e the conditions of the inhabitants of
the States, within the States, it will be but another exercise of that
power, to declare that all shall be free. Are we then to see again
Athenian and Lacedaemonian confederacies? To wage another Peloponnesian
war to settle the ascendancy between them? Or is this the tocsin of
merely a servile war? That remains to be seen: but not, I hope, by you
or me. Surely, they will parley awhile, and give us time to get out
of the way. What a Bedlamite is man? But let us turn from our own
uneasiness to the miseries of our southern friends. Bolivar and Morillo,
it seems, have come to a parley, with dispositions at length to stop
the useless effusion of human blood in that quarter. I feared from the
beginning, that these people were not yet sufficiently enlightened for
self-government; and that after wading through blood and slaughter,
they would end in military tyrannies, more or less numerous. Yet as they
wished to try the experiment, I wished them success in it: they have
now tried it, and will possibly find that their safest road will be an
accommodation with the mother country, which shall hold them together
by the single link of the same chief magistrate, leaving to him power
enough to keep them in peace with one another, and to themselves the
essential power of self-government and self-improvement, until they
shall be sufficiently trained by education and habits of freedom,
to walk safely by themselves. Representative government, native
functionaries, a qualified negative on their laws, with a previous
security by compact for freedom of commerce, freedom of the press,
habeas corpus, and trial by jury, would make a good beginning. This
last would be the school in which their people might begin to learn the
exercise of civic duties as well as rights. For freedom of religion they
are not yet prepared. The scales of bigotry have not sufficiently fallen
from their eyes, to accept it for themselves individually, much less to
trust others with it. But that will come in time, as well as a general
ripeness to break entirely from the parent stem. You see, my dear Sir,
how easily we prescribe for others a cure for their difficulties, while
we cannot cure our own. We must leave both, I believe, to Heaven, and
wrap ourselves up in the mantle of resignation, and of that friendship
of which I tender to you the most sincere assurances.

Th: Jefferson.

LETTER CLVIII.--TO JOSEPH C CABELL, January