York are coming majestically round to the true principles. In Pennsylvania, thirteen out of twenty-two counties had already petitioned on the alien and sedition laws. Jersey and New York had begun the same movement, and though the rising of Congress stops that channel for the expression of their sentiment, the sentiment is going on rapidly, and before their next meeting those three States will be solidly embodied in sentiment with the six southern and western ones. The atrocious proceedings of France towards this country, had well nigh destroyed its liberties. The Anglomen and monocrats had so artfully confounded the cause of France with that of freedom, that both went down in the same scale. I sincerely join you in abjuring all political connection with every foreign power; and though I cordially wish well to the progress of liberty in all nations, and would forever give it the weight of our countenance, yet they are not to be touched without contamination from their other bad principles. Commerce with all nations, alliance with none, should be our motto.

Accept assurances of the constant and unaltered affection of, dear Sir, your sincere friend and servant.

TO EDMUND RANDOLPH.

MONTICELLO, August 18, 1799.

Of

DEAR SIR, I received only two days ago your favor of the 12th, and as it was on the eve of the return of our post, it was not possible to make so prompt a despatch of the answer. all the doctrines which have ever been broached by the federal government, the novel one, of the common law being in force and cognizable as an existing law in their courts, is to me the most formidable. All their other assumptions of un-given powers have been in the detail. The bank law, the treaty doctrine, the sedition act, alien act, the undertaking to change the State laws of evidence in the State courts by certain parts of the stamp

act, &c., &c., have been solitary, unconsequential, timid things, in comparison with the audacious, barefaced and sweeping pretension to a system of law for the United States, without the adoption of their Legislature, and so infinitively beyond their power to adopt. If this assumption be yielded to, the State courts may be shut up, as there will then be nothing to hinder citizens of the same State suing each other in the federal courts in every case, as on a bond for instance, because the common law obliges payment of it, and the common law they say is their law. I am happy you have taken up the subject; and I have carefully perused and considered the notes you enclosed, and find but a single paragraph which I do not approve. It is that wherein (page two) you say, that laws being emanations from the legislative department, and, when once enacted, continuing in force from a presumption that their will so continues, that that presumption fails and the laws of course fall, on the destruction of that legislative department. I do not think this is the true bottom on which laws and the administering them rest. The whole body of the nation is the sovereign legislative, judiciary and executive power for itself. The inconvenience of meeting to exercise these powers in person, and their inaptitude to exercise them, induce them to appoint special organs to declare their legislative will, to judge and to execute it. It is the will of the nation which makes the law obligatory; it is their will which creates or annihilates the organ which is to declare and announce it. They may do it by a single person, as an Emperor of Russia, (constituting his declarations evidence of their will,) or by a few persons, as the aristocracy of Venice, or by a complication of councils, as in our former regal government, or our present republican one. The law being law because it is the will of the nation, is not changed by their changing the organ through which they choose to announce their future will; no more than the acts I have done by one attorney lose their obligation by my changing or discontinuing that attorney. This doctrine has been, in a certain degree, sanctioned by the federal executive. For it is precisely that on which the continuance of obligation

from our treaty with France was established, and the doctrine was particularly developed in a letter to Gouverneur Morris, written with the approbation of President Washington and his cabinet. Mercer once prevailed on the Virginia Assembly to declare a different doctrine in some resolutions. These met universal disapprobation in this, as well as the other States, and if I mistake not, a subsequent Assembly did something to do away the authority of their former unguarded resolutions. In this case, as in all others, the true principle will be quite as effectual to establish the just deductions. Before the revolution, the nation of Virginia had, by the organs they then thought proper to constitute, established a system of laws, which they divided into three denominations of 1, common law; 2, statute law; 3, chancery or if you please, into two only, of 1, common law; 2, chancery. When, by the Declaration of Independence, they chose to abolish their former organs of declaring their will, the acts of will already formally and constitutionally declared, remained untouched. For the nation was not dissolved, was not annihilated; its will, therefore, remained in full vigor; and on the establishing the new organs, first of a convention, and afterwards a more complicated legislature, the old acts of national will continued in force, until the nation should, by its new organs, declare its will changed. The common law, therefore, which was not in force when we landed here, nor till we had formed ourselves into a nation, and had manifested by the organs we constituted that the common law was to be our law, continued to be our law, because the nation continued in being, and because though it changed the organs for the future declarations of its will, yet it did not change its former declarations that the common law was its law. Apply these principles to the present case. Before the revolution there existed no such nation as the United States; they then first associated as a nation, but for special purposes only. They had all their laws to make, as Virginia had on her first establishment as a nation. But they did not, as Virginia had done, proceed to adopt a whole system of laws ready made to their hand. As their association as a nation was

only for special purposes, to wit, for the management of their concerns with one another and with foreign nations, and the States composing the association chose to give it powers for those purposes and no others, they could not adopt any general system, because it would have embraced objects on which this association had no right to form or declare a will. It was not the organ for declaring a national will in these cases. In the cases confided to them, they were free to declare the will of the nation, the law; but till it was declared there could be no law. So that the common law did not become, ipso facto, law on the new association; it could only become so by a positive adoption, and so far only as they were authorized to adopt.

I think it will be of great importance, when you come to the proper part, to portray at full length the consequences of this new doctrine, that the common law is the law of the United States, and that their courts have, of course, jurisdiction coextensive with that law, that is to say, general over all cases and persons. But, great heavens! Who could have conceived in 1789, that within ten years we should have to combat such windmills. Adieu. Yours affectionately.

TO WILSON C. NICHOLAS.

MONTICELLO, August 26, 1799.

DEAR SIR,-I am deeply impressed with the importance of Virginia and Kentucky pursuing the same tract at the ensuing sessions of their Legislatures. Your going thither furnishes a valuable opportunity of effecting it, and as Mr. Madison will be at our Assembly as well as yourelf, I thought it important to procure a meeting between you. I therefore wrote to propose to him to ride to this place on Saturday or Sunday next; supposing that both he and yourself might perhaps have some matter of business at our court, which might render it less inconvenient for you to be here together on Sunday. I took for granted that

you would not set off to Kentucky pointedly at the time you first proposed, and hope and strongly urge your favoring us with a visit at the time proposed. Mrs. Madison, who was the bearer of my letter, assured me I might count on Mr. M.'s being here. Not that I mentioned to her the object of my request, or that I should propose the same to you, because, I presume, the less said of such a meeting the better. I shall take care that Mrs. Monroe shall dine with us. In hopes of seeing you, I bid you affectionately adieu.

TO WILSON C. NICHOLAS.

MONTICELLO, September 5, 1799. DEAR SIR,-Yours of August 30th came duly to hand. It was with great regret we gave up the hope of seeing you here, but could not but consider the obstacle as legitimate. I had written to Mr. Madison, as I had before informed you, and had stated to him some general ideas for consideration and consultation when we should meet. I thought something essentially necessary to be said, in order to avoid the inference of acquiescence; that a resolution or declaration should be passed, 1, answering the reasonings of such of the States as have ventured into the field of reason, and that of the committee of Congress, taking some notice too of those States who have either not answered at all, or answered without reasoning. 2. Making firm protestation against the precedent and principle, and reserving the right to make this palpable violation of the federal compact the ground of doing in future whatever we might now rightfully do, should repetitions of these and other violations of the compact render it expedient. 3. Expressing in affectionate and conciliatory language our warm attachment to union with our sister States, and to the instrument and principles by which we are united; that we are willing to sacrifice to this everything but the rights of self-government in those important points which we have never yielded, and in which alone we see liberty,