A perfect confidence that you are as much attached to peace and union as myself, that you equally prize independence of all nations and the blessings of self-government, has induced me freely to unbosom myself to you, and let you see the light in which I have viewed what has been passing among us from the beginning of the war.  And I shall be happy, at all times, in an intercommunication of sentiments with you, believing that the dispositions of the different parts of our country have been considerably misrepresented and misunderstood in each part, as to the other, and that nothing but good can result from an exchange of information and opinions between those whose circumstances and morals admit no doubt of the integrity of their views.

I remain, with constant and sincere esteem, Dear Sir, your affectionate friend and servant,

Th:  Jefferson.

LETTER CCXI.—­TO GENERAL GATES, May 30,1797

TO GENERAL GATES.

Philadelphia, May 30,1797.

Dear General,

I thank you for the pamphlet of Erskine enclosed in your favor of the 9th instant, and still more for the evidence which your letter affords me of the health of your mind, and I hope of your body also.  Erskine has been reprinted here, and has done good.  It has refreshed the memory of those who had been willing to forget how the war between France and England had been produced; and who, aping St. James’s, called it a defensive war on the part of England.  I wish any events could induce us to cease to copy such a model, and to assume the dignity of being original.  They had their paper system, stockjobbing, speculations, public debt, monied interest, &c, and all this was contrived for us.  They raised their cry against jacobinism and revolutionists, we against democratic societies and anti-federalists; their alarmists sounded insurrection, ours marched an army to look for one, but they could not find it.  I wish the parallel may stop here, and that we may avoid, instead of imitating, a general bankruptcy and disastrous war.

Congress, or rather the Representatives, have been a fortnight debating between a more or less irritating answer to the President’s speech.  The latter was lost yesterday, by forty-eight against fifty-one or fifty-two.  It is believed, however, that when they come to propose measures leading directly to war, they will lose some of their numbers.  Those who have no wish but for the peace of their country, and its independence of all foreign influence, have a hard struggle indeed, overwhelmed by a cry as loud and imposing as if it were true, of being under French influence, and thus raised by a faction composed of English subjects residing among us, or such as are English in all their relations and sentiments.  However, patience will bring all to rights, and we shall both live to see the mask taken from their faces, and our citizens sensible on which side true liberty and independence are sought.  Should any circumstance draw me further from home, I shall with great cordiality pay my respects to you at Rose-Hill, and am not without hope of meeting you here some time.