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HAMILTON,
ALEXANDER
...Hamilton is really a colossus to the
anti-republican party. Without numbers, he is an host within
himself. They have got themselves into a defile, where they might be
finished; but too much security on the republican part will give
time to his talents and indefatigableness to extricate them. We have
had only middling performances to oppose to him. In truth, when he
comes forward, there is nobody but yourself who can meet him.
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James
Madison
21 Sep 1795 |
HAMILTON,
ALEXANDER / ON U.S. CONSTITUTION
General Washington was himself sincerely a
friend to the republican principles of our Constitution. His faith,
perhaps, in its duration, might not have been as confident as mine;
but he repeatedly declared to me, that he was determined it should
have a fair chance for success, and that he would lose the last drop
of his blood in its support, against any attempt which might be made
to change it from its republican form. He made these declarations
the oftener, because he knew my suspicions that Hamilton had other
views, and he wished to quiet my jealousies on this subject. For
Hamilton frankly avowed that he considered the British Constitution,
with all the corruptions of its administration, as the most perfect
model of government which had ever been devised by the wit of man;
professing however, at the same time, that the spirit of this
country was so fundamentally republican, that it would be visionary
to think of introducing monarchy here, and that, therefore, it was
the duty of its administrators to conduct it on the principles their
constituents had elected. I had meant to have added some views on
the amalgamation of parties, to which your favor of the 8th has some
allusion; an amalgamation of name, but not of principle. Tories are
Tories still, by whatever name they may be called. |
Martin
Van Buren
29 Jun 1824 |
HEALTH
I retain good health, am rather feeble to walk
much, but ride with ease, passing two or three hours a day on
horseback, and every three or four months taking in a carriage a
journey of ninety miles to a distant possession, where I pass a good
deal of my time. My eyes need the aid of glasses by night, and with
Small print in the day also; my hearing is not quite so sensible as
it used to be; no tooth shaking yet, but shivering and shrinking in
body from the cold we now experience, my thermometer having been as
low as 12 [degrees] this morning. My greatest oppression is a
correspondence afflictingly laborious, the extent of which I have
been long endeavoring to curtail. This keeps me at the drudgery of
the writing-table all the prime hours of the day, leaving for the
gratification of my appetite for reading, only what I can steal from
the hours of sleep. Could I reduce this epistolary corvee within the
limits of my friends and affairs, and give the time redeemed from it
to reading and reflection, to history, ethics, mathematics, my life
would be as happy as the infirmities of age would admit, and I
should look on its consummation with the composure of one "qui
summum nec metuit diem nec optat." |
Charles
Thomson
9 Jan 1816 |
HEALTH
It is very long, my dear sir, since I have
written to you. My dislocated wrist is now become so stiff that I
write slow and with pain, and therefore write as little as I can.
Yet it is due to mutual friendship to ask once in a while how we do.
The papers tell us that General Stark * is off at the age of
ninety-three. Charles Thomson still lives at about the same age,
cheerful, slender as a grasshopper, and so much without memory that
he scarcely recognizes the members of his house-hold. An intimate
friend of his called on him not long since; it was difficult to make
him recollect who he was, and, sitting one hour, he told him the
same story four times over. Is this life? …
It is at most but the life of a cabbage; surely not worth a wish.
When all our faculties have left, or are leaving us, one by one --
sight, hearing, memory -- every avenue of pleasing sensation is
closed, and athumy, debility, and malaise left in their places --
when friends of our youth are all gone, and a generation is risen
around us whom we know not, is death an evil?
I really think so. I have ever dreaded a doting old age; and my
health has been generally so good, and is now so good, that I dread
it still. The rapid decline of my strength during the last winter
has made me hope sometimes that I see land. During summer I enjoy
its temperature, but I shudder at the approach of winter, and wish I
could sleep through it with the dormouse, and only wake with him in
spring, if ever. They say that Stark could walk about his room. I am
told you walk well and firmly. I can only reach my garden, and that
with sensible fatigue. I ride, however, daily. But reading is my
delight. I should wish never to put pen to paper; and the more
because of the treacherous practice some people have of publishing
one's letters without leave. |
John
Adams
1 Jun 1822 |
HENRY,
PATRICK / REMEMBRANCE OF
When the famous Resolutions of 1765, against
the Stamp-act, were proposed, I was yet a student of law in
Williamsburg. I attended the debate, however, at the door of the
lobby of the House of Burgesses, and heard the splendid display of
Mr. Henry's talents as a popular orator. They were great indeed;
such as I have never heard from any other man. He appeared to me to
speak as Homer wrote. Mr. Johnson, a lawyer, and member from the
Northern Neck, seconded the resolutions, and by him the learning and
the logic of the case were chiefly maintained. My recollections of
these transactions may be seen page 6o of the life of Patrick Henry,
by Wirt, to whom I furnished them. |
Notes
for an Autobiography
6 Jan 1821 |
HISTORY
/ LESSONS OF
Considering history as a moral exercise, her
lessons would be too infrequent if confined to real life. Of those
recorded by historians few incidents have been attended with such
circumstances as to excite in any high degree this sympathetic
emotion of virtue. We are, therefore, wisely framed to be as warmly
interested for a fictitious as for a real personage. The spacious
field of imagination is thus laid open to our use, and lessons may
be formed to illustrate and carry home to the heart every moral rule
of life. Thus a lively and lasting sense of filial duty is more
effectually impressed on the mind of a son or daughter by reading
King Lear, than by all the dry volumes of ethics and divinity that
ever were written. |
Robert
Skipwith
1771 |
HUMAN
NATURE / DESTRUCTIVE TENDENCIES IN
The Political Progress is a work of value and
of a singular complexion. The author's eye seems to be a natural
achromatic, divesting every object of the glare of color. The former
work of the same title possessed the same kind of merit. They
disgust one, indeed, by opening to his view the ulcerated state of
the human mind. But to cure an ulcer you must go to the bottom of
it, which no author does more radically than this. The reflections
into which it leads us are not very flattering to the human species.
In the whole animal kingdom I recollect no family but man, steadily
and systematically employed in the destruction of itself. Nor does
what is called civilization produce any other effect, than to teach
him to pursue the principle of the bellum omnium in omnia on
a greater scale, and instead of the little contest between tribe and
tribe, to comprehend all the quarters of the earth in the same work
of destruction. If to this we add, that as to other animals, the
lions and tigers are mere lambs compared with man as a destroyer, we
must conclude that nature has been able to find in man alone a
sufficient barrier against the too great multiplication of other
animals and of man himself, an equilibrating power against the
fecundity of generation. While in making these observations, my
situation points my attention to the warfare of man in the physical
world, yours may perhaps present him as equally warring in the moral
one. |
James
Madison
1 Jan 1797 |
HUME,
DAVID / BRITAIN'S CONSTITUTION
…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? |
John
Cartwright
5 Jun 1824 |
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