought of a mixture of all these three orders, and giving each a negative by which it might balance the other two. Accordingly, the regal party applied to Macedonian kings for aids and garrisons ; the aristocratical citizens applied to Sparta for the like assistance ; and the democratical factions applied to Aratus and the Achaian league. The consequence was, as each party prevailed, it brought in a new garrison, and massacred the old one, together with the leaders of the faction

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1 Polybius, vol. i. b. 2, translated by Sir H. S.

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504 ON GOVERNMENT.

subdued. But is such a system to be recommended to the United States of America ? If the Americans had no more dis- cretion than the Greeks, no more humanity, no more considera- tion for the benign and peaceful religion they profess, they would still have to consider, that the Greeks had in many places forty, and in all ten, slaves, to one free citizen ; that the slaves did all the labor, and the free citizens had nothing to do but cut one another's throats. Wars did not cost money in Greece ; happily for the world, at present they are very expensive. An American soldier will not serve one year, without more money for pay than many of these Greek cities had for their whole circulating medium.

There is but one possible means of realizing M. Turgot's idea. Let us examine it well before we adopt it. Let every town in the Thirteen States be a free, sovereign, and independent demo- cracy ; here you may nearly collect all authority into one centre, and that centre the nation. These towns will immediately go to war with each other, and form combinations, alliances, and poli- tical intrigues, as ably as the Grecian villages did. But these wars and negotiations cannot be carried on but by men at leisure. The first step to be taken, then, is to determine who shall be freemen, and who slaves. Let this be determined by lot. In every fifty men, forty are to be slaves, and stay at home unarmed, to labor in agriculture and mechanic arts, under certain overseers provided with good whips and scourges. All commerce and navigation, fisheries, &c. are to cease, of course. The other ten are to be free citizens, live like gentlemen, eat black broth, and go out to war; some in favor of tyrants, some for the well-born, and some for the multitude. For, even in the supposition here made, every town will have three parties in it ; some will be for making the moderator a king, others for giving the whole govern- ment to the selectmen, and a third sort for making and execut- ing all laws, and judging all causes, criminal and civil, in town meeting. Americans will well consider the consequences of such systems of policy, and such multiplications and divisions of states, and will universally see and feel the necessity of adopt- ing the sentiments of Aratus, as reported by Plutarch : " That small cities could be preserved by nothing else but a continual and combined force, united by the bond of common interest; and as the members of the body live and breathe by their mutual

CRETE. 505

communication and connection, and when once separated pine away and putrefy, in the same manner are cities ruined by being dismembered from one another, as well as preserved when, linked together in one great body, they enjoy the benefit of that provi- dence and council that governs the whole."1 t These were the $- sentiments which, according to the same Plutarch, acquired him so much of the confidence of the Achaians, " that, since he could not by law be chosen their general every year, yet every other year he was, and by his councils and actions was in effect always so ; for they perceived that neither riches nor repute, nor the friendship of kings, nor the private interest of his own country, nor any other thing else was so dear to him as the increase of the Achaian power and greatness."2

CRETE.

This celebrated island, with the fantastical honor of giving birth to some of the gods of Greece, had the real merit and glory of communicating to that country many useful improve- ments. Their insular situation defended the people from inva- sions by land, and their proximity to Egypt afforded them an easy intercourse of commerce by sea with the capital of that kingdom. Here Rhadamanthus, in his travels, had collected those inventions and institutions of a civilized people, which he had the address to apply to the confirmation of his own author- ity. Minos is still more distinguished. In his travels in the East, he saw certain families possessed of unrivalled honors and unlimited authority, as vicegerents of the Deity. Although the Greeks would never admit, in the fullest latitude of oriental superstition and despotism, this odious profanation, yet Minos, taking advantage of his own unbounded reputation, and that enthusiasm for his person which his skill and fortune in war, his genius for science, and talents for government, had excited among wandering credulous savages, spread a report that he was ad- mitted to familiar conversations with Jupiter, and received from that deity his system of laws, with orders to engrave it on tables

1 " In the same manner, numerical divisions of the people connect and unite the whole, each smaller part being restrained and awed by a larger, and the whole by the resolution of the general assembly." S.

~ "A noble character of the patriot Aratus." S.

VOL. IV. 43

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506 ON GOVERNMENT.

of brass. The great principle of it was, that all freemen should be equal, and, therefore, that none should have any property in lands or goods ; but that citizens should be served by slaves, who should cultivate the lands upon public account. The citizens should dine at public tables, and then: families subsist on the public stock. The monarch's authority was extremely limited, except in war. The magistracies were the recompense of merit and age; and superiority was allowed to nothing else. The youth were restrained to a rigid temperance, modesty, and morality, enforced by law. Their education, which was public, was directed to make them soldiers. Such regulations could not fail to secure order, and what they called freedom, to the citizens ; but nine tenths of mankind were doomed to slavery to support them in total idleness, excepting those exercises proper for war- riors, become more necessary to keep the slaves in subjection, |^m>t(r than to defend the state against the pirates and robbers with

whom the age abounded. Idomeneus, grandson of Minos, and commander of the Cretan forces in the Trojan war, was among the most powerful of the Grecian chiefs, and one of the few who returned in safety from that expedition. Here was a govern- ment of all authority in one centre, and that centre the most aged and meritorious persons of the nation, with little authority in the king, and none in the rest of the people ; yet it was not of sufficient strength to hold together. The venerable old men could not endure the authority, or rather the preeminence of the Icing. Monarchy must be abolished; and every principal city became early a separate, independent commonwealth ; each, no doubt, under its patriarch, baron, noble, or archon, for they all signify the same thing ; and continual wars ensued between the several republics within the island ; and Cretan valor and martial skill were employed and exhausted in butchering one another, until they turned all the virtues they had left against mankind in general, and exerted them in piracies and robberies, to their universal infamy throughout all Greece. Nor was Crete ever of any weight in Grecian politics after the Trojan war.

Corinth

Monarchy remained in this emporium of Greece longer than in any other of the principal cities ; but the noble families here

CORINTH.

507

could no better endure the superiority of a monarch, than others in all countries ; and with numerous branches of the royal family, (named Bacchidae, from Bacchis, fifth monarch in succession from Aletes,) at their head, they accordingly put to death Teles- tes, the reigning monarch ; and, usurping the government, under an association among themselves, they instituted an oligarchy. An annual first magistrate, with the title of Prytanis, but with very limited prerogatives, like a doge of Venice, was chosen from among themselves. Several generations passed away under the administration of this odious oligarchy ; but the people at length finding it intolerably oppressive, expelled the whole junto, and set up Cypselus as a monarch or tyrant. He had long been the head of the popular party, and was deservedly a popular charac- ter, possessed of the confidence and affection of his fellow citi- is to a great degree, or he never could have refused the guard

zen

which was offered him for the protection of his person against ~y the attempts of the defeated oligarchy. His moderation and clemency are allowed by all ; yet he is universally called by the Grecian writers Tyrant of Corinth, and his government a Tyranny* Aristotle f informs us that his tyranny continued thirty years, because he was a popular man and governed without guards. Periander, one of the seven wise men, his son and suc- cessor, reigned forty-four years, because he was an able general. Psammetichus, the son of Gordius, succeeded, but his reign was short ; yet this space of seventy-seven years is thought by Aris- totle one of the longest examples of a tyranny or an oligarchy. At the end of this period the nobles again prevailed ; but not without courting the people. The tyranny was demolished, and a new commonwealth established, in which there was a mixture of oligarchy and democracy, to prevent the first from running into excess of oppression, and the other into turbulence and license. Here we find the usual circle. Monarchy first limited by nobles only ; then the nobles, becoming envious and impatient of the monarch's preeminence, demolish him, and set up oli- garchy. This grows insolent and oppressive to the people, who set up a favorite to pull it down. The new idol's posterity grow insolent ; and the people finally think of introducing a mixture

n

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* " But this had not then an odious meaning." f On Government, 1. 5, c. 12.

508 ON GOVERNMENT.

of three regular branches of power, in the one, the few, and the many, to control one another, to be guardians in turn to the laws, and secure equal liberty to all.

Aristotlej in this chapter, censures some parts of the eighth book of Plato, and says, " That in general, when governments alter, they alter into the contrary species to what they before were, and not into one like the former. And this reasoning holds true of other changes. For he says, that from the Lace- daemonian form it changes into an oligarchy, and from thence into a democracy, and from a democracy into a tyranny ; and sometimes a contrary change takes place, as from a democracy into an oligarchy, rather than into a monarchy. With respect to a tyranny, he neither says whether there will be any change in it ; or, if not, to what cause it will be owing ; or, if there is, into what other state it will alter. But the reason of this is, that a tyranny is an indeterminate government, and, according to him, every state ought to alter into the first and most perfect. Thus, the continuity and circle would be preserved. But one tyranny often changed into another ; as at Sicyon, from Myron to Clis- thenes ; or into an oligarchy, as was Antileon's at Chalcis ; or into a democracy, as was Gelo's at Syracuse ; or into an aristo- cracy, as was Charilaus's at Lacedsemon and at Carthage. An oligarchy is also changed into a tyranny. Such was the rise of most of the ancient tyrannies in Sicily ; at Leontium, into the tyranny of Pansetius ; at Gela, into that of Cleander ; at Rhe- gium, into that of Anaxilaus ; and the like in many other cities. It is absurd also to suppose, that a state is changed into an oli- garchy, because those who are in power are avaricious and greedy of money ; and not because those, who are by far richer than their fellow citizens, think it unfair that those who have nothing should have an equal share in the rule of the state with themselves, who possess so much. For in many oligarchies it is not allowable to be employed in money-getting, and there are many laws to prevent it. But in Carthage, which is a demo- cracy, money-getting is creditable ; and yet their form of govern- ment remains unaltered."

Whether these observations of Aristotle upon Plato be all just or not, they only serve to strengthen our argument, by showing the mutability of simple governments in a fuller light. Not denying any of the changes stated by Plato, he only enumerates

s,j

ARGOS. 509

a multitude of other changes to which such governments are lia- ble ; and, therefore, shows the greater necessity of mixtures of different orders and decisive balances to preserve mankind from those horrible calamities which revolutions always bring with them.

ARGOS.

In order to form an adequate idea of the miseries which were brought upon the Greeks by continual and innumerable revolu- tions of government, it should be considered that the whole Pelo- ponnesus was scarcely two hundred miles in length and one hun- dred and forty in breadth, not much more extensive than the smallest of the thirteen states of America. Such an inherent force of repulsion, such a disposition to fly to pieces, as possessed the minds of the Greeks, would divide America into thousands of petty, despicable states, and lay a certain foundation for irre- concilable wars.

Although Thucydides and Aristotle, as well as Homer, inform us that kingdoms were hereditary, and of limited authority, yet the limitations appear to be very confused ; they were the limit- ations of nobles rather than of people ; and the first struggles for power were between kings and archons. The kings had no standing armies ; and all the forces under their authority, even when they took the field, could be commanded only by the nobles, who had their peculiar districts of land and people to govern. These were illustrious and independent citizens ; like the barons who demanded the great charter, communicated to each other their grievances, and took measures to remove them. But, being generally as averse to popular as to regal power, their constant aim was an aristocracy ; they accordingly extinguished monarchy, but did not secure the rights of the people. The immediate effect of this revolution only multiplied evils. Op- pressed by kings, Greece was much more oppressed by archons ; and, anciently too much divided, was still more subdivided under the new forms of government. Many inferior cities disdained the jurisdiction, and even the superior influence of their respect- ive capitals ; affected independent sovereignty ; and each town maintained war with its neighbors. Each independent state had a right to send two members to the Amphictyonic council. The

43*

510 ON GOVERNMENT.

abolition of royalty rendering the independent states more nume- rous, increased the number of Amphictyons to one hundred members and more ; and an oath was required that the member should never subvert any Amphictyonic city. Yet every excess of animosity prevailed among the Grecian republics* notwith- standing the interposition of the Amphictyons.

Argos was founded by Danaus, the Egyptian, about the time that Athens was settled by Cecrops. At the Trojan war it was the first of the states, and ever continued the rival of Sparta. Though the royal dignity seemed more firmly settled under Aga- memnon than under any other chief, yet Argos was one of the first of the states upon the continent to abolish monarchy, and that as early as on the death of Celsus, son of Temenus, the descendant of Hercules. No account of its new constitution is preserved. But, from analogy we may be convinced that a rest- less body of nobles overturned the monarchy; and, as it. was subject to frequent and violent disorders, that the archons could not agree upon the form of then oligarchy ; and set up for inde- pendency in their different districts, states, or cities, a little sooner than in other republics. The higher and lower ranks were con- tinually at variance ; the democratical faction was commonly superior ; sometimes tyrants were set up over all ; and once, according to Herodotus,* the slaves got possession of the city, took upon them the administration of affairs, and exercised the magistracies.

The government must have been ill constituted, as no Ehada- manthus or Minos, no Lycurgus or Solon, no Zaleucus or Cha- rondas, nor any other legislator of superior wisdom and probity, ever acquired the power ; and no fortunate coincidence of cir- cumstances ever occurred, to unite liberty and administration, law and government, upon a stable basis. One famous tyrant, Pheidon, lineal successor of Hercules, a prince of great abilities, but no moderation, raised himself, rather than his country, to a superiority which ceased with him. For want of distinct orders and steady balances, by which the will and the forces of the peo- ple might have been subjected to the laws, Argos lost that pre- eminence among the Grecian states, which it had obtained under a monarchy. Every little town in Argolis was seized with the

* Lib. vi.

Y<fK

ELIS. 511

caprice of independence, and opposed the general government, at the same time that the metropolis betrayed an ambition to / Jj domineer over the inferior towns. Civil wars ensued. Mycenae, V -,£] Troezene, Epidaurus, and other villages of less consequence, were often conquered and garrisoned, but never subdued. ^Necessity taught them to unite. They reproached Argos with tyranny, and Argos them with rebellion. Union enabled them to set at defiance their capital, by means of intrigues and alliances with Lacedaemon, the never-failing resource of one party or the other >* in every democratical state. The pretence was, the Persian war, * which Argos declined. This was called a base dereliction, and excited, by the help of Spartan emissaries, hatred and contempt in Sicyon, Naupila, Heliaea, and other towns, besides those before-mentioned. Argos alone, of all the cities in the Pelopon- nesus, openly espoused the cause of Athens. This single circum- stance, if it was not accidental, is enough to show that this city had more sense and profound wisdom than all the rest ; for Sparta was certainly then leading all Greece to destruction. In other respects the Argives discovered the same temper and the same understanding with all the others ; for they led their whole forces against Mycenae, took it by storm, decimated the inhabit- ^ yk/ ants, and demolished the town, fjis it not sublime wisdom, to rush headlong into all the distractions and divisions, all the assassinations and massacres, all the seditions, rebellions, and eternal revolutions, which are the certain consequence of the want of orders and balances, merely for the sake of the popular caprice of having every fifty families governed by all authority in one centre ? Even this would not satisfy ; the fifty families would soon dissolve their union, and nothing would ever content them short of the complete' individual independence of the Mohawks ; for it may be depended on, that individual independ- ence is what every unthinking human heart aims at, nearly or remotely.

ELIS.

Eleia had been the scene of athletic games, celebrated with

great pomp by assemblies of chiefs from various parts of Greece.

_Iphitus3 a grandson of Oxylus, succeeded to the throne of Elis.

Active and enterprising, but not by inclination a soldier, he was

m

/<?/.

512 ON GOVERNMENT.

anxious for a remedy for the disorderly situation of his country. Among all the violence, feuds, and wars, superstition maintained its empire, and the oracle of Delphi was held in veneration.

Iphitus sent an embassy to supplicate information from the deity, " How the anger of the gods, which threatened total de- struction to Peloponnesus, through the endless hostilities among its people, might be averted ? " He received an answer, which he had probably dictated, " That the Olympian festival must be restored. For that the neglect of that solemnity had brought on the Greeks the indignation of Jupiter and Hercules ; to the first of whom it was dedicated, and by the last of whom it had been instituted." Iphitus proceeded to model his institu- tion ; and ordained that a festival should be held at the temple of Jupiter at Olympia, near Pisa in Eleia, for all the Greeks to partake in, and that it should be repeated every fourth year ; that there should be sacrifices to Jupiter and Hercules, and games in honor of them ; that an armistice should take place throughout Greece for some time before the commencement of the festival, and continue some time after its conclusion. A tradition was reported, that the Heraclides had appointed Oxylus to the throne of Elis and the guardianship of the temple of Olympian Jupiter, and consecrated all Eleia to the god. A reputation of sanctity became attached to the whole people of Eleia, as the hereditary priesthood of Jupiter ; and secluded them from all necessity of engaging in politics or war. But it was not possible, by any institutions of religion, to destroy that elasticity given by nature to the mind of man, which excites continually to action, often palpably against men's interests, which "was strong in the general temper of the Greeks, and which can never be subdued or restrained in any nation but by orders and balances. Restless spirits arose, not to be satisfied. The Eleians often engaged as auxiliaries in the wars of other states, on pretence of asserting the cause of religion ; but even in that cause itself they could not agree among themselves. While monarchy subsisted in the posterity of Iphitus, as it did for some generations, Eleia contin- ued under one government ; but at length the spirit of demo- cracy prevailed there, as elsewhere in Greece, and with the same effects. Every town claimed independency ; Pisa and Elis became separate commonwealths. Olympia was situated within the territory of Pisa, on the northern bank of the river Alpheius,

ELIS. 513

which alone separated it from that city. Elis was thirty miles distant; but the Eleians retained the guardianship of the temple and superintendency of the festival. The Pisaeans now disputed their right ; wars arose between the two cities ; each endeavored to gain allies. At one time Pheidon, Tyrant of Argos, claiming to be by birth the proper representative of Hercules, took to himself the guardianship of the temple, and presided at the games ; at another time the Pisseans prevailed, and presided at some Olympiads. At length the Eleians destroyed Pisa so entirely, that not a ruin was left ; and ever after, excepting in the one hundred and fourth Olympiad, when the Arcadians vio- / ¥ lently interfered, they held the presidency undisturbed.

If a democracy could ever, in any case, hold together, it would be natural to expect it in this institution of Iphitus, which, founded wholly, on religion, had procured so much prosperity and veneration to his people. But it is as rational to expect that a glass bubble, with a drop of water inclosed in it, will resist the heat of the fire. The vapor within will blast it into dust and atoms.

Thebes

Fable, and history too, relate that this city was governed anciently by kings ; sixteen of whom, from Cadmus the Phceni- I !jskJ-4m>*** cian, who founded it, to Xanthus, are enumerated. After the death of the last, the Thebans changed their government to a democratical republic. Their orders and balances are not known ; but their factions and divisions, as well as their dul- ness, are remembered. From the analogy of all the other Gre- cian states, it is probable that archons presided over the several cities of Bceotia, as their separate districts, and had a king at their head, like Ulysses in Ithaca, and Alcinous in Phseacia ; that the king, whose domain was Thebes, had sometimes an inclination to favor his capital more than the subordinate towns ; and that the archons grew impatient of his monarchy, and aspired at independency. The jealousy and rivalry of cities favored the factious views of the archons, and were probably fomented for that purpose.

Is it an instance of their want of penetration, or was it from necessity, that they chose the two heads of opposite factions for

g 2

hi

Hi

514 ON GOVERNMENT.

their highest annual magistrates ? Ismenias was one ; an honest man, a friend to liberty, and consequently an advocate for an equilibrium of powers in the constitution. Leontidas, the other, was ambitious of the whole power to himself, and of governing by a council of his friends ; but finding his rival more popular than himself, he sold the citadel to a Spartan general, upon con- dition that he and his party should rule. When this was effected he seized his colleague, and had him tried, condemned, and exe- cuted, for caballing against the government. The friends of Ismenias fled in a panic, and were banished by a public edict ; for it seems that a revolution without banishments and confisca- tions, at least, is a degree of moderation and self-government of which nations are wholly incapable. The exiled citizens, who, in this case, were the honest men and friends of liberty, and among whom was Pelopidas, returned from Athens in disguise, destroyed the tyrant and his crew, and with the help of Epami- nondas and his friends, regained the citadel. These two sages and heroes had now enough to do ; first, to inspire a little un- derstanding and unanimity into their fellow-citizens; then to discipline them for war, and conquer their enemies ; and, at last, to frame a good constitution of government. To their immortal glory, they accomplished all but the last; but Pelopidas was killed in battle, before the war was finished ; and Epaminondas grew unpopular, and was rejected by faction even from the com- mand of the army ; a sufficient proof that the aristocratical and democratical factions were nearly equal. He was reinstated, in- deed, after the blunders and defeats of his successor had brought the citizens to repentance ; but was slain in battle at the mo- ment of victory. So that the Theban republic never had the benefit of his advice in the formation of a new code of laws. She had never made any figure, excepting a momentary one, under these two great men, and was at length totally destroyed by Alexander.

The ruin of Boeotia was occasioned by the finesse of Antalci- das, in his Persian treaty. The Thebans, as well as Argives, had withheld their assistance in the Persian war. Antalcidas knew that the subordinate cities of Thespiae, Platea, Aulis, An- themon, Larymna, Aschrcea, Coronea, Labadea, Delium, Alal- komene, Leuctra, Chaeronea, all wished for independence ; they accordingly rejected the jurisdiction and sovereignty of Thebes.

SYBARIS. 515

The Thebans solicited Sparta to take a part in their domestic quarrels ; and, against her own favorite treaty, made by her artful ambassador, she accepted the proposal. The virtuous and amiable Spartan senate perceived that it was equally their interest that Argos should lose her jurisdiction over her revolted towns, and that Thebes, the rival neighbor of Athens, should recover her authority in Boeotia ; but, notwithstanding partial successes, she could not regain her authority over all the cities, until Epami- nondas arose, after eighty years of civil wars.

Had there been a governor in Bceotia, and a senate, and a house of representatives, composed of an equitable proportion of deputies from Thebes and all the lesser cities , — and each of these branches possessed of an independent negative in the legislature, while the whole executive was in the governor, — would these civil wars have happened ? these endless contentions between the nobles and people, the capital and subordinate cities? these intrigues of one party with Athens, and another with Sparta ? The very disinclination, both in Thebes and Argos, to engage in the Persian war, arose wholly from their domestic dissensions; and these from the want of judicious orders and balances.

After the abolition of monarchy in Bceotia, there was an effort to collect all authority into one centre ; but the nation found, that, although laws might be thus made, they could not be so executed. There must, therefore, be an executive magistrate; but not being able to agree, in order to please both sides, the leader of each faction must be chosen. As might have been foreseen, they could not agree, and split the nation at once into two hostile armies ; one of which sought the alliance of Sparta, and the other that of Athens. Thus it ever was, and ever will be, in similar cases. It is much to be regretted that Epaminon- das did not live to display his talents as a legislator ; the world might possibly have been blessed with something like an Eng- lish constitution, two or three thousand years sooner than it was.

Sybaris

The city of Sybaris was a Grecian colony in Italy, planted by Achaians; and, according to Diodorus Siculus,* its beautiful

* Lib. xii. p. 6

516 ON GOVERNMENT.

situation between two rivers, the Crathis and the Sybaris, the extent and fertility of its territory, and the freedom of its laws, had, in a short space of time, drawn together a prodigious num- ber of inhabitants, and greatly enriched them.

But the common fate of all nations and cities attended them. They had three parties ; a chief, a better sort, and a people. The most powerful citizens were caballing, as usual, against the chief, whose name was Telys, and, whatever his character for virtue was, he appears to have had more cunning than Grecian chiefs commonly had; at least he discerned better where the balance lay ; for he courted the people by flattering their follies. He ex- cited a popular cry against the aristocratical party, drove them from the city, confiscated their fortunes and distributed them among the rest of the citizens. The exiles fled to Crotona. Telys sent ambassadors to demand them, on pain of war. Py- thagoras thought the cause of his aristocratical friends just, and persuaded his fellow-citizens to refuse to deliver them up. The Sybarites marched an army ; but were met by another from Crotona, with Milo, the strong man, at their head, whose repu- tation prevailed ; the Sybarites were all massacred, and their I city pillaged and left a desert. First happy effect of a govern- ment without acknowledged orders and legal balances !

Fifty-eight years afterwards, some Thessalians established themselves at Sybaris. They had not been there five years, when the Crotonians came and drove them out. Under Callimachus, f I 'i archon of Athens, it was repeopled the third time, and had the

name of Thurium. A populous colony was sent there, under Lampon and Xenocritus, who built a beautiful city for a capital, and twenty-five subordinate cities. But the inhabitants could not long live in good intelligence among themselves ; they fell into dissensions, grew extravagant, luxurious, and effeminate to a proverb. The quarrel began in this manner : — The old inha- bitants of Sybaris erected themselves into a kind of nobility, and arrogated to themselves all the public employments of any distinction, vouchsafing to the new-comers only those of least importance. They insisted, moreover, that their wives should sacrifice the first to the gods, and that the other ladies should not commence their devotions till the first had concluded. Not content with distinctions so assuming, they went farther, and took to themselves, in the distribution of the lands, all those

SYBARIS. 517

which were nearest the city, and left only the more distant to those whom they called foreigners. The latter being more nume- rous and more brave, carried their resentment so far as to put all the old families to death, and remained sole possessors of all the territory within the walls. Not having people enough left, they invited others from various parts of Greece, divided houses and lands among them, entered into alliance with Crotona, and be- came opulent. They divided the people into ten tribes, and established among them a democratical government, and chose for their legislator Charondas, who, having examined to the /?/ foundation the laws of all countries, chose out of them, for his country, the wisest and most convenient. Some others he added, drawn from his own meditations. His laws are lost, and, there- fore, his orders and balances are not known. It is nevertheless certain, from certain regulations preserved by Diodorus, that orders and balances existed in his institution.

1. He excluded from his public councils all men who, having children, should marry a second time ; and thus mortify their children with the authority of a step-mother.

2. As another check to his democracy, he ordained that all who should be convicted of calumny, should be conducted through the streets crowned with tamarin ; a punishment so infamous, that several put an end to their own lives rather than submit to it.

3. He prohibited all society with wicked men ; for, says he, / f ^ the disposition to evil is very strong, and many of those who at

first love virtue, are often drawn in, by the charms of secret seductions, to the greatest vices.

4. He ordained that all the sons of every family should learn , ^ ^ to write and read, under masters in the pay of the public. This , law alone has merit enough to consecrate to immortality the memory of this legislator, and deserves to be imitated, at least

by every free people.

5. That the property of orphans should be administered by . ^ the relations of the father ; but their persons and education in- trusted to those of the mother.

6. All those who should refuse to take arms for their country, or quit their ranks in the army, instead of being punished by death, should be exposed three days in a public square of the city, in women's clothes.

VOL. IV. 44

518 ON GOVERNMENT.

7. To preserve his democratical arrangement, he thought it necessary to prohibit all proposals of change in his laws. His principle was, it is as advantageous to submit to the laws, as it is dangerous to subject the laws to individuals ; and, therefore, in trials, he reprehended and silenced all criminals who substi- tuted turns of eloquence and arbitrary interpretations in place of the letter of the laws, and he charged them with violating their authority and majesty. The question is, said Charondas, " Whether you shall save the law or the criminal."

8. Struck with the disorders and seditions which he had seen in many democratical cities, he ordained that no citizen should present himself in the public assembly, to propose any reformation or alteration in the law, without a halter about his neck, which he should wear till the people had deliberated and determined. If the people decreed the proposed alteration hurt- ful or unnecessary, the reformer should be strangled on the spot. This regulation silenced all new legislators so entirely, that only three examples occurred of any change.

All his precautions were insufficient. Returning from the country with his sword, which he had taken to defend himself against highwaymen, he found the assembly in division and con- fusion. He hastened to compose the tumult. One of his ene- mies reproached him with violating his own law, by coming armed into the assembly. Charondas, who had forgotten the sword, cried, I mean to observe and enforce the law, and plunged it into his own heart, wearied, most probably, into a contempt of life by the disorders incident to unbalanced parties.

When every legislator who has attempted a democratical esta- blishment, has confessed its inherent tendency to immediate dis- solution, by resorting to the strongest rigors against proposals of innovation, and numberless other provisions to control it, which have all been found ineffectual, is it worth while still to cherish the fond idea, when three branches are found, by experience, so effectually to check each other ; when in two independent as- semblies improvements and reformations may be so easily and safely proposed and adopted, and such as are not beneficial re- jected ?

LOCRIS. 519

Locris

Zaleucus was of Locris in Italy, not far distant from Sybaris. /) He was a disciple of Pythagoras, of noble birth, and admirable morals. Having acquired the esteem and confidence of his fel- oJ- low-citizens, they chose him for their legislator. Unfortunately, little remains of his laws but their preamble. But this is in a style so superior to that of all the other legislators, as to excite regret for the loss of his code. In this preamble he declares, that all those who shall inhabit the city ought, above all things, to be persuaded that there is a God ; and, if they elevate their eyes and thoughts towards the heavens, they will be convinced that the disposition of the heavenly bodies, and the order which reigns in all nature are not the work of men nor of chance ; that, there- fore, they ought to adore the gods, as the authors of all which life presents us of good and beautiful; that they should hold their souls pure from every vice, because the gods accept neither the prayers, offerings, or sacrifices of the wicked, and are pleased only with the just and beneficent actions of virtuous men. Hav- ing thus, in the beginning of his laws, fixed the attention of his fellow-citizens upon piety and wisdom, he ordains, above all things, that there should never be among them any irreconcilable enmity ; but, on the contrary, that those animosities which might arise among them, should be only a passage to a sure and sin- cere reconciliation ; and that he who would not submit himself to these sentiments, should be regarded as a savage in a civilized community. The chiefs of his republic ought not to govern with arrogance nor pride ; nor should the magistrates be guided in their judgments by hatred nor by friendship.

This preamble, instead of addressing itself to the ignorance, prejudices, and superstitious fears of savages, for the purpose of binding them to an absurd system of hunger and glory for a family, like the laws of Lycurgus, places religion, morals, and government upon a basis of philosophy which is rational, intelli- gible, and eternal, for the real happiness of man in society, and throughout his duration.

The principle adopted by this legislator, as the motive to action next to the sense of duty and social obligation, was the sense of honor, like that of Lycurgus. As Zaleucus was a dis-

520 ON GOVERNMENT.

ciple of Pythagoras, whose favorite plan of government was a well-tempered aristocracy, we may conjecture that such was the form recommended to the Locrians. But all are lost ; and cer- tainly no argument can be drawn from them in favor of one popular assembly. If, in visiting the Sybarites and Locrians, we have found nothing in favor of M. Turgot's system, nor any thing very material against it, we have found a greater advance towards civilization than in all the laws of Lycurgus and Solon, excepting only the trial by jury, instituted by the latter ; I mean the preamble of Zaleucus ; and the general education to letters in schools, at the public expense, by Charondas.

ROME.

Plebeians scrambling; after Patricians ; or Democracy hunting down Aristocracy ; or Tribunes in chase of a Senate.

We elsewhere see, in the history of Rome, with what eager- ness the aristocracy pursued and demolished the monarchy. The kings are commonly reproached with tyranny, and the nobles are applauded for resistance to them ; but it is clear that the nobles were as tyrannical as they ; and that their eternal plots and con- spiracies against the kings, their power, their crown, and their lives, were the cause and the provocation to that tyranny. It is impossible to say which were worst, the nobles or the kings; both were bad enough in general, and both frequently violated the laws, as will ever happen when there are but two branches. The people, as yet, had no adequate power to aid or control either. By the institution of Romulus, indeed, the Roman peo- ple, even the lowest class of the citizens, instead of being pro- hibited to engage in all kinds of labor, after the example of the Spartans, were directed to apply themselves to pasturage, agri- culture, and mechanic arts. This had its natural effect ; and immediately after the revolution, by which the monarchy was abolished and aristocracy set up, though we find the patricians at their usual game of encroaching on the people, yet there was a people, a numerous, hardy, courageous people, who were not disposed to submit. They soon began a resistance, and to de- mand more power to resist; and having obtained one conces- sion, they required another, until they obtained an equality with the patricians.

ROME.

521

So far they were in the right ; and if the two powers could have remained equal, justice, liberty, and happiness, the effect of equal laws, might have been enjoyed. But human nature can never rest ; once in motion, it rolls, like the stone of Sisyphus, every instant when the resisting force is suspended. Diodorus Siculus is very right, lib, xix., when he says : " It is of the nature of man to aspire continually at something greater than his pre- sent condition, and to wish that his power might increase, in- stead of decreasing or resting as it is." Dr. Ferguson, who follows very accurately Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Livy, and Polybius, will furnish us with a good account of the steps by which the Roman people proceeded to augment their own power, and diminish that of the senate, until they obtained the whole. I shall give an abridgment of the story, very nearly in Ferguson's words.1 In their career, however, the people lost their morals and their wisdom, as they ever will in such a course, and they were ready to confer the sovereignty on the line of Caesars, even before they had completely obtained it. Those irregulari- ties, and that final catastrophe, were all occasioned by the im- perfections in their balance. If the consuls had been possessed of a negative in the legislature, and of all the executive authority, and the senate and people had been made equal and independ- ent in the first establishment of the commonwealth, it is impos- sible for any man to prove that the republic would not have remained in vigor and in glory at this hour.2

" The government of Rome," (in the two hundred and forty- fourth year from the building of the city, after the expulsion of Tarquin,) " was become wholly aristocratical. The nobles, exclu- sively, had the legislative, executive, and judicial power, without any third party to hold the balance between them and the peo-

1 The following pages contain a summary of the first^book of Adam Fergu- son's History of the Progress and Termination of the Roman lirpuhlic, accom- panied, however, with a running commentary, as usual, which it is difficult with- out collation to distinguish from the text.

During the last half century, the industry of scholars in investigating the nature and origin of the Roman government has been unwearied ; and so much progress has been made, that Dr. Ferguson's work now seems but a superficial production. Nevertheless, much yet remains to be done fully to elucidate the , difficulties under which the subject labors. It is to be regretted that the author's analysis of this, the most extensive and successful republican experiment ever made, should not have been more complete.

2 " The affirmative is as difficult of proof as the negative." H.

44*

yM*v

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ON GOVERNMENT.

f*r*

pie ; for the consuls, although they were executive magistrates, united in their persons the dignities of the state, those of judges, magistrates, and military leaders, were understood to come in the place of kings, and performed all the functions of royalty; yet they were only parts and ministers of the senate.

" While the exiled king was endeavoring, by continual inva- sions, to recover his power, disputes arose between the parties who had joined to expel him. Creditors, supported by the aris- tocracy, of which the nobles were now in full possession, became severe in the exaction of debts, or the patrons laid claim to more than the clients were willing to pay. The state was distracted at once by its enemies from abroad, and by the dissension of parties at home. The authority of the new government not being sufficient to contend with these difficulties, the senate re- solved to place themselves and the commonwealth, for a limited time, under the power of a single person, under the title of dic- tator.

" The inferior class of the people, almost excluded from any share in the new government, soon found that, under its influ- ence, they had more oppression to fear from their patrons, than they had ever experienced from the prince they had banished. So long as the king and the senate shared in the powers of the state, the one took part with the people, when the other at- tempted to oppress them ; and it was the ordinary interest and policy of the prince to weaken the nobles, by supporting the plebeians against them. This effect of the monarchy still, in some measure, remained so long as the exiled king was alive, maintained his pretensions, and made the united services of the people necessary to the senate ; but, upon the death of the king, the nobles availed themselves of their power, and enforced their claims on the people with extreme severity. In the capacity of creditors, they imprisoned, whipped, and enslaved, those who were indebted to them, and held the liberties and lives of their fellow-citizens at their mercy. The whole body of plebeians was alarmed ; they saw more formidable enemies in the persons of their own nobility, than in the armies of any nation whatever. Many, who had already suffered under the rod of their credit- ors, when called upon to enlist, showed their limbs galled with fetters, or torn with stripes, which they had received by command of their merciless patrons.

ROME. 523

" These distractions obliged the senate to have recourse to another dictator ; and Valerius, who was appointed for his popu-

larity, repelled the enemy. The senate, upon his return, not ful- filling his promises to the people, they retired to the Sacred Mountain. The senate was obliged to negotiate, to mitigate the severities against insolvent debtors, and consent to the ap- pointment of tribunes. This was in the year 260, sixteen years after the revolution."

Had the plebeians " discontinued their collective assemblies for every purpose but elections, and increased their tribunes" to four or five hundred representatives, even this would not have been a radical cure, without separating the consuls from the senate, and giving them, or one of them, the executive power, and a negative both upon the senate and popular assembly in the legislature ; but there was too much prejudice, and too little knowledge, for so great an improvement. The people contented themselves with the appointment of a leader, under the name of Tribune, who, without power effectually to protect them, had enough to head every popular tumult, and blow up every spark to a flame. An assembly of representatives would have had an equal right with the senate to propose laws, to deliberate, debate, alter, amend, improve. But the tribunes were authorized only to forbid any measure they thought injurious ; but not to propose any law, or move any resolution. Not permitted to mix with the senators, they had places at the door of the senate house, as their office was felt to be a dangerous one. Their persons were made sacred ; and every one was devoted to the infernal gods who should even strike them. An oath was to be taken to ob- serve this law; and the idea of the sanctity of a tribune took such deep root, that the emperors afterwards were protected from assassins by this sacred title of Tribune.

" The college of tribunes, at first, was not limited to any num- ber ; but, in process of time, they increased from three to ten."

Patricians could not by law be elected; yet the people, to show that they ne\er will be steady to any law, even to those most directly contrived for their benefit, sometimes departed from this.

" The tribunes were at first elected in the curiae, where the £ vote of the poorest citizen was equal to that of the most wealthy. But, even here, the patricians, besides their great influence, had

t

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ON GOVERNMENT.

even a negative on all proceedings, by holding the auspices. For this reason, it was thought necessary to alter the form of the assembly in which the tribunes were elected, to that of the tribes ; and by this means to enable the people to make then- election without any control from the nobles, either in virtue of the authority of the senate, or the interposition of the augurs."

These would have been real improvements of the constitution, if they had proportionally augmented the authority of the con- suls at the same time ; but probably there would have been as many prejudices against such a proposal among the people as in the senate. All the popular jealousies and alarms at regal au- thority would have been excited by demagogues in the senate as well as in the comitia ; for there are in all nations aristocratical demagogues as well as democratical.

" These expedients were adopted by the senate to quiet the animosities of parties ; but tended, in fact, only to render the contest between them more equal, and to multiply the subjects of dispute. The tribunes, being vested with power to assemble the people, could not long be confined to the mere negative with which they were first intrusted. The party of the plebeians, with these magistrates at their head, were then in a posture not only to preserve their right, but likewise to gain to their order continual accessions of power. Happily for the state, there was yet much ground to be gained, without transgressing the bounds of order, or the authority of equitable government. The bar of hereditary distinction was the strongest obstacle which the popular leaders in this career had to break through."

The nobles among the Komans, as well as amortg the Greeks, generally traced back their lineage, in some manner or other, to gods and goddesses ; and the divine original of nobility, and the essential distinction between the two orders of nobles and com- mons, the one being believed a superior order of beings to the other, was founded in their institutions of religion, and in the popular belief; and, although some pretensions are still set up, in many parts of Europe, to the divine right of nobility, yet they are generally held in so little estimation, that a modern can hardly form an idea of the difficulty the tribunes must have found to overcome this inveterate prejudice of superstition. No personal merit, no actual service, no measure of ability or virtue, could remove, as it was pretended, the disqualification of ple- beian birth.

ROME. 525

" One of the first steps towards abolishing this distinction, was to preclude every other power in the state from a negative p , on their proceedings. For this purpose, it was enacted by the tribes, that no one, under pain of death, or of a fine at discre- tion, should interrupt a tribune while he was speaking to the people."

Nothing can- be more curious than these popular efforts to get the better of their own superstitious prejudices. They could not depend upon their own firmness to support their own peculiar magistrate, till they made themselves believe that his person was sacred, as well as the other magistrates.

" Being thus provided against interruption, as they were by a *y / former law against violence to their persons, they not only took up the complaints of their constituents, but suggested new claims to be made by them ; and at every succession to office, endea- vored to signalize their term by some additional establishment for the benefit of the people. They interrupted the state in its councils and wars, and hung upon the wheels of government until the grievances they complained of were redressed, or the de- mands they made were complied with. In order to increase the number of plebeian officers, whose aid the tribunes alleged was necessary to themselves", they, soon after their own institution, procured that of the aediles, who were to inspect the market, and _, have charge of the public buildings and public shows.

w The qualifications of candidates for the office of consul, fur- nished, during some ages, fEeT subject of continual debates. Civil and military transactions were constantly blended together. The senate frequently involved the state in war, in order to suspend its intestine divisions ; and the people as often took occasion, from the difficulties in which the community was involved by its enemies, to extort a compliance with their own demands.

" The first subject of contention was the distribution of the corn which the senate had purchased as a provision against the famine, which the late interruption of industry and agriculture, by the secession of the people, had occasioned. Coriolanus was for compelling the people, by hunger, to part with their tribunes, and the other concessions which had been extorted from the senate. The younger nobility applauded his sentiments; but 2-£ the majority were afraid of another storm, and agreed to deliver corn from the public granaries at a moderate price. The people,

If,

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526 ON GOVERNMENT.

however, were not appeased ; they were greatly incensed against Coriolanus ; and the tribunes cited him to appear before the tri- bunal of the people, to answer for the insult he had offered them. The senate and patricians were disposed to protect him ; but expected to be able to acquit him in the comitia of the centuries, the only tribunal before which any capital accusation of a citizen had ever been tried. " The tribunes, however, determined to introduce an innovation, and insisted that the people should assemble in their tribes. Coriolanus, seeing himself already con- demned by this method of proceeding, withdrew, and joined the enemies of his country."

This novelty made a total change in the constitution ; for " the assembly of the centuries formed an aristocracy, that of the tribes a democracy, as it was not with any precision deter- mined by law what business should be done in one assembly, and what in the other, the patricians and plebeians, instead of balancing each other by regular checks, were in danger of render- ing the administration of the state a continual scene of contra- dictions," which served to the last hour of the republic as an object of popular zeal, and furnished a specious pretence to am- bitious and designing men. This very uncertainty, producing continual altercations and wars, produced great statesmen and warriors, no doubt.* But a regular, well-ordered constitution, will never fail to bring forth men capable of conducting the national councils and arms ; and it is of infinitely more import- ance to the national happiness, to abound in good merchants, farmers, and manufacturers, good lawyers, priests, and physi- cians, and great philosophers, than it is to multiply what are called great statesmen and great generals. It is a miserable servitude, whether you call it a republic or a despotism, where the law is uncertain and unknown ; and it is only under the security of certain and known laws, that arts, sciences, agricul- ture, commerce, and trades, can ever be made to flourish.

Another subject of dispute was soon introduced, "which served to the last hour of the republic as' an object of popular

* This alludes to the following sentiment of Dr. Ferguson, which is not cited in the text.

" This singular constitution will appear to possess at least one of the highest political advantages, in being the most excellent nursery of statesmen and war- riors, and in forming the most conspicuous example of national ability and suc- cess."

ROME. 527

zeal, and furnished a specious pretence to ambitious and design- ing men td captivate the ears of the populace — an equal divi- sion of land, known by the name of an agrarian law."

By this was by no means meant a community of goods and lands, or an equal division of all the lands and goods ; the Roman people had too much sense and honesty ever to think of intro- ducing into practice such an absurd figment of the brain. But the Romans, during the late aristocratical times, and the wars against Tarquin, had " suffered the conquered lands to pass by connivance, occupancy, or purchase, into the hands of powerful citizens," instead of dividing them equally among the people. Spurius Cassius, the consul, who was in favor with the people, fa and affected still farther popularity by flattering the passions of the inferior classes, foreseeing that the tribunes would soon think of this object, determined to make a merit to himself by antici- pating them. " Possessing himself some of these lands, he ostentatiously made a division of them among the more indi- gent citizens ; and obtained an appointment of three commis- sioners to inquire into the evil and consider of a remedy."

" The patricians were alarmed ; but Cassius had numbers on p , his side, and was so confident of success, that he betrayed too / soon his ambitious design, by offering the freedom of the city to aliens, who, at his invitation, crowded from all parts to vote in the assemblies of the Roman people. This convinced all parties that his views were, by the means of aliens and indigent citizens, to usurp the government.1 All parties combined against him, and he was condemned for treason. The tribunes had no sooner /> - destroyed Cassius, than they adopted his project, and insisted on the law for the nomination of three commissioners."

1 It is a common trick of parties to assail the motives of formidable opponents, in order to weaken their influence, if not to destroy them entirely. The result proves that the measure of Cassius was felt to be reasonable, even though he was himself sacrificed as the advocate of it. Yet it is not uncommon among popular men to push good measures from bad reasons.

The course of modern criticism has been to doubt the correctness of many of the judgments passed upon men in the ancient republics, but it can do no more than doubt. In high party times, a vanquished reformer is most likely to be branded by the victors as an incendiary and a demagogue, as on the other hand a conservative statesman, Avhen overthrown, is liable to be handed down as unfaith- ful to popular government. And these judgments are made up under excite- ment, which leaves no room for an analysis of the merits of the questions put at issue. It is not unlikely that the best critics of ancient politics in Greece and Rome, may yet be found hereafter among the statesmen active in the struggles of America.

528 ON GOVERNMENT.

From this time commences a struggle between the tribunes and senate, patricians and plebeians, the various operations of •which would take up too much space to relate. " The tribunes were honored in proportion to the part they took in support of the popular cause, and their animosity against the senate. Every new tribune endeavored to signalize his year, by suggest- ing some new point to be gained by the people. One law was obtained to substitute the assembly of the tribes for that of the curiae, in the election of tribunes ; another to exclude the patri- cians entirely from the assembly of the tribes. The agrarian law they frequently moved in the interval of other pretensions, or together with other claims, in order to alarm the senate, and force them to a compromise."

The powers and artifices of both parties were soon exerted in another contest, in which the people were in the right, and pursued the most rational and necessary object imaginable, — a new code of laws which should regulate the forms of judicial proceedings ; yet even this was not pursued so much from the love of justice, or the spirit of liberty,1 as to gain a point from the patricians, whose power was greatly supported by the discretion- ary judicial powers they had in their hands. This great object, which the English nation have pursued for so long a course of time, under the names of Folcright or Common Law, they alone have had the wisdom to accompany with prerogatives to the crown and privileges to the nobility, which have secured those two branches of the constitution ; at the same time that, by establishing a body of laws and regular formal proceedings in the courts of justice, they have secured their own rights and liberties. The Roman people were not so wise ; by neglecting to give any adequate prerogatives to the consuls, and by undermining the power of the senate in proportion as they introduced regular law to protect their own rights, they undermined every other power in the constitution, and devolved the whole upon themselves. In the career they lost all their integrity and morals. " They opposed an ardor not to be cooled or discouraged, or restrained

1 It is difficult at all times to analyze the springs of popular movements. Mul- titudes are necessarily subject to an infinite diversity of impulses, the precise extent of each of which cannot be defined. But there is no reason in this case to suppose that the love of justice and the spirit of liberty did not animate the same breasts in which the other motive had its play. The desire for victory is an inevitable attendant upon eager contention for even the best object.

ROME. 529

by scruples in the choice of means, to the great authority and address of the nobles. A popular party are apt to think that the rules of veracity and candor may be dispensed with, and that deceit and violence may, without any scruple, be employed in their own favor. With less honor and dignity to maintain than their adversaries, they are less afraid of imputations that detract from either ; and their leaders, supported by the voice of the -* -> more numerous party, are less apprehensive of evil fame. In this contest, accordingly, fictitious plots and conspiracies were fabri- cated by the popular side, and fictitious designs against the liber- ties of the people were imputed to the patricians, in order to render them odious, and to deter them from appearing in support of their real pretensions." l

" The senate at last agreed to the nomination of three commis- sioners, to be sent to Greece, and make a collection of laws. The report they made was accepted, and the decemvirs appointed by the senate and people to compile a body of laws. These ten were intended only as a committee to prepare a draught for the consideration of the senate and people. Yet they had so much credit with the people as to be vested with a temporary sove- reignty ; and superseded the authority of the senate as well as the consuls ; and had unlimited power over the lives and for- tunes of their fellow-citizens. They presented a number of laws, engraven on ten tables or plates, containing a summary of the privileges of the people, the crimes to be punished, and the forms of judicial proceedings. They said then plan was unfinished; _*, and, desiring a renewal of their powers, obtained it for another year. Two more tables were added, which, with the former ten, made the Law of the Twelve Tables.

" In these laws the distinction of patrician and plebeian was •? i so great, that persons of these different orders were not permitted to intermarry. Bankruptcy was made a crime ; and, without any distinction between fraud and misfortune, it exposed the insolvent debtor to the mercy of his creditors, who might put him to death, dissect, or quarter him, and distribute his members -? X among them."

This law was brought from Greece, and shows the atrocious ideas and manners of the age. Although we have no account

1 It is hardly reasonable in a historian of a popular government to suppose that these labors are all confined to one party.

VOL. IV. 45 H 2

530 ON GOVERNMENT.

of the law being executed in its utmost extent, we know that, in consequence of it, debtors were, by the courts of law, delivered bound into the hands of creditors, and frequently scourged and whipped in a most cruel and unmerciful manner. Giving to fathers the power of magistrates, or the power of life and death, over their children, may have some reasons assigned for it ; but nothing can ever account for the people's accepting such a law of debtor and creditor among the Greeks or Romans, but the supposition that property was entirely in the hands of patricians ; and that the people had the blindest superstitious opinion, that the patricians, as descendants of gods, were a superior order of beings. It is no wonder that the people, after this, often clamored for an abolition or diminution of debts. Why they never de- manded an abolition of the law, is another question.

One other of these laws deserves particular notice. " In pri- vate, every family were free to worship the gods in their own way ; and in public, though certain forms were required, yet there was not any penalty annexed to the omission of them, as the punishment of offences in this matter was left to the offended god." This, probably, was the source of that wise and humane toleration which does so much honor to the Romans, and reflects disgrace on almost every Christian nation.

The ardor of the people to obtain this code had nearly cost them then liberties. " The power of a magistrate was supposed to determine only by his own resignation. The decemvirs, taking advantage of this defect in the constitution, continued the exercise of their power; and the people," to show that they never can be jealous of men who are in possession of their confidence, " acquiesced in their usurpation ; until the father of Virginia, by exercising his lawful authority in defence of his daughter's honor, exhibited a spectacle of horror which gave a turn to the imaginations, and aroused all the passions of the people to the expulsion of the decemvirs, as such another event had before given occasion to the abolition of monarchy.

" Patricians and plebeians now united, and a tide of mutual confidence began to flow. Two very popular persons were chosen consuls. The consecration of the tribunes was renewed, and extended to the sediles and other inferior officers, who acted under the tribunes in preserving the rights of the people. The patricians consented to have the acts of the senate formally re-

ROME. 531

corded, placed in the temple of Ceres, and committed to the care of the aediles. As the consuls had been hitherto the keep- ers and interpreters of their decrees, and had often suppressed or earned into execution their acts at their pleasure, this was a con- siderable diminution of the power of the consuls.

"The comitia were of three sorts, — the curiae, the centuries, l^( and the tribes. The centuries, alone, in which the patricians had an undoubted majority, as well as in the senate, had as yet the authority of making laws for the commonwealth. This still preserved the aristocratical character of the republic. Now the plebeians denied the legislative authority of the senate ; and the senate denied the right of the tribes to make laws. Equity re- quired that the plebeians should have a voice in the legislature ; but, instead of becoming a branch of it, instead of aiming at a deliberative or negative voice in it, by which they might concur with the senate and comitia of the centuries ; or, which would have been infinitely better, with the senate and consuls as two independent branches, they obtained a separate and independent power of legislation. Hence the intricacy of this constitution ; hence three distinct sources of laws, — decrees of the senate, acts of the centuries, and resolutions of the tribes, — senatus consulta, leges, plebiscita ;" a source of division, distraction, and tumult, which never ceased to issue streams till the authority of the senate was wholly destroyed, and a dominatio plebis began.

" The plebeians, having removed these inequalities, grew so much the more impatient of those which remained. They were still excluded from the office of consul, from that of the priest- hood, and were forbidden intermarriage with the nobles. In the year of the city, 308, Canuleius, a plebeian and a tribune, moved to repeal the law of the twelve tables, which prohibited the in- ) . . termarriage of patricians and plebeians ; and the nine other tri- | bunes claimed that the office of consul should be held by plebei- ans as well as patricians.

" The senate, and the whole order of nobles, by studied delays, and by the usual artifice of involving the state in foreign wars, suspended the determination of these questions; but at length y$ were obliged to gratify the people respecting the intermarriage of different ranks, in order to pacify them on the refusal of their claim to the consulate. To elude this demand, it was said that the sacrifices and other duties of the priesthood, many of which

532 ON GOVERNMENT.

were to be performed by the consul, could not, by the sacred laws of religion, be performed without profanation by persons of plebeian extraction, or by any but those of noble birth. This argument silenced the people for some time;" but neither super- stition, nor the true religion, any more than education, oaths, morals, or any other tie, will long restrain an unbalanced party, urged by its interest, and stimulated by a growing passion for power. An evasion, a mere change of a word, will answer the purpose of eluding superstitious fears, and even the dictates of conscience.

" The title of Consul was changed for that of Military Tri- bune ; and no sacerdotal function being included in the duties of this office, plebeians, though not qualified to be consuls, were elected military tribunes, with consular power. The military and sacerdotal functions had before been united ; they were now separated, and, as the people thought, without profanation. But another office remained to tempt the people and their tribunes, that of Censor. The cerisus had been a principal object of the executive power ; the kings had always held it, and after them the consuls. At every period of five years, they could dispose of every man's rank, assign him his class, place him in the rolls of the senate or the knights, or strike him off of either, degrade or disfranchise him, as they thought proper. A power so im- portant, although it had not been hitherto flagrantly abused, might easily be so ; and the senate would naturally dread the admission of plebeians to it. While they admitted them, there- fore to be elected tribunes, with consular power, they stipulated that the census should be separated from it, and that this charge should remain with persons of patrician birth."

The invasion of the Gauls had burnt the city, and it was thought, extinguished the republic forever. Manlius saved the capitol, and Camillus restored the commonwealth. " During a period of one hundred and seventeen years which followed, the Romans were ' involved in perpetual wars against the Equi, the Volsci, the Hernici, the Etruscans', and some of their own Latin confederates ; yet these did not wholly suspend their inter- nal convulsions, which gave birth to new political institutions. The plebeians, far from being satisfied with their past acquisi- tions, made continual efforts to extend their privileges. The tribunes, by traducing the senate, and by displaying in their

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ROME. 533

harangues the severities of the patrician creditor, and the suffer- ings of the plebeian debtor, still inflamed the animosity of the popular party. The republic itself was so feebly established, that ambitious citizens were encouraged, by means of factions raised among persons of the lower class, to entertain thoughts of subverting the government. In this manner, Manlius, the champion of the capitol, presuming on his merit, thought him- self above the laws, and incurred the imputation of aspiring to be king. Four hundred citizens, whom he had redeemed from their creditors, and released from chains ; the spoils of thirty enemies, slain by himself, in battle ; forty badges of honor, con- ferred on him by generals under whom he had served ; many citizens whom he had rescued from the enemy, among whom was Servilius, the second in command to the dictator; could not save him from being thrown from the rock on which he had so (% lately signalized his valor."

Such was the influence of the senate ; such " the treasons for which the friends of the people were to be sacrificed to the senate," as he said ; and such the popular prejudice against the name of a king. Yet it is certain that the best thing the Ro- man people could have done at that time, would have been to have made him a king, with a negative ; preserving, at the same time, their own negative, and that of the senate." 1

The plebeians had been now above forty years in possession of a title to hold the office of consular tribune, but had not been able to prevail over the influence of the patricians at any elec- tion. By the increase of their numbers in the first and second classes, by their intermarriages with patrician families, and by the assiduity and influence of individuals who aspired to the office, they at last obtained the dignity of consular tribune for

1 Something akin to this is expressed by Niebuhr : —

" Instead of relieving the distress, the patricians obstinately insisted on their rights, and thus arose a contest between beneficent ambition on the one hand, and the most stubborn oligarchy on the other. The natural consequence was, a very general feeling that any change would be better than such a government ; and that Manlius, as a usurper, might be as useful as many a Greek tyrant. This state of things undoubtedly became very dangerous. When a government is in a bad course, and unwilling to retrace its steps, it drives men to sin, and has much to answer for before God and man." Lectures on the History of Rome, edited by Dr. L. Schmitz, vol. i. p. 280.

The adoption of the Licinian laws seems to have been the popular reversal of the patrician verdict against Manlius. Some further comments on his case are made in the concluding chapter of this work.

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534 ON GOVERNMENT.

one of their own order, and from thenceforward began to divide the votes of the centuries with the patrician candidates. They soon aspired to the title of consuls. Stolo and Sextius were placed in the college of tribunes, to urge this point. They pro- posed three laws : — 1st. For relief of insolvent debtors, by cheat- ing their creditors of part of their debts. 2dly. To limit estates in land to five hundred jugera, about three hundred acres. 3rdly. To restore the election of consuls, in place of consular tribunes, with an express provision that at least one of the consuls should be of plebeian descent. The patricians prevailed upon some of the tribunes to dissent from then colleagues, and suspend, by their negatives, all proceedings upon these laws. Licinius and Sextius, in their turn, suspended the usual election of magis- trates, and put a stop to all the ordinary affairs of state. An anarchy of five years ensued. The patricians still insisted on the sacrilege and profanation that would be incurred, by suffering the rites usually performed by the consuls to pass into plebeian hands. The tribunes, to elude this mysterious objection, which laid fast hold on the superstitious minds of the people, contrived a shift. They moved, that the ordinary attendants on the sacred rites should be augmented from two to ten ; and that of these one half should be named of plebeian extraction. The patricians struggled as long as they could, but were at last obliged to give way, — 1st. To the acts in favor of insolvent debtors. 2dly. To the agrarian law, or limitation of property in land. 3dly. To the new establishment relating to the priesthood, and to the com- munication of the consulate itself to persons of plebeian rank. The plebeian party prevailed in all their points, and raised Sex- tius the tribune to the office of consul ; and, from one step to another, they obtained all the offices, whether of praetor or sedile, of dictator or censor, to be, in process of time, filled with persons of either rank.

" The only effect it now had was favorable to the plebeians, as it limited the choice of tribunes to their own order ; while, in common with the patricians, they had access to every other dig- nity in the state.

" In this account of the Roman constitution, we are now come nearly to that state of its maturity, at which Polybius began to admire the felicity of its institutions, and the order of its admin- istration." The mass, however, was far from being so well com-

h

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ROME. 535

pacted, or the unity of power so well established, as it is in the English constitution ; the senate and the popular assemblies, in their legislative capacities, counteracted one another. However, from this time forward, through a long period of wars, with Greeks, Gauls, Italians, and Carthaginians, the domestic policy of the state appears to be wise and orderly. The distinction between patrician and plebeian was become altogether nominal ; the descendants of those who had held the higher offices of state were, in consequence of the preferments of their ancestors, con- sidered as noble ; and, as the plebeians now found no difficulty in obtaining the offices of state, they were continually opening the way of their posterity to the rank of nobles. The plebeians were entitled by law to claim one of the consul's seats, and fre- quently occupied both. The authority of the senate, the dignity of the equestrian order, and the manners of the people in general, were guarded, and in a great measure preserved, by the integrity and strict exercise of the censorial power. The wisest and most respected of the citizens, from every condition, were raised into office ; and the assemblies, whether of the senate or the people, without envy and without jealousy, suffered themselves to be governed by the counsels of a few able and virtuous men. The spirit of the people was, however, in a high degree democratical ; and though they suffered themselves to be governed by the silent influence of personal authority in a few of their citizens, yet they could not endure any species of uncommon preeminence, even that which arose from the lustre and well-founded pretensions of distinguished merit.

The conduct of the Romans towards the Greeks should not be forgotten ; since it appears to have been copied from the policy of Antalcidas in his Persian treaty. " The states of the Achaean -_ ^ league, already on the decline, hastened, by the temerity and distractions of their own councils, the career of their fortunes to its termination. The Romans, even while they suffered this famous republic to retain the show of its independence, had treated its members, in many particulars, as subjects. At the close of the war with Perseus, they had cited to appear at Rome, or had taken into custody as prisoners of state, many citizens of Achaia. Of these they had detained about a thousand in differ- ZJT$ ent prisons of Italy. After a period of seventeen years, three hundred who remained alive were set at liberty. Polybius was

536 ON GOVERNMENT.

one of them. He attached himself to Scipio, the son of Emilius, and no doubt contributed much to his education and great cha- racter.

" The Romans, while they detained so many Greek prisoners, assumed the administration of affairs in Greece, and disposed of every distinction, whether of fortune or power, to their own tools. They received appeals from the judgments of the Achaean coun- cil, and encouraged its members, contrary to the express condi- tions of their league, to send separate embassies to Rome. The Spartans, having been forced into the Achaean confederacy, con- tinued refractory in most of its councils. By some of their com- plaints at Rome, they obtained a deputation from the senate, to hear parties on the spot, and to adjust then differences. The Achasan council, incensed at this insult which was offered to their authority, proceeded to enforce their own decrees against the republic of Sparta, marched an army, and defeated the in- habitants of that city who ventured to oppose them. The Roman commissioners arriving after these hostilities, summoned the par- ties to assemble at Corinth, and, in the name of the senate, gave sentence, — That Lacedcemon, Corinth, Argos, Heraclea, and Or- chomenos, not having' been original members of the Achaean con- federacy, should now be disjoined from it ; and that all the cities which had been rescued from the dominion of Philip should be left in full possession of their freedom and independency." A war ensued, in which Metellus and Mummius defeated the Greeks, and the Achaean league was dissolved.

" The enmity and the friendship of the Romans was equally fatal. As the Achaean league was dissolved, on having incurred their resentment, so the remnant of the Spartan republic perished, in having accepted their protection." And nothing could be more just than that the Spartans should perish under an insidious policy, which they themselves had first invented, practised, and suggested to the Romans ; who, under the command of Flami- nius, about fifty years before this date, in order to detach the Grecian cities from Philip, proclaimed with so much ostentation, at the Isthmus of Corinth, general independence, and the free exercise of their own laws, to all the republics of Greece. " The Achaean league was dissolved, and all its conventions annulled. The states which had composed it were deprived of their sove- reignty, subjected to pay a tribute, and placed under the govern-

ROME. 537

ment of a person annually sent from Rome with the title of Prae- tor of Achaia.

But the success of the Roman arms abroad, became the source of a ruinous corruption at home. In the state itself, the govern- ing and the governed felt separate interests, and were at vari- ance from motives of avarice, as well as ambition. Two hun- dred and thirty years had elapsed since the animosities of patri- cian and plebeian were extinguished by the equal participation of public honors. —uFhis distinction itself was, in a great measure, obliterated, and gave way~fo a new one, which, under the deno- mination of nobles and commons, or illustrious and obscure, with- out involving any legal disparity of privileges, gave rise to an aristocracy, which was partly hereditary, founded on the repeated succession to honors in the same family ; and partly personal, founded on the habits of high station and on the advantages of education, such as never fail to distinguish the conditions of men in every great and prosperous state. TfThese circumstances con- ferred a power on the nobles, which, though less invidious, was not less real than that which had been possessed by the ancient patricians. The exercise of this power was lodged with the senate, a body which, though by the emulation of its members too much disposed to war, and ambitious of conquest, was never surpassed in magnanimity, ability, or in steadiness, by any coun- cil of state whatever.

" The people had submitted to the senate, as possessed of an authority which was founded in the prevailing opinion of their superior worth ; and even the most aspiring of the commons allowed themselves to be governed by an order of men, amongst whom they themselves, by proper efforts and suitable merit, might hope to ascend. The knights, or the equestrian order, y -, *> being persons possessed of estates or effects of a certain valua- tion, and secluded from the pursuit of political emolument or honor, formed, between the senate and the people, an interme- diate rank, who, in consequence of their having a capital, and being less engaged than the senators in affairs of state, became traders, contractors, farmers of the revenue, and constituted a species of moneyed interest. «

" Circumstances which appear to be fixed in the political state P of nations, are often no more than a passage in the shifting of scenes, or a transition from that which a people have been, to

538 ON GOVERNMENT.

what they are about to become. The nobles began to avail themselves of the high authority and advantages oi their station, and to accumulate property as well as honors. ''Citizens con- tended for offices in the state, as the road to lucrative appoint- ments abroad ; and when they had obtained this end, and had reigned for a while in some province, they brought back from their government a profusion of wealth ill acquired, and the habit of arbitrary and uncontrolled command. When disap- pointed in the pursuits of fortune abroad, they became the lead- ers of dangerous factions at home ; or, when suddenly possessed of great wealth, they became the agents of corruption, to dis- seminate idleness and the love of ruinous amusements in the minds of the people, if The city was gradually crowded with a populace, who, tempted with the cheap or gratuitous distribu- tion of corn, by the frequency of public shows, by the conse- quence they enjoyed as members of the popular assemblies, flocked to Rome. There they were corrupted by idleness and indigence ; and the order itself was continually debased by the frequent accession of emancipated slaves. A turbulent populace tyrannized, in their turn, over the masters of the world, and wreaked on the conquerors of so many nations the evils which they themselves had so freely inflicted on mankind.

" Citizens of this extraction could not for ages arrive at any places of trust, in which they could, by their personal defects, injure the commonwealth ; but they increased, by their numbers and their vices, the weight of that dreg, which, in great and pros- perous cities, ever sinks, by the tendency of vice and misconduct, to the lowest condition. They became a part of that faction, who are ever actuated by envy to their superiors, by mercenary views, or by abject fear ; who are ever ready to espouse the cause of any leader against the restraints of public order ; disposed to vilify the more respectable ranks of men, and, by their indiffer- ence on the subjects of justice or honor, to frustrate every prin- ciple that may be employed for the government of mankind, besides fear and compulsion. Although citizens of this descrip- tion were yet far from being the majority at Rome, yet it is pro- bable that they were in numbers sufficient to contaminate the whole body of the people ; and if enrolled promiscuously in all the tribes, might have had a great weight in turning the scale of political councils. This effect, however, was happily prevented,

ROME. 539

by the wise precaution which the censors had taken, to confine all citizens of mean or slavish extraction to four of the tribes. These were called the tribes of the city, and formed but a small proportion of the whole.

" Notwithstanding this precaution, we must suppose them to ^<5^ have been very improper parties in the participation of sove- reignty, and likely enough to disturb the place of assembly with disorders and tumults. While the inferior people sunk in their characters, or were debased by the circumstances mentioned, the superior ranks, by their application to affairs of state, by their education, by "the ideas of high birth and family distinction, by the superiority of fortune, began to rise in their estimation, in their pretensions, and in then* power ; and they entertained some degree of contempt for persons, whom the laws still required them to admit as their fellow-citizens and equals.

" In this disposition of parties, so dangerous in a common- f wealth, and amidst materials so likely to catch the flame, some ' sparks were thrown, that soon kindled up anew all the popular animosities, which seemed to have been so long extinguished. Tiberius Gracchus, born of a plebeian family, but ennobled by the honors of his father, by his descent, on the side of his mother, from the first Scipio Africanus, and by his alliance with the second Scipio, who had married his sister, being now tribune of the people, and possessed of all the accomplishments required in a popular leader, great ardor, resolution, and eloquence, formed a project in itself extremely alarming, and in its consequences dan- gerous to the peace of the republic.

" Being called to account for his conduct as quaestor in Spain, ^ the severity he experienced from the senate, and the protection he obtained from the people, filled his breast with animosity to the one, and a prepossession in favor of the other. ^Actuated by these dispositions, or by an idea not uncommon to enthusiastic minds, that the unequal distribution of property, so favorable to the rich, is an injury to the poor, he proposed a revival of the law of Licinius, by which Roman citizens had been restrained from accumulating estates in land above the value of five hundred jugera, little more than half as many acres. This was become impracticable, and even dangerous, in the present state of the republic. The distinctions of poor and rich are as necessary, in h .24 states of considerable extent, as labor and good government. The

540 ON GOVERNMENT.

poor are destined to labor ; and the rich, by the advantages of edu- cation, independence, and leisure, are qualified for superior stations. The empire was now greatly extended, and owed its safety and the order of its government to a respectable aristocracy, founded on the possession of fortune, as well as personal qualities and public honors. The rich were not, without some violent con- vulsion, to be stript of estates which they themselves had bought, or which they had inherited from their ancestors. The poor were not qualified at once to be raised to a state of equality with persons inured to a better condition. The project seemed to be as ruinous to government as it was to the security of property, and tended to place the members of the commonwealth, by one rash and precipitate step, in situations in which they were not at all qualified to act.

" For these reasons, as well as from motives of private interest affecting the majority of the nobles, the project of Tiberius was strenuously opposed by the senate ; and, from motives of envy, interest, or mistaken zeal for justice, as warmly supported by the opposite party." Acting in concert with Appius Claudius, whose daughter he had married, a senator of the family of Crassus, who was then at the head of the priesthood, and Mucius Scsevola the consul, he exhausted all his art, and displayed all his eloquence in declamation. " But when he came to propose that the law should be read, he found that his opponents had procured M. Octavius, one of his colleagues, to interpose his negative, and forbid any further proceeding in the business. Here, according to the law and the constitution, this matter should have dropped^ But inflamed and unbalanced parties are not to be restrained by laws and constitutions. " The tribunes were instituted to defend their own party, not to attack their opponents ; and to prevent, not to promote innovations. Every single tribune had a negative on the whole."

The rest of the story I must leave. The constitution thus violated, Gracchus next violated the sacred character of his col- league, the tribune. The senate were transported with indigna- tion ; violence ensued, and the two Gracchi fell. Afterwards, Marius carried the popular pretensions still higher; and Sylla might, if he would, have been emperor. Caesar followed, and completed the catastrophe.

This commonwealth, by the splendor of its actions, the extent

f>-:

ROME. 541

of its empire, the wisdom of its councils, the talents, integrity, and courage of a multitude of characters, exhibits the fairest prospect of our species, and is the most signal example, except- ing England, of the wisdom and utility of a mixture of the three powers in a commonwealth. On the other hand, the various vicissitudes of its fortune, its perpetual domestic con- tests and internal revolutions, are the clearest proofs of the evils arising from the want of complete independence in each branch, and from an ineffectual balance.1

1 The author leaves us here without clearly defining the points in the Roman system in which the balance was defective. His observations on the same sub- ject, scattered in the last chapter of the work, are more forcible than this analy- sis. Some valuable reflections upon the subject have been supplied by Lord Brougham, in his Political Philosophy, part ii. ch. 13, and others are to be found scattered in the pages of Niebuhr and Dr. Arnold ; but a thoroughly repub- lican and philosophical history, written by one familiar with all the phases of a popular government, remains yet to be written.

VOL. IV. 46

CHAPTER VIII. ANCIENT APJSTOCRATICAL REPUBLICS.

CHAPTER VIII.

Ancient Apjstocratical Republics. Rome

ANCIENT APJSTOCRATICAL REPUBLICS.

ROME.

Dionysius Halicarnassensis, in the speech which he puts into the mouth of Valerius, has not only given us his own judgment, that the most perfect form of government is that which consists of an equal mixture of monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy, but he has repeated the same sentiment, in his own name, in other parts of his work. In the seventh section of his second I book of the Roman Antiquities, he says of Romulus, that he was extremely capable of instituting the most perfect form of government. And, again ; " I shall first speak of the form of government he instituted, which I look upon, of all others, to be the most self-sufficient to answer all the ends both of peace and war." This is a mixture of monarchy, aristocracy, and demo- cracy, extolled by Polybius ; and is nearly the same with that of Lycurgus, instituted at Sparta about a hundred years before. As the constitutions of Rome and Sparta lasted so many cen- turies longer than others of Greece and Italy, and produced effects so amazing upon the human character, we may rationally ascribe that duration and those effects to this composition, although the balance was very imperfect in both. The legal power, both of the kings and people, in both, was unequal to that of the senate, and, therefore, the predominant character in both was aristocracy. In Sparta, the influence of the mo- narchy and democracy was derived chiefly from the oath taken by the kings and ephori to support each other. An authority founded thus, in opinion, in religion, or rather in superstition, and not in legal power, would keep the senate in some awe, but not in any certain restraint.

Romulus divided all the people into three parts, and appointed a person of the first rank to be the chief of each of them. Then he subdivided each of these into ten others, and appointed as many of the bravest men to be the leaders of these. The greater

h

ROME. 543

divisions he called tribes, and the lesser curies. The commanders of the tribes were called tribuni ; and those of the curiae, curiones. He then divided the land into thirty portions, and gave one of them to each curia. He distinguished those who were eminent for their birth, virtues, and riches; and to these he gave the name of fathers. The obscure, the mean, and the poor, he called ple- beians, in imitation of the government at Athens, where, at that time, those who were distinguished by their birth and fortune, were called " well-born," to whom the administration of govern- ment was committed ; and the -rest of the people, who had no share in it, " husbandmen." Romulus appointed the patricians to be priests, magistrates, and judges. The institution by which every plebeian was allowed to' choose any patrician for his patron,1 introduced an intercourse of good offices between these orders, made the patricians emulate each other in acts of civility and humanity to their clients, and contributed to preserve the peace and harmony of Rome in so remarkable a manner, that, in all the contests which happened for six hundred and twenty years, they never proceeded to bloodshed.

The king, according to the institution of Romulus, had several important functions, namely, — 1. Supremacy in religion, cere- monies, sacrifices, and worship. 2. The guardianship of the laws, and administration of justice, in all cases, whether founded on the law of nature, or the civil law ; he was to take cognizance of the greatest crimes in person, leaving the lesser to the senate; and to observe that no. errors were committed in their judgments; he was to assemble both the senate and the people ; to deliver his opinion first, and pursue the resolutions of the majority. Ro- mulus, however, wisely avoided that remarkable Spartan absurd- ity of two kings.

The senate were to deliberate and determine, by a majority of votes, all questions which the king should propose to them. This institution, also, Romulus took from the constitution of the La- cedaemonians. The kings, in both constitutions, were so far from being absolute, that they had not the whole executive power, nor any negative upon the legislature ; in short, the whole power of the government was vested in the senate.

1 Upon this relation, as well as the story of the early kings, much has been ■written of late years, calculated to throw doubt upon former impressions, but not to substitute entirely clear ideas.

p

544 ON GOVERNMENT.

The people had three privileges, — to choose magistrates (yet all the great employments must be confined to patricians); to enact laws ; and to determine concerning war, when proposed by the king. But the concurrence of the senate being necessary to give a sanction to their decisions, their power was not with- out control.

To separate the executive from the legislative power, and the judicial from both, and to give the king, the senate, and peo- ple, each a negative in the legislature, is so simple, and to us appears so obvious an improvement of this plan, that it is sur- prising it did not occur to Romulus as well as to Lycurgus ; but, in those early times, perhaps neither kings nor nobles, nor people were willing to have their prerogatives and privileges so exactly ascertained. The nobles in both nations had almost all the in- fluence, and were no doubt as jealous of royal as they were of popular power. It is certain that, although the government was called monarchical, it was in reality aristocratical in a high degree. There is a remarkable example of aristocratical art in the manner of obtaining the determination of the people. They were not permitted to vote in one common assembly ; they were called in their curiae ; the majority of votes in a curia decided its voice ; and a majority of curiae was the resolve of the whole people.

Had Romulus died in peace, and left a son, his monarchy would probably have descended in his family. But a contest arose immediately here (as it has done in all other nations where the people had not a negative, and where the executive power has been partly in the hands of a king, and partly in a senate,) between the king and the nobles ; and Romulus was put to death by the patricians for aiming, as they pretended, at more power than his share. This enabled the patricians to carry their first point ; for it was always the first point of the aristocracy to make the first magistrate elective ; in this they are always at first joined by the people ; but, after seeing the use which the nobles make of these elections a few times, the people them- selves have always made it hereditary.

Numa was chosen; a man of peace, piety, and humanity, who had address enough to make the nobles and people believe that he was married to the goddess Egeria, and received from his celestial consort all his laws and measures.

ROME. 545

Tullus Hostilius, a man of great merit, was chosen in his stead ; but after a glorious, at least a victorious, reign of thirty- two years, was murdered by the patricians, headed by Ancus Marcius, grandson of Numa by his only daughter, who thought his family right prior to that of Tullius.

Ancus was elected king, and died a natural death.

Lucius Tarauinius, after a reign of thirty-eight years, in which he had enlarged the territory, beautified the city, and shown himself worthy of the crown, was assassinated in his palace by the two sons of Ancus Marcius, who had learned the family policy. But their project was unfortunate; the people loved Lucius, execrated the instruments of the murder, banished the two sons of Ancus, and confiscated their estates.

Servius Tullius, who had married the daughter of Lucius, was now elevated to the throne by the people, much against the will of the senate and patricians, because Lucius was not one of them, but of Greek extraction. Tullius was chiefly supported by the people, always disagreeable to the patricians, who held his advancement to the throne to be illegal. The administration of Tullius is an artful system of duplicity, to preserve his charac- ter of the man of the people, and, at the same time, appease the fury of the patricians, by really undermining the authority of the people, and throwing the whole power into their hands.1 In pur- suance of his principle, to please both sides, he made excellent equitable regulations for registering the people, establishing a militia, and proportioning the burdens of war according to the property and abilities of all ranks ; but he subdivided the six classes into one hundred and ninety-three centuries. The first class was composed wholly of the rich, and contained ninety- eight of the centuries. If the centuries of the first class were unanimous, as they generally were, they carried every point by a majority of three ; if they disagreed, the centuries of the second class were called ; if they disagreed, the third came forward ; and so on, till ninety-seven centuries agreed. If the numbers con- tinued equal, ninety-six to ninety-six, the sixth class was called,

1 " Deinde equitum magno numero ex omni populi summa separato, reliquum populum distribuit in quinque classes, senioresque a jimioribus divisit ; eosque ita disparavit, ut sufiragia non in multitudinis sed in locupletium potestate essent ; curavitque, quod semper in republica tenendum est, ne plurimum valeant plurimi." Cicero. Be Rep. ii. 22.

46* 12

546 ON GOVERNMENT.

which was composed wholly of the poorest people, and con- tained but one century ; but even the votes of the fourth class were rarely called for, and the votes of the fifth and sixth were generally useless. When the people voted by curiae, the vote of every citizen was given, and, as the poor were most numerous, they were always sure of a large majority ; but, when thus taken by centuries, that numerous body of the poor, which composed the sixth century, were wholly insignificant, and those of the fifth and fourth very nearly so. By changing the votes from curia? to centuries, Tullius wholly changed the fundamental con- stitution, and threw the elections of magistrates, civil and mili- tary, the power of enacting and repealing laws, declaring war, and making peace, all into the power of the rich patricians. The people had not sense enough to see this; nor to see another thing of more importance, namely, — that the Icing had been driven to the necessity of this artful flattery of the patricians, by his not being independent of them, and by then sharing with him in the executive power. Tullius had two daughters, married to the grandsons of his predecessor, Aruns and Tarquinius. The patri- cians were still caballing against Tullius, and set up Tarquin, one of his sons-in-law, against him ; but as a majority were not for his deposition, Tarquin and his impious and incestuous wife joined the cabal in the murder of her first husband and her father. Tarquin, in time, murdered on all hands, patricians and plebeians. He was expelled by Brutus.

This whole history, from Romulus to Tarquin, is one con- tinued struggle of the noble families for the first place ; and another unanswerable proof of the necessity of having three orders, and each order independent, in order to form an effectual equilibrium. The people were very little regarded by the senate or patricians ; the kings only now and then courted the people for support against their rivals among the patrician families. The tyranny of Tarquin made the name of king odious and un- popular. The patricians, who were the principal conductors of the revolution, took advantage of this — for what ? To restore and improve Romulus's plan of a mixed government ? No ; but to establish their favorite aristocracy upon the ruins of mo- narchy. Two consuls, in imitation of the two Spartan kings, were to be elected annually, by the votes of the people, which carried the name of a democratical power ; but the votes were

ROME. 547

taken by centuries, not by tribes, which made the patricians masters of the elections, and constituted an aristocracy in reality. From this moment a haughty faction of selfish patricians ap- pears, who affected to despise the people, to reduce them to ser- vitude, and establish a despotic oligarchy. The people had suf- fered their prejudices to blind them so far as to be tricked out of their king, who was at least a better friend to them than the pa- tricians were ; and now, the contests were wholly between pa- tricians and plebeians. The former had got the consuls, and consequently the executive power, as much in their hands as ever the nobles in Venice had then doge, or as the nobles in Po- land have their king.

The plebeians were now in a most wretched situation. They were obliged to serve in the wars, to keep out the Tarquins and their allies, at their own expense, which frequently obliged them to borrow money at exorbitant interest of the patricians, who had engrossed the greater part of the wealth ; and, as the coun- try was often ravaged by the enemy, many lost all their effects. Unable to pay the principal, with loads of interest accumulated upon interest, they were frequently confined in chains by their creditors, and scourged with whips ; for the law, to which they had foolishly consented, had made the debtor a slave to the creditor. The people began to demand an abolition of debts ; the senate appointed a dictator. A confusion of foreign wars and domestic dissensions ensues, till we come to the story so beautifully told by Livy and Dionysius, of the man who had been in twenty-eight battles, who appeared before the people, and showed on his back the bleeding scars inflicted by a merci- less creditor. At this time, the patricians had plunged into their usual difficulty, a violent contest among themselves, between a furious headlong party, which always appears for an oligarchy, and the moderate men, who desire to continue the aristocracy ; the young patricians generally follow the haughty Claudius, and the mild Valerius courts the people. The oligarchy prevails, and the decemvirate is established ; their tyranny drives the people to the sacred mountain ; and, at last, the tribunate was established.

Here is the first symptom of any system pursued by the peo- ple. This was a balance ; but what kind of a balance ? No- body thought of another council, a house of representatives, who

548 ON GOVERNMENT.

should have a negative; and, if they had, it would not have availed without* a king ; for such a new assembly would soon have been either wholly subjected to the senate, or would have voted it useless. In truth, the monarchical power being sup- pressed, and the executive authority, as well as legislative, being now only in the senate and people, a struggle commenced be- tween these two.

The people were on the scramble for more power ; and first obtained a law, that all laws passed in their assemblies by tribes, should have equal force with those made in the assembly by cen- turies ; then, that all posts and dignities should be enjoyed by the plebeians equally with the patricians ; and that the decrees of the people should have the same force, and affect the patri- cians in the same manner, as those passed by the senate. All this was very just, and only brought the democracy to an equal- ity with the aristocracy ; but whenever these two are equal in legal power, numbers will soon turn the balance in favor of the democracy, unless there is a third power to intervene. Accord- ingly it so happened here, and the people went on from step to step, increasing their own importance, and diminishing that of the senate, until it was found shut up in Utica ; but, before this, the people were divided into parties, and Caesar, at the head of one, passed the Rubicon, that is, set the most sacred law of his country at open defiance. From this time the government became a government of men, and the worst of men.

From this example, as from all others, it appears that there can be no government of laws without a balance, and that there can be no balance without three orders ; and that even three orders can never balance each other, unless each in its depart- ment is independent and absolute. For want of this the struggle was first between the king and senate ; in which case the king must always give way, unless supported by the people. Before the creation of tribunes, the people were in no sense independ- ent, and, therefore, could not support the kings. After the aboli- tion of kings, the senate had no balance either way, and accord- ingly became at once a tyrannical oligarchy. When the people demanded their right, and obtained a check, they were not satis- fied ; and grasped at more and more power, until they obtained all, there being no monarchical power to aid the senate. But the moment the power became collected into this one centre, it

LACED^EMON. 549

was found in reality split into three ; and as Caesar had the largest of the three shares, he instantly usurped the whole.

Laced.Emon

From the days of Homer to those of Lycurgus, the govern- ments in Greece were monarchical in name and pretension, but aristocratical in reality. The archons were impatient of regal government, constantly struggling against their kings ; and they had prevailed in every other city, except Sparta, to abolish the royal authority and substitute an aristocracy of archons in its place. In Lacedaemon, too, where there were eight-and-twenty archons contending against two kings, they had brought the whole country into the utmost confusion. The circumstance of two kings, which perhaps prolonged the regal power longer in Sparta than in any other city, originated in the fondness of a mother. Aristodemus, one of the descendants of Hercules, to whose share Laconia fell, upon the division of the Peloponnesus, after the return of that family from banishment, died leaving twin sons, Eurysthenes and Procles ; their mother refusing to deter- mine which had the right of primogeniture, it was agreed that ^-/pvV both should succeed to the crown with eoual authority, and that / / 3 the posterity of each should inherit. The nobles took advantage of all the jealousies which arose between the two families, obliged each to court them, and from time to time to make them conces- sions, until the royal authority was lost ; and as the archons could not agree, each party now began to court the people, and universal anarchy prevailed. j fJ^J

Lycurgus, of the family of Procles, and only in the tenth ^^ descent from Hercules, succeeded his brother Polydectes; but -p being told his brother's widow was with child, he declared him- self protector only, and resigned the crown. Such a disinterested indifference to a crown in any one of royal or noble blood, was so unexampled in that age, that no wonder it was much admired and very popular. The ambitious princess, his sister, offered to marry him and remove out of his way the only competitor, by ^

procuring an abortion. He deceived her by counterfeited tender- ness ; and diverted her from the thoughts of an abortion, by pro- mising to take the disposition of the child upon himself when it should be born. The infant was sent to him, when at supper

/

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550 ON GOVERNMENT.

with the principal magistrates. He took it in his arms, and cried, "A king, Spartans, is born to you," and placed it in his own seat. The company were touched at the tenderness of the scene, and fell into a transport of enthusiasm, both of piety to the blood of Hercules, and admiration of the disinterested inte- grity of Lycurgus, who, like an able statesman, perpetuates the memory of the event, and the joy at it, by the name with which, upon the spot, he christens the boy Charilaus, the people's joy. But all this exalted merit, added to his acknowledged divine descent, and the undoubted possession of royal power, were not sufficient to overawe the jealousy of the nobles, a strong party of whom joined the irritated queen and her brother, and raised con- tinual factions against him, Weary of cabals, and stimulated with a thirst for knowledge, he determined to travel ; visited Crete and Egypt, the two sources of the theology and policy of Greece ; and brought home with him, on his return to his own country, Thales, the poet, and the writings of Homer, with the resolution to adopt the 'martial discipline and political liberty which he read in the poet, and had seen exemplified in Crete. Nothing could be better calculated than his two poets, to inspire the nation with that enthusiasm which he wanted, and confirm the belief, that kings were from Jupiter, and beloved by him, excepting the response of the oracle, which he took care to pro- cure. " Welcome, Lycurgus, to this happy place, thou favorite of heaven ! I stand in doubt whether I shall pronounce thee god or man ; inclining still to think thou art a god !" *

The disorders in Sparta were now become insupportable ; the j. kings had as little authority as the laws. All parties, except the two kings, in despair of their private schemes, applied to the great legislator, pointed out to all, by his divine original, the inspiration of Homer and Thales, his own integrity, wisdom, knowledge, and commanding authority over the minds of men, as well as his special divine mission pronounced by the oracle, to be the only man capable of new-modelling the constitution.

In Crete he had acquired a deep insight into human nature, at least he had informed himself fully of the length and breadth, the height and depth, of the passion of ambition in the human heart. That complication of affections, which is called by so many

* Herodotus.

LACEDJEMON. 551

names, the love of esteem, of praise, of fame, of glory ; that sense of honor in which Montesquieu tells us monarchies are founded ; which Tacitus tells us made the ancient Teutons submit quietly to be sold by their inferiors, when they had gambled away their liberty ; which at this day enforces so punctual a payment of debts of honor contracted at play ; which supports against all // laws throughout Europe the custom of duelling, and produces more suicides than any other cause ; which is commonly known by the denomination of the point of honor, and may with as much propriety be called ambition, Lycurgus appears to have under- stood better than any other legislator, and to have made the foundation of his institution. For this reason, Plato with great propriety calls it " The ambitious republic."

Lycurgus in secret consulted the nobles, but not the kings; formed a powerful party, and called an assembly of the people, be- fore whom his friends appeared in arms. Charilaus and Archelaus were not in the secret, but found themselves obliged to submit. What is all this but a body of-; nobles completing, by the aid of Lycurgus, that abolition of monarchy which they had been pur- J suing for ages, unrestrained by any legal check in the people, and unresisted by any adequate power in the crown ? But what was his new institution ?

In compliance with old prejudices, and from attachment to his family, he confirmed the two families on the throne, established the hereditary descent of the crown, but limited its authority. The kings were to continue high priests, to be commanders-in- chief of the armies, and presidents of the senate. Charilaus and Archelaus, terrified by the fate of all the other kings of Greece, agreed to accept of a certain, though limited authority, in lieu of pretensions more absolute and more precarious.

The ancient dignities of the nobles were confirmed and en- larged. A senate of eight-and-twenty of their chiefs was formed, k I &7 at the head of whom the two kings were placed. To the people ' he committed the election of future senators. But as the present twenty-eight were for life, and the influence of kings and sena- tors would be commonly used with great unanimity, in favor of the eldest son, to fill up a vacancy made by the death of his father ; and as the people were not permitted to debate, their choice was perhaps * little more than a consent by acclamation to * " No authority for this ' perhaps.' " S.

552

ON GOVERNMENT.

so

a nomination made by the king, and amounted to the same thing with a hereditary house of peers. To this senate the whole executive power was committed, and the most important part of the legislative ; for as all laws were to originate there only, they had a negative before debate. Here is indeed all authority nearly collected into one centre, and that centre the nobility ; for the king was but the first among equals, having no negative upon the senate.

If the legislator had rested here, his institution would have been in effect a simple hereditary oligarchy, possessed of the whole legislative, executive, and judicial power, and probably as restless as ever, to reduce the kings to elections for life or years, then to take from them the power of religion, the command of armies, and lastly to change the title from king to archon, or from the family of Hercules to other houses. With a view to counter- balance this dangerous authority, he instituted assemblies of the people, but intrusted them only with the power of confirming or rejecting what the senate proposed, and expressly forbade them all debate. The citizens were to give their simple ayes or noes, without beingT allowed to speak, even so far as to give a reason for their vote. He instituted, moreover, as a farther check upon the senate, five magistrates to inspect the administration and maintain the constitution ; to convoke, prorogue, and dissolve both the greater assembly of the people, composed of nine thou- sand inhabitants of the city, and the lesser, consisting of thirty thousand inhabitants of the country or inferior villages. These magistrates were called the ephori, and were to be annually appointed. But the lawgiver saw that the king and people were both too weak, and the senate would still have power to scram- ble after both ; he therefore contrived a kind of solemn alliance to be perpetually renewed between the monarchical and demo- cratical branches, by which the senate might be awed into mode- ration. He ordered an oath to be taken every month, by the kings and the ephori. The former swore to observe the laws, and the latter swore, for 'themselves and the people whom they repre- sented, to maintain the hereditary honors of the race of Hercules, to revere them as ministers of religion, to obey them as judges, and follow them as leaders. This was indeed a balance founded in opinion and in religion, though not a legal and independent check ; as it was not a negative in either.

LACEDiEMON. 553

In this constitution, then, were three orders, and a balance, not indeed equal to that of England, for want of a negative in each branch ; but the nearest resembling it of any we have yet seen. The kings, the nobles, the senate, and the people, in two assem- blies, are surely more orders than a governor, senate, and house. The balance here attempted was as strong as religion operating on human nature could make it, though not equivalent to a negative in each of three branches. Another balance was attempted, in the rigorous separation of the city from the coun- try, in two assemblies. It avoided the danger of jealousies between town and country in the deliberations of the people, and doubled the chances both of the monarchy and democracy, for preserving their importance in case of encroachments by the senate. If the senate and nobles should prevail in one assembly of the people, so far as to carry any unconstitutional point, the kings and ephori would find a resource in the other to lead them back. The Lacedaemonian republic may then, with propriety, be called monarchical, and had the three essential parts of the best possible government ; it was a mixture of monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy. It failed, however, in that essential particular, the balance. The aristocracy had a legal power so eminent above that of king or people, that it would soon have annihilated both, if other precautions had not been taken, which destroyed all the real merit of this celebrated institution.

That the glory of the descendants of Hercules and of their republic might be the pride of every citizen, and that a supersti- tious attachment to both might be perpetuated, it was necessary to extinguish every other appetite, passion, and affection in hu- man nature. The equal division of property ; the banishment of gold and silver ; the prohibition of travel and intercourse with strangers ; the prohibition of arts, trades, and agriculture ; the discouragement of literature ; the public meals ; the incessant warlike exercises ; the doctrine that every citizen was the pro- perty of the state, and that parents should not educate their own children ; although they served to keep up the constant be- lief of the divine mission of Lycurgus, and an enthusiastic pas- sion for the glory of the republic, and the race of Hercules ; and although they are celebrated by the aristocratical philosophers, historians, and statesmen of antiquity ; must be considered as calculated to gratify his own family pride rather than promote

VOL. IV. 47

554 ON GOVERNMENT.

the happiness of his people. Four hundred thousand slaves must be devoted to forty thousand citizens ; weak and deformed child- ren must be exposed; morality and humanity, as well as all the comforts, elegancies, and pleasures of life must be sacrificed to this glaring phantom of vanity, superstition, and ambition. Separated from the rest of mankind, they lived together, desti- tute of all business, pleasure, and amusement, but war and poli- tics, pride and ambition ; and these occupations and passions they transmitted from generation to generation, for seven hun- dred years ; as if fighting and intriguing, and not life and happi- ness, were the end of man and society ; as if the love of one's country and of glory were amiable passions, when not limited by justice and general benevolence ; and as if nations were to be chained together forever, merely that one family might reign among them. Whether Lycurgus believed the descent of his ancestor from Jupiter, the divine inspiration of Homer and Thales, or the divinity of the Oracle, any more than Mahomet believed his divine mission, may well be doubted. Whether he did or not, he shackled the Spartans to the ambitious views of his family for fourteen successions of Herculean kings, at the expense of the continual disturbance of all Greece, 'and the con- stant misery of his own people. Amidst the contradictions of ancient and modern writers, that account has been followed con- cerning the institution of the ephori, which appears most favor- able to Lycurgus.1 The Roman tribunes, and perhaps the Vene- tian inquisitors, were borrowed from this institution.

Human nature perished under this frigid system of national and family pride. Population, the surest indication of national happiness, decreased so fast, that not more than one thousand old Spartan families remained, while nine thousand strangers had intruded, in spite of all their prohibitory laws. The con- quest of Athens gave them a taste of wealth, and even the fear of the penalty of death could not restrain them from travelling. Intercourse with strangers brought in foreign manners. The ephori were sometimes bribed. Divisions arose between the two kings, Agis and Leonidas; one joined with the people, the

1 " That opinion is continually gaining ground, which in the main regards Lycurgus as the regulator of existing institutions, and in particular instances only, as the author of original laws." Wachsmuth, Historical Antiq. of the Greeks, vol. i. p. 322.

LACED.EMON. 555

other with the nobles, and the sedition proceeded to blood. Kings became so fond of subsidies from foreign powers, that Agesilaus received them from a King of Egypt, and his enemy at the same time. Agis was murdered by the order of the ephori, who, instead of honoring the blood of Hercules, according to their oath, took the sovereign power into then own hands. Here the balance broke ; Cleomenes, who endeavored, like Agis, to restore the old laws and maxims, fell a sacrifice ; and nothing appears afterwards in the history of Sparta but profligacy, tyranny, and cruelty, like that in Rome under the worst of the Ceesars.

The institution of Lycurgus was well calculated to preserve the independence of his country, but had no regard to its happi- ness, and very little to its liberty. As the people's consent was necessary to every law, it had so far the appearance of political liberty ; but the civil liberty of it was little better than that of a man chained in a dungeon — a liberty to rest as he is. The in- fluence of this boasted legislation on the human character was to produce warriors and politicians, and nothing else. To say that this people were happy, is to contradict every quality in human nature except ambition. They had no other gratification. Science and letters were sacrificed, as well as commerce, to the ruling passion ; and Milton had no reason to " wonder how museless and unbookish they were, minding nought but the feats of war;" since it was not so much because Lycurgus was « addicted to elegant learning, or to mollify the Spartan surliness with smooth songs and odes, the better to plant among them law and civility," that he brought the scattered works of Homer from Ionia, and Thales from Crete; but merely to propagate his own and his family imposture. The plan was profound, and means were with great ability fitted to the end ; but, as a system of legislation, which should never have any other end than the greatest happiness of the greatest number, saving- to all their rights, it was not only the least respectable, but the most detest- able in all Greece. To do it justice, however, it is much to be desired, that exercises like those established by Lycurgus, run- ning, wrestling, riding, swimming, skating, fencing, dancing, should be introduced into public and private, education in Ame rica, which would fortify the bodies and invigorate the minds ) of youth ; instead of those sedentary amusements which debili- tate, and are taking entire possession of society all over the

7

556 ON GOVERNMENT.

world. The ladies, too, might honor some of these entertain- ments, thoughnot all, with their presence and participation, to the great advantage of their own health, and that of posterity, without injury to their charms or their reputations. But, above all, the existence of an all-perfect Intelligence, the parent of nature, the wise and moral ruler of it ; the responsibility of every subordinate intellectual and moral agent ; a future state of re- wards and punishments ; and the sacred obligation of oaths, as well as of the relative duties of social life, cannot be too clearly fixed by rational arguments in the minds of all the citizens. In this respect Lycurgus merits praise.

But, as a civil and political constitution, taken all together, it is infinitely inferior to another, which Americans have taken for their model. The English constitution is the result of the most mature deliberation on universal history and philosophy. If Harrington's council of legislators had read over the history, and studied the constitution of every nation, ancient and mo- dern, remarked the inconveniences and defects of each, and bent the whole force of their invention to discover a remedy for it, they would have produced no other regulations than those of the English constitution, in its theory, unless they had found a peo- ple so circumstanced as to be able to bear annual elections of the king and senate. This improvement, the Americans, in the pre- sent stage of society among them, have ventured on ; sensible, however, of the danger, and knowing perfectly well a remedy, in case their elections should become turbulent. Of this, at pre- sent, there is no appearance.

Crotona

Pythagoras, as well as Socrates, Plato, and Xenophon, was persuaded that the happiness of nations depended chiefly on the form of their government. They were fully sensible of the real misery, as well as dangerous tendency, both of demoeratical licentiousness and monarchical tyranny ; they preferred a well- tempered aristocracy to all other governments. Pythagoras and Socrates, having no idea of three independent branches in the legislature, both thought, that the laws could neither prevent the arbitrary oppressions of magistrates, nor turbulent insolence of the people, until mankind were habituated, by education and

CROTONA. 557

discipline, to regard the great duties of life, and to consider a reverence of themselves, and the esteem of their fellow-citizens, as the principal source of their enjoyment. In small communi- ties, especially where the slaves were many, and the citizens few, this might be plausible ; but the education of a great nation can never accomplish so great an end. Millions must be brought up, whom no principles, no sentiments derived from education, can restrain from trampling on the laws. Orders of men, watching and balancing each other, are the only security ; power must be opposed to power, and interest to interest. Pythagoras found this by experience at Crotona, where the inferior ranks, elated with the destruction of Sybaris, and instigated by an artful, am- bitious leader, Cylon, clamored for an equal partition of the conquered territory. This was denied them, as inconsistent with an aristocratical government; a conspiracy ensued against the magistrates, who were surprised in the senate-house, many put to death, and the rest driven from their country. Pytha- goras was one of the banished, and died soon afterwards, in extreme old age, at Metapontum. The Crotonians had soon cause to repent their insurrection ; for they were defeated, with all their forces, by the Locrians and Rhegians, with smaller numbers.

The other Greek cities of Italy, which had imitated the exam- ple oT Crotona, in deposing their magistrates, were harassed with wars against each other, and against their neighbors. In consequence of these distresses, the disciples of Pythagoras again recovered their reputation and influence ; and about sixty years afterwards, Zaleucus and Charondas, the one in Locris, and the other in Thurium, revived the Pythagorean institutions. In forty years more, a new revolution drove the Pythagoreans entirely from Italy, and completed the misery of that beautiful country. Thus, experience has ever shown, that education, as well as religion, aristocracy, as well as democracy and monarchy, are, singly, totally inadequate to the business of restraining the passions of men, of preserving a steady government, and pro- tecting the lives, liberties, and properties of the people. Nothing has ever effected it but three different orders of men, bound by their interests to watch over each other, and stand the guardians of the laws. Religion, superstition, oaths, education, laws, all

47*

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558 ON GOVERNMENT.

give way before passions, interest, and power, which can be re- sisted only by passions, interest, and power.

It is no wonder that M. Turgqt should have entertained very crude conceptions of republican legislation ; it is a science the least understood of any in the whole circle. All other orders of men of letters in Europe, as well as physicians, for a long time, have thought it " litter a nihil sanantes." It is a kind of erudition • which neither procures places, pensions, embassies, chairs in academies, nor fame nor practice in the pulpit, at the bar, nor in medicine. A minister of state, of great abilities and merit, as well as reputation, advanced to the head of the affairs of a respectable monarchy, by one of the greatest princes that have ever lived, I mean the Baron de Hertzberg, has, within a few years, set an example, in a royal academy of sciences, of inquiry into this subject. In a learned and ingenious discourse,1 delivered by himself, he has attempted to show the advantages of simple monarchy over all kinds of republican governments, even that best species of them, limited monarchies. But did this worthy minister expect that any of his brother academicians would con- test with him the merits of such governments ? Men of letters are not fond of martyrdom in this age, nor of ruining their repu- tations. It is not, however, my design to discuss any questions at present concerning absolute monarchies, though the principles I contend for might be traced through the history of every mo- narchy and empire in Europe. Even in these there are orders, checks, and balances contrived, at least against abuses in ad- ministration, and for the preservation of the laws.

1 " Sur la forme des gouvernemens, et quelle en est la meilleure ? "

This dissertation was read at Berlin, on the twenty-ninth of January, 1 784, the sixty-third anniversary of the birthday of Frederic II. Of course, as Baron Hertzberg was the King's minister, it is not surprising that he proceeds to assume the government of Prussia to be one of the best in the world, and one " which will serve as a model for princes and for centuries to come."

The main proposition is, that " a hereditary monarchy, tempered by good fundamental laws, adapted to the situation of a country and the character of a nation, is that form of government best fitted to create and to perfect the happi- ness of men, of societies, and of nations."

There is no attempt made in it to show the nature of the foundation upon which the laws, tempering the absolute power of such a sovereign as Frederic II., are to rest. Neither is the texture of the argument, in support of his propo- sition, much stronger than is that of an ordinary oration, delivered on the fourth of July, in America, in favor of a republic. Eulogy is equally the purpose of both.

CROTONA. 559

The science of government has received very little improve- ment since the Greeks and Romans. The necessity of a strong and independent executive in a single person, and of three branches in the legislature instead of two, and of an equality among the three, are improvements made by the English, which were unknown, at least never reduced to practice, by the ancients. Machiavel was the first who revived the ancient politics. The best part of his writings he translated almost literally from Plato "and Aristotle, without' acknowledging the obligation; and the "worst of the sentiments, even in his Prince, he translated from Aristotle, without throwing upon him the reproach. Montesquieu borrowed the best part of his book from Machiavel, without ac- knowledging the quotation. Milton, Harrington, Sidney, were intimately acquainted with the ancients and with Machiavel. They were followed by Locke, Hoadley, &c. The reputation which is to be acquired by this kind of learning may be judged - of by the language of Mr. Hume : — " Compositions the most despicable, both for style and matter, such as R-apin Thoyras, Locke, Sidney, Hoadley, &c, have been extolled and propagated and read, as if they had equalled the most celebrated remains of antiquity." * Such is the style in which this great writer speaks of writings which he most probably never read. But although the time is long since passed when such writings were extolled, propagated, or read, the contempt of them is as fashionable, as likely to procure places and pensions, and to make a book sell now, as it was when Mr. Hume wrote.f

M. Turcot was as little conversant in this kind of erudition as Mr. Hume. The former, however, was a lover of liberty ; but it was of that kind of liberty which he meditated to introduce into France, and could reconcile with a simple monarchy. He was

* History of England, chap. lxxi. Concluding Observations, t^

f The fact's here given relative to Venice, are taken frorri the Able Laug'wr and Moore's Travels; those relative to the ancient republics, excepting the authorities already quoted, are taken from Robertson, Montagu, Potter, the Universal History", and especially from Mitford, Gillies, and Ferguson, three very valuable and elegant productions, which deserve to be carefully studied by all America. I have made free use of then- expressions as well as reflections, with- ' out noting them.

[The enumeration of these authorities will prove to most students of the present day only a landmark of progress in the knowledge of ancient history ; a field in which the Germans have most particularly distinguished themselves during the present century. Ed.]

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560 ON GOVERNMENT.

too good a subject to think of introducing a free constitution of government into his own country. For the liberty of commerce, the liberty of religious sentiments, and the personal liberty of the subject, such as are established by the laws, in a monarchy, he was *an enthusiast ;- and enthusiasm for liberty, the common cause of all mankind, is an amiable fervor, which is pardonable even when it is not according to knowledge. But he was neither an enthusiast for a free constitution of government, nor did he know in what it consisted.

CHAPTER IX. ANCIENT MONARCHICAL REPUBLICS.

CHAPTER IX.

Ancient Monarchical Republics. Ancient Germans

ANCIENT MONARCHICAL REPUBLICS.

ANCIENT GERMANS.

The ancient German nations, mentioned by Tacitus, had among them at least two sorts of government. One was mo- narchy ; and the king was absolute, as appears by these words : — " Exceptis iis gentibus quae regnantur ; ibi enim et super inge- nuos, et super nobiles, ascendunt libertini ; apud ceteros, impares libertini libertatis argumentum sunt." * The other species of government was aristocracy ; for though there was a mixture of monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy, yet the power of the king and people was so feeble, and that of the nobles, as comprehended under the titles of princes, dukes, and counts, was so predominant, that the government must be denominated aristocratical. " De minoribus rebus principes consultant, de majoribus omnes; ita tamen, ut ea quoque, quorum penes plebem arbitrium est, apud principes pertractentur." If those things which were most clearly in the power of the people, were first discussed among the nobles, the reference to the people afterwards seems to have been rather a communication to them of the result of the senate, than a sub- mission of it to the popular judgment.1

* There cannot be a stronger proof than this, that the monarchy was of the most absolute kind, that it was indeed a simple despotism; and Tacitus himself gives the explanation of it, in his account of the origin of this kind of slavery : " Aleam sobrii inter seria exercent, tanta lucrandi perdendive temeritate, ut, cum omnia defecerunt, extremo ac novissimo jactu, de libertate et de corpore contendant. Victu3 voluntariam servitutem adit; quamvis junior, quamvis ro- bustior, alligari se ac venire patitur. Ea est in re prava pervicacia ; ipsi fidem vocant. Servos conditionis hujus per commercia tradunt, ut se quoque pudore victorias exsolvant,

" Libertini non multum supra servos sunt, raro aliquod momentum in domo, nunquam in civitate, exceptis duntaxat iis gentibus qua; regnantur," &c. If in these nations those freedmen, who were nothing in the others, neither in the family or the state, were held in more estimation and advanced to more power than the citizens, even than the nobles, these kings must have been despots in the strictest sense of the word ; otherwise, neither nobles nor people would have suffered the indignity. Tacitus, Germania, c. xxv.

1 " But then it could not be ' penes plebem arbitrium,' for this proves that the business was still according to the people's will, after the great men or principes

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562 ON GOVERNMENT.

The nature and extent of the royal dignity and authority appears from these words : — " Reges ex nobilitate summit ; nee regibus infinita aut libera potestas." Kings were taken1 from the nobility, or kings were chosen for their noble descent ; so that ordinarily the office descended to the next of kin. But it is here expressly ascertained that their power was neither unlimited nor independent. They had no negative, and might in all things be overruled, at least by the nobles and people conjointly.

The nature and extent of the aristocratical dignities and authorities may be collected from what follows : — " Duces ex virtute summit ; et duces exemplo potius quam imperio ; si prompti, si conspicui, si ante aciem agant, admiratione praesunt." The feudal hierarchy,2 even in these early times, was fully esta- blished, although it was afterwards enlarged. The titles of dukes and counts, the rank and power they conferred, descended in families, although there was the bare formality of an election in the grand council. "Arm a sumere, non ante cuiquam moris, quam civitas sufTecturum probaverit ; turn, in ipso consilio, vel principum aliquis, vel pater, vel propinquus, scuto frameaque juvenem ornant. Insignis nobilitas, aut magna patrum merita, principis dignationem etiam adolescentulis assignant." " When the young men were first admitted into public society, it was in the great council ; when some one of the dukes, or the father, or

had debated the matter. The princes had a right to advise, but not to determine for the people ; for the arbitrium was penes plebem, in the people's own power."

S.

1 " Not ' were taken,' nor ' were chosen,' for the verb is active, not passive, and must, therefore, have a very different construction ; so that the nobilitas here mentioned must mean mental nobility, or personal virtue and honor ; and not hereditary honor." S.

This is not the construction of Montesquieu, who says in reference to the same passage, —

" Tacite dit que dans le choix de leur roi ils se determinoient par sa noblesse et dans le choix de leur chef par sa vertu. Voila les rois de la premiere race et les maires du palais ; .les premiers etoient hereditaires, les seconds etoient electifs." De I'Esprit des Loix, livre 31, c. iv.

A remarkable instance of the sense attached to the word by Tacitus, is found in the sixth book of his Annals, where, speaking of Manius Lepidus, he says, —

"Neque nobilitas diutius demonstranda est; quippe iEniilium genus feeundum bonorum civium, et qui eadem familia corruptis moribus, illustri tamen fortuna egere."

2 " The word hierarchy seems improperly applied in this place ; but with respect to the supposed hereditary nobility or dukes of those times, the preceding Latin quotation proves a contrary doctrine ; the duces surely were not dukes, that is, not hereditary titled dukes", but mere leaders, by the example of their valor, rather than their authority." S.

ANCIENT GERMANS. 563

other relation, adorned the youth with arras. And if he is of very noble birth, or his father has great merit, the dignity of a duke is assigned to him, young as he is." From this it is pretty clear that the crown, as well as the titles of dukes and counts, descended in the family line ; 1 although the formality of an admission into council was kept up. The nobles, among whom, the king was little more than the first among equals, at least he was not more superior to the dukes than the dukes were to the counts, had the game in their own hands, and managed a rude

1 "And the counts have as little foundation as the dukes. The comites and eoniitatus mean here the "whole body of companions, or the whole band or com- pany of each leader. See the next page, which shows the sense of eoniitatus, and p. 565 shows the sense of comites." S.

Mr. Hallam has examined this subject with his usual fidelity, and expresses what is probably the correct meaning of the word : —

" There has been some dispute about the origin of nobility in France, which might perhaps be settled, or at least better understood, by fixing our conception of the term. In our modern acceptation, it is usually taken to imply certain dis- tinctive privileges in the political order, inherent in the blood of the possessor, and, consequently, not transferable like those which property confers. Limited to this sense, nobility, I conceive, was unknown to the conquerors of Gaul, till long after the downfall of the Roman empire. They felt no doubt the common prejudice of mankind in favor of those whose ancestry is conspicuous, when com- pared with persons of obscure birth. Though I do not think that the tribes of German origin paid so much regard to genealogy as some Scandinavian and Celtic nations, there are abundant traces of the respect in which families of known antiquity were held among them."

And further on, — . "Although in the lapse of four centuries between the ages of Tacitus and CIo- vis, some change may have been wrought by long intercourse with the Romans, yet the foundations of their political system were unshaken.

" The kingdom of Clovis was divided into a number of districts, each under the government of a count, a name familiar to Roman subjects, by which they ren- dered the graf of the Germans. The authority of this officer extended over all the inhabitants, as well Franks as natives. It was his duty to administer justice, to preserve tranquillity, to collect the revenues, and to lead, when required, the free proprietors into the field. The title of a duke implied a higher dignity, and commonly gave authority over several counties. These offices were originally conferred during pleasure ; but the claims of a son to succeed his father would often be found too plausible or too formidable to be rejected ; and it is highly probable that, even under the Merovingian kings, those provincial governors had laid the foundations of that independence which was destined to change the countenance of Europe."

To which Mr. Hallam appends the following as part of a note : — " That the offices of count and duke were originally but temporary, may be inferred from several passages in Gregory of Tours ; as 1. v. c. 37, 1. viii. c. 18. But it seems by the Laws of the Alemanni, c. 35, that the hereditary succession of their dukes was tolerably established at the beginning of the seventh century, when their code was promulgated. The Bavarians chose their own dukes out of one family, as is declared in their laws ; tit. 11, c. i. and c. xx. &c. &c.

View of the State of Europe during the Middle Ages, part ii. chapter i.

564 ON GOVERNMENT.

people as they pleased. This will appear probable from other passages: — " Caateri robustioribus, ac jampridem probatis, aggre- gantur ; nee rubor inter comites aspici. Gradus quinetiam et ipse comitatus habet, judicio ejus, quem sectantur. Magnaque et comitum semulatio, quibus primus apud principem suum locus ; et principum, cui plurimi et acerrimi comites. Hsec dig- nitas, hse vires, magno semper electorum juvenum globo circum- dari, in pace decus, in bello preesidium ; nee solum in sua gente cuique, sed apud finitimas quoque civitates, id nomen, ea gloria est, si numero ac virtute comitatus emineat ; expetuntur enim legationibus, et muneribus ornantur, et ipsa plerumque fama bella profligant.

" Cum ventum in aciem, turpe principi virtute vinci ; turpe comitatui, virtutem principis non adasquare. Jam vero infame in omnem vitam, ac probrosum, superstitem principi suo ex acie recessisse. Ilium defendere, tueri, sua quoque fortia facta gloriae ejus assignare, praecipuum sacramentum est. Principes pro vic- toria, pugnant ; comites pro principe. Si civitas, in qua orti sunt, longa pace et otio torpeat, plerique nobilium adolescentium petunt ultro eas nationes qua? turn bellum aliquod gerunt ; quia et ingrata genti quies, et facilius inter ancipitia clarescunt, mag- numque comitatum non nisi vi belloque tueare ; exigunt enim principis sui liberalitate ilium bellatorem equum, illam cruentam victricemque frameam. Nam epulae, et quamquam incompti, largi tamen apparatus pro stipendio cedunt. Materia munifi- centiae per bella et raptus. Nee arare terram, aut expectare annum, tarn facile persuaseris, quam vocare hostes et vulnera mereri ; pigrum quinimmo et iners videtur sudore acquirere, quod possis sanguine parare."

When the foregoing ties, by which the people or the common soldiers were attached to the nobles, and the young and inferior nobles to the superior, are considered, a better judgment may be formed of the authority which the people really had in the grand council or national assembly.

The powers and privileges of the people, in assembly, appear from the following passages : — " Coeunt, nisi quid fortuitum et subitum incident, certis diebus, cum aut inchoatur luna, aut im- pletur; nam agendis rebus hoc auspicatissimum initium credunt. Illud ex libertate vitium, quod non simul nee ut jussi conveniunt, sed et alter et tertius dies cunctatione coeuntium absumitur." By

ANCIENT GERMANS. 565

this it should seem that the people were so far from esteeming the privilege of meeting, that the king and nobles could scarcely get them together.1 They had such an aversion to these civil and political deliberations, that the chiefs could hardly col- lect them to receive their orders : " Ut turbae placuit, considunt armati. Silentium per sacerdotes, quibus turn et coercendi jus est, imperatur. Mox rex, vel princeps, prout setas cuique, prout nobilitas, prout decus bellorum, prout facundia est, audiuntur, auctoritate suadendi magis quam jubendi potestate. Si displi- cuit sententia, fremitu aspernantur ; sin placuit, frameas concu- tiunt." Here is some appearance of popular liberty. But when it is considered that the nobles were probably all the speakers; that the numbers were not counted, nor voices distinctly taken ; as- sent expressed by a clash of arms, and dissent by a murmur or a groan ; and especially the dependence of the people on their leaders, and attachment to them by oath ; we may consider these assemblies rather as called to receive the proclamation of the laws or minds of the nobles, than as any effectual democratical check. There was one thing, however, of great importance done in these assemblies, — judges, the posse comitatus, and juries were here appointed to administer justice. " Eliguntur in iisdem conciliis et principes, qui jura per pagos vicosque reddunt. Cen- teni singulis ex plebe comites,2 consilium simul et auctoritas, ad- sunt." An hundred commoners attended the judge, and out of these were juries appointed to give their opinion, "consilium;" and others, or perhaps the same, to afford their assistance, " auc- toritas," in putting the sentences and judgment into execution.

From other particulars related by Tacitus, it is very probable there had been communications between Germany and Greece ; from the worship of Hercules, Mars, Minerva, &c. ; if not from the altar of Ulysses, and the name of Laertes, and the other monu-

1 " On the contrary, the text declares that they are not summoned at all."

S.

2 " The comites mentioned in the preceding page were equally commoners, or else he might as well have deemed these counts." S.

That there was a difference between the offices referred to appears clear, from the Laws of the Alemanni, tit. xxxvi. leg. 1. " Conventus secundum antiquam consuetudinem fiat in omni centena coram comite, aut suo misso, et coram cen- tenario ipsum placitum fiat."

Tit. xxxvi. leg. 2. " Ipsum placitum fiat de sabbato in sabbatum, aut quali die comes, aut centenarius voluerit." See Brotiefs note to the twelfth chapter of Tacitus on the Germans.

VOL. IV. 48

566 ON GOVERNMENT.

ments, and inscriptions in Greek letters, of which he speaks more doubtfully. However this may have been, there is a remarkable analogy between these political institutions of the Germans, and those described by Homer in the times of the Trojan war. It was, in both, the prerogative of the king to lead in war and to rule in peace ; but it is probable he was not fond of deliberating, any more than of fighting, without company ; and though he may have done both sometimes, yet numbers of his followers were ready to attend him in either. The nation acknowledged him for their leader ; but they were accustomed, on great occa- sions, to assemble, and, without any studied form of democracy, took the sovereignty upon themselves, as often as their passions were strongly enough affected to unite them in a body. The superior classes, among themselves, came as naturally to hold their meetings apart ; and assembled frequently, when the occa- sion was not sufficient to engage the attention of the whole. There is one remarkable difference between the Germans and the Greeks. Among the former, the priests were a distinct body, and seem to have had more decisive authority than the kings, nobles, or people in the general assemblies, — " Silentium per sacerdotes, quibus turn et coercendi jus est, imperatur ;" whereas, among the latter, the kings were themselves at the head of the priesthood.

In this second kind of German governments, we see the three orders, of king, nobles, and commons, distinctly marked ; but no balance fixed ; no delineation of the powers of each ; which left room for each to claim the sovereignty, as we know they afterwards did ; at least the king and the nobles claimed and contended for it for many ages ; the people sometimes claimed it, but at last gave it up to the king, as the least evil of the two, in every country except England.

Before we proceed to the Greeks, we may even mention the savages. Every nation in North America has a king, a senate, and a people. The royal office is elective, but it is for life ; his sachems are his ordinary council, where all the national affairs are deliberated and resolved in the first instance ; but in the greatest of all, which is declaring war, the king and sachems call a national assembly round a great council fire, communicate to the people their resolution, and sacrifice an animal. Those of the people who approve the war, partake of the sacrifice ; throw

PH/EACIA. 567

the hatchet into a tree, after the example of the king ; and join in the subsequent war songs and dances. Those who disap- prove, take no part of the sacrifice, but retire.

In the kingdom, or rather aristocracy, of Phaeacia, as repre- sented in the Odyssey, we have a picture at full length of those forms of government which at that time prevailed in Greece.

There is a lung Alcinous ; there is a council of twelve other kings, princes, archons, or peers, for they are called by all these names ; and there is a multitude ; but the last do not appear to have any regular, legal, or customary part in the government. They might be summoned together by the heralds, or called by the sound of trumpet, or a horn, to receive information of the results of their chiefs ; to assist at a sacrifice or procession ; to see a stranger, or a show, or to partake of a feast ; or they might assemble of themselves in a rage against an oppressor, from en- thusiasm for the royal sceptre, or other causes. And the kings had often much dependence on their attachment to their heredi- tary right, their descent from the gods, and the sacred authority of the poets, who were generally royalists. The archons, too, were often afraid of the superstition of their people for the king, and his regal popularity. But the legal power of the people was very far from being a constitutional check ; and the struggle lay between the kings and nobles. The last finally prevailed, as they ever will, against a king who is not supported by an ade- quate popular power. The authority in Phaeacia was collected into one centre, and that centre was thirteen kings, confederated together under a president only. Each archon was a king in his own island, state, or district, in which his dignity and power were hereditary ; and, in case of a foreign war, he commanded his own division in the general camp.

Ulysses is represented, at his first entrance into the Phaeacian

dominions, as observing and admiring the palaces of the archons,

after having surveyed the gardens, palace, and particular territory

of Alcinous : —

" He next their princes' lofty domes admires, In sep'rate islands, crown'd with rising spires." *

* Od. vii. 57.

568

ON GOVERNMENT.

Alcinous is afterwards represented as describing the form of government to Ulysses : —

" Twelve princes in our realm dominion share, O'er whom supreme imperial power I bear." *

Mr. Pope, indeed, in this translation, has given him the air of a sovereign"]" but there is nothing like it in the original. There, Alcinous, with all possible simplicity and modesty, only says, — " Twelve illustrious kings, or archons, rule over the people, and I myself am the thirteenth." Alcinous and his twelve archons were all present at this interview : —

" Night now approaching, in the palace stand, With goblets crown'd, the rulers of the land," &c.

" The nobles gaze, with awful fear opprest ; Silent they gaze, and eye the godlike guest," &c. f

" Pleas'd with his people's fame, the monarch hears, And thus, benevolent, accosts the peers," &c.

" Th' assenting peers, obedient to the king, In haste their heralds send, the gifts to bring.

The precious gifts th' illustrious heralds bear, And to the court th' embodied peers repair.

Then to the radiant thrones they move in state, Aloft the king in pomp imperial sate." J

We must not forget the poet, who, with his inspiration from the Muses, was a principal support of every Grecian king. It was the bard who sung the praises of the king, and propagated the opinion that he was sprung from Jupiter, and instructed as well as dearly beloved by him.

" The bard a herald guides ; the gazing throng Pay low obeisance as he moves, along. Beneath a sculptured arch he sits enthron'd, The peers, encircling, form an awful round. Lives there a man beneath the spacious skies, Who, sacred honors to the bard denies ?

* Od. viii. 425.

f Od. vii. 182-194.

t Od.\m. 421-459.

PH^ACIA. 569

The Muse the bard inspires, exalts his mind ; The Muse indulgent loves th' harmonious kind. O more than man ! thy soul the Muse inspires, Or Phoebus animates with all Ms fires." *

Every peer, in his own district or state, had another subordi- nate council and a people ; so that the three powers, of the one, the few, and the many, appeared in every archonship ; and every archon, in his own district, claimed his office to be hereditary in his family ; and all the archons agreed together to support each other in this claim, even by arms. This, therefore, was rather a confe- deracy of thirteen little kingdoms, than one great one. The first archon of the confederation was called king of all the people, and claimed his office as hereditary, and often as absolute. The other archons were always disposed to dispute the hereditary descent, and to make it elective. The subordinate councils of the archons, in then; several districts, were probably often dis- posed to deny their offices to be hereditary, and to insist upon elections. Ulysses, who was himself one of the greatest and ablest of the Grecian kings, discovers his perfect knowledge of the hearts of Alcinous, his queen, and nobles, in the compliment he makes them. Addressing himself to the queen, the daughter of great Rhexenor : —

" To thee, thy consort, and this royal train, To all that share the blessings of your reign,

So may the gods your better days increase, And all your joys descend on all your race ; So reign forever on your country's breast, Your people blessing, by your people blest." f

This supplication was addressed to the king and queen, the princes, archons, dukes, counts, barons, peers, call them by what name you please, and it concludes with a compliment very flat- tering to all. Ulysses knew the ruling passion of Grecian kings and nobles to be, that their dignities, even such as had been con- ferred by the election of the people, should become hereditary. Mr. Pope has disguised this sentiment, and made it conformable to the notions of Englishmen and Americans ; but has departed from the sense of Homer and from the fact.

* Od. viii. 515-532. f Od. vii. 196-205.

4R*

570 ON GOVERNMENT.

" May you transmit to your children your possessions in your houses, and whatever gifts, rewards, or honors the people hath given you."

It is plain the kings claimed a hereditary right ; yet the suc- cession was sometimes set aside in favor of some other noble, or branch of the royal blood ; and perhaps it was always set aside, when any one of the nobles had more power than the heir apparent. The nobles, too, claimed their honors to be heredi- tary, and they generally were so ; but the people were some- times bold enough to set up competitors, and give them trouble. But perhaps there were never any very formal elections.1 Pre- senting a successor, in presence of the king and the other nobles, to the people for their acclamations, was probably the most that was done ; for, as there were no records, nor written constitution, or laws, the right of kings, archons, and people, must have been very loose and undefined.

Ithaca

The court of Ithaca, in the absence of Ulysses, is an admira- ble example of the intrigues of the archons, and their insatiable ambition. The throne of Ithaca, and the sceptre of Laertes and former kings, were the objects which had so many charms in the eyes of the suitors ; and Penelope's hand was chiefly courted, because that would reconcile the archon who should possess her to the superstition of the people, and enable him to wield the sceptre. The suitors deny the sceptre to be hereditary; and Telemachus himself is doubtful. He threatens, indeed, to call a council or assembly of the people ; but is afraid to trust them, for fear they should set up some other Grecian prince, whose blood might be nearer that of their ancient kings.

' To tempt the spouseless queen with am'rous wiles, Resort the nobles from the neighb'ring isles 5 From Samos, circled with th' Ionian main, Dulichium, and Zacynthus' sylvan reign. Ev'n with presumptuous hope her bed t' ascend, The lords of Ithaca their right pretend.

1 " But perhaps otherwise ; it is as good an argument, and weighs as much."

S.

ITHACA. 571

My sentence hear ; with stern distaste avow'd, To their own districts drive the suitor crowd.

I, to the peers assembled, shall propose The firm resolve, I here in few disclose. No longer live the cankers of my court ; All to your several states with speed resort ; Waste in wild riot what your land allows, There ply the early feast and late carouse.

Elect by Jove, his delegate of sway, With joyous pride the summons I'd obey.

Should factious power dispute my lineal right, Some other Greeks a fairer claim may plead, To your pretence their title would precede. At least, the sceptre lost, I still should reign Sole o'er my vassals, and domestic train." *

" If ruin to our royal race ye doom, Be you the spoilers, and our wealth consume. Then might we hope redress from juster laws, And raise all Ithaca to aid our cause ; But while your sons commit th' unpunished wrong, You make the arm of violence too strong." f

" To heaven, alone, Refer the choice to fill the vacant throne. Your patrimonial stores in peace possess, Undoubted, all your filial claim confess. Your private right should impious pow'r invade, The peers of Ithaca would arm in aid." J

It is thus agreed, on all hands, that, as one of the archons, his hereditary title to his estates, vassals, and government, was in- disputable. This was the common cause of all the archons, and they would arm in support of the claim of any one. But the throne and sceptre of Ithaca were to be disposed of by augury, by the will of Jove, signified by some omen. To this Telema- chus pays some respect ; but still insists on his right of blood, "and says, that if the omen should be unfavorable to him, it would not promote the hopes of any of the archons of Ithaca; but some other Greeks, nearer of kin to the royal blood, would set up their claims. The archons, not likely to succeed in their scheme of getting the sceptre by the marriage of Penelope, nor

* Od.i. 315-508. fOdii. 83-88. J Od. i. 509-514.

572 ON GOVERNMENT.

by persuading Telemachus to submit the question to Jupiter and his omens, and afraid to appeal to the people, or to call them out in arms to dispute the succession; knowing the family of Laertes and Ulysses to be more popular than themselves, take the resolution to assassinate the young prince : —

" But die he shall, and thus condemn'd to bleed, Be now the scene of instant death decreed.

Wait ye, till he to arms in council draws The Greeks, averse too justly to our cause? Strike, ere, the states conven'd, the foe betray, Our murd'rous ambush on the wat'ry way. Or choose ye vagrant from their rage to fly, Outcasts of earth, to breathe an unknown sky ?

But if, submissive, you resign the sway, Slaves to a boy ; go, flatter and obey ; Retire we instant to our native reign, Nor be the wealth of kings consum'd in vain." *

Telemachus had before declared, that, if any archon of Ithaca, or any other Greek, obtained the sceptre, he would no longer remain in the confederation, but would reign separately over his paternal domain. Now, Antinous declares, that, if the rest of the archons submit to the boy, he will not,ibut will retire to his native archonship.

" Amphinomus ascends, Who o'er Dulichium stretch'd his spacious reign, A land of plenty, bless'd with every grain.

O friends, forbear, and be the thought withstood ! 'Tis horrible to shed imperial blood ; Consult we, first, th' all-seeing powers above, And the sure oracles of righteous Jove." f

Neither in Poland nor in Venice was the aristocratical rage to render weak, unsteady, and uncertain the royal authority, more conspicuous than it was here. They were afraid of the people and the auguries ; but neither was a legal check ; and we shall see, hereafter, that these struggles of the archons very soon abo- lished every monarchy in Greece, even that of Sparta, until it

* Od. xvi. 386 - 405. f Od. xvi. 409 - 419.

ITHACA. 573

was renewed, upon another plan, by Lycurgus. And the same progress of passions, through seditions, rebellions, and massacres, must forever take place in a body of nobles against the crown, where they are not effectually restrained by an independent people, known and established in the legislature, collectively or by representation.

That the Grecian kings, claiming from Jupiter, and supported by their auguries and bards, thought themselves absolute, and often punished the crimes of the archons very tyrannically, is true. Ulysses is an example of it. Instead of bringing the suit- ors to trial before the nation, or their peers, he shoots them all, without judge or jury, with his own bow. A more remarkable assertion of a claim to absolute monarchy cannot be imagined.

Antinous would retire to his native district, and spend his revenues among his own people, not consume his royal wealth by attendance at a court of a confederation which would be no longer to his taste. This was a popular sentiment in his own dominions ; his people wished to have their king reside among them, and were very willing to have the confederacy broken. This principle it was that afterwards crumbled all the Greek confederations to dust.

The similitude between the ancient Greek monarchies, as they are generally called, though the predominance of aristocracy in all of them is very manifest, and the feudal aristocracies described by Tacitus, is very obvious. The democratical power is never- theless much more regular, though not independent, in the latter; for, in addition to what is before quoted, it appears that the judi- cial authority was commonly exercised in national assemblies : — " Licet apud concilium accusare quoque, et discrimen capitis intendere. Distinctio pcenarum ex delicto ; proditores et trans- fugas arboribus suspendunt; ignavos, et imbelles, et corpore infames, coeno ac palude, injecta insuper crate, mergunt. Diver- sitas supplicii illuc respicit, tanquam scelera ostendi opporteat dum puniuntur, flagitia abscondi. Sed et levioribus delictis, pro modo, pcena ; equorum pecorumque numero convicti multantur ; pars multse regi, vel civitati, pars ipsi qui vindicatur, vel propin- quis ejus exsolvitur." *

Although the mixture of monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy,

* Germania, c. xii.

574 ON GOVERNMENT.

is visible in the republic of Phteacia, yet the king appears little more among the archons than the first among equals, and the authority of the people is still more faint and feeble. In Ithaca, there appears a strong claim of sovereignty in the king, and as strong a pretension to it in the archons ; and, although the peo- ple are dreaded by both, and their claim to interfere in the dispo- sition of the crown is implicitly acknowledged, yet it seems to be as judges of certain religious ceremonies, by which the will of Jupiter was to be collected, rather than as any regular civil authority.

Homer was a royalist, at least as much as Plato and Aristotle.

" Jove loves our chief, from Jove his honor springs. Beware ! for dreadful is the wrath of kings.

Be silent, wretch ! and think not here allowed That worst of tyrants, a usurping crowd. To one sole monarch Jove commits the sway ; His are the laws, and him let all obey." *

The name of a republic is not found in any of his writings. Yet, in every Grecian government described by him, we find a mixture, not only of an aristocracy, consisting in a council of princes ; but of a democracy, in an assembly of the people.

Agamemnon, in the second Iliad, calls together the whole

body.

" The king despatched his heralds with commands To range the camp, and summon all the bands. The gathering hosts the monarch's word obey, While to the fleet Atrides bends his way. In his black ship the Pylian prince he found, There calls a senate of the peers around. Th' assembly plac'cl, the king of men exprest The counsels lab'ring in his artful breast. Friends and confed'rates ! with attentive ear Receive my words, and credit what you hear ;

111 fits a chief who mighty nations guides, Directs in council, and in war presides, To whom its safety a whole people owes ; To waste long nights in indolent repose.

Now, valiant chiefs ! since heaven itself alarms, Unite, and rouse the sons of Greece to arms.

* 11. ii. 233 - 244.

ITHACA. 575

But first, with caution, try what yet they dare, Worn with nine years of unsuccessful war. To move the troops to measure back the main Be mine ; and yours the province to detain.

The kings without delay

Dissolve the council, and their chief obey. The sceptr'd rulers lead ; the following host, Pour'd forth by thousands, darkens all the coast.

Nine sacred heralds now, proclaiming loud The monarch's will, suspend the list'ning crowd.

The king of kings his awful figure raised, High in his hand the golden sceptre blazed —

Ye sons of Mars ! partake your leader's care, Heroes of Greece, and brothers of the war !

Fly, Grecians, fly ! your sails and oars employ, And dream no more of heaven-defended Troy. His deep design unknown, the hosts approve Atrides' speech ; — the mighty numbers move." *

It appears from the whole narration, that the great body of the people were discontented and desirous of raising the siege. The king alarmed, was obliged to call them together, with an artful design to obtain their consent to persevere. He feigns an inten- tion to return home ; the people were rejoiced at it. Then Ulys- ses., in concert with Agamemnon, receives the sceptre of com- mand, and endeavors to persuade the people to make another effort. To this end Ulysses harangues them.

" He runs, he flies through all the Grecian train, Each prince of name, or chief in arms approved, He fired with praise, or with persuasion moved.

But if a clam'rous, vile plebeian rose,

Him with reproof he checked, or tamed with blows.

Be still, thou slave, and to thy betters yield,

Unknown alike in council or in field !

Ye gods ! what dastards would our host command !

Swept to the war, the lumber of a land.

Be silent, wretch ! and think not here allow'd

That worst of tyrants, an usurping crowd.

* II. ii. 61-174.

576 ON GOVERNMENT.

"With, words like these the troops Ulysses rul'd, The loudest silenc'd, and the fiercest cool'd. Back to th' assembly roll the thronging train, Desert the ships, and pour upon the plain.

Thersites only clamor'd in the throng, Loquacious, loud, and turbulent of tongue. Aw'd by no shame, by no respect control'd, In scandal busy, in reproaches bold, With witty malice studious to defame, Scorn all his joy, and laughter all his aim. But chief he gloried, with licentious style To lash the great, and monarchs to revile.

Spleen to mankind his envious heart possest,

And much he hated all, but most the best ;

Ulysses or Achilles still his theme ;

But royal scandal his delight supreme.

Long had he liv'd, the scorn of ev'ry Greek,

Vext when he spoke, yet still they heard him speak." *

If from this only, and the subsequent harangue of Thersites, we were to form a judgment, we should conclude that popular assemblies were very frequent, and that the freedom of speech in them was far advanced and well established ; but the furious answer of Ulysses, and the unmerciful flogging he gives him for his boldness, in the face of the whole assembly, which is ap- plauded universally, shows that the demagogues had yet but very little influence, very little courage, and that popular assem- blies had as yet very little constitutional power.

The principles of government were very little understood, and all the political institutions extremely confused, in the time of the Trojan war, and from thence to Homer's time. Nothing was precisely defined; no laws were written. The most distinct rules, which are now to be traced, were a supremacy of kings, in religion and war. Sometimes they exercised judicial power. Monarchies were generally hereditary ; yet a right of the nation to interfere and alter the succession is admitted. The right of the sons of the archons, to succeed to their estates and districts, was an agreed point among them ; but these very archons chose to keep open to competition the succession to the throne, so that there might always be room for the pretensions of the most pow-

* 11. ii. 224-272.

ITHACA. 577

erful, who would easily make themselves thought the most worthy. The most celebrated kings, when advanced in years and unable to sustain the fatigues of war and cares of govern- ment, were obliged to resign their power. The anxiety of Achil- les, expressed to Ulysses in the Shades, is a proof of this.

" Say if my sire, the reverend Peleus, reigns Greal in his Pthia, and his throne maintains ; Or, weak and old, my youthful arm demands To fix the sceptre steadfast in his hands '? O might the lamp of life rekindled burn, And death release me from the silent urn ! This arm, that thunder'd o'er the Phrygian plain And swell'd the ground with mountains of the slain, Should vindicate my injur'd father's fame, Crush the proud rebel, and assert his claim.*

Kings and their families, claiming their descent and power from Jupiter, contended very naturally and consistently that the one was hereditary and the other absolute ; and, accordingly, when the prince who swayed the sceptre was active, brave, and able, he kept the archons in awe, and governed as he pleased. But when he was feeble, the archons grew ambitious, disputed the succession, and limited the royal power. To this end, both they and the kings, or heirs of kings, sometimes looked to the people, and seemed to admit in them a right to be present at the religious ceremonies, by which the will of Jupiter was to be declared ; for all parties agree, that the will of Jupiter confers the sceptre, not the mere election of the people.

The right of primogeniture was favored by popular opinion, as well as hereditary descent, because the family was the family of Jupiter, related to him, and descended from him by blood ; and it was natural to suppose that Jupiter's inclinations for descent and primogeniture resembled those of other fathers of families.

The chiefs, who are all called kings, as well as the head of them, or archons, were like the Teutonic counts or feudal barons, who exercised royal rights within their own districts, states, or sepa- rate territories. This principle preserved the real and legal power chiefly in their hands, and constituted the whole government more properly an aristocracy than a royalty. This gave an

* Od. xi. 605. VOL. IV. 49 K 2

I

578 ON GOVERNMENT.

uncontrollable pride to these nobles, which could not willingly submit to the pretensions of the kings, (as representatives of Jupiter,) to omnipotence, at least to unlimited power. Hence the continual straggle between the kings and archons, from Homer's time to that great and memorable revolution through- out Greece, from monarchy to aristocracy ; that is, from kings to archons. The people not yet possessing nor claiming an author- ity sufficiently regular and independent to be a check to mo- narchy or aristocracy, the latter at last prevailed over the former, as it ever did and ever will, where the contest is merely between these two.

The people, only in extraordinary cases, in the most essential matters, and when the chiefs were greatly divided, were at all consulted ; yet, in the course of the struggle between the kings and archons, the multitude were so often called upon, and so much courted, that they came by degrees to claim the whole power, and prepared the way in many of the Grecian states for another subsequent revolution from aristocracy to democracy.

Through the whole of Tacitas and Homer, the three orders are visible both in Germany and Greece ; and the continual fluctua- tions of law, the uncertainty of life, liberty, and property, and the contradictory claims and continual revolutions, arose entirely from the want of having the prerogatives and privileges of those orders defined, from the want of independence in each of them, and a balance between them.

CHAPTER X. CONCLUSION.

CHAPTER X.

Conclusion

By the authorities and examples already recited, you will be convinced that three branches of power have an unalterable foundation in nature ; that they exist in every society natural and artificial ; and that if all of them are not acknowledged in any constitution of government, it will be found to be imperfect, unstable, and soon enslaved ; that the legislative and executive authorities are naturally distinct ; and that liberty and the laws depend entirely on a separation of them in the frame of govern- ment ; that the legislative power is naturally and necessarily sovereign and supreme over the executive ; and, therefore, that the latter must be made an essential branch of the former, even with a negative, or it will not be able to defend itself, but will be soon invaded, undermined, attacked, or in some way or other totally ruined and annihilated by the former. This is applicable to every state in America, in its individual capacity ; but is it equally applicable to the United States in then federal capacity ?

The people of America and their delegates in congress were of opinion, that a single assembly was every way adequate to the management of all their federal concerns ; and with very good reason, because congress is not a legislative assembly, nor a representative assembly, but only a diplomatic assembly.1 A

1 This sentence drew from Mr. Jefferson a remonstrating comment. In a let- ter dated Paris, 23 February, 1787, hitherto unpublished, occurs the following- passage, which, in view of the subsequent history of both the parties, is worthy of record.

" I have read your book with infinite satisfaction and improvement. It will do great good in America. Its learning and its good sense will, I hope, make it an institute for our politicians, old as well as young. There is one opinion in it, however, which I will ask you to reconsider, because it appears to me not entirely accurate, and not likely to do good. ' Congress is not a legislative, but a diplomatic assembly.' Separating into parts the whole sovereignty of our states, some of these parts are yielded to congress. Upon these I should think them both legislative and executive, and that they could have been judiciary also, had not the confederation required them for certain purposes to appoint a judiciary. It has accordingly been the decision of our courts, that the confedc-

580 ON GOVERNMENT.

single council has been found to answer the purposes of con- federacies very well. But in all such cases the deputies are responsible to the states ; their authority is clearly ascertained ; and the states, in their separate capacities, are the checks. These are able to form an effectual balance, and at all times to control their delegates. The security against the dangers of this kind of government will depend upon the accuracy and decision with which the governments of the separate states have their own orders arranged and balanced.

The necessity we are under of submitting to a federal govern- ment, is an additional and a very powerful argument for three branches, and a balance by an equal negative, _in all the separate governments. Congress will always be composed of members from the natural and artificial aristocratical body in every state, even in the northern, as well as in the middle and southern states. Their natural dispositions, then, in general will be, (whether they shall be sensible of it or not, and whatever integrity or abilities they may be possessed of,) to diminish the prerogatives of the governors and the privileges of the people, and to augment the influence of the aristocratical parties. There have been causes enough to prevent the appearance of this inclination hitherto ; but a calm course of prosperity would very soon bring it forth, if effectual provision against it be not made in season. It will be found absolutely necessary, therefore, to give negatives to the governors, to defend the executive against the influence of this body, as well as the senate and representatives in their several states. The necessity of a negative in the house of representa- tives will be called in question by nobody.

Dr. Price and the Abbe de Mably are zealous for additional powers to congress. Full power in all foreign affairs and over foreign commerce, and, perhaps, some authority over the com- merce of the states with one another, may be necessary ; and it islhard to say that more authority in other things is not wanted. Yet the subject is of such extreme delicacy and difficulty, that the people are much to be applauded for their caution. To col- lect together the ancient and modern leagues, — the Amphic- /tyonic, the Olynthian, the Argive, the Arcadian, and the Achaean

ration is a part of the law of the land, and superior in authority to the ordinary laws, because it cannot be altered by the legislature of any one state. I doubt whether they are at all a diplomatic assembly."

CONCLUSION. 581

confederacies, among the Greeks ; the general diet of the Swiss cantons, and the states-general of the United Netherlands ; the union of the Hanse-towns, &c, which have been found to answer the purposes both of government and liberty ; to compare them all with the circumstances, the situation, the geography, the com- merce, the population, and the forms of government, as well as the climate, the soil, and manners of the people, and consider what further federal powers are wanted, and may be safely given, would be a useful work.

According to M. Turgot's idea of a perfect commonwealth, a single assembly is to be possessed of all authority, legislative, executive, and judicial. It will be a proper conclusion of all our speculations upon this, the most interesting subject which can employ the thoughts of men, to consider in what manner such an assembly will conduct its deliberations and exert its power. The executive power is properly the government ; the laws are a dead letter until an administration begins to carry them into execution. Let us begin, then, with this. If there is an army to raise, this single assembly is to appoint all its officers. The man of the most ample fortune, the most honorable descent, the great- est abilities, especially if there is any one among them who has had experience, rendered important services, and acquired fame in war, will be chosen general. This event is a great point gained by the aristocracy ; and a great advance towards the selection of one, in case of convulsions and confusions, for mo- narchy. The general has vast influence, of course, with the whole nation, and especially with the officers of his army ; whose articles of war, and whose habits, both of obedience and com- mand, establish a system of subordination of which he is the centre, and produce an attachment that never wears out. The general, even without being sensible of it, will naturally fall in with the views of the aristocratical body, in promoting men of family, property, and abilities ; and indeed, in general, it will be his duty to do this, as such are, undoubtedly, in general, the fittest for the service. His whole corps of officers will grow habitually to respect such only, or at least chiefly, and, it must be added, because experience proves it, and the truth requires it to be mentioned, to entertain some degree of contempt for the rest of the people, as "rank and file." The general's recom- mendation will have great weight in the assembly, and will in

49*

582 ON GOVERNMENT.

time be given chiefly, if not wholly, to men who are either of the aristocratical body themselves, or at least recommended by such as are so. All the other officers of the army are to be appointed by this assembly ; and we must suppose that all the general offi- cers and field officers will be of patrician families, because each candidate will be unknown to nine tenths of the assembly. He comes from a part of the state which a vast majority of the members of the assembly do not particularly represent and are unacquainted with ; they must, therefore, take his character upon trust from his patron in the house, some member who is his neighbor, and who, perhaps, owes his election to him or his par- ticular friends. Here is an endless source of debate and delay. When there are two or more candidates for a commission, and there will generally be several, how shall an assembly of five hundred or one hundred men, collected from all the most distant parts of a large state, become informed of the merits and preten- sions of each candidate ? It can only be done in public or in private. If in public, it exposes the characters of the candidates to a public discussion, which few men can bear ; it consumes time without end ; and it will frequently happen that the time of the whole assembly shall be wasted, and all the public affairs delayed, for days and weeks, in deliberating and debating, affirm- ing and denying, contradicting and proving, in the appointment of a single officer ; and, after all, he who has friends of the most influence in the house, who will be generally of the aristocratical complexion, will be preferred. It is moderate to say, that the loss of time and delay of business will be a greater burthen to the state than the whole support of a governor and council.

If there is a navy, the same process must be gone through respecting admirals, captains, and all other officers. All the offi- cers of revenue, police, justice, must be appointed in the same way. Ambassadors, consuls, agents to foreign countries, must be appointed, too, by vote of assembly. This branch of business alone would fill up the whole year, and be more than could be done. An assembly must be informed before it can act. The understanding and conscience of every member should be clearly satisfied before he can vote. Information is to be had only by debate and examination of evidence. Any man may see that this must be attended with difficulty ; but no man who has not seen the inside of such an assembly, can conceive the confusion,

CONCLUSION. 583

uncertainty, and procrastination of such proceedings. The Ame- rican provincial congresses had experience enough of this ; and gentlemen were more convinced, by what they there saw, heard, and felt, of the necessity of three branches, than they would have been by reasoning or reading ; it was generally agreed that the appointment of officers by lot would have been a more rational method.

But this is not all. The army, the navy, revenue, excise, cus- toms, police, justice, and all foreign ministers, must be gentlemen, that is to say, friends and connections of the rich, well-born and well-educated members of the house ; or, if they are not, the community will be filled with slander, suspicion, and ridicule against them, as ill-bred, ignorant, and in all respects unqualified for their trusts ; and the plebeians themselves will be as ready as any to join in the cry, and run down their characters. In the second place, there never was yet a people who must not have somebody or something to represent the dignity of the state, the majesty of the people, call it what you will, — a doge, an avoyer, an archon, a president, a consul, a syndic ; this becomes at once an object of ambition and dispute, and, in time, of division, fac- tion, sedition, and rebellion.

The next inquiry is, concerning the administration of justice. Shall every criminal be brought before this assembly and tried ? shall he be there accused before five hundred men? witnesses introduced, counsel heard ? This again would take up more than the whole year ; and no man, after all, would consider his life, liberty, or property, safe in such a tribunal. These all depend upon the disquisitions of the counsel, the knowledge of the law in the judges, the confrontation of parties and witnesses, the forms of proceedings, by which the facts and the law are fairly stated before the jury for their decision, the rules of evi- dence, by which the attention of the jury is confined to proper points, and the artifices of parties and counsel avoided. An assembly of five hundred men are totally incapable of this order, as well as knowledge; for, as the vote of the majority must determine, every member must be capable, or all is uncertain. Besides, it is the unanimity of the jury that preserves the rights of mankind. Must the whole five hundred be unanimous ?

Will it be said that the assembly shall appoint committees to try causes ? But who are to make these appointments ? Will

584 ON GOVERNMENT.

not a few haughty palatines in the assembly have influence enough to determine the election in favor of then friends ? and will not this make the judges the tools of a party ? If the lead- ers are divided into parties, will not one prevail at one year, and another the next? and will not this introduce the most wretched of servitudes, an uncertain jurisprudence ?

Will it be said that the assembly shall appoint committees for the nomination of officers? The same intrigues and greater struggles would be introduced for the place of a committee-man ; and there would be frequent appeals from those committees to the body that appointed them.

Shall the assembly appoint a governor or president, and give him all the executive power ? Why should not the people at large appoint him ? Giving this power to the assembly will open a wider door to intrigue for the place ; and the aristocrat- ical families will be sure, nine times in ten, to carry then choice in this way ; and, what is much worse, the first magistrate will be considered as dependent on every obscure member of the house, but in reality he will be dependent only on a dozen or a score, perhaps on two or three, of the whole. He will be liable to daily motions, debates, and votes of censure. Instead of thinking of his duty to the people at large, he will confine his attention chiefly to the assembly, and believe, that if he can satisfy them, or a majority of them, he has done his duty.

After all, any of these devices are only changing words ; they are, in reality, erecting different orders of men, and aiming at balances, as much as the system which so much displeases M. Turgot ; they are introducing, in effect, all the inequalities and disputes that he so greatly apprehends, without any of that security to the laws, which ought to be the principal object; they render the executive power, which is in truth the govern- ment, the instrument of a few grandees. If these are capable of a combination with each other, they will seldom disagree in their opinion, which is the richest man and of the first family ; and, as these will be all their inquiries, they will generally carry their election. If they are divided, in constant wrangles with each other, and perpetual attacks upon the president about the discharge of his functions, they will keep the nation anxious and irritated, with controversies which can never be decided nor ended. If they agree, and the plebeians still carry the vote

CONCLUSION. 585

against them, the choice will nevertheless probably fall upon one of their number, who will be disposed to favor them too much ; but if it falls upon a plebeian, there commences at once a series of contests between the rich and the poor, which will never end but in the ruin of the popular power and the national liberty; or at least in a revolution and a new constitution. As the ex- ecutive power, the essence of government, is ever odious to popular envy and jealousy, it will ever be in the power of a few illustrious and wealthy citizens to excite clamors and uneasiness, if not commotions and seditions, against it. Although it is the natural friend of the people, and the only defence which they or their representatives can have against the avarice and ambition of the rich and distinguished citizens, yet, such is their thought- less simplicity, they are ever ready to believe that the evils they feel are brought upon them by the executive power. How easy is it, then, for a few artful men among the aristocratical body to make a president, thus appointed and supported, unpopular, though he conducts himself with all the integrity and ability which his office requires?

But we have not yet considered how the legislative power is to be exercised in this single assembly. Is there to be a consti- tution ? Who are to compose it ? The assembly itself, or a convention called for that purpose? In either case, whatever rules are agreed on for the preservation of the lives, liberties, pro- perties, and characters of the citizens, what is to hinder this assembly from transgressing the bounds which they have pre- scribed to themselves, or which the convention has ordained for them ? The convention has published its code and is no more. Shall a new convention be called, to determine every question which arises concerning a violation of the constitution ? This would require that the convention should sit whenever the as- sembly sits, and consider and determine every question which is agitated in it. This is the very thing we contend for, namely, — that there may be two assemblies ; one to divide, and the other to choose. Grant me this, and I am satisfied; provided you will confine both the convention and assembly to legislation, and give the whole executive power to another body. I had almost ventured to propose a third assembly for the executive power ; but the unity, the secrecy, the dispatch of one man has no equal; and the executive power should be watched by all

586 ON GOVERNMENT.

men ; the attention of the whole nation should be fixed upon one point, and the blame and censure, as well as the impeachments and vengeance for abuses of this power, should be directed solely to the ministers of one man. But to pursue our single assembly. The first year, or the first seven years, they may be moderate; especially in dangerous times, and while an exiled royal family, or exiled patricians or nobles, are living, and may return ; or while the people's passions are alive, and their attention awake, from the fresh remembrance of danger and distress. But when these transitory causes pass away, as there is an affection and confidence between the people and their representatives, suppose the latter begin to make distinctions, by making exceptions of themselves in the laws. They may frank letters ; they are exempted from arrests ; they can privilege servants ; one little distinction after another, in time makes up a large sum. Some few of the peo- ple will complain ; but the majority, loving then representatives, will acquiesce. Presently they are exempted from taxes. Then their duration is too short ; from annual they become biennial, triennial, septennial, for life ; and at length, instead of applying to constituents to fill up vacancies, the assembly takes it upon itself, or gives it to their president. In the mean time, wars are conducted by heroes to triumph and conquest, negotiations are carried on with success, commerce flourishes, the nation is pros- perous ; the citizens are flattered, vain, proud of their felicity, envied by others. It would be the basest, the most odious in- gratitude, at least it would be so represented, to find fault with their rulers. In a word, as long as half a score of capital cha- racters agree, they will gradually form the house and the nation into a system of subordination and dependence to themselves, and govern all at their discretion — a simple aristocracy or oli- garchy in effect, though a simple democracy in name. But, as every one of these is emulous of others, and more than one of them is constantly tormented with a desire to be the first, they will soon disagree ; and then the house and the nation gradually divides itself into four parties, one of which, at least, will wish for monarchy, another for aristocracy, a third for democracy, and a fourth for various mixtures of them ; and these parties can never come to a decision but by a struggle, or by the sword. There is no remedy for this, but in a convention of deputies from all parts of the state ; but an equal convention can hardly

CONCLUSION. 587

be obtained, except in times like those we have lately seen, when the danger could only be warded off by the aid and exertions of the whole body of the people. When no such danger from with- out shall press, those who are proud of their wealth, blood, or wit, will never give way to fair and equal establishments. All parties will be afraid of calling a convention ; but if it must be agreed to, the aristocratical party will push their influence, and obtain elections even into the conventions, for themselves and their friends, so as to carry points there which perhaps they could not have carried in the assembly.

But shall the people at large elect a governor and council an- nually to manage the executive power, and a single assembly to have the whole legislative ? In this case, the executive power, instead of being independent, will be the instrument of a few leading members of the house ; because the executive power, being an object of jealousy and envy to the people, and the legislative an object of their confidence and affection, the latter will always be able to render the former unpopular, and under- mine its influence. But if the people for a time support an executive disagreeable to the leaders in the legislative, the con- stitution will be disregarded, and the nation will be divided be- tween the two bodies, and each must at last have an army to decide the question. A constitution consisting of an executive in one single assembly, and a legislative in another, is already composed of two armies in battle array ; and nothing is wanting but the word of command to begin the combat.

In the present state of society and manners in America, with a people living chiefly by agriculture, in small numbers, sprinkled over large tracts of land, they are not subject to those panics and transports, those contagions of madness and folly, which are seen in countries where large numbers live in small places, in daily fear of perishing for want. We know, therefore, that the people can live and increase under almost any kind of govern- ment, or without any government at all. But it is of great im- portance to begin well ; misarrangements now made, will have great, extensive, and distant consequences ; and we are now em- ployed, how little soever we may think of it, in making establish- ments which will affect the happiness of a hundred millions of inhabitants at a time, in a period not very distant. All nations, under all governments, must have parties ; the great secret is to

588 ON GOVERNMENT.

control them. There are but two ways, either by a monarchy and standing army, or by a balance in the constitution. Where the people have a voice, and there is no balance, there will be everlasting fluctuations, revolutions, and horrors, until a standing army, with a general at its head, commands the peace, or the necessity of an equilibrium is made appear to all, and is adopted by all.

End Of Volume IV

END OF VOLUME IV.

The Works of John Adams, vol. 10 (Letters 1811-1825, incl. Adams-Jefferson)

pibrar^

N THE CUSTODY OF THE

BOSTON PUBLIC LIBRARY.

SHELF N°

ADAMS I 3 0. 1

Jo\. \Q

The Works Of John Adams

THE WORKS

OF

JOHN ADAMS

B O S T 0 IT PUBLISHED BT CEAELES C LITTLE Sc JAMES B1CT

THE

WORKS

OF

JOHN ADAMS,

SECOND PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES

WITH

A LIFE OF THE AUTHOR,

NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS,

BY

HIS GRANDSON CHARLES FRANCIS ADAMS.

VOL. X.

BOSTON: LITTLE, BROWN AND COMPANY,

1856.

YX

6Lntcv^

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1856, by Charl.es Francis Adams in the Clerk's office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts.

ISO. ( ^ 10

RIVERSIDE. CAMBRIDGE:

STEREOTYPED AND PRINTED B Y

II. O. HOUGHTON AND COMPANY.

CONTENTS OF VOLUME X.

1811.

October 15. To Benjamin Stoddert

27. Benjamin Stoddert to John Adams November 25. To Samuel Smith

30. Robert Smith to John Adams December 1. Samuel Smith to John Adams 6. To Robert Smith

13. To Samuel Smith

25. To Benjamin Rush

1812. June

August

November

1813. January

2. To Thomas McKean 13. Thomas McKean to John Adams 21. To Thomas McKean 28. To Thomas Jefferson

6. To Samuel B. Malcom 25. To William Keteltas

5. To J. B. Varnum 24. To John Langdon

27. John Langdon to John

28. To Elbridge Gerry February 11. To Elbridge Gerry

23. To James Monroe

March 22. To John Lathrop

28. To William Plumer

April 14. To Elbridge Gerry

a*

Adams

PAGE

3

4 7 8 8 9 9 10

12 14 15 17 20 22

24

27 28 29 30 32 33 35 36

VI

CONTENTS.

July

1813. Juue 5.

10.

14.

28.

30.

9.

13.

17.

18.

16.

20.

31.

September 2.

14.

15.

22.

28.

4.

12.

August

October November

December

1814. January

March

April

May

July

November 1 >ecember

1815.

January

25.

To Benjamin Waterhouse

To Thomas Jefferson .

To Thomas Jefferson .

To Thomas Jefferson .

To Thomas Jefferson .

To Thomas Jeffersqn .

To Thomas Jefferson .

To Thomas Jefferson .

To Thomas Jefferson .

To Thomas Jefferson .

Thomas McKean to John Adams

To Thomas McKean

To Thomas Jefferson .

To Thomas Jefferson .

To Thomas Jefferson .

To Thomas Jefferson .

Thomas McKean to John Adams

To Thomas Jefferson .

To Thomas Jefferson .

Thomas McKean to John Adams

To Thomas Jefferson .

Thomas McKean to John Adams

14. To Thomas Jefferson . 9. To John Taylor . .

30. To Richard Rush

15. To Mrs. Mercy Warren

16. To Thomas Jefferson . 28. To James Madison

2. To Rufus King . ;

17. James Madison to John Adams

To James Lloyd

CONTENTS.

vii

1815.

PAGE

February

6. To James Lloyd . . . . .114

11. To James Lloyd ,

. 116

14. To James Lloyd

. 120

7. To James Lloyd

. 123

21. To James Lloyd

. 126

March

3. To William Cranch

4. To Dr. J. Morse 6. To James Lloyd

12. To James Lloyd . .

26. To James Lloyd

27. To James Lloyd

29. To James Lloyd

30. To James Lloyd

31. To James Lloyd

. 131 . 133 . 134 . 136 . 139 . 143^ . 146 . 149 . 152

April

5. To James Lloyd 5. To Richard Rush 24. To James Lloyd

. 155

. 159

162

July

6. To Thomas McKean 13. To F. A. Vanderkemp . . , 30. To Thomas McKean

166 168 171

August

24. To Thomas Jefferson .

172

November

13. To Thomas Jefferson .

20. Thomas McKean to John Adams

20. To Dr. J. Morse .

26. To Thomas McKean

29. To Dr. J. Morse

174 176 178 180 182

December

2. To Dr. J. Morse . 5. To Dr. J. Morse .... 22. To Dr. J. Morse ....

185 188 192

1810.

January

1. To Dr. J. Morse .... 5. To Dr. J. Morse .

197 201

s

VI 11

CONTENTS.

1816.

January

20.

March

2.

May

3

6.

26.

August

1

9

September

9

30

November

4

16

December

12.

18

27

1817.

January

24

February

4

March

29.

Ajjril

15

19

22

June

1

5

13

17

December

30

1818.

January

5.

9

14

23

30

February

6

To Dr. J. Morse .

To Thomas Jefferson

To Thomas Jefferson

To Thomas Jefferson

To F. A. Vanderkemp

Thomas Jefferson to John Adams

To Thomas Jefferson

To William Tudor

To Thomas Jefferson

To Thomas Jefferson

To William Tudor

To Thomas Jefferson

To William Tudor

To F. A. Vanderkemp

To William Tudor To William Tudor To William Tudor To William Tudor To Thomas Jefferson To James Madison To William Tudor To William Tudor To Henry Colman To James Madison To John M. Jackson

To William Wirt

To John Jay

To H. Niles

To William Wirt

To Benjamin Waterhouse

To Benjamin Waterhouse

PAGE

204

210

213

216

219

222

224

226

227

228

230^

232

232

234

236 241 244 249 253 256 258 262 266 267

269

271, 272

2U) 277 279 280

CONTENTS.

ix

1818.

PAGE

13. To PL Niles .

. 282

25. To William Tudor .

. 289

March

7. To William Wirt .

. 292

11. To William Tudor ,

. 295

April

5. To William Tudor .

. 298

May

29. To Thomas Jefferson .

. 312

June

1. To William Tudor .

. 314

9. To William Tudor

. 317

1 7. To William Tudor .

. 320

24. To William Tudor

. 323

July

9. To William Tudor

. 825

14. To William Tudor

. 328

1 7. To William Tudob

. 332

27. To William Tudor

. 335

30. To William Tudor .

. 337

August

6. To William Tudor

. 338

11. To William Tudor

. 343

16. To William Tudor

. 346

21. To William Tudor

. 349

September

10. To William Tudor

. ^352J

13. To William Tudor

; . 354

18. To William Tudor

. 356

23. To William Tudor

. 359

November

13. Thomas Jefferson to John Adams .

. 362

December

8. To Thomas Jefferson .

. 363

1819.

February

9. To William Tudor . . .

. 364

21. To William Willis . ...

. 365

23. To Thomas Jefferson .

. 366

March

7. To William Tudor

. 367,

12. To John Taylor, of Caroline,

. 375

30. To J. H. Tiffany .

. 377

1819.

April

30.

June

8.

22.

July

15.

August

11.

21.

December

14.

18.

1820.

January

17.

March

7.

July

8.

September

4.

November

o O.

1821.

February

9.

24.

May

14.

19.

22.

September

1.

November

28.

1822.

March

31.

August

10.

1823.

March

9.

9.

August

15.

September

17.

1824.

April

8.

April

12.

Contents. Page

CONTENTS.

PAGE

To J. H. Tiffany

. 378

To Robert J. Evans

. 379

To Thomas Jefferson .

. 380

To William Bentley .

. 381

To Richard Bland Lee

. 382

To William Bentley .

. 383

To William E. Richmond

. 384

To Thomas Jefferson .

. 385

To Thomas Jefferson .

. 387

To Elihu Marshall

. 388

To Samuel Miller

. 389

To Charles Holt

. 391

To Henry Channing

. 392

To George Alexander Otis .

. 394

To Richard H. Lee

. 395

To Richard Rush

. 397

To Thomas Jefferson .

. 398

To David Sewall

. 399

To John Marston

. 399

To Richard Rush

. 400

To Richard Peters

. 402

To William Thomas

. 403

To Thomas Jefferson .

. 405

To F. A. Vanderkemp .

. 407

To Thomas Jefferson .

. 408

To Thomas Jefferson .

. 410

John Taylor to Jonx Adams

. 411

To John Taylor

. 413

Contents. Xi

CONTENTS.

XI

1825. January 22. To Thomas Jefferson .

23. To Thomas Jefferson . February 18. To John Quincy Adams June 7. To John Whitney

10. To Jacob B. Taylor and others

PAGE

414 415 416 416 417

APPENDIX (A.)

Address to the Cadets of the Military Academy of West

Point . . . . . . . .419

Indexes

Letters from John Adams . .

Letters to John Adams

Miscellaneous Letters

Speeches and Messages to Congress

proclamations

Addresses and Answers to Addresses

General Index ....

. 423

. 435

. 440

. 443

. 445

. 445 449-519

GENERAL CORRESPONDENCE

CONTINUED

VOL. X.

GENERAL CORRESPONDENCE

CONTINUED.

TO BENJAMIN STODDERT.

Quincy, 15 October, 1811.

Dear Stoddert, — Your obliging letter of August 16th was presented to me by your son-in-law, Dr. Thomas Ewell, and his amiable lady, your daughter. Although I was confined with a wounded leg, which is not yet healed, and afflicted with a series of misfortunes, afflictions, and deaths among my tenderest con- nections, such as rarely happens to any man even in this trouble- some world, I was not the less obliged to you for giving me an opportunity of seeing this sensible and amiable couple. These causes, however, have retarded my answer, and I hope will plead my excuse. I am happy to hear that your health is good, and I hope your happiness unalloyed.

I am as happy as ever I was in my life, as happy as I can ever expect to be in this "world, and I believe as happy as any man can be, who sees all the friends of his youth dropping off about him, and so much sickness among his nearest relations, and who expects himself to drop in a very short time. Public affairs move me no more than private. I love my country and my friends, but can do very little for either. Reconciled and resigned to my lot in public and private, I wait with patience for a transfer to another scene.

After an introduction so solemn and gloomy, you will be surprised to find me turn to so ludicrous a subject as friend Timothy. You have seen his addresses to the people, in which he has poured out the phials of his vengeance against me, after

4 CORRESPONDENCE.

having nourished and cherished it in his bosom a dozen years. He has implicated General Sam Smith and his brother Robert Smith, the late Secretary of State, in a manner that ought in my opinion to bring them out in vindication of themselves and me.

God knows, I never made any bargain with them or either of them. I never knew or suspected that they had any animo- sity against Pickering, more than they had against you or McHenry, Wolcott or Lee. No hint was ever given to me, directly or indirectly from either, that they wished Pickering removed, or that they would vote for me on any condition, or in any circumstances whatsoever. When I appointed Winchester Judge, in opposition to the wish of Robert Smith, as you know very well, I had the best opportunities to conciliate the Smiths, if I had been so disposed. Pickering knows this as well as you. How, then, can he tell such an abominable story ? I cannot think that he believes it himself. Had I not scruples about setting an example of a President's vindicating himself against such attacks from a mortified, disappointed, and vindictive mi- nister, I should be at no loss for reasons to justify the removal of Mr. Pickering.

B. Stoddert To John Adams

Bladensburg, 27 October, 1811.

I sincerely thank you for your kind letter of the 15th. It always affords me the highest satisfaction to hear of you and from you, and more particularly when I hear favorable accounts of your health and contentment.

I have seen and regretted the attack of Colonel Pickering on you, in a point affecting your moral character. In relation to any intrigue of my countrymen, the Smiths, with you, for his removal from the office of State, I have at all times felt the strongest conviction that you never did descend to such base- ness, not only because I knew you were incapable of such degradation, but because I had reason to know that there was no kind of private intercourse between you and General Smith (and his brother was not at the seat of government), about the

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time of Colonel Pickering's removal. I knew it from this cir- cumstance. A day or two before the New York election, in which Colonel Burr exerted himself with so much success as to produce a result that disappointed every body, and at a moment when members of Congress and all about the government believed that city would be entirely federal, General Smith and a Senator of high standing called on me at my office, and ex- pressed their satisfaction with most of your measures, though disapproving of some which they seemed disposed rather to ascribe to the influence of others than to you, and signified a desire to have a friendly interview with you, and asked my opinion if such an interview would be agreeable. My reply, in substance, was, that I could not doubt it, but that I would speak to you on the subject, and let them know.

It so happened that I did not speak to you before the result of the New York election was known in Philadelphia. This result afforded Mr. Jefferson a prospect of the Presidential chair he seemed not to have had before. But for this result, I ques- tion whether it would not have been decided, about that time, by his friends, to suspend his pretensions for four years longer, and that their support, if from no other motive, for the chance of having influence in your administration, should be given to you.

If I never afterwards mentioned to you my visit from the General and the Senator, it was because I thought I perceived that then- views had changed, with the change of prospect occa- sioned by the result of the New York election. They spoke to me no more, and I am very confident they avoided you.

I am not good at remembering dates ; and, never meaning to be a public man, I never kept memoranda of any political trans- actions. But I believe this election was just before the close of the session of Congress ; and that at the close, or a day or two before, Colonel Pickering was removed. On the morning of the day of the removal, you communicated to Mr. Lee and myself, who chanced to meet at your house without being sum- moned, your intention, and observed, your mind had been made up on the subject before the commencement of the session, but that, to avoid a turbulent session (Colonel Pickering having many warm friends in both Houses), you had delayed to take the step until the close of the session. You said you respected

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fi CORRESPONDENCE.

Colonel Pickering for his industry, his talents, and his integrity, but mentioned instances to show that he wanted those feelings a Secretary of State should possess for the character of a Pre- sident, and wanted temper to enable you to make peace with France, or preserve it with England ; and, upon something sug- gested by Mr. Lee or myself to induce reconsideration on your part, you added, that you felt it a sacred duty to make a change in the Department of State, and proposed, that Mr. Lee or my- self should communicate your decision to Colonel Pickering in terms least calculated to hurt his feelings. We both too sin- cerely respected him to undertake a task so disagreeable. I have never since conversed with Mr. Lee on this subject; but I do presume, were he to relate the occurrence, his relation would agree substantially with mine.

Colonel Pickering, like most honest, warm-tempered men, may be too partial, perhaps, in tracing to the best motives the actions of his friends, and too prone to ascribe to the worst the conduct of those whom he does not like. After hearing of the prediction of Mr. R. Smith at Annapolis (which I presume has been within the last two years), made ten or twelve days before his removal, that he would be removed, it was not extraordinary that he should imagine Mr. R. Smith, his brother, the General, and others, had successfully intrigued with you for his removal as the price of their support. And when he made the charge against you, I cannot, from what I think I know of his charac- ter, persuade myself for a moment to doubt that he did most religiously believe in its truth.

Were I to venture to account for Mr. R. Smith's prediction at Annapolis, it would be in this way. The visit to me, of which I have spoken, shows that the most respectable of that party, with whom Mr. Smith was closely linked, were at least balanc- ing in their minds whether their surest road to more influence in public affairs would not be to attach themselves to you, especially as your reelection seemed at that time certain. Colo- nel Pickering, of all your ministers, was most obnoxious to those gentlemen. And it might have been contemplated by them, with the knowledge of Mr. R. Smith, to ask his removal in return for their support. And as it was too well known that the proper harmony between the President and Secretary of State did not exist, Mr. Smith being sure, as he thought, the

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offer would be made, might conclude, without great violence to probability, that the offer would be made, and, unacquainted with your honorable principles, that it would not be rejected.

If any use can be made of this feeble, though sincere testi- mony, in removing from that reputation you so justly value a transient cloud, most freely do I consent it should be so used. I may dissatisfy men, whose friendship I prize most highly, and make others my enemies, by this ; but consideration of self never did nor ever shall deter me from doing an act of justice.

With my best respects, &c, &c.

Ben. Stoddert.

To Samuel Smith

Quincy, 25 November, 1811.

Sir, — Colonel Pickering, in his letters or addresses to the people of the United States, has represented to the world, and supported by certificates or testimonies, which some persons think plausible, that a corrupt bargain was made between your- self and your brother on one part, and me on the other, that I should dismiss the then Secretary of State from his office, in consideration of your votes and influence for me at the next election of President and Vice-President.

As such a kind of traffic would be as dishonorable to your- self and your brother as to me, I think it would become all three of us to take some prudent measures to disabuse the public, if not to vindicate our characters.

For my own part, I declare upon my honor, and am at any time ready to depose upon oath, that no such communication, intimation, or insinuation ever passed, directly or indirectly, between me and yourself, or your brother. You must, therefore, know and feel the imputation both upon me and yourself to be false and injurious. Consequently I can see no objection that either of us can have to clearing up this matter before the public. I should be obliged to you, Sir, for your sentiments upon this subject, and continue to be, with much respect, your most obedient and humble servant.

Memorandum. Wrote on the same day, in the same words, mutatis mutandis, to the Hon. Robert Smith at Baltimore. J. A.

8 CORRESPONDENCE.

Robert Smith To John Adams

Baltimore, 30 November, 1811.

Sir, — In reply to your letter of the 25th of this month, I have no hesitation in stating to you, that, at no period of your administration did I consider or understand that any kind of bargain or arrangement had, directly or indirectly, in any man- ner or form, been proposed or made, between yourself on the one part, and my brother and myself, or either of us, on the other part, in relation to the dismission of Mr. Pickering from the office of the Department of State.

Be pleased to accept an assurance of the great respect, with which I have the honor to be, Sir, your humble servant,

It. Smith.

Samuel Smith To John Adams

Washington, 1 December, 1811.

Sir, — I had the honor, yesterday, to receive your letter of the 25th ultimo, in which you say, " that Colonel Pickering in his letters to the people of the United States has represented to the world, that a corrupt bargain was made between your- self and brother on the one part, and me on the other, that I should dismiss the then Secretary of State from his office, in consideration of your votes and influence for me, at the next election of President and Vice-President."

You appear to be of opinion, that some notice ought to be taken of this assertion to disabuse the public, justly observing that no such communication had ever passed directly or in- directly between you, my brother, and myself.

I have taught myself to despise every attack upon my poli- tical character ; and I cannot persuade myself, that any man acquainted with your high character will believe that you would have permitted any person to have made to you a proposition so very dishonorable. For myself I declare, that I never held any conversation with you, respecting Colonel Pickering ; that I never heard you utter one word disrespectful of that gentle-

CORRESPONDENCE. 9

man ; that I never did insinuate or express a wish to you that you would dismiss Colonel Pickering from office, nor did I ever insinuate or say, that I would, for any consideration whatsoever, support you by my vote or influence at the election of President and Vice-President. I never believed myself in your confidence. On the contrary, I did at that period think that you were per- sonally hostile to me. It is well known, that I opposed your first election and your reelection, openly, on political ground. It is not known to me, that you had any knowledge of my brother Robert at the period alluded to ; if any communication had ever passed between you and him, it must have been known to me. I never knew of any, and am certain that none did take place.

I have the honor to be, your obedient servant,

S. Smith.

To Robert Smith

Quiney, 6 December, 1811.

Sir, — Yesterday I received from the post-office in this town your favor of the 30th of November, in answer to my letter to you of the 25th of that month.

I thank you, Sir, for the promptitude, punctuality, and accu- racy of your reply, which is fully satisfactory. It is such, indeed, as I knew it must be from the immutability of truth.

TO SAMUEL SMITH.

Quiney, 13 December, 1811.

Sir, — I have received your letter of the 1st of this month in answer to mine of the 25th of November. It is not less frank and candid than prompt and punctual.

I have only to remark that you were certainly mistaken when you thought that " I was personally hostile to you." Your brother Robert I "never saw in my life, nor had any communica- tion with him of any kind while I had any share in government.

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To Benjamin Rush

Quincy, 25 December, 1811.

I never was so much at a loss how to answer a letter as yours of the 16th.

Shall I assume a sober face and write a grave essay on reli- gion, philosophy, laws, or government?

Shall I laugh, like Bacchus among his grapes, wine vats, and bottles?

Shall I assume the man of the world, the fine gentleman, the courtier, and bow and scrape, with a smooth, smiling face, soft words, many compliments and apologies ; think myself highly honored, bound in gratitude, &c, &c. ?

I perceive plainly enough, Rush, that you have been teasing Jefferson to write to me, as you did me some time ago to write to him. You gravely advise me " to receive the olive branch," as if there had been war ; but there has never been any hostility on my part, nor that I know, on his. When there has been no war, there can be no room for negotiations of peace.

Mr. Jefferson speaks of my political opinions ; but I know of no difference between him and myself relative to the Constitu- tion, or to forms of government in general. In measures of administration, we have differed in opinion. I have never approved the repeal of the judicial law, the repeal of the taxes, the neglect of the navy; and I have always believed that his system of gunboats for a national defence was de- fective. To make it complete, he ought to have taken a hint from Moliere's " Femmes precieuses" or his learned ladies, and appointed three or four brigades of horse, with a Major- General, and three or four brigadiers, to serve on board his gal- leys of Malta. I have never approved his non-embargo, or any non-intercourse, or non-importation laws.

But I have raised no clamors nor made any opposition to any of these measures. The nation approved them ; and what is my judgment against that of the nation ? On the contrary, he disapproved of the alien law and sedition law, which I believe to have been constitutional and salutary, if not necessary.

He disapproved of the eight per cent, loan, and with good

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reason. For I hated it as much as any man, and the army, too, which occasioned it. He disapproved, perhaps, of the partial war with France, which I believed, as far as it proceeded, to be a holy war. He disapproved of taxes, and perhaps the whole scheme of my administration, &c, and so perhaps did the nation. But his administration and mine are passed away into the dark backwards, and are now of no more importance than the administration of the old Congress in 1774 and 1775.

We differed in opinion about the French revolution. He thought it wise and good, and that it would end in the esta- blishment of a free republic. I saw through it, to the end of it, before it broke out, and was sure it could end only in a restor- ation of the Bourbons, or a military despotism, after deluging France and Europe in blood. In this opinion I differed from you as much as from Jefferson ; but all this made me no more of an enemy to you than to him, nor to him than to you. I believe you both to mean well to mankind and your country. I might suspect you both to sacrifice a little to the infernal Gods, and perhaps unconsciously to suffer your judgments to be a little swayed by a love of popularity, and possibly by a little spice of ambition.

In point of republicanism, all the difference I ever knew or could discover between you and me, or between Jefferson and me, consisted,

1. In the difference between speeches and messages. I was a monarchist because I thought a speech more manly, more respectful to Congress and the nation. Jefferson and Rush preferred messages.

2. I held levees once a week, that all my time might not be wasted by idle visits. Jefferson's whole eight years was a levee.

3. I dined a large company once or twice a week. Jefferson dined a dozen every day.

4. Jefferson and Rush were for liberty and straight hair. I thought curled hair was as republican as straight.

In these, and a few other points of equal importance, all miserable frivolities, that Jefferson and Rush ought to blush that they ever laid any stress upon them, I might differ ; but I never knew any points of more consequence, on which there was any variation between us.

12 CORRESPONDENCE.

You exhort me to " forgiveness and love of enemies," as if 1 considered, or had ever considered, Jefferson as my enemy. This is not so ; I have always loved him as a friend. If I ever received or suspected any injury from him, I have forgiven it long and long ago, and have no more resentment against him than against you.

You enforce your exhortations by the most solemn considera- tions that can enter the human mind. After mature reflection upon them, and laying them properly to heart, I could not help feeling that they were so unnecessary, that you must excuse me if I had some inclination to be ludicrous.

You often put me in mind that I am soon to die ; I know it, and shall not forget it. Stepping into my kitchen one day, I found two of my poor neighbors, as good sort of men as two drunkards could be. One had sotted himself into a consump- tion. His cough and his paleness and weakness showed him near the last stage. Tom, who was not so far gone as yet, though he soon followed, said to John, " You have not long for this world." John answered very quick : " I know it, Tom, as well as you do ; but why do you tell me of it ? I had rather you should strike me." This was one of those touches of nature which Shakspere or Cervantes would have noted in his ivory book.

But why do you make so much ado about nothing? Of what use can it be for Jefferson and me to exchange letters ? I have nothing to say to him, but to wish him an easy journey to heaven, when he goes, which I wish may be delayed, as long as life shall be agreeable to him. And he can have nothing to say to me, but to bid me make haste and be ready. Time and chance, however, or possibly design, may produce ere long a letter between us.

To Thomas Mckean

Quincy, 2 June, 1812.

Our ancient and venerable friend Clinton is gone before us. It had long been my intention to write to him, but while 1 was busied about many things perhaps of less importance, he has

CORRESPONDENCE. 13

slipped out of my reach. I am determined no longer to neglect to write to you, lest I should glide away, where there is no pen and ink.

Nearly thirty-eight years ago our friendship commenced. It has never been interrupted, to my knowledge, but by one event. Among all the gentlemen with whom I have acted and lived in the world, I know not any two who have more uniformly agreed in sentiment upon political principles, forms of government, and national policy, than you and I have done, except upon one great subject — a most important and momentous one, to be sure. That subject was the French revolution. This, at the first appearance of it, you thought a " minister of grace." I fully believed it to be " a goblin damned." Hence all the estrangement between us, that I know, or ever suspected. There is no reason that this should now keep us asunder, for I presume there can be little difference of opinion at present upon this subject. "When Pultney accepted a peerage, some droll wit wrote, —

" Of all the patriot things that Pultney writ, The earl of Bath confutes them every bit."

We may now say, —

" Of all the glorious things French patriots writ, The emperor confutes them every bit."

There can be no question of honors or profits, or rank or fame, between you and me at present. Personal friendship and private feelings are all that remain. I should be happy to hear of your health and prosperity, but I cannot conclude with- out one political observation. In ancient times Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and Virginia agreed very well. Why should they be at variance now ?

I hope, Sir, you will excuse this intrusion, and believe me to be still, with much esteem, your friend and servant.

vol. x.

14 CORRESPONDENCE.

Thomas Mckean To John Adams

Philadelphia, 13 June, 1812.

On my return from a tour to the State of Delaware, I found your kind letter of the 2d instant, and thank you for this mark of esteem.

Our venerable friend Clinton has gone before us; so has the illustrious Washington, eleven years ago ; and I have nearly outlived all my early acquaintance. I remain the only surviv- ing member of the first American Congress, held in the city of New York in October, 1765 ; and but three more, of whom you are one, remain alive of the second, held in this city in Septem- ber, 1774. It was my fate to be delegated to that trust annually during the revolutionary war with Great Britain, until the pre- liminary articles of peace were signed in 1782, which afforded me an opportunity of knowing every member of Congress dur- ing the whole of that time ; and I declare with pleasure, and also with pride, that I embraced the political sentiments of none with more satisfaction (being congenial with my own) than yours, nor do I recollect a single question in which we differed.

It is true, I was a friend to the revolution in France, from the assembly of the Notables until the king was decapitated, which I deemed not only a very atrocious but a most absurd act. After the limited monarchy was abolished, I remained in a kind of apathy with regard to the leaders of the different parties, until I clearly perceived that nation was incapable at that time of being ruled by a a popular government; and when the few and afterwards an individual assumed a despotic sway over them, I thought them in a situation better than under the government of a mob, for I would prefer any kind of govern- ment to such a state, even tyranny to anarchy. On this sub- ject, then, I do not conceive we differed widely.

My dear Sir, at this time of our lives there can certainly be no question, as you observe, of honors, profits, rank or fame, between us. I shook hand with the world three years ago, and we said farewell to each other. The toys and rattles of child- hood would, in a few years more, be probably as suitable to me as office, honor, or wealth ; but, I thank God, the faculties of my mind are as yet little, if any thing, impaired, and my affec-

CORRESPONDENCE. 15

tions and friendships are unshaken : I do assure you that I venerate our early friendship, and am happy in a continuance of it.

Since my exemption from official and professional duties, I have enjoyed a tranquillity never (during a long protracted life) heretofore experienced, and my health and comforts are suffi- cient for a reasonable man.

Our country is at this moment in a critical situation ; the result is in the womb of fate. Our system of government, in peace, is the best in the world ; but how it will operate in war, is doubtful. This, however, is likely to be soon put to the test, and I sincerely regret it.

There is a cheerful air in your letter that evidences health, peace, and a competency, which that you may long enjoy is the sincere wish and ardent prayer of, dear Sir, your old friend and most obedient servant

Thomas McKban.

TO THOMAS MCKEAN.

Quincy, 21 June, 1812.

I have received your kind letter of the 13th of this month with emotions like those of two old friends after a separation of many years, such as we may suppose Ulysses to have felt on meeting one of his ancient associates (not one of the suitors) on his return to Ithaca.

Your name among the members of Congress in New York, in October, 1765, is, and has long been a singular distinction. I wish you would commit to writing your observations on the characters who composed that assembly, and the objects of your meeting. Otis and Ruggles are peculiarly interesting to me, and every thing that passed on that important occasion is and will be more and more demanded (and it is to be feared, in vain) by our posterity.

Of the Congress, in September, 1774, there remains Governor Johnson, of Maryland, Governor McKean, of Pennsylvania, Governor Jay, of New York, Judge Paine, of Massachusetts, and John Adams, not forgetting our venerable Charles Thom- son, Secretary.

You had an opportunity that was denied me in 1778, 1779,

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1780, 1781, 1782. I was in Europe from 1778 to 1788. There -was a great change in Congress soon after 1778. The Massa- chusetts men were chosen of a very different stamp from Han- cock, Sam Adams, and Gerry. Higginson, Gorham, King, Jackson, and Lowell were a batch of loaves of a very different flour from their predecessors. I would now give any thing for your knowledge of their oratory, dialectics, and principles and opinions. This nation now groans, and future ages, I fear, will have reason to rue the hunting of that day. After the peace, New York and Pennsylvania followed the example of Massachusetts, and brought in lukewarmness instead of zeal, not to say toryism in the place of whiggism.

I acknowledge that the most unaccountable phenomenon I ever beheld, in the seventy-seven years, almost, that I have lived, was to see men of the most extensive knowledge and deepest reflection entertain for a moment an opinion that a democratical republic could be erected in a nation of five-and- twenty millions of people, four-and-twenty millions and five hundred thousand of whom could neither read nor write.

My sentiments and feelings are in symphony with yours in another particular. The last eleven years of my life have been the most comfortable of the seventy-seven. I have never en- joyed so much in any equal period. Mr. Jefferson, I find, is equally happy. I have had opportunity, however, to know that the illustrious Washington was not, and that to his uneasiness in retirement great changes in the politics of this country were to be attributed, perhaps for the better, possibly for the worse. God knows. I am as cheerful as ever I was ; and my health is as good, excepting a quiveration of the hands, which disables me from writing in the bold and steady character of your letter, which I rejoice to see. Excuse the word quiveration, which, though I borrowed it from an Irish boy, I think an improve- ment in our language worthy a place in Webster's dictionary. Though my sight is good, my eyes are too weak for all the labor I require of them ; but as this is a defect of more than fifty years standing, there are no hopes of relief. The trepidation of the hands arising from a delicacy, or, if you will, a morbid irritability of nerves, has shown itself at times for more than half a century, but has increased for four or five years past, so as to extinguish all hopes that it will ever be less.

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The danger of our government is, that the General will be a man of more popularity than the President, and the army pos- sess more power than Congress. The people should be apprised of this, and guard themselves against it. Nothing is more essential than to hold the civil authority decidedly superior to the military power.

Wishing you life as long as you desire it, and every blessing in it, I remain, &c.

To Thomas Jefferson

Quincy, 28 June, 1812.

I know not what, unless it were the prophet of Tippecanoe, had turned my curiosity to inquiries after the metaphysical science of the Indians, their ecclesiastical establishments, and theological theories ; but your letter, written with all the accu- racy, perspicuity, and elegance of your youth and middle age, as it has given me great satisfaction, deserves my best thanks.1

It has given me satisfaction, because, while it has furnished me with information where all the knowledge is to be obtained that books afford, it has convinced me that I shall never know much more of the subject than I do now. As I have never aimed at making any collection of books upon this subject, I have none of those you have abridged in so concise a manner. Lafitau, Adair, and De Bry were known to me only by name.

The various ingenuity which has been displayed in inven- tions of hypotheses to account for the original population of America, and the immensity of learning profusely expended to support them, have appeared to me, for a longer time than I can possibly recollect, what the physicians call the liter ce nihil sanantes. Whether serpents' teeth were sown here and sprung up men ; whether men and women dropped from the clouds upon this Atlantic island ; whether the Almighty created them here, or whether they emigrated from Europe, are questions of no moment to the present or future happiness of man. Neither

1 This letter is not published in Mr. Randolph's edition of Jefferson. It re- lates entirely to the Indians, their manners and habits.

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18 CORRESPONDENCE.

agriculture, commerce, manufactures, fisheries, science, litera- ture, taste, religion, morals, nor any other good will be pro- moted, or any evil averted, by any discoveries that can be made

in answer to these questions.

... * *

The opinions of the Indians and their usages, as represented

in your obliging letter of the 11th June, appear to me to resem- ble the platonizing Philo, or the philonizing Plato, more than the genuine system of Judaism.

The philosophy both of Philo and Plato is at least as absurd ; it is indeed less intelligible./ Plato borrowed his doctrines from oriental and Egyptian philosophers, for he had travelled both in India and Egypt. .The oriental philosophy, imitated and adopted in part, if not the whole, both by Plato and Philo, was, 1. One God, the good. 2. The ideas, the thoughts, the rea- son, the intellect, the logos, the ratio of God. 3. Matter, the universe, the production of the logos, or contemplations of God. ' This matter was the source of evil., ,

Perhaps the three powers of Plato, Philo, the Egyptians and Indians, cannot be distinctly made from your account of the Indians ; but,

1. The great Spirit, the good, who is worshipped by the kings, sachems, and all the great men in their solemn festivals, as the author, the parent of good.

2. The devil, or the source of evil ; they are not metaphysi- cians enough as yet to suppose it, or at least to call it matter, like the wiseacres of antiquity and like Frederic the Great, who has written a very silly essay on the origin of evil, in which he ascribes it all to matter, as if this was an original discovery of his own.

The watch-maker has in his head an idea of the system of a watch, before he makes it. The mechanician of the universe had a complete idea of the universe before he made it, and this idea, this logos, was almighty, or at least powerful enough to produce the world ; but it must be made of matter, which was eternal. For creation out of nothing was impossible, and mat- ter was unmanageable. It would not and could not be fashioned into any system, without a large mixture of evil in it, for matter J was essentially evil.

The Indians are not metaphysicians enough to have dis- covered this idea, this logos, this intermediate power between

CORRESPONDENCE. 19

good and evil, God and matter. But of the two powers, the good and the evil, they seem to have a full conviction ; and what son or daughter of Adam and Eve has not?

This logos of Plato seems to resemble, if it was not the pro- totype of the Ratio and its Progress, of Manilius, the astrologer, of the Progress of the Mind, of Condorcet, and the Age of Jleason, of Tom Paine. n I would make a system, too. The seven hundred thousand soldiers of Zengis, when the whole or any part of them went to battle, set up a howl which resem- bled nothing that human imagination has conceived, unless it be the supposition that all the devils in hell were let loose at once to set up an infernal scream, which terrified then enemies and never failed to obtain them victory. The Indian yell resembles this ; and therefore America was peopled from Asia.

Another system. The armies of Zengis, sometimes two, three, or four hundred thousand of them, surrounded a province in a circle, and marched towards the centre, driving all the wild beasts before them — lions, tigers, wolves, bears, and every living thing — terrifying them with their howls and yells, their drums and trumpets, &c, till they terrified and tamed enough of them to victual the whole army. Therefore the Scotch high- landers, who practise the same thing in miniature, are emigrants from Asia. Therefore, the American Indians, who, for any thing I know, practise the same custom, are emigrants from Asia or Scotland.

I am weary of contemplating nations from the lowest and most beastly degradations of human life to the highest re- finement of civilization. I am weary of philosophers, theolo- gians, politicians, and historians. They are immense masses of absurdities, vices, and lies. Montesquieu had sense enough to say in jest, that all our knowledge might be comprehended in twelve pages in duodecimo ; and I believe him in earnest. I could express my faith in shorter terms. He who loves the workman and his work, and does what he can to preserve and improve it, shall be accepted of him.

I also have felt an interest in the Indians, and a commisera- tion for them, from my childhood. Aaron Pomham, the priest, and Moses Pomham, the king of the Punkapaug and Neponset tribes, were frequent visitors at my father's house, at least seventy years ago. I have a distinct remembrance of their

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forms and figures. They were very aged, and the tallest and stoutest Indians I have ever seen. The titles of king and priest, and the names of Moses and Aaron, were given them, no doubt, by our Massachusetts divines and statesmen. There was a numerous family in this town, whose wigwam was within a mile of this house. This family were frequently at my father's house, and I, in my boyish rambles, used to call at their wig- wam, where I never failed to be treated with whortleberries, blackberries, strawberries, or apples, plums, peaches, &c, for they had planted a variety of fruit trees about them ; but the girls went out to service and the boys to sea, till not a soul is left. We scarcely see an Indian in a year. I remember the time when Indian murders, scalpings, depredations, and confla grations, were as frequent on the eastern and northern frontiers of Massachusetts as they are now in Indiana, and spread as much terror. But since the conquest of Canada all this has ceased ; and I believe with you that another conquest of Canada will quiet the Indians forever, and be as great a blessing to them as to us.

The instance of Aaron Pomham made me suspect that there was an order of priesthood among them ; but according to your account, the worship of the good spirit was performed by the kings, sachems, and warriors, as among the ancient Germans, whose highest rank of nobility were priests ; the worship of the evil spirit by the conjurors, jongleurs, praestigiatores.

We have war now in earnest. I lament the contumacious spirit that appears about me, but I lament the cause that has given too much apology for it, the total neglect and absolute refusal of all maritime protection and defence. Money, mari- ners, and soldiers would be at the public service, if only a few frigates had been ordered to be built. Without this, our Union will be but a brittle China vase, a house of ice, or a palace of glass.

To Samuel B. Malcom

Quincy, 6 August, 1812.

Your favor of July 11th was duly received. Your resolution to subjugate yourself to the control of no party, is noble ; but

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have you considered all the consequences of it ? In the whole history of human life this maxim has rarely failed to anni- hilate the influence of the man who adopts it, and very often exposed him to the tragical vengeance of all parties.1

There are two tyrants in human life who domineer in all nations, in Indians and Negroes, in Tartars and Arabs, in Hin- doos and Chinese, in Greeks and Romans, in Britons and Gauls, as well as in our simple, youthful, and beloved United States of America.

These two tyrants are fashion and party. They are some- times at variance, and I know not whether their mutual hostil- ity is not the only security of human happiness. But they are forever struggling for an alliance with each other; and, when they are united, truth, reason, honor, justice, gratitude, and humanity itself in combination are no match for the coalition. Upon the maturest reflection of a long experience, I am much inclined to believe that fashion is the worst of all tyrants, be- cause he is the original source, cause, preserver, and supporter of all others.

Nothing short of the philosophy of Zeno, Socrates, Seneca, and Epictetus could ever support an ancient, and nothing short of the philosophy of Jesus could ever support a modern, in the resolution you have taken. Nothing less than the spirit of mar- tyrdom is sufficient; for martyrdom will infallibly ensue. Not always in flames at the stake, not always in the guillotine ; but in lies, slanders, insults, and privations, oftentimes more diffi- cult to bear than the horrors of Smithfield or the Place dc Louis XV.

Men have suffered martyrdom for party and for fashion in sufficient numbers ; but none for contempt of party and fashion, but upon principles of the highest order.

But to descend from these romantic heights. I wish to know the name and age of your son, and the meaning of the letter B in your name. Your printed publications I am anxious to see. I am sorry you left your practice at the bar. There is the scene of independence. Cannot you return to it? Integrity

1 Mr. Malcom had been Mr. Adams's private secretary during a part of his Presidential term. He had just, been an unsuccessful applicant for a judicial office under the federal government, to obtain which he had solicited Mr. Adams's aid. Mr. Jefferson had also been applied to. His letter to President Madison respecting it is in Mr. Randolph's collection. Vol. iv. p. 175.

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and skill at the bar, are better supporters of independence than any fortune, talents, or eloquence elsewhere. A man of genius, talents, eloquence, integrity, and judgment at the bar, is the most independent man in society. Presidents, governors, senat- ors, judges, have not so much honest liberty ; but it ought always to be regulated by prudence, and never abused.

Judge Vanderkemp is a great man, a star of the first magni- tude under a thick cloud.

Smith has been the enemy of no man but himself ; I lament the loss to the nation of military talents and experience, but I fear it is irremediable.

Without entering into any moral, political, or religious dis- cussions of the subject of private combats, and individual ad- ministration of justice in one's own case, I cannot but lament that the sacred, solemn bench of justice should exhibit perpe- tual exemplifications of the practice before the people. This is not conformable to the policy even of Europe, where duelling is not carried to such rancorous, deliberate, and malicious excess as it is in America. Aristides, 1 do not remember to have read.1 Colonel Burr, Attorney- General Burr, Senator Burr, Vice-President Burr, almost President Burr, has returned to New York. What is to be his destiny ?

Emulation, rivalry, ambition, have unlimited scope under our forms of government. We have seen enough already to ad- monish us what we have to expect in future. My poor coarse boudoir, five or six-and-twenty years ago, held up mirrors in which our dear countrymen might have seen their pictures. If this is vanity, it is also cool philosophy.

From your real well-wisher.

To William Keteltas

Quincy, 25 November, 1812.

Sir, — I have received your polite letter of the 6th of the month and your present of the " Crisis." You will excuse a

1 A pamphlet with this signature, ascribed to Mr. W. P. Van Ness, who ob- tained the office for which Mr. Malcom had applied. He was Colonel Burr's second in the duel with Mr. Hamilton.

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question or two. In page first, you say, " Our administrations, with the exception of Washington's, have been party adminis- trations." On what ground do you except Washington's ? If by party you mean majority, his majority was the smallest of the four in all his legislative and executive acts, though not in his election.

You say, " our divisions began with federalism and anti- federalism." Alas ! they began with human nature ; they have existed in America from its first plantation. In every colony, divisions always prevailed. In New York, Pennsylvania, Vir- ginia, Massachusetts, and all the rest, a court and country party have always contended. Whig and tory disputed very sharply before the revolution, and in every step during the revolution. Every measure of Congress, from 1774 to 1787 inclusively, was disputed with acrimony, and decided by as small majorities as any question is decided in these days. We lost Canada then, as we are like to lose it now, by a similar opposition. Away, then, with your false, though popular distinctions in favor of Washington.

In page eleventh, you recommend a "constitutional rotation, to destroy the snake in the grass ; " but the snake will elude your snare. Suppose your President in rotation is to be chosen for Rhode Island. There will be a federal and a republican candi- date in that State. Every federalist in the nation will vote for the former, and every republican for the latter. The light troops on both sides will skirmish ; the same northern and southern distinctions will still prevail; the same running and riding, the same railing and reviling, the same lying and libelling, cursing and swearing, will still continue. The same caucusing, as- semblaging, and conventioning.

In the same page eleventh, you speak of a " portion of our own people who palsy the arm of the nation." There is too much truth in this. When I was exerting every nerve to vin- dicate the honor, and demand a redress of the wrongs of the nation against the tyranny of France, the arm of the nation was palsied by one party. Now Mr. Madison is acting the same part, for the same ends, against Great Britain, the arm of the nation is palsied by the opposite party. And so it will always be while we feel like colonists, dependent for protection on France or England ; while we have so little national public

24 CORRESPONDENCE.

opinion, so little national principle, national feeling, national patriotism ; "while we have no sentiment of our own strength, power, and resources.

I thank you, Sir, for reminding me, in page twelfth, of my " many blunders in my administration," and should have been still more obliged to you, if you had enumerated them in detail, that I might have made a confession of them one by one, repented of them on conviction, and made all the atonement for them now in my power. In the same page, you observe, that " you never knew how far I extended my views as to a maritime force." I will tell you, Sir. My views extend very far — as far as Colonel Barre's, when, in his last speech in parliament, he exclaimed, " Who shall dare to set limits to the commerce and naval power of this country?" Yet I know that Washington city was not built in a day, any more than Rome. I am not for any extravagant efforts. Your plan of a ship of the largest size for the whole, and a frigate of the largest size for each State, would satisfy me for the present.

Your last sentence is a jewel, " a monarchy of justice, an aristocracy of wisdom, and a democracy of freedom."

As I never knew your person, nor heard your name, till I read it in your letter, I hope you will excuse the freedom of your obedient servant.

To J. B. Varnum

Quincy, 5 January, 1813.

The foundation of an American navy, which I presume is now established by law, is a grand era in the history of the world. The consequences of it will be greater than any of us can fore- see. Look to Asia and Africa, to South America and to Europe for its effects. My private opinion had been for fri- gates and smaller vessels, but I rejoice that the ideas of Con- gress have been greater. The four quarters of the world are in a ferment. We shall interfere everywhere. Nothing but a navy under Heaven can secure, protect, or defend us.

It is an astonishment to every enlightened man in Europe,

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who considers us at all, that we have been so long insensible and inattentive to this great instrument of national prosperity, this most efficacious arm of national power, independence, and safety.

I could give you many proofs of this, but I will confine my- self to two. In June, 1779, I dined with Monsieur Thevenard, intendant of the navy at Lorient, certainly one of the most experienced, best read, and most scientific naval commanders in Europe. That excellent officer said to me, in the hearing of the Chevalier de la Luzerne, Mr. Marbois, and twenty offi- cers of the French navy, " Your country is about to become the first naval power in the world." My answer was, " It is im- possible to foresee what may happen a hundred, or two or three hundred years hence, but there is at present no appearance of probability of any great maritime power in America for a long time to come." " Hundred years ! " said Thevenard, " It will not be twenty years before you will be a match for any mari- time powers of Europe." " You surprise me, Sir ; I have no suspicion or conception of any such great things. Will you allow me to ask your reasons for such an opinion." " My rea- sons ! " said Mr. Thevenard, " My reasons are very obvious. You have all the materials, and the knowledge and skill to em- ploy them. You have timber, hemp, tar, and iron, seamen and naval architects equal to any in the world." " I know we have oak and pine and iron, and we may have hemp ; but I did not know that our shipwrights were equal to yours in Europe." " The frigate in which you came here," said Mr. Thevenard (the Alliance, Captain Landais) " is equal to any in Europe. I have examined her, and I assure you there is not in the king's service, nor in the English navy, a frigate more perfect and com- plete in materials or workmanship." " It gives me great plea- sure, Sir, to hear your opinion. I know we had or might have materials, but I had not flattered myself that we had artists equal to those in Europe." Mr. Thevenard repeated with em- phasis, " You may depend upon it, there is not in Europe a more perfect piece of naval architecture than your Alliance, and indeed several other of your frigates that have already arrived here and in other ports of France." My reply was, " Your character forbids me to scruple any opinion of yours in naval affairs ; but one thing I know, we delight so much in

vol. x. 3

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peace and hate war so heartily that it will be a long time before we shall trouble ourselves with naval forces. We shall pro- bably have a considerable commerce and some nurseries of seamen, but we had so much wild land, and the most of us loved land so much better than sea, that many years must pass before we should be ambitious of power upon the ocean. We had land enough. No temptation to go abroad for conquests. If the powers of Europe should let us alone, we should sleep quietly for ages without thinking much of ships of war."

I returned to America, and staid about three months, when Congress sent me to Europe again. We landed at Ferrol, in Spain. In a few days a French squadron of five ships of the line came in. I was soon invited to dine with the Admiral, or, as the French call him, General or Chef d'Escadre, the Count de Sade, with all the officers of the squadron, on board his eighty gun ship. At table, in the hearing of all the company, the Count said to me, " Your Congress will soon become one of the great maritime powers." " Not very soon, Monsieur le Comte ; it must be a long time first." " Why a long time ? No people have such advantages." " There are many causes in the way." " What difficulties ? No nation has such nurse- ries for seamen so near it. You have the best timber for the hulks of ships, and best masts and spars ; you have pitch, tar, and turpentine ; you have iron plenty, and I am informed you grow hemp ; you have skilful ship-builders. What is wanting ? " " The will, Monsieur le Comte ; the will may be wanting and nothing else." " We have a maxim among us mariners, that with wood, hemp, and iron, a nation may do what it pleases. If you get your independence, as I doubt not you will, the trade of all nations will be open to you, and you will have a very extensive commerce, and such a commerce will want pro- tection." " We must have a considerable commerce, but our lands will be so much out of proportion to our trade, that if the powers of Europe do not disturb us, it must be ages before we shall want a navy, or be willing to bear the expense of it."

I said I would give you two anecdotes. I will add a third. In 1778 I went to France in the Boston, frigate. We took a very rich prize commanded by a captain who had served twenty years in the British navy, several of them as a lieutenant. The captain became very curious to examine the ship. Captain

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Tucker allowed him to see every part of her. As we lived together in the cabin, we became very intimate. He frequently expressed to me his astonishment. He said he had never seen a completer ship; that there was not a frigate in the royal navy better built, of better materials or more perfectly equipped, fur- nished, or armed. " However," he added, " you are the rising country of the world, and if you can send to sea such ships as this, you will soon be able to do great things."

To John Langdon

Quincy, 24 January, 1813.

I feel an irresistible propensity to compare notes with you, in order to ascertain whether your memory and mine coincide in the recollection of the circumstances of a particular transaction in the history of this country. As it lies in my mind, Captain John Manly applied to General Washington, in Cambridge, in 1775, informed him that British transports and merchant ships were frequently passing and repassing unarmed, and asked leave to put a few guns on board a vessel to cruise for them. Washington, either shrinking from the boldness of the enter- prise, or doubting his authority, prudently transmitted the in- formation to Congress in a letter. When the letter was read, many members seemed much surprised ; but a motion was made, and seconded, to commit it to a special committee. Op- position was made to this motion, and a debate ensued; but the motion prevailed by a small majority. The committee ap- pointed were John Langdon, Silas Deane, and John Adams. We met, and at once agreed to report a resolution, authorizing General Washington to fit and arm one or more vessels for the purpose. A most animated opposition and debate arose upon this report, but the resolution was carried by a small majority. Under the authority of this resolution, Washington fitted out Manly, who soon brought in several prizes, the most important of which was that transport loaded with soldiers, arms, ammu- nition, and that immortal mortar, which was called the Con- gress, and finally drove the British army out of Boston, and

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their fleet out of the harbor. This splendid success inspired new courage into Congress. They appointed a new committee, consisting of yourself, Governor Hopkins, Richard Henry Lee, Mr. Gadsden, and me, to purchase, arm, equip, officer, and man ships. We met every night, and, in a short time, had the Al- fred, Columbus, Cabot, Andrew Doria, Providence, at sea under Commodore Hopkins. The naval enterprise of Congress increased fast. They soon appointed a committee of one from each State, of which you was one, and ordered twelve frigates to be built.

My recollection has been excited lately by information from Philadelphia, that Paul Jones has written in his journal, " My hand first hoisted the American flag," and that Captain Barry used to say, that the " first British flag struck to him." Both these vain boasts I know to be false, and, as you know them to be so, I wish to have your testimony to corroborate mine.

It is not decent nor just that those emigrants, foreigners of the south, should falsely arrogate to themselves merit that be- longs to New England sailors, officers, and men. Wishing you a healthy, pleasant year, I remain your old friend.

John Langdon To John Adams

Portsmouth, 27 January, 1813.

Respected Sir, — I had the honor of receiving by the last mail your letter of the 24th instant, by which I see your time is taken up, and your mind continually on the stretch, for the sup- port and honor of our beloved country. You request me to call to mind " the circumstances of a particular transaction in the history of this country," to which I answer that, upon read- ing your correct statement of the proceedings of Congress on our naval matters, the appointment of Committees, of which we were a part, the struggle we had to begin our little navy, and the opposition that was made by many members of Con- gress, it brings to my recollection the circumstances that took place in 1775, in all which, as far as I can recollect, I most per- fectly coincide with you. The appointment of Manly, and his

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successes, must be well known throughout the United States. As to Paul Jones, if my memory serves me, pretending to say that " his hand first hoisted the American flag," and Captain Barry, that " the first British flag struck to him," they are both unfounded, as it is impressed on my mind that many prizes were brought into the New England States before their names were mentioned.

I am, dear Sir, always happy to hear from you that you are in good health, and able still to continue your preeminent ser- vices to your country.

Mrs. Langdon, who, I am sorry to say, has been very unwell for some time past, joins me in our most sincere respects to yourself and your good lady, whom we have in grateful remem- brance.

That your last days may be your best and happiest, is the wish of, &c. John Langdon.

To Elbridge Gerry

Quincy, 28 Januaiy, 1813.

Vive la bagatelle! How shall we cure that distemper of the mind, State vanity? You know to what a degree the ancient dominion was infected with it, and how many sacri- fices we have been obliged to make to it. You remember how Pennsylvania had it. Pennsylvania was " first in arts and arms ! " Philadelphia was " the heart of the Union ! " so said George Ross. Dr. Lyman Hall, of Georgia, readily acknow- ledged that she was the heart, because we know that " the heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked." Now, New York is to be placed at the head. Our poor old tame, good-natured pussy Massachusetts, who has the distem- per in her heart deeper than any of them, has been obliged to turn and to flatter, to dissimulate and to simulate, in plain English, as Governor Hopkins once said, or rather was accused of saying, to coax, lie, and flatter in order to carry her points, and save herself from perdition. Her distemper, however, seems to be now rising, and approaching to the delirium of a fever. These are objects too great for my genius. I dare

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not rise to greater things than ensigns, midshipmen, pursers, or deputy-quartermasters. My present topic is smaller than either.

Philadelphia is now boasting that Paul Jones has asserted in his journal that "his hand hoisted the first American flag!" And Captain Barry has asserted that " the first British flag was struck to him ! "

Now, I assert that the first American flag was hoisted by John Manly, and the first British flag was struck to him. You were not in Congress in 1775, but you were in the State Con- gress, and must have known the history of Manly's capture of the transport which contained the mortar, which afterwards, on Dorchester heights, drove the English army from Boston, and navy from the harbor. I pray you, give me your recollections upon this subject. I wish to know the number of transports and merchant ships, and their names, captured by Manly or any of his associates, in 1775 — 6.

As your time and thoughts must be employed upon subjects of much greater moment, I hope you will not give yourself any trouble about this little thing. Your first recollections will be sufficient.

TO ELBRIDGE GERRY.

Quincy, 11 February, 1813

I am much obliged by your favor of the 9th, just received. Though I called the subject of my former letter a bagatelle, it is perhaps of some importance ; for, as a navy is now an object, I think a circumstantial history of naval operations in this country ought to be written, even as far back as the province ship under Captain Hallowell, &c, and perhaps earlier still.

Looking into the journal of Congress for 1775, I find on Fri day, September 22, 1775, Congress resolved that a committee be appointed to take into consideration the state of the trade of America.

Monday, September 25, 1775. Congress took into consider- ation the letters from General Washington, Nos. 5 and 6, and two others not numbered. Resolved, that a committee of three

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be appointed to prepare an answer. Mr. Lynch, Mr. Lee, and Mr. Adams were chosen. But our accurate secretary has not stated whether it was Samuel or John Adams.

Thursday, October 5, 1775. Resolved, that a committee of three be appointed to prepare a plan for intercepting two ves- sels, which are on their way to Canada, laden with arms and powder ; and that the committee proceed on this business im- mediately.

Our correct secretary has omitted the names of this commit- tee ; but if my memory has not created something out of no- thing, this committee were Silas Deane, John Langdon, and John Adams. On the same day, the committee appointed to prepare a plan for intercepting the two vessels bound to Ca- nada, brought in a report, which was taken into consideration.1

December 13th. Congress resolved, on the report of the com- mittee, to build thirteen ships ; five of thirty-two guns, five of twenty-eight, and three of twenty -four; and, December 12th, appointed a committee of thirteen, one from each State, to do the business. I was gone home, by leave of Congress ; but I presume Barry and Jones were appointed by this committee.

General Heath, in his Memoirs, page 30, says, November 4th, (1775,) "the privateers fitted out by the Americans about this time, began to send in a few prizes." Page 31, November 30th, he says, " intelligence was received from Cape Ann, that a ves- sel from England, laden with warlike stores, had been taken and brought into that place. There were on board one thirteen- inch brass mortar, two thousand stand of arms, one hundred thousand flints, thirty-two tons of leaden ball, &c, &c. A for- tunate capture for the Americans! December 2d, the brass thirteen-inch mortar, and sundry military stores taken in the ordnance prize, were brought to camp."

Pray, write to Captain John Selman, of Marblehead, and pray him to commit his recollections to writing. Broughton and Sel- man are important characters, and their ten prizes important events, as well as Governor Wright. Pray let me have the act and the preamble ; curiosities they are. Who was Captain Burke and the other, Campbell and military stores, &c. ? These

1 The list of Acts and proceedings of Congress is omitted, as the same is found in the autobiography. Vol. iii. p. 8-10.

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facts ought all to be ascertained. Heath was mistaken ; priva- teering was not yet authorized by Congress or the State.

P. S. What might not Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island do, at this day, had they the patriotism of 1775 ?

To James Monroe

Quincy, 23 February, 1813.

I thank you for your favor of the loth, and the able report of the committee of foreign relations, and a very conciliatory bill for the regulation of seamen. I call it conciliatory, because in theory it should appear to be so, and because I believe it was sincerely intended to be so. The views were upright and the motives pure which produced it, I have no doubt. But will the present ministry in Great Britain receive it with equal candor ? Will the parliament or the nation accept it ? 1 be- lieve not. My reasons for this opinion are too many to be enumerated in detail ; but one or two may be suggested.

1. Equality, reciprocity, and indeed the right of an independ- ent nation require that the imperial parliament of Great Britain should pass an act forbidding the employment of American seamen, not only in their royal navy, but in their merchant ser- vice. Will ministry, parliament, or nation consent to this? I think not, at least at present, nor for a long time to come. Why ? Because, if they do, Sweden, Denmark, Portugal, indeed all other nations will demand a similar law relative to their seamen.

2. It is only necessary to look in the Index of the British Statutes at large, to find a number of statutes offering and pro- mising rewards, temptations, and allurements to foreign sea- men of all nations to enter the service in the royal navy and the merchant ships too, and promising them by the faith of the nation all the rights and privileges of natural-born subjects. Will they repeal all these laws ?

3. Will Great Britain stipulate to renounce the power of employing American seamen ? On this subject I may be de-

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ceived. And I desire to be understood to speak with diffidence. But I am suspicious, nay, persuaded, they have not only the im- pressed and enlisted American seamen on board their men-of- war to an amount of many thousands, but many more in their merchant ships and their transports. Among the documents attending one of their financial reports, was an article of four or five millions sterling for the pay of foreign seamen, in the merchant service, to the number of forty thousand. How came the government to pay seamen in the private service of mer- chants? I presume that foreign seamen have been em ployed not only in the transport service, but in forcing a clandestine commerce with the continent. And who were those foreign seamen ? Nine tenths of them probably Americans.

The next question is, will this bill conciliate and unite the American people ? It may put an argument into the mouths of some of the friends of the present administration, and take one away from some in the opposition ; but it will not diminish the dread of taxes in the sordid, of whom the number is very great, nor extinguish the ambition to become the dominant party.

I hope you have by this time letters from Petersburg. We have only two since August. One containing nothing but a me- lancholy account of the death of the only daughter my son ever had. The other I will venture to inclose to you, in confidence, praying you to return it to me by the post. It is to his mother, and not intended to be seen by any but his family ; but it con- tains more than usual of public affairs. We dare not correspond with him, nor he with us, upon public affairs. The times are too dangerous. Our letters have been almost all opened, many read by government in France and England ; some produced in Court of Admiralty, yet all sent on at last. We have never lost but one letter. You may conclude from this that we have not offended High Mightinesses in France or England.

To John Lathrop

Quincy, 22 March, 1813.

Reverend Sir, — I thank you for your kind letter of the 19th, and for the valuable present of your discourse, occasioned

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by the death of Dr. Eliot. I had, indeed, " an acquaintance with the late Dr. Eliot," and with his father, and " an affection " for both.

I believe them both to have been '' candid, pious, learned, sincere, and amiable," but I never had the felicity to belong to the same denomination in politics with either of them. Al- though I acknowledge much merit in the younger Dr. Eliot, in the labor and research discovered in his Biographical Dictionary, and its general utility, I must, nevertheless, own my regret for the numerous evidences of political prejudices. To such pre- judices, however, I have found through the whole course of my life the very greatest and the very best men more or less liable.

I know nothing of the mediation, nor of the hopes of peace. I carefully avoid all secrets of government. Nothing has been presented to my mind, on which I can ground my hopes of a speedy peace. Your aspirations, my dear Doctor, after peace, are becoming your philosophical, moral, and Christian character. But you and I must remember that " sufferings become power- ful means of checking the progress of folly and vice ; " that " the miseries we feel or fear are the consequences of mani- fold abuses of Divine goodness."

Let me add an observation which your learning and expe- rience must have made, because all ages and nations have attested to its truth ; — that mankind, in general, and our be- loved country, in particular, bear adversity much better than prosperity.

When I look back upon the period which has passed since you and I settled in Boston, in 1768, upon the lawyers, the physicians, and the merchants, who have departed, though I have made no exact enumeration, I cannot perceive that the number of divines is greater in proportion than in either of those professions. I see no reason, therefore, to surmise that the clergy have been distinguished from the laity in the important article of mortality. The moment cannot be distant, my excel- lent friend, when you and I must follow the multitude of our acquaintance, who have gone before us to a region where we shall meet the two Dr. Eliots, and other worthies of whatever nation, sect, or party, and smile at the little passions and smaller prejudices, which divide us in this region of wisdom and folly, virtue and vice, light and darkness, ignorance and knowledge,

CORRESPONDENCE. 35

where, however, the good predominates immensely over the evil, whatever in peevish moments we may think or say. I am, dear Sir, with high esteem and sincere respect, your friend.

To William Plumer

Quincy, 28 March, 1813.

You inquire, in your kind letter of the 19th, whether " every member of Congress did, on the 4th of July, 1776, in fact, cor- dially approve of the declaration of independence."

They who were then members, all signed it, and, as I could not see their hearts, it would be hard for me to say that they did not approve it ; but, as far as I could penetrate the intricate, internal foldings of their souls, I then believed, and have not since altered my opinion, that there were several who signed with regret, and several others, with many doubts and much lukewarmness. The measure had been upon the carpet for months, and obstinately opposed from day to day. Majorities were constantly against it. For many days the majority de- pended on Mr. Hewes, of North Carolina. While a member, one day, was speaking, and reading documents from all the colonies, to prove that the public opinion, the general sense of all, was in favor of the measure, when he came to North Caro- lina, and produced letters and public proceedings which demon- strated that the majority of that colony were in favor of it, Mr. Hewes, who had hitherto constantly voted against it, started suddenly upright, and lifting up both his hands to Heaven, as if he had been in a trance, cried out, " It is done ! and I will abide by it." I would give more for a perfect painting of the terror and horror upon the faces of the old majority, at that critical moment, than for the best piece of Raphael. The question, however, was eluded by an immediate motion for adjournment.

The struggle in Congress was long known abroad. Some members, who foresaw that the point would be carried, left the house and went home, to avoid voting in the affirmative or negative. Pennsylvania and New Jersey recalled all their dele- gates who had voted against independence, and sent new ones

36 CORRESPONDENCE.

expressly to vote for it. The last debate but one was the most copious and the most animated; but the question was now evaded by a motion to postpone it to another day ; some mem- bers, however, declaring that, if the question should be now demanded, they should vote for it, but they wished for a day or two more to consider of it. When that day arrived, some of the new members desired to hear the arguments for and against the measure. When these were summarily recapitulated, Hie question was put and carried. There were no yeas and nays in those times. A committee was appointed to draw a decla- ration ; when reported, it underwent abundance of criticism and alteration ; but, when finally accepted, all those members who had voted against independence, now declared they would sign and support it.

The appointment of General Washington to the command, in 1775, of an army in Cambridge, consisting altogether of New England men, over the head of officers of their own flesh and choice, a most hazardous step, was another instance of apparent unanimity, and real regret in nearly one half. But this history is too long for this letter.

The taxes must be laid, and the war supported.

I have nothing from my son since 28th October. I know not how we shall ever get him home, though that is the most anxious wish of my heart. Pray write him as often as you can. I regret the change of hands in New Hampshire at this junc- ture very much.

TO ELBRIDGE GERRY.

Quincy, 14 April, 1813.

I have received your favors of the 8th and 10th, and the vo- lume of Benjamin Edes's Gazettes, printed at Watertown be- tween the 5th of June, 1775, and the 9th of December, 1776.

I am much obliged to you and to Mr. Austin for the loan of this precious collection of memorials.

I read last fall and winter The Scottish Chiefs, Thaddeus of Warsaw, and The Exiles of Siberia, and Scott's Lay, Marmion, and Lady, I must say, with much interest and amusement;

CORRESPONDENCE. 37

but this volume of gazettes, and the journals of Congress for the same period, which I have lately run over, have given me much more heartfelt delight. If these volumes appear to you as they do to me, how can we wonder at the total ignorance and obli- vion of the revolution, which appears everywhere in the present generation ? All the Boston orations on the 4th of July that I have ever read or heard, contain not so much of " the manners and feelings and principles which led to the revolution," as these two volumes of gazettes and journals.

The act printed in the Gazette of November 13th, 1775, " In the sixteenth year of the reign of George the Third, king, &c, an act for encouraging the fitting out of armed vessels to defend the sea-coast of America, and for erecting a court to try and condemn all vessels that shall be found infesting the same," is one of the most important documents in history.1 The decla- ration of independence is a brimborion in comparison with it. Why may not the Chronicle or the Patriot reprint this law? Surely, this could be no libel. Neither editors nor printers need consult lawyers, to know whether Chief Justice Parsons could find any expression in it, to give in charge to a grand jury.

The best care shall be taken of this volume, and it shall be returned to Mr. Austin with thanks.

Commodore Williams's " record of our earliest privateers and prizes " will be received with gratitude ; but I should be glad to see them in the Chronicle and Centinel. Had I not been in Congress at the time, and as anxious as Martha about many things, I should be ashamed to acknowledge that I am unac- quainted with his person, character, and residence.

I can conceive of no possible objection against the publica- tion of these things at this time, except that they do too much honor to Vice-President Gerry and to the memory of the late Governor Sullivan. " Quorum pars magna fui " might be as- sumed by them with more propriety than by your assured friend.

1 This act was drawn by Mr. Gerry and Mr. Sullivan, for the Provincial Congress of Massachusetts.

VOL. X. 4

38 CORRESPONDENCE.

To Benjamin Waterhouse

Quincy, 5 June, 1813.

I read, within a few days, an address to General and Go- vernor Gage, from the bar, and the name of Caleb Strong among the addressers. This, to be sure, is a characteristic trait. In former parts of my life I have known somewhat of the thing called a bar — a significant word, and an important thing.

By all that I remember of the history of England, the British Constitution has been preserved by the bar. In all civil con- tests and political struggles, the lawyers have been divided ; some have advocated the prerogatives of the crown, and some the rights of the people. All, or at least a majority, have united, at last, in restoring and improving the Constitution.

The principles, the characters, and the views of the American bar at this time are unknown or incomprehensible to me. What is the American bar ? Who are the men ? What are their names ? Has their education been alike ? Are their principles the same ? Are Tucker and Story united in theory ? I might proceed with my questions for half an hour. But, I will con- clude with an anecdote. When Governor Hutchinson was about to leave his government and embark for England, a meet- ing of the bar was summoned in Boston. We met. A motion was made to " address the Governor upon his departure from the government of his native province. It "was peculiarly pro- per for the bar, who had served under him as Chief Justice of the province, and witnessed his great abilities and integrity, to express publicly their high esteem of his character, and appro- bation of his conduct as Chief Justice, as Lieutenant-Governor, and as Governor."

No opposition was made, though father Dana, William Reed,1 Samuel Swift, and Josiah Quincy, Junior, Esquires, were pre- sent. All was going on swimmingly. After some time, John Adams, whose destiny has always been to mount breaches and lead the forlorn hope, arose from his seat and modestly inquired

1 The copy, which is quite defective, says John in one place and Joseph in the other, but John had been dead many years. Of William Reed, the only one of the name at the bar at this time, Mr. Washburn confesses his inability to gain any information. Judicial History of Massachusetts.

CORRESPONDENCE. 39

whether the proposed address was to be presented to the Go- vernor, and go to the public, as the address of the bar as a body, to be signed by their president or secretary, or whether it was to be signed and presented as the act of individuals. The answer from all quarters was, " by the bar as a body, to be sure." John Adams then said, it would be unfair to send out to the world an address, as an act of the whole bar, when some of them could not approve it. He had no desire to control any man in the expression of his sentiments, but was not willing to have his own suppressed. He had no objection to an address to be drawn, signed, and presented by those gentlemen who should approve it ; but the bar* was not a legal corporation, and had no public authority. The minority, therefore, however small, could not be controlled, and ought not to be restrained from expressing their opinions ; and ought not to be involved in a general vote. This ought to have been sufficient, but it was not. Still the cry was, " the bar ! " The address must be from the bar !

Poor John was obliged, at last, to rise once more and say, " To be sure, it is in the power of the majority to vote, and to address, and to present and publish their addresses as the act of the bar ; but it was not in their power to prevent the minor- ity from publishing their dissent. He knew not whether he should be joined or countenanced by any other ; but he would attend, and when the address should be discussed, he would give his opinions and his reasons, and, if an address was finally adopted by the bar, as a bar, in which any thing should be in- serted to which he could not agree, he would enter his protest against it, in writing, and assign his reasons. Whether any other gentlemen would join him, he knew not. But, if not, he would stand alone." Josiah Quincy, Junior, Esquire, and Sa- muel Swift, Esquire, as if appalled and astonished, sat mute. John Lowell, Esquire, said, in a kind of hurry, " This declaration does great honor to Mr. Adams" Daniel Leonard, Esquire, said : " If there is to be a protest, and reasons assigned, and all this to be published, the whole design will be defeated, and it would be better to have no address at «//."

John Adams then said, " he neither approved the administra- tion of Mr. Hutchinson as Lieutenant-Governor, as Chief Jus- tice, nor as Governor, and he would not suffer his opinion to be

40 CORRESPONDENCE.

equivocal." Your knowledge of human nature is deep enough to infer the character of Lowell, Leonard, and Quincy, from what they said or what they said not. The plan of an address from the bar, as a body, was laid aside.

Had John Adams been compelled to produce his protest, Richard Dana, William Reed, Samuel Swift, Benjamin Kent, and Josiah Quincy, Junior, would have signed it. Auchmuty, Sewall, Fitch, Samuel Quincy, Ben. Gridley, Blowers, Caz- neau, &c, &c, would have been against them.1

You have, and ought to have, a tenderness for the memories of Hutchinson and Olivers. So have I, more than you suspect. Yet you must know the truth, and nothing but the truth, from

John Adams.

TO THOMAS JEFFERSON.

Quincy, 10 June, 1813.

In your letter to Dr. Priestley, of March 21st, 1801, you ask, " What an effort of bigotry in politics and religion have we gone through ! The barbarians really flattered themselves they should be able to bring back the times of vandalism, when ignorance put every thing into the hands of power and priestcraft. All advances in science were proscribed as innovations. They pre- tended to praise and encourage education, but it was to be the education of our ancestors ; we were to look backward, not for- ward, for improvement, the President himself declaring, in one of his answers to addresses, that we were never to expect to go beyond them in real science." I shall stop here. Other parts of this letter may hereafter be considered, if I can keep the book long enough ; but only four copies have arrived in Boston, and they have spread terror ; as yet, however, in secret.'2

" The President himself declaring that we were never to ex-

1 Hutchinson speaks of the address, which was actually presented, as having been signed by " the gentlemen of the law, with three or four exceptions only." None of the names of the persons placed in the first category are found attached to it. All those included in the second signed it.

2 This letter had just appeai-ed at this time, in the appendix to Belsham's Memoirs of TheopMlus Lindsey. It is included in Mr. Randolph's edition of Jefferson's Writings, vol. iii. p. 461.

CORRESPONDENCE. 41

pect to go beyond them in real science." This sentence shall be the theme of my present letter. I would ask what President is meant. I remember no such sentiment in any of Washing- ton's answers to addresses. I myself must have been meant. Now, I have no recollection of any such sentiment ever issuing from my pen or my tongue, or of any such thought in my heart for at least sixty years of my past life. I should be obliged to you for the words of any answer of mine that you have thus misunderstood. «

A man of seventy-seven or seventy-eight cannot commonly be expected to recollect promptly every passage of his past life, \ or every trifle he has written. Much less can it be expected of me to recollect every expression of every answer to an ad- dress, when, for six months together, I was compelled to answer addresses of all sorts, from all quarters of the Union. My pri- vate secretary has declared that he has copied fifteen answers from me in one morning. The greatest affliction, distress, con- fusion of my administration arose from the necessity of receiv- ing and answering these addresses. Richard Cromwell's trunk did not contain so many of the lives and fortunes of the Eng- lish nation as mine of those in the United States. For the honor of my country I wish these addresses and answers were annihilated. For my own character and reputation, I wish every word of every address and every answer were published.

The sentiment that you have attributed to me in your letter to Dr. Priestley, I totally disclaim, and demand, in the French sense of the word, of you the proof. It is totally incongruous to every principle of my mind and every sentiment of my heart for three score years at least.

You may expect many more expostulations from one who has loved and esteemed you for eight-and-thirty years.

When this letter was ready to go, your favor of May 27th came to hand.1 I can only thank you for it at present.

1 Published by Randolph, vol. iv. p. 191.

42 CORRESPONDENCE.

TO THOMAS JEFFERSON.

Quincy, 14 June, 1813.

In your letter to Dr. Priestley, of March 21st, 1801, you " ten- der to him the protection of those laws which were made for the wise and good like him, and disclaim the legitimacy of that libel on legislation, which, under the form of a law, was, for some time, placed among them." This law, I presume, was the alien law, as it was called.

As your name is subscribed to that law, as Vice-President, and mine as President, I know not why you are not as respon- sible for it as I am. Neither of us was concerned in the forma- tion of it. We were then at war with France. French spies then swarmed in our cities and our country; some of them were intolerably impudent, turbulent, and seditious. To check these, was the design of this law. Was there ever a govern- ment which had not authority to defend itself against spies in its own bosom — spies of an enemy at war ? This law was never executed by me in any instance.

But what is the conduct of our government now? Aliens are ordered to report their names, and obtain certificates once a month ; and an industrious Scotchman, at this moment kwiasc trkmsly laboring in my garden, is obliged to walk once a month to Boston, eight miles at least, to renew his certificate from the marshal. And a fat organist is ordered into the country, '&c All this is right. Every government has, by the law of nations, a right to make prisoners of war of every subject of an enemy. But a war with England differs not from a war with France. The law of nations is the same in both.

I cannot write volumes on a single sheet, but these letters of yours require volumes from me.

'" The mighty wave of public opinion, which has rolled over!" This is in your style ; and, sometimes, in mine, with less preci- sion and less delicacy. O, Mr. Jefferson ! what a wave of public opinion has rolled over the universe ! By the universe here, I mean our globe. I can yet say, "there is nothing new under the sun " in my sense. The reformation rolled a wave of public opinion over the globe, as wonderful as this. A war of thirty years was necessary to compose this wave. The wars of Char-

lie <

CORRESPONDENCE. 43

lemagne rolled a wave. The Crusades rolled a wave more mountainous than the French revolution. Only one hundred years ago, a wave was rolled, when Austria, England, and Holland, in alliance, contended against France for the domi- nion, or rather, the alliance of Spain.

Had " the clock run down," I am not so sanguine as you that the consequence would have been as you presume. I was determined, in all events, to retire. You and Mr. Madison are indebted to Bayard for an evasion of the contest. Had the voters for Burr addressed the nation, I am not sure that your convention would have decided in your favor.1 But what reflec- tions does this suggest ! What pretensions had Aaron Burr to be President or Vice-President ?

What " a wave " has rolled over Christendom for fifteen hun- dred years ! What a wave has rolled over France for fifteen hundred years, supporting in power and glory the dynasty of Bourbon ! What a wave supported the house of Austria ! What a wave has supported the dynasty of Mahomet for twelve hundred years! What a wave supported the house of Her- cules for so many ages in more remote antiquity ! These waves are not to be slighted. They are less resistible than those in the gulf stream in a hurricane. What a wave has the French revolution spread ! And what a wave is our navy of five fri- gates raising !

If 1 can keep this book, " Memoirs of Lindsey," I shall have more to say. Meantime,

I remain, &c.

TO THOMAS JEFFERSON.

Quincy, 28 June, 1813.

It is very true that the denunciations of the priesthood are fulminated against every advocate for a complete freedom of religion. Comminations, I believe, would be plenteously pro- nounced by even the most liberal of them, against atheism,

' aA convention, invited by the republican members of Congress with the virtual President and Vice-President, would have been on the ground in eight weeks, would have repaired the Constitution where it was defective, and wound it up again." Jefferson to Priestley.

44 CORRESPONDENCE.

deism, — against every man who disbelieved or doubted the resurrection of Jesus, or the miracles of the New Testament. Priestley himself would denounce the man "who should deny the Apocalypse, or the prophecies of Daniel. Priestley and Lindsey have both denounced as idolaters and blasphemers all the Trinitarians and even the Arians." Poor weak man! when will thy perfection arrive ? Thy perfectibility I shall not deny, for a greater character than Priestley or Godwin has said, " Be ye perfect," &c. For my part, I cannot " deal damnation round the land" on all I judge the foes of God or man. But ^ I did not intend to say a word on this subject in this letter. As much of it as you please, hereafter ; but let me now return to politics.

With some difficulty I have hunted up or down the " address of the young men of the city of Philadelphia, the district of Southwark, and the northern liberties," and the answer.

The addressers say, "actuated by the same principles on which our forefathers achieved their independence, the recent attempts of a foreign power to derogate from the rights and dignity of our country, awaken our liveliest sensibility and our strongest indignation." Huzza, my brave boys ! Could Tho- mas Jefferson or John Adams hear these words with insensibility and without emotion? These boys afterwards add, "we regard our liberty and independence as the richest portion given us by our ancestors." And who were these ancestors ? Among them were Thomas Jefferson and John Adams ; and I very coolly believe that no two men among these ancestors did more towards it than those two. Could either hear this like a statue ? If, one hundred years hence, your letters and mine should see the light, I hope the reader will hunt up this address, and read it all, and remember that we were then engaged, or on the point of engaging, in a war with France.// I shall not repeat the answer till we come to the paragraph upon which you criti- cized to Dr. Priestley, though every word of it is true ; and I now rejoice to see it recorded, though I had wholly forgotten it.

The paragraph is, j Science and morals are the great pillars on which this country has been raised to its present population, opulence, and prosperity ; and these alone can advance, support, and preserve it. Without wishing to damp the ardor of curio- sity, or influence the freedom of inquiry, I will hazard a predic-

CORRESPONDENCE. 45

tion, that after the most industrious and impartial researches, the longest liver of you all will find no principles, institutions, or systems of education more fit, in general, to be transmitted to your posterity than those you have received from your ancestors^y^

Now, compare the paragraph in the answer with the para- graph in the address, as both are quoted above, and see if we can find the extent and the limits of the meaning of both.

Who composed that army of fine young fellows that was then before my eyes ? There were among them Roman Catho- lics, English Episcopalians, Scotch and American Presbyterians, Methodists, Moravians, Anabaptists, German Lutherans, Ger- man Calvinists, Universalists, Arians, Priestleyans, Socinians, Independents, Congregationalists, Horse Protestants, and House Protestants,2 Deists and Atheists, and Protestants " qui ne croij- ent Hen." Very few, however, of several of these species; nevertheless, all educated in the general principles of Christian- ity, and the general principles of English and American liberty.

Could my answer be understood by any candid reader or hearer, to recommend to all the others the general principles, institutions, or systems of education of the Roman Catholics, or those of the Quakers, or those of the Presbyterians, or those of the Methodists, or those of the Moravians, or those of the Universalists, or those of the Philosophers ? No. fThe general principles on which the fathers achieved independence, were the only principles in which that beautiful assembly of young men could unite, and these principles only could be intended by them in their address, or by me in my answer. And what were these general principles ? I answer, the general principles of Christianity, in which all those sects were united, and the gene- ral principles of English and American liberty, in which all those young men united, and which had united all parties in America, in majorities sufficient to assert and maintain her in- dependence. Now I will avow, that I then believed and now believe that those general principles of Christianity are as eter- nal and immutable as the existence and attributes of God ; and

1 For the whole of the answer, of which this is a part, see vol. ix. p. 188.

2 All the later letters of Mr. Adams are much marred in the copying- Unless these words refer to Messrs. Home and Howes, two of the disputants with Dr. Priestley in England, the editor cannot explain them.

46 CORRESPONDENCE.

that those principles of liberty are as unalterable as human nature and our terrestrial, mundane system. I could, therefore safely say, consistently with all my then and present informa- tion, that I believed they would never make discoveries in con- tradiction to these general principles. ' In favor of these general principles, in philosophy, religion, a*hd government, I could fill sheets of quotations from Frederic of Prussia, from Hume, Gib- bon, Bolingbroke, Rousseau, and Voltaire, as well as Newton and Locke ; not to mention thousands of divines and philo- sophers of inferior fame.

I might have flattered myself that my sentiments were suffi- ciently known to have protected me against suspicions of nar- row thoughts, contracted sentiments, bigoted, enthusiastic, or superstitious principles, civil, political, philosophical, or eccle- siastical. The first sentence of the preface to my Defence of the Constitution, vol. i., printed in 1787, is in these words : " The arts and sciences, in general, during the three or four last cen- turies, have had a regular course of progressive improvement. The inventions in mechanic arts, the discoveries in natural phi- losophy, navigation, and commerce, and the advancement of civilization and humanity, have occasioned changes in the con- dition of the world, and the human character, which would have astonished the most refined nations of antiquity," &c. I will quote no farther, but request you to read again that whole page, and then say whether the writer of it could be suspected of re- commending to youth " to look backward instead of forward," for instruction and improvement. This letter is already too long. In my next, I shall consider " the terrorism of the day."

TO THOMAS JEFFERSON.

/

Quincy, 30 June, 1813.

Before I proceed to the order of the day, which is " the terror- ism of a former day," I beg leave to correct an idea that some readers may infer from an expression in one of your letters. No sentiment or expression in any of my answers to addresses was obtruded or insinuated by any person about me. Every

CORRESPONDENCE. 47

one of them was written with my own hand. I alone am responsible for all the mistakes and errors in them. To have

called council to deliberate on such a mass of would have

taken all the time, and the business of the State have been suspended. It is true, I was sufficiently plagued by P's and T's, and S's. These, however, were puppets danced upon the wires of two jugglers behind the scene ; and these jugglers were Hamilton and Washington. How you stare at the name of Washington ! ( But to return, /or the present, to " the sensations excited in frfe yet firm minds by the terrorism of the day." You say, " none can conceive them who did not witness them, and they were felt by one party only." l

Upon this subject/ 1 despair of making myself understood by posterity, by the present age, and even by you. To collect and arrange the documents illustrative of it, would require as many lives as a cat. You never felt the terrorism of Shays's rebellion in Massachusetts. I believe you never felt the terrorism of Mr. Gallatin's insurrection in Pennsylvania. You certainly never realized the terrorism of Fries's most outrageous riot and rescue, as I call it, — treason, rebellion, as the world and great judges and two juries pronounced it. You certainly never felt the terrorism excited by Genet, in 1793, when ten thousand people in the streets of Philadelphia, day after day, threatened to drag Washington out of his house, and effect a revolution in the government, or compel it to declare war in favor of the French revolution and against England, j The coolest and the firmest minds, even among the Quakers in Philadelphia, have given their opinions to me, that nothing but the yellow fever, which removed Dr. Hutchinson and Jonathan Dickinson Sergeant from this world, could have saved the United States from a fatal revolution of government. I have no doubt you were fast asleep, in philosophical tranquillity, when ten thousand people, and, perhaps, many more, were parading the streets of Philadel- phia on the evening of my Fast Day ; when even Governor Mifflin himself thought it Ms duty to order a patrol of horse and foot to preserve the peace ; when Market Street was as full as men could stand by one another, and, even before my door ; when some of my domestics, in frenzy, determined to sacrifice

1 See the whole letter of Mr. Jefferson in Mr. Randolph's collection, vol. iv. p. 193.

%

48 CORRESPONDENCE.

their lives in my defence ; when all were ready to make a des- perate sally among the multitude, and others were, with diffi- culty and danger, dragged back by the rest; when I, myself, judged it prudent and necessary to order chests of arms from the war-office to be brought through by-lanes and back-doors, determined to defend my house at the expense of my life and -j the lives of the few, very few domestics and friends within it.

yr .What think you of terrorism, Mr. Jefferson ? I shall investi- gate the causes, the motives, the incentives to these terrorisms. Shall I remind you of Philip Freneau, of Lloyd, of Ned Church, of Peter Markoe, of Andrew Brown, of Duane, of Callender, of Tom Paine, of Greenleaf, of Cheetham, of Jennison at New York, of Benjamin Austin at Boston? But, above all, shall I request you to collect the circular letters from members of Con- gress, in the middle and southern States, to their constituents ? I would give all I am worth for a complete collection of those letters. Please to recollect Edward Livingston's motions and speeches, and those of his associates, in the case of Jonathan Robbins.

The real terrors of both parties have always been, and now are, the fear that they shall lose the elections, and, consequently, the loaves and fishes, and that their antagonists will get them. Both parties have excited artificial terrorism, and, if I were summoned as a witness to say, upon oath, which party had

IfK ~ excited I the most terror, and -which had really felt the most, I could not give a more sincere answer than in the vulgar style, " put them in a bag and shake them, and then see which will come out first."

Where is the terrorism now, my friend ? There is now more real terrorism in New England than there ever was in Virginia, the terror of a civil war_« la Vendee, a division of the States, * , p &c, &c, &c. How shall we conjure down this damnable rivalry * between Virginia and Massachusetts ? Virginia had recourse to Pennsylvania and New York. Massachusetts has now re- course to New York. They have almost got New Jersey and Maryland, and they are aiming at Pennsylvania. And all this in the midst of a war with England, when all Europe is in flames !

1 One or two words not legible in the copy.

CORRESPONDENCE. 49

I will give you a hint or two more on the subject of terrorism. When John Randolph, in the House, and Stephens Thompson Mason, in the Senate, were treating me with the utmost con- tempt ; when Ned Livingston was threatening me with impeach- ment for the murder of Jonathan Robbins, the native of Danvers in Connecticut ; when I had certain information that the daily language in the insurance office in Boston was, even from the mouth of Charles Jarvis, " We must go to Philadelphia and drag that John Adams from his chair," I thank God that ter- ror never seized on my mind. But I have had more excite- ments to it, from 1761 to this day, than any other man. Name the other, if you can. I have been disgraced and degraded, and I have a right to complain. But, as I have always expected it, I have always submitted to it, perhaps with too much tame- ness.

The amount of all the speeches of John Randolph, in the House, for two or three years, is that himself and myself are the only two honest and consistent men in the United States ; him- self eternally in opposition to government, and myself as con- stantly in favor of it. He is now in correspondence with his friend Quincy. What will come of it, let Virginia and Massa- chusetts judge. In my next, you may find something upon correspondences, whig and tory, federal and democratic, Virgi- nian and Novanglian, English and French, Jacobin and des- potic. Meantime, &c.

TO THOMAS JEFFERSON.

Quincy, 9 July, 1813.

Lord ! Lord ! what can 1 do with so much Greek ? When I was of your age, young man, that is, seven or eight years ago, I felt a kind of pang of affection for one of the flames of my youth, and again paid my addresses to Isocrates and Dionysius Halicarnassensis, &c, &c, &c. I collected all my lexicons and grammars, and sat down to Uepl avv&easuc dvofiuruv. In this way I amused myself for some time, but I found that if I looked a word to-day, in less than a week I had to look it again. It

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was to little better purpose than writing letters on a pail of water.

Whenever I sit down to write to you, I am precisely in the situation of the wood-cutter on Mount Ida. I cannot see wood for trees. So many subjects crowd upon me, that I know not which to begin. But I will begin at random with Belsham, who is, I have no doubt, a man of merit. He had no malice against you, nor any thought of doing mischief; nor has he done any, though he has been imprudent. The truth is, the dissenters of all denominations in England, and, especially, the Unitarians, are cowed, as we used to say at college. They are ridiculed, insulted, persecuted. They can scarcely hold their heads above water. They catch at straws and shadows to avoid drowning. Priestley sent your letter to Lindsey, and Belsham printed it from the same motive, i. e. to derive some countenance from the name of Jefferson. Nor has it done harm

here. Priestley says to Lindsey, " You see he is almost one of us, and he hopes will soon be altogether such as we are." Even in our New England I have heard a high federal divine say, your letters had increased his respect for you.

" The same political parties, which now agitate the United States, have existed through all time." Precisely ; and this is precisely the complaint in the preface to the first volume of my Defence. While all other sciences have advanced, that of go- vernment is at a stand; little better understood, little better practised now than three or four thousand years ago. What is the reason ? I say, parties and factions will not suffer improve- ments to be made. As soon as one man hints at an improve- ment, his rival opposes it. No sooner has one party discovered or invented any amelioration of the condition of man, or the order of society than the opposite party belies it, misconstrues it, misrepresents it, ridicules it, insults it, and persecutes it. Re- cords are destroyed. Histories are annihilated or interpolated or prohibited ; sometimes by Popes, sometimes by Emperors, sometimes by aristocratical, and sometimes by democratical assemblies, and sometimes by mobs.

Aristotle wrote the history and description of eighteen hun- dred republics which existed before his time. Cicero wrote two volumes of discourses on government, which, perhaps, were worth all the rest of his works. The works of Livy and Taci-

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tus, &c, that are lost, would be more interesting than all that remain. Fifty gospels have been destroyed. Where are St. Luke's world of books that were written ?

If you ask my opinion, who has committed all the havoc? I will answer you candidly. Ecclesiastical and imperial despot- isms have done it to conceal their frauds.

Why are the histories of all nations, more ancient than the Christian era, lost ? Who destroyed the Alexandrian library ? I believe that Christian priests, Jewish rabbis, Grecian sages, and Roman emperors, had as great a hand in it as Turks and Mahometans. Democrats, rebels, and Jacobins, when they possess a momentary power, have shown a disposition both to destroy and to forge records, as Vandatical as priests and des- pots. Such has been and such is the world we live in.

I recollect, near thirty years ago, to have said carelessly to you/ that I wished I could find time and means to write sorae- thing upon aristocracy. You seized upon the idea, and en- couraged me to do it with all that friendly warmth that is natural and habitual to you. I soon began, and have been writing upon that subject ever since. I have been so unfor- tunate as never to be able to make myself understood. Your J&vrfoi are the most difficult animals to manage of any thing in Q-Xs the whole theory and practice of government. They will not suffer themselves to be governed. They not only exert all their own subtilty, industry, and courage, but they employ the com- monalty to knock to pieces every plan and model that the most honest architects in legislation can invent to keep them within bounds. Both patricians and plebeians are as furious as the workmen in England to demolish labor-saving machinery.

But who are these upiaroLi Who shall judge? Who shall Qj select these choice spirits from the rest of the congregation ? Themselves ? We must find out and determine who them- selves are. Shall the congregation choose ? Ask Xenophon. Perhaps, hereafter I may quote you Greek ; too much in a hurry at present ; English must suffice. ) Xenophon says, that the ecclesia always choose the worst men they can find, because none others will do their dirty work. This wicked motive is worse than birth or wealth.., ^Jere I want to quote Greek again, but the day before I received your letter of June 27th, I gave the book to George Washington Adams, going to the academy

52 CORRESPONDENCE.

at Hingham. The title is, hgikh nomsi^ a collection of moral sentences from all the most ancient Greek poets. , , In one of the oldest of them I read, in Greek that I cannot repeat, a couplet, the sense of which was : " Nobility in men is worth as much as it is in horses, asses, or rams ; but the meanest-blooded puppy in the world, if he gets a little money, is as good a man as the best of them." Yet birth and wealth together have prevailed over virtue and talents in all ages. The many will acknow- ledge no other upiaroi. Your experience of this truth will not much differ from that of your old friend.

TO THOMAS JEFFERSON.

Quincy, 13 July, 1813.

Let me allude to one circumstance more, in one of your let- ters to me, before I touch upon the subject of religion in your letter to Priestley. The first time thai you and f differed in opinion on any material question was/ after your arrival from Europe ; and that point was the Frencri revolution. You was well persuaded in your own mind that the nation would suc- ceed in establishing a free republican government. I was well persuaded in mine, that a project of such a government, over five-and-twenty millions of people, when four-and-twenty mil- lions and five hundred thousand of them could neither read nor write, was as unnatural, irratibnal, and impracticable as it would be over the elephants, lions, tigers, panthers, wolves, and bears, in the royal menagerie at Versailles. Napoleon has lately invented a word, which perfectly expressed my opinion at that time and ever since. He calls the project ideology; and John Randolph, though he was, fourteen years ago, as wild an enthusiast for equality and fraternity as any of them, appears to be now a regenerated proselyte to Napoleon's opinion and mine, that it was all madness.

The Greeks, in their allegorical style, said that the two ladies, upiGTOKparia and dTifioKparia, always in a quarrel, disturbed every body in the neighborhood with their brawls. It is a fine obser- vation of yours that whig and tory belong to natural history.

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Inequalities of mind and body are so established by God Al- mighty in his constitution of human nature, that no art or policy can ever plane them down to a level. 1 have never read reason- ^ ing more absurd, sophistry more gross, in proof of the Athanasian creed, or transubstantiation, than the subtle labors of Helvetius and Rousseau to demonstrate the natural equality of mankind. Jus cuique, the golden rule, do as you would be done by, is all the equality that can be supported or defended by reason or common sense.

It is very true, as you justly observe, I can say nothing new on this or any other subject of government. But when Lafayette harangued you, and me, and John Quincy Adams, through a whole evening, in your hotel in the Cul de Sacg at Paris, and developed the plans now in operation to reform France, though I was silent as you was, I then thought I could say something new to him. In plain truth, I was astonished at the grossness of his ignorance of government and history, as I had been foi years before, at that of Turgot, Rochefoucauld, Condorcet, and Franklin. This gross ideology of them all first suggested to , me the thought and the inclination, which I afterwards executed in London, of writing something upon aristocracy. ^J was re- strained for years by many fearful considerations. Who and what was I ? Why, a man of no name or consideration in Europe. The manual exercise of writing was painful and dis- tressing to me, almost like a blow on the elbow or the knee ; my style was habitually negligent, unstudied, unpolished ; I should make enemies of all the French patriots, the Dutch patriots, the English republicans, dissenters, reformers, call them what you will ; and, what came nearer home to my bosom than all the rest, I knew I should give offence to many, if not all, of my best friends in America, and, very probably, destroy all the little popularity I ever had in a country where popularity had more omnipotence than the British parliament assumed. Where should I get the necessary books ? What printer or bookseller would undertake to print such hazardous writings ? r But/ when the French assembly of notables mety and I saw that Turgot's " government in one centre, and that centre the nation," a sen- tence as mysterious or as contradictory as the Athanasian creed, was about to take place ; and when I saw that Shays's rebel- lion was breaking out in Massachusetts ; and when I saw that

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even my obscure name was often quoted in France as an ad- vocate for simple democracy ; when I saw that the sympathies in America had caught the French name, I was determined to wash my own hands as clear as I could of all this foulness. I had then strong forebodings that I was sacrificing all the emoluments of this life; and so it has happened, but not in so great a degree as I apprehended.

In truth, my " Defence of the Constitutions" and " Discourses on Davila," were the cause of that immense unpopularity which fell like the tower of Siloam upon me. Your steady defence of democratical principles, and your invariable favor- able opinion of the French revolution, laid the foundation of your unbounded popularity. / Sic transit gloria mundi.

Now," I will forfeit my life, if you can find one sentiment in my Defence of the Constitutions, or the Discourses on Davila, which, by a fair construction, can favor the introduction of hereditary monarchy or aristocracy into America. They were all written to support and strengthen the Constitution of the United States.

The wood-cutter on Mount Ida, though he was puzzled to find a tree to drop at first, I presume knew how to leave off when he was weary. But I never know when to cease when I begin to write to you.

TO THOMAS JEFFERSON.

Quincy, 17 July, 1813.

Your letters to Priestley have increased my grief, if that were possible, for the loss of Rush. Had he lived, I would have stimulated him to insist on your promise to him to write him on the subject of religion. Your plan I admire.

In your letter to Priestley, of March 21st, 1801, dated at Washington, you call the Christian philosophy " the most sublime and benevolent, but most perverted system, that ever shone on man." That it is the most sublime and benevolent, I agree ; but whether it has been more perverted than that of Moses, of Confucius, of Zoroaster, of Sanchoniathon, of Numa, of Mahomet, of the Druids, of the Hindoos, &c, &c, &c, I can-

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not as yet determine, because 1 am not sufficiently acquainted with these systems, or the history of their effects, to form a decisive opinion of the result of the comparison.

In your letter, dated Washington, April 9th, 1803, you say, " in consequence of some conversation with Dr. Rush, in the years 1798 — 99, I had promised him, some day, to write him a letter, giving him my view of the Christian system. I have reflected upon it since, and even sketched the outlines in my own mind. I should first take a general view of the moral doctrines of the most remarkable of the ancient philosophers, of whose ethics we have sufficient information to make an esti- mate, say of Pythagoras, Epicurus, Epictetus, Socrates, Cicero, Seneca, Antoninus. I should do justice to the branches of morality they have treated well, but point out the importance of those in which they are deficient. I should then take a view of the deism and ethics of the Jews, and show in what a de- graded state they were, and the necessity they presented of a reformation. I should proceed to a view of the life, character, and doctrines of Jesus, who, sensible of the incorrectness of their ideas of the Deity and of morality, endeavored to bring them to the principles of a pure deism, and juster notions of the attributes of God, to reform their moral doctrines to the stand- ard of reason, justice, and philanthropy, and to inculcate a belief in a future state. This view would purposely omit the question of his divinity, and even his inspiration. To do him justice, it would be necessary to remark the disadvantages his doctrines have to encounter, not having been committed to writing by himself, but by the most unlettered of men, by me- mory, long after they had heard them from him, when much was forgotten, much misunderstood, and presented in very paradoxical shapes. Yet such are the fragments remaining as to show a master-workman, and that his system of morality was the most benevolent and sublime, probably, that has ever been taught, and more perfect than any of the ancient philo- sophers. His character and doctrines have received still greater injury from those who pretend to be his special disciples, and who have disfigured and sophisticated his actions and precepts from views of personal interest, so as to induce the unthinking part of mankind to throw off the whole system in disgust, and to pass sentence as an impostor on the most innocent, the most

56 CORRESPONDENCE.

benevolent, the most eloquent and sublime character that has ever been exhibited to man. This is the outline ! "

" Sancte Socrate ! Ora pro nobis ! " Erasmus. Priestley, in his letter to Lindsey, inclosing a copy of your letter to him, says, " he is generally considered as an unbeliever. If so, how- ever, he cannot be far from us, and I hope in the way to be not only almost, but altogether what we are. He now attends public worship very regularly, and his moral conduct was never impeached."

Now, I see not but you are as good a Christian as Priestley and Lindsey. Piety and morality were the end and object of the Christian system, according to them and according to you. They believed in the resurrection of Jesus, in his miracles and inspirations. But what inspirations ? Not all that is recorded in the New Testament or the Old. They have not yet told us how much they believe or disbelieve. They have not told us how much allegory, how much parable they find, nor how they explained them all in the New Testament or Old.

John Quincy Adams has written, for years, to his sons, boys of ten and twelve, a series of letters, in which he pursues a plan more extensive than yours, but agreeing in most of the essen- tial points. I wish these letters could be preserved in the bosoms of his boys. But women and priests will get them ; and I expect, if he makes a peace, he will have to retire, like Jay, to study prophecies to the end of his life.

I have more to say upon this subject of religion.

TO THOMAS JEFFERSON.

Quincy, 18 July, 1813.

I have more to say on religion. /For more than sixty years I have been attentive to this great subject. Controversies be- tween Calvinists and Arminians, Trinitarians and Unitarians, Deists and Christians, Atheists and both, have attracted my attention, whenever the singular life I have led would admit, to all these questions. The history of this little village of Quincy, if it were worth recording, would explain to you how this hap-

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pened. I think I can now say I have read away bigotry, if not enthusiasm.

What does Priestley mean by an unbeliever, when he applies it to you? How much did he unbelieve himself? Gibbon had him right when he denominated his creed " scanty." We are to understand, no doubt, that he believed the resurrection of Jesus, some of his miracles, his inspiration; but in what degree? He did not believe in the inspiration of the writings that con- tain his history. Yet he believed in the Apocalyptic beast, and he believed as much as he pleased in the writings of Daniel and John. This great and extraordinary man, whom I sincerely loved, esteemed, and respected, was really a phenomenon ; a comet in the system, like Voltaire, Bolingbroke, and Hume. Had Bolingbroke or Voltaire taken him in hand, what would they have made of him and his creed ?

I do not believe you have read much of Priestley's " Corrup- tions of Christianity," his History of early opinions concerning Jesus Christ, his predestination, his no soul system, or his contro- versy with Horsley. I have been a diligent student for many years in books whose titles you have never seen. In Priestley's and Lindsey's writings, in Farmer, Cappe, in Tucker, or Edward Search's Light of Nature Pursued, in Edwards and Hopkins, and, lately, in Ezra Stiles Ely, his reverend and learned pane- gyrists, and his elegant and spirited opponents. I am not wholly uninformed of the controversies in Germany, and the learned researches of universities and professors, in which the sanctity of the Bible and the inspiration of its authors are taken for granted or waved, or admitted or not denied. I have also read Condorcet's Progress of the Human Mind. Now, what is all this to you ? No more than if I should tell you that I read Dr. Clarke, and Dr. Waterland, and Emlyn, and Leland's View or Review of the Deistical writers, more than fifty years ago, which is a literal truth.

I blame you not for reading Euclid and Newton, Thucydides and Theocritus, for I believe you will find as much entertain- ment and instruction in them as I have found in my theological and ecclesiastical instructors, or even, as I have found, in a profound investigation of the life, writings, and doctrines of Erastus, whose disciples were Milton, Harrington, Selden, St. John, the Chief Justice, father of Bolingbroke, and others, the

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choicest spirits of their age ; or in La Harpe's history of the phi- losophy of the eighteenth century; or in Vanderkemp's vast map of the causes of the revolutionary spirit, in the same and preceding centuries. These things are to me the marbles and nine-pins of old age ; I will not say the beads and prayer-books. I agree with you as far as you go, most cordially, and, I think, solidly. How much farther I go, how much more I believe than you, I may explain in a future letter. Thus much I will say at present. I have found so many difficulties that I am not astonished at your stopping where you are ; and, so far from sentencing you to perdition, I hope soon to meet you in an- other country.

TO THOMAS JEFFERSON.

Quincy, August, 1813.

Kpiovg fiev ml bvovg di&fieda, Kvpve, ml imrovg

'Evyevcag, mi rig fiovkzTai it; uya&uv Kr^aaadai ■ yr/fxai 6e mur/v mmv ov fieledaivsi

'EedXor uvi/p, ?]V oi xpTj/iara no'AAu didu.

Behold my translation !

" My friend Curnis, when we want to purchase horses, asses, or rams, we inquire for the well-born, and every one wishes to procure from the good breeds. A good man does not care to marry a shrew, the daughter of a shrew, unless they give a great deal of money with her." 1

What think you of my translation ? Compare it with that of Grotius, and tell me which is the nearest to the original in letter and in spirit.

Grotius renders it, —

Nobilitas asinis et equis simul, arietibusque Dat pretium : nee de semine degeneri Admissura placet. Sed pravse e sanguine pravo, Si dos sit, presto est optima conditio.

i " The expressions rjonfl and bad men, which in later times bore a purely- moral signification, are evidently used by Theognis in a political sense for nobles and commons." Miiller, Literatim of Ancient t In ere.

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This flower of Greek poetry is extracted from the

0EOrNIAO2 MErAPE'fiS IIAPAINESEIS.

Theognis lived five hundred and forty-four years before Jesus Christ. Has science, or morals, or philosophy, or criticism, or Christianity, advanced, or improved, or enlightened mankind upon this subject, and shown them that the idea of the " well- born" is a prejudice, a phantom, a point-no-point, a Cape Fly- away, a dream ?

I say it is the ordinance of God Almighty, in the constitution of human nature, and wrought into the fabric of the universe. Philosophers and politicians may nibble and quibble, but they never will get rid of it. Their only resource is to control it. "Wealth is another monster to be subdued. Hercules could not subdue both or either. To subdue them by regular approaches and strong fortifications, by a regular siege, was btrt my object in writing on aristocracy, as I proposed to you in Grosvenor- Square. If you deny any one of these positions, I will prove them to demonstration by examples drawn from your own Vir- ginia, and from every other State in the Union, and from the history of every nation, civilized and savage, from all we know of the time of the creation of the world. , r/

Whence is the derivation of the words generous, generously, generosity, &c. ? Johnson says, " Generous — a generosus, La- tin, not of mean birth ; of good extraction ; noble of mind ; mag- nanimous ; open of heart ; liberal ; munificent, strong, vigorous," and he might have added, courageous, heroic, patriotic.

Littleton happens to be at hand. " Generosus — hyevris, yevvaioc. Nobilis; ex proeclaro genere ortus ; qui a genere non defiectit. Born of a noble race, a gentleman born." See his examples.

What is the origin of the word gentleman ?

It would be a curious critical speculation for a learned idler tomirsue this idea through all languages.

/ We may call this sentiment a prejudice, because we can give what names we please to such things as we please ; but, in my opinion, it is a part of the natural history of man, and politi- cians and philosophers may as well project to make the animal live without bones or blood, as society can pretend to establish a free government without attention to it. I

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Quincy, 16 August, 1813.

I can proceed no further with this letter, as I intended.

Your friend, my only daughter, expired yesterday morning in the arms of her husband, her son, her daughter, her father and mother, her husband's two sisters, and two of her nieces, in the forty-ninth year of her age, forty of which she was the healthiest and firmest of us all. Since which she has been a monument to suffering and to patience.

THOMAS MCKEAN TO JOHN ADAMS.

Philadelphia, 20 August, 1813.

I can, at length, furnish you with a copy of the proceedings of the Congress, held at New York, in 1765 ; it is inclosed here- with. After diligent inquiry, I had not been able to procure a single copy, either in manuscript or print, done in the United States, but fortunately met one published by J. Almon, in Lon- don, in 1767, with a collection of American tracts, in four octavo volumes, from which I caused the present one to be printed. It may be of some use to the historian at least.

The Marquis de Casa Yrujo, with my daughter, their child- ren and servants, made me a visit on his return from an em- bassy to the prince regent of Portugal, at Rio Janeiro, in Brazil, last June was a year, and remained here until a few weeks ago, owing to the embargo, war, blockades, &c, when they sailed for Cadiz. The above circumstances, with others, will, I trust, be some apology for my long delay in answering your last esteemed letter.

In the Congress of 1765, there were several conspicuous cha- racters. Mr. James Otis appeared to me to be the boldest and best speaker. I voted for him as our President, but Brigadier Ruggles succeeded by one vote, owing to the number of the committee from New York, as we voted individually. When the business was finished, our president would not sign the petitions, and peremptorily refused to assign any reasons, until I pressed him so hard that he at last said, " it was against his

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conscience" on which word I rung the change so loud, that a plain challenge was given by him and accepted, in the presence of the whole corps ; but he departed the next morning before day, without an adieu to any of his brethren. He seemed to accord with what was done during the session so fully and heartily, that Mr. Otis told me frequently it gave him surprise, as he confessed he suspected his sincerity.

There was less fortitude in that body than in the succeeding Congress of 1774; indeed, some of the members seemed as timid as if engaged in a traitorous conspiracy. Mr. Ogden, then speaker of the New Jersey assembly, following the example of the president, declined to sign the petitions, though warmly solicited by myself in private, and also by my father-in-law, Colonel Borden, his colleague. The consequence of my men- tioning this fact, as I returned to Newcastle through New Jer- sey, was to Mr. Ogden a burning in effigy in several of the counties, and his removal from the office of speaker, at the next meeting of the general assembly ; and to me, menaces of another challenge. The great mass of the people were at that time zealous in the cause of America. Other incidents of that day are recollected, but they are of trivial import.

In the year 1778, and afterwards, until the preliminaries of peace were signed, the members of Congress varied yearly in point of talents and exertions in favor of the revolution. They seemed to be considerably governed by the prospects before them, as they were promising or the contrary ; however, a great majority were staunch whigs at all times.

Whatever may be the fate of our government in the United States, I decidedly think with you, for the reason you assign, that a democratic form in France, in the present age, was pre- posterous. I entertain the same opinion of the Spanish pro- vinces in South America. The form established last year by the Cortes of Spain is admirably adapted to the state of civil- ization in the peninsula. It is a capital performance, but will be attacked and resisted by the inquisitors, Jesuits, monks, and all the bigots and petty tyrants.

It does not seem to me, that either of your successors enjoys more ease than your predecessor. Mr. Madison has paid too great a deference to the recommendations to office by low and designing men, who stood very much in need of recommenda-

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tions themselves, though excellent democrats, if they were to be credited. Mr. Jefferson split on the same rock. Many of their appointments have been exceedingly improper. Though General Washington conferred offices on some tories, yet they were capable, and only undeserving.

My paper is drawing to a close ; so is my life. I am now in my eightieth year, therefore more than a year older than you. Had you not noticed the quiveration of your hand (an expressive word, though newly used) I should not have discovered it; mine quivers very much when feverish, or agitated by severe exercise ; my eyes grow dimmer, my hearing duller, and I have other symptoms of age ; but why repeat grievances that cannot be redressed? May you not only continue to enjoy, but in- crease your health and otium cum dignitate with every other blessing. Dear Sir, your friend,

Tho's McKean.

TO THOMAS MCKEAN.

Quincy, 31 August, 1813.

Your friendly letter of the 20th, with the authentic account of the proceedings of the Congress held at New York, A. D. 1765, on the subject of the American stamp act, though they found me in the deepest affliction for the loss of my daughter, were very acceptable, and deserve my thanks.

There was a prior Congress held at Albany in 1754 or 1755, in which Franklin, Hutchinson, Wells, and Brattle, with others, assisted. Where is any account of that to be found ?

Can you account for the apathy, the antipathy of this nation to their own history ? Is there not a repugnance to the thought of looking back ? While thousands of frivolous novels are read with eagerness and got by heart, the history of our own native country is not only neglected, but despised and abhorred.

You may conjecture my suspicions from what follows. Were I a man of fortune, I would offer a gold medal to the man who should produce the most instances of the friendship of Great Britain toward this country from 1600 to 1813.

1 have had knowledge enough of the Marquis de Casa Yrujo and his lady, your lovely daughter, and notwithstanding all

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political flickerings, to esteem them both, and wish them all the felicity that you can desire for them. They live, as you and I have lived, in times of confusion and uncertainty more dis- tressing than the ordinary lot of humanity.

In times like those in which you and I have lived, we are not masters, we can scarcely be said to be fathers, of our own families. I have three children born in Quincy, one in Boston. I have one grandson born in London, another on Long Island, another in Berlin, several in Quincy, several in New York, several in Boston, one born and died in St. Petersburg. Is this a desirable history of a family ? I trow not.

I will not tell you what I would prefer. You would think me a dunce or an hypocrite.

Your history of Otis and Ruggles is familiar to me. I knew them both. Ruggles was my cousin; Otis, my friend and one of my patrons. I could not have drawn the character of either with more precision than you have done. Both high-minded men, exalted souls, acting in scenes they could not comprehend, and acting parts, whose effects and consequences will last longer than their names will be remembered.

You say that at the time of the Congress, in 1765, " The great mass of the people were zealous in the cause of America." " The great mass of the people " is an expression that deserves analysis. New York and Pennsylvania were so nearly divided, if their propensity was not against us, that if New England on one side and Virginia on the other had not kept them in awe, they would have joined the British. Marshall, in his life of Washington, tells us, that the southern States were nearly equally divided. Look into the Journals of Congress, and you will see how seditious, how near rebellion were several counties of New York, and how much trouble we had to compose them. The last contest, in the town of Boston, in 1775, between whig and tory, was decided by five against two. Upon the whole, if we allow two thirds of the people to have been with us in the revolution, is not the allowance ample ? Are not two thirds of the nation now with the administration ? Divided we ever have been, and ever must be. Two thirds always had and will have more difficulty to struggle with the one third than with all our foreign enemies.

A letter from you will always console your old friend.

64 CORRESPONDENCE.

TO THOMAS JEFFERSON.

Quincy, 2 September, 1813.

OvSe yvvy Hanoi avdpbc avaiverai elvai ukoltlq UAovoiov, uTJJ cMpveov fiovkerai uvt' uyaftov.

Xpr//iara yup tl^ugl • nal en kclkov eo&?mc eyrjjiE Kal Katcbc eij uyw&ov • tv'Aovtoc efiilje yivoq.

Grotius renders this into Latin thus :

Nee dedignetur ditemque malumque maritum

Femina : divitiae prae probitate placent. In pretio pretium est : genus et praenobile vili,

Obscurum claro, miscet avaritia.

I should render the Greek into English thus :

" Nor dees a woman disdain to be the wife of a bad rich man. But she prefers a man of property before a good man ; for riches are honored, and a good man marries from a bad family, and a bad man from a good one. Wealth mingles races."

Now, please to tell me, whether my translation has not hit the sense of Theognis as exactly as that of Grotius ?

Tell me, also, whether poet, orator, historian, or philosopher, can paint the picture of every city, county, or State, in our pure, uncorrupted, unadulterated, uncontaminated federal re- public, or, in France, England, Holland, and all the rest of Christendom or Mahometanism, in more precise lines or colors? Another translation of the whole passage of Theognis is this :

Arietes quidem et asinos quaerimus, Cyrne, et equos, Generosos, et quisque vult ex bonis admittere ; ducere autem malam (filiam) Mali, non renuit generosus vir, si ei pecunias multas dederit. Nulla (femina) mali viri recusat esse uxor divitis ; sed divitem vult Pro bono. Opes quidem ajstimat, et ex malo (natam) bonus dueet Et malus ex bono ortam. Divitias miscent genus.

o^

Now, my friend, who are the uptoToii Philosophers may an- swer, " the wise and good." But the world, mankind, have, by their practice, always answered, " the rich, the beautiful, and well-born." And philosophers themselves, in marrying their children, prefer the rich, the handsome, and the well-descended, to the wise and good.

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What chance have talents and virtues, in competition with wealth and birth and beauty ?

Hand facile emergunt quorum virtutibus obstant Res angustae douii.

One truth is clear, by all the world confessed, Slow rises worth, by poverty depressed.

The five pillars of aristocracy are beauty, wealth, birth, genius, and virtue. Any one of the three first can, at any time, over- bear any one or both of the two last.

Let me ask again, what a wave of public opinion, in favor of birth, has been spread over the globe by Abraham, by Her- cules, by Mahomet, by Guelphs, Ghibellines, Bourbons, and a

miserable Scottish chief, Stuart, by Zengis, by , by -,

by a million of others. And what a wave will be spread by Napoleon and by Washington ! Their remotest cousins will be sought, and will be proud, and will avail themselves of their descent. Call this principle, prejudice, folly, ignorance, baseness, slavery, stupidity, adulation, superstition, or what you will, I will not contradict you. But the fact in natural, moral, political, and domestic history, I will not deny, or dispute, or question.

And is this great fact in the natural history of man, this unal- terable principle of morals, philosophy, policy, domestic felicity, and daily experience from the creation, to be overlooked, forgot- ten, neglected, or hypocritically waved out of sight, by a legis- lator, by a professed writer upon civil government, and upon constitutions of civil government ?

Thus far had I written, when your favor of August 22d was laid on my table from the post-office. I can only say at pre- sent that I can pursue this idle speculation no further, at least till I have replied to this fresh proof of friendship and con- fidence. Mrs. A. joins in cordial thanks with

J. A.

You may laugh at the introduction of beauty among the pil- lars of aristocracy. But Madame du Barry says, ula veritable royaute c'est la beaute" and there is not a more certain truth. Beauty, grace, figure, attitude, movement, have, in innumerable instances, prevailed over wealth, birth, talents, virtues, and

(jti CORRESPONDENCE.

every thing else, in men of the highest rank, greatest power, and, sometimes, the most exalted genius, greatest fame, and highest merit.

TO THOMAS JEFFERSON.

Quincy, 14 September, 1813.

I owe you a thousand thanks for your favor of August 22d, and its inclosures, and for Doctor Priestley's " Doctrines of Heathen Philosophy compared with those of Revelation." Your letter to Dr. Rush, and the syllabus, I return inclosed with this, according to your injunction, though with great reluctance. May I beg a copy of both ? They will do you no harm, me and others, much good. I hope you will pursue your plan, for I am confident you will produce a work much more valuable than Priestley's, though that is curious, and, considering the expiring powers with which it was written, admirable.

The bill in parliament for the relief of Anti- Trinitarians, is a great event, and will form an epoch in ecclesiastical history. The motion was made by my friend Smith, of Clapham, a friend of the Belshams. I should be very happy to hear that the bill is passed. ^>*y\ie human understanding is a revelation from its maker, which can never be disputed or doubted. There can be no scepticism, Pyrrhonism, or incredulity or infidelity here. No prophecies, no miracles are necessary to prove this celestial communication, This revelation has made it certain that two and one make three, and that one is not three nor can three be one. We can never be so certain of any prophecy, or the fulfilment of any prophecy, or of any miracle, or the design of any miracle, as we are from the revelation of nature, that is, nature's God, that two and two are equal to four. Miracles or prophecies might frighten us out of our wits, might scare us to death, might induce us to lie, to say that we believe that two and two make five, but we should not believe it; we should know the contrary.

Had you and I been forty days with Moses on Mount Sinai, and admitted to behold the divine Shechinah, and there told that

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one was three and three one, we might not have had courage to deny it, but we could not have believed it. The thunders and lightnings and earthquakes, and the transcendent splen- dors and glories, might have overwhelmed us with terror and amazement, but we could not have believed the doctrine. We should be more likely to say in our hearts — whatever we might say with our lips — , This is chance. There is no God, no truth. This is all delusion, fiction, and a lie, or it is all chance. But what is chance ? It is motion ; it is action ; it is event ; it is phenomenon without cause. Chance is no cause at all ; it is nothing, and nothing has produced all this pomp and splendor, and nothing may produce our eternal dam- nation in the flames of hell-fire and brimstone, for what we know, as well as this tremendous exhibition of terror and false- hood.

God has infinite wisdom, goodness, and power ; he created the universe ; his duration is eternal, a parte ante and a parte post. His presence is as extensive as space. What is space ? An infinite spherical vacuum. He created this speck of dirt and the human species for his glory ; and with the deliberate design of making nine tenths of our species miserable for ever for his glory. This is the doctrine of Christian theologians, in general, ten to one. Now, my friend, can prophecies or miracles con- vince you or me that infinite benevolence, wisdom, and power, created, and preserves for a time, innumerable millions, to make them miserable for ever, for his own glory ? Wretch ! What is his glory ? Is he ambitious ? Does he want promotion ? Is he vain, tickled with adulation, exulting and triumphing in his power and the sweetness of his vengeance ? Pardon me, my Maker, for these awful questions. My answer to them is al- ways ready. I believe no such things. My adoration of the author of the universe is too profound and too sincere. The love of God and his creation — delight, joy, triumph, exultation in my own existence — though but an atom, a molecule organ- ique in the universe — are my religion.

Howl, snarl, bite, ye Calvinistic, ye Athanasian divines, if you will ; ye will say I am no Christian ; I say ye are no Christians, and there the account is balanced. Yet I believe all the honest men among you are Christians, in my sense of the word.X'

When I was at college, I was a mighty metaphysician, at

68 CORRESPONDENCE.

least I thought myself such, and such men as Locke, Hemmen- way, and West thought me so too, for we were forever disput- ing, though in great good humor.

When I was sworn as an attorney in 1758, in Boston, though I lived in Braintree, I was in a low state of health, thought in great danger of a consumption, living on milk, vegetables, pud- ding, and water, not an atom of meat or a drop of spirit ; my next neighbor, my cousin, my friend, Dr. Savil, was my physi- cian. He was anxious for me, and did not like to take upon himself the sole responsibility of my recovery. He invited me to a ride. I mounted my horse, and rode with him to Hingham, on a visit to Dr. Ezekiel Hersey, a physician of great fame, who felt my pulse, looked in my eyes, heard Savil describe my regi- men and course of medicine, and then pronounced his oracle : " Persevere, and as sure as there is a God in Heaven you will recover." He was an everlasting talker, and ran out into his- tory, philosophy, metaphysics, &c, and frequently put questions to me as if he wanted to sound me and see if there was any thing in me besides hectic fever. I was young and then very bashful, however saucy I may have sometimes been since. J gave him very modest and very diffident answers. But when he got upon metaphysics, I seemed to feel a little bolder, and ventured into something like argument with him. I drove him up, as I thought, into a corner, from which he could not escape. " Sir, it will follow, from what you have now advanced, that the universe, as distinct from God, is both infinite and eternal." " Very true," said Dr. Hersey ; " your inference is just ; the con- sequence is inevitable, and I believe the universe to be both eternal and infinite." Here I was brought up. I was defeated. I was not prepared for this answer. This was fifty-five years ago. When I was in England, from 1785 to 1788, I may say I was intimate with Dr. Price. I had much conversation with him at his own house, at my house, and at the houses and tables of many friends. In some of our most unreserved con- versations, when we have been alone, he has repeatedly said to me : " I am inclined to believe that the universe is eternal and infinite : it seems to me that an eternal and infinite effect must necessarily flow from an eternal and infinite cause ; and an in- finite wisdom, goodness, and power, that could have been niduced to produce a universe in time, must have produced it

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from eternity. It seems to me, the effect must flow from the cause."

Now, my friend Jefferson, suppose an eternal, self-existent being, existing from eternity, possessed of infinite wisdom, goodness, and power, in absolute, total solitude, six thousand years ago conceiving the benevolent project of creating a uni- verse ! I have no more to say at present. It has been long, very long, a settled opinion in my mind, that there is now, ever will be, and ever was, but one being who can understand the universe, and that it is not only vain but wicked for insects to pretend to comprehend it.

TO THOMAS JEFFERSON.

Quincy, 15 September, 1813.

My last sheet would not admit an observation that was ma- terial to my design. Dr. Price " was inclined to think," that infinite wisdom and goodness could not permit infinite power to be inactive from eternity, but that an infinite and eternal ^_universe must have necessarily flowed from these attributes.

Plato's system wasu&yatfof was eternal, self-existent, &c. His idea, his word, his reason, his wisdom, his goodness, or, in one word, his " Logos " was omnipotent, and produced the universe from all eternity.

Now, as far as you and I can understand Hersey, Price, and Plato, are they not of one theory, of one mind ? What is the difference ? I own, an eternal solitude of a self-existent being, infinitely wise, powerful, and good, is to me altogether incom- prehensible and incredible. I could as soon believe the Athan- asian creed. You will ask me, what conclusion I draw from all this. I answer, I drop into myself, and acknowledge my- self to be a fool. No mind but one can see through the im- measurable system. It would be presumption and impiety in me to dogmatize on such subjects. My duties, in my little infinitesimal circle, I can understand and feel. The duties of a son, a brother, a father, a neighbor, a citizen, I can see and feel ; but I trust the ruler with his skies, j

Si quid novisti reetius istis,

Candiclus imperii ; si non, his uterc mecum.

CV

c\J

70 CORRESPONDENCE.

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

Now for the odd, the whimsical, the frivolous. I had scarcely sealed my last letter to you, upon Theognis's doctrine of well- born stallions, jacks, and rams, when they brought me from the post-office a packet, without post-mark, without letter, without name, date, or place. Nicely sealed, was a printed copy of eighty or ninety pages, in large, full octavo, entitled, Sec- tion first. Aristocracy.

I gravely composed my risible muscles, and read it through. It is, from beginning to end, an attack upon me, by name, for the doctrines of aristocracy in my three volumes of Defence, &c. The conclusion of the whole is, that an aristocracy of bank- paper is as bad as the nobility of France or England. I most assuredly will not controvert this point, with this man. Who he is, I cannot conjecture. The Honorable John Taylor, of Virginia, of all men living or dead, first occurred to me.

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

Why is Plato associated with Theognis, &c. ? Because no man ever expressed so much terror of the power of birth. His genius could invent no remedy or precaution against it, but a

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community of wives, a confusion of families, a total extinction of all relations of father, son, and brother. Did the French revolutionists contrive much better against the influence of birth ?

TO THOMAS JEFFERSON.

Quincy, 22 September, 1813.

Considering all things, I admire Dr. Priestley's last effort, for which I am entirely indebted to you. But, as I think it is ex- tremely imperfect, I beg of you to pursue the investigation according to your promise to Dr. Rush, and according to your syllabus. It may be presumptuous in me to denominate any thing of Dr. Priestley's imperfect ; but I must avow, that among all the vast exertions of his genius, I have never found one that is not imperfect, and this last is egregiously so. I will instance, at present, in one article. I find no notice of Cleanthes, one of whose sayings alone ought to have commanded his attention. He compared " philosophers to instruments of music, which made a noise without understanding it or themselves." He was ridiculed by his brother philosophers, and called " an ass." He owned he was the ass of Zeno, and " the only one whose back and shoulders were stout enough to carry his burdens." Why has not Priestley quoted more from Zeno and his dis- ciples ? Were they too Christian ? Though he lived two cen- turies and a half before Christ.

If I did not know it would be sending coals to Newcastle, I would, with all my dimness of eyes and trembling of fingers, copy in Greek the hymn of Cleanthes, and request you to com- pare it with any thing of Moses, of David, of Solomon. Instead of those ardent oriental figures, which are so difficult to under- stand, we find that divine simplicity, which constitutes the charm of Grecian eloquence in prose and verse. Pope had read, if Priestley had not, the

KAEAN60Y2 TMNOS £12 AlA.

K.vdt.OT' a&avuTov, KoTMUvvjie, TvavKpareQ aiei Zev, (f>i>0Eoc upxvyt} vo/iov fiEra ttuvto. Kv(Sepvuv, Xalpe.

" Most glorious of immortal beings ! Though denominated by

72 CORRESPONDENCE.

innumerable names and titles, always omnipotent ! Beginning and end of nature, governing the universe by fixed laws, blessed be thy name ! "

What think you of this translation ? Is it too Jewish or too too Christian ? Pope did not think it was either, for the first sentence in his universal prayer is more Jewish and more Christ- ian still. If it is not a literal translation, it is a close paraphrase of this simple verse of Cleanthes, —

Father of all ! in every age, In every clime adored, By saint, by savage, and by sage, Jehovah, Jove, or Lord !

But it may be said, for it has been said, that Pope was a Deist, and Swift too, as well as Bolingbroke. What will not men say? But- is the existence, the omnipotence, the eter- nity, the alpha and omega, and the universal Providence of one Supreme Being governing by fixed laws, asserted by St. John, in his Gospel, or in the Apocalypse, whether his or not, in clearer or more precise terms ? Can you conjecture a reason why Grotius has not translated this hymn ? Were Grotius and Priestley both afraid that the stoics would appear too much like Unitarians, Jews, and Christians? Duport has translated the sentence thus : —

Magne Pater divuin, cni nomina multa, sed una Omnipotens semper virtus, tu, Jupiter, auctor Naturae, certa qui singula lege gubernas, Rex, salve !

Bougainville has translated it, —

Pere et maitre des dieux, auteur de la nature, Jupiter, O Sagesse ! O loi sublime et pure ! Unite Souveraine, a qui tous les mortels, Sous mille noms divers, elevent des autels ; Je t' adore, nos coeurs te doivent leur hommage, Nous sommes tes enfans, ton ombre, ton image ; Et tout ce qui respire, anime par tes mains, A celebrer ta gloire, invite les humains. Beni sois a jamais !

I am so awkward in Italian, that I am ashamed to quote that

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language to you ; but Pompeius, a gentleman of Verona, has translated it thus, and you will understand it.

O Glorioso fra gli eterni, in guise Molte nomato, omnipossente ognora, Tu che, tutto con legge governando, De la natura sei principio e duce, Salve, O Giove.

It appears to me that the great principle of the Hebrews was the fear of God; that of the Gentiles, honor the gods; that of Christians, the love of God. Could the quiveration of my nerves and the inflammation of my eyes be cured, and my age diminished by twenty or thirty years, I would attend you in these researches with infinitely more pleasure than I would George the Fourth, Napoleon, Alexander, or Madison. But only a few hours, a few moments remain for your old friend.

THOMAS MCKEAN TO JOHN ADAMS.

Philadelphia, 28 September, 1813.

With sincerity I condole with you on the death of your daughter. I had five children who have died, three of whom have been married and left a numerous offspring. By these events we have sustained the deprivation of great comforts ; but our loss is their ineffable gain. They are in the bosom of their father and their God. These are among the common calamities of life ; resignation to the dispensations of Providence, and grati- tude for all the blessings left us, are indispensable duties.

Your favor of the 31st last month would have been acknow- ledged before now, but from a hope I entertained of giving you some account of the Congress at Albany, in 1754. However, after considerable inquiry, I have been disappointed.1 I have a faint recollection, that it was appointed by the British ministry for the ostensible purpose of ascertaining the boundaries of the several colonies to the eastward of Delaware ; but in reality to

1 Much has been published on this subject since. See Collections Massachu- setts Historical Society, vol. xxv. pp. 5 - 74. Hutchinson's Massachusetts, vol. iii. p. 20. Sparks's Franklin, vol. iii. pp. 22-36.

\fOL. X. 7

74 CORRESPONDENCE.

propose the least offensive plan for raising a revenue in Ame- rica. In 1739, Sir William Keith, a Scotch gentleman, who had been a lieutenant-governor of Pennsylvania, proposed such an assembly to the ministry. He also proposed the extension of the British stamp-duties to the colonies. He was then, I believe, in the Fleet prison. The hints he gave were embraced, the first in 1754, the second in 1764.

It has been long a matter of surprise to me, that no gentle- man of talents and character has undertaken to write a historv of the former British colonies, now United States of America, at least from 1756 to 1806, a period of fifty very important years. Such a work would not only be a great benefit to pos- terity, but also to the author. It would sell well.

To form an opinion, that a majority of the people of Penn- sylvania were against the American revolution at its commence- ment, was not uncommon, especially by strangers. The mis- take arose from the circumstance of a large majority of their representatives and civil officers being in the opposition. This State was first settled by a colony of Quakers, their proprietor and governor, William Penn, being at the head of the sect. They had the entire government or rule of Pennsylvania from 1682 until 1776, by the following means. The province was in the beginning divided into three counties, Philadelphia, Chester, and Bucks, and when the three lower counties on Delaware (now State of Delaware) separated from them in 1700, each county had eight members in the legislature, and the city, hav- ing been incorporated and inhabited chiefly by that sect, was allowed two. Eight other counties were erected prior to the revolution, and were allowed, some two, some but one repre- sentative, so that in all they had but ten ; although, if they had founded the representation according to the number of human beings in each district or county, the Quakers would have been greatly overruled, even adding all the tories or enemies of the revolution to their number. The voice of the representatives was not the voice of the people, as is the case with the British parliament; the three Quaker counties, having twenty-four members in assembly, made all the laws. They gave great trouble to the whigs, but they were kept under by fear as well as by superior numbers. From that day, the people called "Friends," have ceased to rule Pennsylvania. They foresaw

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the consequences of an equal representation, as it would affect themselves, and this was a principal cause of their aversion to a change in the form of our government as a body, though many individuals of their society differed with them, and be- came active and good citizens.

In the marriage of our children, their, not our happiness, is to be chiefly consulted. I confess, my wish is to have them established in their native country.

On reflection, I cannot refer to a single instance of disinter- ested or evident friendship of Great Britain towards this country during the period you mention. Every act which might bear such an aspect, has been performed for the interest of the ad- ministration alone, although coupled in some cases with that of their own island.

I shall be always pleased with your correspondence, and happy in contributing to your amusement. Your able talent for writing history, and your eminent public stations, induced a hope that we should be favored with an account of the trans- actions in America, for at least the last sixty years, from your pen. Tho's McKean.

TO THOMAS JEFFERSON.

Quiney, 4 October, 1813.

2e yap nuvTeom fti/Mg dpyroZoc npooavduv.

" It is not only permitted, but enjoined upon all mortals to address you." Why should not our divines translate it,

" It is our duty and our privilege to address the throne of thy grace, and pray for all needed lawful blessings, temporal and spiritual " ?

eifug was the goddess of honesty, justice, decency, and right ; the wife of Jove, another name for Juno. She presided over all oracles, deliberations, and councils. She commanded all mor- tals to pray to Jupiter for all lawful benefits and blessings. Now, is not this (so far forth) the essence of Christian devo- tion ? Is not this Christian piety ? Is it not an acknowledg- ment of the existence of a Supreme Being, of his universal Providence, of a righteous administration of the government of

76 CORRESPONDENCE.

the universe ? And what can Jews, Christians, or Mahomet- ans do more ? Priestley, the heroic Priestley, would not have

dared to answer or to ask these questions, though he might have answered them consistently enough with the spirit of his system. I regret, that Grotius has not translated this hymn, and cannot account for his omission of it. Duport translates the above line only by, —

" Te nempe licet mortalibus aegris, Cunctis compellare."

Where he finds his cegris, I know not; no such idea is in the Greek. All mortals, sick or well, have a right, and it is their duty, to pray, as far as I can understand the Greek. Bqu- gainville translates it, —

•• Et tout ce qui respire aniine par tes mains, A celebrer ta gloire, invite les humains. Beni sois a jamais ! "

This translation is Christian with a witness. None but a Jew, a Mahometan, or a Christian could ever have translated that simple line in this manner. Yet, the idea, the sentiment, translated into Christianity, is very well; well enough. The gentleman of Verona, Girolamo Pompei translates it thus, after " Salve, O Giove" for "Xaipe,"

" Perb che gli uomin tutti, Dritto e ben, che a te volgan le parole."

Now, tell me what resemblance of the Greek you can find in this Italian version ? In this manner are the most ancient Greek theologians rendered and transmitted to our youth by the Christians !

'E« gov yup yivoQ la/tEV, iifc /Jti/irjfia ^■0-xovTeg Movvov, baa C/oel te nal sp^Ei &v?jt' eki yalav.

■E/c aov yup yivog ea/niv, I presume, is the phrase quoted by Saint Paul, when he says to the Athenians, " one of your own poets hath said, we are all his offspring." Acts, xvii. 28. " For in Him we live and move and have our being ; as certain, also, of your own poets have said, ' for we are also his offspring.' Forasmuch, then, as we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Godhead is like unto silver, or gold, or stone graven by art and man's device." This reasoning is irresist-

CORRESPONDENCE. 77

ible ; for what can be more mad than to represent the eternal, almighty, omnipresent cause and principle of the universe by statues and pictures, by coins or medals ! Duport renders these two lines by, —

" Omnes tua namque propago Nos sumus, astern ae quasi imago vocis et echo Tanturn, quotquot humi spirantes repiimis."

Bougainville translates them thus : —

Nous sommes tes enfans, ton ombre, ton image, Et tout ce qui respire, anime par tes mains, A celebrer ta jjloire invite les humains. Beni sois a jamais !

Pompei renders them : —

Che siam tua stirpe, e solo noi, fra quanti Vivon mortali e muovon su la terra, Lo imitar de la voce abbiam sortito.

Moses says, Genesis i. 27 : " God created man in his own image." What, then, is the difference between Cleanthes and Moses? Are not the being and attributes of the Supreme Being, the resemblance, the image, the shadow of God in the intelligence and moral qualities of man, and the lawfulness and duty of prayer, as clearly asserted by Cleanthes as by Moses ? And did not the Chaldeans, the Egyptians, the Persians, the Indians, the Chinese, believe all this, as well as the Jews and Greeks 1

Alexander appears to have behaved to the Jews as Napoleon did to the Mahometans in the pyramid of Grand Cairo. Ptole- my, the greatest of his generals, and a greater man than himself, was so impressed with what he learned in Judea, that he em- ployed seventy learned men to translate the Hebrew Scriptures into Greek, nearly three hundred years before Christ. He sent learned men to collect books from all nations, and deposited them in the Alexandrian library. Will any man make me be- lieve that Caesar, that Pompey, that Cicero, that Seneca, that Tacitus, that Dionysius Halicarnassensis, that PlutarchA had never seen or heard of the Septuagint ? Why might not Clean- thes have seen the Septuagint? a The curiosity of Pompey to see the interior of the temple shows that the system of the Jews was become an object of speculation. It is impossible

78 CORRESPONDENCE.

to believe that the Septuagint was unknown and unheard of by Greeks or Romans at that time, at least by the great generals, orators, historians, philosophers, and statesmen, who looked through the then known world for information of every thing. On the other hand, how do we know how much Moses, Samuel, Joshua, David, Solomon, and Esdras, Daniel, Ezekiel, Isaiah, and Jeremiah learned in Babylon, Egypt, and Persia ? The destruction of the library at Alexandria is all the answer we can obtain to these questions. I believe that Jews, Gre- cians, Romans, and Christians all conspired or connived at that savage catastrophe, r I believe Cleanthes to be as good a Christ- ian as Priestley. /

But enough of my school-boy criticisms and crude philosophy, problematical history and heretical divinity, for the present.

TO THOMAS JEFFERSON.

Quincy, 12 November, 1813.

As I owe you more for your letters of October 12th and 28th than I shall be able to pay, I shall begin with the P. S. to the last. I am very sorry to say that I cannot " assist your memory in the inquiries of your letter of August 22d." 1 I really know not who was the compositor of any one of the petitions or ad- dresses you enumerate. Nay, farther, I am certain I never did know. I was so shallow a politician, that I was not aware of the importance of those compositions. They all appeared to me, in the circumstances of the country, like children's play at marbles or push-pin, or, rather, like misses in their teens emu- lating each other in their pearls, their bracelets, their diamond pins and Brussels lace.

In the Congress of 1774, there was not one member, except Patrick Henry, who appeared to me sensible of the precipice, or, rather, the pinnacle on which he stood, and had candor and courage enough to acknowledge it. America is in total ignor- ance, or under infinite deception, concerning that assembly.

1 The principal inquiry was, who drew the petition to the king, in the Con- gress of 1774,

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To draw the characters of them all would require a volume, and "would now be considered as a caricature-print ; one third tories, another whigs, and the rest mongrels. There was a little aristocracy among us, of talents and letters ; Mr. Dickin- son was primus inter pares, the bellwether, the leader of the aristocratical flock. Billy, alias Governor Livingston, and his son-in-law, Mr. Jay, were of this privileged order. The credit of most, if not all, those compositions was often, if not gene- rally, given to one or the other of the choice spirits. Mr. Dick- inson, however, was not on any of the original committees. He came not into Congress until October 17th ; he was not appointed till the 15th by his assembly.1 Congress adjourned, October 27th, though our correct secretary has not recorded any final adjournment or dissolution. Mr. Dickinson was in Con- gress but ten days. The business was all prepared, arranged, and even, in a manner, finished before his arrival. R. H. Lee was the chairman of the committee for preparing " the loyal and dutiful address to his Majesty." Johnson and Henry were acute spirits, and understood the controversy very well, though they had not the advantages of education, like Lee and John Rutledge. The subject had been near a month under discus- sion in Congress, and most of the materials thrown out there. It underwent another deliberation in committee, after which they made the customary compliment to their chairman, by requesting him to prepare and report a draught, which was done, and after examination, correction, amelioration, or pejo- ration, as usual, reported to Congress. October 3d, 4th, and 5th were taken up in debating and deliberating on matters proper to be contained in the address to his Majesty.2 October 21st, the address to the king was, after debate, recommitted, and Mr. John Dickinson added to the committee. The first draught was made, and all the essential materials put together by Lee. It might be embellished and seasoned afterwards with some of Mr. Dickinson's piety, but I know not that it was.3 Neat and handsome as the composition is, having never had any confidence in the utility of it, I never have thought much

1 Journals, vol. i. p. 30.

2 Journals, vol. i. p. 22.

3 It is now well known to have been the composition of Mr. Dickinson. Much light is shed upon this question by an article in the American Quarterly Re- view, vol. i. p. 413.

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about it since it was adopted. Indeed, I never bestowed much attention on any of those addresses, which were all but repeti- tions of the same things, the same facts and arguments, — dress and ornaments rather than body, soul, or substance. My thoughts and cares were nearly monopolized by the theory of our rights and wrongs, by measures for the defence of the country, and the means of governing ourselves. I was in a great error, no doubt, and am ashamed to confess it, for those things were necessary to give popularity to our cause, both at home and abroad ; and, to show my stupidity in a stronger light, the reputation of any one of those compositions has been a more splendid distinction than any aristocratical star or garter in the escutcheon of every man who has enjoyed it. Very sorry I cannot give you more satisfactory information, and more so, that I cannot, at present, give more attention to your two last excellent letters.

N. B. I am almost ready to believe that John Taylor, of Carolina, or of Hazel Wood, Port Royal, Virginia, is the author of 630 pages of printed octavo upon my books, that I have re- ceived. The style answers every characteristic that you have intimated. Within a week, I have received and looked into his Arator. They must spring from the same brain, as Minerva issued from the head of Jove, or, rather, as Venus rose from the froth of the sea. There is, however, a great deal of good sense in Arator, and there is some in his Aristocracy.

THOMAS MCKEAN TO JOHN ADAMS.

Philadelphia, 15 November, 1813.

The anecdote of Sir William Keith's proposal to the British ministry is to be found in the latter end of the 1st volume of American Tracts, printed by J. Almon, in London, 1767. It had been published in London in 1739, and is titled "A pro- posal for establishing by act of parliament the duties upon stamped paper and parchment in all the British colonies." Part of the anecdote I had by tradition, and in a novel, " Peregrine

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Pickle ; " for I have read and still read novels. These fabulous histories afford me not only amusement but pleasure, because they almost universally make vice detested and punished, and virtue triumphant, which is not the case of history of real life.

With respect to the histories of North America hitherto pub- lished, I concur with you in opinion. They were not popular, because the authors were little known, and it was known, that they had not an opportunity of personal knowledge of the facts they related, and in several of them were mistaken. The authors seem to have paid too much attention to those who they supposed would, from their reputation for wealth and in- fluence, be most likely to promote the sale of their books, or otherwise advance their fortunes. This temptation is now done away ; the favored characters are all dead, and very few of their descendants at present in any way distinguished.

I have briefly mentioned the situation of the people of Penn- sylvania at the time of the American revolution ; the like shall now be done with respect to Delaware. This small State was inhabited before Pennsylvania ; it consists of only three counties, namely — Newcastle, Kent, and Sussex ; the last was settled by a few families from Sweden, more from Holland, but the great mass from England. Kent was nearly in the same pro- portions ; and Newcastle was inhabited from Sweden, Holland, but the great majority were from Ireland ; there were a few from England and Scotland. In Newcastle, three fifths were at the time of the revolution Presbyterians, in Kent, about five eighths Protestant Episcopalians, and in Sussex, two thirds of the latter. The Society in London " for propagating the gospel in foreign parts," had about half a dozen missionaries, perhaps more, in the State of Delaware, to some of whom they gave a salary of 60/., to others 50/. sterling a year. These ministers foresaw, that if America became an independent state or nation, their salaries would necessarily cease. It was their interest, therefore, to oppose the revolution, and they did oppose it, though with as much secrecy, as practicable. They told their hearers, many of whom, especially in Sussex, were illiterate, ignorant, and bigoted, that it was a plan of the Presbyterians to get their religion established ; that it originated in New England, and was fostered by the Presbyterians in every colony or province A majority of this State were unquestionably against the inde-

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penclence of America ; but the most sensible of the Episcopa- lians, the Baptists and Quakers, and the Presbyterians, with very few exceptions, prevailed against them, as they believed they would be overpowered, with tlie help of the other colonies, if they resisted. I could not avoid remarking, that I was chosen, unanimously, speaker of the House of Representatives of this State, when, of all the members present, there were but six, including myself, who were esteemed whigs.

That you may continue to enjoy health and every other blessing is the sincere prayer of, dear Sir, your old friend, v

Tho's McKean.

TO THOMAS JEFFERSON.

Quincy, 25 December, 1813.

Answer my letter at your leisure. Give yourself no concern. I write as a refuge and protection against ennui.

The fundamental principle of all philosophy and all Christ- ianity is, " Rejoice always in all things." " Be thankful at all times for all good, and all that we call evil." Will it not fol- low, that I ought to rejoice and be thankful that Priestley has lived ? Aye, that Voltaire has lived ? I should have given my reason for rejoicing in Voltaire, &c. It is because I believe they have done more than even Luther or Calvin to lower the tone of that proud hierarchy that shot itself up above the clouds, and more to propagate religious liberty than Calvin, or Luther, or even Locke. That Gibbon has lived? That Hume has lived, though a conceited Scotchman ? That Bolingbroke has lived, though a haughty, arrogant, supercilious dogmatist ? That Burke and Johnson have lived, though superstitious slaves, or self-deceiving hypocrites both ? Is it not laughable to hear Burke call Bolingbroke a superficial writer ; to hear him ask, " who ever read him through ! " Had I been present, I should have answered him: " I, I myself! I have read him through, more than fifty years ago, and more than five times in my life, and once within five years past. And, in my opinion, the epithet ' superficial ' belongs to you and your friend Johnson more than to him." I might say much more ; but I believe Burke and Johnson to have been as political Christians as Leo X.

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I return to Priestley, though I have great complaints against him for personal injuries and persecution, at the same time that I forgive it all, and hope and pray that he may be pardoned for it all above. Dr. Brocklesby, an intimate friend and convivial companion of Johnson, told me, that Johnson died in agonies of horror of annihilation ; and all the accounts we have of his death corroborate this account of Brocklesby. Dread of anni- hilation ! Dread of nothing ! A dread of nothing, I should think, would be no dread at all. Can there be any real, sub- stantial, rational fear of nothing? Were you on your death- bed, and in your last moments informed by demonstration or revelation that you would cease to think and to feel at your dissolution, should you be terrified? You might be ashamed of yourself for having lived so long, to bear the proud man's contumely ; you might be ashamed of your Maker, and com- pare Him to a little girl amusing herself, her brothers, and sis- ters by blowing bubbles in soapsuds ; you might compare Him to boys, sporting with crackers and rockets, or to men employed in making more artificial fireworks, or to men and women at fairs and operas, or Sadler's Wells exploits ; or to politicians, in their intrigues ; or to heroes, in their butcheries ; or to Popes, in their devilisms. But what should you fear ? Nothing. Emori nolo ; sed me mortuum esse nihil cestimo.

To return to Priestley — you could make a more luminous book than his upon the " Doctrines of Heathen Philosophers, compared with those of Revelation." /Why has he not given us a more satisfactory account of the Pythagorean philosophy and theology ? He barely names Ocellus, who lived long before Plato. His treatise of kings and monarchy has been destroyed, I conjecture, by Platonic philosophers, Platonic Jews or Christ- ians, or by fraudulent republicans or despots. His treatise of the universe has been preserved. He labors to prove the eter- nity of the world. The Marquis D' Argens translated it in all its noble simplicity. The Abbe Batteux has given another trans- lation. D' Argens not only explains the text, but sheds more light upon the ancient systems. His remarks are so many treatises, which develop the concatenation of ancient opinions. The most essential ideas of the theology, of the physics, and of the morality of the ancients are clearly explained, and their different doctrines compared with one another, and with the

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modern discoveries. I wish I owned this book, and one hun- dred thousand more that I want every day, now when I am almost incapable of making any use of them. No doubt, he informs us that Pythagoras was a great traveller.

Priestley barely mentions Timaeus^; but-rtr does not appear that he had read him. Why has he not given us an account of him and his book ? He was before Plato, and gave him the idea of his Timaeus, and much more of his philosophy. After his master, he maintained the existence of matter ; that matter was capable of receiving all sorts of forms ; that a moving power agitates all the parts of it, and that an intelligence directed the moving power; that this intelligence produced a regular and harmonious world. The intelligence had seen a plan, an idea (logos), in conformity to which it wrought, and without which it would not have known what, it was about, nor what it wanted to do. This plan was the idea, image, or model, which had represented to the Supreme Intelligence the world before it existed, which had directed it in its action upon the moving power, and which it contemplated in forming the elements, the bodies, and the world. This model was distinguished from the intelligence which produced the world, as the architect is from his plans. He divided the productive cause of the world into a spirit, which directed the moving force, and into an image, which determined it in the choice of the directions which it gave to the moving force, and the forms which it gave to mat- ter.

I wonder that Priestley has overlooked this, because it is the same philosophy with Plato's, and would have shown that the Pythagorean, as well as the Platonic philosophers, probably concurred in the fabrication of the Christian Trinity,/ Priestley mentions the name of Archytas, but does not appear to have read him, though he was a successor of Pythagoras, and a great mathematician, a great statesman, and a great general. John Gram, a learned and honorable Dane, has given a handsome edition of his works, with a Latin translation, and an ample account of his life and writings. Zaleucus, the legislator of Locris, and Charondas of Sybaris, were disciples of Pythagoras, and both celebrated to immortality for the wisdom of their laws, five hundred years before Christ. Why are those laws lost ? I say, the spirit of party has destroyed them ; civil, poli-

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tical, and ecclesiastical bigotry. Despotical, monarchical, aristo- cratical, and democratical fury, have all been employed in this work of destruction of every thing that could give us true light, and a clear insight of antiquity. For every one of these parties, when possessed of power, or when they have been undermost, and struggling to get uppermost, has been equally prone to every species of fraud and violence and usurpation.— Why has not Priestley mentioned these legislators? The preamble to the laws of Zaleucus, which is all that remains, is as orthodox Christian theology as Priestley's, and Christian benevolence and forgiveness of injuries almost as clearly expressed.

Priestley ought to have done impartial justice to philosophy and philosophers. Philosophy, which is the result of reason, is the first, the original revelation of the Creator to his creature, man. When this revelation is clear and certain, by intuition or necessary induction^, no subsequent revelation, supported by prophecies or miracles, can supersede it. Philosophy is not only the love of wisdom, but the science of the universe and its cause. There is, there was, and there will be but one master of philosophy in the universe. Portions of it, in different de- grees, are revealed to creatures. Philosophy looks with an im- partial eye on all terrestrial religions. I have examined all, as well as my narrow sphere, my straitened means, and my busy . life would allow me ; and the result is, that the Bible is the best book in the world. It contains more of my little philosophy than all the libraries I have seen ; and such parts of it as I can- not reconcile to my little philosophy, I postpone for future investigation. Priestley ought to have given us a sketch of the religion and morals of Zoroaster, of Sanchoniathon, of Con- fucius, and all the founders of religions before Christ, whose superiority would, from such a comparison, have appeared the more transcendent. Priestley ought to have told us that Pythagoras passed twenty years in his travels in India, in Egypt, in Chaldea, perhaps in Sodom and Gomorrah, Tyre and Sidon. He ought to have told us^that in India he conversed with the Brahmins^ and read the Shasta, five thousand years old, written in the language of the sacred Sanscrit, with the elegance and sentiments of Plato. Where is to be found theology more orthodox, or philosophy more profound, than in the introduction to the Shasta ? " God is one, creator of all,

vol. x. 8

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universal sphere, without beginning, without end. God go- verns all the creation by a general providence, resulting from his eternal designs. Search not the essence and the nature of the Eternal, who is one ; your research will be vain and pre- sumptuous. It is enough, that, day by day and night by night, you adore his power, his wisdom, and his goodness, in his works. The Eternal willed, in the fulness of time, to communi- cate of his essence and of his splendor, to beings capable of perceiving it. They as yet existed not. The Eternal willed, and they were. He created Birma, Vitsnow, and Sib." These doctrines, sublime, if ever there were any sublime, Pythagoras learned in India, and taught them to Zaleucus and his other disciples. He there learned also his metempsychosis ; but this never was popular, never ruade much progress in Greece or Italy, or any other country besides India and Tartary, the region of the grand immortal Lama. And how does this differ from the possessions of demons in Greece and Rome, from the demon of Socrates, from the worship of cows and crocodiles in Egypt and elsewhere ? After migrating through various ani- mals, from elephants to serpents, according to their behavior, souls that, at last, behaved well, became men and women, and then, if they were good, they went to Heaven. All ended in Heaven, if they became virtuous. Who can wonder at the widow of Malabar ? Where is the lady who, if her faith were without doubt that she should go to Heaven with her husband on the one hand, or migrate into a toad or a wasp on the other, would not lie down on the pile, and set fire to the fuel ? Modi- fications and disguises of the metempsychosis had crept into Egypt, and Greece, and Rome, and other countries. Have you read Farmer on the demons and possessions of the New Testa- ment?

According to the Shasta, Moisayer, with his companions, rebelled against the Eternal, and were precipitated down to Ondero, the region of darkness.

Do you know any thing of the prophecy of Enoch ? Can you give me a comment on the 6th, the 9th, the 14th verses of" the epistle of Jude ?

If I am not weary of writing, I am sure you must be of read- ing such incoherent rattle. I will not persecute you so severely in future, if I can help it, so farewell.

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THOMAS MCKEAN TO JOHN ADAMS.

Philadelphia, January, 1814.

In your favor of the 26th November last you say, " that you ventured to say, that about a third of the people of the colonies were against the revolution." It required much reflection be- fore I could fix my opinion on this subject; but on mature deliberation I conclude you are right, and that more than a third of influential characters were against it. The opposition consisted chiefly of the Friends or Quakers, the Menonists, the Protestant Episcopalians, — whose clergy received salaries from the Society for Propagating the Gospel in Foreign Parts, — and from the officers of the crown and proprietors of provinces, with their connections, — adding the timid and those who believed the colonies would be conquered, and that, of course, they would be safe in their persons and property from such conduct, and also have a probability of obtaining office and distinction, — and also the discontented and capricious of all grades.

I have not heard the specific sum of money Mr. C. J. Mar- shall received for his copyright of the Life of Washington, nor have I been able to obtain any certain information concerning it ; but if he obtained a sixth part of what you mention, I think he ought to be contented.

During my protracted life, I neither have had leisure or in- clination to write a history, and at my present age it is out of the question. It is true I have often been spoken to, and even solicited by a great many of my learned acquaintance, to un- dertake that of the American Revolution, beginning at the year 1760 or before ; among them Dr. Rush, your former correspond- ent, was not the least anxious.

Though I shall never write a history, I will give you a histori- cal fact respecting the declaration of independence, which may amuse, if not surprise.

On the 1st July, 1776, the question was taken in the com- mittee of the whole of Congress, when Pennsylvania, represented by seven members then present, voted against it — four to three ; among the majority were Robert Morris and John Dickinson. Delaware (having only two present, namely, myself and Mr. Read) was divided ; all the other States voted in favor of it.

*H CORRESPONDENCE.

The report was delayed until the 4th, and in the mean time I sent an express for Csesar Rodney, to Dover, in the county of Kent, in Delaware, at my private expense, whom I met at the State-house door on the 4th of July in his boots ; he resided eighty miles from the city, and just arrived as Congress met. The question was taken ; Delaware voted in favor of independ- ence; Pennsylvania (there being only live members present, Messrs. Dickinson and Morris absent) voted also for it; Messrs. Willing and Humphreys were against it. Thus the thirteen States were unanimous in favor of independence.1 Notwith- standing this, in the printed public journal of Congress for 1776, vol. ii., it appears that the declaration of independence was declared on the 4th of July, 1776, by the gentlemen whose names are there inserted ; whereas no person signed it on that day, and among the names there inserted, one gentleman, namely George Read, was not in favor of it ; and seven were not in Congress on that day, namely Messrs. Morris, Rush, Clymer, Smith, Taylor, and Ross, all of Pennsylvania, and Mr. Thornton, of New Hampshire ; nor were the six gentlemen last named, members of Congress on the 4th of July. The five for Pennsylvania were appointed delegates by the conven- tion of that State on the 20th July, and Mr. Thornton took his seat in Congress for the first time on the 4th November follow- ing; when the names of Henry Wisner, of New York, and Thomas M'Kean, of Delaware, are not printed as subscribers, though both were present in Congress on the 4th of July and voted for independence.

Here false colors are certainly hung out ; there is culpability somewhere. What I have heard as an explanation is as fol- lows. When the declaration was voted, it was ordered to be engrossed on parchment and then signed, and that a few days afterwards a resolution was entered on the secret journal, that no person should have a seat in Congress during that year until he should have signed the declaration of independence. After the 4th of July I was not in Congress for several months, hav-

1 This account is not quite accurate. The writer has confounded the ques- tion on the motion to declare^ and that on Jlie form of the declaration. The first was taken on the 2d of July. The second was adopted on "the 4th. See Mr. Jefferson's clear statement rectifying this error, in his letter to S. A. Wells, in RandoljuYs edition, vol. i. p. 98.

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ing marched with a regiment of associators, as colonel, to sup- port General Washington, until the flying camp of ten thousand men was completed. When the associators were discharged, I returned to Philadelphia, took my seat in Congress, and signed my name to the declaration on parchment. This transaction should be truly stated, and the then secret journal should be made public. In the manuscript journal, Mr. Pickering, then Secretary of State, and myself, saw a printed half sheet of paper, with the names of the members afterwards in the printed jour- nals stitched in. We examined the parchment, where my name is signed in my own handwriting.*

A glimmering of peace appears in the horizon ; may it be real- ized ; but every preparation should be made for a continuance of the war. When the British arms have been successful, I have never found their rulers or ministers otherwise than haughty, rude, imperious, nay, insolent. They and their allies have this year been successful both in the north and south of Europe.

My sight fades very fast, though my writing may not discover it. God bless you. Your friend,

Tho's McKean.

TO THOMAS JEFFERSON.

Quincy, 14 March,' 1814.

I was sitting, nibbing my pen and brushing my faculties, to write a polite letter of thanks to Mr. Counsellor Barton, for his valuable Memoir of Dr. Rittenhouse, though I could not ac- count for his sending it to me, when I received your favor of January 24th. I now most cordially indorse my thanks over to you. The book is in the modern American style, an able imitation of Marshall's Washington, though far more entertain- ing and instructive, a Washington mausoleum, an Egyptian pyramid. I shall never read it, any more than Taylor's Aristo- cracy. Mrs. Adams reads it with great delight, and reads to me what she finds interesting, and that is, indeed, the whole book. I have not time to hear it all.

1 This letter was commenced in February, and bears the date of that month in the very imperfect copy of it which remains. But from Mr. Jefferson's acknowledgment of the receipt, the actual date has been obtained.

8*

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Rittenhouse was a virtuous and amiable man ; an exquisite mechanician, master of the astronomy known in his time, an expert mathematician, a patient calculator of numbers. But we have had a Winthrop, an Andrew Oliver, a Willard, a Webber, his equals, and we have a Bowditch, his superior, in all these particulars, except the mechanism. But you know Philadelphia is the heart, the sensorium, the pineal gland of the United States. In politics, Rittenhouse was good, simple, ignorant, well-meaning, Franklinian, democrat, totally ignorant of the world, as an anchorite, an honest dupe of the French revolution, a mere instrument of Jonathan Sergeant, Dr. Hut- chinson, Genet, and Mifflin. I give him all the credit of his planetarium. The improvement of the orrery to the planeta- rium was an easy, natural thought, and nothing was wanting but calculations of orbits, distances, and periods of revolutions, all of which were made to his hands long before he existed. Patience, perseverance, and sleight of hand, is his undoubted merit and praise.

I had heard Taylor in Senate, till his style was so familiar to me, that I had not read three pages before I suspected the author. I wrote a letter to him, and he candidly acknowledged that the six hundred and fifty pages were sent me with his con- sent. I wait with impatience for the publication and annuncia- tion of the work. Arator ought not to have been adulterated with politics ; but his precept, " Gather up the fragments, that nothing be lost," is of inestimable value in agriculture and hor- ticulture. Every weed, cob, husk, stalk, ought to be saved for manure.

Your researches in the laws of England, establishing Christ- ianity as the law of the land, and part of the common law, are curious and very important. Questions without number will arise in this country. Religious controversies and ecclesiastical contests are as common, and will be as sharp as any in civil politics, foreign or domestic. In what sense and to what extent the Bible is law, may give rise to as many doubts and quarrels as any civil, political, military, or maritime laws, and will inter- mix with them all to irritate faction of every sort. I dare not look beyond my nose into futurity. Our money, our commerce, our religion, our national and state constitutions, even our arts and sciences, are so many seed-plots of division, faction, sedi-

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tion, and rebellion. Every thing is transmuted into an instru- ment of electioneering. Election is the Grand Brama, the immortal Lama, I had almost said the Juggernaut ; for wives are almost ready to burn upon the pile, and children to be thrown under the wheel.

You will perceive, by these figures, that I have been looking into Oriental history and Hindoo religion. I have read voyages and travels, and every thing I could collect. Not the least is JPriestley's " Comparison of the Institutions of Moses with those _of the Hindoos and other Ancient Nations," a work of great labor, and not less haste. I thank him for the labor, and for- give, though I lament, the hurry. You would be fatigued to read, and I, just recruiting^ a little from a longer confinement and indisposition than I have had for thirty years, have not strength to write many observations. But I have been dis- appointed in the principal points of my curiosity. I am disappointed, —

1. By rinding that no just comparison can be made, because the original Shasta and the original Vedas are not obtained, or, if obtained, not yet.

2. In not finding such morsels of the sacred books as have been translated and published, which are more honorable to the original Hindoo religion than any thing he has quoted.

3. In the history of the rebellion of innumerable hosts of angels in heaven against the Supreme Being, who, after some thousands of years of war, conquered them, and hurled them down to the region of total darkness, where they suffered a part of the punishment of their crime, and then were mercifully released from prison, permitted to ascend to earth, and migrate into all sorts of animals, reptiles, birds, beasts, and men, accord- ing to their rank and character, and even into vegetables and minerals, there to serve on probation. If they passed without reproach their several gradations, they were permitted to be- come cows and men. If, as men, they behaved well, that is, to the satisfaction of the priests, they were restored to their original rank and bliss in heaven.

4. In not finding the Trinity of Pythagoras and Plato ; their contempt of matter, flesh, and blood ; their almost adoration of fire and water ; their metempsychosis, and even the prohibition of beans, so evidently derived from India.

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5. In not finding the prophecy of Enoch deduced from India, in which the fallen angels make such a figure.

But you are weary. Priestley has proved the superiority of the Hebrews to the Hindoos, as they appear in the Gentoo laws and institutions of Menu, but the comparison remains to be made with the Shasta.

In his remarks on M. Dupuis, p. 342, Priestley says : " the history of the fallen angels is another circumstance on which M. Dupuis lays much stress." According to the Christians, he says, vol. i. p. 336, " there was, from the beginning, a division among the angels; some remaining faithful to the light, and others taking the part of darkness," &c. " But this supposed history is not found in the Scriptures. It has only been inferred from a wrong interpretation of one passage in the second epistle of Peter, and a corresponding one in that of Jude, as has been shown by judicious writers. That there is such a person as the devil, is no part of my faith, nor that of many other Christians ; nor am I sure that it was the belief of any of the Christian writers. Neither do I believe the doctrine of demoniacal pos- sessions, whether it was believed by the sacred writers or not ; and, yet my belief in these articles does not affect my faith in the great facts of which the Evangelists were eye and ear witnesses. They might not be competent judges in the one case, though perfectly so with respect to the other."

I will ask Priestley, when I see him, do you believe those passages in Peter and Jude to be interpolations ? If so, by whom made, and when, and where, and for what end ? Was it to support or found the doctrine of the fall of man, original sin, the universal corruption, depravation, and guilt of human nature and mankind, and the subsequent incarnation of God to make atonement and redemption ? Or, do you think that Peter and Jude believed the book of Enoch to have been written by the seventh from Adam, and one of the sacred canonical books of the Hebrew prophets ? Peter, 2d epistle, chapter 2, verse 4, says : " for if God spared not the angels that sinned, but cast them down to hell, and delivered them into chains of darkness, to be reserved unto judgment." Jude, verse 6th, says : " and the angels which kept not their first estate, but left their own habitation, he hath reserved in everlasting chains, under darkness, unto the judgment of the great day." Verse 14th, "And Enoch also,

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the seventh from Adam, prophesied of these, saying, Behold the Lord cometh with ten thousand of his saints, to execute judgment upon all." &c. Priestley says, " a wrong interpreta- tion has been given to the texts." I wish he had favored us with his right interpretation of them.

In another place, p. 326, Priestley says, " there is no circum- stance of which M. Dupuis avails himself so much, or repeats so often, both with respect to the Jewish and Christian religions, as the history of the fall of man, in the beginning of the book of Genesis. I believe with him, and have maintained in my writ- ings, that this history is either an allegory, or founded on uncer- tain tradition ; that it is a hypothesis to account for the origin of evil, adopted by Moses, which, by no means, accounts for the facts."

March 3. So far was written almost a month ago ; but sickness has prevented progress. I had much to say about this work. I shall never be a disciple of Priestley ._ He is as ab- surd, inconsistent, credulous, and incomprehensible as Athana- sius. Read his letter to the Jews in this volume. Could a rational creature write it ? Aye ! such rational creatures as Rochefoucauld and Condorcet and John Taylor, in politics, and Towerses, Jurieus, and French prophets, in theology.

Priestley's account of the philosophy and religion of India appears to me to be much such a work as a man of busy re- search would produce, who should undertake to describe Christ- ianity from the sixth to the twelfth century, when a deluge of wonders overflowed the world; when miracles were performed and proclaimed from every convent and monastery, hospital, church-yard, mountain, valley, cave, and cupola.

There is a work which I wish I possessed. _It has never crossed the Atlantic. It is entitled Acta Sanctorum, in forty- seven volumes in folio.1 It contains the lives of the saints. It was compiled in the beginning of the sixteenth century by_B_ol- landus^ Henschenius, and Papebroch. What would I give to possess, in one immense map, one stupendous draught, all the legends, true, doubtful, and false ? These Bollandists dared to discuss some of the facts, and to hint that some of them were

1 Fifty-four volumes ; and it is still in course of publication. Two volumes have lately been issued under the auspices of the Belgian government.

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doubtful. E. g. Papebroch doubted the antiquity of the Car- melites from Elias ; and whether the face of Jesus Christ was painted on the handkerchief of St. Veronique ; and whether the prepuce of the Savior of the world, which was shown in the church at Antwerp, could be proved to be genuine^ For these bold skepticisms, he was libelled in pamphlets, and denounced to the Pope and the inquisition in Spain. The inquisition con- demned him ; but the Pope, not daring to condemn or acquit him, prohibited all writings pro and con. But, as the physi- cians cure one disease by exciting another, as a fever by a sali- vation, this bull was produced by a new claim. The brothers of the Order of Charity asserted a descent from Abraham nine hundred years anterior to the Carmelites.

A philosopher, who should write a description of Christian- ism from the Bollandistic saints of the sixth or tenth century, would probably produce a work tolerably parallel to Priestley's upon the Hindoos.

To John Taylor

Quincy, 9 April, 1814.

I have received from Mr. John M. Carter your " Inquiry " in 656 pages, neatly bound. If I had any rational expectation, in my seventy-ninth year, of life, health, unclouded eyes, and un- paralyzed fingers for twenty years to come, I would cheerfully engage with you in an analytical investigation of all those sub- jects which, you say, have amused some of your leisure hours for twenty years past.

The field is vast. It comprehends the first and the last phi- losophy ; the end of man in all his existence. In this letter, I shall confine myself to one topic. In your 519th page, and several that follow, you have taken notice of something of my composition. But i cannot understand it. I suspect, by some accident or other, you have confounded together a little pam- phlet with a letter that was never printed. Let me give you an unvarnished explanation, according to my best recollection. In January, 1776, six months before the declaration of independ- ence, Mr. Wythe, of Virginia, passed an evening with me, at

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my chambers. In the course of conversation upon the neces- sity of independence, Mr. Wythe, observing that the greatest obstacle, in the way of a declaration of it, was the difficulty of agreeing upon a government for our future regulation, I replied that each colony should form a government for itself, as a free and independent State. " Well," said Mr. Wythe, " what plan would you institute or advise for any one of the States ? " My answer was, " It is a thing I have not thought much of, but I will give you the first ideas that occur to me ; " and I went on to explain to him off-hand and in short-hand my first thoughts. Mr. Wythe appeared to think more of them than I did, and requested me to put down in writing what I had then said. I agreed, and, accordingly, that night and the next morning wrote it, and sent it in a letter to him. This letter he sent to R. H. Lee, who came and asked my leave to print it. I said it was not fit to be printed, nor worth printing; but, if he thought otherwise, he might, provided he would suppress my name. He went accordingly to Dunlap, and had it printed under the title of " Thoughts on Government, in a Letter from a Gentle- man to his Friend." Thus much for the printed pamphlet. Now for the imprinted letter. Some time in the ensuing spring, the delegates from North Carolina called upon me with a vote of the legislature of their State, instructing them to apply to me for advice concerning a form of government to be instituted in that State. I blushed, to be sure, to find that my name had reached so far as North Carolina; and still more at such an unexpected honor from so respectable an assembly.1

Overwhelmed, however, as I was at that period, night and day, with business in Congress and on committees, I found moments to write a letter, perhaps as long as that to Mr. Wythe, and containing nearly the same outlines. In what points the two letters agree or differ, I know not, for I kept no copy, and have never seen or heard of it since, till your volume revived

1 There can be no doubt that there were three separate letters of Mr. Adams in circulation, each of them embodying the same general idea, with more or less amplification. One of them is the printed pamphlet alluded to in the text; the second is that published by Mr. Taylor, which gave rise to this letter, and which that gentleman had obtained from Mr. John Penn, of North Carolina ; and stdl a third has been found in North Carolina, a copy of which was trans- mitted to Mr. J. Q. Adams, a few years before his decease, by Mr. Charles Philips, Secretary of the Historical Society of the University of North Carolina.

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the recollection of it. I suspect you have never seen either of the letters, but have taken extracts from them both, which may have been printed in newspapers, and blended them together ; for certainly there was not a word about North Carolina in the printed letter to Mr. Wythe.

I may possibly hear hereafter of another letter I wrote to Jonathan Dickinson Sergeant, of New Jersey, in answer to an earnest solicitation from him to give him my sentiments of a proper form of government for that State. I took no copy, and have not heard of it for thirty-five or thirty-six years. Let it come to light, however. I have no wish to conceal any thing in any of these letters, though there may be many things I should not now approve. The experience of thirty-eight years alters many views. Opinionum commenta delet dies.

As you seem to have found some amusement in some of my scribbles, I beg your acceptance of another morsel, the Dis- courses on Davila, which you may call the fourth volume of the Defence of the Constitutions of the United States. I am, Sir, very respectfully, and with very friendly dispositions, &c.

TO RICHARD RUSH.

Quincy, 30 May, 1814.

Your favor of the 20th has given me great pleasure, because it informs me that you are happy. Your visit to Philadelphia must have been delightful, and the company of your excellent surviving parent on your return, and her domestication with you and the fair enchantress, must be more so. This family intercourse cannot be less pleasing to your mother. It will preserve her health and prolong her life, much more important to you, your brothers and sisters, than I dare say she esteems it for herself.

A stock of new law books, next to the renovation of social, domestic, and local feelings, was an object worthy of you. New law books, I hope, improve upon the old, but ought not to supersede them all. I fear you would laugh, if I should say that the Corpus Juris, Vinnius, and Cujacius, ought not to be

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■ wholly superseded by Hale and Coke, Holt and Mansfield. No,

nor by Parsons, Ingersoll, or Marshall.

Why are we " astonished at the events in Europe " ? They are every day occurrences in history. That heroes come to bad ends, has been the experience of all ages. Alexander, Csesar, Charles XIL, and Oliver Cromwell, and millions of others, as wild and delirious as they, have all come to a like catastrophe. Read the histories of our missionary societies. Is there not the same enthusiasm, the same heroism ? I scarcely dare to say what I know, that many a kept mistress has dared for her lover as great hazards and sufferings, as any of these sublime heroes, temporal or spiritual. While we know that enthusiasm pro- duces the most sublime and beautiful actions and events in human life, at times, we should always be jealous of it, watch its movements, and be prepared to escape, avoid, or resist its deleterious effects.

Alas ! the Massachusetts triumvirate is broken ! Judge Paine is no more ! An old German doctor, Turner, when I was a little boy, asked me the age of my father. When I told him as well as I knew, "Alas ! " said the old gentleman, " your father's age is so near my own, that, when one dies of old age, the other may quake for fear." If death were terrible to Gerry or to me, the death of Paine might make us " quake for fear."

" What would New England say ? " 1 She will say as she ought to say, and as she always has said on like occasions, " I have been cheated, deceived, deluded. I thought Britain our friend, but find I have been mistaken." The " intimations " you have had, have been made to me. The tories have " inti- mated " to me in various secret, confidential, round-about ways, these mighty bugbears. " Mr. Adams saved the fisheries once I hope his son will save them a second time. We have no con- fidence in Gallatin, Clay, Russell, or even Bayard ; we believe they would all sacrifice the fisheries for Canada or even for peace." My invariable answer has been, " You deceive your- selves with imaginary fears. You know that the men Bayard, Russell, Clay, and even Gallatin would cede the fee simple of the United States, as soon as they would the fisheries."

1 Mr. Rush had asked this question : —

" What, for example, would New England say to Great Britain talking a limit, excluding us from trade beyond the Cape of Good Hope, from the West Indies, and from the Newfoundland fisheries ? "

VOL. X. 9 G

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Did you ever know a man, or nation, a coaTition or alliance that could bear success, victory, and prosperity ? Victory has destroyed Napoleon. Victory is in danger of destroying the allies. If not, and the Bourbons are restored, what is their prospect ? The Stuarts were restored ; for how long a time ? and how many plots ? how many Sidneys, Russells, Staffords, were beheaded ? I know by experience that the swell is as dangerous as the storm. We must learn to know ourselves, to esteem ourselves, to respect ourselves, to confide in ourselves under heaven alone. We must hold Europe at arm's length, do them justice, treat them with civility, and set their envy, jealousy, malice, retaliation, and revenge at defiance.

The lakes, the lakes, the lakes ! shocking, indeed, that we have not the command of the lakes! But I could convince you that it is still more shocking that we have not the com- mand of the ocean, or at least an independent power upon the ocean. But this would lead too far at present. If you have a curiosity upon this subject, I will give you a few hints in a future letter.

TO MRS. MERCY WARREN.

Quincy,15 July, 1814.

What brain could ever have conceived or suspected Samuel Barrett, Esquire, to have been the author of the " Group " ? l The bishop had neither the natural genius nor the acquired talents, the knowledge of characters, nor the political principles, sentiments, or feelings that could have dictated that pungent drama. His worthy brother, the major, might have been as rationally suspected.

I could take my Bible oath to two propositions, — 1st, that

1 " My next question, Sir, you may deem impertinent. Do you remember who was the author of a little pamphlet entitled The Group f To your hand it was committed by the writer. You brought it forward to the public eye. I will therefore give you my reason for naming it now. A friend of mine, who lately visited the Athenaeum, saw it among a bundle of pamphlets, with a high encomium of the author, who, he asserted, was Mr. Samuel Barrett. You can, if you please, give a written testimony contradictory of the false assertion." Extract from Mrs. Warren's letter.

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Bishop Barrett, in my opinion, was one of the last literary cha- racters in the world who ought to have been suspected to have written the " Group." 2d. That there was but one person in the world, male or female, who could at that time, in my opinion, have written it ; and that person was Madam Mercy Warren, the historical, philosophical, poetical, and satirical consort of the then Colonel, since General, James Warren of Plymouth, sister of the great, but forgotten, James Otis.

This Group has mortified and confounded me. Since the receipt of your letter, I went to Boston and demanded of my nephew and quondam secretary,1 the volume. He says he obtained it, with other pamphlets, from Governor Adams's collec- tion, with the strange certificate in manuscript, in the handwrit- ing, as he thinks, of Jo Dennie, the editor of the Port Folio.2 Jo Dennie in Sam. Adams's library is as great an oddity as Sam. Barrett, author of the Group. But this is not the worst. The Group has convinced me of the decay of my memory more than any thing that has yet occurred. Hazelrod, Judge Meagre, Hateall, Beau Trumps, Francois, Dupe, and Spendall, I can comprehend ; but Mushroom, Dick, Sapling, Crowbar, Fribble, Batteau, and Collaterals have escaped my recollection. The Group was printed in 1775. The " cawing cormorants " in the 16th page, and Novanglus and Massachusettensis in the 20th page, prove that it was written during the flickering between those two scribblers ; but as no allusion is found in it to the skirmishes of Concord or Lexington, it must have been written

1 W. S. Shaw, the librarian of the Boston Athenaeum.

2 This certificate yet remains attached to the volume at the Athenaeum, but another has been added, correcting the mistake. The Group has little merit as a literary work, but it will always be a curiosity on other accounts. Mr. Adams afterwards wrote with his own hand in the same copy, the names of the persons designed to be represented. And another copy in the same library has the names written in the hand of Norton Quincy, to whom it belonged. They are as follows :

Hazelrod, Peter Oliver, Humbug, John Erving,

Meagre, Foster Hutchinson, Spendall, Wm. Pepperell,

Hateall, Timothy Ruggles, Mushroom, Morrow,

Beau Trumps, Leonard, Crowbar, Edson,

Dick, Lechmere, Dupe, Flucker,

Sapling, N. R. Thomas, Fribble, Harrison Gray,

Francois, Boutineau, Collateralis, Brown, Batteau, Loring,

Harrison Gray was unquestionably intended, although the association of ideas prompted the accidental addition in the book, of the name of his grand- son, then a child.

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and printed before the 19th of April, 1775. Now, I cannot recollect to have been in Plymouth since the spring of 1774. Help ! O help my memory.

France is humbled and Napoleon is banished ; but the tyrant, the tyrant of tyrants is not fallen. John Bull still paws, and bellows terrible menaces and defiances.

Sincerely your friend.

TO THOMAS JEFFERSON.

Quincy, 16 July, 1814

I received this morning your favor of the 5th, and as I can never let a sheet of yours rest, I sit down immediately to ac- knowledge it.

Whenever Mr. Rives, of whom I have heard nothing, shall arrive, he shall receive all the cordial civilities in my power.

I am sometimes afraid that my machine will not surcease motion soon enough ; for I dread nothing so much as " dying at top," and expiring like Dean Swift, a " driveller and a show," or like Sam. Adams, a grief and distress to his family, a weep- ing, helpless object of compassion for years.

I am bold to say^that neither you nor I will live to see the course which the " wonders of the times " will take. Many years, and perhaps centuries must pass before the current will acquire a settled direction. If the Christian religion, as I under- stand it, or as you understand it, should maintain its ground/ as I believe it will, yet Platonic, Pythagoric, Hindoo, and cabalist- ical Christianity, which is Catholic Christianity, and which has prevailed for fifteen hundred years, has received a mortal wounds of which the monster must finally die. Yet so strong is his con- stitutioiiy that he may endure for centuries before he expires. Government has never been much studied by mankind ; but their attention has been drawn to it in the latter part of the last century and the beginning of this, more than at any former period, and the vast variety of experiments which have been made of constitutions in America, in France, in Holland, in Geneva, in Switzerland, and even in Spain and South America, can never be forgotten. They will be studied, and their imme- diate and remote effects and final catastrophes noted. The

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101

result in time will be improvements 1 and I have no doubt that the horrors we have experienced for the last forty years will ultimately terminate in the advancement of civil and religious liberty, and amelioration^ in the condition of mankind. For I am a believer in the probable unprovability and improvement, the amenorability and amelioration in human affairs ; though I never could understand the doctrine of the perfectibility of the human mind. This has always appeared to me like the phi- losophy or theology of the Gentoos, -namely^ that a Brahmin, by certain studies for a certain time pursued, and by certain ceremonies a certain number of times repeated, becomes om- niscient and almighty.

Our hopes, however, of sudden tranquillity ought not to be too sanguine. Fanaticism and superstition will still be selfish, subtle, intriguing, andj at times,* furious. Despotism will still struggle for domination ; monarchy will still study to rival nobil- ity in popularity ; aristocracy will continue to envy all above it, and despise and oppress all below it ; democracy will envy all, contend with all, endeavor to pull down all, and when by chance it happens to get the upper hand for a short time, it will be revengeful, bloody^ and cruel. These and other elements of fanaticism and anarchy will yet for a long time continue a fer- mentation, which will excite alarms and require vigilance.

Napoleon is a military fanatic like Achilles, Alexander, Caesar, Mahomet, Zengis, Kouli, Charles XII. The maxim and prin- ciple of all of them was the same.

" Jura negat sibi lata, nihil non arrogat armis."

But is it strict to call him a usurper ? Was not his elevation to the empire of France as legitimate and authentic a national act as that of William 11^ or the house of Hanover to the throne of the three kingdoms ? or as the election of Washington to the command of our army or to the chair of ^tate,?

Human nature, in no form of it, could bear prosperity. That peculiar tribe of men called conquerors, more remarkably than any other, have been swelled with vanity by a series of victories. Napoleon won so many mighty battles in such quick succession^ and for so long a time^that it was no wonder his brain became completely intoxicated, and his enterprises rash, extravagant, and mad.

k/2

It*

<.

102 CORRESPONDENCE.

Though France is humbled, Britain is notf, jthough Bona is banished, a greater tyrant and wider usurper still domineers. John Bull is quite as unfeeling, as unprincipled, more powerful, has shed more blood than Bona. Johiy by his money, his in- trigues and arms, by exciting coalition after coalition against him, made him what he was, and at last what he is. How shall the tyrant of tyrants be brought low ? AyeJ there's the rub ! J still think Bona great, at least as any of his conquerors. " The wonders of his rise and fall " may be seen in the life of King Theodore, or Pascal Paoli, or Rienzi, or Dionysius, or Massa- niello, or Jack Cade, or "Wat Tyler. The only difference is^that between miniature,., and full length pictures. The schoolmaster at Corinth was a greater man than the tyrant of Syracuse, upon the principle^ that " he who conquers himself is greater than he who takes a city." Though the ferocious roar of the wounded lion may terrify the hunter with the possibility of another dan- gerous leap, Bona was shot dead at once by France. He could no longer roar or struggle, growl or paw, he could only gasp 44s grin of death ; I wish that France may not still regret him. But these are speculations in the clouds. I agree with you that the milk of human kindness in the Bourbons is safer for mankind than the fierce ambition of Napoleon.

The autocrator appears in an imposing light. Fifty years agq^English writers held up terrible consequences from " thaw- ing out the monstrous northern snake." If Cossacs and Tartars, and Goths and Vandals, and Huns and Ripuarians should get a taste of European sweets, what may happen ? Could Wel- lingtons or Bonapartes resist them ? The greatest trait of sagacity that Alexander has yet exhibited to the world^ is his courtship to the United States. But whether this is a mature, well digested policy^ or only a transient gleam of thought, still remains to be explained and proved by time.

The refractory sister will not give up the fisheries. Not a man here dares to hint at so base a thought.

I am very glad you have seriously read Plato, and still more rejoiced to find that your reflections upon him so perfectly har- monize with mine. Some thirty years ago^ I took upon me the severe task of going through all his works. With the help of two Latin translations and one English and one French trans- lation, and comparing some of the most remarkable passages

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with the Greek, I labored through the tedious toil. My disap- pointment was very great, my astonishment was greater, and my disgust was shocking. Two things only did I learn from him. First, that Franklin's ideas of exempting husbandmen and mariners, &e>j from the depredations of war, were borrowed from him | and-seeesad, that sneezing is a cure for the hiccough^ , Accordingly, I have cured myself and all my friends of that provoking disorder, for thirty years, with a pinch of snuff.

Some parts of some of his dialogues are entertaining, like the writings of Rousseau ; but his Laws and his Republic, from which I expected most, disappointed me most. I could scarcely exclude the suspicion* that he intended the latter as a bitter sa- tire upon all republican government?, as Xenophon undoubtedly designed by his essay on democracy to ridicule that species of republic. In a late letter to the learned and ingenious Mr. Taylor^ of Hazelwood>I suggested to him the project of writing a novel, in which the hero should be sent on his travels through Plato's republic, and all his adventures, with his observations on the principles and opinions, the arts and sciences, the manners, customsuand habits of the citizens, should be recorded. No- thing can be conceived more destructive of human happiness, more infallibly contrived to transform men and women into brutes, yahoos, or demons^ than a community of wives and property. Yet, in what are the writings of Rousseau and Hel- vetius wiser than those of Plato? " The man who first fenced a tobacco yard, and saidy ' this is mine^' ought instantly to have been put to death," says Rousseau. " The man who first pro- nounced the barbarous word _D£e%<ought to have been imme- diately destroyed," says Diderot. In short, philosophers, ancient and modern, appear to me as mad as Hindoos, Mahometans^ and Christians. No doubt they would all think me mad, and for any thing I know, this globe may be the Bedlam, le Bketre of the jiniverse.

After all, as long as property exists, it will accumulate in in- dividuals and families. As long as marriage exists, knowledge, property,, and influence will accumulate in families. Your and our equal partition of intestate estates, instead of preventing, will in time augment the evil, if it is one. The French revolu- tionists saw this, and were so far consistent. When they burned pedigrees and genealogical trees, they annihilated, as far as they

f

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could, marriages, knowing that marriage, among a thousand other things, was an infallible source of aristocracy. 1 repeat it, so sure as the idea and the existence of property is admitted and established in society, accumulations of it will be made, -t-f the snowball will grow as it roils.

Cicero was educated in the groves of Academus, where the name and memory of Plato were idolized to such a degree^ that if he had wholly renounced the prejudices of his education, his reputation would have been lessened, if not injured and ruined. In his two volumes of Discourses on government^ we may presume that he fully examined Plato's Laws and Republic, as well as Aristotle's writings on government. But these have been carefully destroyed, not improbably with the general con- sent of philosophers, politicians^, and priests. The loss is as much to be regretted as that of any production of/antiquity.

Nothing seizes the attention of the staring animal so surely as paradox, riddle, mystery, invention, discovery, wonder, teme- rity.

Plafayand his disciples, from the fourth century Christians to Rousseau and Tom Paine, have been fully sensible of this weakness in mankind, and have too successfully grounded upon it their pretensions to fame. I might, indeed, have men- tioned Bolingbroke, Hume, Gibbon, Voltaire, Turgot, Helvetius, Diderot, Condorcet, Buffon, De la Lande^and fifty others, all a little cracked!

" Be to their faults a little blind, VTo their virtues_ever kind."

Education ! oh, education ! Jfjhe greatest grief of my heart, and the greatest affliction of my life ! To my mortification I must confess that I have never closely thought or deliberately reflected upon the subject, which never occurs to me now with- out producing a deep sigh, a heavy groan^and sometimes tears. My cruel destiny separated me from my children almost con- tinually from their birth to their manhood. I was compelled to leave them to the ordinary routine of reading, writing^and Latin school, academy, and college. John alone was much with me, and he, but occasionally.

If I venture to give you my thoughts at all, they must be very crude. I have turned over Locke, Milton, Condillac, Rous-

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seau/ and even Miss Edgeworth, as a bird flies through the air. The " Preceptor " I have thought a good book. Grammar, rhetoric, logic, ethics, mathematics, cannot be neglected. Clas- sics, in spite of our friend Rush, I must think indispensable. Natural /history, mechanics, and experimental philosophy, che-

TO JAMES MADISON.

Quincy, 28 November, 1814.

When my son departed for Russia, I enjoined it upon him to write nothing to me, which he was not willing should be pub-

mistry, &lqiix at least their rudiments, cannot be forgotten. Geography, astronomy, and even history and chronology, though I am myself afflicted with a kind of pyrrhonism in the two latter, I presume cannot be omitted. Theology I would leave to Ray, Durham, Nieuwentyt, and Paley, rather than to Luther, Zinzendorf, Swedenborg, Wesley, or Whitefield, or Thomas Aquinas, or Wollebius. Metaphysics I would leave in the clouds with the materialists and spiritualists, with Leib- nitz, Berkeley, Priestley^ and Edwards, and, I might add, Hume and Reed. Or, if permitted to be read, it should be with romances and novels. . What shall I say of music, drawing, fencing, dancings and gymnastic exercises ? What of languages, oriental or occidental ? Of French, Italian, Ger- man, or Russian, of Sanscrit or of Chinese ? The task you have prescribed to me of grouping these sciences or arts^, under professors, within the views of an enlightened economy, is far beyond my forces. Loose^indeed^and undigested must be all the hints I can note.

Might grammar, logics and rhetoric be under one professor ? Might mathematics, mechanics, natural philosophy be under another? Geography and astronomy under a third? Laws and government, history and chronology, under a fourth ? Clas- sics might require a fifth. Condillac's course of study has excellent parts ; among many systems of mathematics, English, French and American, there is none preferable to Bezout's course ; La Harpe's Course of Literature is very valuable. y/But I am ashamed to add any thing more to the broken inivuenda. -£^-^6ecept assurances of continued friendship.

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lished in French and English newspapers. He has very scrupu- lously observed the rule. I have been equally reserved in my letters to him ; but the principle on both sides has been to me a cruel privation, for his correspondence when absent, and his conversation when present, have been a principal enjoyment of my life. In the inclosed letter he has ventured to deviate, and has assigned his reason for it. I think, however, that I ought to communicate it to you.

I have no papers, that I recollect, that can be of any service to him. I published in the Boston Patriot all I recollect of the negotiations for peace in 1782 and 1783. But I have no copy of that publication in manuscript or print, and I had hoped never to see or hear of it again.

All I can say is, that I would continue this war forever, rather than surrender one acre of our territory, one iota of the fisheries, as established by the third article of the treaty of 1783, or one sailor impressed from any merchant ship. I will not, however, say this to my son, though I shall be very much obliged to you, if you will give him orders to the same effect.

It is the decree of Providence, as I believe, that this nation must be purified in the furnace of affliction. You will be so good as to return my letter, and believe me, &c.

TO RUFUS KING.

Quincy, 2 December, 1814.

I am very much obliged to you for the information, melan- choly as it is to me, of the death of Mr. Gerry. A friendship of forty years, I have found a rarity, though not a singularity.

I am left alone. While Paine, Gerry, and Lovell lived, there were some that I seemed to know ; but now, not one of my contemporaries and colleagues is left. Can there be any deeper damnation in this universe than to be condemned to a long life, in danger, toil, and anxiety ; to be rewarded only with abuse, insult, and slander ; and to die at seventy, leaving to an amiable wife and nine amiable children nothing for an inherit- ance but the contempt, hatred, and malice of the world ? How much prettier a thing it is to be a disinterested patriot, like

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Washington and Franklin, live and die among the hosannas and adorations of the multitude, and leave half a million to one child or to no child ! Do you wonder at Tacitus and Quincti- lian ? I do ; but not at the profoundness of their philosophy. I am astonished at the shallowness of it. I am amazed at their vanity and presumption in pretending to judge the government of this all. Their only true philosophy should have been sub- mission and resignation.

JAMES MADISON TO JOHN ADAMS.

Washington, 17 December, 1814.

Your favor of the 28th ultimo was duly received, though with more delay than usually attends the mail. I return the inte- resting letter from your son, with my thanks for the opportunity of perusing it.

I have caused the archives of the Department of State to be searched, with an eye to what passed during the negotiations for peace on the subject of the fisheries. The search has not fur- nished a precise answer to the inquiry of Mr. Adams. It ap- pears from one of your letters, referring to the instructions accompanying the commission to make a treaty of commerce with Great Britain, that the original views of Congress did not carry their ultimatum beyond the common right to fish in waters distant three leagues from the British shores. The negotiations, therefore, and not the instructions, if no subsequent change of them took place, have the merit of the terms actually obtained. That other instructions, founded on the resolutions of Congress,' issued at subsequent periods, cannot be doubted, though, as yet, they do not appear. But how far they distinguished between the common use of the sea, and the use, then common, also, of the shores, in carrying on the fisheries, I have no recollection.

The view of the discussions at Ghent presented by the pri- vate letters of all our ministers there, as well as by their official despatches, leaves no doubt of the policy of the British cabinet so forcibly illustrated by the letter of Mi*. Adams to you. Our enemy, knowing that he has peace in his own hands, speculates on the fortune of events. Should these be unfavorable, he can

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at any moment, as he supposes, come to our terms. Should they correspond with his hopes, his demands may be insisted on, or even extended. The point to be decided by our ministers is, whether, during the uncertainty of events, a categorical alter- native of immediate peace, or a rupture of the negotiation, would not be preferable to a longer acquiescence in the gambling pro- crastinations of the other party. It may be presumed that they will, before this, have pushed the negotiations to this point.

It is very agreeable to find that the superior ability, which distinguishes the notes of our envoys, extorts commendation from the most obdurate of their political enemies. And we have the further satisfaction to learn, that the cause they are pleading is beginning to overcome the prejudice, which misre- presentations had spread over the continent of Europe against it. The British government is neither inattentive to this ap- proaching revolution in the public opinion there, nor blind to its tendency. If it does not find in it a motive to immediate peace, it will infer the necessity of shortening the war by bring- ing upon us, the ensuing campaign, what it will consider as a force not to be resisted by us.

It were to be wished that this consideration had more effect in quickening the preparatory measures of Congress. I am unwilling to say how much distress in every branch of our affairs is the fruit of their tardiness ; nor would it be necessary to you, who will discern the extent of the evil in the symptoms from which it is to be inferred.

I pray you, Sir, to accept assurances, &c.

James Madison.

TO JAMES LLOYD.

Quincy, January, 1815.

Although I have no recollection that I ever met you more than once in society, and that, I presume, was the instance you have recorded, yet I feel as if I was intimately acquainted with you. The want of familiarity between us, I regret, not only because I have known, esteemed, and I may say, loved your family, from an early age, but, especially, because whatever I

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have heard or read of your character in life, has given me a respect for your talents and a high esteem for your character.

Having read Mr. Randolph's letter to you, and your answer to him, I shall not question the propriety of your taking so much notice of him.1 It would give me pleasure to dilate on the various parts of your letter, and mark the many points in which I fully agree with you, as well as the few which are not so clear to me ; but I shall confine myself at present to those things which personally relate to myself and my administration. You say, Sir, that " I built upon the sand." And so, indeed, I did. I had no material for a foundation, but a rope of it. The union of the States was at that time nothing better. In this respect I was in a worse situation than Mr. Madison is at this hour.

You are pleased to say, Sir, that " upon the earlier part of my administration you could dilate con amoreP I believe you, Sir. The addresses, of which Mr. Randolph " defies you to think without a bitter smile," will remain immortal monuments, in proof that one third at least of the people of the United States thought and felt as you did. But, Sir, did you then consider, or have you since considered, that this Mr. Randolph, with two thirds of the people of the United States, then " dilated on that earlier part of my administration," con odio ?

There is not, Sir, in your masterly letter a more correct or important observation than that of " the unhappy ignorance which exists among the members of this great family, but resi- dent in different sections of it, with regard to the objects and qualities of each other. This ignorance, the offspring of narrow prejudice and illiberality, is now presenting brimful the chalice of envy and hatred, where it should offer nothing but the cup of conciliation and confidence. It sprang from the little inter- course and less knowledge which the people of the then British Provinces possessed of each other antecedently to the American revolution, and instead of being dissipated by an event so hon-

1 Mr. John Randolph had addressed a letter, dated Philadelphia, 15th Decem- ber, 1814, through the newspapers, to Mr. James Lloyd, of Massachusetts, depre- cating a resort to extreme measures by the federalists of New England. He was

y answered by Mr. Lloyd in a letter published in the Boston Daily~Ad-yertiser, of January 1815. In both letters there were allusions to Mr. Adams, that called forth the series of letters which now follow each other very closely in this volume.

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orable to them all, has been cherished and perpetuated for political party purposes, and for the promotion of the sinister views and ambitious projects of a few restless and unprincipled individuals, until the present period."

Of this ignorance, when I went to Congress in 1774, I can assure you, Sir, I had a most painful consciousness in my own bosom. There I had the disappointment to find, that almost every gentleman in that assembly was, in this kind of informa- tion, nearly as ignorant as myself; and what was a more cruel mortification than all the rest, the greatest part even of the most intelligent, full of prejudices and jealousies, which I had never before even suspected. Between 1774 and 1797, an in- terval of twenty-three years, this ignorance was in some measure removed from some minds. But some had retired in disgust, some had gone into the army, some had been turned out for timidity, some had deserted to the enemy, and all the old, steadfast patriots, weary of the service, always irksome in Con- gress, had retired to their families and States, to be made go- vernors, judges, marshals, collectors, &c, &c. So that in 1797, there was not an individual in the House of Representatives, in the Senate, or in either of the executive departments of government, who had been in the national controversy from the beginning. Mr. Jefferson himself, the Vice-President, the oldest V in service of them all, was but a young and a new man in com- parison with the earliest conductors of the cause of the country, the real founders and legitimate fathers of the American repub- lic. The most of them had been but a very few years in public business, and a large proportion of these were of a party which had been opposed to the revolution, at least in the beginning of it. K I were called to calculate the divisions among the people of America, as Mr. Burke did those of the people of England, I should say that full one third were averse to the revolution. These, retaining that overweening fondness, in which they had been educated, for the English, could not cor- dially like the French ; indeed, they most heartily detested them. An opposite third conceived a hatred of the English, and gave themselves up to an enthusiastic gratitude to France. The middle third, composed principally of the yeomanry, the sound- est part of the nation, and always averse to war, were rather lukewarm both to England and France ; and sometimes strag-

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glers from them, and sometimes the whole body, united with the first or the last third, according to circumstances.

The depredations of France upon our commerce, and her in- solence to our ambassadors, and even to the government, united, though for a short time, with infinite reluctance, the second third with the first, and produced that burst of applause to the administration, in which you concurred, though it gave much offence to Mr. Randolph. Nor to him alone, I assure you. It appeared to me then, and has appeared ever since, that a great majority of the people of the United States, and even in New England, in their hearts disapproved of those addresses as much as they did of those pompous escorts, public dinners, and child- ish festivals, which tormented me much more than they did them. They thought, that such things led to monarchy and aristocracy as well as to a long and interminable war, a war with France, our sister republic ; and a war with any body, must bring expenses and taxes. Those hosannas, moreover, excited envy and bitter jealousy in many breasts in the first class, whose names I will not mention at present.

National defence is one of the cardinal duties of a statesman. On this head I recollect nothing with which to reproach myself. The subject has always been near my heart. The delightful imaginations of universal and perpetual peace have often amused, but have never been credited by me. From the year 1755 to this day, almost three score years, I have thought a naval force the most natural, safe, efficacious, and economical bulwark for this country. In 1775, I labored day and night to lay the foundation of a navy, and in the four last years of the last century I hesitated at no expense to purchase navy yards, to collect timber to build ships, and spared no pains to select officers. And what was the effect? No part of my adminis- tration was so unpopular, not only in the western, the southern, and middle States, but in all New England, and, strange to tell, even in Marblehead, Salem, Newburyport, and Boston. The little army, the fortifications, the manufactures of arms and ammunition, were all unpopular. They were the reign of ter- ror. They were to introduce monarchy and aristocracy. John Adams and John Jay were sold to Great Britain.

In this critical state of things, when Virginia and Kentucky, too nearly in unison with the other southern and western States,

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were menacing a separation ; when insurrection was flaming in Pennsylvania ; when Baltimore, at the head of one half of Maryland, -was glowing with opposition ; when the two great interests in New York, headed by the Clintons and Living- stons, were united with Colonel Burr, General Gates, and their little band, in open opposition to the administration and the contest with France ; when the administration was threatened, even in the town of Boston, I will not say at present by whom, nor with what ; there was not one man in either house of Con- gress of the then majority, nor in any executive department of government, who was not chargeable with the grossest ignorance of the nation, which you impute to the north and south before and since the revolution, nor one who had any experience of foreign affairs. Never was any majority more grossly deceived in their opinion of their own importance and influence. No ! not Napoleon, when he undertook the conquest of Russia. Had the administration persevered in the war against France, if would have been turned out at the election of 1800 by two votes to one. Had Washington himself, with his transcendent popularity and all the fascination of his name, been a candi- date, he would have undergone the same fate.

The democratic societies, affiliated without number and con-

catenated to an unknown extent, had long been laying their trains to explode Washington, to sacrifice Adams, and bring in Jefferson. The population in the southern and western States had increased, and their votes with it to an astonishing degree. Yet, all these things were unknown to the ruling majority ; or, if partially known, they were not sufficiently considered. Their self-love deluded them to believe what they wished to be true. Washington was aware of this, and prudently retreated. But what had he done before he left the chair? Ellsworth, the firmest pillar of his whole administration in the Senate, he had promoted to the high office of Chief Justice of the United States ; King, he had sent ambassador to London ; Strong was pleased to resign, as well as Cabot ; Hamilton had fled from his unpopularity to the bar in New York ; Ames, to that in Bos- ton ; and Murray was ordered by Washington to Holland. The utmost efforts of Ellsworth, King, and Strong in the Senate had scarcely been sufficient to hold the head of Washington's ad- ministration above water, during the whole of his eight years.

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And how was I elected? By a majority of one, or at most two votes. And was this a majority strong enough to support a war, especially against France ? Mr. Madison can now scarcely support a war against England, a much more atrocious offender, elected as he was, and supported as he is, by two thirds of the votes. And what was my support in the Senate ? Mr. Goodhue, from Massachusetts. Of this man I will say nothing ; let the world speak. Mr. Sedgwick, without dignity, never able to win the complacency, or command the attention of his hearers in either house, but ever ready to meet in private caucuses and secret intrigues to oppose me. Mr. Langdon, of New Hampshire, was constant in opposition, as was one from Rhode Island. Had Ellsworth, Strong, and King been there, the world would never have heard of the disgraceful cabals and unconstitutional proceedings of that body.

You say, Sir, that my missions to France, " the great shade , in my Presidential escutcheon, paralyzed the public feeling and weakened the foundations of the goodly edifice." I agree, Sir, that they did with that third part of the people, who had been averse to the revolution, and who were then, and always, before and since, governed by English prejudices ; and who then, and always, before and since, constantly sighed for a war with France and an alliance with Great Britain ; but with none others. The house would have fallen with a much more vio- lent explosion, if those missions to France had not been insti- tuted.

I wish not to fatigue you with too long a letter at once ; but, ' Sir, I will defend my missions to France, as long as I have an j eye to direct my hand, or a ringer to hold my pen. They were the most disinterested and meritorious actions of my life. I reflect upon them with so much satisfaction, that I desire no other inscription over my gravestone than : " Here lies John Adams, who took upon himself the responsibility of the peace with France in the year 1800."

In the mean time, I recommend to you, Sir, to inquire into the state of the nation at that time, and into the state of Europe, especially France and Great Britain, and the state of our rela- tions with both, and to consider, at the same time, the important question, whether it is our interest to enlist under the banners of either against the other, or to support at all hazards, and at

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every sacrifice, our independence of all. I am, Sir, with great esteem and sincere affection, your friend.

TO JAMES LLOYD.

Quincy, 6 February, 1815.

In my first letter I requested the favor of you to recollect and consider the positive and relative state of this nation, at the time when my " missions to France " were instituted. I now request you to look over the list of senators and representatives in Congress at that time, and then tell me whether you think that the war party had influence enough in this nation to carry on a long war with France. If you should be at a loss con- cerning the influence of any individual of either party in either house, I promise you I will decompose the character of that individual as a chemist analyzes a mushroom. And then you shall judge for yourself whether the war party had power to maintain a war against France or not.

I affirm that they had not ; and nothing but that ignorance of the nation, of which you and I are so sensible, could ever have deluded them into such a confidence in their own power, and such a vain conceit of their own importance, as they then exhibited.

I think, Sir, that in the fair field of controversy, I have a right to request of you a frank and candid declaration of your opinion, whether that party had or had not power to support a war with France for any considerable time, and for what length of time.

But supposing, for argument's sake, what I peremptorily deny, that they could have continued war and maintained their superiority at the then approaching election; supposing, the strongest case that can be imagined, that the President of 1801 had been as absolute as Louis XIV., or Napoleon, able to com- mand by conscriptions the whole population of the United States, for what end or object should the war have been con- tinued ? Cui bono ? What profit ? "What loss ? Losses enough. Ta^es enough. If three or five millions could not be borrowed

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under an interest of eight per cent., you may easily conjecture how soon we should have seen as glorious a bankruptcy as we now feel. The French had no commerce to enrich our pri- vateers, though they had privateers to enrich themselves upon our commerce. They had no territories accessible to our land forces, to tempt us with prospects of conquests. Were our hopes of aggrandizement in South America or in St. Domingo ?

Let me repeat to you once more, Sir, the faction was dizzy. Their brains turned round. They knew not, they saw not the precipice on which they stood.

In my last I observed, that all the old supporters of the Con- stitution and of Washington's administration, had foreseen the evil and hid themselves. I forbore to mention one of more importance than any of the rest, indeed of almost as much weight as all the rest. I mean Mr. Jay. That gentleman had as much influence in the preparatory measures, in digesting the Constitution, and in obtaining its adoption, as any man in the nation. His known familiarity with Madison and Hamilton, his connection with them in writing the Federalist, and his then connection with all the members of the old Congress, had given to those writings more consideration than both the other writers could have given them. But Mr. Jay, wearied with labors and disgusted by injuries, had retired and refused all further concern in the government.

To despatch all in a few words, a civil war was expected. The party committed suicide ; they killed themselves and the national President (not their President) at one shot, and then, as foolishly as maliciously, indicted me for the murder. My own " missions to France," which you call the " great shade in my Presidential escutcheon," I esteem the most splendid diamond in my crown ; or, if any one thinks this expression too monarchical, Twill say the most brilliant feather in my cap. To such an extent do we differ in opinion. I have always known that my missions to France were my error, heresy, and great offence in the judgment, prejudices, predilections, and passions of a small party in every State ; but no gentleman in the fifteen years past has ever publicly assailed those missions till your letter to Mr. Randolph. A few years ago, a scurrilous scribbler in Bal- timore, as I suppose, one of those vagabonds, fugitives from a halter, a pillory or a bailiff, in Great Britain or Ireland, threw out

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his billingsgate upon me and my missions to France. I pub- lished what I thought a vindication of my missions to France. Mr. Pickering accused me, as I remember, of writing a hundred pages in justification of them. Those hundred pages I am afraid you have never read. If you had, I am confident you would not at this day have assailed my administration on that quarter. I have a right to ask you candidly, whether you have read it or not. If you have, I shall wonder at your censure of my " missions " ; if you have not, I shall wonder less.

Mr. Randolph, in his letter to you, says : " The artillery of the press has long- been the instrument of our subjugation" Such a confession I never expected to see from such a penitent. And which were the presses that formed the fortresses ? And who were the engineers that directed this artillery ? Mr. Randolph's own dear friends, Ned Church, Philip Freneau, Peter Markoe, Andreiv Brown, James Duane, Greenleaf Dennison, Cheetham, Tom Paine, Stephens Thompson Mason, Callender, Wood, the classical author, who wrote the history of the administration of John Adams, in two large octavo volumes, and last, not least, Benjamin Austin and his Old South, not to mention his own dear Cooper, Matthew Lyon, Parson Ogden, Parson Austin, or Christopher Macpherson. I believe, Sir, you understand little of this fatras, but you must understand it all, and much more which may be hereafter explained, before you can judge " avec connaissance de cause," of the merit and demerit of my " mis- sions to France."

We differ so widely upon this important point, that I feel an ardent zeal to make a proselyte of you to my faith, and I do not despair of it.

TO JAMES LLOYD.

Quincy, 11 February, 1815.

We are ignorant, as you intimate, of one another. We are ignorant of our own nation ; we are ignorant of the geography, the laws, customs, and manners and habits of our own country. Massachusetts, as knowing as any State in the Union, is de- plorably ignorant of her sister States, and, what is more to be

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lamented still, she is ignorant of herself. She is composed of two nations, if not three. One party reads the newspapers and pamphlets of its own church, and interdicts all writings of the opposite complexion. The other party condemns all such as heresy, and will not read or suffer to be read, as far as its influence extends, any thing but its own libels. " The avenue to the public ear is shut" in Massachusetts, as Mr. Randolph says it is in Virginia. With us, the press is under a virtual imprimatur, to such a degree, that I do lio^Jid£ev^..J^could get these letters to you printed in a newspaper in Boston. Each party is deliberately and studiously kept in ignorance of the other. Have naked truth and honest candor a fair hearing or impartial reading in this or any other country ? Have not narrow bigotry, the most envious malignity, the most base, vulgar, sordid, fishwoman scurrility, and the most palpable lies, a plenary indulgence, and an unbounded licentiousness? If there is ever to be an amelioration of the condition of man- kind, philosophers, theologians, legislators, politicians and mo- ralists will find that the regulation of the press is the most difficult, dangerous, and important problem they have to resolve. Mankind cannot now be governed without it, nor at present with it. Instead of a consolation, it is an aggravation to know that this kind of ignorance is not peculiar to Massachusetts. It is universal. It runs through every State in the Union. It is at least as prevalent in New York, Pennsylvania, and Virginia, as in Massachusetts. Parties in politics, like sects in religion, will not read, indeed they are not permitted by their leaders to read, any thing against their own creed, nor indeed to converse with any but their own club. The Bible is forbidden to the vulgar by all parties.

Let me give an example. Coming down from the Senate chamber, when I was Vice-President, a hawker, at the bottom of the stairs presented to me an octavo volume. Turning to the title-page, I found it was the "American Remembrancer," written by Callender. I knew nothing of the book or its author, gave the pedlar his price, and pocketed the book. Turning over the leaves at home, I found it full of the grossest lies and calumnies against Washington, against myself, and the whole government. I pointed to passages, but the gentlemen of the ruling party would take no notice of them. " They were below

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contempt." New England is ignorant of this book, but it was circulated in the middle and southern States, and believed as an oracle. No measures were taken to counteract an engine that contributed so essentially to the final prevalence of the

southern over the northern interests. " The Prospect before Us " appeared afterwards, but no measures were taken as an anti- dote to that poison. Not only was ignorance permitted to remain, but error and falsehood to run and be glorified.

If we turn our attention to another subject, we shall see the same ignorance, inadvertency, nonchalance, or apathy in the leaders of the faction, who were for continuing the war. The utmost exertions of all their recruiting officers, with all the in- fluence of Hamilton and Pinckney, reenforced by the magical name of Washington, had not been able to raise one half of their favorite little army. That army was as unpopular, as if it had been a ferocious wild beast let loose upon the nation to devour it. In newspapers, in pamphlets, and in common con- versation they were called cannibals. A thousand anecdotes, true or false, of their licentiousness, were propagated and be- lieved. There was not in the house of representatives a more unbridled tongue or a more licentious vituperatory orator against war, the army, the navy, the administration, and all their mea- sures and men, than Mr. Randolph. He called the army raga- muffins, and was not even called to order. Yet all these things did not remove from the minds of those leaders the ignorance of the faintness of their own influence and the imbecility of their power. No proper measures were taken by means of the press to counteract abuses. Indiscreet and injudicious prose- cutions were instituted by some of the law officers of the United States, which did more harm than good ; yet these were thought sufficient to suppress all opposition. I pray you to remark, Sir, that I speak of the leaders, of the advocates for continuing the war. The soundest statesmen of the ruling party in both houses approved of my missions to France, and were highly pleased with them, as I will show you hereafter.

Another demonstration of the inattention and inconsideration, if not of the ignorance of those leaders, arose from an unfashion- able source of mischief, which I fear labitur et labetur in omne volubilis cevum. I mean that stream of misrepresentations of the men and measures of the administration in circular letters from

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members of Congress to their constituents in the middle and especially in the southern States, which began as early as 1789, when Congress was held in New York, and continued through the eight years of Washington's administration, flowing all the time in peculiarly copious abundance against me, and which, in the electioneering parliamentary campaign of 1796, and from thence to 1801, swelled, raged, foamed in all the fury of a tempest at sea against me. A collection of those circular let- ters would make many volumes, and contain more lies in pro- portion to the time than the Acta Sanctorum. Yet no measures were taken to raise dikes against this inundation !

Another proof of ignorance may surprise you ; I hope it will not offend you. Washington, Hamilton, and Pinckney were assembled at Philadelphia to advise in the selection of officers for the army. The history of the formation of this triumvirate would be as curious as that of Pompey, Csesar, and Crassus, or that of Antony, Octavius, and Lepidus, and the effects of it have been and may be, for any thing I know, as prosperous or adverse to mankind. One thing I know, that Cicero was not sacrificed to the vengeance of Antony by the unfeeling selfish- ness of the latter triumvirate more egregiously than John Adams was to the unbridled and unbounded ambition of Alexander Hamilton in the American triumvirate.

Washington, Hamilton, and Pinckney depended for the sup- port of their power and the system of their politics entirely on New York and Pennsylvania. The northern and the southern States were immovably fixed in opposition to each other. If this triumvirate did not know this, they were as ignorant as you and I know, and acknowledge, we all are of each other. Pennsylvania -was compounded of Germans, Irish, Quakers, and a few ancient English families, who had been generally attached to the proprietary government. These were the great capital classes. The subdivisions of Roman Catholics, Epis- copalians, Presbyterians, Methodists, Anabaptists, Moravians, &c, &c, &c, were infinite. The Quakers were all in principle hostile to war.

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TO JAMES LLOYD.

Quincy, 14 February, 1815.

The Quakers, as I said in my last, were in principle against all wars, and, moreover, greatly prejudiced against New Eng- land, and personally against me. The Irish, who are very numerous and powerful in Pennsylvania, had been, and still were enthusiasts for the French revolution, extremely exaspe- rated against old England, bitterly prejudiced against New England, strongly inclined in favor of the southern interest and against the northern. The Germans hated France and Eng- land too, but had been taught to hate New England more than either, and to abhor taxes more than all. A universal and per- petual exemption from taxes was held up to them as a tempta- tion, by underhand politicians. The English, Scotch, and Irish Presbyterians, the Methodists, Anabaptists, the Unitarians and Universalists, with Dr. Priestley at their head, and all the other sectaries, even many of the Episcopalians themselves, had been carried away with the French revolution, and firmly believed that Bonaparte was the instrument of Providence to destroy the Pope and introduce the millennium. All these interests and parties were headed by Mr. McKean, an upright Chief Justice, an enlightened lawyer, a sagacious politician, and the most experienced statesman in the nation ; by Mr. Mifflin, one of the earliest in the legislature of Pennsylvania and the first and second Congresses of the nation, an active officer in the revolutionary army, always extremely popular; by Jonathan B. Smith, an old revolutionary character. Dr. Rush, George Clymer, Mr. Ingersoll, wished well to the administration, but saw that nothing could be done, and were quite discouraged. Mr. John Dickinson and the venerable Charles Thomson were decidedly against us. Gallatin and Dallas, able and indefati- gable men, as opposite to us as the poles, and Tenche Coxe, a runaway from his master Hamilton.

My triumvirate were either ignorant or wholly inattentive and inconsiderate of all these things. Mr. Jefferson knew them all. These parties had all been making their court to him for fifteen years. And what had my triumvirate to depend upon to support a war against France? The Willings, the Chews,

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and the Aliens, three very respectable families, it is true, but who lost all their influence in Pennsylvania by their invariable opposition to the American revolution. A complete revolution had taken place in the minds of the people, against the national administration, as appeared by the election of Mr. McKean for governor, by a majority, I believe, of thirty thousand votes. The revolution in the legislature, though not yet so decisive, was nevertheless so great that the friends of the national ad- ministration, apprehensive of losing all the votes, were obliged to beat a parley with their antagonists, and agree to appoint half their electors of President and Vice-President from one party, and half from another. Such was the state of things when I received two letters, one from Frederic Augustus Muh- lenberg, and another from Peter Muhlenberg. These two Ger- mans, who had been long in public affairs and in high offices, were the great leaders and oracles of the whole German interest, in Pennsylvania and the neighboring States. Augustus very respectfully requested me to appoint him to some office. I sug- gested the idea to some of the heads of department, but none would hear it with patience. I had determined against it my- self, because he had failed in business, and several reports were in circulation unfavorable to his integrity, as always happens in cases of bankruptcy. As his poverty might tempt him to misapply public money, I was afraid to trust him in any office that would give him the disposal of any of it, and no other em- ployment occurred. Peter had served with reputation in the revolutionary army as a general officer, commanded a brigade of German troops, was universally allowed to be a brave and able officer ; he had long been a member of Congress, had the universal character of an honest man, representing a district of honest Germans. It is true, he had voted generally against the administration. This gentleman wrote me a letter, asking nothing, but offering his services in the army, and expressly declaring that he would make no stipulation with regard to rank.

Detesting in my heart that contracted principle of monopoly and exclusion, which had prevailed through Washington's ad- ministration, and to which I had so often been compelled. to submit, I was very desirous of relaxing it upon this occasion. I determined to propose it to the triumvirate. Accordingly I took an opportunitv to propose it to General Washington, in a

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conference between him and me alone. General Washington said, " By all that I have seen and heard in the late war, Gene- ral Muhlenberg is a good officer." But the triumvirate would not consent. I was provoked enough to have nominated him notwithstanding; but I knew that he would be negatived by the Senate. Hamilton would give the hint to Pickering, Picker- ing to Goodhue and Hillhouse, Sedgwick and Bingham, &c, &c, and down would fall the guillotine of a negative upon the neck of poor Muhlenberg. Unwilling to expose him to such an affront, or myself to another, for this would not have been the first, I forbore to nominate him. And what was the conse- quence ? These two Muhlen bergs addressed the public with their names, both in English and German, with invectives against the administration, and warm recommendations of Mr. Jefferson. Although I dreaded the change, well knowing that the party about to come into power would conduct themselves

as they have done, I could not very severely condemn the Muhlenbergs ; for a faction, selfish and contracted, so entirely devoted to such a leader as Hamilton, would pursue a system more destructive than the other.

The Muhlenbergs turned the whole body of Germans, great numbers of the Irish, and many of the English, and in this manner introduced the total change that followed in both houses of the legislature, and in all the executive departments of the national government. Upon such slender threads did our elec- tions then depend! The federalists had marched for twelve years " super ig-nes suppositos cineri doloso." What strength, what power, what force, had such a party to support a war against France, when she held the olive branch to us, with both her hands, upon our own terms ?

With feelings and sentiments that I am not master of lan- guage to express, I must enter on another subject. If American history is ever to be understood or related with truth, two cha- racters must be explained. Their portraits must be drawn at full length. Their birth, their education, their services, their marriages, their religion, their morals, their manners, their poli- tical principles and connections, their lives and their deaths, must be narrated by a historian, under the oath of the President de Thou, " Pro veritate historiarum mearum Deum ipsum ob- testor." I myself could write a volume of biography for each

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of them, if I had clear eyes and steady hands ; but, if I should spend years in writing them, I know they would not be read by any party ; and, after all, I should not dare to take the oath of Thuanus. These characters are Aaron Burr^ and Alexander Hamilton.

But I must pause to acknowledge your favor of February 6th. Its sentiments are worthy of the best men and citizens. I may be more particular hereafter. Your sagacity has penetrated one cause of the impossibility of maintaining the war against France, to wit, " prostration of public credit." The gulf of national bankruptcy yawned. The monsters, paper money, tender law, and regulation of prices, all stalked in horrors before me. I have hinted at this subject in a former letter, and will consider it more in detail in a future one.

Meantime, with unfeigned regard.

TO JAMES LLOYD.

Quincy, 17 February, 1815.

I have never known, in any country, the prejudice in favor of birth, parentage, and descent more conspicuous than in the in- stance of Colonel Burr. That gentleman was connected by blood with many respectable families in New England. He was the son of one president and the grandson of another pre- sident of Nassau Hall, or Princeton University; the idol of all the Presbyterians in New York, New England, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, and elsewhere. He had served in the army, and came out of it with the character of a knight without fear and an able officer. He had afterwards studied and practised law with application and success. Buoyed upon these religious partialities and this military and juridical reputation, it is no wonder that Governor Clinton and Chan- cellor Livingston should take notice of him. They made him attorney-general, and the legislature sent him to Congress as a senator, where he served, I believe, six years. At the next election he was, however, left out, and being at that time some- what embarrassed in his circumstances, and reluctant to return

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to the bar, he would have rejoiced in an appointment in the army. In this situation, I proposed to General Washington, in a conference between him and me, and through him to the tri- umvirate, to nominate Colonel Burr for a brigadier-general. Washington's answer to me was, " By all that I have known and heard, Colonel Burr is a brave and able officer; but the question is, whether he has not equal talents at intrigue." How shall I describe to you my sensations and reflections at that moment ? He had compelled me to promote, over the heads of Lincoln, Gates, Clinton, Knox, and others, and even over Pinck- ney, one of his own triumvirate, the most restless, impatient, artful, indefatigable and unprincipled intriguer in the United States, if not in the world, to be second in command under himself, and now dreaded an intriguer in a poor brigadier ! He did, however, propose it to the triumvirate, at least to Hamil- ton. But I was not permitted to nominate Burr. If I had been, what would have been the consequence ? Shall I say, that Hamilton would have been now alive, and Hamilton and Burr now at the head of our affairs ? What then ? If I had nomi- nated Burr without the consent of the triumvirate, a negative in Senate was certain. Burr to this day knows nothing of this. But what followed ? A volume would be necessary to explain the consequences. A few hints must suffice. Hamilton made a journey to Boston, to Providence, &c, to persuade the people and their legislatures, but without success, to throw away some of their votes, that Adams might not have the unanimous vote of New England ; consequently that Pinckney might be brought in as President and Adams as Vice-President. Washington was dead, and the Cincinnati were assembled at New York to choose Hamilton for their new President. Whether he publicly opened his project to the whole assembly of the Cincinnati or not, I will not say ; but of this I have such proof that I cannot doubt, namely, that he broached it privately to such members as he could trust; for the learned and pious Doctors Dwight and Badcock, who having been chaplains in the army, were then attending as two reverend knights of the order, with their blue ribbons and bright eagles at their sable buttonholes, were heard to say repeatedly in the room where the society met, " we must sacrifice Adams," " we must sacrifice Adams." Of this fact I have such evidence that I should dare to appeal, if it were

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worth while, to the only survivor, Dr. Dwight, of New Haven University.

About the same time, walking in the streets of Philadelphia, I met, on the opposite sidewalk, Colonel Joseph Lyman, of Springfield, one of the most amiable men in Congress, and one of the most candid men in the world. As soon as he saw me, he crossed over to my side of the street, and said, " Sir, I cross over to tell you some news." "Aye ! what news ? I hope it is good." " Hamilton has divided the federalists, and proposed to them to give you the go-by and bring in Pinckney. By this step he has divided the federalists, and given great offence to the honestest part of them. I am glad of it, for it will be the ruin of his faction." My answer was, " Colonel Lyman, it will be, as you say, the ruin of his faction ; but it will also be the ruin of honester men than any of them." And with these words I marched on, and left him to march the other way. I was soon afterwards informed by personal witnesses and private letters, that Hamilton had assembled a meeting of the citizens and made an elaborate harangue to them. He spoke of the President, John Adams, with respect ! But with what respect, I leave you, Sir, to conjecture. Hamilton soon after called an- other more secret caucus to prepare a list of representatives for the city of New York, in their State legislature, who were to choose electors of President and Vice-President. He fixed upon a list of his own friends, people of little weight or consideration in the city or the country. Burr, who had friends in all circles, had a copy of this list brought to him immediately. He read it over, with great gravity folded it up, put it in his pocket, and, without uttering another word said, " Now I have him all hol- low; " but immediately went to Governor Clinton, General Gates, Chancellor Livingston, &c, &c, stirred them all up, and persuaded the Governor and the General to stand candidates, with a list of the most respectable citizens, to represent the city in the legislature. Burr's list was chosen, as common sense must have foreseen, by a great majority, went to Albany, and chose electors, who voted unanimously for Mr. Jefferson, though New York at all antecedent elections voted unanimously for Adams. Thus ignorant of the character of this nation, of Pennsylvania, and of his own city and State of New York, wa3 Alexander Hamilton ! And how could it be otherwise ? Born

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in Nevis, educated in Scotland, spending a short time at Colum- bia College, and then as aid-de-camp in the army, depending wholly on the Cincinnati, the old English tory interest in New York, Philadelphia, and Boston, — had such a faction, with such a leader at their head, influence or power to support a war against France ? The very supposition is ridiculous. Espe- cially when France had cried Peccavi; when France had re- nounced all her claims and demands of tribute ; when France had abandoned all demands of apologies from me, for certain free expressions in my speeches to Congress and answers to addresses ; when France, by an authentic act of her sovereign authority, authentically certified to me through several chan- nels, had solemnly pledged herself to receive my ambassadors in their highest character. The rage of the Hamilton faction upon that occasion appeared to me then, and has appeared ever since, an absolute delirium.

I thank you, Sir, for your kind note of the 13th. Madam Breck and Mrs. Lloyd will confer an obligation on Mrs. and Mr. Adams, whenever they can find it convenient to make a visit to Quincy, and Mr. Lloyd's company with them will en- hance the favor.

It is not my design nor desire to excite you to a controversy. Be assured, I considered what you said of me, exactly as you intended it, and that in a very friendly light. My wish is equally friendly to give you information of some facts, of which, from your age, I presume you were not aware.

TO JAMES LLOYD.

Quincy, 21 February, 1815.

In my letter of the 6th of this month, I asked you " if three or five millions could not be borrowed, under an interest of eight per cent., you may easily conjecture how soon we should have seen as glorious a bankruptcy as we now feel." In your letter to me of the same date, February 6th, you admit that " all would have proved fallacious, if public credit had become as prostrate, and all national feeling as callous, as they seem to be

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at the present moment." Here, Sir, is a coincidence of senti- ment, certainly without any concert, intercourse, or communi- cation between us, somewhat remarkable. Your sagacity accorded with my bitter experience. I most sincerely condole with you over that " callousness of national feelings " which has appeared in our dear New England more grossly, if we ex- cept Washington and Alexandria, than anywhere else. That callousness, however, in another year of war, notwithstanding the " prostration of public credit," would have been softened, if not wholly dissolved. And this the British Ministry have had cunning enough to perceive. Witness the treaty of peace of 24th December, 1814.

How shall I explain to you, Sir, the horrors of national bank- ruptcy, of paper money, of tender laws, and of regulation of prices, which then stared me in the face ? For this purpose I must make a tedious and disagreeable circuit, and must hope and beg to be pardoned for that egotism and vanity which you think my " strong foible."

My hobby-horse was a navy ; Alexander Hamilton's, an army.

I had no idea that France, involved as she was in Europe, could send any formidable invasion to America. A petty squadron, a single ship of war, or privateer, might insult our coasts and harbors, as they had done, and a very small force of sailors and soldiers might lay some of our cities under contribution. Against this danger, I thought brigantines, sloops, schooners, and frigates, well armed and manned and officered, the most economical, the most certain and effectual defence ; and as many fortifications as we could afford to erect in the best chosen places, for the protection of our most exposed cities, ought to be erected and garrisoned as soon as possible. Accordingly in my •communications to Congress, I recommended strong mea- sures for maritime and naval defence, and four or six regiments or companies (I forget which, and will not spend time to ascer- tain) of artillery to garrison the fortresses already built or in- tended to be immediately erected.

But Alexander Hamilton, who fled from his own unpopu- larity, and I may say from national hatred, to the bar at New York, to acquire the character of an unambitious man, was found to be (to borrow a little modest oratory from your corres- pondent, Mr. Randolph) " commander-in-chief" of the House

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of Representatives, of the Senate, of the heads of department, of General Washington, and last, and least, if you will, of the President of the United States. This language, you will say, is highly figurative ; but in fact and in essence, it is strictly and literally true. I am thankful that the sequel proved that he was not the " commander-in-chief" of the nation. This great genius, this sublime statesman, this profound politician, found that he could not apply himself to the black-letter law, in Latin and French ; that he could not devote his attention to the interests and causes of his clients. This indeed had never been his inten- tion. Nothing was further from his thoughts. His deep medi- tations were for the salvation of the United States, not for Nevis, his native_country. Accordingly he sits down and writes a long, elaborate, and voluminous letter to a confidential friend in Con- gress, in which he graciously condescended to delineate a per- fect system of administration. He projected negotiations, and nominated ambassadors ; he urged the establishment of an army of fifty thousand men, ten thousand of whom to be cavalry ; he advised to seize upon all the sources of revenue not yet occu- pied, to "invigorate the treasury." This letter was brought to me, I believe by Mr. Tracy. The arrogance and presumption of it, I despised; the extravagance of it astonished me; the gross ignorance it betrayed, and the fatal influence I knew it would have with the ruling party, grieved me to the heart. This letter still exists, as I believe. If it does not, more than monkish knavery has been exerted to destroy it. I appeal to Wolcott and Pickering, and might appeal to many others now living, and to many who are dead. The House of Representa- tives dared not adopt the extravagance of the plan, but with- out consulting the President, who was far beneath their notice, they adopted part of the scheme of then leader, and voted, as I remember, about twelve thousand men.

Here must be a hiatus valde deflendus ! If you wish to have it filled up, I will hereafter attempt it.

This army, small as it was, called for revenue. Revenue de- manded taxes. Taxes had already raised three rebellions, as they were called, and threatened three times, if not ten times three. The public necessities were so apparent, that Congress authorized me to borrow five millions of dollars. They were so apprised of the difficulty and uncertainty of raising this

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small sum, that they dared not ascertain and limit the interest at which it was to be borrowed, but threw all the risk and re- sponsibility upon me to determine the terms of the loan. Of course, consultation after consultation took place between me and my secretary of the treasury, Mr. Wolcott, concerning the terms of this loan, — a loan that now appears but a trifle. Mr. Wolcott's opinion was, that the loan could not be obtained at a less interest than eight per cent. I objected to this interest. I thought it extravagant and unnecessary. I thought it might be had at six per cent. Where were we going ? What were we about ? Five millions would be but a sprat for the nourish- ment of leviathans. We must borrow more, if we give ten or twelve per cent. ; and so on without end. Mr. Wolcott, who appeared to me then, as he does now, to be perfectly honest and disinterested in the business, said, " The legal interest in several of the States, is seven or eight per cent. The interest given in private transactions is much more, amounting to ten, twelve, and still more, and I do not believe the money can be obtained at less than eight." I desired him to consider of it, and inquire farther. At another interview, Mr. Wolcott persevered in his opinion that eight per cent, was the lowest interest at which the loan could be obtained. He said his situation in the trea- sury, as controller and as secretary, had given him opportunities to know the quantity of money in the country ; that there was not such a plenty of it as some people thought ; that, if the loan should fail, it would be a fatal discouragement to the peo- ple ; that the recruiting service for the army would be stopped ; that the treasury would be embarrassed, &c, &c. I said, " surely there are in the United States men of wealth enough, who love their country well enough, to lend five millions at six per cent, upon the faith of the United States, which ought to be as si able as the soil. Think and inquire again." I was so distressed with this question, that I wrote a letter to Mr. Wolcott, remon- strating against that interest of eight per cent., in which I said, that fifteen years before, I had borrowed a larger sum in Hol- land for four and a half, five and a half, and never more than six per cent., upon the naked pledge of the faith of the United States, and therefore I could not but think an unfair advantage was taken of the public.1 Mr. Wolcott, however, at our next

1 Vol. ix. p. 57.

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conference, persisted in his opinion, was afraid to publish pro- posals for the loan at a less interest than eight per cent. My patience, which had been put, by enemies and friends, to so many severe trials, was quite exhausted, and I broke out, " This damned army will be the ruin of this country ; if it must be so, it must ; I cannot help it. Issue your proposals as you please" I ask pardon for that peevish and vulgar expression ; but for the truth, in substance and essence, of this narration, I appeal to Mr. Wolcott himself. I know that Oliver Wolcott dare not lie ; and if he does not recollect these facts, his memory is not so good as mine.

At the rate of our expenses for the support of government, the navy, and that army, I was sure that national bankruptcy must occur in one year ; and what resource had we ? Paper money ! I had been a witness of the nature and effects of old tenor, from 1745 to 1751, and of continental currency from 1775 to 1782, indeed to 1791 ; and must we buffet our way through such a chaos to support an army already called ragamuffins and cannibals, in total idleness and inaction? Unless they spent their time in pillage and plunder, in debauching wives and se- ducing daughters.

I think, Sir, I have suggested considerations enough to con- vince you that the then dominant party had not sufficient influ- ence in the nation to proceed in the war against France, after the government of that nation had offered us peace upon honorable terms ; no, nor after she had offered us negotiations upon honor- able terms. But if I had possessed the hands of Midas, and could have changed trees and rocks into gold, or could I, by stamping on the ground, have called up legions of infantry and cavalry, for what purpose should I have continued the war ? The end of war is peace ; and peace was offered me. Had I continued the war, and raised a great army, every wise man in the world would have said of me, in the language of Boileau, " Midas ! le roi Midas a les oreilles d'ane ! " Mr. Hamilton and his friends might have said Ao? nov otu, not ttjv yr/v tivnou. But he had not the ttuv ctu. This nation was not then harnessed in taxes, nor broken to the draught.

I ask again a question, which I am not certain you will fully understand. If you do not, I will explain it to you hereafter. The question is, whether Mr. Hamilton and Mr. Pickering ex-

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pected to draw their resources from South America or St. Do-

mingo.

In your note of the 13th, you congratulate me on the " news of the day." On the news from New Orleans, I reciprocate your congratulations. On the news of peace, I say, " rejoice always in all things." But with what feelings of indignation, of grief, sorrow, and humiliation, I rejoice, I leave you to consider, after reading the inclosed letter, which, in full faith in your honor and candor, I trust to you, in confidence that you will re- turn it to me by the post, without making any improper use of it.1

TO WILLIAM CRANCH.

Quincy, 3 March, 1815.

Our fisheries have not been abandoned. They cannot be abandoned. They shall not be abandoned. We hold them by no grant, gift, bargain, sale, or last will and testament, nor by hereditary descent from Great Britain. We hold them in truth, not as kings and priests claim their rights and power, by hypo- crisy and craft, but from God and our own swords.

1. The author of nature and common father of mankind has made his ocean free and common to all his human children. We have, therefore, as clear a moral and divine right to the fisheries, at least as the English, Scotch, Irish, or any other people.

2. We have all the rights and liberties of Englishmen in the fisheries, in as full and ample a manner as we had before the revolution ; we have never forfeited, surrendered, alienated, or lost any one punctilio of those rights or liberties. On the contrary, we compelled the British nation to acknowledge them, in the most solemn manner, before God and the world, in the treaty of peace of 1783.

3. We have a stronger, clearer, and more perfect right than the Britons or any other nation of Europe, or on the globe, for

1 The allusion is to an extremely interesting confidential letter of J. Q. Adams, written to his father from Ghent, after the signature of the treaty, explaining his position, as one of the negotiators, upon the disputed point of the fisheries. It was this that gave rise to the letter immediately succeeding.

132 CORRESPONDENCE.

they were all indebted to us and our ancestors for all these fisheries. "We discovered them. We explored them. We dis- covered and settled the countries round about them, at our own expense, labor, risk, and industry, without assistance from Bri- tain. We have possessed, occupied, exercised, and practised them from the beginning. We have done more towards ex- ploring the best fishing grounds and stations, and all the bays, harbors, inlets, creeks, rivers, shores, and coasts, where fish of all sorts were to be found, and discovered, by experiments, the best means and methods of curing, preserving, drying, and per- fecting the commodity, as well as extending and improving the commerce in it, than all the Britons and all the rest of Europe.

4. If conquest can confer any right, our right is at least equal and common with Englishmen in any part of the world. In- deed, it is incomparably superior, for we conquered all the countries round about the fisheries. We conquered Cape Bre- ton, Nova Scotia, and dispossessed the French, both hostile and neutral. We did more, in proportion, towards the conquest of Canada than any other portion of the British empire, and could, and would, and should have done the whole at an easier ex- pense to ourselves, both of men and money, if the British government would have permitted that union of the colonies, which we projected, planned, earnestly desired, and humbly petitioned in 1754. In short, we have done more, in propor- tion, than any other part of the British empire towards protect- ing and defending all these fisheries against the French. For all these reasons, if there is a people under heaven who could advance a color of a pretension to any exclusive privileges, or any rights of one nation more than another in the fisheries, that people are the inhabitants of the United States of America, and especially of New England. But we set up no such par- tial claims. We demand only those equal rights and privileges that we have always held, possessed, and enjoyed. These we assert, and these we will have. They are of more importance to us than to any other nation. It would be illnatured in the English to deprive us of them, if they had the power, which they have not. There is room enough, and fish enough, for both nations.

To John Taylor (part 2)

As you are famous for indefatigable research, I wish you would ransack all the books and all the rules for the construe-

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tion of treaties, and concerning the dissolution and renovation of treaties, to show that the article in the treaty of 1783 is still in force. I say, as it is an acknowledgment only of an ante- cedent right, it is of eternal obligation.

TO DR. JEDIDIAH MORSE.

Quincy, 4 March, 1815.

Thanks for your favor of the 1st, and the sermon. I have never seen Trumbull's History in print, and know nothing of it, but from the very hasty perusal of the manuscript you sent me. I esteem Dr. Morse and Dr. Ware ; the vote of the former against the latter * never diminished my esteem for either, be- cause I believed both to be able and conscientious men. I esteem Dr. Morse and Miss Adams, and the flickerings and bickerings between them have made no change in my regard for either. In short, Sir, I have been a reader of theological, philosophical, political, and personal disputes for more than sixty years, and now look at them with little more interest than at the flying clouds of the day.

When you apply to me to assist you in writing history,2 I know not whether I ought to laugh or cry. I have little faith in history. I read it as I do romance, believing what is pro- bable and rejecting what I must. Thucydides, Tacitus, Livy, Hume, Robertson, Gibbon, Raynal, and Voltaire, are all alike. Our American history for the last fifty years is already as much corrupted as any half century of ecclesiastical history, from the Council of Nice to the restoration of the Inquisition in 1814. If I were to write a history of the last sixty years, as the facts rest in my memory, and according to my judgment, and under the oath of "pro veritate historiarum mearum Deum ipsum ob- testor" a hundred writers in America, France, England, and

1 In the Board of Overseers of Harvard College, on the ground, that the election of a person of Dr. Ware's theological opinions would be a violation of the statutes of Mr. Hollis, the founder of the professorship to be filled. This act was the origin of a long and sharp controversy in Massachusetts.

2 Dr. Morse proposed to continue Trumbull's History, but he finally con- verted a portion of the materials collected for that purpose into a work, entitled Annals of the American Revolution.

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134 CORRESPONDENCE.

Holland, would immediately appear, and call me, to myself, and before the world, a gross liar and a perjured villain.

I have never preserved newspapers or pamphlets. The few I have ever attempted to save, I have long since given away. Mr. Shaw has in his Athenaeum more of them than any other person. Private letters I have preserved in considerable num- bers, but they ought not to be opened these hundred years, and then, perhaps, will not be found of much consequence, except as memorials of private friendship.

If you desire it, I may hereafter give you two or three sam- ples of such a history as I should write ; anecdotes, of no kind of consequence now, unless they should serve to show how many thousand facts are wholly concealed and unknown to the world, and how many more will be finally unknown to posterity ; facts, which mark characters, and might materially influence great events.

TO JAMES LLOYD.

Quincy, 6 March, 1815.

As method is of no importance in my letters, I will deviate from the course I was in, to speak of the project of the inde- pendence of South America in 1798. Since my glances at this subject have excited your curiosity, it shall be gratified. As the prudence and necessity of my mission to France are cogently demonstrated by this history, I pray you to read it with patience in detail.

During our revolutionary war, General Miranda came to the United States, travelled through many, if not all of them, was introduced to General Washington and his aids,, secretaries, and all the gentlemen of his family, to the other general officers and their families, and to many of the colonels.1 He acquired the character of a classical scholar, of a man of universal know- ledge, of a great general, and master of all the military sciences, and of great sagacity, an inquisitive mind, and an insatiable curiosity. It was a general opinion and report, that he knew more of the families, parties, and connections in the United

1 He seems to have had long conferences with M. Marbois, the French Charge d'Affaires, at Philadelphia, and to have communicated through him with the government at Versailles. Histoire de la Louisiane, p. 161.

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States, than any other man in them ; that he knew more of every campaign, siege, battle, and skirmish that had ever occur- red in the whole war, than any officer of our army, or any states- man in our councils. His constant topic was the independence of South America, her immense wealth, inexhaustible resources, innumerable population, impatience under the Spanish yoke, and disposition to throw off the dominion of Spain. It is most certain that he rilled the heads of many of the young officers with brilliant visions of wealth, free trade, republican govern- ment, &c, &c, in South America. Hamilton was one of his most intimate friends and confidential admirers, and Colonel Smith, I presume, was another. Of Burr I will say nothing, because I know nothing with certainty. Of Dayton I will say but little. Of Wilkinson, nothing at all, at present. But of Winthrop Sargent, Governor of the Mississippi Territory, and one of the most intelligent of them all, I will say, that he acknowledged to me, with apparent humiliation and grief, that he had been one who had been carried away by. the fashionable enthusiasm, and been charmed with the ideas of wealth, glory, and liberty, "which the independence of South America exhi- bited. General Knox was also one of his intimates. I had never seen Miranda^and have never seen him yet. But this was the universal language concerning Miranda, of all the Ame- ricans whom I met in France, Holland, and England, without one exception.

Some years after the peace of 1783, Miranda came to Eng- land, and was several weeks in London. He never came near me. I never heard he had been there till years afterwards. I have lately heard, that his apology for avoiding my house was, that if he had been seen there, the Spanish ambassador might have been informed of it, and the Marquis del Campo might have procured from court an order for his arrest. This excuse may be true, and I may and do conjecture other reasons that may be equally true, though I need not explain them at pre- sent. But he did meet Colonel Smith, secretary of legation to my commission to the Court of St. James ; was intimate with him, though I knew nothing of it, and persuaded him to travel to Holland, Prussia, and Germany. On this journey he per- suaded Smith to lend him money to the amount of some hun- dred guineas to pursue his travels to Russia. The money he

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136 CORRESPONDENCE.

afterwards honorably and punctually remitted to his benefactor. He afterwards entered the service of France, commanded ar- mies, was accused of treason, tried, and honorably acquitted. But he soon went over to England, procured audiences and conferences with Mr. Pitt and Mr. King, some of the results of which I shall proceed to state to you.

On the 25th of August, 1798, I received a letter at Quincy from Mr. Pickering, Secretary of State, dated Trenton, 21st August, 1798,1 inclosed in a large packet of papers, among which was a letter from Mr. King, one from Mr. Joseph Pedro Caro, and one from Miranda. Mr. Pickering informed me, that he had received under the same cover two letters, one for Colonel Hamilton and the other for General Knox, which he forwarded by the same post to those gentlemen.

Mr. King's letter to the Secretary of State, Mr. Pickering, dated February 26th, 1798, was in these words.2

I inclose Mr. Pickering's original letter and an authenticated official copy of Mr. King's, requesting the return of them by post. In my next, I will develop more of this mystery, which, I think, abounds with instruction to American statesmen, among whom you, Mr. Lloyd, will be enumerated, whether you will or no. You are in a cage. Like Sterne's starling, you " can't get out."

TO JAMES LLOYD.

Quincy, 12 March, 1815.

I am infinitely obliged to you for your letter of March 8th. From 1758 to 1775, I practised at the bar, and, suffering under ill health, I rode the circuits of the province more than any other lawyer in the States, and this more for exercise and the reco- very of my health than for any profit I made by these excursions ; for I could have made more in my office at home. I practised considerably in the county of Essex, and became somewhat intimately acquainted with King, Hooper, and Colonel Lee, of

1 See vol. viii. p. 583.

2 For this letter, see vol. viii. p. 585.

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Marblehead, and my uncle, Isaac Smith, of Boston, the three greatest employers of fishermen and greatest exporters of fish in the county of Essex. I also attended the courts in the counties of Plymouth and Barnstable, made one tour of a fortnight, to Martha's Vineyard, and, in short, became much acquainted with merchants, sea-captains, and even sailors employed in the fisheries of whale, cod, salmon, seals, and mackerel, in Nan- tucket, the Vineyard, and Cape Cod. I had argued many causes, both in Essex and on the Cape, in which the fisheries of all descriptions were explained. I saw the value of them to New England. When the conferences opened at Paris, in 1782, I thought myself tolerably well informed on the subject of the fisheries, and accordingly represented to my colleagues and the British agents our right to them, our constant posses- sion of them, our proximity to them, our discovery and defence of them, and, above all, their essential importance to us in every branch of our commerce with Europe, the West Indies, the southern States, &c. In short, they were our only staple com- modity. These representations, however, made not all the im- pression I desired. I was thought to be too zealous, sanguine, and ardent. Even my own colleagues seemed to think I greatly exaggerated the value and importance of all the fisheries, espe- cially those on the coasts of Labrador, in the gulf of St. Law- rence, &c, &c. The Comte de Vergennes, too, appeared more eager to cheat us out of them even than the English. And the Comte had more influence with one of my colleagues than I had. And both of them thought peace, and the acknowledgment of our independence, much more essential than the fisheries. Deter- mined never to consent to peace, nor to set my hand to any treaty without an explicit acknowledgment of our right to them all, and hearing of the arrival in Holland of some of our Nantucket sea-captains, Coffins, Folgers, and Rotches, I wrote to them, stating all the questions relative to the subject, and received very prompt and obliging answers, containing ample details, not only of the course and practice of all the fisheries, but of their great value and indispensable necessity to New England, and especially to Massachusetts. These letters I communicated immediately to my colleagues, as well as to our opponents, but I never could obtain from either of the former his consent to make the fisheries a sine qua non, an ultimatum, nor from the

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latter the least appearance of relaxation, till the last moment, when Mr. Laurens, who joined us for the first time on the last evening of the conferences, united with me in the explicit and decided declaration, that we never would sign the treaty, with- out the article securing to us the fisheries. There were but four of us, Adams, Franklin, Jay, and Laurens (Jefferson never dared to cross the Atlantic before the peace) ; two against two could make no treaty. Peace was indispensable for Great Britain ; France, Spain, Holland, armed neutrality, desolation of commerce, manufactures, and consequently agriculture, re- venue, scarcity of seamen, &c, &c, all conspired to produce despair in England and exultation in France and Spain ; Lord George Gordon's rebellion, too. In such a moment, Oswald, Whitefoord, Fitzherbert, and, I believe, Strachy too, after long and tedious deliberation among themselves, in a separate apart- ment, came to us, and announced their consent to the article relative to the fisheries, which was the only article which had not been settled long before.1

Upon such terms did we live with Great Britain then, and upon such terms do we live with her now; and upon such terms shall we live, till we have a naval power capable of protecting her as well as ourselves. I wish I could amalgamate oil and water; I wish I could reconcile the interests, passions, preju- dices, and even the caprices of Britons and Americans. But I have despaired of it more than sixty years, and despair of it still. Ratio ultima Rerum-publicarum must ultimately decide.

Wounds, deadly wounds have been inflicted on both sides. Contempt and disgrace never can be forgotten by human nature, and hardly, very hardly forgiven by the sincerest and devoutest Christianity.

Your letter has suggested every thing on both sides of the great question. It shall not be lost to your country, nor to yourself. Posterity, at least, will give you credit. This is cold comfort, I

know by experience ; but you will have neighbor's fare.

1 See the full account of this, written at the time, in the Diary, Vol. iii. pp. 333 - 335. The only difference among the American commissioners seems to have been upon making the admission of the right a sine qua non in the treaty.

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TO JAMES LLOYD.

Quincy, 26 March, 1815.

1. I now 1 inclose to you the original Spanish letter to me, dated Falmouth, 10th May, 1798, from Don Pedro Josef Caro, apologizing for his not coming to me in person.

2. I next inclose a translation of Pedro's letter to Pickering, dated Falmouth, 10th May, 1798.2

March 18th. Last night I received your favor of the 14th, with the inclosures. I have been and still am desirous, that you should see the original documents in this great and pro- found political intrigue, for the pretended, ostensible independ- ence of South America. They throw some light on the policy of England and France, and the dupery of Spain, at the same time that, in my conscience, I believe, as I have always believed, that they prove to a demonstration the wisdom of my missions to France.

But before I proceed, Mr. Lloyd, I must settle some prelimi- naries with you.

1. I have no insidious design of drawing from you any opi- nion on any facts stated, or inferences 'or conclusions drawn, by me. You may reserve all your judgments. I only wish to furnish you with evidence, which I believe you never could derive from any other source.

2. I pray you to take your own time to answer or acknow- ledge my letters. I wish not to interfere with a moment of business or amusement. My object is to convince you, that my missions to France were not less dictated by deliberate prudence, than compelled by cogent necessity.

3. You can never " trespass on my time or retrospection ; " both at your service ; neither is of any value to me, but as it may possibly at some time be of some use to the public or to posterity. There is not a fact in my memory that I will not reveal to you, if you ask it.

1 In a preceding letter, dated 9th March, Mr. Adams had inclosed a transla- tion of General Miranda's letter to him, printed in Vol. vhi. of this work, p. 569.

2 Omitted, because printed in Vol. viii. p. 584. What follows, seems to have been written earlier, but inclosed in the same letter.

J 40 CORRESPONDENCE.

4. 1 ask your pardon for translating Miranda's letter. I be- lieved that you understood the language ; but was not certain, and thought it not amiss to furnish you with the sense in which I understand it. I will now inclose to you, Sir, the remainder of the South American packet, with a request that you will return it to me with the same punctuality that you have ob- served in all my former communications.

1. A magnificent confederation, association, platform, or con- spiracy, call it which you will, of three great personages to separate all South America from Spain, erect an independent empire over that vast region, under the form of a federative republic ; and these three great personages were Don Josef del Pozo y Sucre, Don Manuel Josef de Salas, and Don Francisco de Miranda. This was certified to me by Miranda.

2. The." Pouvoirs" signed and sealed by Josef del Pozo y Sucre, Manuel Josef de Salas, and Francisco de Miranda.

I need not proceed further, Mr. Lloyd ! Here is enough to furnish a volume of reflections. Nay, if you were to pursue all the investigations and speculations that these papers suggest, you might write as many folios as Priestley or Voltaire ever produced. I read all these papers over and over, with great and very serious attention; and the oftener I read them, the more my astonishment was increased. After mature deliberation, -I knew not whether I ought to laugh or to weep. In the sequel, laugh I did, most heartily ; weep I did not, for I too cordially despised the whole business to cry over it. Give me leave to recapitulate the heads of my speculations or reveries upon that occasion.

1. What was to be done with these papers ? "What was the dictate of my duty? We are at peace with Spain. We are engaged in a friendly demarcation of the limits between their territories and ours ; negotiations are in train for compensation for spoliations on our commerce, with a fair prospect of an ami- cable termination. Is it my duty to communicate these docu- ments to Yrujo, the Spanish minister?

No, surely not. I cannot be obliged to act the part of a spy, a sycophant, or informer, to Spain or any other nation or govern- ment. Besides, "what good can come of it ? None, but to expose Miranda to the guillotine in France, and his associates to the rack or the stake in Spain or Spanish America. Besides, what

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fuel would these papers have thrown into the flames, the vol- cano of European politics and wars at that time !

Should I communicate them to Mr. Liston, the British minis- ter ? Surely not. If Mr. Liston had received any instructions from Mr. Pitt, it was his duty to impart them to me.

Should I transmit them to the Senate and House in Con- gress ? No. This would give the greatest possible publicity. And what could Congress do with them ? Should I summon the heads of departments, lay the packets before them, and ask their opinion and advice ? No. I wanted none of their advice in so plain a case. Who ever thought of summoning a board of mathematicians to deliberate upon the question, whether two and two are equal to four? So intuitively ob- vious and certain was the answer to every question that I could imagine relative to the subject, that my judgment was made up as soon as I had read the despatch. If the British

minister should present a memorial in the name of his master to the Secretary of State, proposing the tripartite alliance, I should instantly dictate the answer to the Secretary, very civilly and respectfully apologizing for declining the engagement on account of the juvenility of our nation, the infancy of our go- vernment, the instability of our financial establishments, the aversion of our people to war, the difficulty of raising men, the vastness, difficulty, and uncertainty of the enterprise, and the want of powers and authority in the agents for South Ame- rica; and, above all, as it would be a departure from our established system of policy, a neutrality in all the wars of Europe as long as we could preserve it.

My reflections did not stop here. What was I to think of Mr. Pitt and the British cabinet ? Was it possible that Miranda should be such a conjurer as to bewitch Mr. Pitt and his col- leagues into a serious belief, that South America was to be revolutionized so easily by Miranda and his two Jesuits ? Did they believe the South Americans capable of a free government, or a combination of free federative republics, according to Mi- randa's plan? Or did Mr. Pitt deliberately project an insidious plan to dupe me into a rash declaration of war against France, and a submissive alliance, offensive and defensive, with him ? Does he think me as raw, awkward, and ignorant a boy as I know him to be ? If he does, he will find himself mistaken.

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Having despatched the great and renowned Mr. Pitt in this laconic style, my next inquiry was, who and what is Miranda ? He is either an Achilles, hurt by some personal injury, real or imaginary, by being deprived of his girl, as likely as any thing else that we know, who has adopted the maxim of so many other heroes, " Jura neg-at sibi lata, nihil non arrogat armis ; " or he is a knight-errant, as delirious as his immortal countryman, the ancient hero of La Mancha. In the next place, what could I think of Don Josef y Pozo y Sucre^ and Don Manuel Josef de Salas ? I knew nothing about them but that they wereJesuits^ And what were Jesuits ? Ask Pascal in his Provincial Letters.

Spain had abolished the order, and these might be taking ven- geance for their imaginary wrongs. They might boil with revenge against the king of Spain for abolishing their order. They were certainly corrupted by British mercenary policy. But what was I to think of Don Pablo de Olavide ? Here was a fact, a history, a secret, unknown to Pitt, King, Miranda, and all their Jesuits. The fact is, I personally knew Olavide^ his history, his character. I had been in company with him at festive convivial dinners with the Duke Rochefoucauld, the hereditary representative of the famous Sully, the bishop of Langres, a brother of the great Lamoignon, a duke and a peer, who had assisted at the coronation of the King at Rheims, where the holy oil had been poured on the royal head ; that holy oil which was brought down from heaven in the bill or the claws of a pigeon.

Olavide was an old man, had been in Spain a great man, a member of the Council of Seville, &c.' A head stuffed with learning, and curiosity insatiable. Touched with the contagious heresy of the holy church philosophy, of which Voltaire was the sovereign pontiff, he had suffered to escape him sentiments which alarmed the Inquisition. He was obliged to fly, as the Count d'Aranda had been, to France, as an asylum from the persecutions of the Court and the Inquisition in Spain. In Paris, he was tormented with ennui; he knew not what to do with himself. He told me, " mes momens ne sont pas si courts" He went daily to the mesmeric experiments. I heard him say, he saw there miracles as inexplicable as those of the Abbe Paris in a former century.

One of the highest frolics I ever enjoyed was with this Ola-

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vide, at a dinner with the highest characters in France, eccle- siastical and civil,1 in which the question was discussed between Olavide and me of an alliance, offensive and defensive, between North and South America. The history of it would be as diverting as the feast of Plato. You will see with what eager- ness Miranda and his associates courted Olavide to join them, and you will see the total neglect and contempt of them shown by Olavide. I was confident he had too much sense to have any connection with them. They never could get him to meet them, or to answer their invitations. This Olavide afterwards hit upon the happy expedient of translating from French into Spanish a work in favor of Christianity, which appeased the wrath of the Inquisition, and procured his return to Spain.2 But who were the "Junta" in Spain? Who were the Junta in South America ? Whom did Miranda and his two Jesuits

represent ? Where were their full powers ?

I will not fatigue you with too much speculation at once. I beg you to read the inclosed papers, and I will soon again trespass on your patience with a few more of my lucubrations.

V

TO JAMES LLOYD.

Quincy, 27 March, 1815.

Let me put a case like a lawyer. Suppose Samuel Adams, John Dickinson, Patrick Henry, and Christopher Gadsden, had been enterprising and romantic enough in 1773 to go to France, and propose to the Due de Choiseul a triple alliance between the crowns of France and Spain and the United, or to be United, States of North America. WThat would the duke have said? " Gentlemen, show me your full powers ! Whom do you repre- sent ? " " Oh ! " say the American patriots, " the people are un- easy, ardent to throw off the yoke of Great Britain. A few ships of the line and a few thousand men from France and Spain will

1 See the Diary, vol. iii. p. 3G2.

2 A curious account of this person's life up to 1782, is given by Diderot, from papers furnished by a Spaniard. It is found in the Literary Correspondence of Baron de Grimm, vol. xi. p. 233.

144 CORRESPONDENCE.

unite all North America ; they Mall instantly rise, renounce Great Britain, become independent, and enter into an eternal alliance, offensive and defensive, with France and Spain." What would the duke have said ? " Gentlemen, this is a deep, dangerous, and difficult subject. It interests the whole globe. I myself pretend not to fathom the depth of it. But you show me no authority. You have no powers ; you represent nobody. You appear to us only in the light of rebels and traitors to your lawful sovereign. Return, then, home to your country with as little eclat and publicity as possible, and think yourselves very fortunate, if I do not denounce you all at St. James's as traitors and rebels to your king." That this supposition is no exaggera- tion, would appear from the history of the reception of Franklin, Deane, and Lee, by the Comte de Vergennes, in 1776, and till the 6th February, 1778 ; an epoch of great importance in the history of mankind, of which my dearly -beloved citizens of the United States are as ignorant as they are of the Sanscrit Shasta, its origin and progress. Before Franklin, Deane, and Lee ap- peared in France, the royal governments in America were all annihilated, Congress was sovereign and supreme, de facto and dejure, and those ambassadors had authentic records to show for every step of the progress, from 1761 to 1778. What had Mi- randa and two obscure, unknown, unheard of Jesuits to show ? "Nothing, absolutely nothing but their ipsi dixerwd. But, al- though they show no commission, no delegation, no deputation from any original power, any physical force, any animal strength, much less from any regular assemblies of people, any legitimate authority of any kind, what is the probability of their pretensions? The people of South America are the most ignorant, the most bigoted, the most superstitious of all the Roman Catholics in Christendom. They believe salvation to be confined to themselves and the Spaniards in Europe. They can scarcely allow it to the Pope and his Italians, certainly not to the French ; and as to England, English America, and all other Protestant nations, nothing could be expected or hoped for any of them, but a fearful looking for of eternal and unquench- able flames of fire and brimstone. No Catholics on earth were so abjectly devoted to their priests, as blindly superstitious as themselves, and these priests had the powers and apparatus of the Inquisition to seize every suspected person and suppress

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every rising motion. Was it probable, was it possible, that such a plan as Miranda's, of a free government, and a confede- ration of free governments, should be introduced and established among such a people, over that vast continent, or any part of it ? It appeared to me more extravagant than the schemes of Condorcet and Brissot to establish a democracy in France, schemes which had always appeared to me as absurd as similar plans would be to establish democracies among the birds, beasts, and fishes. What should I think of Mr. King ? My disposi- tion was very good to make a plausible apology for him. He might think it, and, indeed, it might be his duty to transmit this information to me. I could not, however, avoid remarking a little enthusiastic leaning in favor of the sublime project, and more symptoms of credulity than became a cautious and wary statesman. I did not, however, reflect with any severity upon Mr. King. Had Miranda's powers been unexceptionable, his associates known, and Mr. Pitt made an official proposal of such a triple alliance, could I for one moment have deliberated on the question, whether I should accept it or not ? Certainly not. Britain had not then displayed all her omnipotence in the Nile, at Copenhagen, or Trafalgar. France, Spain, Holland, Denmark, and Russia, had naval forces, some of them danger- ous and powerful. These would require all the naval and military forces of Britain to defend her own island and watch the hostile fleets of her enemies, which were all the maritime powers of Europe. But had Mr. Pitt, in complaisance to the great Miranda, sent ten ships of the line to South America, who would have had the advantage ? Most certainly the South Americans would have been in favor of Spain and France. And as certainly the North Americans, too, even though Adams, Washington, Hamilton, and Pickering had been ever so strenuous and enthusiastic advocates and parti- sans and allies of the great Miranda.

If I looked at home, I was to send four or six thousand in- fantry and two thousand cavalry to South America. And for what? To make of Miranda a king Theodore or a Pascal Paoli. Where could I get six thousand infantry and two thou- sand cavalry ? We had them not ; and in my opinion we could not obtain them. I had before had sufficient experience of the difficulty of recruiting regular soldiers in the United States.

vol. x. 13 j

146 CORRESPONDENCE.

Where should we find transports? What would be the in- terest of money ? Had we not had rebellions enough against taxes? And were we not threatened with more and greater, and even with division, disunion, dismemberment, a dissolu- tion of the constitution, and a total anarchy ? Miranda's pro- ject is as visionary, though far less innocent, than that of his countryman Gonzalez, of an excursion to the moon in a car drawn by geese trained and disciplined for the purpose. Such were my reflections. In my next you shall know the insigni- ficant result of all these meditations, from, &c.

TO JAMES LLOYD.

Quincy, 29 March, 1815.

In my last, I promised you the result of all my deliberations on this great subject. It was this, " What shall I do with these papers ? " The answer was, " Lock them up in my desk, and there let them be." I did accordingly lock them up, and there they lay till I had forgotten them ; and there they would have remained to this hour, if the Edinburgh reviewers first, and Bristed after them, had not implicated Mr. King and me in their ignoranl and nonsensical speculations and censures.

Pickering, without consulting me, had sent a letter to Knox, and another to Hamilton. I presumed both were from Miranda. I believed Knox to have too sound and sober a judgment to be seduced into any folly by Miranda. I never thought it worth while to ask him a question about the letter or the subject. Very probably Madam Knox can produce the original letter. What Miranda had written to Hamilton, I neither knew nor cared. Hamilton's answer, however, has been intercepted somewhere among Miranda's papers, and published to the world in some magazine or review that I have seen, but do not now possess. He says, " We have an army of twelve thousand men" x — (by the way, more than half exaggeration) — " He must refer to the government ; " and concludes with, " You know

1 The words are, " We are raising an army of about twelve thousand men." Hamilton's Works, vol. vi. p. 348.

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my sentiments." This, you see, was sagacious policy enough, and would have given me no alarm, if I had seen the letter in its time. But I knew nothing of it, and thought nothing about it. My imagination was amused with very different pictures. Seven thousand men and two thousand horses, crowded into transports in the Gulf stream, bound to South America, two thirds of them, within a fortnight after their landing, dead with the rot, the jail fever, the yellow fever, or the plague, and their fathers and mothers, wives and children, brothers and sis- ters, weeping and wailing their losses, and cursing John Adams as a traitor to his country, and a bribed slave to Great Britain, — a Deane, an Arnold, a devil !

After all, Mr. Lloyd, I must go a step further, and with frankness and candor acknowledge a truth, a principle, an opi- nion, and a system, in which I have great doubts whether you will concur with me. For full forty years, three points have been settled in my mind after mature deliberation.

1. That neutrality in the wars of Europe is our truest policy ; and to preserve this, alliances ought to be avoided as much and as long as possible.

But, if we should be driven to the necessity of an alliance,

2. Then France is our natural ally ; and,

3. That Great Britain is the last power, to which we should, in any, the last extremity, resort for any alliance, political or military.

These three propositions appear to me as clear, as obvious, and as demonstrable as any political principles whatever, and almost as any proposition in Euclid.

Miranda's plot, Mr. Pitt's plot, and Mr. Hamilton's plot (if, indeed, he had any hand in it), was in direct opposition to my system, and wholly subversive of it. On the one hand, I was determined not to submit to the insolence and injuries of the French government ; on the other, to enter into no alliance with Great Britain, nor any kind of connection that might embarrass us in making peace with France, whenever her government should come to her senses and show a disposition to do us jus- tice.

Very fortunately for me and for this nation, the French Di- rectory had a lucid interval, and gave me a fan- opportunity to institute that mission to France, que vous fletrissez, that mission

aX

\f

148

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to France which you describe as the "great shade in my Presi- dential escutcheon," and which I wish to inscribe on my grave- stone ; and which, if we had escutcheons in this country, I would contrive to introduce into mine. I would rather have it there than seventeen quarters of marquises and dukes, princes, kings, or emperors. I would not exchange it for the name of Bowdoin or Baudoin, the most splendid name that I have read in history, far superior to Bourbons or Guelphs. Sic transit glo- ria. Far greater than Medicis or Napoleons ; almost equal to those of Hercules and Mahomet.

On April 10th, 1809, I commenced in the Boston Patriot a series of letters in vindication of my missions to France. These letters were imprudently published in pamphlets. If you have ever seen one of them, you must remember that ninety-five pages of it are devoted to a vindication of my missions to France. If you have never seen it, I pray you to look it up ; and, if you cannot find it, I will send it to you. I had done with it forever, as I thought. I wished never to see it or hear of it again. But a grandson of mine, not yet fourteen years of age, has picked them up and bound them in a volume. I have borrowed it of him, and if you cannot find it elsewhere, I will lend it to you, upon condition that you will return it to me, for I know of no other copy. After that publication, I did not expect to see a slur cast upon my missions to France by any man of intelligence and honor.

Will you linger and loiter with me a little in this place ? Did Mr. Pitt and Mr. Miranda believe me to be a lover of revolu- tions, deeply smitten with their charms, ready and eager to seize upon any and every opportunity to involve myself and my country in any revolutionary enterprise?! had been plunged head and ears in the African revolution from 1761 to 1798 (for~it had been all revolution during the whole period). Did Mr. Pitt and Mr. Miranda think that I had trod upon feathers, and slept upon beds of roses, during those thirty-seven years ? I had been an eye-witness of two revolutions in Holland ; one from aristocracy to a mongrel mixture of half aristocracy and half democracy, the other back again to aristocracy and the splendid restoration of the Stadtholder. Did Mr. Pitt and Mr. Miranda think that I was so delighted with these electric shocks, these eruptions of volcanoes, these tremblemens de terre, as to

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be ambitious of the character of a chemist, who could produce artificial ones in South America ? I had been an ear-witness of some of the first whispers of a revolution in France in 1783, 1784, and 1785, and had given all possible attention to its rise and progress, and I can truly say, that it had given me as much anxiety as our American revolution had ever done. Could Mr. Pitt and Mr. Miranda believe me so fascinated, charmed, en- chanted, with what had happened in France, as to be desirous of engaging myself and my country in most hazardous and expensive and bloody experiments to excite similar horrors in South America?

The last twenty-five years of the last century, and the first fifteen years of this, may be called the age of revolutions and constitutions. We began the dance, and have produced eighteen or twenty models of constitutions, the excellences and defects of which you probably know better than I do. They are, no doubt, the best for us that we could contrive and agree to adopt.

TO JAMES LLOYD.

Quincy, 30 March, 1815.

I need not say any thing about our constitutions, or the diffi- culties that have been experienced to reconcile the people to them, or the dangerous diversities of opinion, in the construc- tion of them, or the dissatisfaction with them, the uneasiness under them, or the perpetual projects to alter and amend them.

Since we began the career of constitutions, the wisest, most learned, and scientific heads in France, Holland, Geneva, Swit- zerland, Spain, and Sicily, have been busily employed in devis- ing constitutions for their several nations. And brilliant com- positions they have produced, adorned with noble sentiments in morals, wise maxims in politics, if not sound doctrines in religion and salutary precepts in private life. But has there been one that has satisfied the people ? One that has been ob- served and obeyed, even for one year or one month ? The truth is, there is not one people of Europe that knows or cares any

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thing about constitutions. There is not one nation in Europe that understands or is capable of understanding any constitu- tion whatever. Panem et aquam, et vinum et cir censes are all that they understand or hope or wish for. If there is a color- able exception, it is England. On this subject, I scarcely dare to write, speak or think. Once loose the spirit of democratical revolution, and the three kingdoms will rival France in anarchy, as triumphantly as they have in policy, commerce, naval and military power. These, Sir, were the results of ten years' care- ful, attentive, anxious, and (if without vanity I may use the word) philosophical observation in France, Spain, Holland, Austrian Netherlands, and England. What could I think of revolutions and constitutions in South America? A people more ignorant, more bigoted, more superstitious, more implicitly credulous in the sanctity of royalty, more blindly devoted to their priests, in more awful terror of the Inquisition, than any people in Europe, even in Spain, Portugal, or the Austrian Netherlands, and infinitely more than in Rome itself, the imme- diate residence of the head of the holy church.

I did not say, as my old friend Lord St. Vincent did, though I thought as much. You cannot understand this without an anecdote of General Moreau, who related, that Fulton carried from Mr. Pitt to Lord St. Vincent a recommendation to his lordship to try the experiment of Fulton's projects, to blow up ships by machinery under water. The only answer that the old lord-admiral gave to Fulton, was, " Pitt is a damned fool, and I will have nothing to do with your project." The story, which I had from our Commodore Rogers, who, I understood, heard it from Moreau's own mouth, was embellished with many beautiful circumstances, infinitely more worthy to be transmit- ted to posterity than the letters of that mixture of Napoleon, Petrarch, and Werter^JLord Nelson.

But I have not yet stated all my reflections upon this subject. Had Mr. Pitt thought of the consequences of opening a navi- gable canal across the isthmus to the South Sea ? Who was to have the jurisdiction and dominion of that canal ? What would be the effect of an independent, free government in South Ame- rica ? Could common sense in South America not think of a navy? No country has greater advantages for commerce and naval power. What would soon happen in Hindostan and in

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China, if a communication of commerce, navigation, and naval power was opened between South America and the East In- dies ? What is to become of the East India Company and the British possessions ? Where is this ignorant, thoughtless boy Jeading his king and country ? I am apprehensive you will think me as mad now as I then thought Pitt and Miranda. But my reading and observations on men and nations were then fresher in my head than they are now; and I assure you, I am not conscious of having insinuated a thought to you in this correspondence, that did not pass through my mind upon reading and considering those despatches from Mr. King and Miranda.

Should I have any thing to do in the business ? No ! If both houses of Congress, and Washington and Hamilton, should all agree in an address to me, advising and requesting me to engage in such a Quixotic attack of a windmill, I never would put my hand to it. I would resign my office, retire to Braintree, follow my plough, and leave the nation to follow its own wis- dom or folly.

It was impossible not to perceive a profound and artful plot hatching in England, France, Spain, South and North Ame- rica, to draw me into a decided instead of a quasi war with France, Spain, Holland, and all the enemies of England, and a perpetual alliance, offensive and defensive, with Great Britain ; or in other words, to entangle us forever in all the wars of Eu- rope. This plot I was determined to resist and defeat, if I could; and accordingly I embraced the first overtures from France to make peace with her upon terms honorable and ad- vantageous to the United States. This was completely effected. In my letters in the Boston Patriot before referred to, from April « 10th, 1809, to June 10th, 1809, you will see the history of the rise and progress of the negotiations with France, which led to that happy conclusion.1 On the subject of that happy conclu- sion, I have a few words hereafter to say. Meantime, what shall I do with these letters and the subject of them ? I have no inclination to publish them. They will remain in my letter- book, to enable my children to apologize for my memory. You are at liberty to quote them hardily whenever and wherever

' Vol. ix. pp. 241 - 310, of the present work.

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you please. You may show them, or print them, if you will. And I will give an account of all the reason that is in me to any gentleman, who in his proper name shall ask me any questions about them. If they were all printed in a pamphlet, I should admire to read an Edinburgh or Quarterly review of it. If I could see Mr. Bristed, I would ask him to print them as an appendix to the second edition of his Hints. Shall I send the documents to our Historical Society ? to our Antiqua- rian Society ? or to the Historical Society of New York, where, I believe, they would be more welcome ? or shall I still keep them locked in my desk ?

TO JAMES LLOYD.

Quincy, 31 March, 1815.

Before I proceed to St. Domingo, I have a few words more to say. And, after all, I expect to forget and omit more than half that I ought to say. In my last, I hinted at the happy conclusion of the peace with France in 1801, and its fortunate effects and consequences. Here, Sir, I must ask indulgence. I cannot repent of my " strong character." Whether I have one or not, I know not. I am not conscious of any character stronger than common. If I have such a nature, it was given me. I shall neither be rewarded nor punished for it. For all my foibles, strong or weak, I hold myself responsible to God and man. I hope to be forgiven for what I humbly acknow- ledge I cannot justify, and not be too severely censured for what, in my circumstances, " humana parum cavet natural I did not humble France, nor have the combined efforts of em- perors and kings humbled her, and, I hope, she never will be humbled below Austria, Russia, or England. But I humbled the French Directory as much as all Europe has humbled Bo- naparte. I purchased navy yards, which would now sell for double their cost with compound interest. I built frigates^ manned a navy, and selected officers with great anxiety and care, who perfectly protected our commerce, and gained virgin victories against the French, and who afterwards acquired such laurels in the Mediterranean, and who have lately emblazoned

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themselves and their country with a naval glory, which I trem- ble to think of. God forbid that American Saaval power should ever be such a scourge to the human race as that of Great Britain has been ! I was engaged in the most earnest, sedulous, and, I must own, expensive exertions to preserve peace with the Indians, and prepare them for agriculture and civilization,

through the whole of my administration. I had the inexpres- sible satisfaction of complete success. Not a hatchet was lifted in my time ; and the single battle of Tippecanoe has since cost the United States a hundred times more money than it cost me to maintain universal and perpetual peace. I finished the de- marcation of limits, and settled all controversies with Spain. I made the composition with England, for all the old Virginia debts, and all the other American debts, the most snarling, an- gry, thorny, scabreux negotiation that ever mortal ambassador, king, prince, emperor, or president was ever plagued with. I say I made it, and so I did, though the treaty was not ratified till Jefferson came in. My labors were indefatigable to com- pose all difficulties and settle all controversies with all nations, civilized and savage. And I had complete and perfect success, and left my country at peace with all the world, upon terms consistent with the honor and interest of the United States, and with all our relations with other nations, and all our obli- gations by the law of nations or by treaties. This is so true, that no nation or individual ever uttered a complaint of injury, insult, or offence. I had suppressed an insurrection in Penn- sylvania, and effectually humbled and punished the insurgents ; not by assembling an army of militia from three or four States, and marching in all the pride, pomp, and circumstance of war, at an expense of millions, but silently, without noise, and at a trifling expense. I pardoned Fries ; and what would a triumph- ant, victorious, and intoxicated party, not to say faction, under the "command-in-chief" of John Randolph, have done with honest Judge Chase and Judge Peters, if I had hanged him ? But I am not about to laugh off this question. What good, what example would have been exhibited to the nation by the execution of three or four obscure, miserable Germans, as igno- rant of our language as they were of our laws, and the nature and definition of treason ? Pitiful puppets danced upon the wires of jugglers behind the scene or under ground. But I am

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not going to make an apology here. Had the mountebanks been in the place of the puppets, mercy would have had a harder struggle to obtain absolution for them.

The verdict of a jury, and the judgment of the court, would, to be sure, have justified me in the opinion of the nation, and in the judgment of the world, if I had signed the warrant for their execution ; but neither, nor both, could have satisfied my con- science, nor tranquillized my feelings. If I had entertained only a doubt of their guilt, notwithstanding verdicts and judg- ments, it was my duty to pardon them. But my determination did not rest upon so wavering a foundation as a doubt.

My judgment was clear, that their crime did not amount to treason. They had been guilty of a high-handed riot and res- cue, attended with circumstances hot, rash, violent, and dan- gerous, but all these did not amount to treason. And I thought the officers of the law had been injudicious in indicting them for any crime higher than riot, aggravated by rescue. Here I rest my cause on this head, and proceed to another.

As I am not now writing a history of my administration, I will sum up all I have to say in a few words. I left my coun- try in peace and harmony with all the world, and after all my " extravagant expenses " and " wanton waste of public money," I left navy yards, fortifications, frigates, timber, naval stores, manufactories of cannon and arms, and a treasury full of five millions of dollars. This was all done step by step, against perpetual oppositions, clamors and reproaches, such as no other President ever had to encounter, and with a more feeble, divided, and incapable support than has ever fallen to the lot of any admi- nistration before or since. For this I was turned out of office, degraded and disgraced by my country ; and I was glad of it. I felt no disgrace, because I felt no remorse. It has given me fourteen of the happiest years of my life ; and I am certain I could not have lasted one year more in that station, shackled in the chains of that arbitrary faction.

Virtus, repulsae nescia sordidae, Intaminatis fidget honoribus ; Nee sumit aut ponit secures Arbitrio popularis aurse.

As I had been intimately connected with Mr. Jefferson in

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friendship and affection for five-and-twenty years, I well knew his crude and visionary notions of government as well as his learning, taste, and talent in other arts and sciences. I expectecT \ * his reign would be very nearly what it has been. I regretted it, but could not help it. At the same time, I thought it would be better than following the fools who were intriguing to plunge us into an alliance with England, an endless war with all the rest of the world, and wild expeditions to South America and St. Domingo ; and, what was worse than all the rest, a civil war, which I knew would be the consequence of the measures the heads of that party wished to pursue.

TO JAMES LLOYD.

Quincy, 5 April, 1815.

The halcyon days of New England prosperity were the first six years of Mr. Jefferson's administration. Was this felicity owing to the wisdom, the virtue, or the energy of Mr. Jefferson ? Or was it the natural, necessary, and unavoidable effect of the universal peace and tranquillity abroad and at home, and with universal nature, civilized and "savage, entailed upon him by his predecessor, in spite of friends and enemies ?

Had Mr. Hamilton and his host, for he was " commander-in- chief," been good citizens, submitted to the legitimate consti- tuted authorities, relaxed their rigid, bigoted monopolies and exclusions, suffered the executive to be independent and mode- rate the fury of parties, the federal administration might and would have been triumphant, might have had a navy, might have maintained their neutrality. But, alas ! Hamilton would not endure it. " Othello's occupation was gone," and jealousy and Moorish revenge again stabbed and murdered Desdemona. And Deacon Phillips has called a noble block of buildings " Hamilton place," in lasting honor of Othello ! Such is the honor, the dignity, the virtue, the piety, the religion, the moral- ity, the patriotism, the philanthropy, of the head-quarters of principles, sometimes good and sometimes bad !

Such was the faD of the house that Jack built. Such the

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overthrow of the lofty palace, the sublime and beautiful build- ing that he then thought, and still thinks, he had erected and finished, though he all along knew he was building on the sand ; he could only lament, as he did, that he could not find a rock. He was sometimes vain and foolish enough to please himself wdth visions of studies and labors to promote the felicity of the nation, by encouraging agriculture, commerce, certain manufactures, national defence, safety and security by fortifica- tions and wooden walls, by arts and sciences, by systems of education, and by canals and roads ; but he soon saw that such delights were forbidden to him, and he submitted to the decree. He thought he had answered the end of his creation, as far as he could see any use of his existence upon earth, and was con- tent it should come to an end, physically or politically, if it was the pleasure of the Supreme Ruler.

But I cannot relieve you yet. You must read a little more curious history. There is extant a volume in print, Boston, 1810, published by Edward Oliver, 70 State street, " The history of Don Francisco de Miranda's Attempt to effect a Revolution in South America," with a very apt motto from Shakspeare, " Thoughts tending to ambition, they do plot unlikely wonders." If ever more unlikely wonders were plotted in this world than those plotted by Pitt, Miranda, and King, I have never read them in history or romance. There is not an Arabian tale more extravagant. This volume deserves your perusal, and so do the writings of Nimrod Hughes and Christopher Macpher- son, quite as much as those of Paine, Callender, and Hamilton, for without them you never can know the character of your country and its government. I shall leave this volume to your perusal, and proceed to something which has harrowed up my soul and all its feelings. I neither know, nor suspect, nor have ever heard of a conjecture, who the author of this history is. I know not whether I had heard a rumor, retired as I was, of the arrival of Miranda in America, when I received a letter from Dr. Rush, informing me that General Miranda had been in Philadelphia, had visited him, dined with him, and given him an account of the politics of all the courts of Europe, as fami- liarly as if he had been in the inside of all the kings and princes. Miranda was then upon his return from Washington, where he had conversed with Jefferson and Madison, and Rush assured

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me that Miranda had assured him that we should have no war with Spain. I thought little more of the matter. I considered Miranda as a vagrant, a vagabond, a Quixotic adventurer, and cared no more about him than about Abraham Brown or Par- son Austin.

How can I proceed in the narration ? The next news I heard was that Miranda had sailed a fortnight or three weeks before, with a military and naval armament to set South America free ; and that my grandson, W^J^Smith, had been taken from col- lege, when senior sophister, on the point of taking his degree, and sent with Miranda to liberate South America. "What do you think were my sensations and reflections ? I shudder to this moment at the recollection of them. I saw the ruin of my only daughter, and her good-hearted, enthusiastic husband, and had no other hope or wish or prayer than that the ship, with my grandson in it, might _be sunk in a storm in the Gulf stream, where I had myself been for three days in momentary danger and expectation of perishing in 1778, eight-and-twenty years before !

I had never the most distant intimation or suspicion of this expedition, till I heard it had been at sea for weeks. I can truly say, that information that the ship had gone to the bottom would at the same moment have been an alleviation of my grief. I gave up my grandson as lost fore verL But what could I think of his father ? Was he more mad than Pitt or King ?

In course of time, news came that my grandson was in prison at Caraccas, with many of his companions, waiting for trial and execution. Yrujo, who had known me in Europe and America, came forward with an offer to Interpose for a pardon for my grandson. I took no notice of it. No ! My blood should flow upon a Spanish scaffold, before I would meanly ask or accept a distinction in favor of my grandson. No ! He should share the fate of his colleagues, comrades, and fellow- prisoners. Colonel Smith answered Yrujo in a style that atoned in some measure for his previous imprudence, in a lan- guage consistent with his professed principle, however erro- neous, in the whole enterprise ; in short, in the tone of the elder Brutus, when he sacrificed his sons for conspiring with Tarquin.

When Mr. Bristed, in his " Broad Hints," announced John Adams as the defeater of Mr. Pitt's and Mr. King's projects for

vol. x. 14

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separating South America from Spain, I printed in the Patriot a short apology for my conduct, and some of the documents I have sent you. In consequence of that publication, I soon received the letter and paper, which I will now inclose to you with the request that you will return them to me. The letter is dated " Baltimore, June 7th, 1810," and signed " B. Irvine, Edit. "Whig." The object of the letter was, as it professed to be, " to obtain farther information on the subject of Miranda's project, and the designs of the British ministry, or rather the reason why the valuable information communicated by me to the public relative to that project was so long withheld, to the

injury of Mr. Jefferson's character, and to the danger of the commonwealth." Inclosed with this letter was the newspaper called the Whig, of June 7th, 1810, in the second column of the second page of which you will find a paragraph, headed "An explanation wanted," in which I am called to an account, somewhat rudely and impertinently, and by implication, at least, charged or suspected of aiming to waft my son into place, and restore myself to favor.

I have never answered this letter, nor acknowledged its re- ceipt, nor taken any notice of it or its Whig. Who was this Mr. Irvine ? Who his honest inquirers ? What authority had they to catechize me ? Did they think that I had courted the mission of my son to Russia ? I had infinitely rather he had remained at home in his private station. I could have told them, that a general suspicion ran through the continent, which indeed prevails to this day, that he was sent away as a danger- ous rival, too near the throne. What favor had I to restore myself to ? What have I to restore myself to ? What favor have I ever asked of government or people ? Never once since I came out of my mother's womb. Miranda's expedition from New York was infinitely better known to Jefferson and Madi- json than" to me. I never had the least intimation or suspicion of it, till he had been three weeks at sea.

I will also inclose an estimate in Spanish, sent me by Mi- randa, of the Spanish dominions in South America, with a translation in English, made by a Spanish gentleman, a go- vernor of Chili, who said the estimate was very low. All those regions, however, were to become republican under our confederation !

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TO RICHARD RUSH.

Quincy, 5 April, 1815.

Your two letters of the 27th ultimo have been received, with the inclosures, for all which I thank you.

You ask " some reflections of my own." My dear Sir, it would require a folio volume to give you the histories, disserta- tions, and discussions which you require. How can I, sans eyes, sans hands, sans memory, sans clerks, sans secretaries, sans aids-de-camp, sans amanuensis, undertake to write folios ?

Let me ask you, Mr. Rush, is the sovereignty of this nation a gift ? a grant ? a concession ? a conveyance ? or a release and acquittance from Great Britain ? Pause here and think. No ! The people, in 1774, by the right which nature and nature's God had given them, confiding in original right, and original power, in 1774 assumed powers of sovereignty. In 1775, they assmned greater power. In July 4th, 1776, they assumed ab- solute unlimited sovereignty in relation to other nations, in all cases whatsoever ; no longer acknowledging any authority over them but that of God Almighty, and the laws of nature and of nations. The war from 4th of July, 1776, to 30th of November, 1782, six years and some months, was only an appeal to Heaven in defence of our sovereignty. Heaven decided in our favor; and -Britain was forced not to give, grant, concede, or release our independence, but to acknowledge it, in terms as clear as our language afforded, and under seal and under oath.

Now, Sir, they say that the late war has annihilated our treaty of 1782, and its definitive in 1783. Let me ask, has it annihilated our independence and our sovereignty ? It has annihilated our sovereignty as effectually as it has any one par- ticle of our rights and liberties in the fisheries. We asked not our independence as a grant, a gift, a concession from Great Britain. We demanded, insisted upon it as our right, derived from God, nature, and our own swords. The article in the treaty ought to have been, " The United States have been for seven years, now are, and of right ought to be free, sovereign, and independent States." But it was not thought necessary to hurt the delicacy of royal or popular feelings by language so emphatical, though so literally true.

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Now, Sir, does not the article relative to the fisheries stand upon the same foundation with that of our independence ? We claim and demand the fisheries in their utmost extent, from God and nature and our own swords, as we did our independ- ence. And we will have them, God willing.

Neither nature nor art has partitioned the sea into empires, kingdoms, republics, or states. There are no dukedoms, earl- doms, baronies, or knight's fees, no freeholds, pleasure grounds, ornamented or unornamented farms, gardens, parks, groves, or forests there, appropriated to nations or individuals, as there are upon land. Let Mahomet, and the Pope, and Great Britain say what they will, mankind will act the part of slaves and cowards, if they suffer any nation to usurp dominion over the ocean or any portion of it. Neither the Mediterranean, the Baltic, the four seas, or the North Sea, are the peculium of any nation. The ocean and its treasures are the common property of all men, and we have a natural right to navigate the ocean and to fish in it, whenever and wherever we please. Upon this broad and deep and strong foundation do I build, and with this cogent and irresistible argument do I fortify our rights and liberties irf the fisheries on the coasts as well as on the banks, namely, the gift and grant of God Almighty in his creation of man, and his land and water ; and, with resignation only to the eternal counsels of his Providence, they never will and never shall be surrendered to any human authority or any thing but divine power.

You will accuse me of the bathos, if I descend from this height to any inferior ground ; but the same rights from the same source may be deduced and illustrated through another channel.

2. We have a right — (I know not very well how to express it) — but we have the rights of British subjects. Not that we are now British subjects ; not that we were British subjects at the treaty of 1783, but as having been British subjects, and entitled to all the rights, liberties, privileges, and immunities of British subjects, which we had possessed before the revolution, which we never had surrendered, forfeited, or relinquished, and which we never would relinquish any farther than in that treaty is expressed. Our right was clear and indubitable to fish in all places in the sea where British subjects had fished or ever had a right to fish.

3. We have a stronger and clearer right to all these fisheries

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in their largest extent than any Britons or Europeans ever had or could have, for they were all indebted to us and our ances- tors for all these fisheries. We discovered them ; we explored them; we settled the country, at our own expense, industry, and labor, without assistance from Britain or from Europe. We possessed, occupied, exercised, and practised them from the beginning. We have done more towards exploring the best fishing grounds and stations, and all the harbors, bays, inlets, creeks, coasts, and shores, where fish were to be found, and had discovered by experiments the best means and methods of preserving, curing, drying, and perfecting the commodity, and done more towards perfecting the commerce in it, than all the Britons, and all the rest of Europe.

4. We conquered Cape Breton and Nova Scotia, dispossessed the French, both hostile and neutral, and did more, in propor- tion, towards the conquest of Canada, than any other portion of the British empire ; and would and could and should have done the whole, at an easier expense to ourselves, both of men and money, if the British government would have permitted that union of colonies, which we projected, planned, earnestly desired, and humbly petitioned. In short, we had done more, in proportion, towards protecting and defending all these fisheries against the French, than any other part of the British empire. For all these reasons, if there is a people under heaven who could advance a claim or a color of a pretension to any exclusive privileges in the fisheries, or any rights in one part of the old British empire more than another, that people are the inhabitants of the United States of America, especially of New England. But we set up no claims but those asserted and acknowledged in the treaty of 1783. These we do assert, and these we will have and maintain.

As you ask my opinion, it is that stipulations in acknow- ledgment of antecedent rights, in affirmance of maxims of equity and principles of natural and public law, if they are suspended during war, are revived in full force on the restora- tion of peace. Former treaties, not formally repeated in a new treaty, are presumed to be received and acknowledged. The fisheries are therefore ours, and the navigation of the Mississippi theirs, that is the British, as much as ever. I will answer any question you may ask.

If K

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TO JAMES LLOYD.

Quincy, 24 April, 1815.

I have not yet treated your letters to me, which I esteem above all price, with the respect they deserve, nor indeed with common civility. I cannot but hope, that in the great order of things, which we for the moment are so apt to think confusion, tome good may accrue to our country from this correspondence.

In your favor of February 6th, 1815, you have given a pro- verb, a maxim of more value to the statesmen of this nation than diamonds. " The progress of the horseman can only be proportioned to the speed of his horse." Had Hamilton, the " commander-in-chief" of both houses of Congress, of all the five heads of departments of General Washington, and conse- quently of the President of the United States, been aware of your principle, and acted upon it, the revolution of 1801 would not have happened. There is no rodomontade, no exaggera- tion, Mr. Lloyd, in this language. In essence, it is strictly true.

Your allusion to the trial of Captain Preston and his soldiers, touches me more nearly than you can imagine. To this hour my conduct in it is remembered, and is alleged against me to prove that I am an enemy to my country, and always have been. It was one of those cases, of which I could give you the history of many, in which my head or my heart, and perhaps a conspiracy of both, compelled me to differ in opinion from all my friends, to set at defiance all their advice, their remon- strances, their raillery, their ridicule, their censures, and their sarcasms, without acquiring one symptom of pity from my enemies.

I could give you several other anecdotes, curious enough, perhaps memorable, of the same kind, which, if you wish to read them, shall be at your service. At present, I will confine myself to one.

After the battles or skirmishes of Concord and Lexington on the 19th of April, 1775, the militia of Massachusetts, Connecti- cut, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island, marched to Cambridge, Roxbury, Medford, Charlestown, &c, to drive the British army into the sea ; and if their first ardor had not been restrained by considerations of the Union of the Colonies, they would have done it,

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When, in the beginning of May, Congress met, no man knew whether the skirmish at Concord, the battle of Lexington, or the assembly of an army of militia at Cambridge and the other neighborhood of Boston, in hostile array against his Majesty's regular, disciplined, and veteran troops and fleets, would be approved or condemned by that continental assembly. Those who had been members the year before, that is, in 1774, and now met the same gentlemen again, I assure you had great reasons for doubts and apprehensions, fears and jealousies.

The army at Cambridge had poor arms, no cannon but the Hancock and Adams, no tents, no barracks, no provisions but from day to day, no clothing for change, no magazines, very little powder, and but few balls. Congress could not be brought to look the crisis in the face. It was easy to see that the mem- bers dared not, either on the one hand, to command or advise the assemblage about Boston to disperse and go home, or on the other, to approve and adopt it as a continental army. A majority of them lived in hourly expectation of news, that the British troops had marched out of the town of Boston, and scattered the militia of New England, at Cambridge, to the four winds. For the opinion, that four or five thousand regulars could march where they pleased in America, was not peculiar to parliament or ministry. As many believed it in this country, in proportion, as in England. But when days and weeks passed away, and instead of any such intelligence, all accounts agreed that the Britons were completely imprisoned in the town, they began to think what must be done, and the people began to be clamorous that something should be done. Should they give up the contest ? No. The people, at least the Whigs, out of doors, and in their own colonies, would stone them. Should they adopt the army at Cambridge, or raise a new one of their own ? This last project would require a long time, and it was very uncertain whether it would ever be practicable. If they adopted the army now on foot, who should command it? A New England army under a New England General, they were pleased to say, would be dangerous to the other colonies, for no man then dared to utter the word State or nation. Who, then, should be General? On this question, the members were greatly divided. A number were for Mr. Han- cock, then President of Congress, and extremely popular

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throughout the United Colonies, and called " King Hancock " all over Europe. A greater number (can you believe it ?) were for General Charles Lee, then in Philadelphia, extremely assi- duous in his visits to all the members of Congress at their lodg- ings, and universally represented in America as a classical and universal scholar, as a scientific soldier, and as one of the greatest generals in the world, who had seen service with Bur- goyne in Portugal and in Poland, &c, and who was covered over with wounds he had received in battles. In short, this General Lee was a kind of precursor of Miranda. He excited much such an enthusiasm, and made as many proselytes and partisans. A number were for Washington. But the greatest number were for Ward.

In the midst of this chaos, the Massachusetts delegates daily received letters from their friends and constituents at home, entreating them to urge Congress to a decision, for the army wanted many things, and every thing was uncertain. The anxiety of New England, and her members in Congress, may be well imagined, may be easily conceived. In this state of things, John Adams, who had previously taken unwearied pains with his own colleagues, and with other members, in private, to form some plan and agree upon something to be done, with- out success, met Samuel Adams in the State House yard in Philadelphia, from various walks and avocations. " What shall we do to get Congress to adopt our army ? " said Samuel Adams to John Adams. " I will tell you what I am determined to do," said John to Samuel. " I have taken pains enough to bring you to agree upon something, but you will not agree upon any thing, and now I am determined to take my own way, let come what will come." " Well," said Sa- muel, " what is your scheme ? " Said John to Samuel, " I will go to Congress this morning, and move, that a day be ap- pointed to take into consideration the adoption of the army before Boston, the appointment of a General, and officers ; and I will nominate Washington for commander-in-chief." J

From this narration it appears, that Washington was the creature of a principle, and that principle was the Union of the

1 The. account which follows is a mere amplification of that given in the Autobiography, vol. ii. pp. 416 - 418, and omitted on that account.

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Colonies. He knew it, and it is not wonderful that he preached union. But is it not wonderful that one party should now found their arguments in favor of union, principally on the authority of Washington, and that the other party, in his name, and under pretence of his authority, should intrigue and cabal the destruction of the Union ? Good God ! Is there a man or woman in the United States, of common sense and information, who wants the authority of Washington to prove the necessity of Union ? Is there one who can abuse the name of Washing- ton, to influence a separation or division ? From this narration it also appears, that the boast of your correspondent, Mr. Ran- dolph, is vain and unfounded. We owe no thanks to Virginia for Washington. Virginia is indebted to Massachusetts for Washington, not Massachusetts to Virginia. Massachusetts made him a general against the inclination of Virginia. Vir- ginia never made him more than a colonel.

Would Mr. Randolph now say, that John Adams was " ill- omened " in his exertions to get Washington appointed a gene- ral, not only against the judgment and inclinations of his own colleagues, but of the most respectable and able of the dele- gates from Virginia herself?

Is there, Mr. Lloyd, in the history of nations an example of submission to a mere point of policy, to be compared to the compliance of New England, their general, their army and all its officers, with an arrangement, which placed a total stranger over the heads and bodies of them all ? At a moment, too, when they were flushed with victory at Bunker's Hill ? For a victory indeed it was, the most important event, and to this day, the most glorious action in the history of North America. It gave unshaken confidence to the people, from New Hamp- shire to Georgia, in their own valor, which nine tenths of them to that hour had doubted. It was not owing to any want of sensibility, I assure you, Sir, that no public remonstrance was made, and no public murmurs heard. Poor John Adams, upon his return to the army and his constituents, had enough to do to apologize for the part he had taken in the change. " Was there ever known, in the history of the world, an instance of changing the commander-in-chief of an army in the sight of an enemy, and in hourly expectation of another battle more bloody

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and desperate than the first ? Was it not unexampled to su- persede a general, a commander-in-chief, universally esteemed, beloved and confided in by his army and their country, by ap- pointing another, an entire stranger, whom they had never seen, whose name they had scarcely heard? Was there another army or country that would submit to it ? Was it not asto- nishing that a high-spirited, independent militia had not shoul- dered their firelocks and marched home ? or at least refused to receive the new commander? Was it not to have been ex- pected, that the officers would have resigned their commissions, when such a flight of officers of high rank, all strangers, was sent and placed over them ? How could you, in such critical circumstances, assist in putting the cause of your country at such imminent hazard ? "

These questions, Mr. Lloyd, and many other questions of similar import, were put to me wherever I went, by my best friends, and I had no other way to soften their hard thoughts, but by appeals to their patriotism, by urging the policy and necessity of sacrificing all our feelings to the union of the colo- nies, and by panegyrics upon Washington, Lee, Gates, Mifflin, Reed, &c. In a few words, I was subjected to almost as bitter exprobrations for creating Washington commander-in-chief, as I had been, five years before, for saving Preston and his soldiers from an unrighteous judgment and execution. Are not these facts as new to you as any political tale that could be brought you from Arabia, or by a special messenger from Sirius, the dog-star ?

Should I take the oath of Thuanus, the great martyr to the faint ideas of his age, of religious liberty, " Pro veritate historia- rum me arum Deum ipsum obtestor" would you believe me? It is sufficient for me to say that the facts are true, and I attest them with my hand.

TO THOMAS MCKEAN.

Quincy, 6 July, 1815.

Your friendly letter of the 1st of this memorable month, bear- ing in the handwriting, the sentiments, and the arrangement,

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every mark of undecayed vigor of mind and body, while it delights me in every other point of view, mortifies me by a comparison with my own quivering infirmities, which make it painful and difficult for me to write.

The history of mankind, as far as we can trace it, is full of wonders, and the greatest wonder of all is, the total destruction of all the monuments and memorials by which we could have formed a correct and impartial judgment of characters and events. The present question before the human race, that great democratical tribunal, is whether the jus divinum is in men or in magistrates ; in human nature or in instituted offices ; in human understanding or in holy oil ; in good sense and sound morality, or in crowns, sceptres, crosses, and Episcopal and Presbyterian ordination. When and where shall we date the commencement of these struggles? I fear it must be from the death of Abel. But, to leap over all former ages and nations, shall we begin with Constantine and the council of Nice ? With Clovis ? With the Crusades ? With the wars of the Hussites ? With Luther ? With Charles V., Louis XIV. ? Shall we recollect the Waldenses, the powder plot, the Irish massacre, St. Bartholomew's day, Robespierre, or Equality, the Duke of Orleans, or his predecessor, the Regent of France, and his Mississippi bubble ? Shall we come down to Napoleon and the grand council at Vienna ? These are all

" Bubbles on the sea of matter borne."

The question is still before the democratical tribunal of the human race. Is the Court as yet sufficiently enlightened to give a verdict and judgment, and according to law ? Will the verdict be in favor of Zinzendorf, or Swedenborg, or Whitefield, or Wesley, or Hopkins, or Priestley, or Voltaire ? Philosophy and religion will still mix with politics, and both, like matter, are infinitely indivisible. As the mariners say, " I can yet see no blue sky." Your parallel between John and J. Q,. is amus- ing enough. Whether it will continue a step or two farther, is a question before the democratical tribunal, and there I leave it. But I have a presentiment, that if it should be protracted for a leap or two, it will end in a perfect resemblance of disgrace, contempt, or neglect.

Mr. Madison's administration has proved great points long disputed in Europe and America.

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1. He has proved, that an administration under our present Constitution can declare war.

2. That it can make peace.

3. That money or no money, government or no government, Great Britain can never conquer this country or any consider- able part of it.

4. That our officers and men by land are equal to any from Spain and Portugal.

5. That our trans- Alleghanian States, in patriotism, bravery, enterprise, and perseverance, are at least equal to any in the Union.

6. That our navy is equal, ceteris paribus, to any that ever floated.

In a few minutes I shall be elevated to your honorable rank of an octogenarian.

TO F. A. VANDERKEMP.

Philadelphia, 13 July, 1815.

I have read D'Argens' Ocellus, Timssus, and Julian. In- stead of being sincere, he appears to me to be a consummate hypocrite, in the beginning, the middle, and the end ; the most frank, candid, impudent, and sincere liar I ever read. It is plain that he believed neither Old Testament nor New, neither Moses nor Jesus. He labors to destroy the credibility of the whole Bible, and all the evidence of a future state, and all this for the sake of establishing the infallibility of the Pope and the church, the necessity of forbidding the Bible to the people, and placing all religion in grace, and its offspring, faith. Among all the disciples of Loyola, I never read a more perfect Jesuit. He is a complete exemplification of Condorcet's " precious con- fessions," as you called them. You speak of his " superficial reflections." I have not found them. They are all deep, and aiming at the same end, a complete system of Antichristianity. No epic poem, no dramatic romance, not even Don Quixote himself, ever amused me more. Call him not superficial ; his Greek and his Latin are remarkably correct, his reading is immense, his system pursued with undeviating uniformity.

CORRESPONDENCE. 169

I thank you for your letters to Mr. Everett, who, I believe, will not disgrace you or me. Frederic's works are in my library over the way. But I have lost my George,1 who alone could look them up, and I am too indolent to go in search of them. Indeed, I have no great veneration for the hero, — not more than for Napoleon. He was more " superficial " than D' Argens.

You ask, " What ! have you more grandchildren about you ? " Yes, I have four pretty little creatures, who, though they dis- arrange my writing-table, give me much of my enjoyment. Why, you seem to know nothing about me. I have grand- children and great grandchildren, multiplying like the seed of Abraham. You have no idea of the prolific quality of the New England Adamses. Why, we have contributed more to the population of North America, and cut down more trees, than any other race ; and I hope will furnish hereafter, if they should be wanted, more soldiers and sailors for the defence of their country.

If, as our friend De Gyselaer says, " it were lawful to envy," I should envy Mrs. Vanderkemp, her children and grandchildren, their delicious meeting. It must be as delightful as any thing we find in this pleasant world, as I call it. I cannot call it " a vale of tears." This is false philosophy and false Christianity. If it is at any time a vale of tears, we make it such.

My friend, what opportunities have I had to do good things, and how few have I done ! I am ashamed, I grieve, I am mortified and humiliated, at the recollection of what I have been and where I have been. Yet, I have done nothing to reproach myself with. I have done all in my power to do, and have been overwhelmed by a dispensation, uncontrollable by any talents or virtues I possessed.

My friend, again ! the question before mankind is, — how shall I state it ? It is, whether authority is from nature and reason, or from miraculous revelation ; from the revelation from God, by the human understanding, or from the revelation to Moses and to Constantine, and the Council of Nice. Whether it re- sides in men or in offices. Whether offices, spiritual and tem- poral, are instituted by men, or whether they are self-created and instituted themselves. Whether they were or were not

1 A grandson, who had lived in his family until now. VOL. X. 15

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brought down from Heaven in a phial of holy oil, sent by the Holy Ghost, by an angel incarnated in a dove, to anoint the head of Clovis, a more cruel tyrant than Frederic or Napoleon. Are the original principles of authority in human nature, or in stars, garters, crosses, golden fleeces, crowns, sceptres, and thrones ? These profound and important questions have been agitated and discussed, before that vast democratical congrega- tion, mankind, for more than five hundred years. How many crusades, how many Hussite wars, how many powder plots, St. Bartholomew's days, Irish massacres, Albigensian massacres, and battles of Marengo have intervened ! Sub judice lis est. Will Zinzendorf, Swedenborg, Whitefield, or Wesley prevail? Or will St. Ignatius Loyola inquisitionize and jesuitize them all ? Alas, poor human nature ! Thou art responsible to thy Maker and to thyself for an impartial verdict and judgment.

" Monroe's treaty ! " I care no more about it than about the mote that floats in the sunbeams before my eyes. The British minister acted the part of a horse-jockey. He annexed a rider that annihilated the whole treaty.

You are " a dissenter from me in politics and religion." So you say. I cannot say that I am a dissenter from you in either, because I know not your sentiments in either. Tell me plainly your opinions in both, and I will tell you, as plainly, mine. I hate polemical politics and polemical divinity as cordially as you do, yet my mind has been involved in them sixty-five years at least. For this whole period I have searched after truth by every means and by every opportunity in my power, and with a sincerity and impartiality, for which I can appeal to God, my adored Maker. My religion is founded on the love of God and my neighbor; on the hope of pardon for my offences; upon contrition ; upon the duty as well as necessity of supporting with patience the inevitable evils of life ; in the duty of doing no wrong, but all the good I can, to the creation, of which I am but an infinitesimal part. Are you a dissenter from this

(religion ? I believe, too, in a future state of rewards and punishments, but not eternal.

You have again read Tacitus. What do you think of his religion, his philosophy, his morality ? When Nero wished he could cut off the heads of the whole Roman empire with one stroke of his falchion, was this sentiment dictated by tyranny

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or philosophy, or humanity? And if any man should wish he could cut off the head of every Frenchman, Englishman, or Russian, at one blow, would he not be as wise, as benevolent, and philosophical ? And those who wish they could decapitate Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe, are they wiser or better?

As I did not expect to hear again from that manly character, my respected and beloved friend, De Gyselaer, your communi- cation has been very delightful. Tell him, that although the affairs of my country have been administered in many respects very differently from my system, yet they have not been upon the whole so ill conducted as I fear he has been taught to be- lieve. We have made advances, we have acquired glory, we have gained confidence in our Union, our Constitution, and our administration.

If I had good eyes and fingers, I could write you sheets, if not volumes ; but I must soon cease to write at all, even the name of

John Adams.

TO THOMAS MCKEAN.

Quiney, 30 July, 1815.

Who shall write the history of the American Revolution? Who can write it ? Who will ever be able to write it ? The most essential documents, the debates and deliberations in Congress, from 1774 to 1783, were all in secret, and are now lost forever. Mr. Dickinson printed a speech, which he said he made in Congress against the declaration of independence ; but it appeared to me very different from that which you and I heard. Dr. Witherspoon has published speeches, which he wrote beforehand, and delivered memoriter, as he did his ser- mons. But these, I believe, are the only speeches ever com- mitted to writing. The orations, while I was in Congress, from 1774 to 1778, appeared to me very universally extemporaneous, and I have never heard of any committed to writing, before or after delivery.

To John Taylor (part 3)

These questions have been suggested to me by a review in the Analectic Magazine for May, 1815, published in Philadel-

172 CORRESPONDENCE.

phia, p. 385, of the Chevalier Botta's " Storia delta guerra Ame- ricana." The reviewers inform us, that it is the best history of the revolution that has ever been written. This Italian clas- sic has followed the example of the Greek and Roman histo- rians, by composing speeches for his generals and orators. The reviewers have translated one of Mr. R. H. Lee, in favor of the declaration of independence. A splendid morsel of oratory it is ; how faithful, you can judge.

I wish to know your sentiments and opinions of this publi- cation. Some future Miss Porter may hereafter make as shin- ing a romance of what passed in Congress, while in conclave, as her Scottish Chiefs.

Your friend, durante vita.

TO THOMAS JEFFERSON.

Quincy, 24 August, 1815.

If I am neither deceived by the little information I have, or by my wishes for its truth, I should say that France is the most Protestant country of Europe at this time, though I cannot think it the most reformed. In consequence of these reveries, I have imagined that Camus and the Institute meant, by the revival and continuance of the Acta Sanctorum, to destroy the Pope and the Catholic church hierarchies, de fond en comble, or in the language of Frederic, Voltaire, D'Alembert, &c, " e eraser le miserable" " crush the wretch." This great work must con- tain the most complete History of the Corruptions of Christian- ity that has ever appeared, Priestley's not excepted, and his History of Ancient Opinions not excepted.

As to the history of the revolution, my ideas may be peculiar, perhaps singular. What do we mean by the revolution ? The war ? That was no part of the revolution ; it was only an effect and consequence of it. The revolution was in the minds of the people, and this was effected from 1760 to 1775, in the course of fifteen years, before a drop of blood was shed at Lex- ington. The records of thirteen legislatures, the pamphlets, newspapers in all the colonies, ought to be consulted during

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that period, to ascertain the steps by which the public opinion was enlightened and informed concerning the authority of par- liament over the colonies. The Congress of 1774 resembled in some respects, though I hope not in many, the Council of Nice in ecclesiastical history. It assembled the priests from the east and the west, the north and the south, who compared notes, engaged in discussions and debates, and formed results, by one vote and by two votes, which went out to the^world as unani- mous.

Mr. Madison's notes of the Convention of 1787, are consist- ent with his indefatigable character. I shall never see them, but I hope posterity will.

That our correspondence has been observed, is no wonder, for your hand is more universally known than your face. No printer has asked me for copies, but it is no surprise that you have been requested. These gentry will print whatever will sell ; and our correspondence is thought such an oddity by both parties, that they imagine an edition would soon go off, and yield them profits. There has, however, been no tampering with your letters to me. They have all arrived in good order.

Poor Bonaparte ! Poor devil ! What has and what will be- come of him ? Going the way of King Theodore, Alexander, Caesar, Charles XII., Cromwell, Wat Tyler, and Jack Cade; that is, to a bad end. And what will become of Wellington ? , , , Envied, hated, despised by all the barons, earls, viscounts, marquises, as an upstart, a parvenu, elevated over their heads (for these people have no idea of any merit but birth), Welling- ton must pass the rest of his days buffeted, ridiculed, scorned, and insulted by factions, as Marlborough and his duchess did.1 Military glory dazzles the eyes of mankind, and for a time eclipses all wisdom, all virtue, all laws, human and divine ; and after this it would be bathos to descend to services merely civil or political.

Napoleon has imposed kings upon Spain, Holland, Sweden, Westphalia, Saxony, Naples, &c. The combined emperors and kings are about to retaliate upon France, by imposing a king upon her. These are all abominable examples, detestable pre- cedents. When will the rights of mankind, the liberties and in-

1 This prediction has by no means been justified by the event. No man ever lived and died more honored by his country.

15*

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\

dependence of nations be respected?, ,.When the perfectibility

of the human race shall arrive at perfection. When the progress of Manilius's ratio shall have not only

" Eripuit coelo fulmen Jovisque fulgores,"

but made mankind rational creatures. V It remains to be seen whether the allies were honest in their declaration, that they were at war only with Napoleon.

Can the French ever be cordially reconciled to the Bourbons again ? If not, who can they find for a head ? The infant, or one of the generals ? Innumerable difficulties will embarrass either project.

TO THOMAS JEFFERSON.

Quiney, 13 November, 1815.

The fundamental article of my political creed is, that despot- ism, or unlimited sovereignty, or absolute power, is the same in a majority of a popular assembly, an aristocratical council, an oligarchical junto, and a single emperor. Equally arbitrary, cruel, bloody, and in every respect diabolical. Accordingly, arbitrary power, wherever it has resided, has never failed to destroy all the records, memorials, and histories of former times, which it did not like, and to corrupt and interpolate such as it was cunning enough to preserve or to tolerate. We cannot therefore say with much confidence what knowledge or what virtues may have prevailed in some former ages in some quar- ters of the world.

Nevertheless, according to the few lights that remain to us, we may say that the eighteenth century, notwithstanding all its errors and vices, has been, of all that are past, the most hon- orable to human nature. Knowledge and virtue were increased and diffused ; arts, sciences, useful to men, ameliorating their condition, were improved more than in any former equal period.

But what are we to say now ? Is the nineteenth century to be a contrast to the eighteenth ? Is it to extinguish all the lights of its predecessor ? Are the Sorbonne, the Inquisition, the In-

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dex expurgatorius, and the Knights-errant of St. Ignatius Loyola to be revived and restored to all their salutary powers of sup- porting and propagating the mild spirit of Christianity ? The proceedings of the allies and their Congress at Vienna, the accounts from Spain and France, and the Chateaubriands, and the Genlis, indicate which way the wind blows. The priests are at their old work again ; the Protestants are denounced, and another St. Bartholomew's day threatened. This, however, will probably, twenty-five years hence, be honored with the character of " the effusions of a splenetic mind, rather than as the sober reflections of an unbiased understanding."

I have received Memoirs of the life of Dr. Price, by William Morgan, F. R. S. In page 157 and 185, Mr. Morgan says, " So well assured was Dr. Price of the establishment of a free con- stitution in France, and of the subsequent overthrow of despot- ism throughout Europe, as the consequence of it, that he never failed to express his gratitude to Heaven for having extended his life to the present happy period, in which, after sharing the benefits of one revolution, he had been spared to be a witness to two other revolutions, both glorious. But some of his cor- respondents were not quite so sanguine in their expectations from the last of these revolutions, and among these the late American ambassador, Mr. John Adams. In a long letter, which he wrote to Dr. Price at this time, so far from congratu- lating him on the occasion, he expresses himself in terms of contempt in regard to the French revolution ; and after asking rather too severely, what good was to be expected from a nation of atheists, he concludes with foretelling the destruction of a million of human beings, as the probable consequence of it. These harsh censures and gloomy predictions were particularly ungrateful to Dr. Price ; nor can it be denied, that they must have then appeared as the effusions of a splenetic mind, rather than as the sober reflections of an unbiased understanding."

I know not what a candid public will think of this practice of Mr. Morgan, after the example of Mr. Belsham, who, finding private letters in the cabinet of a great and good man, after his decease, written in the utmost freedom and confidence of inti- mate friendship by persons still living, though after the lapse of a quarter of a century, produces them before the world. Dr. Disney had different feelings and a different judgment. Find-

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ing some cursory letters among the papers of Mr. Hollis, he would not publish them without my consent. In answer to his request, I submitted them to his discretion, and might have done the same to Mr. Morgan. Indeed, had Mr. Morgan pub- lished my letter entire, I should not have given him nor myself any concern about it. But as in his summary he has not done the letter justice, I shall give it with all its faults.1

Mr. Morgan has been more discreet and complaisant to you than to me. He has mentioned respectfully your letters from Paris to Dr. Price, but has given us none of them. As I would give more for those letters than for all the rest of the book, I am more angry with him for disappointing me than for all he says of me, and my letter, which, scambling as it is, contains nothing but sure words of prophecy.

THOMAS MCKEAN TO JOHN ADAMS.

Philadelphia, 20 November, 1815.

I can now answer the questions in your favor of the 30th of July last, namely, " Who shall write the history of the Ameri- can Revolution, &c. ? "

Major-General James Wilkinson has written it. He com- mences with the battle of Bunker's or Breed's hill, at Boston, and concludes with the battle near New Orleans, on the Mis- sissippi, a period of forty years. It will be published in three volumes, large octavo, each containing about five hundred pages.

The General, I am informed, confines himself to military transactions, with a reference to a very few of the civil. 1 knew him personally nearly forty years ago, but have not seen or heard from him for the last seven years. I think him above mediocrity. He has been in the army during the whole time, and is better qualified to give a description of its proceedings, than any gentleman with whom I am acquainted.

This history has been written within the last seven or eight

1 See the letter to Dr. Price, vol. ix. p. 563.

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months, at Germantown, about six miles from this city, though I have not heard of the General being there until lately ; he has kept himself quite retired and private.

I do not recollect any formal speeches, such as are made in the British Parliament and our late Congresses, to have been made in the revolutionary Congress, though I was a member for eight years, from 1774 until the preliminaries of peace were signed. We had no time to hear such speeches ; little for deli- beration ; action was the order of the day. The speech of Mr. Richard H. Lee, given by the Italian, the Chevalier Botta, which I have read, may have been delivered, but I have no remembrance of it, though in Congress, nor would it do any member much credit. I have no favorable opinion of the Che- valier ; he appears to me a vain and presuming character to have attempted such a history ; perhaps the res angustce. domi (poverty) impelled him.

Although we may not in the United States have a Thucydi- des, a Tacitus, Hume, Robertson, or Gibbon, who have been reckoned the best historians in Greece, Rome, or Great Britain, yet we have gentlemen of great talents, and capable of writing the history of our Revolution with at least as much regard to truth as any of them has exhibited.

With respect to General Wilkinson, I recollect an anecdote. He was, in 1777, an aid to General Gates, and by him sent to Congress at Yorktown, in Pennsylvania, with the despatches, giving an account of the surrender of Sir John Burgoyne and the British army to the Americans at Saratoga. On the way he spent a day at Reading, about fifty miles from Yorktown, with a young lady from Philadelphia, whom he afterwards married. When the despatches were read in Congress, propo- sitions were made for paying a proper compliment to the favor- ite of General Gates, who brought us such pleasing news. Governor Samuel Adams, with a grave and solemn face, moved Congress, that the young gentleman should be presented with " a pair of spurs."

What ghanges in Europe have occurred since I had the pleasure of writing to you last! Louis XVIII. is again on the throne of France ; the great Napoleon at the bottom of the wheel, never to rise more, a prisoner for life. The French nation miserable ; Spain has reestablished the tribunal of the

178 CORRESPONDENCE.

Inquisition, and restored the Jesuits. The rulers of Portugal void of common sense. South America in a state of opposition to the government of Spain, and in all appearance will soon be independent of it. Whatever is, is right, said Mr. Pope, the first of poets and moralists.

I have nothing to do with politics, nor much with any- thing else in this world, but I hear and listen. It is said, that James Monroe, Secretary of State, John Armstrong, late Secre- tary at War, Dewitt Clinton, late Mayor of New York, and perhaps Rufus King, now a senator, will be proposed as candi- dates for the next Presidency. I do not think the prospect of either, or any of them, very encouraging.

Mr. John Q. Adams has been named ; but it is not known whether this may not create jealousy, or injure him with the present administration, which his friends would by all means avoid.

My sheet is almost finished. God bless you.

Your old friend,

Tho's McKean.

TO DR. J. MORSE.

Quincy, 20 November, 1815.

The pamphlet I lent you, and the letters from Governor McKean, you may retain for the time you mention. The pam- phlet I would give you, if I had or could procure another. The rise and progress of that pamphlet is this. On my return from Philadelphia, in November, 1774, I found that Mr. Draper's Massachusetts Gazette had been long pouring forth torrents of scurrility against the Whigs, and dreadful denunciations of the irresistible power of Great Britain, and her implacable ven- geance against any resistance to her government over us in all cases whatsoever. Among this mass of billingsgate and terror, I soon distinguished the hand of my bosom friend, Jonathan Sewall, then Attorney- General and Judge of Admiralty for Hali- fax, over the signature of Massachusettensis. This gentleman had been the most intimate and familiar friend I ever had at the bar, and had been as ardent an American and as explicitly

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for resistance to Great Britain, in arms, as I ever had been or ever have been ; but the insolvency of his uncle, the Chief Jus- tice Sewall, to whose estate he was administrator, induced him to petition the legislature for a grant to enable him to pay the debts of his deceased uncle.

Colonel Otis, of Barnstable, and his son, the great Boston orator, statesman, and patriot, had not supported his petition with as much zeal as he wished, and his resentment of their non- chalance became bitter. Hutchinson, Trowbridge, and Bernard, soon perceived this ill humor, and immediately held out to him prospects of honor, promotion, and wealth. They created a new office for him, that of Solicitor- General, and upon the death of Mr. Gridley made him Attorney- General, and soon after pro- cured for him from England the office of Judge of Admiralty for Halifax, with a salary of three hundred pounds sterling per annum. Such was the character of Massachusettensis.1 He had a subtle, insinuating eloquence that often gained slowly and imperceptibly upon his hearers, but none of that command- ing, animating energy, that vehemence of enthusiasm, that sometimes carries all before it. Draper's paper, I found, dis- tressed the Whigs, and spread alarms and terrors among the people ; and none of the writers half so much as Massachuset- tensis. I set myself about preparing some antidote against his poison, and began, I believe, in December, 1774, and continued ' weekly till the 19th of April, 1775, a series of papers under the signature of Novanglus, in Edes and Gill's Boston Gazette. Coarse and rough as they are, like every thing else that has ever been published by me, who never had time to polish, cor- rect, or transcribe any thing, they were sent to England in the Boston Gazette, I never knew by whom, picked up by Almon, the famous printer and bookseller, and printed by him in a volume of Prior Documents, which followed his Remembrancer for the year 1775, under a title which he gave them, much too pompous, of " History of the Disputes, &c." Stockdale, who had been an apprentice of Almon, afterwards reprinted them, under Almon's title, in the pamphlet I sent you. You may find them in the Boston Gazette, from December, 1774, to 19th April,

1 It is almost needless to repeat, that Mr. Adams before his death had occa- sion to alter his opinion on the authorship of Massachusettensis. Probably Daniel Leonard wrote it. See vol. iv. p. 10, note.

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1775, or in Almon's Prior Documents ; but of Stockdale's pam- phlet I know of no copy in America but mine, and one that Judge Trumbull, of Hartford, has.

I thank you for the prospectus. From all I have heard or read of your sons, I believe them to have a genius for letters as well as for the fine arts, and wish them success in all their laud- able pursuits ; but I cannot subscribe.

The proposal of taking my bust, can only make me smile. If your son had proposed it, I would have written him a letter too ludicrous for you to read, describing the portraits and busts which have already transmitted me to posterity.

TO THOMAS MCKEAN.

Quincy, 26 November, 1815.

Your favor of the 20th revives me. A brother octogenarian, who can write with such vigor of hand and mind, excites a kind of emulation even in these old veins.

A history of the first war of the United States is a very differ- ent thing from a history of the American Revolution. I have seen in France a military history of France during the reign of Louis XIV., by the Marquis of Quincy. This work was held in high esteem by military men, but it was nothing like a his- tory of the reign of that monarch. General Wilkinson may have written the military history of the war that followed the Revolution ; that was an effect of it, and was supported by the American citizens in defence of it against an invasion of it by the o-overnment of Great Britain and Ireland, and all her allies, black, white, and pied ; but this will by no means be a history of the American Revolution. The revolution was in the minds of the people, and in the union of the colonies, both of which were accomplished before hostilities commenced. This revolu- tion and union were gradually forming from the year 1760 to 1775. The records of the British government, and the records of all the thirteen colonies, and the pamphlets, newspapers, and handbills of both parties must be examined, and the essence extracted, before a correct history can be written of the Ameri- can Revolution.

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I agree with you, that General "Wilkinson's talents are by no means inconsiderable. His openness of soul, and a little too much pomp, have as usual made him enemies and given them advantages. I do not recollect that my impatience was ever wrought up to a higher pitch than by the total failure of all intelligence, official and unofficial, from Saratoga, for so long a time after we had heard a confused, fugitive rumor of the defeat of Burgoyne. Wilkinson, according to your anecdote, which I never heard before, seems to have put an amorous construction on the precept, cedant arma togce. Had I known that he had fallen in love at Reading with so fine a woman as his after wife really was, my rigorous heart would have somewhat re- lented.

I remember a jocular suggestion thrown out in a private con- versation, in which Mr. Samuel Adams and Mr. Hancock were present, on the morning after "Wilkinson's arrival and before Congress met, that it would be proper to present the courier with a horsewhip and a pair of spurs ; but I never before heard that a motion was actually made in Congress, in jest or in earnest, to that purpose. I must have been absent at that moment upon some committee.

Awakenings and revivals of religion always attend the most cruel extremities of anarchy, despotism, and civil war. They have brought again the Pope and all his train of Jesuits, Inqui- sitions, Sorbonnes, massacres, &c. The pendulum swings as far on one side as on the other. You and I should be convinced that our friend, Governor Adams, was in the right when he said, that anarchy was better than tyranny, because it was of shorter duration, if we did not know that anarchy is always followed by more permanent despotism.

Washington and Jefferson have introduced a custom of retir- ing after eight years, and Madison, it is said; will follow their example. I am not enamored with this practice. I may be wrong.

I have heard the names you mention, and Governor Tomp- kins, of New York, added to them. I can only conjecture ; but I presume Mr. Monroe will be nominated by the republicans, and Mr. King by the federalists. The event cannot be doubt- ful in your mind or mine. A Vice-President will probably be sought by the republicans in New York. I know not who will

vol. x. 16

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be selected by the federalists, unless it be Mr. Harper, of Mary- land ; but in the present posture of men and things, Mr. King for President and Mr. Harper for Vice-President, will not be an equal match for Mr. Monroe for President and any one of the gentlemen of New York you have named, as Vice-President, or any respectable gentleman of Pennsylvania.

I must acknowledge 1 contemplate with pleasure the rising generation. As much secluded as I am from the world, I see a succession of able and honorable characters, from members of Congress down to bachelors and students in our universities, who will take care of the liberties which you have cherished and done so much to support. The greatest danger is, that their numbers are so great, and their pretensions will all he so high, that rivalries pernicious to the nation and her union may arise.

The federalists will still hold up their pretensions and nomi- nate their men, however desperate their prospect may be.

TO DR. J. MORSE.

Quincy, 29 November, 1815.

A history of military operations from April 19th, 1775, to the 3d of September, 1783, is not a history of the American Revolu- tion, any more than the Marquis of Quincy's military history of Louis XIV., though much esteemed, is a history of the reign of that monarch. The revolution was in the minds and hearts of the people, and in the union of the colonies ; both of which were substantially effected before hostilities commenced.

When, where, by what means, and in what manner was this great intellectual, moral, and political change accomplished ? Undoubtedly it was begun in the towns of Boston and Salem, where the British government first opened their designs, and first urged their pretensions.

In the month of February, 1761, the great cause of writs of assistance was argued before the supreme judicature of the province, in the council chamber in Boston ; and this important question was tainted from the beginning with an odious and

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corrupt intrigue. Chief Justice Stephen Sewall, who was an enlightened friend of liberty, having great doubts of the legality and constitutionality of this projected writ of assistance, at No- vember term, 1760, at Salem, where it was solicited by Cockle, a custom-house officer, had ordered the question to be argued be- fore the court at the next February term in Boston ; but Sewall in the mean time died, and Bernard, instead of fulfilling the promises of two of his predecessors, Shirley and Pownall, to give the next vacancy on that bench to Colonel Otis, appointed Hutchinson, for the very purpose of deciding the fate of the writs of assistance, and all other causes in which the claims of Great Britain might be directly or indirectly implicated, though Hut- chinson was then lieutenant-governor, judge of probate, mem- ber of council, his brother, Oliver, secretary, and his brother, Oliver, judge of the .Supreme Court; and himself furnished with no education to the law, and very little knowledge of it. When the cause came on, however, Mr. Otis displayed so com- prehensive a knowledge of the subject, showed not only the ille- gality of the writ, its insidious and mischievous tendency, but he laid open the views and designs of Great Britain, in taxing us, of destroying our charters and assuming the powers of our government, legislative, executive, and judicial, external and internal, civil and ecclesiastical, temporal and spiritual ; and all this was performed with such a profusion of learning, such con- vincing argument, and such a torrent of sublime and pathetic eloquence, that a great crowd of spectators and auditors went away absolutely electrified. The next May, Mr. Otis was elected by the town of Boston into the legislature, and for ten years afterwards ; during the whole of which period his tongue and his pen were incessantly employed in enlightening his fel- low-citizens and countrymen in the knowledge of their rights, and developing and opposing the designs of Great Britain. He governed the town of Boston and the House of Representatives, notwithstanding a few eccentricities, with a caution, a pru- dence and sagacity, which astonished his friends and confounded his enemies. His fame soon spread though the continent, and three or four years afterwards was emulated by Mr. Dickinson in his Farmer's Letters ; and some other gentlemen in Virginia began to think.

Here, then, Sir, began the revolution in the principles, views,

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opinions, and feelings of the American people. Their eyes were opened to a clear sight of the danger that threatened them and their posterity, and the liberties of both in all future gene- rations. From Boston these alarms spread through Massachu- setts and all New England ; and in course to New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia. A general aspiration for a union of the colonies soon followed, the first attempt at which necessary measure was made in a Congress at New York, in 1765, of which Brigadier Ruggles was President, but Mr. Otis the soul. The President and Colonel Partridge, Mr. Otis's colleagues, were devoted Hut- chinsonians. The former ran away. Mr. Ogden, too, a man of great weight in the middle States, also deserted. Timidity was too general. None supported Otis with more uniformity and decision than McKean and Rodney, of Delaware. Both of those gentlemen have repeatedly told me, and Mr. Rodney more frequently, that of all the members of that body, not one appeared to be so complete a master of every subject, or threw so much light on every question, as Mr. Otis.

The rise and progress of this knowledge, the gradual expan- sion and diffusion of the change in the minds of the people, and the growing hopes of a union of the colonies, and their dependence upon it as the future rock of their salvation, can- not be traced but by a diligent perusal of the pamphlets, news- papers, and handbills of both parties, and the proceedings of the legislatures from 1761 to 1774, when the union of the colonies was formed.

If strength should remain, I may hereafter point to a few periods, in which knowledge made the greatest advances, and the revolution in the understanding and affections of the people made the most rapid progress.

But I must conclude at present, with an assurance of the respect and regard of your old friend,

John Adams.

P. S. I should have candidly added, in its place, that Ber- nard was not bound by the promises of Shirley and Pownall ; but his fault was in appointing a judge so evidently and noto- riously partial as Hutchinson. Nor do I approve of Shirley's and Pownall's promises of a vacancy before it happened; a

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practice very common in Europe, and too frequent in America, before and since the revolution. I never countenanced it in any one instance.

TO DR. J. MORSE.

Quincy, 2 December, 1815.

If I ever comply with your request, I must make haste and employ the few intervals of light which my eyes afford me.

Where is the man to be found at this day, when we see Methodistical bishops, bishops of the church of England, and bishops, archbishops, and Jesuits of the church of Rome, with indifference, who will believe that the apprehension of Episco- pacy contributed fifty years ago, as much as any other cause, to arouse the attention, not only of the inquiring mind, but of the common people, and urge them to close thinking on the con- stitutional authority of parliament over the colonies? This, nevertheless, was a fact as certain as any in the history of North America. The objection was not merely to the office of a bishop, though even that was dreaded, but to the authority of parliament, on which it must be founded. The reasoning was this. The archbishops and bishops in England can neither locate and limit dioceses in America, nor ordain bishops in any part of the dominions of Great Britain, out of the realm, by any law of the kingdom or of any of the colonies, nor by any canon law acknowledged by either. The king cannot grant his conge d'elire to any people out of his realm; there is no power or pretended power, less than parliament, that can create bishops in America. But if parliament can erect dioceses and appoint bishops, they may introduce the whole hierarchy, establish tithes, forbid marriages and funerals, establish religions, forbid dissenters, make schism heresy, impose penalties extending to life and limb as well as to liberty and property. Here, Sir, opens an extensive field of investigation, even for a young his- torian, who might be disposed to undertake so laborious an enterprise.

The opinions, the principles, the spirit, the temper, the views, designs, intrigues, and arbitrary exertions of power, displayed

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by the church of England at that time towards the dissenters, as they were contemptuously called, though in reality the churchmen were the real dissenters, ought to be stated at full length. The truth is, that the Congregationalists, the Presby- terians, the Anabaptists, the Methodists, or even the Quakers, or Moravians, were each of them as numerous as the church- men ; several of them immensely more numerous, and all of them together more than fifteen to one.

In Virginia, the church of England was established by law, in exclusion and without toleration of any other denomination. The British statute, called the act of uniformity, was acknow- ledged as law, and carried into execution by the magistrates. It is worthy of inquiry, whether the same law was not in force in Maryland, the Carolinas, and Georgia. In Pennsylvania, the Quakers, the Presbyterians, the German Lutherans and Calvin ists, the Anabaptists, the Methodists, the Dunkers, the Mennonists, and the Roman Catholics, were so numerous, and the church of England so few, that the latter found it difficult to support their cause ; and the ridiculous incurvations and ter- giversations of the Proteus, Dr. Smith, and that other weaker Proteus, Duche, and the bigotry of Coombs, showed their awkward struggles to preserve their cause from contempt. White, now bishop, then young, behaved with uniform candor, moderation, and decorum.

In New York, the church of England displayed its essential character of intolerance. The royal governors, counsellors, judges, &c, had such overbearing influence, that they dared to grant large tracts of fertile lands to the churches of England, and laid the foundation of the ample riches they still hold, while no other denomination could obtain any. Even Dr. Rogers's congregation, numerous and respectable as it was, could never obtain a legal title to a spo't to bury their dead. The writings of Livingston and Smith furnish evidence enough of the spirit of these times. Great exertions were made in New York to propagate Anglican Episcopacy in Connecticut ; and a famous Dr. Cutler, and a more famous Dr. Johnson, and his still more celebrated son, were employed with success in that service, — with such success, indeed, that an English church and an Episcopal priest soon appeared in all the towns from New Haven to New York.

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The efforts in New Hampshire and Rhode Island, though they ought to be recorded, I pass over, and hasten to Massachusetts. And here I want to write a volume. Here the clergy, and prin- cipal gentlemen among the laity, were high churchmen indeed. Passive obedience and non-resistance, in the most unqualified and unlimited sense, were their avowed principles in govern- ment, and the power of the church to decree rites and ceremo- nies, and the authority of the church in controversies of faith, were explicitly avowed. I know not where to begin, nor when to end. The anecdotes which I could relate as an eye and an ear-witness, would be innumerable. This north precinct of the large and ancient town of Braintree, now called Quincy, in which I was born and bred, and in which my father, grandfather, great-grandfather, and great-great-grandfather, lived, died, and lie buried, was a very focus of Episcopal bigotry, intrigue, intolerance, and persecution. I could introduce here a dra- matis personce of names, which I will not now commit to paper, and entertain you with plots and intrigues, which would compose a comedy equal to any of Moliere or Shak- speare, if corruption, prostitution, and dupery can compose a comedy. Waving this for the present, we will proceed to Cambridge. Several branches of our Braintree family of Vassals had removed and planted themselves in the very front of the university, and they must have an Episcopal church. Our Braintree family of Apthorps instantly turned their atten- tion to that seat of the muses and dissenters. Mr. East Ap- thorp, hot from Oxford, and still more warmed by holy orders from Episcopal hands, returned to his native country, and soon after arose a splendid edifice, as it was then thought, which every-body immediately concluded was intended for an Episco- pal palace and in time for a Lambeth. All sensible men knew that this system could not be effected but by act of parliament ; and if parliament could do this, they could do all things ; and what security could Americans have for life, liberty, property, or religion ? The Society for Propagating the Gospel had long perverted their revenues from their original design to the sup- port of the church of England ministers. Upon the death of Dr. Miller, of Braintree, a satirical irony appeared in a news- paper, the point of which turned upon this abuse of the society's resources. This jeu d1 esprit soon produced an explosion. Mr.

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Apthorp came out with an eloquent and zealous pamphlet. Dr. May hew appeared with his comparison between the charter and conduct of the society, showing their non-conformity with each other. The controversy soon interested all men, spread through America and in Europe, brought forward the aged Dr. Johnson, and at last the Archbishop of Canterbury. All deno- minations in America became interested in it, and began to think of the secret, latent principle upon which all encroach- ments upon us must be founded, the power of parliament. The nature and extenl of the authority of parliament over the colo- nics was discussed everywhere, till it was discovered that it had "none at all, a conclusion still more forcibly impressed upon the people by the Canada bill, by which the Roman Catholic reli- gion and Popish bishops were established in that province by authority of a British parliament. The people said, if parlia- ment can do this in Canada, they can do the same in all the other colonies ; and they began to see and freely to say, that parliament had no authority over them in any case whatsoever.

TO DR. J. MORSE.

Qnincy, 5 December, 1815.

If such was the spirit of the English church in America, and especially in Virginia, before the revolution, can you wonder that men so enlightened as Richard Henry Lee and his brothers, Patrick Henry, Chancellor Wythe, Chief Justice Pendleton, Mr. Jefferson, Mr. Madison, &c, though they had been all educated in that church, became afterwards disciples of Locke, Black- burne, Furneaux, and William Penn, and united in destroying all ecclesiastical establishments in that State ?

But to return to the narration of the progress of investigation into the nature and extent of the jurisdiction of Great Britain, and especially of the authority of parliament over these North American colonies.

From 1761 to 1764, America was all alive with jealousies and apprehensions of the designs of the British ministry and their own governors and their adherents. In 1764, Mr. George

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Grenvillo moved and carried in the House of Commons a num- ber of fifty-five resolutions, that it would be expedient to lay taxes, particularly stamp duties, upon the colonies.

Here the cloak was thrown off", and the mask trampled under foot. Nothing in religion or government ever touched to the quick the people of all classes in any country, like taxation. The cry was, if parliament can tax us, we are undone forever, in soul, body, and estate. They can give us what religion and government they please, and do what they will with our pro- perty, persons, and consciences. Resistance to the last extre- mity, at whatever risk, must be made. How often have I heard in conversation in private companies, and how often was it said in the streets, " I will never live to see such acts of parlia- ment executed in this country ; " and how constantly was it echoed from man to man, " nor I," " nor I," " nor I ; " and no man thought it expedient to say " I will ! "

I remember to have read somewhere, I believe in the writings of Dr. Tillotson, that Providence had been pleased, in the per- son of Martin Luther, to raise up a bold and daring genius, a proper wedge for splitting so hard and knotty a block as the Papal usurpation upon mankind. Providence was now raising up in the person of Mr. Otis a genius, equally bold and daring, equally well tempered and qualified, as a wedge to split the knotty lignum vitce block of parliamentary usurpation over the colonies.

Mr. Otis, whose tongue and whose pen had never been idle in the cause of his country, from 1761, now printed his " Rights of the Colonies Asserted and Proved," a work that was so popu- lar, that it was read in the House of Representatives, and went out to the public under a kind of sanction from that body, who by their resolutions solemnly denied the right of parliament to tax the colonies. The next year, on the 29th of May, 1765, the same resolution was adopted in Virginia, and not long after- wards by all the other colonies. Between the denial of Massa- chusetts and that of Virginia, namely, on the 22d of March, 1765, the stamp act was passed.

Here, then, was a declaration of war on both sides. Here were already two nations directly and explicitly at issue con- cerning their fundamental laws ; for if the sovereignty of the empire was vested in parliament, a denial of its right to tax the

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colonies was a declaration of total independence on parliament ; and the stamp act was a declaration of war against the colo- nies, by King, Lords, and Commons. As the King had con- spired with his Lords and Commons in the treasonable invasion of the legal sovereignties of the colonies, his Majesty was, upon their principles, a rebel, a traitor, and a declared enemy, and they had a right, if they pleased, " to cashier him," notwith- standing the musical insolence of Mr. Burke against Dr. Price, in the strictest sense of the Doctor's expression. Nay, they had as clear a right to hang, draw, and quarter him, upon their prin- ciples, as he had upon his, notwithstanding his anointment with holy oil, to practise a similar inhumanity upon Samuel Adams and John Hancock, for which he has recorded to endless ages so ardent a desire.

At this period, events crowd upon my memory in such num- bers, that I can only refer you to the records and journals of 1764 and 1765. Massachusetts wrote circular letters to all the colonies, requesting a general Congress. Ministerial monkery was practised in New Hampshire, Virginia, North Carolina, and Georgia, to prevent those colonies from sending delegates. Nine colonies only were represented in the Congress who met on the 7th of October, 1765. While Mr. Otis was absent upon this legation, Mr. Samuel Adams was chosen by the town of Boston, a member of the legislature of the province. If Otis was Martin Luther, Samuel Adams was John Calvin. If Luther was rough, hasty, and loved good cheer, Calvin was cool, abstemious, polished, and refined, though more inflexible, uniform, and consistent. The people in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Charleston, and everywhere else, arose like a hur- ricane, and bore down the stamp act and the stamps, their officers and principal abettors, as nullities.

This open resistance by force was a virtual declaration, by the people of all the colonies, of their independence on parlia- ment, and on the crown too, whenever that crown should cease to defend and protect their fundamental laws and essential liberties, and especially when it united with Lords and Com- mons in a plan to destroy them all. For this resistance was as decided to the executive, as it was to the legislative power of Great Britain.

The violent sensation and the profound reflection excited by

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this universal hostility to the whole authority of Great Britain, setting at open defiance all its boasted power, disseminated the freedom of inquiry and the spirit of investigation into the four corners of the colonies. The principles, the objects, and the ends of government became the topics of discussion in all com- panies, and at the firesides of private families. Writers on the laws of nations were more read, and more definite notions of our relation to Great Britain were formed, than ever had pre- vailed. The opinions of the people were more unanimous at that epoch than they ever have been since. No party was yet formed against their country. A great majority of the partial friends of Great Britain would acknowledge the rectitude of the American cause, and would vote against the authority of parliament. Their last resort was to the omnipotence of Great Britain, and the imbecility of the colonies. It was a child of five years old, challenging his father to single combat. The boy was right, and the man wrong, arbitrary, cruel ; but resist- ance was vain, and would only provoke the old gentleman to greater moroseness and more cruel severity.

It has been a question, whether, if the ministry had persevered in support of the stamp act, and sent a military force of ships and troops to enforce its execution, the people of the colonies would then have resisted. Dr. Chauncy and Dr. Mayhew, in sermons which they preached and printed after the repeal of the stamp act, have left to posterity their explicit opinions upon this question. If my more extensive familiarity with the senti- ments and feelings of the people in the eastern, western, and southern counties of Massachusetts may apologize for my pre- sumption, I subscribe without a doubt to the opinions of Chauncy and Mayhew. What would have been the conse- quence of resistance in arms ?

Here opens an unbounded field of speculation. The condi- tion of Britain, the state of parties in it, the state of France and Spain, the ungristled youth of George Rex, the unpopular- ity of his mother and preceptor, would have forced Chatham into power, and Chatham might have fallen from a more envi- able height than Napoleon has in 1815.

192 CORRESPONDENCE.

TO DR. J. MORSE.

Quincy, 22 December, 1815.

You are examining me upon interrogatories. I must tell you the truth, and nothing but the truth ; but to tell you the whole truth is impossible. It would require more volumes than I can calculate. I am as incapable of composing or writing them, as I am of commanding the sun to stand still. I can only note a few broken hints.

In 1765, the colonies were more unanimous than they ever have been since, either as colonies or States. No party was formed against their country. The few who voted against the general sentiment, were but a handful. The resistance in America was so universal and so determined, that Great Britain with all her omnipotence dared not attempt to enforce her pre- tensions. She retreated and resorted to an insidious policy. She was by long practice and habit too perfect a mistress of the maxim, " In bello stratagemata sunt licita" to forget it upon this critical emergency. She saw, she felt, that she could do nothing without her Chatham. He was called in to com- mand the forlorn hope, and, at the same time, to invent the ruse de guerre. Ducente Chatham, the stamp act was repealed, and the statute passed, that " parliament was sovereign over V the colonies in all cases whatsoever." 1 Such was the great Chatham, a great national minister, because he always flat- tered and gratified the national passion for war, victory, and conquest, but he was not a wise minister; he was not an Elizabeth's minister ; he was not a Cecil. He died a martyr to his idol. He fell in the House of Lords, with the sovereignty of parliament in his mouth. Who, or which, was the most extravagant, Great Britain in openly and avowedly asserting the sovereignty of the seas, Napoleon without asserting, yet attempting to exercise the sovereignty of Europe by land, or Chatham, perishing with the sovereignty of parliament over the whole globe ? For if parliament had any sovereignty beyond the realm, they had it wherever they could carry their arms and

i Chatham certainly favored it, but the declaratory act seems to have been a concession to the Yorke family, and to Edmund Burke's private influence over Lord Rockingham.

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conquests in Europe, Asia, Africa, and America, a more uni- versal empire than Napoleon, Louis XIV., Henry IV., or Charlemagne ever usurped or assumed. When the immortal Chatham had established in the laws of his kingdom and in the minds of his people, — for they were his in a stricter sense than they were those of George the III., — his fundamental principle, that parliament was sovereign, supreme, unlimited, and uncontrollable over the colonies in all parts of the world, the ministry had recourse to address, intrigue, artifice, and stratagem. Hopes and fears, promises and threatenings, avarice and ambition, were excited ; promotion, advancement, honor, glory, wealth, and power were promised ; disgrace, ruin, poverty, contempt, torture, and death, were threatened ; and this pious moral system was pursued with steady and invariable perse- verance for ten years, that is, from 1765 to 1775. And what was their success ? Blot it out, my tears ! But the recording angel has noted it, and my lamentation would be vain. In the course of these ten years, they formed and organized and drilled and disciplined a party in favor of Great Britain, and they seduced and deluded nearly one thud of the people of the colo- nies.

If you can spare the time and take the pains to inquire, you may find a catalogue in New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Con- necticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Geor- gia, of names, among whom were many men of the first rank, station, property, education, influence, and power, who in 1765 had been real or pretended Americans, converted during this period to real Britons.

Let me confine myself to Massachusetts, and here to a few only of individuals. In 1764 and 1765, Harrison Gray, Esquire, treasurer of the province, and member of his Majesty's council, and Colonel Brattle, of Cambridge, also a member of his Majes- ty's council and colonel of a regiment of militia, were both as open and decided Americans as James Otis. In 1766, Dr. Mayhew, who had been an oracle to the treasurer, died, and left him without a Mentor. Had Mayhew lived, it is believed that Gray would never have been a refugee. But the seducers prevailed, though he had connected his blood with an Otis, by

vol. x. 17 ai

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marrying his beautiful daughter to a brother of the Great Pa- triot, James Otis, Jr.

Brattle was a divine, a lawyer, and a physician, and, how- ever superficial in each character, had acquired great popularity by his zeal, and I must say, by his indiscreet and indecorous ostentation of it, against the measures of the British govern- ment. The two subtle spirits, Hutchinson and Sewall, saw his character, as well as Trowbridge, who had been his rival at the bar, for many years. Sewall was the chosen spirit to convert Brattle. Sewall became all at once intimate with Brattle. Brattle was soon converted and soon announced a brigadier- general in the militia. From this moment, the Tories pro- nounced Brattle a convert, and the Whigs an apostate. This rank in the militia in time of peace was an innovation, and it was instantly perceived to have been invented to take in gud- geons.

Jonathan Sewall, Daniel Leonard, and Samuel Quincy were my brother barristers at the bar, and my cordial, confidential, and bosom friends. I never, in the whole course of my life, lived with any men in more perfect intimacy. They had all been patriots as decided, as I believed, as I was. I have al- ready hinted at the manner and means of Sewall's conversion.

Daniel Leonard was the only child of Colonel Ephraim Leo- nard, of Norton. He was a scholar, a lawyer, and an orator, according to the standard of those days. As a member of the House of Representatives, even down to the year 1770, he made the most ardent speeches which were delivered in that House against Great Britain, and in favor of the colonies. His popu- larity became alarming. The two sagacious spirits, Hutchinson and Sewall soon penetrated his character, of which, indeed, he had exhibited very visible proofs. He had married a daughter of Mr. Hammock, who had left her a portion, as it was thought, in that day. He wore a broad gold lace round the rim of his hat, he had made his cloak glitter with laces still broader, he had set up his chariot and pair, and constantly travelled in it from Taunton to Boston. This made the world stare ; it was a novelty. Not another lawyer in the province, attorney or barrister, of whatever age, reputation, rank or station presumed to ride in a coach or a chariot. The discerning ones soon per- ceived, that wealth and power must have charms to a heart that

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delighted in so much finery, and indulged in such unusual expense. Such marks could not escape the vigilant eyes of the two archtempters, Hutchinson and Sewall, who had more art, insinuation, and address than all the rest of their party. Poor Daniel was beset with great zeal for his conversion. Hutchin- son sent for him, courted him with the ardor of a lover, reasoned with him, flattered him, overawed him, frightened him, invited him to come frequently to his house. As I was intimate with Mr. Leonard during the whole of this process, I had the sub- stance of this information from his own mouth, was a wit- ness to the progress of the impression made upon him, and to many of the labors and struggles of his mind, between his interest or his vanity, and his duty.

Samuel Quincy was born in the same town and parish with me. I was three years at college with him, and as intimate with him, as with any one there. We were sworn at the bar in October, 1758, together on the same day. He was upright at first in his views, though he meddled not much in politics ; but he belonged to a club, who affected to be thought neutral, though their real propensities were all on one side. This gen- tleman could not escape the notice of Hutchinson and Sewall, who had married his cousin. History must search the human heart. Josiah Quincy, Jr., was by many years younger than Samuel, his brother ; many years after him at college and at the bar. Possessing more energy of character, more ardor of spirit, more obstinate and patient and persevering application to study and to business, and an eloquence more popular and imposing than all his other qualities, and openly espousing the cause of his country, soon eclipsed his brother, attracted and commanded much more business, and much more important and lucrative business in his profession than his elder brother. Such a rivalry and such a jealousy was more than human nature could bear, at least in this instance. Hutchinson and Sewall perceived it. They accordingly applied their magic arts to him. He was made Solicitor-General, as successor to Sewall, and became henceforward a Tory and a refugee.

My classmate, Brown, a solid, judicious character, was once a disciple of James Otis, and a cordial supporter of him and his cause in the House of Representatives. This I know from his own lips, as well as from his recorded votes. But they

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made him a Judge of the Superior Court, and that society made him a refugee. A Tory, I verily believe, he never was.

I know the grief, the resentment, and the rage that this nar- ration will excite in many families. But I owe nothing to them, and every thing to truth. I could descend to minuter details and to many inferior examples in Boston and Massa- chusetts, but these may suffice for the present, as specimens or exemplifications of the arts that were employed in all the colo- nics for ten years, that is, from 1765 to 1775, to divide the people and form a party in favor of Great Britain. Where is the historian who can and will travel through the United States, and investigate all the similar intrigues in each of them for the same purpose ? Yet, without this, the real history of the United States, and especially of their revolution, never can be written. I could crowd sheets of paper with anecdotes and names, which would surprise you, of conversions in the other States. If you insist upon it, I may hereafter give you a few of the most conspicuous names and characters. But I give you notice, that not one of your friends, the federalists, through the continent, will thank you for your curiosity.

There is another very remarkable source of historical inform- ation now totally forgotten. So unanimous were the senti- ments and so universal the congenial feelings of the people of Massachusetts in 1764 and 1765, that almost, if not quite, every town in the province was aroused to instruct their representa- tives in the General Court ; all breathing the same spirit, all decided against submission. These instructions were read in the House, and it was proposed and expected that they should be published in volumes. But the expense, and especially the repeal of the stamp act prevented it. I know not how well or how ill the records and files of our legislature have been pre- served, but these documents ought now to be found somewhere. Still less do I know, how the records of towns have been kept or preserved ; but these instructions ought to be in the hands of the town clerks.

There is another large tract of inquiry to be travelled in the correspondence of the committees of the town of Boston with the other towns and States, commonly called the committees of correspondence. For reasons too numerous to be stated at present, I never belonged to any of these committees, and have

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never seen one of their letters, sent or received. None of them have ever been published ; at least, I have never seen one. Never- theless, I doubt not they exist. Where they are, I know not, and I never knew ; indeed, I never inquired. But, in my opi- nion, the history of the United States never can be written till they are discovered. What an engine ! France imitated it, and produced a revolution. England and Scotland were upon the point of imitating it, in order to produce another revolution, and all Europe was inclined to imitate it for the same revolu- tionary purposes.

The history of the world for the last thirty years is a sufficient commentary upon it. That history ought to convince all man- kind, that committees of secret correspondence are dangerous machines. That they are caustics, and incision knives, to which recourse should never be had but in the last extremities of life, in the last question between life and death.

In this year, 1765, the Congress met at New York. Their proceedings must be stated ; but it must also be remembered that a part of that body, very important at that time, was hos- tile to the business, and their influence is visible in the com- plexion of the results. The assembly, nevertheless, was so prominent a phenomenon as to draw the attention of other nations as well as this, to the question concerning the authority of parliament, and raised the hopes of the people to a union of the colonies, to be accomplished and perfected by future and more universal Congresses, for their defence, protection, and security.

TO DR. J. MORSE.

Quincy, 1 January, 1816.

From 1760 to 1766, was the purest period of patriotism; from 1766 to 1776 was the period of corruption ; from 1775 to 1783 was the period of war. Not a revolutionary war, for the revolution was complete, in the minds of the people, and the union of the colonies, before the war commenced in the skir- mishes of Concord and Lexington on the 19th of April, 1775.

In 1766 commenced the separation of parties. The stamp

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act was repealed. Universal rejoicings had run like wildfire through the continent. But Chatham's declaratory act of the sovereignty of parliament hung like a cloud over the whole American continent. Thinking men and discerning eyes saw it, and amidst all the popular rejoicings dreaded its ominous appearance. The public opinion thought it a brutum fulmen, a mere device to preserve the nominal dignity of Great Britain without any intention of ever bringing it forward into action.

When the General Court met in May, Mr. Otis's services, sacrifices, and exertions had been so splendid, that the House of Representatives, by a spontaneous and almost unanimous feeling of gratitude, chose him their Speaker. Bernard nega- tived him. Hutchinson, without whom Bernard was nothing, was instantly believed to be the adviser to this declaration of hostility. The conviction flashed like lightning through the community, that the sovereignty of parliament was not in- tended to be relinquished, and that future calamities must be expected. The House of Representatives was electrified to such a degree, that when the election of counsellors came upon the carpet, Hutchinson, though Lieutenant-Governor and Chief Justice, and all his brother judges of the Superior Court of Judicature, Court of Assizes, and general gaol delivery, were turned out of the Council, and a general looking for future troubles took place. It was now seen, that every man who espoused the cause of his country, must prepare himself for the fate of a martyr or confessor, and that every man of any con- sequence, who would betray his country, might expect lucrative as well as honorable rewards ; honorable, I mean, in the common sense of the word in the world. It was not long before these apprehensions were confirmed. A bill was brought into par- liament, imposing taxes on glass, tea, paper, colors, &c, im- ported into the colonies. The great Chatham was destined to

" Close his long' glories with a sigh to find The unwilling gratitude of base mankind."

e e>

Although his name still carried great power, the mortification arising from the loss of so much of his popularity, by his ac- ceptance of a peerage and a pension, the unbounded licentious- ness of the press in abusing him for it, and perhaps, above all, the embarrassments he had found in forming a ministry among

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the factions of Rockingham, Bedford, and Bute, when his brother, Lord Temple, and even the Duke of Portland, deserted him, aggravated the natural and habitual infirmity of his con- stitution, and rendered him incapable of that activity in busi- ness, and that fire which inspired every-body with his own enthusiasm, which had been so conspicuous in all parts of his former life.

This new act of tyrannical taxation rekindled all the fires of opposition and resistance on this side the water. The associa- tions against its execution were universal through all the colo- nies, and ought to be stated and related in detail, because they illustrate the jprogress of the revolution in the minds of the people, against the authority of parliament, towards a union of the colonies and a total independence on the one hand, and the progress of seduction and corruption on the other.

Another innovation was contrived, and a board of commis- sioners of the customs created ; but the remonstrances and associations against the execution of the acts were so formi- dable, that the ministry thought it necessary to send a fleet and army to protect Temple, Hallowell, Paxton, Birch, and Robin- son, their adherents and followers. In 17G8, there appeared a general disposition to oppose their landing by force ; but many gentlemen, apprehending confusion from unconcerted resistance, took measures for inviting a Convention of the province. The circumstances of this year ought to be distinctly developed, and the result of the Convention stated. The fleet was drawn up to fire upon the town, and protect the landing of those illus- trious personages, the commissioners and their drunken secre- tary, and their defenders, the troops, which were given out to be four thousand men, though, probably, they were not half the number. These poor creatures, the soldiers, were in a for- lorn condition, — no barracks, no shelter, hungry and cold. The inhabitants shut their doors, and would admit panthers and serpents as soon. The address of their officers upon this dangerous crisis, I shall never forget. They became suppliants, and appealed to humanity. Had the door of a citizen been broken, to let in the soldiers, such was the inflammation of spirits that they would all have been made prisoners before morn- ing ; but the officers had too much sense. They put themselves and their men upon the compassionate list. " The poor soldiers

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were innocent. They knew not why they were sent here. Can you see your fellow-creatures perish in your streets for -want of shelter ? " Humanity prevailed. The troops were paraded on the common. One regiment appeared every day in Brattle Square, with their left flank before the front of the white house, where I then lived. Every morning I saw from my front win- dows Major Small exercising his battalion or his regiment, and admired his patient, persevering assiduity no less than the regularity of his men. What were my reflections and feelings at these sights ! Poor puppets ! you know nothing of the invis- ible hand, which dances you upon its wires ! No more than the cogs and wheels of a clock, of the weights that move them, or the hand which they point to the hour. The men who understand the machinery, and are the first springs of its move- ment, know no more of what they are doing than you do. They are heaping up vengeance against the day of vengeance, against you, against themselves, and against unnumbered thou- sands of others as innocent as you. Major Small and I passed each other every day, but never spoke. Twenty years after- wards, we passed each other at public places of amusement in London, as Dido and ^Eneas passed each other in the shades, and never spoke. The troops lived in Boston for a few months more than a year, as the allied forces now reside in France, the blood of the inhabitants boiling with indignation, and the continent sympathizing with them. Wrangles and quarrels frequently occurred between the citizens and the soldiers ; ex- asperation increased on both sides, till it broke out in the melancholy catastrophe of the 5th of March, 1770. Now ap- peared the spirit of freemen ; multitudes from Boston and the neighboring towns assembled spontaneously the next day, and from day to day. Strong guards were placed in the State House, and every luan appeared to be ready at the toll of a bell or the sound of a gun to turn out with his arms. The assembly applied to the governor and council. Mr. Hutchinson ■was Lieutenant-Governor and commander-in-chief. Colonel Dairy mple was sent for. Samuel Adams appeared in his true character. His caution, his discretion, his ingenuity, his saga- city, his self-command, his presence of mind, and his intrepidity, commanded the admiration and loud applauses of both parties. The troops were ordered to the Castle, and Lord North called them from this time " Sam Adams's two regiments."

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TO DR. J. MORSE.

Quincy, 5 January, 1816.

The trials of the officer and soldiers, who were indicted for the slaughter in King Street, were pending for the greatest part of the year 1770, and when they came on, consumed six or seven days each. The discussions and decisions in those cases convinced the people that they could depend on no protection against the sovereignty of parliament but Providence and their own arms. Accordingly they were found in Boston and all the neighboring towns, forming companies for voluntary mili- tary exercises. Even Salem, Marblehead, and Newbury, caught the flame, though the county of Essex, next to' Worcester and Hampshire, was the last to abandon the ministry and their governors.

These trials, as important in the history of mankind as any that are recorded in the history of jurisprudence, never have been, and never can be truly, impartially, and faithfully repre- sented to posterity. The first was taken down, and transmitted to England, by a Scottish or English stenographer, without any known authority but his own. The British government have never permitted it to see the light, and probably never will.

The second trial was taken by the same stenographer, by permission of the court, and allowed to be published. The Court allowed him to show his manuscript to the counsel. He brought it to me. Upon reading it over, I found so much inac- curacy and so many errors, that I scratched out every thing but the legal authorities and the testimonies of the witnesses. Mr. Quincy and Mr. Paine were consulted, and the result of their deliberations appears in the printed trial. Mr. Sewall, the Attor- ney-General, who ought, at the hazard of his existence, to have conducted those prosecutions, disappeared ; and Mr. Paine and Mr. Samuel Quincy were substituted, nobody knew whether by the Court or the Attorney- General. I leave to the masters of chess to make their reflections on this curious arrangement of kings, knights, and pawns, upon the board. I speculated little on these puppetshows and idle games. " To the law and the testimony," was my only maxim. The law and the testimony prevailed, and destroyed as much of my popularity as Mr. Pitt

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lost by accepting a peerage and a pension. It was instantly- propagated that I had been bribed by an immense fee, to sell my country. I never uttered a word or suggested a hint allud- ing to fees from first to last. A single guinea was put into my hand by the Irish infant, for a retaining fee ; ten guineas were offered on the first trial, and eight at the second, and accepted without looking at them, or uttering a word. These nineteen guineas -were all the fees I ever received for a Avhole year of distressing anxiety, and for thirteen or fourteen days of the hardest labor in the trials that I ever went through. Add to all this the taunts and scoffs and bitter reproaches of the Whigs, and the giggling and tittering of the Tories, which was more provoking than all the rest.

This great event turned the attention of all the colonies to it, and the supremacy of parliament stared all men in the face. If parliament was omnipotent, could enact "what statutes it pleased, and employ armies and navies, governors, counsellors, and judges to interpret them, and carry them into execution, of what use could our houses of representatives be ? And what were our religion, liberties, properties, or existence worth? I recollect no event which increased the horror of parliamentary usurpation so much as this. The journals, the pamphlets, and the records of this period ought to be collected and examined with patient attention. About this period, parties in England were as angry as in America* Wilkes and Junius agitated king, ministry, parliament, and nation. Opposition pretended friendship for America ; but no members of either house, of administration or opposition, ever dared to avow the true American principle, or to express a doubt of the supreme, un- limited authority of parliament over all the dominions of the crown. " Standing armies in time of peace, stationed in popu- lous cities to preserve internal peace," Cato's Letters and the Independent Whig, and all the writings of Trenchard and Gordon, Mrs. Macaulay's History, Burgh's Political Disquisi- tions, Clarendon's History of the Civil War, and all the writings relative to the revolutions in England became fashionable read- ing. Hutchinson, whose ambition made him as weak as water, had declared publicly in council, that he had no authority over the king's troops ; that the military force had a separate com- mand, and he could do nothing without Dalrymple. " Good

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God!" said the public, "is this our situation already? Is a military authority already erected over the civil authority, or independent of it ? Is a lieutenant-colonel of a regiment com- mander-in-chief of the province, or even independent upon him ? We remember the time when Brigadier Timothy Ruggles, com- mander-in-chief of Massachusetts troops, was put under the command of a British ensign for a whole campaign. Is the whole civil authority of the province now to be placed under the command of a lieutenant-colonel of a British regiment ? To talk or think of liberty or privileges under a military govern- ment, is as idle and absurd as under an ecclesiastical govern- ment.

How slightly soever historians may have passed over this event, the blood of the martyrs, right or wrong, proved to be the seeds of the congregation. Not the battle of Lexington or

Bunker's Hill, not the surrender of Burgoyne or Cornwallis were more important events in American history than the battle of King Street, on the 5th of March, 1770. The town of Boston instituted an annual oration in commemoration of this catas- trophe, " upon the danger of standing armies, stationed in popu- lous cities in time of peace," and among the first orators were such names as Hancock, Warren, and Lovell. These orations were read, I had almost said by every-body that could read, and scarcely ever with dry eyes. They have now been con- tinued for forty-five years. Will you read them all? They were not long continued in their original design, but other gen- tlemen with other views had influence enough to obtain a change from " standing armies," to " feelings which produced the revolution." Of these forty-five orations I have read as many as I have seen. They have varied with all the changes of our politics. They have been made the engine of bringing forward to public notice young gentlemen of promising genius, whose connections and sentiments were conformable to the prevailing opinions of the moment. There is juvenile ingenuity in all that I have read. There are few men of consequence among us who did not commence their career by an oration on the 5th of March. I have read these orations with a mixture of grief, pleasure, and pity. Young gentlemen of genius de- scribing scenes they never saw, and descanting on feelings they never felt, and which great pains had been taken that they

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never should feel. When will these orations end ? And when will they cease to be monuments of the fluctuations of public opinion and general feeling in Boston, Massachusetts, New England, and the United States ? They are infinitely more indicative of the feelings of the moment, than of the feelings that produced the revolution.

Remember, Sir, that I am not writing history nor annals. I am only stating a few facts, and suggesting a few hints. If I could be fifty years younger, and had nothing better to do, I would have these orations collected, and printed in volumes, and then write the history of the last forty-five years in com- mentaries upon them.

TO DR. J. MORSE.

Quincy, 20 January, 1816.

In the order of time, I have passed over a tragical event which excited much interest, and contributed largely to render the sovereignty of parliament odious, detestable, and horrible to the people, and I can conscientiously add, accelerated the catas- trophe of the 5th March, 1770.1

In 1769, a little before the recall of Governor Bernard, the British frigate, The Rose, sent a lieutenant, a midshipman, and a pressgang of sailors on board a ship of Mr. Hooper, of Mar- blehead, then returning from Bilboa, upon the recruiting service. The lieutenant demanded of the captain a sight of his crew. The crew were called. "Are here all? " No answer. " Search the ship," said the imperious lieutenant. Away flew the mid- shipman and his gang of loyal soldiers, through every part of the ship to search for hidden seamen. At last the cry was heard, " here they are." Four sailors had hid themselves in the forepeak of the ship, the place most likely to be overlooked in a search. The forepeak was immediately invaded by the lieute- nant, the midshipman, and the whole pressgang armed with

1 The account which follows is in some measure a repetition of what has been already printed in the second volume, pp. 224 - 226, note, and also in the ninth volume, pp. 317-319. But as it forms one of the series addressed to Dr. Morse, and opens some views of the subject not there touched upon, it has been thought best to retain it.

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swords and pistols. Michael Corbet and Lieutenant Panton argued the cause, but neither being convinced, resort was had to the ratio ultima, and an amiable youth was laid dead at the feet of Michael Corbet. A boat was sent to the Rose, and a strong reenforcement to the pressgang soon broke down all before them, seized the four sailors, one of whom was bleeding with an arm broken by a pistol ball, shot by the midshipman at random among the four, in the first assault upon the forepeak.

A special Court of Admiralty was summoned, according to act of parliament, to try these four sailors for piracy and mur- der on the high seas, in killing Lieutenant Panton ; when in law, truth, and conscience, the commander of the Rose frigate ought to have been prosecuted for piracy and murder on the high seas, in illegally sending a pressgang to enslave freemen, and compelling them in self-defence to destroy their invader and intended destroyer ; or in the better language of the boat- swain of the Rose frigate, " to deprive honest men of their liberty."

The constitution of this Court ought to be stated by a his- torian. It consisted of the Governors of Massachusetts, Ber- nard, and New Hampshire, Wentworth ; Judge of Admiralty, Auchmuty ; Commander of the Navy, Commodore Hood ; and counsellors from several colonies, to the number of fifteen. Whether Hutchinson sat as Lieutenant-Governor or as Chief Justice, I know not. When the Court opened, the counsel of the poor prisoners presented pleas to the jurisdiction of the Court, and if that should be overruled, requesting and demand- ing that a jury should be summoned to try the facts, according to the course of the common law.

What has become of the records of this Court, whether they have been sent to Halifax or to London, whether they remain in any repository in Boston, or whether they have been burned, like most of the records of this world, I know not. But if they exist, they will show four pleas, drawn at great length, stating the laws, principles, and reasonings on which they were founded, and each of them signed by one of the four prisoners, or by his counsel. These pleadings, contemptible as they may appear at this day, cost the counsel many days of painful research, and the mere composition and draught of them cost more than one sleepless night, in the handwriting.

vol. x. 18

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When the prisoners were arraigned, they presented these four pleas to the Court, and their counsel appeared to support them, with his arguments and books of authority, against Mr. Sewall himself and the other counsel for the crown.

But the counsel on neither side were permitted to say a word. Hutchinson started up, and with a countenance, which remains deeply graven on my retina to this hour, expressive of the designs and passions, the fears and apprehensions, that agitated and tormented his soul, moved that the Court should adjourn to the council chamber. No opposition ! no reasons pro or con ! The countenances of the innocents and the sim- ple on the bench, indicating some surprise, but the knowing ones manifesting a knowledge, or, at least, a pleasing conjec- ture of the secret. The prisoners were remanded ; parties, wit- nesses, counsel, audience, dismissed ; and the Court adjourned to the council chamber, where they remained in secret conclave, till late in the evening. When they arose, it was given out and propagated through the town that they had decided in favor of the pleas, and that jurors were to be summoned the next morn- ing, to try the prisoners.

Whether this rumor had any foundation in truth, or whether it was invented and circulated to soften the keen asperity of the public feeling, I know not ; but this is certain, the Court met again early next morning in secret conclave in the council chamber ; and then it was believed by many, conjectured by more, and reported generally, that Hutchinson and his con- fidential few had been alarmed at the decision of the preced- ing evening, and had contrived a secret meeting in the morning to reconsider the vote. Whether there was any truth in these whispers, rumors, and murmurs, I know not. But one thing is certain, that "when the Court opened in form, the four pleas, without permitting one word to be said for them or against them by the counsel on either side, were pronounced by the president, Bernard, to be overruled.

The prisoners were now at the bar, and the trial commenced. The witnesses on both sides examined and cross-examined.1

' The notes taken by Mr. Adams in this trial have been found since the publication of the prior volumes. They are very full, and entirely confirm the accuracy of this account given from memory nearly half a century afterwards. Hutchinson says, however, that it was he who pronounced the decision of the Court.

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All agreed in every fact and circumstance. No contradictory- testimony; British sailors and American sailors all agreed. What morality and what religion, Dr. Morse, in these sons of Neptune ! Oh ! for the honor of human nature, that I could say the same of the Court !

When the examination was ended and taken down by the clerk and the counsel in writing, the argument of counsel was expected. The counsel for the prisoners had taken great pains to search and research, through every law, human and divine, the doctrine of homicide in all its divisions, distinctions, and limitations. As this was said to be a civil law court, he had ransacked every writer on the civil law, that the town of Boston possessed. He had examined every authority in the laws of England upon the subject, and, superadded to all, he had brought forward that volume of the British Statutes at Large, which contained the act of parliament which expressly prohi- bited the impressment of seamen in America. All these books were piled up on the table before him, in the sight of the Court, when the counsel arose, in the ordinary course of proceedings, to argue the cause of his clients, the poor prisoners at the bar. After addressing the court in the usual style of respect, he begged their attention to the authorities in law, and to the testi- monies, which he should apply, to show that the action of the prisoners in killing Lieutenant Panton could amount to nothing more than justifiable homicide in necessary self-defence.

The words " justifiable homicide " were scarcely out of his mouth, before Hutchinson started up in very indecorous haste, and moved that the prisoners be remanded, and the Court adjourned to the council chamber. The prisoners, the crowded audience, the bar, the counsel, were all thunderstruck. But what were prisoners, audience, bar or counsel, against " sic volo, sic jubeo, stet pro ratione voluntas " ? The Court was ad- journed to the council chamber, and there inclosed, like a con- clave of cardinals, in secret intrigues for the rest of the day.

When the Court opened the next day, and the prisoners or- dered to the bar, all the world expected that the trial would commence, and the argument on the law and the evidence pro- ceed. But after a solemn pause and total silence, Governor Bernard, the President of the Court, arose, and with a counte- nance so solemn and gloomy as made the audience shudder, as

208 CORRESPONDENCE.

if a sentence of death "was coming, addressed himself to the prisoners by name, and pronounced, " The Court have con- sidered the evidence in support of the libel against you, and are unanimously of opinion that it amounts only to justifiable homicide ; you are accordingly acquitted and discharged from your imprisonment." Not another word was said, except by Mr. Auchmuty, the Judge of Admiralty, who cried out, " The Court is unanimous in this opinion."

I will leave to poets and writers of romance to describe the joy that glowed in every heart, and lighted every countenance at this denouement of the tragedy. One circumstance is too characteristic to be omitted. The counsel for the prisoners descending from the chamber where the Court sat, to the lower floor of the Court House, was met at the bottom of the stairs by the boatswain of the Rose. " Sir," said he, " we are all greatly obliged to you for your noble conduct in defence of these brave fellows ; yet, Sir, this is the employment in which I have been almost constantly engaged for twenty years, fight- ing with honest men to deprive them of their liberty. I always thought I ought to be hanged for it, and now I know it."

This trial, Dr. Morse, is a mystery never yet explained, — a labyrinth without a clue ! an enigma that never can be un- riddled. Though all hypothesis must be unavailing in investi- gating this phenomenon, so strange, so unprecedented in the history of jurisprudence, I must be permitted to suggest a few hints for your consideration and inquiry.

First. Where can you find a secret court of judicature ? In courts martial, in the Inquisition, or in the Lion's mouth at Venice ? The star chamber and the high commission court in England, even Jeffreys's courts were open and public.

Second. Here were the Governor, the Lieutenant-Governor, the Chief Justice, the Judge of Admiralty of Massachusetts, the Governor and counsellors from New Hampshire, counsellors from Rhode Island, and the commander-in-chief of the royal navy, Commodore Hood, now, if alive, Lord Bridport, skulking and hiding in total silence from open court to secret council chamber, like Indians fighting behind bushes, and running in the dark from one bush to another to avoid detection.

Third. Upon what law, upon what principle were the pri- soners acquitted of piracy and murder ? Nobody knew, nobody

CORRESPONDENCE. 209

could conjecture. Every honest soul was delighted with the decision, but none knew or could surmise upon what grounds it was made.

Fourth. Was the decision according to the law of nature, the law of nations, the civil law, the common law, or the statute law ? No man could answer any of these questions. All was darkness, mystery, uncertainty, and confusion. The honest lawyers said, " misera servitus est, ubi jus est vagum aut incos-nitumP

Fifth. There was an act of parliament expressly forbidding impressments in America, then lying on the table before the judges, produced by the counsel for the prisoners, and ready to be read at a moment's warning, which would have justified the decision of the Court, to the king, the English nation, and the American public, without any other authority or argument. Why did not the Court permit this statute to be read or men- tioned ? Why did they not produce it and read it themselves, if the counsel had through ignorance or forgetfulness omitted it.

Sixth. Can it be credible, that this Court, and all the counsel for the crown, and all the naval and custom-house officers -were ignorant of this statute ? However incredible it may appear, I have always believed and still believe that not one of them all had the least knowledge or suspicion that such an act existed. There was at that time but one copy of the Statutes at Large in the Massachusetts, and that set had been imported by the coun- sel for the prisoners.

Seventh. Was the sentence of the Court founded on the principle of the universal illegality of impressment ? I sincerely believe it was, and, moreover, that not one judge upon that bench would have dared to give an opinion of its legality. The oracular and equivocal dictum of Lord Chatham had not then been pronounced, nor the opinion of the first Pitt, as ignorant as it was dogmatical, that it was a common-law prerogative of the crown. Candor obliges me to acknowledge that Mr. Sewall conducted this prosecution like a judicious lawyer and a polite gentleman ; but Hutchinson appeared hurried between his ter- ror of the crown and its officers on one hand, and his dread of unpopularity on the other.1 No trial had ever interested the

1 'Hutchinson has explained this whole matter. He admits that the change in the action of the Court upon the application tor a jury was owing entirely to

N

18*

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community so much before, excited so much curiosity and com- passion, or so many apprehensions of the fatal consequences of the supremacy of parliamentary jurisdiction, or the intrigues of parliamentary courts. No trial had drawn together such crowds of auditors from day to day ; they were as numerous as those in the next year, at the trials of Preston and the soldiers. Nevertheless, every thing relative to this great event must remain mysterious. The whole transaction seems totally for- gotten. None of our historians appears to have ever heard of it. Mrs. Warren has not remembered it, and Dr. Gordon has taken no notice of it ; yet Dr. Gordon has minutely related the action of Mr. Richardson in shooting young Snider, and its effects. Mr. Richardson and his exploit were thought worthy to be recorded, while Panton and Corbet were to be forgotten ! And who was Richardson ? If there was even a color of justice in the public opinion, he was the most abandoned wretch in Ame- rica. Adultery, incest, perjury were reputed to be his ordinary crimes. His life would exhibit an atrocious volume. This man was selected by the board of commissioners for a custom- house officer. His name was sufficient to raise a mob, and I had almost said to the honor of the mob. Mr. Richardson and the innocent victim, Snider, ought to have been remembered, but Panton and Corbet ought not to have been forgotten. Preston and his soldiers ought to have been forgotten sooner.

TO THOMAS JEFFERSON.