|
|
24. Secretary of State
n the 26th of September, 1789, Mr. Jefferson left Paris for America. He was detained at Havre by contrary winds until the 8th of October, when he crossed over to Cowes, where he was again detained by contrary winds until the 22nd, when he embarked and landed at Norfolk, Virginia, on the 23rd of November. On his way to Monticello he passed some days at Eppington in Chesterfield county, the residence of his friend and correspondent, Francis Eppes; and while there he received a letter from the President, George Washington, by express, concerning an appointment as Secretary of State to the new government. Gratifying as was this high testimonial of his public estimation -- the highest in the power of the president to confer -- he nevertheless received it with real regret. His wish had been to return to Paris where he had left his household establishment, to see the end of the revolution, which he then thought would be certainly and happily closed in less than a year, and to make that the epoch of his retirement from all public employments. "I then meant," says he, "to return home, to withdraw from Political life, into which I had been impressed by the circumstances of the times, to sink into the bosom of my family and friends, and devote myself to studies more congenial to my mind." (Autobiography, 1821. ME 1:160) In a letter to Mr. Madison a short time before leaving Paris he wrote: "You ask me if I would accept any appointment on that side of the water? You know the circumstances which led me from retirement, step by step, and from one nomination to another up to the present. My object is a return to the same retirement; whenever, therefore, I quit the present, it will not be to engage in any other office, and most especially any one which would require a constant residence from home." (Aug. 28, 1789. ME 7:453) In a letter to another friend in Virginia, the same sentiment is pursued: "Your letter has kindled all the fond recollections of ancient times; recollections much dearer to me than any thing I have known since. There are minds which can be pleased by honors and preferments, but I see nothing in them but envy and enmity. It is only necessary to possess them to know how little they contribute to happiness, or rather how hostile they are to it. No attachments soothe the mind so much as those contracted in early life, nor do I recollect any societies which have given me more pleasure than those of which you have partaken with me. I had rather be shut up in a very modest cottage with my books, my family, and a few old friends, dining on simple bacon and letting the world roll on as it liked, than to occupy the most splendid post which any human power can give." (to Alexander Donald, Feb 7, 1788. ME 6:427)
In his answer to the President under date of December 15th, he expressed these dispositions frankly and his preference of a return to Paris, but assured him at the same time that if it were believed he could be more useful in the administration of the government, he would sacrifice his own inclinations without hesitation and repair to that destination. He arrived at Monticello on the 23rd of December, where he received a second letter from the President expressing his continued wishes that he would accept the Department of State if not absolutely irreconcilable with his inclinations. This silenced his reluctance, and he accepted the new appointment. He left Monticello on the 1st of March, 1790, arrived at New York, the then seat of government, on the 21st, and immediately entered on the duties of his station.
In the short interval which he passed at Monticello, his eldest daughter was married to Thomas M. Randolph, eldest son of the Tuckahoe branch of Randolphs, who afterwards filled a dignified station in the general government and, at length, the executive chair of Virginia for a number of years.
Mr. Jefferson's arrival at the seat of government in the character of Secretary of State completed the organization of the first administration under the new Constitution of the United States. The new system had been in operation about one year. George Washington had been unanimously elected President and inaugurated on the 30th of April, 1789. John Adams was Vice-President, Alexander Hamilton Secretary of the Treasury, Henry Knox Secretary of War, and Edmund Randolph Attorney General.
Of this cabinet, Alexander Hamilton was enjoying the unlimited confidence of the President and acquired a preponderating influence in directing the measures of the administration. But his political opinions combined with such advantages of personal ascendency rendered him perhaps a dangerous minister at this crisis of the new government. The political character of the Secretary of the Treasury is drawn with a discriminating hand by Mr. Jefferson in his private memoranda of that period.
"Conversation began on other matters and by some circumstance was led to the British constitution, on which Mr. Adams observed, 'Purge that constitution of its corruption, and give to its popular branch equality of representation, and it would be the most perfect constitution ever devised by the wit of man.' Hamilton paused and said, 'Purge it of its corruption, and give to its popular branch equality of representation, and it would become an impracticable government: as it stands at present, with all its supposed defects, it is the most perfect government which ever existed.' And this was assuredly the exact line which separated the political creeds of these two gentlemen. The one was for two hereditary branches and an honest elective one: the other for a hereditary king with a house of lords and commons, corrupted to his will and standing between him and the people. Hamilton was indeed a singular character. Of acute understanding, disinterested, honest, and honorable in all private transactions, amiable in society and duly valuing virtue in private life, yet so bewitched and perverted by the British example as to be under thorough conviction that corruption was essential to the government of a nation." (The Anas, 1791-1806. ME 1:279)
The following note of a conversation with Mr. Hamilton dated August 13th, 1791, presents a more favorable view of his sentiments and seems due to him as a matter of justice.
"Alexander Hamilton, in condemning Mr. Adams' writings, and most particularly 'Davila,' as having a tendency to weaken the present government, declared in substance as follows: 'I own it is my own opinion, though I do not publish it in Dan or Beersheba, that the present government is not that which will answer the ends of society by giving stability and protection to its rights, and that it will probably be found expedient to go into the British form. However, since we have undertaken the experiment, I am for giving it a fair course, whatever my expectations may be. The success, indeed, so far is greater than I had expected, and therefore at present, success seems more possible than it had done heretofore; and there are still other stages of improvement which, if the present does not succeed, may be tried and ought to be tried before we give up the republican form altogether; for that mind must be really depraved which would not prefer the equality of political rights, which is the foundation of pure republicanism, if it can be obtained consistently with order. Therefore, whoever by his writings disturbs the present order of things is really blameable, however pure his intentions may be,' and he was sure Mr. Adams' were pure. This is the substance of a declaration made in much more lengthy terms and which seemed to be more formal than usual for a private conversation between two, and as if intended to qualify some less guarded expressions which had been dropped on former occasions. Th. Jefferson has committed it to writing in the moment of A. Hamilton's leaving the room." (The Anas, 1791-1806. ME 1:284)
Such were the strong aristocratical elements which entered into the composition of General Washington's cabinet. Against the weight of opinion, Mr. Jefferson constituted the great republican check, and the only one, except on some occasions when he was supported by the Attorney General.
o other office under the government of the United States comprehended so wide a range of objects or involved duties of such magnitude as the Department of State. It embraced the whole mass of foreign and a principal portion of the domestic administration. To the first order of capacity and the greatest versatility of talent, it is indispensable that the overseer of this important department should unite an intimate and extensive knowledge of the foreign and domestic relations of the country, a familiarity with the object and duties of government, and a profound acquaintance with history and human nature. If these qualifications are rightly deemed essential in ordinary times and under any circumstances, how much more was their possession necessary at the opening of the new government? --before it had formed a character among nations, and when the impulse and direction which should then be given to it would establish that character perhaps forever? --before its internal faculties and capabilities were developed, but while they were in the process of development? The share which Mr. Jefferson had in marshaling the domestic resources of the republic and fixing them upon a durable foundation in shaping the subordinate features of its political organization and, more especially, in establishing the principles of its foreign policy, constitutes one of the most important epochs in his public history.
Among his labors which were of a character not necessarily appertaining to the duties of his department and, indeed, belonging more properly to some one or more of the ordinary committees of Congress, were:
- Report of a plan for establishing a uniform system of coins, weights, and measures in the United States.
- Report on the cod and whale fisheries.
- Report on the commerce and navigation of the United States.
They were of a peculiar nature, growing out of the infancy of the republic and the imperfect development and organization of its resources, and as such, their execution in a faithful and satisfactory manner required an accurate knowledge of the condition of the country, with the exercise of the most patient investigation and varied, practical talents. The manner in which these difficult and important trusts were discharged by Mr. Jefferson commanded the admiration of his country.
1. The report of the Secretary of State containing a plan for establishing a uniform system of coins, weights, and measures was executed with uncommon dispatch considering the intricacy of the subject and the novelty of the experiment. He received the order of Congress on the 15th of April, 1790, when an illness of several weeks supervened which, with the pressure of other business, retarded his entering upon the undertaking until some time in the ensuing month. He finished it, however, on the 20th of May. One branch of the subject, that of coins, had already received his attention while a member of Congress in 1784, and it had then occurred to him that a corresponding uniformity in the kindred branches of weights and measures would be easy of introduction and a desirable improvement.
In sketching the principles of his system, Mr. Jefferson was dependent on his own judgment. It was in vain to look to the nations of the old world for an example to direct him in his researches. No such example existed. It should be remarked, however, that two of the principal European governments, France and England, were at this very period learnedly engaged on the same subject.
The first object which presented itself to his enquiries was the discovery of some measure of invariable length as a standard. This was found to be a matter of no small difficulty.
"There exists not in nature, as far as has been hitherto observed, a single subject or species of subject accessible to man which presents one constant and uniform dimension.
"The globe of the earth itself, indeed, might be considered as invariable in all its dimensions, and that its circumference would furnish an invariable measure; but no one of its circles, great or small, is accessible to admeasurement through all its parts, and the various trials to measure definite portions of them have been of such various result as to show there is no dependence on that operation for certainty.
"Matter, then, by its mere extension, furnishing nothing invariable; its motion is the only remaining resource.
"The motion of the earth round its axis, though not absolutely uniform and invariable, may be considered as such for every human purpose. It is measured obviously, but unequally, by the departure of a given meridian from the sun and its return to it, constituting a solar day. Throwing together the inequalities of solar days, a mean interval, or day, has been found and divided by very general consent into 86,400 equal parts.
"A pendulum, vibrating freely in small and equal arcs may be so adjusted in its length as, by its vibrations, to make this division of the earth's motion into 86,400 equal parts, called seconds of mean time.
"Such a pendulum, then, becomes itself a measure of determinate length, to which all others may be referred to as to a standard." (Plan for Establishing Uniformity etc., 1790. ME 3:27)
But even the pendulum was not without its uncertainties. Among these, not the least was the fact that the period of its vibrations varied in different latitudes. To obviate this objection, he proposed to fix on some one latitude to which the standard should refer. That of 38 deg. being the mean latitude of the United States, he adopted it at first; but afterwards, on receiving a printed copy of a proposition of the Bishop of Autun to the national assembly of France in which the author had recommended the 45th deg., he determined to substitute that in the place of 38 deg. for the sake of uniformity with a nation with whom we were connected in commerce and in the hope that it might become a line of union with the rest of the world.
Having adopted the pendulum vibrating seconds in the 45th deg. of latitude as a standard of invariable length, he proceeded to identify by that the measures, weights, and coins of the United States. But unacquainted with the extent of reformation meditated by Congress, he submitted two plans. First, on the supposition that the difficulty of changing the established habits of a whole nation opposed an insuperable bar to a radical reformation, he proposed that the present weights and measures should be retained but be rendered uniform by bringing them to the same invariable standard. Secondly, on the hypothesis that an entire reformation was contemplated, he proposed the adoption of a unit of measure to which the whole system of weights and measures should be reduced, with divisions and subdivisions in the decimal ratio corresponding to the uniformity already established in the coins of the United States. On the whole, he was inclined to a general reformation with a view to make the denominations of weights and measures conform to those already introduced into the currency of the country. The facility which such an improvement would establish in the vulgar arithmetic would be soon and sensibly felt by the mass of the people, who would thereby be enabled to compute for themselves whatever they should have occasion to buy, sell, or measure, which the present difficult and complicated ratios, for the most part, place beyond their computation. In the event of its being adopted, however, he recommended a gradual introduction of it into practice. A progressive introduction would lessen the inconveniences which might attend too sudden a substitution, even of an easier for a more difficult system. After a given term, for instance, it might begin in the custom houses where the merchants would become familiarized to it. After a further term, it might be introduced into all legal proceedings, and merchants and traders in foreign commodities might be required to use it. After a still further term, all other descriptions of persons might receive it into common use. Too long a postponement, on the other hand, would increase the difficulties of its reception with the increase of our population.
This report is a curious and learned document, valuable to the statesman and philosopher, though for the same reasons, not calculated to interest the general reader. It was submitted to Congress on the 13th of July, 1790, and referred to a committee who reported in favor of a general reformation on the principles recommended by the author. But the subject was postponed from session to session for several years without receiving a final determination and at length became lost altogether in the crowd of more important matters. The idea of reducing to a single standard the discordant ratios of coins, weights, and measures has ever since, at different intervals, engaged the attention of learned statesmen in England, France, Spain, and America; but a fear of encountering the difficulties of a change of familiar denominations with a natural attachment to established usage has hitherto prevented the introduction of a general uniformity in the systems of either country.
2. The report of the Secretary of State on the cod and whale fisheries of the United States is one of those ancient State papers which, unlike the innumerable multitude that perish with the occasion, seem destined to be perpetual. The subject was referred to him by Congress on the 9th of August, 1790, in consequence of a representation from the legislature of Massachusetts setting forth the embarrassments under which those great branches of their business labored and soliciting the interference of the government in various ways.
This sound and energetic report was submitted to Congress on the 4th of February, 1791. It was accepted, published, and applauded by the great majority of the people. The policy so urgently recommended by Mr. Jefferson was adopted, and its utility was soon demonstrated by the restoration to the United States upon a prosperous and permanent footing of one of their most important branches of domestic and maritime industry.
3. The report of the Secretary of State on commerce and navigation was prepared in pursuance of a resolution of the House of Representatives passed on the 23rd of February, 1791, instructing the Secretary to report to Congress the nature and extent of the privileges and restrictions of the commercial intercourse of the United States with foreign nations, and the measures which he should think proper to be adopted for the improvement of their commerce and navigation.
Top | Previous Chapter | Next Chapter | Front Page
© 1997 by Eyler Robert Coates, Sr.