Letter to the Inhabitants of Louisiana
Thomas Paine
[22 September, 1804 / In a letter to Albert
Gallatin, Secretary of the Treasury (14 October, 1804), John
Randolph of Roanoke proposed "the printing of-thousand copies
of Tom Paine's answer to their remonstrance, and transmitting them
by as many thousand troops, who can speak a language perfectly
intelligible to the people of Louisiana, whatever that of their
government may be." The purchase of Louisiana was announced to
the Senate by President Jefferson, October 17, 1803]
A publication having the appearance of a memorial and remonstrance,
to be presented to Congress at the ensuing session, has appeared in
several papers. It is therefore open to examination, and I offer you
my remarks upon it. The title and introductory paragraph are as
follows:
"To the Congress of the United States, in the Senate and
House of Representatives convened: We the subscribers, planters,
merchants, and other inhabitants of Louisiana, respectfully approach
the legislature of the United States with a memorial of our rights,
a remonstrance against certain laws which contravene them, and a
petition for that redress to which the laws of nature, sanctioned by
positive stipulations, have entitled us."
It often happens that when one party, or one that thinks itself a
party, talks much about its rights, it puts those of the other party
upon examining into their own, and such is the effect produced by
your memorial.
A single reading of that memorial will show it is the work of some
person who is not of your people. His acquaintance with the cause,
commencement, progress, and termination of the American revolution,
decides this point; and his making our merits in that
revolution the ground of your claims, as if our
merits could become yours, show she does not understand your
situation.
We obtained our rights by calmly understanding principles, and by
the successful event of a long, obstinate, and expensive war. But it
is not incumbent on us to fight the battles of the world for the
world's profit. You are already participating, without any merit or
expense in obtaining it, the blessings of freedom acquired by
ourselves; and in proportion as you become initiated into the
principles and practice of the representative system of government,
of which you have yet had no experience, you will participate more,
and finally be partakers of the whole. You see what mischief ensued
in France by the possession of power before they understood
principles. They earned liberty in words, but not in fact. The
writer of this was in France through the whole of the revolution,
and knows the truth of what he speaks; for after endeavouring to
give it principle, he had nearly fallen a victim to its rage.
There is a great want of judgment in the person who drew up your
memorial. He has mistaken your case, and forgotten his own; and by
trying to court your applause has injured your pretensions. He has
written like a lawyer, straining every point that would please his
client, without studying his advantage. I find no fault with the
composition of the memorial, for it is well written; nor with the
principles of liberty it contains, considered in the abstract. The
error lies in the misapplication of them, and in assuming a ground
they have not a right to stand upon. Instead of their serving you as
a ground of reclamation against us, they change into a satire on
yourselves. Why did you not speak thus when you ought to have spoken
it? We fought for liberty when you stood quiet in slavery.
The author of the memorial injudiciously confounding two distinct
cases together, has spoken as if he was the memorialist of a body of
Americans, who, after sharing equally with us in all the dangers and
hardships of the revolutionary war, had retired to a distance and
made a settlement for themselves. If, in such a situation, Congress
had established a temporary government over them, in which they were
not personally consulted, they would have had a right to speak as
the memorial speaks. But your situation is different from what the
situation of such persons would be, and therefore their
ground of reclamation cannot of right become yours. You are
arriving at freedom by the easiest means that any people ever
enjoyed it; without contest, without expense, and even without any
contrivance of your own. And you already so far mistake principles,
that under the name of rights you ask for powers; power
to import and enslave Africans; and to govern a
territory that we have purchased.
To give colour to your memorial, you refer to the treaty of
cession, (in which you were not one of the contracting
parties,) concluded at Paris between the governments of the United
States and France.
"The third article" you say "of the treaty lately
concluded at Paris declares, that the inhabitants of the ceded
territory shall be incorporated in the union of the United States,
and admitted as soon as possible, according to the principles
of the Federal Constitution, to the enjoyment of all the rights,
advantages, and immunities of citizens of the United States; and
in the mean time, they shall be protected in the enjoyment
of their liberty, property, and the exercise of the religion they
profess."
As from your former condition, you cannot be much acquainted with
diplomatic policy, and I am convinced that even the gentleman who
drew up the memorial is not, I will explain to you the grounds of
this article. It may prevent your running into further errors.
The territory of Louisiana had been so often ceded to different
European powers, that it became a necessary article on the part of
France, and for the security of Spain, the ally of France, and which
accorded perfectly with our own principles and intentions, that it
should be ceded no more; and this article, stipulating for
the incorporation of Louisiana into the union of the United States,
stands as a bar against all future cession, and at the same time, as
well as "in the mean time," secures to you a civil
and political permanency, personal security and liberty which you
never enjoyed before.
France and Spain might suspect, (and the suspicion would not have
been ill-founded had the cession been treated for in the
administration of John Adams, or when Washington was president, and
Alexander Hamilton president over him,) that we bought
Louisiana for the British government, or with a view of selling it
to her; and though such suspicion had no just ground to stand upon
with respect to our present president, Thomas Jefferson, who is not
only not a man of intrigue but who possesses that honest pride of
principle that cannot be intrigued with, and which keeps intriguers
at a distance, the article was nevertheless necessary as a
precaution against future contingencies. But you, from not knowing
the political ground of the article, apply to yourselves personally
and exclusively, what had reference to the territory,
to prevent its falling into the hands of any foreign power that
might endanger the [establishment of] Spanish dominion in
America, or those of the French in the West India Islands.
You claim, (you say), to be incorporated into the union of the
United States, and your remonstrances on this subject are unjust and
without cause.
You are already incorporated into it as fully and
effectually as the Americans themselves are, who are settled in
Louisiana. You enjoy the same rights, privileges, advantages, and
immunities, which they enjoy; and when Louisiana, or some part of
it, shall be erected into a constitutional State, you also will be
citizens equal with them.
You speak in your memorial, as if you were the only
people who were to live in Louisiana, and as if the territory was
purchased that you exclusively might govern it. In both these cases
you are greatly mistaken. The emigrations from the United States
into the purchased territory, and the population arising therefrom,
will, in a few years, exceed you in numbers. It is but twenty-six
years since Kentucky began to be settled, and it already contains
more than double your population.
In a candid view of the case, you ask for what would be injurious
to yourselves to receive, and unjust in us to grant. Injurious,
because the settlement of Louisiana will go on much faster under the
government and guardianship of Congress, then if the government of
it were committed to your hands; and consequently, the landed
property you possessed as individuals when the treaty was concluded,
or have purchased since, will increase so much faster in value.-
Unjust to ourselves, because as the reimbursements of the
purchase money must come out of the sale of the lands to new
settlers, the government of it cannot suddenly go out of the hands
of Congress. They are guardians of that property for all the
people of the United States. And besides this, as the new
settlers will be chiefly from the United States, it would be unjust
and ill policy to put them and their property under the jurisdiction
of a people whose freedom they had contributed to purchase. You
ought also to recollect, that the French Revolution has not
exhibited to the world that grand display of principles and rights,
that would induce settlers from other countries to put themselves
under a French jurisdiction in Louisiana. Beware of intriguers who
may push you on from private motives of their own.
You complain of two cases, one of which you have no right,
no concern with; and the other is founded in direct injustice.
You complain that Congress has passed a law to divide the country
into two territories. It is not improper to inform you, that after
the revolutionary war ended, Congress divided the territory acquired
by that war into ten territories; each of which was to be erected
into a constitutional State, when it arrived at a certain population
mentioned in the Act; and, in the mean time, an officer appointed by
the President, as the Governor of Louisiana now is, presided, as
Governor of the Western Territory, over all such parts as have not
arrived at the maturity of statehood. Louisiana will require
to be divided into twelve States or more; but this is a matter that
belongs to the purchaser of the territory of Louisiana, and
with which the inhabitants of the town of New-Orleans have no right
to interfere; and beside this, it is probable that the inhabitants
of the other territory would choose to be independent of
New-Orleans. They might apprehend, that on some speculating
pretence, their produce might be put in requisition, and a maximum
price put on it - a thing not uncommon in a French government. As a
general rule, without refining upon sentiment, one may put
confidence in the justice of those who have no inducement to do us
injustice; and this is the case Congress stands in with respect to
both territories, and to all other divisions that may be laid out,
and to all inhabitants and settlers, of whatever nation they may be.
There can be no such thing as what the memorial speaks of, that is,
of a Governor appointed by the President who may have no
interest in the welfare of Louisiana. He must, from the nature
of the case, have more interest in it than any other person can
have. He is entrusted with the care of an extensive tract of
country, now the property of the United States by purchase. The
value of those lands will depend on the increasing prosperity of
Louisiana, its agriculture, commerce, and population. You have only
a local and partial interest in the town of New-Orleans, or its
vicinity; and if, in consequence of exploring the country, new seats
of commerce should offer, his general interest would lead him to
open them, and your partial interest to shut them up.
There is probably some justice in your remark, as it applies to the
governments under which you formerly lived. Such governments always
look with jealousy, and an apprehension of revolt, on colonies
increasing in prosperity and population, and they send governors to
keep them down. But when you argue from the conduct of
governments distant and despotic, to that of domestic
and free government, it shows you do not understand the
principles and interest of a Republic, and to put you right is
friendship. We have had experience, and you have not.
The other case to which I alluded, as being founded in direct
injustice, is that in which you petition for power, under
the name of rights, to import and enslave Africans!
Dare you put up a petition to Heaven for such a power, without
fearing to be struck from the earth by its justice?
Why, then, do you ask it of man against man?
Do you want to renew in Louisiana the horrors of Domingo?
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