TO TIMOTHY BLOODWORTH, ESQ.
Washington, January 29, 1804.
Dear Sir,—I thank you for the seed of the fly-trap. It is the first I have ever been able to obtain, and shall take great care of it. I am well pleased to hear of the progress of republicanism with you. To do without a land tax, excise, stamp tax and the other internal taxes, to supply their place by economies, so as still to support the government properly, and to apply $7,300,000 a year steadily to the payment of the public debt; to discontinue a great portion of the expenses on armies and navies, yet protect our country and its commerce with what remains; to purchase a country as large and more fertile than the one we possessed before, yet ask neither a new tax, nor another soldier to be added, but to provide that that country shall by its own income, pay for itself before the purchase money is due; to preserve peace with all nations, and particularly an equal friendship to the two great rival powers France and England, and to maintain the credit and character of the nation in as high a degree as it has ever enjoyed, are measures which I think must reconcile the great body of those who thought themselves our enemies; but were in truth only the enemies of certain Jacobinical, atheistical, anarchical, imaginary caricatures, which existed only in the land of the raw head and bloody bones, beings created to frighten the credulous. By this time they see enough of us to judge our characters by what we do, and not by what we never did, nor thought of doing, but in the lying chronicles of the newspapers. I know indeed there are some characters who have been too prominent to retract, too proud and impassioned to relent, too greedy after office and profit to relinquish their longings, and who have covered their devotion to monarchism under the mantle of federalism, who never can be cured of their enmities. These are incurable maniacs, for whom the hospitable doors of Bedlam are ready to open, but they are permitted to walk abroad while they refrain from personal assault.
The applications for Louisiana are so numerous that it would be immoral to give a hope to the friends you mention. The rage for going to that country seems universal. Accept my affectionate salutations, and assurances of great esteem and respect.