To James Madison from David Jameson, [ca. 12 January] 1782
From David Jameson
RC (LC: Rives Collection of Madison Papers). The cover is missing, and the letter is undated. Probably many years later, JM wrote “[1782?]” at the top of the first sheet.
[ca. 12 January 1782]1
Dr. Sir
By last Post I told you Mr Stark had written to you about your Accot. in a conversation with him since on the subject, I find I was mistaken, he intended to write but did not, because he could not fill up the blanks. He expected the Assembly would have fixed the allowance but they have not done so.2 He wishes you to send a state of the whole Accot. at one view We have put into Mr Ross’s hands a Bill of Exchange for about £900 sterling. that, or the value, he will send to the Delegates.3 I shall be glad to know how long this will last, that some method may be fallen on to procure more in time—what this method will be I do not now know, as the assembly have with the stroke of a pen put it out of the Agents power to do anything. After encouraging him to make large contracts in behalf of the State, they have repealed all the Laws by which he was to make good those Contracts.4 And they have put nothing in the power of the Executive, until the Revenue and new Specific Acts can be enforced.5 I hope however you will somehow or other be better supplied than you have been, for let us at home suffer what we may it is cruel, it is shameful, to let those who serve the State abroad suffer. for the quarters Salary due to the Council the first day of April, they recd. as much paper Money as would purchase only £72 Specie. Since that time, no officer of Government has been paid a shilling. the last Assembly fixed their pay in Specie,6 but as there is no Specie, nor any thing in hand that will raise it, some of them (I am told) have within these few days taken Auditors Warrants to the amount of their pay, and sold for less than a third of their nominal Value Some who have more paper Money than will pay their arrears of taxes, are selling it for Specie at 3000 for one,7 rather than carry it into the Treasury & take certificates. There is but little Specie in the state—not any in the Treasury—and those whose services are required by the State, will not take certificates, so that the meanest Coblar can now obtain Credit where the State cannot. how humiliating, how hurtful to the feelings of every friend to his Country: And where it will end God only knows. While the tax payable in Tobacco continued in force, the State had some Credit, but that being set aside we are now quite Bankrupt.8 I write this only to yourself. Can any method be fallen on to releave us by a loan or otherwise? On looking over the dispatches by Irish recd. while I was below, I find you understood that the Bill drawn in his favour, was to be paid out of the 4/10 of the 18t. of March money. The Bill is not now in Town, therefore I cannot speak possitively, but I am pretty sure it was drawn on our Treasurer9 And we never did conceive ourselves or the Treasurer of the State to have any controul of that money—nor ever ordered the payment of a shilling of it on any occasion10 You some time ago asked why we desired the British prisoners to be removed. it was on supposition we must guard and feed them if they remained in the State, which it was not in our power to do, unless Congress would have furnished Specie for the purpose; and that we had no reason to expect. The people in that part of the Country supposing they were to have their provisions taken from them & to receive certificates as usual; expresly refused to supply them. Had we known Congress intended to feed them by contract and to pay Specie, the people would have been very glad to keep them. it would indeed have been a considerable benefit to the State, and particularly to the Counties near Winchester11
We are again disapointed by having no Mail from the Northward. I suppose you have had hard frost. We too have had some severe Weather. Tuesday last was I think as cold a day as I ever felt, the frost continued, and thursday evening it began to Snow, & contd Snowing all yesterday. however it is not very deep
I am Yrs sincerely
David Jameson
1. The clue to the exact dating of this letter is chiefly in its final paragraph. As was his custom, Jameson was writing on a Saturday and, in this instance, it was on the closing day of a week in Richmond that included an unusually cold Tuesday and a snowy Thursday evening and Friday. The particular Saturday could not have been earlier than 12 January, for, until he resumed his seat on the Council of State on Thursday the tenth, after an absence from Richmond of about three weeks, Jameson had had no access to “the dispatches by Irish” that had arrived on the fifth. By stating in his letter of 26 January to JM (q.v.) that “In my last I mentd Gen Greenes requisition,” Jameson eliminated the nineteenth of that month from consideration, because the “requisition” is not mentioned in the present dispatch.
Lacking a daily report of Richmond’s weather in January and early February 1782, the latest Saturday when he could have written this letter is more problematical. The reasons for excluding 2 and 9 February are somewhat complicated. At the outset of the present letter Jameson remarks that “By last Post” he had mentioned “Mr Stark.” This eliminates 2 February as a possible date, because “By last Post” would then have been 26 January, and his letter to JM on that day makes no reference to Stark. Jameson’s statement in the present letter that the “Bill [of Captain Irish] is not now in Town” removes 9 February from consideration, because this bill was before the Council of State three days earlier, and Jameson had attended that session (, III, 40). Since no letters from JM to Jameson are known to exist, acknowledgments in them of letters from Jameson are obviously unavailable for help in fixing the date in this instance.
2. Bolling Stark was an auditor of public accounts for the Commonwealth of Virginia. By “the blanks,” Jameson meant those left by JM on his expense accounts of 20 June, 20 September, and 20 December 1781 because he did not know his per diem salary and allowances (, III, 163, 264, 334). Before adjourning on 5 January 1782, the General Assembly had provided for many state officials, not including the delegates in Congress, a revised salary scale which, much more realistically than the one it superseded, recognized the depreciation of paper currency (, X, 493–94).
4. Besides the law mentioned in his letter of 26 January (q.v.), Jameson probably also referred to another statute enacted by the General Assembly on 5 January 1782 whereby the legal-tender quality of all currency issued by Virginia was voided for “payment of any debt or contract whatsoever, except in payment of taxes due” in 1781 (, October 1781, p. 74; , X, 456). Although David Ross, in a letter of 2 April 1782, notified the governor that his expected election to the General Assembly as a delegate from Fluvanna County would legally bar him from continuing as commercial agent of Virginia, he may have been the more willing to resign that office because of the legislation mentioned above (, III, 118). On 24 May, William Hay replaced Ross as commercial agent (, III, 97).
5. For these laws, see , X, 456–57, 501–17.
6. By the statute mentioned in n. 2, the eight privy councilors, taken together, were to receive annually £3,200, “to be divided amongst them according to their attendance.” Whatever salaries under the old scale had been due to the councilors since 1 July 1781 were to be paid in specie “after the rate of twenty shillings for each hundred pounds of tobacco.”
7. The Virginia General Assembly, in its session of October 1781, had set one thousand to one as the depreciation rate for the paper currency of the state in relation to gold (, X, 473).
8. Although Jameson does not qualify his statement, he must have intended it to apply only to the tax on land. According to “An act for ascertaining certain taxes and duties, and for establishing a permanent revenue,” passed by the General Assembly on 5 January 1782, all other taxes could be paid “in specie, tobacco, hemp, or flour,” in certain stipulated proportions (, October 1781, p. 74; , X, 508).
9. George Brooke (1728–1782) of King and Queen County served as treasurer of the Commonwealth from his election to that office by the General Assembly in December 1779 until his death in April 1782 (, October 1779, pp. 105, 106; , III, 76; , 13 April 1782).
10. Upon receiving a statement of account from Captain Nathaniel Irish, the Council of State on 6 February requested John Hopkins, Jr., in charge of the continental loan office in Virginia (, III, 325, n. 2.), “to pay a bill drawn by Michael Hillegas esqr. Continental Treasurer on … the State of Virginia in favor of Samuel Hodgden Dep: Com: Gen: of mil: Stores bearing date July 10th 1781 for ten thousand Dollars of the new emission of Continental Money; it appearing from the face of the said Bill that it was intended to be paid out of the four tenths received for continental uses” (, III, 40). But Hopkins quickly convinced the governor that the charge had been assessed against state rather than continental funds. The former being exhausted, the bill remained unpaid. See Harrison to Virginia Delegates, 9 February 1782. As already pointed out, the ordinance of Congress of 18 March 1780, providing for the exchange of continental currency for a new issue of paper money at the rate of forty for one, stipulated that Congress should have for its own use four-tenths of the new issue, the amount in dollars depending upon the quantity of the old currency which each state redeemed of its quota (, II, 49, n. 2).
11. See ibid., III, 313, n. 2; 319, n. 1; 335–36. When JM asked “why we desired the British prisoners to be removed” is not known to the editors.