of whig and tory the most wholesome which can exist in any government, and well worthy of being nourished, to keep out those of a more dangerous character." We already see the power, installed for life, responsible to no authority (for impeachment is not even a scare-crow), advancing with a noiseless and steady pace to the great object of consolidation. The foundations are already deeply laid by their decisions, for the annihilation of constitutional state rights, and the removal of every check, every counterpoise to the engulfing power of which themselves are to make a sovereign part. If ever this vast country is brought under a single government, it will be one of the most extensive corruption, indifferent and incapable of a wholesome care over so wide a spread of surface. This will not be borne, and you will have to choose between reformation and revolution. The remedy for the threatened evil proposed by him is, that the future appointments of judges should be for four or six years, and removable by the President and Senate. This would bring their conduct, at regular periods, under revision and probation, and might keep them in equipoise between the general and special governments. He distinguishes be: tween this country and England as to the independence of the judges, and says, "That there should be public functionaries independent of the nation, whatever may be their demerit, is a solecism in a republic, of the first order of absurdity and inconsistency."

In October, Mr. Jefferson received a letter from Mr. Adams, inquiring of him the history of the four ships ordered by Congress to be built during General Washington's administration for the purpose of protecting American commerce in the Mediterranean; and says that he had always imputed this measure to Mr. Jefferson, 1st. Because he had

It is doing injustice to popular sentiment to suppose that the people would have grudged it. They are far more liberal of the public money than some of those who undertake to answer for them would make us believe.

frequently proposed the same measure while they were at Paris, negotiating for peace with the Barbary powers. 2nd. Because he knew that Washington and Hamilton were not only indifferent to a navy, but averse to it. He supposes that General Washington might have consented to it, from his attachment to General Knox, and his deference to Mr." Jefferson's opinion. He says that he had personal evidence that Hamilton was averse to the measure, for, he says, while it was pending," he came in a hurry and a fit of impatience to make a visit to me. He said he was likely to be called upon for a large sum of money to build ships of war, to fight the Algerines, and he asked my opinion of the measure. I answered him that I was clearly in favour of it, for I had always been of opinion, from the commencement of the revolution, that a navy was the most powerful, the safest, and the cheapest national defence for this country. My advice, therefore, was, that as much of the revenue as could possibly be spared, should be applied to the building and equipping of ships. The conversation was of some length, but it was manifest in his looks and in his air, that he was disgusted at the measure, as well as at the opinion I had expressed." He adds that he had always believed the navy to be " Mr. Jefferson's child," and that he had full proof that "Washington was averse to a navy, from his own lips, in many different conversations, some of them of length, in which he always insisted that it was only building and arming ships for the English."

To this letter Mr. Jefferson replies on the 1st of November: That he had racked his memory and ransacked his papers to answer Mr. Adams's inquiries, but to little purpose. He admits that he formed the opinion, while in Europe; that our government, as soon as practicable, should provide a naval force to keep the Barbary States in order; and when he returned to America, and became a member of 2 K.

VOL. II.

General Washington's administration, he constantly maintained the same opinion: that in December, 1790, on a reference made to him by the first Congress, he reported in favour of a force sufficient for the protection of our Mediterranean commerce. He thinks that General Washington approved of building ships to that extent; and General Knox certainly, but Colonel Hamilton he does not remember. He admits that Mr. Adams's recollections are corroborated by "his known anxieties for a close connexion with Great Britain; and his consequent apprehension of collisions between their vessels and ours. That after some of the ships added in Mr. Adams's administration were sold, under a law passed while he was in office, he considered that the public safety might require some additional ships to be in readiness for the first moment of war, provided they could be preserved from decay, and without expense. With this view he proposed that they should be built in dry docks, above the level of the tide waters, and covered with roofs. But a majority of the legislature was against any addition to the navy," and the minority, [meaning the federalists,] though for it in judgment, voted against it on a principle of opposition." He adverts to the present plan of building ships under shelter, until wanted, when they will be launched and finished, and remarks: "On my plan they could be in service at an hour's notice." He thus far expresses his existing opinions on the subject: "The navy of the late war certainly raised our rank and character among nations. Yet a navy is a very expensive engine. It is admitted that in ten or twelve years a vessel goes to entire decay; or, if kept in repair, costs as much as would build a new one : and that a nation who could count on twelve or fifteen years of peace would gain by burning its navy and building a new one in time." Its extent, therefore, he says, must be governed by circumstances; and that since his proposition

"for a force adequate to the piracies of the Mediterranean, a similar necessity has arisen in our own for a considerable addition to that force;" and he expresses the wish that a convention with the naval powers of Europe would agree to keep down the pirates of the Mediterranean and the slave ships on the coast of Africa, while our ships performed the same duties in our seas: as in this way we should avoid collisions between the ships of different nations and consequent wars," which constitute the weightiest objection to navies."

Whatever is connected with this branch of the national defence, which is at once the cheapest, the most efficient, the safest, and that which has earned for the United States a glory which can never die, is interesting; and it would seem from the preceding correspondence, that the cautious character of General Washington prevented his being a zealous advocate for a navy, in the straitened means of the public treasury at that time. Mr. Jefferson's own mind certainly seems to have oscillated more than once on this subject-sometimes seeing its value and importance as clearly as it is generally seen now, and therefore becoming its advocate; but at others, alarmed at its burthensome expense, and its exposing the country to collisions with other naval powers, to discomfiture and disgrace, and therefore becoming its opponent. The objections urged by him to this species of defence, in his letter to Mr. Adams, seems not to be well founded, either on the adoption of his own plan of dry docks, supposing them practicable within a reasonable limit of expense, or on the plan which has been subsequently adopted; since vessels perfectly defended from the sun and rain undergo no change in a long series of years, and occasion an insignificant expense for their safe keeping. It is not seen how there would be any advantage in Mr. Jefferson's plan over the one now adopted, in being more readily prepared for service, except the single one that a

vessel could be floated into tide water by locks quicker than she could be launched; for in either case the rigging and equipment must take place after the ship had left her shelter, and all other preparation could be made as well on one plan as the other: and the first advantage may be more than compensated by the great cost of water-tight locks, constructed of the requisite depth and dimensions. But in truth the two plans are essentially the same; and it affords a striking illustration of the justice with which party censure is meted out, that a scheme which since, with a small modification, it has been tested by experiment, obtains universal approbation, was, when proposed by Mr. Jefferson, ridiculed as visionary.

The perusal of O'Meara's account of Bonaparte disposed Mr. Jefferson somewhat to qualify his opinion of that extraordinary individual. "It places him in a higher scale of understanding than I had allotted him. I had thought him the greatest of all military captains, but an indifferent statesman, and misled by unworthy passions. The flashes, however, which escaped from him in these conversations with O'Meara, prove a mind of great expansion, though not of distinct development and reasoning. He seizes results with rapidity and penetration, but never explains logically the process of reasoning by which he arrives at them." He thinks, too, that the book makes us "forget his atrocities for a moment, in commiseration of his sufferings, and proves also that nature had denied him the moral sense, the first excellence of well-organized man." On this position Mr. Jefferson thus reasons: "If he could seriously and repeatedly affirm, that he had raised himself to power without ever having committed a crime, it proves that he wanted totally the sense of right and wrong. If he could consider the million of human lives which he had destroyed or caused to be destroyed, the desolations of countries by plunderings, burn