The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, Vol. 4 (of 9): Being His Autobiography, Correspondence, Reports, Messages, Addresses, and Other Writings, Official and Private — John Shaqi
The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, Vol. 4 (of 9): Being His Autobiography, Correspondence, Reports, Messages, Addresses, and Other Writings, Official and PrivateJefferson, Thomas
History
The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, Vol. 4 (of 9): Being His Autobiography, Correspondence, Reports, Messages, Addresses, and Other Writings, Official and Private
Jefferson, Thomas
United States -- Politics and government -- 1775-1783; United States -- Politics and government -- 1783-1865
SIR,--I wrote you on the 23d, and yesterday I received yours of the 17th,
which was the more welcome as it acknowledged mine of the 9th, about the
safety of which I was anxious. I now risk some other papers, the sequel of
those conveyed in that. The result I know not. We are sending a courier to
Madrid to make a last effort for the preservation of honorable peace. The
affairs of France are recovering their solidity, and from the steadiness
of the people on the defection of so popular and capital a commander as
Dumourier, we have a proof that nothing can shake this republicanism.
Hunger is to be expected; but the silence of the late papers on that
head, and the near approach of harvest, makes us hope they will weather
that rock. I do not find that there has been serious insurrection but in
Brittany, and where the noblesse having been as numerous as the people,
and indeed being almost the people, the counter-revolutionary spirit has
been known always to have existed since the night in which titles were
suppressed. The English are trying to stop the torrent of bankruptcies
by an emission of five millions of exchequer bills, loaned on the
pawn-broking plan, consequently much inferior to the assignats in value.
But that paper will sink to an immediate level with their other public
paper, and consequently can only complete the ruin of those who take it
from government at par, and on a pledge of pins, buckles, &c., of little
value, which will not sell so as to pay storage in a country where there
is no specie, and we may say no paper of confidence. Every letter which
comes expresses a firm belief that the whole paper system will now vanish
into that nothing on which it is bottomed. For even the public faith is
nothing as the mass of paper bottomed on it is known to be beyond its
possible redemption. I hope this will be a wholesome lesson to our future
Legislature. The war between France and England has brought forward the
Republicans and Monocrats in every State, so that their relative numbers
are perfectably visible.
TO MESSRS. CARMICHAEL AND SHORT.
PHILADELPHIA, June 30, 1793.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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