, are the general ideas suggested by your interesting
communication. If they do not coincide with yours, and imply less
of confidence than may be due to the plan you have formed, I hope
you will not question either my admiration of the generous
philanthropy which dictated it, or my sense of the special regard
it evinces for the honor and welfare of our expanding, and, I
trust, rising Republic.

As it is not certain what construction would be put on the view
I have taken of the subject, I leave it with your discretion to
withhold it altogether, or to disclose it within the limits you
allude to; intimating only that it will be most agreeable to me,
on all occasions, not to be brought before the public where there
is no obvious call for it.

Writing to General Lafayette in 1826, Madison commented thus on the
proposal of Miss Frances Wright for the uplift of Negroes.

You possess, notwithstanding your distance, better information
concerning Miss Wright, and her experiment, than we do here. We
learn only that she has chosen for it a remote spot in the
western part of Tennessee, and has commenced her enterprise; but
with what prospects we know not. Her plan contemplated a
provision for the expatriation of her Eleves, but without
specifying it; from which I infer the difficulty felt in devising
a satisfactory one. Could this part of the plan be ensured, the
other essential part would come about of itself. Manumissions now
more than keep pace with the outlets provided, and the increase
of them is checked only by their remaining in the Country. This
obstacle removed, and all others would yield to the emancipating
disposition. To say nothing of partial modes, what would be more
simple, with the requisite grant of power to Congress, than to
purchase all female infants at their birth, leaving them in the
service of the holder to a reasonable age, on condition of their
receiving an elementary education? The annual number of female
births may be stated at twenty thousand, and the cost at less
than one hundred dollars each, at the most; a sum which would not
be felt by the nation, and be even within the compass of State
resources. But no such effort would be listened to, whilst the
impression remains, and it seems to be indelible, that the two
races cannot co-