younger one continues to speak of her warmly. Accept yourself, assurances of the sincere esteem and respect with which

I have the honor to be, &c.

TH: JEFFERSON.

FROM THOMAS JEFFERSON TO COLONEL SMITH.

Paris, November 13, 1787.

Dear Sir,

I am now to acknowledge the receipt of your favors of October the 4th, 8th, and 26th. In the last you apologize for your letters of introduction to Americans coming here. It is so far from needing apology on your part, that it calls for thanks on mine. I endeavor to show civilities to all the Americans who come here, and who will give me opportunities of doing it. And it is a matter of comfort to know, from a good quarter, what they are, and how far I may go in my attentions to them.

Can you send me Woodmanson's bills for the two copying presses for the Marquis de Lafayette and the Marquis de Chastellux? The latter makes one article in the considerable account, of old standing, and which I cannot present for want of this article. I do not know whether it is to yourself or Mr. Adams, that I am to give my thanks for the copy of the new constitution. I beg leave, through you, to place them where due. It will yet be three weeks before I shall receive them from America There are very good articles in it, and very bad. I do not know which preponderate. What we have lately read in the history of Holland, in the chapter on the

Stadtholder, would have sufficed to set me against a chief magistrate, eligible for a long duration, if I had ever been disposed towards one. And what we have always read of the elections of Polish Kings, should have forever excluded the idea of one continuable for life.

Wonderful is the effect of impudent and persevering lying. The British Ministry have so long hired their gazetteers, to repeat and model into every form, lies about our being in anarchy, that the world has at length believed them, the English nation has believed them, the Ministers themselves have come to believe them, and what is more wonderful, we have believed them ourselves. Yet where does this anarchy exist? Where did it ever exist, except in the single instance of Massachusetts? And can history produce an instance of rebellion so honorably conducted? I say nothing of its motives. They were founded in ignorance, not wickedness. God forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion. The people cannot be all, and always, well informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented, in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions, it is a lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. We have had thirteen States independent for eleven years. There has been one rebellion. That comes to one rebellion in a century and a half, for each State. What country before, ever existed a century and a half without a rebellion? And what country can preserve its liberties, if its rulers are not warned, from time to time, that this people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives

lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed, from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure. Our Convention

has been too much impressed by the insurrection of Massachusetts; and, on the spur of the moment, they are setting up a kite to keep the hen yard in order. I hope in God, this article will be rectified, before the new constitution is accepted. You ask me, if any thing transpires here on the subject of South America? Not a word. I know that there are combustible materials there, and that they wait the torch only. But this country, probably will join the extinguishers. The want of facts, worth communicating to you, has occasioned me to give a little loose to dissertation. We must be contented to amuse when we cannot inform.

Present my respects to Mrs. Smith, and be assured of the sincere esteem of, dear sir, your friend and servant, TH: JEFFERSON.

FROM THOMAS JEFFERSON TO WILLIAM CARMICHAEL. Paris, December 11, 1787.

Dear Sir,

I am later in acknowledging the receipt of your favors of October the 15th, and November the 5th, and 15th, because we have been long expecting a packet, which I hoped would bring communications worth detailing to you, and she arrived only a few days ago, after a very long passage indeed. I am very sorry you have not been able to make out the cypher of my letter of September the 25th, because it contained things which I wished you

to know at that time. They have lost now a part of their merit; but still I wish you could decypher them, as there remains a part, which it yet might be agreeable to you to understand. I have examined the cypher from which it was written. It is precisely a copy of those given to Messrs. Barclay and Lamb. In order that you may examine whether yours correspond, I will now translate into cypher, the three first lines of my letter of June the 14.

This will serve to shew, whether your cypher corresponds with mine, as well as my manner of using it. But I shall not use it in future, till I know from you the result of your re-examination of it. I have the honor now, to return you the letter you had been so good as to enclose to me. About the same time of Liston's conversation with you, similar ones were held with me by Mr. Eden. He particularly questioned me on the effect of our treaty with France, in the case of a war, and what might be our dispositions. I told him without hesitation, that our treaty obliged us to receive the armed vessels of France, with their prizes into our ports, and to refuse the admission of prizes, made on her by her enemies; that there was a clause by which we guarantied to France, her Ame-. rican possessions, and which might, perhaps, force us into the war, if these were attacked. "Then it will be war," said he, "for they will assuredly be attacked." I added, that our dispositions would be to be neutral, and that I thought it the interest of both these powers that we should be so, because it would relieve both from all anxiety as to the feeding their West India Islands, and England would, moreover, avoid a heavy land war on our

continent, which would cripple all her proceedings elsewhere. He expected these sentiments from me personally, and he knew them to be analagous to those of our country. We had often before had occasions of knowing each other; his peculiar bitterness towards us, had sufficiently appeared, and I had never concealed from him, that I considered the British as our natural enemies, and as the only nation on earth, who wished us ill from the bottom of their souls. And I am satisfied, that were our Continent to be swallowed up by the ocean, Great Britain would be in a bonfire from one end to the other. Mr. Adams, as you know, has asked his recal. This has been granted, and Colonel Smith is to return too; Congress having determined to put an end to their commission at that Court. I suspect and hope they will make no new appointment.

Our new constitution is powerfully attacked in the American newspapers. The objections are, that its effect would be, to form the thirteen States into one; that proposing to melt all down into one general goverment, they have fenced the people by no declaration of rights; they have not renounced the power of keeping a standing army; they have not secured the liberty of the press; they have reserved the power of abolishing trials by jury in civil cases; they have proposed that the laws of the federal legislatures shall be paramount to the laws and constitutions of the States; they have abandoned rotation in office; and particularly, their President may be re-elected from four years to four years for life, so as to render him a King for life, like a King of Poland; and they have not given him either the check or aid of a council. To these they add calculations of expense, &c. &c. to frighten the people.