DEAR SIR:

TO JOSEPH HALL

EALING, near London, 7 August, 1816.

Your obliging favor of the 13th of June has come safely to hand, but I have not been so fortunate as to receive the preceding letter of 24 December to which it refers. This is a circumstance which I greatly regret, as the loss of any one of your letters is a privation of much valuable information and of the soundest views of our political affairs.

I was not surprised at the issue of the late election in Massachusetts, though I had been much at the selection of the federal candidate. As the federal majority in 1814 had been of more than ten thousand votes, and in 1815 had only fallen to seven thousand, I had little or no expectation that in the space of one year more it would fall off in a proportion so much accelerated as to change it into a minority for the time. The late Mr. Bayard was of opinion that the result of the peace would be to strengthen and increase the federal party throughout the Union. My own anticipation was that it would have a contrary effect, but with a slow, gradual and uniform operation. The recovery from an inflammatory disease is seldom so rapid as the progress of the disease itself, nor is the most sudden generally the most effectual convalescence. The improvement of the public spirit has been quite equal to my expectations; and to find the Massachusetts federalists reduced to the necessity of holding up General Brooks for their candidate was quite as satisfactory a demonstration to me of the tendencies of the popular sentiment, as the triumph of the Republican party in Vermont, New Hampshire, and New York.

I have read with much satisfaction the new Governor's

speech to the legislature, and have observed with still more pleasure the temper with which it has been received by both parties. The republicans have approved and applauded it without reserve. The federalists, applauding it apparently with equal warmth, seem only to vent their chagrin at the thought that their Governor has pleased and conciliated their adversaries. Governor Brooks has neither insulted nor calumniated the government of the nation. His immediate predecessor [a line missing] last three or four years seem to have considered that practice as by far the most important of their official duties. A snarling Governor, a snarling Senate, a snarling House of Representatives, such is the picture of Massachusetts under Strong's last administrations. Pious eulogies upon the bulwark of our Holy Religion; black letter law in favor [blank] in the face of mankind that they could find no more than eleven natives of Massachusetts impressed into the British Navy; sanctified resolutions that a moral and religious people ought not to rejoice at the victories of their country; processions and illuminations to celebrate the triumphs of the public enemy; the territory of the state abandoned to the invader, and Hartford Conventions to dissolve the Unionthese, with periodical insult and calumny upon the government of the Union, these are the beams of glory with which Strong's second administration of Massachusetts will go down to posterity. Sound, sound was the sense of Governor Brooks when he turned a deaf ear to the [demand] which urged him to pledge his unsullied fame to the approbation of this mass of [blank].

It is a strong proof at once of the desperate condition to which the junto federalists find themselves reduced, and of the narrow scale upon which all their politics are graduated that they have reconciled themselves to the dismember

ment of the Commonwealth by the separation of the province of Maine, merely because it may secure to them a year or two longer the dominion of the remnant of the state, though with a prospect equally apparent of introducing into the Senate of the Union two new members to counteract the influence of their own. I regret the separation of Maine, because it will sink my native state from the first down to the second or third rate among the members of the Union, and because I should have hoped that the weight which her strength and population must always have given her, would in future times be directed to the true honor and general interest of the country, although they had been so miserably misapplied for some years past. But as the objects of administration to which the state governments are generally confined may best be superintended by authorities compassed within small local divisions, as there was necessarily much inconvenience to the inhabitants of Maine by reason of their distance from the seat of government, and by their separation from its territory and the intervention of New Hampshire, and as our legislature had already become so enormously unwieldly, and was growing more so from year to year, I have made up my mind to be contented with the measure; and if the states of New York, Pennsylvania and Virginia would be partitioned in the same manner, I should be perfectly satisfied with this operation of our political arithmetic which multiplies by dividing, and adds to the whole body whatever it subtracts from each individual member.

The accounts that we receive from all the commercial cities of the United States are in some respects unpleasant. Trade is said to be by no means in a flourishing state. Excessive importations of goods that can neither be disposed of nor paid for: floods of discredited paper and a total ex

haustion of gold and silver: provisions and all the necessaries of life at immoderate prices, and foreign goods unsaleable at prime cost; the public credit extremely low, and showing no symptom of recovery-these appearances give serious concern to the friends of our country, and afford some consolation to the people of this nation who are beginning to suffer severe distress themselves. Among them it is a great and as yet unsettled question to what cause their distress is to be imputed. The friends of the government and loyal subjects ascribe it to the transition from the state of war to that of peace, and to two or three successive seasons of extraordinary plenty. The Jacobins charge it upon the extravagant expenditures of the government, the insupportable load of taxation, and the wars against the French Revolution. The complete final success of those wars and the splendid victories of their armies in the late years have given the loyal party an irresistible ascendency over all their opponents, and there was probably never a period in the history of the island when there was such general submission to the government, so little disaffection throughout the country, and such a universal feeling of national pride and exultation as that which immediately succeeded the battle which they call the battle of Waterloo. The pressure upon the farmers had indeed begun to be felt some time before, but it was for several months after lost in the general shouts of triumph. It was, however, in the autumn of the last year that the complaints of agricultural distress began to be heard. The produce of the land sunk in value so that the farmers were unable to pay their rents. The country banks called in their paper and many of them failed. The manufacturers were compelled to dismiss their workmen. The paupers multiplied until many parishes became unable to maintain them. Yet these effects were all so limited and

partial when Parliament met in February, that the Regent's speech congratulated them upon the flourishing state of commerce and the revenue, and took no notice of any distress as existing anywhere. The proposal on the part of the Ministers to continue the property tax, though reduced from ten to five per cent, produced a struggle against it, and many petitions from all parts of the kingdom. It was lost by a small majority in the House of Commons. Parliament sat five months, in which there was much speech making about distress and economy, but nothing more was done to relieve the distress, and an expenditure of thirty millions for the present year was sanctioned to illustrate the economy. In the meantime the complaints have been increasing and growing louder, at last they have resorted to a public subscription to relieve the sufferers. The most alarming symptom of the disease has but just shown itself, that is, a diminution of the revenue. The quarter which ended on the 5th of July was the first in which this deficiency appeared. If that should continue and increase as the present prospect threatens, the government will find it difficult to fulfil its engagements with the public creditors. Some slight appearances of discontent have lately been manifested in various parts of the country, and here and there hunger has produced an occasional popular riot which has been immediately suppressed by the soldiers. But hitherto the popularity of the government has suffered little. A foreign war might again divert the attention of the people from their own situation, and again make it supportable to them; but unless that, or some extraordinary turn of affairs should happen, I think it impossible that two years more should pass away without bringing the conflict between the land and the funds, the debtor and creditor of this nation to a crisis, which will dissolve the spell of her overgrown