acts to rights, as much
as possible. The author was well disposed; but could not entirely get
the better of his original bias. I send you the article as ultimately
published. If you find any material errors in it, and will be so good
as to inform me of them, I shall probably have opportunities of setting
this author to rights. What has heretofore passed between us on this
institution, makes it my duty to mention to you, that I have never heard
a person in Europe, learned or unlearned, express his thoughts on this
institution, who did not consider it as dishonorable and destructive
to our governments; and that every writing which has come out since
my arrival here, in which it is mentioned, considers it, even as now
reformed, as the germ whose developement is one day to destroy the
fabric we have reared. I did not apprehend this, while I had American
ideas only. But I confess that what I have seen in Europe, has brought
me over to that opinion; and that though the day may be at some
distance, beyond the reach of our lives perhaps, yet it will certainly
come, when a single fibre left of this institution will produce an
hereditary aristocracy, which will change the form of our governments
from the best to the worst in the world. To know the mass of evil which
flows from this fatal source, a person must be in France; he must see
the finest soil, the finest climate, the most compact state, the most
benevolent character of people, and every earthly advantage combined,
insufficient to prevent this scourge from rendering existence a curse to
twenty-four out of twenty-five parts of the inhabitants of this country.
With us, the branches of this institution cover all the states. The
southern ones, at this time, are aristocratical in their dispositions:
and that that spirit should grow and extend itself, is within the
natural order of things. I do not flatter myself with the immortality
of our governments: but I shall think little also of their longevity,
unless this germ of destruction be taken out. When the society
themselves shall weigh the possibility of evil, against the
impossibility of any good to proceed from this institution, I cannot
help hoping they will eradicate it. I know they wish the permanence of
our governments, as much as any individuals composing them.

An interruption here, and the departure of the gentleman by whom I send
this, oblige me to conclude it with assurances of the sincere respect
and esteem, with wh