but that compared with the interest which two years ago I should have felt in the prospect of these events, that of the present moment is not to be named.

1

The selection of the federal candidate for governor of Massachusetts has much surprised me. In November you gave me a list of nine names then talked of, but that of Brooks 1 was not among them. Assuredly the General would have my vote in preference to most of them, for I never heard of him as a Hartford Conventionist; but he has been so little known in public life at all, and has gone along in such an easy even tenor, that I should not have dreamt of him as the candidate of those who plotted that notable conspiracy. It is the worst thing I ever knew of him. I have seen the electioneering address in his favor, and find that not only his own honorable services in the revolutionary war are very properly alleged in support of his pretensions, but also that he is said to have had two sons in the public service during the late war, and that one of them fell in the glorious battle upon Lake Erie. These are to my mind strong titles to public gratitude and would be powerful motives to influence my vote. But what can they be to those who grudged even a vote of thanks for the victory on Lake Erie, and all others achieved by their own countrymen? To those who in the struggle of life and death hailed the enemy as the bulwark of our holy religion? To those who not only avowed their approbation of the infamous principle of the press gang, but who while thousands of their own brethren natives of their own state were groaning under the bondage of British John Brooks (1752-1825). "Mr. Erving, who has arrived in Paris, writes me, that in Boston the Trinitarians are increasing and the Federalists diminishing, and putting water into their wine. Their liquor will require much more diluting yet. I have nothing to say against General Brooks, much against those whose candidate he is. By the returns that we have seen his majority will be meagre enough, and too consumptive to be long lived." To Abigail Adams, May 20, 1816. Ms.

1

impressment, instituted a mock legislative inquiry, and reported in the face of mankind that they could ascertain only eleven citizens of Massachusetts who had been subjected to it? Now can those aiders and abettors of the man-stealer hold it up as a claim of merit in General Brooks, that he had a son who died in a cause so reprobated by their abhorrence? 1 But I should be still more embarrassed to account for this, had I not been informed that my old friend Otis writes to his correspondents in this country, that the issue of the war has been to give our people a consciousness of their own strength and confidence in themselves; and he has even given warning that if Great Britain should again provoke us into a war, she will find us far more united against her than we were in the last. Burke says that Charles Townshend always hit the House of Commons between wind and water. Otis has spent his life in hitting the opinions of the people of Massachusetts between wind and water. After his exploits at the Hartford Convention and his πаρаπρeo Beía to Washington, when he was so seasonably accompanied from Baltimore to that city by the messenger bearing the treaty of Ghent,' it was certainly very gratifying to me to be told that he was writing to his friends in England that the next war between the United States and Great Britain would exhibit us more united than the last. Not that I placed much reliance upon it as a promise; but it was the evidence to me where the wind and water line now is, and has been since the peace. As the election is at this moment decided, there can be no harm in the avowal that my vote should have been for Dexter; one reason for which would have been precisely because he has not been so skilful in aiming at the wind and water line as

1 John Brooks, Jr. (1783-1813). He was killed at the battle on Lake Erie. Morison, Harrison Gray Otis, II. 160.

my friend Otis, and because he did not wait till the next war to take the side of his country in a quarrel with Britain.

No. 39.

TO THE SECRETARY OF STATE

[JAMES MONROE]

LONDON, 9 April, 1816.

SIR:

From the representations of the present condition of this country, contained in all the newspapers that you will receive and repeated day after day, and week after week, in the parliamentary debates, it is to be apprehended that erroneous impressions of the reality may be made unless these highly colored pictures should be received with suitable allowances. It might perhaps be stated that there never was a period in the history of this island, when there was less of real suffering among the people than at this moment. There certainly never was a period, when the public tranquillity was more profound. The great and immediate cause of complaint is excessive plenty, the consequence of which, in point of fact, is that the whole people are fed. The nature of their want will give a striking idea of their real state. They want a year of scarcity. It is nevertheless true that this overflowing abundance, combining with the load of taxation with which they are oppressed, bears with peculiar hardship upon one particular class of the people, a very important part of the community-the small farmer. Nothing can be more simple than that the calculation of this load of taxation has been doubled upon them by the depreciation of their stock to one-half the value at which it could

be sold during the war. Hence the inability of many of them to pay their rents and their tithes. Hence the reduction in the wages of laborers, which increases the numbers to be supported or assisted by the poor rates. Hence a falling off in the income of the landlords, some of whom are compelled to retrench their expenses, and others to intrench upon their capitals. Hence a diminution of consumption in the articles of commerce and luxury, and hence finally an augmented number of distresses for rent and executions for the payment of taxes. To what extent this may be carried hereafter I will not undertake to say; but if it should amount to anything that can deserve the name of national distress, it will be discovered by symptoms far, very far differing from any that have been hitherto discernible. It is clear that neither [this] nor any other government can levy taxes upon the poor absolutely poor. Taxation must in its nature be levied upon superfluity. But there is a state of society just above that of poverty, and from which the government may, and this government does, commence the extraction of part of its superfluity; and as that part was a large proportion of the whole when the stock and income of this class of people was double what it is at present, now that these have been reduced one-half in value, the part extracted absorbs the whole superfluity, and encroaching upon the stock itself, ruins the man and casts him upon the parish for subsistence. Cases of this kind have undoubtedly become numerous and every individual case is of great hardship. But on the other hand, it should be considered that the property of the fundholders has risen in value in proportion as that of the landholders has fallen. The three, and four, and five per cents have nominally risen but little. The prices at the stock exchange are nearly as they were. year, which the bank paid out two years ago to the stock

But the forty millions a

holders as interest upon their funded property, was worth not more than twenty-five millions of gold or silver. It is now equivalent to specie. Here is then fifteen millions in value added to the circulating superfluity of the nation, and the fundholders are enabled to enlarge their scale of expenditure as much as the landed proprietors are obliged to retrench theirs. This appears to be the circumstance which will falsify the predictions of those who have foretold a great falling off in the revenue as a consequence inevitable from the distress of the landed interest. The fact has hitherto proved directly the reverse. All the taxes upon consumption and expenditure yielded more in 1815 than they ever had in any preceding year. The returns upon the 5th of this month for the first quarter of the present year indicate no symptoms of deficiency. The excise, the assessed taxes, the stamps, are all as productive as they ever have been, and hence it is demonstrated that the consumption of luxuries as well as of necessaries, the transfers of property, and the commerce of internal circulation, are as great and as active as ever; while the other fact, that the exchange and consequently the balance of trade of all the world is in favor of Great Britain, amply refutes the clamors of commercial distress in which the merchants are indulging themselves, rather for the sake of keeping in tune with the farmers, than from any real participation in their sufferings.

The distress therefore about which so much is said both in and out of Parliament is not the distress of the nation, but it may with propriety be termed the distress of the landed for the benefit of the funded interest. That its tendency must be, should it long continue, to destroy the harmony between those two important parts of the community, is very obvious, and the consequences may be serious, if the attention of the nation should be allowed to fix itself