93 838. THE JEFFERSONIAN CYCLOPEDIA The only birthday which I recognize is that of my country's liberties.* -RAYNER'S LIFE OF JEFFERSon, p. 18. among 839. BIRTHDAY, Celebration of Washington's.-A great ball is to be given here [Philadelphia] on the 22d, and in other great towns of the Union. This is, at least, very indelicate, and probably excites uneasy sensations in some. I see in it, however, this useful deduction, that the birthdays, which have been kept, have been, not those of the President, but of the General.-To JAMES MADISON. iv, 212. FORD ED., vii, 203. (Pa., Feb. 1798.) 840. The late birth-night has certainly sown tares the exclusive federalists. It has winnowed the grain from the chaff. The sincerely Adamites did not go. The Washingtonians went religiously, and took the secession of the others in high dudgeon. The one sect threaten to desert the levees, the other the parties. The whigs went in number, to encourage the idea that the birth-nights hitherto kept had been for the General and not the President, and of course that time would bring an end to them.-To JAMES MADISON. iv, 218. FORD ED., vii, 211. (Pa., Feb. 1798.) 841. BISHOP (Samuel), Appointment as Collector.-I have received the remonstrance you were pleased to address to me, on the appointment of Samuel Bishop to the office of Collector of New Haven, lately vacated by the death of Daniel Austin. The right of our fellow citizens to represent to the public functionaries their opinion on proceedings interesting to them, is unquestionably Bishop (Samuel) civil jurisdiction wherein most causes are decided without the right of appeal or review, and sole judge of the court of Probates, wherein he singly decides all questions of wills, settlement of estates, testate and intestate, appoints guardians, settles their accounts, and in fact has under his jurisdiction and'care all the property, real and personal, of persons dying. The two last offices, in the annual gift of the legislature, were given to him in May last. Is it possible that the man to whom the legislature of Connecticut has so recently committed trusts of such difficulty and magnitude, is "unfit to be the collector of the district of New Haven," though acknowledged in the same writing, to have obtained all this confidence "by a long life of usefulness"? It is objected, indeed, in the remonstrance, that he is seventy-seven years of age; but at a much more advanced age, our Franklin was the ornament of huHe may not be able to perform man nature. in person all the details of his office; but if he gives us the benefit of his understanding, his integrity, his watchfulness and takes care that all the details are well per Should formed by himself or his necessary assist- a constitutional right, often useful, sometimes necessary, and will always be respectfully acknowledged by me. Of the various executive duties, no one excites more anx- 842. BISHOP (Samuel), Goodrich's reious concern than that of placing the inter-moval and.-The removal, as it is called, of ests of our fellow citizens in the hands of honest men, with understandings sufficient for their stations. No duty, at the same time, is more difficult to fulfil. The knowledge of characters possessed by a single individual is, of necessity, limited. To seek out the best through the whole Union, we must resort to other information, which, from the best of men, acting disinterestedly and with the purest motives, is sometimes incorrect. In the case of Samuel Bishop, however, the subject of your remonstrance, time was taken, information was sought, and such obtained as could leave no room for doubt of his fitness. From private sources it was learned that his understanding was sound. his integrity pure, his character unstained. And the offices confided to him within his own State, are public evidences of the estimation in which he is held by the State in general, and the city and township particularly in which he lives. He is said to be the town clerk, a justice of the peace, mayor of the city of New Haven, an office held at the will of the legislature, chief judge of the court of common pleas for New Haven County, a court of high criminal and Jefferson thought he discovered in the birthday celebrations of particular persons, a germ of aristocratical distinction, which it was incumbent upon all such persons, by a timely concert of example, to crush in the bud.-RAYNER'S Life of Jefferson, p. 17. Mr. [Elizur] Goodrich, promises another subject of complaint. Declarations by myself in favor of political tolerance, exhortations to harmony and affection in social intercourse, and to respect for the equal rights of the minority, have, on certain occasions, been quoted and misconstrued into assurances that the tenure of offices was to be undisturbed. But could candor apply such a construction? It is not, indeed, in the remonstrance that we find it; but it leads to the explanations which that calls for. When it is considered, that during the late administration, those who were not of a particular sect of politics were excluded from all office: when, by a steady pursuit of this measure, nearly the whole officers of the United States were monopolized by that sect; when the public sentiment at length declared itself, and burst open the doors of honor and confidence to those whose opinions they more approved, was it to be imagined that this monopoly of office was still to be continued in the hands of the minority? Does it violate their equal rights, to assert some rights in the majority also? Is it political intolerance to claim a proportionate share in the direction of the public affairs? Can they not harmonize in society unless they have everything in their own hands? If the will of the nation, manifested by their various ante elections, calls for an administration of government according with the opinions of those elected; if, for the fulfilment of that will, displacements are necessary, with whom can they so justly begin as with persons appointed in the last moments of an administration, not for its own aid, but to begin a career at the same time with their successors, by whom they had never been approved, and who could scarcely expect from them a cordial coöperation? Mr. Goodrich was one of these. Was it proper for him to place himself in office, without knowing whether those whose agent he was to be would have confidence in his agency? Can the preference of another, as the successor to Mr. Austin, be candidly called a removal of Mr. Goodrich? If a due participation of office is a matter of right, how are vacancies to be obtained? Those by death are few; by resignation, none. Can any other mode than that of removal be proposed? This is a painful office; but it is made my duty, and I meet it as such. I proceed in the operation with deliberation and inquiry, that it may injure the best men least, and effect the purposes of justice and public utility with the least private distress; that it may be thrown, as much as possible, on delinquency, on oppression, on intolerance, on incompetence, on revolutionary adherence to our enemies. The remonstrance laments that a change in the administration must produce a change in the subordinate officers," in other words, that it should be deemed necessary for all officers to think with their principal? But on whom does this imputation bear? On those who have excluded from office every shade of opinion which was not theirs? those who have been so excluded? I lament sincerely that unessential differences of political opinion should ever have been deemed sufficient to interdict half the society from the rights and blessings of self-government, to proscribe them as characters unworthy of every trust. It would have been to me a circumstance of great relief, had I found a moderate participation of office in the hands of the majority. I would gladly have left to time and accident to raise them to their just share. But their total exclusion calls for prompter correctives. I shall correct the procedure; but that done, disdain to follow it. shall return with joy to that state of things, when the only questions concerning a candidate shall be: Is he honest? Is he capable? Is he faithful to the Constitution?-To THE NEW HAVEN COMMITTEE, iv, 403. FORD ED., viii, 69. (W., July 1801.) Or on 843. BISHOP (Samuel), New Haven Remonstrance and.-Mr. Goodrich's removal has produced a bitter remonstrance, with much personality against the two Bishops. I am sincerely sorry to see the inflexibility of the federal spirit there, for I cannot believe they are all monarchists.-To LEVI LINCOLN. iv, 399. FORD ED., viii, 67. (W., July 1801.) 844. Some occasion of public explanation was eagerly desired, when the New Haven remonstrance offered us that occasion. The answer was meant as an explanation to our triends. It has had on them, everywhere, the most wholesome effect. Appearances of schismatizing from us have been entirely done away. I own I expected it would check the current with which the republican federalists were returning to their brethren, the republicans. I extremely lamented this effect; for the moment which should convince me that a healing of the nation into one is impracticable, would be the last moment of my wishing to remain where I am.-To LEVI LINCOLN. iv, 406. FORD ED., | viii, 84. (M., Aug. 1801.) See GOODRICH. 845. BLACKSTONE (Sir William), Commentaries.-The exclusion from the courts of the malign influence of all authorities after the Georgium Sidus became ascendant, would uncanonize Blackstone, best digested of our law catalogue, has been whose book, although the most elegant and perverted, more than all others, to the degeneracy of legal science. A student finds there a smattering of everything, and his indolence easily persuades him that if he understands that book, he is master of the whole body of the law. The distinction between these, and those who have drawn their stores from the deep and rich mines of Coke on Littleton, seems well understood even by the unlettered common people, who apply the appellation of Blackstone lawyers to these ephemeral insects of the law. TO JUDGE TYLER. vi, 66. (M., 1812.) 846. BLACKSTONE (Sir William), Toryism of.-Blackstone and Hume have made tories of all England. and are making tories of those young Americans whose native feelings of independence do not place them above the wily sopustries of a Hume or a Blackstone. These two books, but especially the former, have done more towards the suppression of the liberties of man, than all the million of men in arms of Bonaparte, and the millions of human lives with the sacrifice of which he will stand loaded before the judgment seat of his Maker.-To HORATIO G. SPAFFORD. vi, 335. (M., 1814.) 847. BLAND (Richard), Character of.Colonel Richard Bland was the most learned and logical man of those who took prominent tional lore, a most ungraceful speaker (as were lead in public affairs, profound in constituPeyton Randolph and Robinson, in a remarkable degree.) He wrote the first pamphlet on the nature of the connection with Great Britain which had any pretension to accuracy of view on that subject, but it was a singular one. He would set out on sound principles, pursue them logically till he found them leading to the precipice which he had to leap, start back alarmed, then resume his ground, go over it in another direction, be led again by the correctness of his reasoning to the same place, and again back out, and try other processes to reconcile right and wrong, but finally left his reader and himself bewildered between the steady index of the compass in their hand, and the phantasm to which it seemed to point. Still there was more sound matter in his pamphlet than in the celebrated Farmer's Letters," 95 THE JEFFERSONIAN CYCLOPEDIA which were really but an ignis fatuus, misleading us from true principles.-To WILLIAM WIRT. vi, 485. FORD ED., ix, 474. (M., 1815.) 848. BLOCKADES, Law of.-When the fleet of any nation actually beleaguers the port of its enemy, no other has a right to enter their line any more than their line of battle in the open sea, or their lines of circumvallation, or of encampment, or of battle array on land. The space included within their lines in any of those cases, is either the property of their enemy, or it is common property, assumed and possessed for a moment, which cannot be intruded on, even by a neutral, without committing the very trespass we are now considering, that of intruding into the lawful possession of a friend.— iv, 410. FORD To ROBERT R. LIVINGSTON. ED., viii, 91. (M., 1801.) 849. BLOCKADES, Neutrals and.When two nations go to war, it does not abridge the rights of neutral nations but in the two articles of blockade and contraband of war.-To BENJAMIN STODDERT. v, 425. FORD ED., ix, 245. (W., 1809.) 850. BLOCKADES, Seizure of Ships.The instruction [to commanders of British war ships] which allows the armed vessels of Great Britain to seize, for condemnation, all vessels, on their first attempt to enter a blockaded port, except those of Denmark and Sweden, which are to be prevented only, but not seized. on their first attempt. Of the nations inhabiting the shores of the Atlantic ocean, and practising its navigation, Denmark, Sweden and the United States, alone are neutral. To declare, then, all neutral vessels (for as to the vessels of the belligerent powers no order was necessary) to be legal prize, which shall attempt to enter a blockaded port, except those of Denmark and Sweden. is exactly to declare that the vessels of the United States shall be lawful prize. and those of Denmark and Sweden shall not. It is of little consequence that the article has avoided naming the United States, since it has used a description applicable to them, and to them alone, while it exempts the others from its operation, by name. Bollman (Eric) may stop our vessels going with grain to the ports of their enemies, and ask instructions which may meet the question in various points of view, intending, however, in the meantime to contend for the amplest freedom of neutral nations. Your intention in this is perfectly proper, and coincides with the ideas of our own government in the particular case you put, as in general cases. Such a stoppage to an unblockaded port would be so unequivocal an infringement of the neutral rights, that we cannot conceive it will be attempted.-TO THOMAS PINCKNEY. iii, 551. FORD ED., vi, 242. (Pa., May 1793.) 852. BLOUNT (William), Impeachment of.-It is most evident, that the antirepublicans wish to get rid of Blount's impeachment. Many metaphysical niceties are handing about in conversation, to show that it cannot be sustained. To show the contrary, it is evident must be the task of the republicans, or of nobody. To JAMES MADISON. iv, 206. FORD ED., vii, 190. (Pa., Jan. 1798.) See IMPEACH MENT. 853. BOLINGBROKE, Writings of Lord.-Lord Bolingbroke and Thomas Paine 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 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 Dr. Franklin; and indeed his Com over mon Sense was, for awhile, believed to have been written by Dr. Franklin, and published under the borrowed name of Paine, who had with him from England. Lord Bolingbroke's, on the other hand, is a style of the highest order. The lofty, rythmical, fullflowing 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 sen ate. come You will be pleased to ask an explanation of this distinction; and you will be able to say in discussing its justice, that in every circumstance, we treat Great Britain on the footing of the most favored nation, where our treaties do not preclude us, and that even these are just as favorable to her as hers are to us. Possibly she may be bound by treaty to admit this exception in favor of Denmark and Sweden, but she cannot be bound by treaty to withhold it from us; and if it be withheld merely because not established with us by treaty, what might not we, on the same ground, have withheld from Great Britain, during the short course of the present war, as well as the peace which has preceded it ?-To THOMAS PINCKNEY. iv, 62. FORD ED., vi, 416. (Pa., Sept. 1793.) 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.-To FRANCIS EPPES. vii, 197. FORD ED., x, 183. (M., 1821.) On 854. BOLLMAN (Eric), Burr and.—I am sorry to tell you that Bollman was Burr's right hand man in all his guilty schemes. being brought to prison here [Washington]. he communicated to Mr. Madison and myself the whole of the plans. always, however, apologetically for Burr, as far as they would bear. But his subsequent tergiversations have proved him conspicuously base. I gave him a pardon, however, which covers him from everything but infamy. I was the more astonished at his engaging in this business, from the peculiar motives he should have felt for fidelity. When I came into the government, I sought him out on account of the services he had rendered you, cherished him, offered him two different appointments of value, which, after keeping them long under consideration, he declined for commercial views, and would have given him anything for which he was fit. Be assured he is unworthy of ever occupying again the care of any honest man.-To MARQUIS DE LAFAYETTE. V, 130. FORD ED., ix, 114. (W., July 1807.) 855. BOLLMAN (Eric), Pardon of.— Dr. Bollman, on his arrival in Washington in custody in January, voluntarily offered to make communications to me, which he accordingly did, Mr. Madison also being present. I previously and subsequently assured him (without, however, his having requested it), that they should never be used against himself. Mr. Madison on the same evening committed to writing, by memory, what he had said; and I moreover asked of Bollman to do it himself, which he did, and I now enclose it to you. The object is, as he is to be a witness, that you may know how to examine him, and draw everything from him. I wish the paper to be seen and known only to yourself and the gentlemen who aid you, and to be returned to me. If he should prevaricate, I should be willing you should go so far as to ask him whether he did not say so and so to Mr. Madison and myself, in order to let him see that his prevarications will be marked. Mr. Madison will forward you a pardon for him, which we mean should be delivered previously. It is suspected by some he does not intend to appear. If he does not, I hope you will take effectual measures to have him immediately taken into custody. Some other blank pardons are sent on to be filled up at your discretion, if you should find a defect of evidence, and believe that this would supply it, avoiding to give them to the gross offenders, unless it be visible that the principal will otherwise escape.TO GEORGE HAY. FORD ED., ix, 52. (W., May 1807.) * * * 856. BONAPARTE (Jerome), Marriage of. A report reaches us from Baltimore, * * * that Mr. Jerome Bonaparte, brother of the First Consul, is married to Miss Patterof that city. The effect of this measure on the mind of the First Consul, is not for me son, to suppose; but as it might occur to him, prima facie, that the Executive of the United States ought to have prevented it, I have thought it advisable to mention the subject to you, that, if necessary, you may by explanation set that idea to rights. You know that by our laws, all persons are free to enter into marriage, if of twenty-one years of age, no one having a power to restrain it, not even their parents; and that under that age, no one can prevent it but the parent or guardian. The lady is under age, and the parents, placed between her affections, which were strongly fixed, and the considerations opposing the measure, yielded with pain and anxiety to the former. Mr. Patterson is the President of the Bank of Baltimore, the wealthiest man in Maryland, perhaps in the United States, except Mr. Carroll; a man of great virtue and respectability; the mother is the sister of the lady of General Samuel Smith; and, consequently, the station of the family in society is with the first of the United States. These circumstances fix rank in a country where there are no hereditary titles. To ROBERT R. LIVINGSTON. iv, 510. FORD ED., viii, 277. (W., Nov. 1803.) 857. BONAPARTE (N.), Brutuses for. -If Bonaparte declares for royalty, either in his own person, or for Louis XVIII., he has but a few days to live. In a nation of so much enthusiasm, there must be a million of Brutuses who will devote themselves to destroy him.-TO HENRY INNES. iv, 315. FORD ED., vii, 412. (Pa., Jan. 1800.) 858. Had the consuls been put to death in the first tumult, and before the nation had time to take sides, the Directory and Councils might have reestablished themselves on the spot. But that not being done, perhaps it is now to be wished that Bonaparte may be spared, as, according to his protestations, he is for liberty, equality and representative government, and he is more able to keep the nation together, and to ride out the storm than any other. Perhaps it may end in their establishing a single representative, and that in his person. I hope it will not be for life, for fear of the influence of the example on our countrymen. It is very material for the latter to be made sensible that their own character and situation are materially different from the French; and that whatever may be the fate of republicanism there, we are able to preserve it inviolate here.-To JOHN BRECKENRIDGE. FORD ED., vii, 418. (Pa., Jan. 1800.) 859. BONAPARTE (N.), Cromwell, Washington and.-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.-To SAMUEL ADAMS. iv. 321. FORD ED., vii, 425. (Pa., Feb. 1800.) 860. BONAPARTE (N.), Detested.-No man on earth has stronger detestation than myself of the unprincipled tyrant who is deluging the continent of Europe with blood. No one was more gratified by his disasters of the last compaign.*-To DR. GEORGE LOGAN. vi, 216. FORD ED., ix, 423. (M., Oct. 1813.) 861. BONAPARTE (N.), Embargo and. -The explanation of his principles given you by the French Emperor, in conversation, is correct as far as it goes. He does not wish us to go to war with England, knowing we have no ships to carry on that war. To submit to pay to England the tribute on our commerce which she demands by her orders of council, would be to aid her in the war against him, and would give him just ground to declare war with us. He, concludes, there *This extract got into the newspapers contrary to Jefferson's wishes, and led to a long interruption of the correspondence between him and Dr. Logan. At length, in 1816, he wrote to Logan, complaining of the publication, and said: "this [extract] produced to me more complaints from my best friends and called for more explanations than any transaction of my life had ever done. They inferred from this partial extract an approbation of the conduct of England, which yet the same letter censured with equal rigor. It produced, too, from the minister of Bonaparte a complaint, not indeed formal, for I was but a private citizen, but serious, of my volunteering with England in the abuse of his sovereign."—EDITOR. |