TO JAMES MADISON.
June 9, 1793.
I have to acknowledge the receipt of your two favors of May 27th and 29th, since the date of my last which was of the 2d instant. In that of the 27th you say you must not make your final exit from public life till it will be marked with justifying circumstances which all good citizens will respect, and to which your friends can appeal. To my fellow-citizens the debt of service has been fully and faithfully paid. I acknowledge that such a debt exists, that a tour of duty, in whatever line he can be most useful to his country, is due from every individual. It is not easy perhaps to say of what length exactly this tour should be, but we may safely say of what length it should not be. Not of our whole life, for instance, for that would be to be born a slave—not even of a very large portion of it. I have now been in the public service four and twenty years; one half of which has been spent in total occupation with their affairs, and absence from my own. I have served my tour then. No positive engagement, by word or deed, binds me to their further service. No commitment of their interests in any enterprise by me requires that I should see them through it. I am pledged by no act which gives any tribunal a call upon me before I withdraw. Even my enemies do not pretend this. I stand clear then of public right on all points—my friends I have not committed. No circumstances have attended my passage from office to office, which could lead them, and others through them, into deception as to the time I might remain, and particularly they and all have known with what reluctance I engaged and have continued in the present one, and of my uniform determination to return from it at an early day. If the public then has no claim on me, and my friends nothing to justify, the decision will rest on my own feelings alone. There has been a time when these were very different from what they are now; when perhaps the esteem of the world was of higher value in my eye than everything in it. But age, experience and reflection preserving to that only its due value, have set a higher on tranquillity. The motion of my blood no longer keeps time with the tumult of the world. It leads me to seek for happiness in the lap and love of my family, in the society of my neighbors and my books, in the wholesome occupations of my farm and my affairs, in an interest or affection in every bud that opens, in every breath that blows around me, in an entire freedom of rest, of motion, of thought, owing account to myself alone of my hours and actions. What must be the principle of that calculation which should balance against these the circumstances of my present existence—worn down with labors from morning to night, and day to day; knowing them as fruitless to others as they are vexatious to myself, committed singly in desperate and eternal contest against a host who are systematically undermining the public liberty and prosperity, even the rare hours of relaxation sacrificed to the society of persons in the same intentions, of whose hatred I am conscious even in those moments of conviviality when the heart wishes most to open itself to the effusions of friendship and confidence, cut off from my family and friends, my affairs abandoned to chaos and derangement, in short, giving everything I love in exchange for everything I hate, and all this without a single gratification in possession or prospect, in present enjoyment or future wish. Indeed, my dear friend, duty being out of the question, inclination cuts off all argument, and so never let there be more between you and me, on this subject.
I enclose you some papers which have passed on the subject of a new town. You will see by them that the paper Coryphæus is either undaunted or desperate. I believe that the statement enclosed has secured a decision against his proposition. I dined yesterday in a company where Morris and Bingham were, and happened to sit between them. In the course of a conversation after dinner, Morris made one of his warm declarations that after the expiration of his present senatorial term, nothing on earth should ever engage him to serve again in any public capacity. He did this with such solemnity as renders it impossible he should not be in earnest. The President is not well. Little lingering fevers have been hanging about him for a week or ten days, and affected his looks most remarkably. He is also extremely affected by the attacks made and kept up on him in the public papers. I think he feels those things more than any person I ever yet met with. I am sincerely sorry to see them. I remember an observation of yours, made when I first went to New York, that the satellites and sycophants which surrounded him had wound up the ceremonials of the government to a pitch of stateliness which nothing but his personal character could have supported, and which no character after him could ever maintain. It appears now that even his will be insufficient to justify them in the appeal of the times to common sense as the arbiter of everything. Naked he would have been sanctimoniously reverenced; but enveloped in the rags of royalty, they can hardly be torn off without laceration. It is the more unfortunate that this attack is planted on popular ground, on the love of the people to France and its cause, which is universal. Genet mentions freely enough in conversation that France does not wish to involve us in the war by our guarantee. The information from St. Domingo and Martinique is, that those two islands are disposed and able to resist any attack which Great Britain can make on them by land. A blockade would be dangerous, could it be maintained in that climate for any length of time. I delivered to Genet your letter to Roland. As the latter is out of office, he will direct it to the minister of the Interior. I found every syllable of it strictly proper. Your ploughs shall be duly attended to. Have you ever taken notice of Tull's horse-houghing plough? I am persuaded that where you wish your work to be very exact, and our great plough where a less degree will suffice, leave us nothing to wish for from other countries as to ploughs, under our circumstances. I have not yet received my threshing machine. I fear the late, long, and heavy rains must have extended to us, and effected our wheat. Adieu. Yours affectionately.
TO GOUVERNEUR MORRIS.
Philadelphia, June 13, 1793.
Dear Sir,—The insulated state in which France is placed with respect to almost all the world, by the present war, has cut off all means of addressing letters to you through other countries. I embrace the present occasion by a private individual going to France directly, to mention, that since the date of my last public letter, which was April the 24th, and which covered the President's proclamation of April, I have received your Nos. 17 to 24. M. de Ternant notified us of his recall on the 17th of May, and delivered the letter of the Provisory Executive Council to that effect. I now enclose you the President's answer to the Council, which you will be pleased to deliver; a copy of it is also enclosed, open, for your information. Mr. Genet delivered his credentials on the same day on which M. de Ternant took his leave, and was received by the President. He found himself immediately immersed in business, the consequence of this war. The incidents to which that gives daily rise, and the questions respecting chiefly France and England, fills the executive with business, equally delicate, difficult and disagreeable. The course intended to be pursued being that of a strict and impartial neutrality, decisions rendered by the President rigorously on that principle, dissatisfy both parties, and draw complaints from both. That you may have a proper idea of them, I enclose you copies of several memorials and letters, which have passed between the executive and the ministers of those two countries, which will at the same time develop the principles of the proceedings, and enable you to satisfy them in your communications, should it be necessary. I enclose also the answer given to Mr. Genet, on a proposition from him to pay up the whole of the French debt at once. While it will enable you to explain the impracticability of the operation proposed, it may put it in your power to judge of the answer which would be given to any future proposition to that effect, and perhaps to prevent their being brought forward. The bill lately passed in England, prohibiting the business of this country with France from passing through the medium of England, is a temporary embarrassment to our commerce, from the unhappy predicament of its all hanging on the pivot of London. It will be happy for us, should it be continued till our merchants may establish connections in the countries in which our produce is consumed, and to which it should go directly.
Our commissioners have proceeded to the treaty with the northwestern Indians. They write, however, that the treaty will be a month later than was expected. This delay, should it be extended, will endanger our losing the benefit of our preparations for the campaign, and consequently bring on a delicate question, whether these shall be relinquished for the result of a treaty in which we never had any confidence? The Creeks have proceeded in their depredations till they assume the appearance of formal war. It scarcely seems possible to avoid its becoming so. They are so strong and so far from us, as to make very serious addition to our Indian difficulties. It is very probable that some of the circumstances arising out of our affairs with the Indians, or with the belligerent powers of Europe, may occasion the convocation of Congress at an earlier day than that to which its meeting stands at present.
I send you the forms of the passports given here. The one in three columns is that now used; the other having been soon discontinued. It is determined that they shall be given in our own ports only, and to serve but for one voyage. It has also been determined, that they shall be given to all vessels bona fide owned by American citizens wholly, whether built here or not. Our property, whether in the form of vessels, cargoes, or anything else, has a right to pass the seas untouched by any nation, by the law of nations; and no one has a right to ask where a vessel was built, but where is she owned? To the security which the law of nations gives to such vessels against all nations, are added particular stipulations with three of the belligerent powers. Had it not been in our power to enlarge our national stock of shipping suddenly in the present exigency, a great proportion of our produce must have remained on our hands for want of the means of transportation to market. At this time, indeed, a great proportion is in that predicament. The most rigorous measures will be taken to prevent any vessel, not wholly and bona fide owned by American citizens, from obtaining our passports. It is much our interest to prevent the competition of other nations from taking from us the benefits we have a right to expect from the neutrality of our flag; and I think we may be very sure that few, if any, will be fraudulently obtained within our ports.