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To John Adams Monticello, Jan. 11, 1816
DEAR SIR, -- Of the last five months I have past four at my
other domicil, for such it is in a considerable degree. No letters
are forwarded to me there, because the cross post to that place is
circuitous and uncertain. During my absence therefore they are
accumulating here, and awaiting acknolegments. This has been the
fate of your favor of Nov. 13.
I agree with you in all it's eulogies on the 18th. century. It
certainly witnessed the sciences and arts, manners and morals,
advanced to a higher degree than the world had ever before seen. And
might we not go back to the aera of the Borgias, by which time the
barbarous ages had reduced national morality to it's lowest point of
depravity, and observe that the arts and sciences, rising from that
point, advanced gradually thro' all the 16th. 17th. and 18th.
centuries, softening and correcting the manners and morals of man? I
think too we may add, to the great honor of science and the arts,
that their natural effect is, by illuminating public opinion, to
erect it into a Censor, before which the most exalted tremble for
their future, as well as present fame. With some exceptions only,
through the 17th. and 18th. centuries morality occupied an honorable
chapter in the political code of nations. You must have observed
while in Europe, as I thought I did, that those who administered the
governments of the greater powers at least, had a respect to faith,
and considered the dignity of their government as involved in it's
integrity. A wound indeed was inflicted on this character of honor
in the 18th. century by the partition of Poland. But this was the
atrocity of a barbarous government chiefly, in conjunction with a
smaller one still scrambling to become great, while one only of those
already great, and having character to lose, descended to the
baseness of an accomplice in the crime. France, England, Spain
shared in it only inasmuch as they stood aloof and permitted it's
perpetration. How then has it happened that these nations, France
especially and England, so great, so dignified, so distinguished by
science and the arts, plunged at once into all the depths of human
enormity, threw off suddenly and openly all the restraints of
morality, all sensation to character, and unblushingly avowed and
acted on the principle that power was right? Can this sudden
apostacy from national rectitude be accounted for? The treaty of
Pilnitz seems to have begun it, suggested perhaps by the baneful
precedent of Poland. Was it from the terror of monarchs, alarmed at
the light returning on them from the West, and kindling a Volcano
under their thrones? Was it a combination to extinguish that light,
and to bring back, as their best auxiliaries, those enumerated by
you, the Sorbonne, the Inquisition, the Index expurgatorius, and the
knights of Loyola? Whatever it was, the close of the century saw the
moral world thrown back again to the age of the Borgias, to the point
from which it had departed 300. years before. France, after crushing
and punishing the conspiracy of Pilnitz, went herself deeper and
deeper into the crimes she had been chastising. I say France, and
not Bonaparte; for altho' he was the head and mouth, the nation
furnished the hands which executed his enormities. England, altho'
in opposition, kept full pace with France, not indeed by the manly
force of her own arms, but by oppressing the weak, and bribing the
strong. At length the whole choir joined and divided the weaker
nations among them. Your prophecies to Dr. Price proved truer than
mine; and yet fell short of the fact, for instead of a million, the
destruction of 8. or 10. millions of human beings has probably been
the effect of these convulsions. I did not, in 89. believe they
would have lasted so long, nor have cost so much blood. But altho'
your prophecy has proved true so far, I hope it does not preclude a
better final result. That same light from our West seems to have
spread and illuminated the very engines employed to extinguish it.
It has given them a glimmering of their rights and their power. The
idea of representative government has taken root and growth among
them. Their masters feel it, and are saving themselves by timely
offers of this modification of their own powers. Belguim, Prussia,
Poland, Lombardy etc. are now offered a representative organization:
illusive probably at first, but it will grow into power in the end.
Opinion is power, and that opinion will come. Even France will yet
attain representative government. You observe it makes the basis of
every constitution which has been demanded or offered: of that
demanded by their Senate; of that offered by Bonaparte; and of that
granted by Louis XVIII. The idea then is rooted, and will be
established, altho' rivers of blood may yet flow between them and
their object. The allied armies now couching upon them are first to
be destroyed, and destroyed they will surely be. A nation united can
never be conquered. We have seen what the ignorant bigotted and
unarmed Spaniards could do against the disciplined veterans of their
invaders. What then may we not expect from the power and character
of the French nation? The oppressors may cut off heads after heads,
but like those of the Hydra, they multiply at every stroke. The
recruits within a nation's own limits are prompt and without number;
while those of their invaders from a distance are slow, limited, and
must come to an end. I think too we percieve that all these allies
do not see the same interest in the annihilation of the power of
France. There are certainly some symptoms of foresight in Alexander
that France might produce a salutary diversion of force were Austria
and Prussia to become her enemies. France too is the natural ally of
the Turk, as having no interfering interests, and might be useful in
neutralizing and perhaps turning that power on Austria. That a
re-acting jealousy too exists with Austria and Prussia I think their
late strict alliance indicates; and I should not wonder if Spain
should discover a sympathy with them. Italy is so divided as to be
nothing. Here then we see new coalitions in embrio which after
France shall in turn have suffered a just punishment for her crimes,
will not only raise her from the earth on which she is prostrate, but
give her an opportunity to establish a government of as much liberty
as she can bear, enough to ensure her happiness and prosperity. When
insurrection begins, be it where it will, all the partitioned
countries will rush to arms, and Europe again become an Arena of
gladiators. And what is the definite object they will propose? A
restoration certainly of the status quo prius, of the state of
possession of 89. I see no other principle on which Europe can ever
again settle down in lasting peace. I hope your prophecies will go
thus far, as my wishes do, and that they, like the former, will prove
to have been the sober dictates of a superior understanding, and a
sound calculation of effects from causes well understood. Some
future Morgan will then have an opportunity of doing you justice, and
of counterbalancing the breach of confidence of which you so justly
complain, and in which no one has had more frequent occasion of
fellow-feeling than myself.
Permit me to place here my affectionate
respects to Mrs. Adams, and to add for yourself the assurances of
cordial friendship and esteem.
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