The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, Vol. 6 (of 9)

TO MADAM DE TESSÉ

December 8, 1813.

While at war, my dear Madam and friend, with the leviathan of the ocean, there is little hope of a letter escaping his thousand ships; yet I cannot permit myself longer to withhold the acknowledgment of your letter of June 28 of the last year, with which came the memoirs of the Margrave of Bareuth. I am much indebted to you for this singular morsel of history which has given us a certain view of kings, queens and princes, disrobed of their formalities. It is a peep into the state of the Egyptian god Apis. It would not be easy to find grosser manners, coarser vices, or more meanness in the poorest huts of our peasantry. The princess shows herself the legitimate sister of Frederic, cynical, selfish, and without a heart. Notwithstanding your wars with England, I presume you get the publications of that country. The memoirs of Mrs. Clarke and of her darling prince, and the book, emphatically so called, because it is the Biblia Sacra Deorum et Dearum sub-cœlestium, the Prince Regent, his Princess and the minor deities of his sphere, form a worthy sequel to the memoirs of Bareuth; instead of the vulgarity and penury of the court of Berlin, giving us the vulgarity and profusion of that of London, and the gross stupidity and profligacy of the latter, in lieu of the genius and misanthropism of the former. The whole might be published as a supplement to M. de Buffon, under the title of the "Natural History of Kings and Princes," or as a separate work and called "Medicine for Monarchists." The "Intercepted Letters," a later English publication of great wit and humor, has put them to their proper use by holding them up as butts for the ridicule and contempt of mankind. Yet by such worthless beings is a great nation to be governed and even made to deify their old king because he is only a fool and a maniac, and to forgive and forget his having lost to them a great and flourishing empire, added nine hundred millions sterling to their debt, for which the fee simple of the whole island would not sell, if offered farm by farm at public auction, and increased their annual taxes from eight to seventy millions sterling, more than the whole rent-roll of the island. What must be the dreary prospect from the son when such a father is deplored as a national loss. But let us drop these odious beings and pass to those of an higher order, the plants of the field. I am afraid I have given you a great deal more trouble than I intended by my enquiries for the Maronnier or Castanea Saliva, of which I wished to possess my own country, without knowing how rare its culture was even in yours. The two plants which your researches have placed in your own garden, it will be all but impossible to remove hither. The war renders their safe passage across the Atlantic extremely precarious, and, if landed anywhere but in the Chesapeake, the risk of the additional voyage along the coast to Virginia, is still greater. Under these circumstances it is better they should retain their present station, and compensate to you the trouble they have cost you.

I learn with great pleasure the success of your new gardens at Auenay. No occupation can be more delightful or useful. They will have the merit of inducing you to forget those of Chaville. With the botanical riches which you mention to have been derived to England from New Holland, we are as yet unacquainted. Lewis's journey across our continent to the Pacific has added a number of new plants to our former stock. Some of them are curious, some ornamental, some useful, and some may by culture be made acceptable on our tables. I have growing, which I destine for you, a very handsome little shrub of the size of a currant bush. Its beauty consists in a great produce of berries of the size of currants, and literally as white as snow, which remain on the bush through the winter, after its leaves have fallen, and make it an object as singular as it is beautiful. We call it the snow-berry bush, no botanical name being yet given to it, but I do not know why we might not call it Chionicoccos, or Kallicoccos. All Lewis's plants are growing in the garden of Mr. McMahon, a gardener of Philadelphia, to whom I consigned them, and from whom I shall have great pleasure, when peace is restored, in ordering for you any of these or of our other indigenous plants. The port of Philadelphia has great intercourse with Bordeaux and Nantes, and some little perhaps with Havre. I was mortified not long since by receiving a letter from a merchant in Bordeaux, apologizing for having suffered a box of plants addressed by me to you, to get accidentally covered in his warehouse by other objects, and to remain three years undiscovered, when every thing in it was found to be rotten. I have learned occasionally that others rotted in the ware-houses of the English pirates. We are now settling that account with them. We have taken their Upper Canada and shall add the Lower to it when the season will admit; and hope to remove them fully and finally from our continent. And what they will feel more, for they value their colonies only for the bales of cloth they take from them, we have established manufactures, not only sufficient to supersede our demand from them, but to rivalize them in foreign markets. But for the course of our war I will refer you to M. de La Fayette, to whom I state it more particularly.

Our friend Mr. Short is well. He makes Philadelphia his winter quarters, and New York, or the country, those of the summer. In his fortune he is perfectly independent and at ease, and does not trouble himself with the party politics of our country. Will you permit me to place here for M. de Tessé the testimony of my high esteem and respect, and accept for yourself an assurance of the warm recollections I retain of your many civilities and courtesies to me, and the homage of my constant and affectionate attachment and respect.

TO DON VALENTIN DE TORONDA CORUNA

Monticello, December 14, 1813.

Dear Sir,—I have had the pleasure of receiving several letters from you, covering printed propositions and pamphlets on the state of your affairs, and all breathing the genuine sentiments of order, liberty and philanthropy, with which I know you to be sincerely inspired. We learn little to be depended on here as to your civil proceedings, or of the division of sentiments among you; but in this absence of information I have made whatever you propose the polar star of my wishes. What is to be the issue of your present struggles we here cannot judge. But we sincerely wish it may be what is best for the happiness and reinvigoration of your country. That its divorce from its American colonies, which is now unavoidable, will be a great blessing, it is impossible not to pronounce on a review of what Spain was when she acquired them, and of her gradual descent from that proud eminence to the condition in which her present war found her. Nature has formed that peninsula to be the second, and why not the first nation in Europe? Give equal habits of energy to the bodies, and of science to the minds of her citizens, and where could her superior be found? The most advantageous relation in which she can stand with her American colonies is that of independent friendship, secured by the ties of consanguinity, sameness of language, religion, manners, and habits, and certain from the influence of these, of a preference in her commerce, if, instead of the eternal irritations, thwartings, machinations against their new governments, the insults and aggressions which Great Britain has so unwisely practised towards us, to force us to hate her against our natural inclinations, Spain yields, like a genuine parent, to the forisfamiliation of her colonies, now at maturity, if she extends to them her affections, her aid, her patronage in every court and country, it will weave a bond of union indissoluble by time. We are in a state of semi-warfare with your adjoining colonies, the Floridas. We do not consider this as affecting our peace with Spain or any other of her former possessions. We wish her and them well; and under her present difficulties at home, and her doubtful future relations with her colonies, both wisdom and interest will, I presume, induce her to leave them to settle themselves the quarrels they draw on themselves from their neighbors. The commanding officers in the Floridas have excited and armed the neighboring savages to war against us, and to murder and scalp many of our women and children as well as men, taken by surprise—poor creatures! They have paid for it with the loss of the flower of their strength, and have given us the right, as we possess the power, to exterminate or to expatriate them beyond the Mississippi. This conduct of the Spanish officers will probably oblige us to take possession of the Floridas, and the rather as we believe the English will otherwise seize them, and use them as stations to distract and annoy us. But should we possess ourselves of them, and Spain retain her other colonies in this hemisphere, I presume we shall consider them in our hands as subjects of negociation.

We are now at the close of our second campaign with England. During the first we suffered several checks, from the want of capable and tried officers; all the higher ones of the Revolution having died off during an interval of thirty years of peace. But this second campaign has been more successful, having given us all the lakes and country of Upper Canada, except the single post of Kingston, at its lower extremity. The two immediate causes of the war were the Orders of Council, and impressment of our seamen. The first having been removed after we had declared war, the war is continued for the second; and a third has been generated by their conduct during the war, in exciting the Indian hordes to murder and scalp the women and children on our frontier. This renders peace for ever impossible but on the establishment of such a meridian boundary to their possessions, as that they never more can have such influence with the savages as to excite again the same barbarities. The thousand ships, too, they took from us in peace, and the six thousand seamen impressed, call for this indemnification. On the water we have proved to the world the error of their invincibility, and shown that with equal force and well-trained officers, they can be beaten by other nations as brave as themselves. Their lying officers and printers will give to Europe very different views of the state of their war with us. But you will see now, as in the Revolutionary war, that they will lie, and conquer themselves out of all their possessions on this continent.

I pray for the happiness of your nation, and that it may be blessed with sound views and successful measures, under the difficulties in which it is involved; and especially that they may know the value of your counsels, and to yourself I tender the assurances of my high respect and esteem.

JOHN ADAMS TO THOMAS JEFFERSON

Quincy, December 25, 1813.

Dear Sir,—Answer my letters at your leisure. Give yourself no concern. I write as for a refuge and protection against ennui.

The fundamental principle of all philosophy and all christianity, is "Rejoice always in all things!" "Be thankful at all times for all good, and all that we call evil." Will it not follow that I ought to rejoice and be thankful that Priestley has lived? 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 would 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 Tenth.

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 annihilation! Dread of nothing! A dread of nothing, I should think, would be no dread at all. Can there be any real, substantial, rational fear of nothing? Were you on your death-bed, and in your last moments informed by demonstration of 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 compare him to a little girl, amusing herself, her brothers and sisters, by blowing bubbles in soap-suds. You might compare him to boys sporting with crackers and rockets, or to men employed in making mere artificial fire-works, 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 estimo.

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 Œileus, who lived long before Plato. His treatise of kings and monarchy has been destroyed, I conjecture, by Platonic Philosophers, Platonic Jews or Christians, or by fraudulent republicans or despots. His treatise of the universe has been preserved. He labors to prove the eternity of the world. The Marquis D'Argens translated it, in all its noble simplicity. The Abbé Batteaux has since given another translation. 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 modern discoveries. I wish I owned this book and one hundred 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 Timæus, but it 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 Timæus, 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 agitated all the parts of it, and that an intelligence produced a regular and harmonious world. This 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 matter. 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 Achylas, 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. Seleucus, 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, political and ecclesiastical bigotry.

Despotical, monarchical, aristocratical and democratical fury have all been employed in this work of destruction of everything 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 degrees, are revealed to creatures.

Philosophy looks with an impartial eye on all terrestrial religions. I have examined all, as well as my narrow sphere, my straightened 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 cannot 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 Confucius, 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 Sydon. 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 Sansosistes, 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 universal sphere, without beginning, without end. God governs 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 presumptuous. 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 fullness of time, to communicate 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, Vitsnou and Siv." 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 made 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 animals, 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, or migrate into a toad or a wasp on the other, would not lay down on the pile, and set fire to the fuel?

Modifications and disguises of the Metempsychosis, has crept into Egypt, and Greece, and Rome, and other countries. Have you read Farmer on the Dæmons and possessions of the New Testament? According to the Shasta, Moisasor, with his companions, rebelled against the eternal, and were precipitated down to Ondoro, the region of darkness.

Do you know anything 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 reading such incoherent rattle. I will not persecute you so severely in future, if I can help it.

So farewell.