The war with Tripoli stands on two grounds of fact. 1st.  It is made known to us by our agents with the three other Barbary States, that they only wait to see the event of this, to shape their conduct accordingly.  If the war is ended by additional tribute, they mean to offer us the same alternative. 2ndly.  If peace was made, we should still, and shall ever, be obliged to keep a frigate in the Mediterranean to overawe rupture, or we must abandon that market.  Our intention in sending Morris with a respectable force, was to try whether peace could be forced by a coercive enterprise on their town.  His inexecution of orders baffled that effort.  Having broke him, we try the same experiment under a better commander.  If in the course of the summer they cannot produce peace, we shall recall our force, except one frigate and two small vessels, which will keep up a perpetual blockade.  Such a blockade will cost us no more than a state of peace, and will save us from increased tributes, and the disgrace attached to them.  There is reason to believe the example we have set, begins already to work on the dispositions of the powers of Europe to emancipate themselves from that degrading yoke.  Should we produce such a revolution there, we shall be amply rewarded for what we have done.  Accept my friendly salutations, and assurances of great respect and esteem.

Th:  Jefferson.

LETTER XXII.—­TO DOCTOR LOGAN, May 11, 1805

TO DOCTOR LOGAN.

Washington, May 11, 1805.

Dear Sir,

I see with infinite pain the bloody schism which has taken place among our friends in Pennsylvania and New York, and will probably take place in other States.  The main body of both sections mean well, but their good intentions will produce great public evil.  The minority, whichever section shall be the minority, will end in coalition with the federalists, and some compromise of principle; because these will not sell their aid for nothing.  Republicanism will thus lose, and royalism gain, some portion of that ground which we thought we had rescued to good government.  I do not express my sense of our misfortunes from any idea that they are remediable.  I know that the passions of men will take their course, that they are not to be controlled but by despotism, and that this melancholy truth is the pretext for despotism.  The duty of an upright administration is to pursue its course steadily, to know nothing of these family dissensions, and to cherish the good principles of both parties.  The war ad internecionem which we have waged against federalism, has filled our latter times with strife and unhappiness.  We have met it, with pain indeed, but with firmness, because we believed it the last convulsive effort of that Hydra, which in earlier times we had conquered in the field.  But if any degeneracy of principle should ever render it necessary to give ascendancy to one of the rising sections over the other, I thank my God it will fall to some other to perform that operation.  The only cordial I wish to carry into my retirement, is the undivided good will of all those with whom I have acted.