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Subject Area: Political Theory
Topic: The American Revolution and Constitution

JAY TO JUDGE PETERS. - John Jay, The Correspondence and Public Papers of John Jay, vol. 4 (1794-1826) [1893]

Edition used:

The Correspondence and Public Papers of John Jay, ed. Henry P. Johnston, A.M. (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1890-93). Vol. 4 (1794-1826).

Part of: The Correspondence and Public Papers of John Jay, 4 vols.

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JAY TO JUDGE PETERS.

Bedford, 26th December, 1820.

I thank you cordially, my good and constant friend, for your letter of the 25th ult. It affords me no little gratification. We grow old, but our hearts retain their warmth.

The perversion and obliquity you notice have not been recent nor unexpected. Men who are ardent in the pursuit of influence and its fruits, and more attentive to the prosecution than to the propriety of their schemes, usually become and remain hostile to those who steadfastly disapprove of their manœuvres. Instead of regulating their hostility by truth and candour, they generally find it convenient to recur to perversion and obliquity.

The conventional statement to which you allude, was doubtless devised and formed in the manner which its projectors deemed to be best accommodated to the objects they had in view. So many years have elapsed since the negotiations at Paris, that only a few individuals among the present members of any of our popular assemblies probably possess ample and accurate knowledge of those negotiations.

On considering your hint of my making some statement of facts relative to them, in addition to my letter to Congress, which you observe may (like the papers of the War Office) be accidentally destroyed, I think that precaution will not be necessary. I have a book in which are entered that and all my other official letters to Congress.

An accurate and well-written history of the United States down to the conclusion of the late war is desirable, but my expectations on that head are not sanguine. Time is daily obscuring and diminishing the materials, and the task becoming more and more difficult. The marks of talent and rectitude which appear in the Life of Washington by Judge Marshall, have induced me to regret that he had not commenced such a history and incorporated that life in it. The mass of information he has collected continues to afford facilities for such a work, and it would more than answer the purpose of a new edition of the other. Whoever may undertake it would, in my opinion, do well to give it the advantage of frequent revision and postpone the publication until a period when the events and circumstances related in it had ceased to produce personal and political excitement.

As to President Washington’s valedictory address, I can add nothing material to the information contained in my letter to you of the 29th March, 1811. The attention both of Col. Hamilton and myself was, in our consultation on that subject, confined to the paper in which he had incorporated that address with his proposed corrections. We considered whether in this state it required any further amendment, and nothing occurring to render recurrences to the draft itself, as sent by the President, necessary, it was not then read by either of us; nor by me at any time. An idea that this confidential reference might perhaps be disclosed, did not enter into my mind, and not having the least apprehension of unpleasant consequences, there was nothing to excite my attention to care or precaution respecting them. Whether the President adopted all or only some of the proposed corrections, or added others, are questions which my memory at this late day does not enable me to answer; nor do I recollect having read the printed address with an eye to these circumstances. I think Mr. Hopkinson will readily perceive that he cannot assign to Col. Hamilton even the credit of amending and correcting that address, without necessarily and unavoidably assigning to him the discredit of a breach of confidence.

I rejoice in your continuing to enjoy good health. I will not say with the Spaniards “may you live a thousand years,” for that would postpone greater blessings.

The name and the character of Judge Washington interest me in his welfare. I hope he will be restored to health. The prevailing disease which attacked him, I suspect, was the same which visited us—influenza; few families here escaped. I have had it, but not severely; it has left a cough which still gives me some trouble. Although too feeble to go often beyond the piazza, yet I experience no depression of spirits, nor frequent returns of acute pain.

Here also the distress of the times is felt very sensibly. Habits of expense, unproductive speculations and debts injudiciously contracted, press hard both upon debtors and creditors. How long this state of things will continue, or how much good or evil will eventually result from it, cannot now be calculated. They who hope for the best, and prepare for the worst, will doubtless mitigate some of their troubles, and probably obviate the occurrence of some others.

God bless you, my dear sir.
Yours affectionately,

John Jay.

1821.