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• The Significance of the Pacificus-helvidius Debates: Toward the Completion of the American Founding
• Addendum
• Note On the Text
• The Pacificus-helvidius Debates of 1793-1794
• Washington’s Neutrality Proclamation, April 22, 1793 *
• Defense of the President’s Neutrality Proclamation *
• Pacificus Number I *
• Pacificus Number Ii *
• Pacificus Number Iii *
• Pacificus Number Iv *
• Pacificus Number V *
• Pacificus Number Vi *
• Pacificus Number Vii *
• Thomas Jefferson to James Madison *
• Helvidius Number I *
• Helvidius Number Ii *
• Helvidius Number Iii *
• Helvidius Number Iv *
• Helvidius Number V *
• Americanus Number I *
• Americanus Number Ii *

Thomas Jefferson to James Madison*

Dear Sir

July 7. 1793

I wrote you on the 30th. ult. and shall be uneasy till I have heard you have received it. I have no letter from you this week. You will perceive by the inclosed papers that they are to be discontinued in their present form & a daily paper published in their stead, if subscribers enough can be obtained. I fear they cannot, for nobody here scarcely has ever taken his paper. You will see in these Colo. H’s 2d. & 3d. pacificus. Nobody answers him, & his doctrine will therefore be taken for confessed. For god’s sake, my dear Sir, take up your pen, select the most striking heresies, and cut him to peices in the face of the public. There is nobody else who can & will enter the lists with him. Never in my opinion, was so calamitous an appointment made, as that of the present minister of F. here. Hotheaded, all imagination, no judgment, passionate, disrespectful & even indecent towards the P. in his written as well as verbal communications, talking of appeals from him to Congress, from them to the people, urging the most unreasonable & groundless propositions, & in the most dictatorial style &c. &c. &c. If ever it should be necessary to lay his communications before Congress or the public, they will excite universal indignation. He renders my position immensely difficult. He does me justice personally, and, giving him time to vent himself & then cool, I am on a footing to advise him freely, & he respects it. But he breaks out again on the very first occasion, so as to shew that he is incapable of correcting himself. To complete our misfortune we have no channel of our own through which we can correct the irritating representations he may make. Adieu. Yours affectionately.

[* ]Reprinted with permission from The Papers of James Madison, ed. Thomas A. Mason, Robert A. Rutland, and Jeanne K. Sisson, vol. 15 (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1985), 43.