"Mama has amused me very much in her letter where she writes on politics. She says that, next to changing one's religion, she would dislike a man for changing his politics. Mama, perhaps, is not aware that she would in this way shut the door completely to conviction in anything. It would imply that, because a man is educated in error, he must forever live in error. I know exactly how mama feels; she thinks, as I did when at home, that it was impossible for the Federalists to be in the wrong; but, as all men are fallible, I think they may stand a chance of being wrong as well as any other class of people….
"Mama thinks my 'error' arises from wrong information. I will ask mama which of us is likely to get at the truth; I, who am in England and can see and hear all their motives for acting as they have done; or mama, who gets her information from the Federal papers, second-hand, with numerous additions and improvements made to answer party purposes, distorted and misrepresented?
"But to give you an instance. In the Massachusetts remonstrance they attribute the repeal of the Orders in Council to the kind disposition of the English Government, and a wish on their part to do justice, whereas it is notorious in this country that they repealed them on account of the injury it was doing themselves, and took America into consideration about as much as they did the inhabitants of Kamschatka. The conditional repeal of the Berlin and Milan decrees was a back door for them, and they availed themselves of it to sneak out of it. This necessity, this act of dire necessity, the Federal papers cry up as evincing a most forbearing spirit towards us, and really astonish the English themselves who never dreamt that it could be twisted in that way.
"Mama assigns as a reason for my thinking well of the English that they have been very polite to me, and that it is ingratitude in me if I do otherwise. A few individuals have treated me politely, and I do feel thankful and gratified for it; but a little politeness from an individual of one nation to an individual of another is certainly not a reason that the former's Government should be esteemed incapable of wrong by the latter. I esteem the English as a nation; I rejoice in their conquests on the Continent, and would love them heartily, if they would let me; but I am afraid to tell them this, they are already too proud.
"Their treatment of America is the worse for it. They are like a poor man who has got a lottery ticket and draws a great prize, and when his poor neighbor comes sincerely to congratulate him on his success, he holds up his head, and, turning up his nose, tells him that now he is his superior and then kicks him out of doors.
"Papa says he expects peace in six months. It may be in the disposition of America to make peace, but not in the will of the English. It is in the power of the Federalists to force her to peace, but they will not do it, so she will force us to do it."
As in most discussions, political or otherwise, neither party seems to have been convinced by the arguments of the other, for the parents continue to urge him to leave politics alone; indeed, they insist on his doing so. They also urge him to make every effort to support himself, if he should decide to spend another year abroad, for they fear that they will be unable to send him any more money. However, the father, when he became convinced that it was really to his son's interest to spend another year abroad, contrived to send him another thousand dollars. This was done at the cost of great self-sacrifice on the part of himself and his family, and was all the more praiseworthy on that account.
In a letter from his brother Edwards, written also on the 17th of November, is this passage: "I must defer giving my reasons for thinking Poetry superior to Painting; I will mention only a few of the principles upon which I found my judgment. Genius in both these arts is the power of making impressions. The question then is: which is capable of making the strongest impression; which can impress upon the mind most strongly a sublime or a beautiful idea? Does the sublimest passage in Milton excite a stronger sensation in the mind of a man of taste than the sublimest painting of Michael Angelo? Or, to make the parallel more complete, does Michael Angelo convey to you a stronger impression of the Last Judgment, by his painting, than Milton could by his poetry? Could Michael Angelo convey a more sublime idea of Death by his painting than Milton has in his 'Paradise Lost'? These are the principles upon which your 'divine art' is to be degraded below Poetry."
This was rather acute reasoning for a boy of twenty who had spent his life in the Boston and New Haven of those early days. The fact that he had never seen a great painting, whereas he had greedily read the poets, will probably account for his strong partisanship.
The pious mother writes on November 25, 1813:—