[TO COLONEL CARRINGTON.]
Paris, May 27, 1788.
Dear Sir,—I have received with great pleasure your friendly letter of April 24th. It has come to hand after I had written my letters for the present conveyance, and just in time to add this to them. I learn with great pleasure the progress of the new Constitution. Indeed I have presumed it would gain on the public mind, as I confess it has on my own. At first, though I saw that the great mass and groundwork was good, I disliked many appendages. Reflection and discussion have cleared off most of these. You have satisfied me as to the query I had put to you about the right of direct taxation. My first wish was that nine States would adopt it in order to ensure what was good in it, and that the others might, by holding off, produce the necessary amendments. But the plan of Massachusetts is far preferable, and will, I hope, be followed by those who are yet to decide. There are two amendments only which I am anxious for: 1. A bill of rights, which it is so much the interest of all to have, that I conceive it must be yielded. The 1st amendment proposed by Massachusetts will in some degree answer this end, but not so well. It will do too much in some instances, and too little in others. It will cripple the Federal Government in some cases where it ought to be free, and not restrain in some others where restraint would be right. The 2d amendment which appears to me essential is the restoring the principle of necessary rotation, particularly to the Senate and Presidency: but most of all to the last. Re-eligibility makes him an officer for life, and the disasters inseparable from an elective monarchy, render it preferable if we cannot tread back that step, that we should go forward and take refuge in an hereditary one. Of the correction of this article, however, I entertain no present hope, because I find it has scarcely excited an objection in America. And if it does not take place erelong, it assuredly never will. The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground. As yet our spirits are free. Our jealousy is only put to sleep by the unlimited confidence we all repose in the person to whom we all look as our president. After him inferior characters may perhaps succeed, and awaken us to the danger which his merit has led us into. For the present, however, the general adoption is to be prayed for, and I wait with great anxiety for the news from Maryland and South Carolina, which have decided before this, and with that Virginia, now in session, may give the ninth vote of approbation. There could then be no doubt of North Carolina, New York, and New Hampshire. But what do you propose to do with Rhode Island? as long as there is hope we should give her time. I cannot conceive but that she will come to rights in the long run. Force, in whatever form, would be a dangerous precedent.
There are rumors that the Austrian army is obliged to retire a little; that the Spanish squadron is gone to South America; that the English have excited a rebellion there; and some others equally unauthenticated. I do not mention them in my letter to Mr. Jay, because they are unauthenticated. The bankruptcies in London have re-commenced with new force. There is no saying where this fire will end, perhaps in the general conflagration of all their paper. If not now, it must erelong. With only twenty millions of coin, and three or four hundred millions of circulating paper, public and private, nothing is necessary but a general panic, produced either by failures, invasion, or any other cause, and the whole visionary fabric vanishes into air, and shows that paper is poverty, that it is only the ghost of money, and not money itself. One hundred years ago, they had twenty odd millions of coin. Since that they have brought in from Holland by borrowing forty millions more, yet they have but twenty millions left, and they talk of being rich, and of having the balance of trade in their favor. Paul Jones is invited into the Empress' service, with the rank of rear Admiral, and to have a separate command. I wish it corresponded with the views of Congress to give him that rank from the taking of the Serapis. I look to this officer as our great future dependence on the sea, where alone we should think of ever having a force. He is young enough to see the day when we shall be more populous than the whole British dominions, and able to fight them ship to ship. We should procure him, then, every possible opportunity of acquiring experience.
I have the honor to be, with sentiments of the most perfect esteem, dear Sir, your friend and servant.
[TO JAMES MADISON.][F]
Paris, May 28, 1788.
Dear Sir,—The enclosed letter for Mr. Jay, being of a private nature, I have thought it better to put it under your cover, lest it might be opened by some of his clerks, in the case of his absence. But I enclose a press copy of it for yourself, as you will perceive the subject of it referred to you, as well as to him. I ask your aid in it so far as you think right, and to have done what you think right. If you will now be so good as to cast your eye over the copy enclosed, what follows the present sentence, will be some details, supplementary to that only, necessary for your information, but not proper for me to state to Mr. Jay.