TO M. DUPONT DE NEMOURS.
Monticello, May 15, 1815.
My Dear Friend,—The newspapers tell us you are arrived in the United States. I congratulate my country on this as a manifestation that you consider its civil advantages as more than equivalent to the physical comforts and social delights of a country which possesses both in the highest degree of any one on earth. You despair of your country, and so do I. A military despotism is now fixed upon it permanently, especially if the son of the tyrant should have virtues and talents. What a treat would it be to me, to be with you, and to learn from you all the intrigues, apostasies and treacheries which have produced this last death's blow to the hopes of France. For, although not in the will, there was in the imbecility of the Bourbons a foundation of hope that the patriots of France might obtain a moderate representative government. Here you will find rejoicings on this event, and by a strange qui pro quo, not by the party hostile to liberty, but by its zealous friends. In this they see nothing but the scourge reproduced for the back of England, they do not permit themselves to see in it the blast of all the hopes of mankind, and that however it may jeopardize England, it gives to her self-defence the lying countenance again of being the sole champion of the rights of man, to which in all other nations she is most adverse. I wrote to you on the 28th of February, by a Mr. Ticknor, then proposing to sail for France, but the conclusion of peace induced him to go first to England. I hope he will keep my letter out of the post offices of France; for it was written for the inspection of those now in power. You will now be a witness of our deplorable ignorance in finance and political economy generally. I mentioned in my letter of February that I was endeavoring to get your memoir on that subject printed. I have not yet succeeded. I am just setting out to a distant possession of mine, and shall be absent three weeks. God bless you.