BANNEKER,
BENJAMIN
I am happy to be able to inform you that we
have now in the United States a Negro, the son of a black man born
in Africa, and of a black woman born in the United States, who is a
very respectable mathematician. I procured him to be employed under
one of our chief directors in laying out the new federal city on the
Potomac, and in the intervals of his leisure, while on that work, he
made an almanac for the next year, which he sent me in his own
handwriting, and which I enclose to you. I have seen very elegant
solutions of geometrical problems by him. Add to this that he is a
very worthy and respectable member of society. He is a free man. I
shall be delighted to see these instances of moral eminence so
multiplied as to prove that the want of talents observed in them is
merely the effect of their degraded condition, and not proceeding
from any difference in the structure of the parts on which intellect
depends. |
Marie
Jean Antoine-Nicolas
(Marquis de Condorcet)
30 Aug 1791 |
BOLINGBROKE
/ OPINION OF
You ask my opinion of Lord Bolingbroke and
Thomas Paine. They were alike in making bitter enemies of the
priests and pharisees of their day. Both were honest men; both
advocates for human liberty. Paine wrote for a country which
permitted him to push his reasoning to whatever length it would go.
Lord Bolingbroke in one restrained by a constitution, and by public
opinion. He was called indeed a tory; but his writings prove him a
stronger advocate for liberty than any of his countrymen, the Whigs
of the present day. Irritated by his exile, he committed one act
unworthy of him, in connecting himself momentarily with a prince
rejected by his country. But he redeemed that single act by his
establishment of the principles which proved it to be wrong. These
two persons differed remarkably in the style of their writing, each
leaving a model of what is most perfect in both extremes of the
simple and the sublime. No writer has exceeded Paine in ease and
familiarity of style, in perspicuity of expression, happiness of
elucidation, and in simple and unassuming language. In this he may
be compared with Doctor Franklin; and indeed his Common Sense
was, for a while, believed to have been written by Doctor Franklin,
and published under the borrowed name of Paine, who had come over
with him from England. Lord Bolingbroke's, on the other hand, is a
style of the highest order. The lofty, rhythmical, full-flowing
eloquence of Cicero. Periods of just measure, their members
proportioned, their close full and round. His conceptions, too, are
bold and strong, his diction copious, polished and commanding as his
subject. His writings are certainly the finest samples in the
English language, of the eloquence proper for the Senate. His
political tracts are safe reading for the most timid religionist,
his philosophical, for those who are not afraid to trust their
reason with discussions of right and wrong.
You have asked my opinion of these persons, and, to you, I
have given it freely. But, remember, that I am old, that I wish not
to make new enemies, nor to give offense to those who would consider
a difference of opinion as sufficient ground for unfriendly
dispositions. |
Francis
Eppes
19 Jan 1821 |
BONAPARTE,
NAPOLEON / ASSESSMENT OF
Should it be really true that Bonaparte has
usurped the government with an intention of making it a free one,
whatever his talents may be for war, we have no proof that he is
skilled in forming governments friendly to the people. Wherever he
has meddled we have seen nothing but fragments of the old Roman
government stuck into materials with which they can form no
cohesion: we see the bigotry of an Italian to the ancient splendor
of his country, but nothing which bespeaks a luminous view of the
organization of rational government. |
T.
M. Randolph
2 Feb 1800 |
BONAPARTE,
NAPOLEON / ASSESSMENT OF
I have just finished reading O'Meara's
Bonaparte. It places him in a higher scale of understanding than I
had allotted him. I had thought him the greatest of all military
captains, but an indifferent statesman, and misled by unworthy
passions. The flashes, however, which escaped from him in these
conversations with O'Meara, prove a mind of great expansion,
although not of distinct development and reasoning. He seizes
results with rapidity and penetration, but never explains logically
the process of reasoning by which he arrives at them. This book,
too, makes us forget his atrocities for a moment, in commiseration
of his sufferings. I will not say that the authorities of the world,
charged with the care of their country and people, had not a right
to confine him for life, as a lion or tiger, on the principle of
self-preservation. There was no safety to nations while he was
permitted to roam at large. But the putting him to death in cold
blood, by lingering tortures of mind, by vexations, insults and
deprivations, was a degree of inhumanity to which the poisonings and
assassinations of the school of Borgia, and the den of Marat never
attained. The book proves, also, that nature had denied him the
moral sense, the first excellence of well-organized man. If he could
seriously and repeatedly affirm that he had raised himself to power
without ever having committed a crime, it proves that he wanted
totally the sense of right and wrong. If he could consider the
millions of human lives which he had destroyed, or caused to be
destroyed, the desolations of countries by plunderings, burnings,
and famine, the dethronements of lawful rulers of the world without
the consent of their constituents, to place his brothers and sisters
on their thrones, the cutting up of established societies of men and
jumbling them discordantly together again at his caprice, the
demolition of the fairest hopes of mankind for the recovery of their
rights and amelioration of their condition, and all the numberless
train of his other enormities; the man, I say, who could consider
all these as no crimes, must have been a moral monster, against whom
every hand should have been lifted to slay him. |
John
Adams
25 Feb 1823 |
BONAPARTE,
NAPOLEON / DESTROYER OF CIVILIZATIONS
Robespierre met the fate, and his memory the
execration, he so justly merited. The rich were his victims, and
perished by thousands. It is by millions that Bonaparte destroys the
poor, and he is eulogized and deified by the syncophants even of
science. These merit more than the mere oblivion to which they will
be consigned; and the day will come when a just posterity will give
to their hero the only preeminence he has earned, that of having
been the greatest of the destroyers of the human race. What year of
his military life has not consigned a million of human beings to
death, to poverty and wretchedness! What field in Europe may not
raise a monument of the murders, the burnings, the desolations, the
famines and miseries it has witnessed from him! And all this to
acquire a reputation which Cartouche attained with less injury to
mankind, of being fearless of God or man. |
La
Baronne De Stael-Holstein
(Madame)
24 May 1813 |
BONAPARTE,
NAPOLEON / DESTROYER OF CIVILIZATIONS
That Bonaparte is an unprincipled tyrant, who
is deluging the Continent of Europe with blood, there is not a human
being, not even the wife of his bosom, who does not see; nor can
there, I think, be a doubt as to the line we ought to wish drawn
between his successes and those of Alexander. Surely none of us wish
to see Bonaparte conquer Russia, and lay thus at his feet the whole
continent of Europe. This done, England w6uld be but a breakfast;
and, although I am free from the visionary fears which the votaries
of England have affected to entertain, because I believe he cannot
effect the conquest of Europe; yet put all Europe into his hands,
and he might spare such a force, to be sent in British ships, as I
would as leave not have to encounter, when I see how much trouble a
handful of British soldiers in Canada has given us. No. It cannot be
to our interest that all Europe should be reduced to a single
monarchy.
But is our particular interest to make us insensible to all
sentiments of morality? Is it then become criminal, the moral wish
that the torrents of blood this man is shedding in Europe, the
sufferings of so many human beings, good as ourselves, on whose
necks he is trampling, the burnings of ancient cities, devastations
of great countries, the destruction of law and order, and
demoralization of the world, should be arrested, even if it should
place our peace a little further distant? No. You and I cannot
differ in wishing that Russia, and Sweden, and Denmark, and Germany,
and Spain, and Portugal, and Italy, and even England, may retain
their independence. |
Thomas
Leiper
1 Jan 1814 |
BONAPARTE,
NAPOLEON / ENEMY OF REPUBLICANISM
I fear our friends on the other side of the
water, laboring in the same cause, have yet a great deal of crime
and misery to wade through. My confidence has been placed in the
head, not in the heart of Bonaparte. I hoped he would calculate
truly the difference between the fame of a Washington and a
Cromwell. Whatever his views may be, he has at least transferred the
destinies of the republic from the civil to the military arm. Some
will use this as a lesson against the practicability of republican
government. I read it as a lesson against the danger of standing
armies. Adieu, my ever respected and venerable friend. May that kind
overruling providence which has so long spared you to our country,
still foster your remaining years with whatever may make them
comfortable to yourself and soothing to your friends. |
Samuel
Adams
26 Feb 1800 |
BONAPARTE,
NAPOLEON / ENEMY OF REPUBLICANISM
I am in general extremely unwilling to be
carried into the newspapers, no matter what the subject. …With
respect, however, to so much of my letter of January 9th as relates
to manufactures, I have less repugnance, because there is perhaps a
degree of duty to avow a change of opinion called for by a change of
circumstances, and especially on a point now become peculiarly
interesting.
What relates to Bonaparte stands on different
ground. …I have grieved to see even good republicans so
infatuated as to this man, as to consider his downfall as calamitous
to the cause of liberty. In their indignation against England which
is just, they seem to consider all her enemies as our friends, when
it is well known there was not a being on earth who bore us so
deadly a hatred. In fact, he saw nothing in this world but himself,
and looked on the people under him as his cattle, beasts for burden
and slaughter. Promises cost him nothing when they could serve his
purpose. On his return from Elba, what did he not promise? But those
who had credited them a little, soon saw their total insignificance,
and, satisfied they could not fall under worse hands, refused every
effort after the defeat of Waterloo. Their present sufferings will
have a term; his iron despotism would have had none. France has now
a family of fools at its head, from whom, whenever it can shake off
its foreign riders, it will extort a free Constitution, or dismount
them and establish some other on the solid basis of national right.
|
Benjamin
Austin
9 Feb 1816 |
BONAPARTE,
NAPOLEON / EXILED
Shall you and I last to see the course the
seven-fold wonders of the time will take? The Attila of the age
dethroned, the ruthless destroyer of ten millions of the human race,
whose thirst for blood appeared unquenchable, the great oppressor of
the rights and liberties of the world, shut up within the circle of
a little island of the Mediterranean, and dwindled to the condition
of an humble and degraded pensioner on the bounty of those he had
most injured. How miserably, how meanly, has he closed his inflated
career! What a sample of the bathos will his history present! He
should have perished on the swords of his enemies, under the walls
of Paris. …
But Bonaparte was a lion in the field only. In civil life, a
cold-blooded, calculating, unprincipled usurper, without a virtue;
no statesman, knowing nothing of commerce, political economy, or
civil government, and supplying ignorance by bold presumption. I had
supposed him a great man until his entrance into the Assembly des
cinq cens, eighteen Brumaire (an 8). From that date, however, I
set him down as a great scoundrel only. To the wonders of his rise
and fall, we may add that of a Czar of Muscovy, dictating, in Paris,
laws and limits to all the successors of the Czsars, and holding
even the balance in which the fortunes of this new world are
suspended. |
John
Adams
5 Jul 1814 |
BONAPARTE,
NAPOLEON / RETURN FROM EXILE
Europe has been a second time turned
topsy-turvy since we were together; and so many things have happened
there that I have lost my compass. As far as we can judge from
appearances, Bonaparte, from being mere military usurper, seems to
have become the choice of his nation; and the allies in their turn,
the usurpers and spoliators of the European world. The right of
nations to self-government being my polar star, my partialities are
steered by it, without asking whether it is a Bonaparte or an
Alexander towards whom the helm is directed. Believing that England
has enough on her hands without us, and therefore has by this time
settled the question of impressment with Mr. Adams, I look on this
new conflict of the European gladiators, as from the higher forms of
the amphitheatre, wondering that man, like the wild beasts of the
forest, should permit himself to be led by his keeper into the
arena, the spectacle and sport of the lookers on. Nor do I see the
issue of this tragedy with the sanguine hopes of our friend M.
Dupont. I fear, from the experience of the last twenty-five years
that morals do not of necessity advance hand in hand with the
sciences. |
Correa
de Serra
28 Jun 1815 |
BONAPARTE,
NAPOLEON / AND MEXICO
I suppose Napoleon will get possession of
Spain; but her colonies will deliver themselves to any member of the
Bourbon family. Perhaps Mexico will choose its sovereign within
itself. He will find them much more difficult to subdue than Austria
or Prussia; because an enemy (even in peace an enemy) possesses the
element over which he is to pass to get at them; and a more powerful
enemy (climate) will soon mow down his armies after arrival. This
will be, without any doubt, the most difficult enterprise the
emperor has ever undertaken. He may subdue the small colonies; he
never can the old and strong; and the former will break off from him
the first war he has again with a naval power. |
John
Armstrong
(General)
5 Mar 1809 |
BRITAIN
/ CONDITIONS
This is a village of about 15,000 inhabitants
when the court is not here, and 20,000 when they are, occupying a
valley through which runs a brook and on each side of it a ridge of
small mountains, most of which are naked rock. The King comes here,
in the fall always, to hunt. His court attend him, as do also the
foreign diplomatic corps; but as this is not indispensably required
and my finances do not admit the expense of a continued residence
here, I propose to come occasionally to attend the King's levees,
returning again to Paris, distant forty miles. This being the first
trip, I set out yesterday morning to take a view of the place. For
this purpose I shaped my course towards the highest of the mountains
in sight, to the top of which was about a league. As soon as I had
got clear of the town I fell in with a poor woman walking at the
same rate with myself and going the same course. Wishing to know the
condition of the laboring poor I entered into conversation with her,
which I began by enquiries for the path which would lead me into the
mountain: and thence proceeded to enquiries into her vocation,
condition and circumstances. She told me she was a day laborer at 8
sous or 4d. sterling the day: that she had two children to maintain,
and to pay a rent of 30 livres for her house (which would consume
the hire of 75 days), that often she could get no employment and of
course was without bread. As we had walked together near a mile and
she had so far served me as a guide, I gave her, on parting, 24
sous. She burst into tears of a gratitude which I could perceive was
unfeigned because she was unable to utter a word. She had probably
never before received so great an aid. This little attendrissement,
with the solitude of my w4k, led me into a train of reflections on
that unequal division of property which occasions the numberless
instances of wretchedness which I had observed in this country and
is to be observed all over Europe. The property of this country is
absolutely concentrated in a very few hands, having revenues of from
half a million of guineas a year downwards. These employ the flower
of the country as servants, some of them having as many as 200
domestics, not laboring. They employ also a great number of
manufacturers and tradesmen, and lastly the class of laboring
husbandmen. But after all there comes the most numerous of all
classes, that is, the poor who cannot find work. I asked myself what
could be the reason so many should he permitted to beg who arc
willing to work, in a country where there is a very considerable
proportion of uncultivated lands? These lands are undisturbed only
for the sake of game. It should seem then that it must be because of
the enormous wealth of the proprietors which places them above
attention to the increase of their revenues by permitting these
lands to be labored. I am conscious that an equal division of
property is impracticable, but the consequences of this enormous
inequality producing so much misery to the bulk of mankind,
legislators cannot invent too many devices for subdividing property,
only taking care to let their subdivisions go hand in hand with the
natural affections of the human mind. The descent of property of
every kind therefore to all the children, or to all the brothers and
sisters, or other relations in equal degree, is a politic measure
and a practicable one. Another means of silently lessening the
inequality of property is to exempt all from taxation below a
certain point, and to tax the higher portions or property in
geometrical progression as they rise. Whenever there are in any
country uncultivated lands and unemployed poor, it is clear that the
laws of property have been so far extended as to violate natural
right. The earth is given as a common stock for man to labor and
live on. If for the encouragement of industry we allow it to be
appropriated, we must take care that other employment be provided to
those excluded from the appropriation. If we do not, the fundamental
right to labor the earth returns to the unemployed. It is too soon
yet in our country to say that every man who cannot find employment,
but who can find uncultivated land, shall be at liberty to cultivate
it, paying a moderate rent. But it is not too soon to provide by
every possible means that as few as possible shall be without a
little portion of land. The small landholders are the most precious
part of a state. |
James
Madison
28 Oct 1785 |
BRITAIN
/ CONDITIONS IN
A comparison of the conditions of Great
Britain and the United States, which is the subject of your letter
of August 17th, would be an interesting theme indeed. …The
population of England is composed of three descriptions of persons
(for those of minor note are too inconsiderable to affect a general
estimate). These are, 1. The aristocracy, comprehending the
nobility, the wealthy commoners, the high grades of priesthood, and
the officers of government. 2. The laboring class. 3. The
eleemosynary class, or paupers, who are about one-fifth of the
whole. The aristocracy, which have the laws and government in their
hands, have so managed them as to reduce the third description below
the means of supporting life, even by labor; and to force the
second, whether employed in agriculture or the arts, to the maximum
of labor which the construction of the human body can endure, and to
the minimum of food, and of the meanest kind, which will preserve it
in life, and in strength sufficient to perform its functions. To
obtain food enough, and clothing, not only their whole strength must
be unremittingly exerted, but the utmost dexterity also which they
can acquire; and those of great dexterity only can keep their
ground, while those of less must sink into the class of paupers. Nor
is it manual dexterity alone, but the acutest resources of the mind
also which are impressed into this struggle for life; and such as
have means a little above the rest, as the master-workmen, for
instance, must strengthen themselves by acquiring as much of the
philosophy of their trade as will enable them to compete with their
rivals, and keep themselves above ground. Hence the industry and
manual dexterity of their journeymen and day-laborers, and the
science of their master-workmen, keep them in the foremost ranks of
competition with those of other nations; and the less dexterous
individuals, falling into the eleemosynary ranks, furnish materials
for armies and navies to defend their country, exercise piracy on
the ocean, and carry conflagration, plunder and devastation, on the
shores of all those who endeavor to withstand their aggressions. A
society thus constituted possesses certainly the means of defence.
But what does it defend? The pauperism of the lowest class, the
abject oppression of the laboring, and the luxury, the riot, the
domination and the vicious happiness of the aristocracy. In their
hands, the paupers are used as tools to maintain their own
wretchedness, and to keep down the laboring portion by shooting them
whenever the desperation produced by the cravings of their stomachs
drives them into riots. Such is the happiness of scientific England;
… |
Thomas
Cooper
10 Sep 1814 |
BRITAIN
/ CONSTITUTION OF
I am much indebted for your kind letter of
February the 29th, and for your valuable volume on the English
constitution. I have read this with pleasure and much approbation,
and think it has deduced the constitution of the English nation from
its rightful root, the Anglo-Saxon. It is really wonderful, that so
many able and learned men should have failed in their attempts to
define it with correctness. No wonder, then, that Paine, who thought
more than he read, should have credited the great authorities who
have declared, that the will of parliament is the constitution of
England. So Marbois, before the French Revolution, observed to me,
that the Almanac Royal was the constitution of France. Your
derivation of it from the Anglo-Saxons, seems to be made on
legitimate principles. …And although this constitution was
violated and set at naught by Norman force, yet force cannot change
right. …It has ever appeared to me, that the difference between
the Whig and the Tory of England is, that the Whig deduces his
rights from the Anglo-Saxon source, and the Tory from the Norman.
And Hume, the great apostle of Toryism, says, in so many words, note
AA to chapter 42, that, in the reign of the Stuarts, "it was
the people who encroached upon the sovereign, not the sovereign who
attempted, as is pretended, to usurp upon the people." This
supposes the Norman usurpations to be rights in his successors. And
again, C 159, "the commons established a principle, which is
noble in itself, and seems specious, but is belied by all history
and experience, that the people are the origin of all just
power." And where else will this degenerate son of science,
this traitor to his fellow men, find the origin of just
powers, if not in the majority of the society? Will it be in the
minority? Or in an individual of that minority?
Our revolution commenced on more favorable ground. It presented us
an album on which we were free to write what we pleased. We had no
occasion to search into musty records, to hunt up royal parchments,
or to investigate the laws and institutions of a semi-barbarous
ancestry. We appealed to those of nature, and found them engraved on
our hearts .
br> We have not yet so far perfected our constitutions as to
venture to make them unchangeable. But still, in their present
state, we consider them not otherwise changeable than by the
authority of the people, on a special election of representatives
for that purpose expressly: they are until then the lex legum.
But can they be made unchangeable? Can one generation bind another,
and all others, in succession forever? I think not. The Creator has
made the earth for the living, not the dead. Rights and powers can
only belong to persons, not to things, not to mere matter, unendowed
with will. The dead are not even things. The particles of matter
which composed their bodies, make part now of the bodies of other
animals, vegetables, or minerals, of a thousand forms. To what then
are attached the rights and powers they held while in the form of
men? A generation may bind itself as long as its majority continues
in life; when that has disappeared, another majority is in place,
holds all the rights and powers their predecessors once held, and
may change their laws and institutions to suit themselves. Nothing
then is unchangeable but the inherent and unalienable rights of man.
|
John
Cartwright
5 Jun 1824 |
BRITAIN
/ GOVERNMENT / POVERTY RELIEF
I never knew an instance of the English
parliament's undertaking to relieve the poor, by a distribution of
bread in time of scarcity. In fact, the English commerce is so
extensive and so active, that though bread may be a little more or
less plenty, there can never be an absolute failure. This island is
so narrow, that corn can be readily carried from the seaports to its
interior parts. But were an absolute want to happen, and were the
parliament to undertake a distribution of corn, I think, that
according to the principles of their government, they would only
vote a sum of money, and address the King to employ it for the best.
The business is, in its nature, executive, and would require too
great a variety of detail to be managed by an act of parliament.
However, I repeat it, that I never heard or read of an instance of
the parliament's interfering to give bread. |
Marquis
de Lafayette
12 Jun 1789 |
BRITAIN
/ IMPRESSMENT OF U.S. SEAMEN
I am in hopes you will have been able to enter
into proper arrangements with the British minister for the
protection of our seamen from impressments, before the preparations
for war shall have produced inconvenience to them. While he regards
so minutely the inconveniences to themselves which may result from a
due regulation of this practice, it is just he should regard our
inconveniences also, from the want of it. His observations in your
letter imply merely, that if they should abstain from injuring us,
it might be attended with inconvenience to themselves. |
Thomas
Pinckney
16 Mar 1793 |
BRITAIN
/ REPORTS BY THOMAS PAINE
It is true that I received, very long ago,
your favors of September the 9th and 15th, and that I have been in
daily intention of answering them, fully and confidentially; but you
know, such a correspondence between you and me cannot pass through
the post, nor even by the couriers of ambassadors. The French packet
boats being discontinued, I am now obliged to watch opportunities by
Americans going to London, to write my letters to America. Hence it
has happened, that these, the sole opportunities by which I can
write to you without fear, have been lost, by the multitude of
American letters I had to write. I now determine, without foreseeing
any such conveyance, to begin my letter to you, so that when a
conveyance occurs, I shall only have to add recent occurrences.
Notwithstanding the interval of my answer which has taken place, I
must beg a continuance of your correspondence; because I have great
confidence in your communications, and since Mr. Adams' departure, I
am in need of authentic information from that country. |
Thomas
Paine
23 Dec 1788 |
BRITAIN
/ POLICIES TOWARD COLONIALS
I think it must be evident to yourself, that
the Ministry have been deceived by their officers on this side of
the water, who (for what purpose I cannot tell) have constantly
represented the American opposition as that of a small faction, in
which the body of the people took little part This, you can inform
them, of your own knowledge, is untrue. They have taken it into
their heads, too, that we are cowards, and shall surrender at
discretion to an armed force. The past and future operations of the
war must confirm or undeceive them on that head. I wish they were
thoroughly and minutely acquainted with every circumstance relative
to America, as it exists in truth. I am persuaded, this would go far
towards disposing them to reconciliation. Even those in Parliament
who are called friends to America, seem to know nothing of our real
determinations. I observe, they pronounced in the last Parliament,
that the Congress of 1774 did not mean to insist rigorously on the
terms they held out, but kept something in reserve, to give up; and,
in fact, that they would give up everything but the article of
taxation. Now, the truth is far from this, as I can affirm; and put
my honor to the assertion. Their continuance in this error may,
perhaps, produce very ill consequences. The Congress stated the
lowest terms they thought possible to be accepted, in order to
convince the world they were not unreasonable. They gave up the
monopoly and regulation of trade, and all acts of Parliament prior
to 1764, leaving to British generosity to render these, at some
future time, as easy to America as the interest of Britain would
admit. But this was before blood was spilt. I cannot affirm, but
have reason to think, these terms would not now be accepted. I wish
no false sense of honor, no ignorance of our real intentions, no
vain hope that partial concessions of right will be accepted, may
induce the Ministry to trifle with accommodation, till it shall be
out of their power ever to accommodate. If, indeed, Great Britain,
disjoined from her colonies, be a match for the most potent nations
of Europe, with the colonies thrown into their scale, they may go on
securely. But if they are not assured of this, it would be certainly
unwise, by trying the event of another campaign, to risk our
accepting a foreign aid, which, perhaps, may not be obtainable, but
on condition of everlasting avulsion from Great Britain. This would
be thought a hard condition, to those who still wish for re-union
with their parent country. I am sincerely one of those, and would
rather be in dependence on Great Britain, properly limited, than on
any nation on earth, or than on no nation. But I am one of those,
too, who, rather than submit to the rights of legislating for us,
assumed by the British Parliament, and which late experience has
shown they will so cruelly exercise, would lend my hand to sink the
whole Island in the ocean.
If undeceiving the Minister, as to matters of fact, may change his
disposi tion, it will, perhaps, be in your power, by assistilig to
do this, to render service to the whole empire, at the most critical
time, certainly, that it has ever seen. Whether Britain shall
continue the head of the greatest empire on earth, or shall return
to her original station in the political scale of Europe, depends,
perhaps, on the resolutions of the succeeding winter. God send they
may be wise and salutary for us all. |
John
Randolph
25 Aug 1775 |
BURR,
AARON / IMPERIAL ASPIRATIONS
Burr's enterprise is the most extraordinary
since the days of Don Quixote. It is so extravagant that those who
know his understanding, would not believe it if the proofs admitted
doubt. He has meant to place himself on the throne of Montezuma, and
extend his empire to the Alleghany, seizing on New Orleans as the
instrument of compulsion for our western States. I think his
undertaking effectually crippled by the activity of Ohio. Whether
Kentucky will give him the coup de grace is doubtful; but if
he is able to descend the river with any means, we are sufficiently
prepared at New Orleans. |
Charles
Clay
11 Jan 1807 |
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