Томас Джефферсон
The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, Vol. 2 (of 9)
Heart. And what more sublime delight than to mingle tears with one whom the hand of heaven hath smitten! to watch over the bed of sickness, and to beguile its tedious and its painful moments! to share our bread with one to whom misfortune has left none! This world abounds indeed with misery; to lighten its burthen, we must divide it with one another. But let us now try the virtue of your mathematical balance, and as you have put into one scale the burthens of friendship, let me put its comforts into the other. When languishing then under disease, how grateful is the solace of our friends! how are we penetrated with their assiduities and attentions! how much are we supported by their encouragements and kind offices! When heaven has taken from us some object of our love, how sweet is it to have a bosom whereon to recline our heads, and into which we may pour the torrent of our tears! Grief, with such a comfort, is almost a luxury! In a life, where we are perpetually exposed to want and accident, yours is a wonderful proposition, to insulate ourselves, to retire from all aid, and to wrap ourselves in the mantle of self-sufficiency! For, assuredly, nobody will care for him who cares for nobody. But friendship is precious, not only in the shade, but in the sunshine of life; and thanks to a benevolent arrangement of things, the greater part of life is sunshine. I will recur for proof to the days we have lately passed. On these, indeed, the sun shone brightly. How gay did the face of nature appear! Hills, valleys, chateaux, gardens, rivers, every object wore its liveliest hue! Whence did they borrow it? From the presence of our charming companion. They were pleasing, because she seemed pleased. Alone, the scene would have been dull and insipid: the participation of it with her gave it relish. Let the gloomy monk, sequestered from the world, seek unsocial pleasures in the bottom of his cell! Let the sublimated philosopher grasp visionary happiness, while pursuing phantoms dressed in the garb of truth! Their supreme wisdom is supreme folly; and they mistake for happiness the mere absence of pain. Had they ever felt the solid pleasure of one generous spasm of the heart, they would exchange for it all the frigid speculations of their lives, which you have been vaunting in such elevated terms. Believe me, then, my friend, that that is a miserable arithmetic which could estimate friendship at nothing, or at less than nothing. Respect for you has induced me to enter into this discussion, and to hear principles uttered which I detest and abjure. Respect for myself now obliges me to recall you into the proper limits of your office. When nature assigned us the same habitation, she gave us over it a divided empire. To you, she allotted the field of science; to me, that of morals. When the circle is to be squared, or the orbit of a comet to be traced; when the arch of greatest strength, or the solid of least resistance, is to be investigated, take up the problem; it is yours; nature has given me no cognizance of it. In like manner, in denying to you the feelings of sympathy, of benevolence, of gratitude, of justice, of love, of friendship, she has excluded you from their control. To these, she has adapted the mechanism of the heart. Morals were too essential to the happiness of man, to be risked on the uncertain combinations of the head. She laid their foundation, therefore, in sentiment, not in science. That she gave to all, as necessary to all; this to a few only, as sufficing with a few. I know, indeed, that you pretend authority to the sovereign control of our conduct, in all its parts; and a respect for your grave saws and maxims, a desire to do what is right, has sometimes induced me to conform to your counsels. A few facts, however, which I can readily recall to your memory, will suffice to prove to you, that nature has not organized you for our moral direction. When the poor, wearied soldier whom we overtook at Chickahomony, with his pack on his back, begged us to let him get up behind our chariot, you began to calculate that the road was full of soldiers, and that if all should be taken up, our horses would fail in their journey. We drove on therefore. But, soon becoming sensible you had made me do wrong, that, though we cannot relieve all the distressed, we should relieve as many as we can, I turned about to take up the soldier; but he had entered a bye-path, and was no more to be found; and from that moment to this, I could never find him out, to ask his forgiveness. Again, when the poor woman came to ask a charity in Philadelphia, you whispered that she looked like a drunkard, and that half a dollar was enough to give her for the ale-house. Those who want the dispositions to give, easily find reasons why they ought not to give. When I sought her out afterwards, and did what I should have done at first, you know that she employed the money immediately towards placing her child at school. If our country, when pressed with wrongs at the point of the bayonet, had been governed by its heads instead of its hearts, where should we have been now? Hanging on a gallows as high as Haman's. You began to calculate, and to compare wealth and numbers: we threw up a few pulsations of our blood; we supplied enthusiasm against wealth and numbers; we put our existence to the hazard, when the hazard seemed against us, and we saved our country: justifying, at the same time, the ways of Providence, whose precept is, to do always what is right, and leave the issue to him. In short, my friend, as far as my recollection serves me, I do not know that I ever did a good thing on your suggestion, or a dirty one without it. I do forever, then, disclaim your interference in my province. Fill paper as you please with triangles and squares: try how many ways you can hang and combine them together. I shall never envy nor control your sublime delights. But leave me to decide, when and where friendships are to be contracted. You say, I contract them at random. So you said the woman at Philadelphia was a drunkard. I receive none into my esteem, till I know they are worthy of it. Wealth, title, office, are no recommendations to my friendship. On the contrary, great good qualities are requisite to make amends for their having wealth, title, and office. You confess, that, in the present case, I could not have made a worthier choice. You only object, that I was so soon to lose them. We are not immortal ourselves, my friend; how can we expect our enjoyments to be so? We have no rose without its thorn; no pleasure without alloy. It is the law of our existence; and we must acquiesce. It is the condition annexed to all our pleasures, not by us who receive, but by him who gives them. True, this condition is pressing cruelly on me at this moment. I feel more fit for death than life. But, when I look back on the pleasures of which it is the consequence, I am conscious they were worth the price I am paying. Notwithstanding your endeavors, too, to damp my hopes, I comfort myself with expectations of their promised return. Hope is sweeter than despair; and they were too good to mean to deceive me. "In the summer," said the gentleman; but "in the spring," said the lady; and I should love her forever, were it only for that! Know, then, my friend, that I have taken these good people into my bosom; that I have lodged them in the warmest cell I could find; that I love them, and will continue to love them through life; that if fortune should dispose them on one side the globe, and me on the other, my affections shall pervade its whole mass to reach them. Knowing then my determination, attempt not to disturb it. If you can, at any time, furnish matter for their amusement, it will be the office of a good neighbor to do it. I will, in like manner, seize any occasion which may offer, to do the like good turn for you with Condorcet, Rittenhouse, Madison, La Cretelle, or any other of those worthy sons of science, whom you so justly prize.
I thought this a favorable proposition whereon to rest the issue of the dialogue. So I put an end to it by calling for my nightcap. Methinks, I hear you wish to heaven I had called a little sooner, and so spared you the ennui of such a sermon. I did not interrupt them sooner, because I was in a mood for hearing sermons. You too were the subject; and on such a thesis, I never think the theme long; not even if I am to write it, and that slowly and awkwardly, as now, with the left hand. But, that you may not be discouraged from a correspondence which begins so formidably, I will promise you, on my honor, that my future letters shall be of a reasonable length. I will even agree to express but half my esteem for you, for fear of cloying you with too full a dose. But, on your part, no curtailing. If your letters are as long as the Bible, they will appear short to me. Only let them be brimful of affection. I shall read them with the dispositions with which Arlequin, in Les deux billets, spelt the words "je t'aime," and wished that the whole alphabet had entered into their composition.
We have had incessant rains since your departure. These make me fear for your health, as well as that you had an uncomfortable journey. The same cause has prevented me from being able to give you any account of your friends here. This voyage to Fontainebleau will probably send the Count de Moutier and the Marquis de Brehan, to America. Danquerville promised to visit me, but has not done it as yet. De la Tude comes sometimes to take family soup with me, and entertains me with anecdotes of his five and thirty years' imprisonment. How fertile is the mind of man, which can make the Bastile and dungeon of Vincennes yield interesting anecdotes! You know this was for making four verses on Madame de Pompadour. But I think you told me you did not know the verses. They were these: "Sans esprit, sans sentiment, Sans etre belle, ni neuve, En France on peut avoir le premier amant: Pompadour en est l'epreuve." I have read the memoir of his three escapes. As to myself, my health is good, except my wrist which mends slowly, and my mind which mends not at all, but broods constantly over your departure. The lateness of the season obliges me to decline my journey into the south of France. Present me in the most friendly terms to Mr. Cosway, and receive me into your own recollection with a partiality and warmth, proportioned not to my own poor merit, but to the sentiments of sincere affection and esteem, with which I have the honor to be, my dear Madam, your most obedient humble servant.
TO MRS. COSWAY
Paris, October 13, 1786.
My Dear Madam,—Just as I had sealed the enclosed, I received a letter of a good length, dated Antwerp, with your name at the bottom. I prepared myself for a feast. I read two or three sentences; looked again at the signature to see if I had not mistaken it. It was visibly yours. Read a sentence or two more. Diable! Spelt your name distinctly. There was not a letter of it omitted. Began to read again. In fine, after reading a little and examining the signature, alternately, half a dozen times, I found that your name was to four lines only, instead of four pages. I thank you for the four lines, however, because they prove you think of me; little, indeed, but better little than none. To show how much I think of you, I send you the enclosed letter of three sheets of paper, being a history of the evening I parted with you. But how expect you should read a letter of three mortal sheets of paper? I will tell you. Divide it into six doses of half a sheet each, and every day, when the toilette begins, take a dose, that is to say, read half a sheet. By this means, it will have the only merit its length and dulness can aspire to, that of assisting your coeffeuse to procure you six good naps of sleep. I will even allow you twelve days to get through it, holding you rigorously to one condition only, that is, that at whatever hour you receive this, you do not break the seal of the enclosed till the next toilette. Of this injunction I require a sacred execution. I rest it on your friendship, and that, in your first letter, you tell me honestly whether you have honestly performed it. I send you the song I promised. Bring me in return the subject, Jours heureux! Were I a songster, I should sing it all to these words: "Dans ces lieux qu'elle tarde a se rendre!" Learn it, I pray you, and sing it with feeling. My right hand presents its devoirs to you, and sees, with great indignation, the left supplanting it in a correspondence so much valued. You will know the first moment it can resume its rights. The first exercise of them shall be addressed to you, as you had the first essay of its rival. It will yet, however, be many a day. Present my esteem to Mr. Cosway, and believe me to be yours very affectionately.
TO M. DE CORNY
Paris, October 20, 1786.
Sir,—By the first conveyance which shall offer, I propose to report to the Governor of Virginia the manner in which the wish of the State, relative to the bust of the Marquis de La Fayette, has been carried into execution, and the very friendly and flattering attentions paid by Messieurs de Prevot des Marchands, et Echevins de Paris to them and to the character to which they desired to show their gratitude. It would enable us to do this with more exactness could I obtain copies of the proceedings which attended the inauguration of the bust. Your goodness, already so often manifested in this business, encourages me to endeavor to obtain these through your intervention. I do it the rather as it furnishes me an occasion very grateful to my feelings, of returning to you at the same time my sincere thanks for the zeal with which you have seconded the views of the State, the readiness with which you have condescended to give me information in the course of the proceedings, and to secure by your influence the success of these proceedings. This friendly assistance in the discharge of a public duty has added to the many motives of private esteem and attachment with which I have honor to be, Sir, your most obedient, and most humble servant.
TO THE HONORABLE JOHN JAY
Paris, October 22, 1786.
Sir,—In a letter of Jan. 2d, I had the honor of communicating to you the measures which had been pursued here for the improvement of the commerce between the United States and France, the general view of that commerce which I had presented to the Chevalier de Vergennes. The circumstance of the renewal of the forms which had obliged me to press separately and in the first place the article of tobacco, and that which had also brought forward that of whale oil; and, in my letters of May 27th and 31st, I informed you of the result on the first of these articles. During the course of the proceedings, a committee had been established for considering the means of promoting the general commerce with America, and the M. de La Fayette was named of that committee. His influence in obtaining that establishment was valuable, but his labors and his perseverance as a member of it became infinitely more so. Immediately after the committee of Berni, of which my letter of May 27th gave an account, we thought it expedient to bring the general subject of the American commerce before the committee; and as the members were much unacquainted with the nature and value of our commercial productions, the Marquis proposed that, in a letter to him as a member, I should give as particular details of them as I could, as a ground for the committee to proceed on. I did so in the letter, a copy of which I have now the honor to enclose. The committee were well disposed, and agreed to report, not only the general measures which they thought expedient to be adopted, but the form of the letter to be written by the minister of finance to me, for the communication of those measures. I have received this letter this morning and have now the honor to enclose it. I accompany it with the one proposed by the committee, of which you will perceive that it is almost a verbal copy; it furnished a proof of the disposition of the King and his ministers to produce a more intimate intercourse between the two nations. Indeed, I must say that, as far as I am able to see, the friendship of the people of this country towards us is cordial and general, and that it is a kind of security for the friendship of ministers who cannot in any country be uninfluenced by the voice of the people. To this we may add, that it is their interest, as well as ours, to multiply the bans of friendship between us. As the regulations stated in the minister's letter are immediately interesting to those concerned in our commerce, I send printed copies of it to the sea-port towns in France. We may consider them as an ultimate settlement of the conditions of our commerce with this country; for, though the consolidation of the ship duties, and the encouragements for the importation of rice are not finally decided, yet the letter contains a promise of them so soon as necessary facts shall be known. With a view to come at the facts relative to the two last subjects, I had proposed, whenever I should receive the final decision now enclosed, to avail myself of the pause which that would produce, in order to visit the sea-port towns with which we trade chiefly, and to collect that kind of knowledge of our commerce, and of what may be further useful to it, which can only be gathered on the spot, and suggested by one's own inspection. But the delay which has attended the obtaining the final determination has brought us to the entrance of winter, and will oblige me to postpone my journey to the spring. Besides the objects of public utility which induce me to make a tour of this land, that of health will oblige me to pay more attention to exercise and change of air than I have hitherto done since my residence in Europe; and I am willing to hope that I may be permitted at times to absent myself from this place, taking occasions when there is nothing important on hand, nor likely to arise. The assistance of the M. de La Fayette in the whole of this business, has been so earnest and so efficacious, that I am in duty bound to place it under the eye of Congress, as worthy their notice on this occasion. Their thanks, or such other notice as they think proper, would be grateful to him without doubt. He has richly deserved and will continue to deserve it, whenever occasions shall arise of rendering service to the United States. These occasions will continually occur. Though the abolition of the monopoly of our tobacco cannot be hoped under the present circumstances, changes are possible which may open that hope again. However jealous, too, this country is of foreign intercourse with their colonies, that intercourse is too essential to us to be abandoned as desperate. At this moment, indeed, it cannot be proposed; but, by watching circumstances, occasion may arise hereafter; and I hope will arise. I know from experience what would, in that case, be the value of such an auxiliary.
I have the honor to be, with sentiments of the most perfect esteem and respect, Sir, your most obedient, and most humble servant.
TO H. E. J. ADAMS
Paris, October 27, 1786.
Dear Sir,—I formerly had the honor of mentioning to you the measures I had taken to have our commerce with this country put on a better footing, and you know the circumstances which had occasioned the articles of whale oil and tobacco to be first brought forward. Latterly we got the committee, which had been established for this purpose, to take up the other article, and on their report, the King and council have come to the decisions explained in the enclosed letter from M. de Calonnes1 to me. The abandonment of revenue raised on articles of importation shows a friendly disposition. I have had, through this business, a most zealous and powerful auxiliary in the Marquis de La Fayette, by whose activity it has been sooner and better done than I could otherwise have possibly expected. Though you are free to show the enclosed letter as you please, I would wish it kept out of the public papers two or three months. I am, dear Sir, your affectionate friend and servant.
