ACCOMPLISHMENT
Determine never to be idle. No person will have
occasion to complain of the want of time who never loses any. It is
wonderful how much may be done if we are always doing. |
Martha
Jefferson
5 May 1787 |
ADAMS,
JOHN / A PERSONAL THOUGHT
Of the signers of the Declaration of
Independence, I see now living not more than half a dozen on your
side of the Potomac, and on this side, myself alone. You and I have
been wonderfully spared, and myself with remarkable health, and a
considerable activity of body and mind. I am on horseback three or
four hours of every day; visit three or four times a year a
possession I have ninety miles distant, performing the winter
journey on horseback. |
John
Adams
21 Jan 1812 |
ADAMS,
JOHN / RELATIONSHIP WITH
The public, and the public papers, have been
much occupied lately in placing us in a point of opposition to each
other. I confidently trust we have felt less of it ourselves. In the
retired canton where I live, we know little of what is passing. Our
last information from Philadelphia is of the 16th instant. At that
date the issue of the late election seems not to have been known as
a matter of fact. With me, however, its issue was never doubted. I
knew the impossibility of your losing a single vote north of the
Delaware; and even if you should lose that of Pennsylvania in the
mass, you would get enough south of it to make your election sure. I
never for a single moment expected any other issue; and though I
shall not be believed, yet it is not the less true, that I never
wished any other. My neighbors, as my compurgators, could aver this
fact, as seeing my occupations and my attachment to them. It is
possible, indeed, that even you may be cheated of your succession by
a trick worthy the subtlety of your arch friend of New York, who has
been able to make of your real friends tools for defeating their and
your just wishes. Probably, however, he will be disappointed as to
you; and my inclinations put me out of his reach. …And never
since the day you signed the treaty of Paris, has our horizon been
so overcast. I devoutly wish you may be able to shun for us this
war, which will destroy our agriculture, commerce, and credit. If
you do, the glory will be all your own. And that your administration
may be filled with glory and happiness to yourself, and advantage to
us, is the sincere prayer of one, who, though in the course of our
voyage, various little incidents have happened or been contrived to
separate us, yet retains for you the solid esteem of the times when
we were working for our independence, and sentiments of sincere
respect and attachment.
|
John
Adams
28 Dec 1796 |
ADAMS,
JOHN / RELATIONSHIP WITH
Mr. Adams' friendship and mine began at an
earlier date. It accompanied us through long and important scenes.
The different conclusions we had drawn from our political reading
and reflections, were not permitted to lessen personal esteem; each
party being conscious they were the result of an honest conviction
in the other. Like differences of opinion existing among our fellow
citizens, attached them to one or the other of us, and produced a
rivalship in their minds which did not exist in ours. We never stood
in one another's way; for if either had been withdrawn at any time,
his favorers would not have gone over to the other, but would have
sought for some one of homogeneous opinions. This consideration was
sufficient to keep down all jealousy between us, and to guard our
friendship from any disturbance by sentiments of rivalship; and I
can say with truth, that one act of Mr. Adams' life, and one only,
ever gave me a moment's personal displeasure. I did consider his
last appointments to office as personally unkind. They were from
among my most ardent political enemies, from whom no faithful
co-operation could ever be expected; and laid me under the
embarrassment of acting through men whose views were to defeat mine,
or to encounter the odium of putting others in their places. It
seems but common justice to leave a successor free to act by
instruments of his own choice. If my respect for him did not permit
me to ascribe the whole blame to the influence of others, it left
something for friendship to forgive, and after brooding over it for
some little time, and not always resisting the expression of it, I
forgave it cordially, and returned to the same state of esteem and
respect for him which had so long subsisted. Having come into life a
little later than Mr. Adams, his career has preceded mine, as mine
is followed by some other; and it will probably be closed at the
same distance after him which time originally placed between us. I
maintain for him, and shall carry into private life, an uniform and
high measure of respect and good will, and for yourself a sincere
attachment.
|
Abigail
Adams
13 Jun 1804 |
ADAMS,
JOHN / RELATIONSHIP WITH
I receive with sensibility your observations on
the discontinuance of friendly correspondence between Mr. Adams and
myself, and the concern you take in its restoration. This
discontinuance has not proceeded from me, nor from the want of
sincere desire and of effort on my part, to renew our intercourse.
You know the perfect coincidence of principle and of action, in the
early part of the Revolution, which produced a high degree of mutual
respect and esteem between Mr. Adams and myself. Certainly no man
was ever truer than he was, in that day, to those principles of
rational republicanism which, after the necessity of throwing off
our monarchy, dictated all our efforts in the establishment of a new
government. And although he swerved, afterwards, towards the
principles of the English constitution, our friendship did not abate
on that account. While he was Vice-President, and I Secretary of
State, I received a letter from President Washington, then at Mount
Vernon, desiring me to call together the Heads of departments, and
to invite Mr. Adams to join us (which, by-the-bye, was the only
instance of that being done) in order to determine on some measure
which required despatch; and he desired me to act on it, as decided,
without again recurring to him. I invited them to dine with me, and
after dinner, sitting at our wine, having settled our question,
other conversation came on, in which a collision of opinion arose
between Mr. Adams and Colonel Hamilton, on the merits of the British
constitution, Mr. Adams giving it as his opinion, that, if some of
its defects and abuses were corrected, it would be the most perfect
constitution of government ever devised by man. Hamilton, on the
contrary, asserted, that with its existing vices, it was the most
perfect model of government that could be formed; and that the
correction of its vices would render it an impracticable government.
And this you may be assured was the real one of difference between
the political principles of these two gentlemen. Another incident
took place on the same occasion, which will further delineate Mr.
Hamilton's political principles. The room being hung around with a
collection of the portraits of remarkable men, among them were those
of Bacon, Newton and Locke, Hamilton asked me who they were. I told
him they were my trinity of the three greatest men the world had
ever produced, naming them. He paused for some time: "the
greatest man," said he, "that ever lived, was Julius
Caesar." Mr. Adams was honest as a politician, as well as a
man; Hamilton honest as a man, but, as a politician, believing in
the necessity of either force or corruption to govern men.
You remember the machinery which the federalists played off, about
that time, to beat down the friends to the real principles of our
Constitution, to silence by terror every expression in their favor,
to bring us into war with France and alliance with England, and
finally to homologize our Constitution with that of England. Mr.
Adams, you know, was overwhelmed with feverish addresses, dictated
by the fear, and often by the pen, of the bloody buoy, and
was seduced by them into some open indications of his new principles
of government, and in fact, was so elated as to mix with his
kindness a little superciliousness towards me. Even Mrs. Adams, with
all her good sense and prudence, was sensibly flushed. And you
recollect the short suspension of our intercourse, and the
circumstance which gave rise to it, which you were so good as to
bring to an early explanation, and have set to rights, to the
cordial satisfaction of us all. The nation at length passed
condemnation on the political principles of the federalists, by
refusing to continue Mr. Adams in the Presidency. On the day on
which we learned in Philadelphia the vote of the city of New York,
which it was well known would decide the vote of the State, and
that, again, the vote of the Union, I called on Mr. Adams on some
official business. He was very sensibly affected, and accosted me
with these words: "Well, I understand that you are to beat me
in this contest, and I will only say that I will be as faithful a
subject as any you will have." "Mr. Adams," said I, "this
is no personal contest between you and me. Two systems of principles
on the subject of government divide our fellow citizens into two
parties. With one of these you concur, and I with the other. As we
have been longer on the public stage than most of those now living,
our names happen to be more generally known. One of these parties,
therefore, has put your name at its head, the other mine. Were we
both to die to-day, to-morrow two other names would be in the place
of ours; without any change in the motion of the machinery. Its
motion is from its principle, not from you or myself." "I
believe you are right," said he, "that we are but passive
instruments, and should not suffer this matter to affect our
personal dispositions." But he did not long retain this just
view of the subject. I have always believed that the thousand
calumnies which the federalists, in bitterness of heart, and
mortification at their ejection, daily invented against me, were
carried to him by their busy intriguers, and made some impression.
When the election between Burr and myself was kept in suspense by
the federalists, and they were meditating to place the President of
the Senate at the head of the government, I called on Mr. Adams with
a view to have this desperate measure prevented by his negative. He
grew warm in an instant, and said with a vehemence he had not used
towards me before, "Sir, the event of the election is within
your own power. You have only to say you will do justice to the
public creditors, maintain the navy, and not disturb those holding
offices, and the government will instantly be put into your hands.
We know it is the wish of the people it should be so." "Mr.
Adams," said I, "I know not what part of my conduct, in
either public or private life, can have authorized a doubt of my
fidelity to the public engagements. I say, however, I will not come
into the government by capitulation. I will not enter on it, but in
perfect freedom to follow the dictates of my own judgment." I
had before given the same answer to the same intimation from
Gouverneur Morris. "Then," said he, "things must take
their course." I turned the conversation to something else, and
soon took my leave. It was the first time in our lives we had ever
parted with anything like dissatisfaction. And then followed those
scenes of midnight appointment, which have been condemned by all
men. The last day of his political power, the last hours, and even
beyond the mid-night, were employed in filling all offices and
especially permanent ones, with the bitterest federalists, and
providing for me the alternative, either to execute the government
by my enemies, whose study it would be to thwart and defeat all my
measures, or to incur the odium of such numerous removals from
office, as might bear me down. A little time and reflection effaced
in my mind this temporary dissatisfaction with Mr. Adams, and
restored me to that just estimate of his virtues and passions, which
a long acquaintance had enabled me to fix. |
Benjamin
Rush
15 Jan 1811 |
ADAMS,
SAMUEL / OPINION OF
…A letter from you, my respectable friend,
after three and twenty years of separation, has given me a pleasure
I cannot express. It recalls to my mind the anxious days we then
passed in struggling for the cause of mankind. Your principles have
been tested in the crucible of time, and have come out pure. You
have proved that it was monarchy, and not merely British monarchy,
you opposed. A government by representatives, elected by the people
at short periods, was our object; and our maxim at that day was, "where
annual election ends, tyranny begins;" nor have our departures
from it been sanctioned by the happiness of their effects. A debt of
a hundred millions growing by usurious interest, and an artificial
paper phalanx overruling the agricultural mass of our country, with
other et ceteras, have a portentous aspect.
|
Samuel
Adams
26 Feb 1800 |
AFRICAN
AMERICANS
I am safe in affirming, that the proofs of
genius given by the Indians of North America place them on a level
with whites in the same uncultivated state. The North of Europe
furnishes subjects enough for comparison with them, and for a proof
of their equality. I have seen some thousands myself, and conversed
much with them, and have found in them a masculine, sound
understanding. I have had much information from men who had lived
among them, and whose veracity and good sense were so far known to
me, as to establish a reliance on their information. They have all
agreed in bearing witness in favor of the genius of this people. As
to their bodily strength, their manners rendering it disgraceful to
labor, those muscles employed in labor will be weaker with them,
than with the European laborer; but those which are exerted in the
chase, and those faculties which are employed in the tracing an
enemy or a wild beast, in contriving ambuscades for him, and in
carrying them through their execution, are much stronger than with
us, because they are more exercised. I believe the Indian, then, to
be, in body and mind, equal to the white man. I have supposed the
black man, in his present state, might not be so; but it would be
hazardous to affirm, that, equally cultivated for a few generations,
he would not become so. |
General
Chastellus
7 Jun 1785 |
AFRICAN
AMERICANS / MULATTOS DEFINED BY LAW
You asked me in conversation, what constituted
a mulatto by our law? And I believe I told you four crossings with
the whites. I looked afterwards into our law, and found it to be in
these words: "Every person, other than a Negro, of whose
grandfathers or grandmothers anyone shall have been a Negro, shall
be deemed a mulatto, and so every such person who shall have
one-fourth part or more of Negro blood, shall in like manner be
deemed a mulatto;" L. Virga' 1792, December 17; the case put in
the first member of this paragraph of the law Is exempli gratid.
The latter contains the true canon, which is that one-fourth of
Negro blood, mixed with any portion of white, constitutes the
mulatto. As the issue has one-half of the blood of each parent, and
the blood of each of these may be made up of a variety of fractional
mixtures, the estimate of their compound in some cases may be
intricate, it becomes a mathematical problem of the same class with
those on the mixtures of different liquors or different metals; as
in these, therefore, the algebraical notation is the most convenient
and intelligible. …
…Our canon considers two crosses with the pure white, and a
third with any degree of mixture, however small, as clearing the
issue of the Negro blood. But observe, that this does not
re-establish freedom, which depends on the condition of the mother,
the principle of the civil law, partus sequitur ventrem,
being adopted here. But if emancipated, he becomes a free white
man, and a citizen of the United States to all intents and purposes.
So much for this trifle by way of correction.
|
Francis
C. Gray
4 Mar 1815 |
AFRICANS
/ HISTORY OF
I have received the favor of your letter of
August 17th, and with it the volume you were so kind as to send me
on the "Literature of Negroes." Be assured that no person
living wishes more sincerely than I do, to see a complete refutation
of the doubts I have myself entertained and expressed on the grade
of understanding allotted to them by nature, and to find that in
this respect they are on a par with ourselves. My doubts were the
result of personal observation on the limited sphere of my own
State, where the opportunities for the development of their genius
were not favorable, and those of exercising it still less so. I
expressed them therefore with great hesitation; but whatever be
their degree of talent it is no measure of their rights. Because Sir
Isaac Newton was superior to others in understanding, he was not
therefore lord of the person or property of others. On this subject
they are gaining daily in the opinions of nations, and hopeful
advances are making towards their re-establishment on an equal
footing with the other colors of the human family. I pray you
therefore to accept my thanks for the many instances you have
enabled me to observe of respectable intelligence in that race of
men, which cannot fail to have effect in hastening the day of their
relief. |
Henri
Gregoire
(Bishop and Senator)
25 Feb 1809 |
AGRARIAN
SOCIETIES
It is my principle that the will of the
majority should prevail. If they approve the proposed constitution
in all its parts, I shall concur in it cheerfully, in hopes they
will amend it, whenever they shall find it works wrong. This
reliance cannot deceive us, as long as we remain virtuous; and I
think we shall be so, as long as agriculture is our principal
object, which will be the case, while there remain vacant lands in
any part of America. When we get piled upon one another in large
cities, as in Europe, we shall become corrupt as in Europe, and go
to eating one another as they do there. |
James
Madison
20 Dec 1787 |
AGRICULTURE
/ COTTON
I have no doubt the cotton plant will succeed
in some of the southern parts of France. Whether its culture will be
as advantageous as those they are now engaged in, remains to be
tried. We could, in the United States, make as great a variety of
wines as are made in Europe, not exactly of the same kinds, but
doubtless as good. Yet I have ever observed to my country-men, who
think its introduction important, that a laborer cultivating wheat,
rice, tobacco, or cotton here, will be able with the proceeds, to
purchase double the quantity of the wine he could make. Possibly the
same quantity of land and labor in France employed on the rich
produce of your Southern counties, would purchase double the
quantity of the cotton they would yield there. This however may
prove otherwise on trial, and therefore it is worthy the trial. In
general, it is a truth that if every nation will employ itself in
what it is fittest to produce, a greater quantity will be raised of
the things contributing to human happiness, than if every nation
attempts to raise everything it wants within itself. |
Lasteyrie
15 Jul 1808 |
ALIEN
AND SEDITION LAWS
A wonderful and rapid change is taking place in Pennsylvania,
Jersey; and New York. Congress is daily piled with petitions against
the alien and sedition laws and standing armies. Several parts of
this State are so violent that we fear an insurrection. This will be
brought about by some if they can. It is the only thing we have to
fear. The appearance of an attack of force against the government
would check the present current of the middle States, and rally them
around the government; whereas, if suffered to go on, it will pass
on to a reformation of abuses. The materials now bearing on the
public mind will infallibly restore it to its republican soundness
in the course of the present summer, if the knowledge of facts can
only be disseminated among the people. Under separate cover you will
receive some pamphlets written by George Nichols on the acts of the
last session. These I would wish you to distribute, not to sound men
who have no occasion for them, but to such as have been misled, are
candid and will be open to the conviction of truth, and are of
influence among their neighbors. It is the sick who need medicine,
and not the well. Do not let my name appear in the matter. Perhaps I
shall forward you some other things to be distributed in the same
way. |
Archibald
Stuart
13 Feb 1799 |
AMERICANS
/ SUPERIORITY OF
The European papers have announced, that the
Assembly of Virginia were occupied on the revisal of their code of
laws. This, with some other similar intelligence, has contributed
much to convince the people of Europe, that what the English papers
are constantly publishing of our anarchy, is false; as they are
sensible that such a work is that of a people only, who are in
perfect tranquillity. Our act for freedom of religion is extremely
applauded. The ambassadors and ministers of the several nations of
Europe, resident at this Court, have asked of me copies of it, to
send to their sovereigns, and it is inserted at full length in
several books now in the press; among others, in the new "Encyclopedie."
I think it will produce considerable good even in these countries,
where ignorance, superstition, poverty, and oppression of body and
mind, in every form, are so firmly settled on the mass of the
people, that their redemption from them can never be hoped. If all
the sovereigns of Europe were to set themselves to work, to
emancipate the minds of their subjects from their present ignorance
and prejudices, and that, as zealously as they now endeavor the
contrary, a thousand years would not place them on that high ground,
on which our common people are now setting out. Ours could not have
been so fairly placed under the control of the common sense of the
people, had they not been separated from their parent stock, and
kept from contamination, either from them, or the other people of
the old world, by the intervention of so wide an ocean. To know the
worth of this, one must see the want of it here. I think by far the
most important bill in our whole code, is that for the diffusion of
knowledge among the people. No other sure foundation can be devised,
for the preservation of freedom and happiness. If anybody thinks
that kings, nobles, or priests are good conservators of the public
happiness, send him here. It is the best school in the universe to
cure him of that folly. He will see here, with his own eyes, that
these descriptions of men are an abandoned confederacy against the
happiness of the mass of the people. The omnipotence of their effect
cannot be better proved, than in this country particularly, where,
not-withstanding the finest soil upon earth, the finest climate
under heaven, and a people of the most benevolent, the most gay and
amiable character of which the human form is susceptible; where such
a people, I say, surrounded by so many blessings from nature, are
loaded with misery, by kings, nobles, and priests, and by them
alone. Preach, my dear Sir, a crusade against ignorance; establish
and improve the law for educating the common people. Let our
countrymen know, that the people alone can protect us against these
evils, and that the tax which will be paid for this purpose, is not
more than the thousandth part of what will be paid to kings, priests
and nobles, who will rise up among us if we leave the people in
ignorance. The people of England, I think, are less oppressed than
here [France]. But it needs but half an eye to see, when among them,
that the foundation is laid in their dispositions for the
establishment of a despotism. Nobility, wealth, and pomp are the
objects of their admiration. They are by no means the free-minded
people we suppose them in America. Their learned men, too, are few
in number, and are less learned, and infinitely less emancipated
from prejudice, than those of this country. |
George
Wythe
13 Aug 1786 |
ARCHITECTURE
The bill for the federal buildings passed the
Representatives here by 42 to 10, but it was rejected yesterday by 9
to6 in the Senate, or to speak more exactly, it was postponed till
the next session. In the meantime, spirited proceedings at
Georgetown will probably, under the continuance of your patronage,
prevent the revival of the bill. I received last night from Major
L'Enfant a request to furnish him any plans of towns I could, for
his examination. I accordingly send him, by this post, plans of
Frankfort-on-the-Mayne, Carlsruhe, Amsterdam, Strasburg, Paris,
Orleans, Bordeaux, Lyons, Montpelier, Marseilles, Turin, and Milan,
on large and accurate scales, which I procured while in those towns
respectively. They are n6ne of them, however, comparable to the old
Babylon, revived in Philadelphia, and exemplified. While in Europe,
I selected about a dozen or two of the handsomest fronts of private
buildings, of which I have the plates. Perhaps it might decide the
taste of the new town, were these to be engraved here, and
distributed gratis among the inhabitants of Georgetown. The expense
would be trifling. |
George
Washington
10 Apr 1791 |
ARISTOCRACY
/ OF TALENT
I agree with you that there is a natural
aristocracy among men. The grounds of this are virtue and talents.
Formerly, bodily powers gave place among the aristoi. But since the
invention of gunpowder has armed the weak as well as the strong with
missile death, bodily strength, like beauty, good humor, politeness
and other accomplishments, has become but an auxiliary ground of
distinction. There is also an artificial aristocracy, founded on
wealth and birth, without either virtue or talents; for with these
it would belong to the first class. The natural aristocracy I
consider as the most precious gift of nature, for the instruction,
the trusts, and government of society. And indeed, it would have
been inconsistent in creation to have formed man for the social
state, and not to have provided virtue and wisdom enough to manage
the concerns of the society. May we not even say, that that form of
government is the best, which provides the most effectually for a
pure selection of these natural aristoi into the offices of
government?
The artificial aristocracy is a mischievous ingredient in
government, and provision should be made to prevent its ascendency.
On the question, what is the best provision, you and I differ; but
we differ as rational friends, using the free exercise of our own
reason, and mutually indulging its errors. You think it best to put
the pseudo-aristoi into a separate chamber of legislation, where
they may be hindered from doing mischief by their co-ordinate
branches, and where, also, they may be a protection to wealth
against the agrarian and plundering enterprises of the majority of
the people; I think that to give them power in order to prevent them
from doing mischief, is arming them for it, and increasing instead
of remedying the evil. For if the co-ordinate branches can. arrest
their action, so may they that of the coordinates. Mischief may be
done negatively as well as positively. Of this, a cabal in the
Senate of the. United States has furnished many proofs. Nor do I
believe them necessary to protect the wealthy; because enough of
these will find their way into every branch of the legislation, to
protect themselves. From fifteen to. twenty legislatures of our own,
in action for thirty years past, have proved that no fears of an
equalization of property are to be apprehended from them. I think
the best remedy is exactly that provided by all our constitutions,
to leave to the citizens the free election and separation of the
aristoi from the pseudo-aristoi, of the wheat from the chaff. In
general they will elect the really good and wise. In some instances,
wealth may corrupt, and birth blind them; but not in sufficient
degree to endanger the society.
It is probable that our difference of opinion may, in some measure,
be produced by a difference of character in those among whom we
live. From what I have seen of Massachusetts and Connecticut myself,
and still more from what I have heard, and the character given of
the former by your-self, who know them so much better, there seems
to be in those two States a traditionary reverence for certain
families, which has rendered the offices of the government nearly
hereditary in those families. I presume that from an early period of
your history, members of those families happening to possess virtue
and talents, have honestly exercised them for the good of the
people, and by their services have endeared their names to them.
In Virginia . . . laws, drawn by myself, laid the axe to the foot
of pseudo-aristocracy. And had another which I prepared been adopted
by the legislature, our work would have been complete. It was a bill
for the more general diffusion of learning. This proposed to divide
every county into wards of five or six miles square, like your
townships; to establish in each ward a free school for reading,
writing and common arithmetic; to provide for the annual selection
of the best subjects from these schools, who might receive, at the
public expense, a higher degree of education at a district school;
and from these district schools to select a certain number of the
most promising subjects, to be completed at an university, where all
the useful sciences should be taughit. Worth and genius would thus
have been sought out from every condition of life, and completely
prepared by education for defeating the competition of wealth and
birth for public trusts.
With respect to aristocracy, we should further consider, that
before the establishment of the American States, nothing was known
to history but the man of the old world, crowded within limits
either small or overcharged, and steeped in the vices which that
situation generates. A government adapted to such men would be one
thing; but a very different me, that for the man of these States.
But even in Europe a change has sensibly taken place in the mind of
man. Science had liberated the ideas of those who read and reflect,
and the American example had kindled feelings of right in the
people. An insurrection has consequently begun, of science, talents,
and courage, against rank and birth, which have fallen into
contempt. It has failed in its first effort, because the mobs of the
cities, the instrument used for its accomplishment, debased by
ignorance, poverty, and vice, could not be restrained to rational
action. But the world will recover from the panic of this first
catastrophe. Science is progressive, and talents and enterprise on
the alert. Resort may be had to the people of the country, a more
governable power from their principles and subordination; and rank,
and birth, and tinsel-aristocracy will finally shrink into
insignificance, even there.
I have thus stated my opinion on a point on which we differ, not
with a view to controversy, for we are both too old to change
opinions which are the result of a long life of inquiry and
reflection; but on the suggestions of a former letter of yours, that
we ought not to die before we have explained ourselves to each
other. |
John
Adams
28 Oct 1813 |
ARTICLES
OF CONFEDERATION / EDUCATION
We thought that … a systematical plan of
general education should be proposed, and I was requested to
undertake it. I accordingly prepared three bills for the Revisal,
proposing three distinct grades of education, reaching all classes.
1st. Elementary schools, for all children generally, rich and poor.
2d. Colleges, for a middle degree of instruction, calculated for the
common purposes of life, and such as would be desirable for all who
were in easy circumstances. And, 3d, an ultimate grade for teaching
the sciences generally, and in their highest degree. The first bill
proposed to lay off every county into Hundreds, or Wards, of a
proper size and population for a school, in which reading, writing,
and common arithmetic should be taught; and that the whole State
should be divided into twenty-four districts, in each of which
should be a school for classical learning, grammar, geography, and
the higher branches of numerical arithmetic. The second bill
proposed to amend the constitution of William and Mary college, to
enlarge its sphere of science, and to make it in fact a University.
The third was for the establishment of a library. These bills were
not acted on until the same year, '96, and then only so much of the
first as provided for elementary schools. …And in the
Elementary bill, they inserted a provision which completely defeated
it; for they left it to the court of each county to determine for
itself, when this act should be carried into execution, within their
county. One provision of the bill was, that the expenses of these
schools should be borne by the inhabitants of the county, every one
in proportion to his general tax rate. This would throw on wealth
the education of the poor; and the justices, being generally of the
more wealthy class, were unwilling to incur that burden, and I
believe it was not suffered to commence in a single county. I shall
recur again to this subject, towards the close of my story, if I
should have life and resolution enough to reach that term; for I am
already tired of talking about myself. |
Notes
for an Autobiography
6 Jan 1821 |
ARTICLES
OF CONFEDERATION / PROPERTY, SLAVES AND TAXATION
On Friday, July 12, the committee appointed to
draw the articles of Confederation reported them, and, on the 22d,
the House resolved themselves to a committee to take them into
consideration. On the 30th and 31st of that month, and 1st of the
ensuing, those articles were debated which determined the
proportion, or quota, of money which each state should furnish to
the common treasury, and the manner of voting in Congress.
Mr. Chase moved that the quotas should be fixed, not by the number
of inhabitants of every condition, but by that of the "white
inhabitants." He admitted that taxation should be always in
proportion to property, that this was, in theory, the true rule; but
that, from a variety of difficulties, it was a rule which could
never be adopted in practice. The value of the property in every
State, could never be estimated justly and equally. Some other
measure for the wealth of the State must therefore be devised, some
standard referred to, which would be more simple. He considered the
number of inhabitants as a tolerably good criterion of property, and
that this might always be obtained. He therefore thought it the best
mode which we could adopt, with one exception only: he observed that
negroes are property, and as such, cannot be distinguished from the
lands or personalities held in those States where there are few
slaves; that the surplus of profit which a Northern farmer is able
to lay by, he invests in cattle, horses, &c., whereas a Southern
farmer lays out the same surplus in slaves. There is no more reason,
therefore, for taxing the Southern States on the farmer's head, and
on his slave's head, than the Northern ones on their farmer's heads
and the heads of their cattle; that the method proposed would,
therefore, tax the Southern States according to their numbers and
their wealth conjunctly, while the Northern would be taxed on
numbers only: that negroes, in fact, should not be considered as
members of the State, more than cattle, and that they have no more
interest in it.
Mr. John Adams observed, that the numbers of people were taken by
this article, as an index of the wealth of the State, and not as
subjects of taxation; that, as to this matter, it was of no
consequence by what name you called your people, whether by that of
freemen or of slaves; that in some countries the laboring poor were
called freemen, in others they were called slaves; but that the
difference as to the state was imaginary only. … That the
condition of the laboring poor in most countries, that of the
fishermen particularly of the Northern States, is as abject as that
of slaves. It is the number of laborers which produces the surplus
for taxation, and numbers, therefore, indiscriminately, are the fair
index of wealth; that it is the use of the word "property"
here, and its application to some of the people of the State, which
produces the fallacy. How does the Southern farmer procure slaves?
Either by importation or by purchase from his neighbor. If he
imports a slave, he adds one to the number of laborers in his
country, and proportionably to its profits and abilities to pay
taxes; if he buys from his neighbor, it is only a transfer of a
laborer from one farm to another, which does not change the annual
produce of the State, and therefore, should not change its tax. …
Mr. Harrison proposed, as a compromise, that two slaves should he
counted as one freeman. He affirmed that slaves did not do as much
work as freemen, and doubted if two effected more than one; that
this was proved by the price of labor; the hire of a laborer in the
Southern colonies being from £8 to £12, while in the
Northern it was generally £24.
Mr. Wilson said, that if this amendment should take place, the
Southern colonies would have all the benefit of slaves, whilst the
Northern ones would bear the burthen: that slaves increase the
profits of a State, which the Southern States mean to take to
themselves; that they also increase the burthen of defence, which
would of course fall so much the heavier on the Northern: that
slaves occupy the places of freemen, and eat their food. Dismiss
your slaves, and freemen will take their places. It is our duty to
lay every discouragement on the importation of slaves; but this
amendment would give the jus trium liberorum to him who
would import slaves: that other kinds of property were pretty
equally distributed through all the colonies: there were as many
cattle, horses and sheep, in the North as the South, and South as
the North; but not so as to slaves: that experience has shown that
those colonies have been always able to pay most, which have the
most inhabitants, whether they be black or white; and the practice
of the Southern colonies has always been to make every farmer pay
poll taxes upon all his laborers, whether they be black or white. He
acknowledges, indeed, that freemen work the most; but they consume
the most also. They do not produce a greater surplus for taxation.
The slave is neither fed nor clothed so expensively as a freeman.
Again, white women are exempted from labor generally, but negro
women are not. In this, then, the Southern States have an advantage
as the article now stands. …
I moved and presented a bill for the revision of the laws, which
was passed on the 24th of October; and on the 5th of November, Mr.
Pendleton, Mr. Wythe, George Mason, Thomas L. Lee, and myself, were
appointed a committee to execute the work. We agreed to meet at
Fredericksburg to settle the plan of operation, and to distribute
the work. We met there accordingly, on the 13th of January, 1777.
I proposed to abolish the law of primogeniture, and to make real
estate descendible in parcenary to the next of kin, as personal
property is, by the statute of distribution. Mr. Pendleton wished to
preserve the right of primogeniture, but seeing at once that that
could not prevail, he proposed we should adopt the Hebrew principle,
and give a double portion to the elder son. I observed, that if the
eldest son could eat twice as much, or do double work, it might be a
natural evidence of his right to a double portion; but being on a
par in his powers and wants, with his brothers and sisters, he
should be on a par also in the partition of the patrimony; and such
was the decision of the other members. |
Notes
for an Autobiography
6 Jan 1821 |
ARTICLES
OF CONFEDERATION / RELIGIOUS FREEDOM
The bill for establishing religious freedom,
the principles of which had, to a certain degree, been enacted
before, I had drawn in all the latitude of reason and right. It
still met with opposition; but, with some mutilations in the
preamble, it was finally passed; and a singular proposition proved
that its protection of opinion was meant to be universal. Where the
preamble declares, that coercion is a departure from the plan of the
holy author of our religion, an amendment was proposed, by inserting
the word "Jesus Christ," so that it should read, "a
departure from the plan of Jesus Christ, the holy author of our
religion"; the insertion was rejected by a great majority, in
proof that they meant to comprehend, within the mantle of its
protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mahometan,
the Hindoo, and Infidel of every denomination. |
Notes
for an Autobiography
6 Jan 1821 |
ARTICLES
OF INCORPORATION / SLAVERY
The bill on the subject of slaves, was a mere
digest of the existing laws respecting them, without any intimation
of a plan for a future and general emancipation. It was thought
better that this should be kept back, and attempted only by way of
amendment, whenever the bill should be brought on. The principles of
the amendment, however, were agreed on, that is to say, the freedom
of all born after a certain day, and deportation at a proper age.
But it was found that the public mind would not yet bear the
proposition, nor will it bear it even at this day. Yet the day is
not distant when it must bear and adopt it, or worse will follow.
Nothing is more certainly written in the book of fate, than that
these people are to be free . |
Notes
for an Autobiography
6 Jan 1821 |
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