Jefferson Quotes & Family Letters

Mr. Editor.—I find, much to my surprize and regret, that a proposal has been started to convert the intended donation to Mr. Jefferson, into a monument to his memory. This appears to me an indirect way, of putting an end to the subscriptions originally intended to free Mr. J. and his family from pecuniary embarrassments, which many years of indiscriminate hospitality forced on him by his high station, and higher character, had produced. Men who devote their lives to the benefit of their fellow citizens, and to public affairs, are very apt to neglect their private affairs. The people of England felt this in the cases of Mr. Pitt and Mr. Fox, whose embarrassments were incurred by no means so honorably as those of Mr. J. nor in any way by the exercise of that unbounded though frugal hospitality which Mr. Jefferson could not avoid, being an object of interest and curiosity to every well informed foreigner who has visited the United States for this half century past. Yet the British public raised by subscription £50,000 sterling for Mr. Pitt, and as much for his antagonist Mr. Fox, neither of whom had any family who might suffer when these gentlemen were dead, for their devotion to the public while living.

What could have been Mr. Jefferson’s own meaning and intention by requesting a lottery for the sale of his estate? To free himself from pecuniary difficulties? an old man of 83, with one foot in the grave, and in daily expectation of quitting this world and all its troubles? can any body believe that he thought one moment of his own accommodation when he applied to be allowed thus to dispose of his estate? surely not. It was to do ample justice to his creditors, and to relieve his daughter and her numerous family, from the state of destitution which a forced sale of his property would have surely brought on. What elderly man cares one moment for himself, when he has a deserving and a beloved family to care for? The death of Mr. J. therefore, has changed nothing in the motives that actuated him, and nothing in the motives that ought to actuate the public. The reason for the subscription remains not only in full force, but increased by the loss of such a parent. His wishes related to those he left behind him, not to himself. I should consider it a disgrace on the national character, if any stop were now put to the subscriptions, or any change seriously contemplated in their intended destination.—Mr. Jefferson is dead: but the objects of the subscription—the persons whom he contemplated to serve by his proposed lottery, are alive; and his death has only added to the expedience of the proposed donation.

I speak advisedly, and with good consideration when I say that Mr. Jefferson has left a will that embraces the sum proposed to be raised by the Lottery he asked for: and the most prudent appropriation of the donation now contemplated by his grateful fellow citizens, will be, to make it subject to the dispositions of his will in such manner, in every respect as if had died in possession thereof. I submit these views to my fellow citizens.