Your favor of August 10th was duly received and immediately communicated with several other letters on the same subject to the President. His determination which will be made on the best principles and from the purest motives, as well as the most universal information, for he receives letters and makes enquiries from all quarters, we shall soon know. Altho’ it is most probable to me that Mr Lowell will be the judge, yet if it should be otherwise, I apprehend your fears of an appointment to the place of C Justice of the State are not founded— Mr Hancock is not of a character strong enough to venture on such a nomination, and his Council would not consent to the appointment, if he did. It would have an happy effect if all the judges of the national supreme Court, would be taken from the chief Justices of the several states. The superiority of the national government would in this way be decidedly acknowledged. All the judges of the states would look up to the national bench as their ultimate object.— As there is great danger of collisions between the national and state judiciaries, if the state judges are men possesed of larger portions of the people’s confidence than the national judges, the latter will become unpopular. This however is a subject which cannot be very accurately asscertained. It is easy to determine who a C Justice is, but not so easy to say who has most of the public confidence. The morals of the nation and perfection of the constitution; The national character, public credit, private confidence, public liberty, private property: every thing that is sacred, prescious or dear, depends so much upon these judges, that the President will choose I presume with caution. In Massachusetts 164 happily there are several among whom he cannot make a wrong choice. The majority of the Senators and representatives from that state have recommended Lowell.

Your “Ideas of revenue and commerce” I should be glad to receive, as well as any other information relative to the affairs of this nation, whose wellfare is near my heart, Tho’ it is not probable it will ever be in my power to do it much service. My own opinions of what is necessary to be done, to secure the liberty, and promote the prosperity of this Country if not singular, have too small a number of supporters to be of much use: May heaven grant that tradgedies and calamities may not in time convince Americans, when it is too late, that they have missed the tide in the affairs of men. Democratical powers equally with Aristocratical powers pushed to extremeties, necessarily produce a feudal system; this Country has already been very near the brink: within a short space of seeing hostile armies commanded by factious leaders, encamped on every great mountain and defended by a Barons castle. And if more pains and care than any disposition for has yet appeared are not taken to limit and adjust our national government, to raise it decidedly above the state government, and to prevent collisions of sovereignties, we may yet be not so far removed from a scene of feudal anarchy as we imagine. Thus you see I begin to be a croaker. Tho’ the character is not natural to me.

Your letter of the 23 of July remains unanswered. There is in the United States and the regions to the southward of it a body of people, possesed of too much of the public confidence who are desperately in debt, and therefore determined all or any government, which shall have power to compel them to pay. Untill the property possesed by some of these men shall change hands, no government will be consistent in this Country. Trial by jury by the judicial bill and by the amendments to the constitution, already passed I imagine is secured to the utmost of your wishes.

The exorbitance of the power of the crown as it was exercised in this Country before the revolution was not generally complained 165 of—it was the authority claimed by Parliament, and the attempt to increase the power of the crown and to diminish and annihilate, the power of our legislatures which gave the alarm. The legal perogatives of the crown were asserted and contended for by Mr Otis Mr Thatcher and Mr S Adams in speeches and writings constantly, as essential to the protection of the rights of the people, and the liberties of the subject.

Whatever there is of danger in England at present from the power of the crown, arises not from its having an overballance, but it arises from the Aristocracy’s having an overballance. The truth of fact is, that the people on one side and the crown on the other are each of them singly weaker than the Aristocracy; and as power increases like a snow ball, by rolling, if the influence of that Aristocracy; should increase much farther so strong an union will be formed between the people and the crown in opposition to it, that the King will be absolute If a few leading characters among the great landholder’s were united as they were by the late Coalition administration, the Constitution would be overturned. King and people both would be prisoners to an oligarchic Junto. King and people would then unite to pull it down, as they did.—

You hope that our limbs will gain strength by time.— Indeed they will. But what limbs? Will the weak ones gain, and the strong ones loose? This would be contrary to nature and experience. The strong arm by constant exercise grows stronger, and draws the juices and nutrition from the weaker. If at our first setting out the executive power is not a counterpoise to the legislative; and if in the legislature, there be not a mediating power, sufficient at all times to decide the disputes between the poor and the rich; we shall not have law, nor consequently liberty nor property. The older we grow the more those ideas of equilibrium to which we were born and bred will wear out of the minds of the people, and Barons wars of a thousand years may be the miserable fate of America as it has been of Europe— A little longer delay might have exibited the feudal scene in America—Hancock Encamped upon Beacon hill, and Lincoln on Pens hill the one entitled Duke of Tremontain and the other duke of the blue hills—Washington encamped on mount Vernon and Henry on some other hillock—Clinton on one side of Hudsons river and Yates or a Livingston on the other. Pushing to extremities either Democratical or Aristocratical powers without attending to a ballance, produces a feudal system as naturally and, necessarily, as the collision of flint and steel produces fire.

I may expose myself to abuse and misrepresentations by such sentiments as these: but I have uniformly entertained them, and hence will discover who is in the right.— I have run the gauntlet too long among libels, halters, axes daggers, cannonballs and pistol bullet, in the service of this people, to be at this age afraid of their injustice. Those who wish for anarchy and civil war will not easily gain me over to their party.

I am sir & & &