The Diary and Letters of Gouverneur Morris, vol. 2 - Online Library of ...

Online Library of Liberty: The Diary and Letters of Gouverneur Morris, vol. 2
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CHAPTER XLVI.
The summer of 1806. Letter to Samuel Hunt. Morris fears war. Conduct of the
administration. Letter to Madame de Staël. General Moreau. Letter to Chief Justice
Marshall. Washington’s character. Details relative to Lafayette’s liberation in 1796.
Waiting for European news. Begs Madame de Staël to come to Morrisania.
Napoleon’s victory at Friedland. Letter to Madame Foucault. Letter to the Marquis of
Stafford.
Several short tours through New York and New England occupied and interested
Morris during the summer of 1806. The pretty farms and picturesque country through
which he passed, over hills, and down into valleys along the banks of streams, made a
charming variety. “I do not remember,” he says, “to have seen anywhere so beautiful
a country.” At home again by the 24th of September, he once more resumed the
thread of his daily routine. That war was an inevitable consequence of the conduct of
the administration Morris was at this time fully convinced, and, writing to Samuel
Hunt, of Marietta, on October 3d, he gave vent to his impressions of the general
demoralization in high places, as follows:
“It is to be noted that sound heads are rarely found in the company of rotten hearts.
Vice corrupts alike the judgment and the will; whereby it happens that bad projects
are seldom well matured. . . . Let us take up certain suggestions respecting plans
agitated in your quarter. It seems far from impossible that some foreign powers should
wish to see a severance of our Union, and that they would, at a suitable moment, take
under their protection the ultramontane republic. It is not therefore impossible that
their agents should listen attentively to propositions tending that way, and it is not
improbable that, if a scheme of this sort should be in agitation, communications
would be made by leading characters with a view to foreign aid. Disobedience would
be encouraged, and the noise of needy retainers to conspiracy would be called the
voice of the people, and then, by blasphemous transition, the voice of God. But these
subtle contrivers will find themselves egregiously mistaken and find, to their cost, that
they have merely given to the body politic a sufficient stimulus to throw off its foul
humors. Our politicians have been much alarmed, I hear, by the apprehension of a
peace between England and France, which will, they suppose, be followed by such
measures on the part of the latter as may compromise our independence. Our rulers,
like the sluggard, ask a little more sleep and a little more slumber, but sooner or later
they will be awakened in no pleasant manner. The war between France and England
cannot be eternal. It seems to me that sundry untoward circumstances are like to arise,
and, considering the divided and defenceless state of our country, no common
firmness, skill, and dexterity will be required in the management of our most
important concerns. Perhaps these ideas flow from the timidity incident to age. At any
rate, I will not, by publishing them, become an alarmist. That Jefferson should lose his
popularity is natural enough, but those who were wedded to his opinions should not
now be permitted to claim a divorce. He, poor creature, could have done nothing had
he not been supported by others. If, indeed, he had, after getting into power, displayed
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