Th:  Jefferson.

LETTER CXX.—­TO COLONEL MONROE, January 1, 1815

TO COLONEL MONROE.

Monticello, January 1, 1815.

Dear Sir,

Your letters of November the 30th and December the 21st have been received with great pleasure.  A truth now and then projecting into the ocean of newspaper lies, serves like headlands to correct our course.  Indeed, my scepticism as to every thing I see in a newspaper, makes me indifferent whether I ever see one.  The embarrassments at Washington, in August last, I expected would be great in any state of things; but they proved greater than expected.  I never doubted that the plans of the President were wise and sufficient.  Their failure we all impute, 1.  To the insubordinate temper of Armstrong:  and, 2.  To the indecision of Winder.  However, it ends well.  It mortifies ourselves, and so may check, perhaps, the silly boasting spirit of our newspapers, and it enlists the feelings of the world on our side:  and the advantage of public opinion is like that of the weather-gage in a naval action.  In Europe, the transient possession of our Capital can be no disgrace.  Nearly every Capital there was in possession of its enemy some often and long.  But diabolical as they paint that enemy, he burnt neither public edifices nor private dwellings.  It was reserved for England to show that Bonaparte, in atrocity, was an infant to their ministers and their generals.  They are taking his place in the eyes of Europe, and have turned into our channel all its good will.  This will be worth the million of dollars the repairs of their conflagrations will cost us.  I hope that to preserve this weather-gage of public opinion, and to counteract the slanders and falsehoods disseminated by the English papers, the government will make it a standing instruction to their ministers at foreign courts, to keep Europe truly informed of occurrences here, by publishing in their papers the naked truth always, whether favorable or unfavorable.  For they will believe the good, if we candidly tell them the bad also.

But you have two more serious causes of uneasiness; the want of men and money.  For the former, nothing more wise or efficient could have been imagined than what you proposed.  It would have filled our ranks with regulars, and that, too, by throwing a just share of the burthen on the purses of those whose persons are exempt either by age or office; and it would have rendered our militia, like those of the Greeks and Romans, a nation of warriors.  But the go-by seems to have been given to your proposition, and longer sufferance is necessary to force us to what is best.  We seem equally incorrigible in our financial course.  Although a century of British experience has proved to what a wonderful extent the funding on specific redeeming taxes enables a nation to anticipitate in war the resources of peace, and although the other