MS (Thomas A. Lingenfelter, Doylestown, Pennsylvania, 1994); entirely in TJ’s hand. The Philadelphia Aurora of 5 Apr. 1800 printed portions of this text (see below) without identifying TJ as the author.

Subjoin to the letter: in the document printed above, TJ furnished William Duane’s Philadelphia Aurora with explanatory text to be published in that newspaper along with TJ’s letter of 5 Jan. 1787 to William Jones of the English firm of Farell & Jones. In that letter, printed at Vol. 11:14–18, TJ had outlined his proposed arrangement to pay his share of what the estate of his deceased father-in-law, John Wayles, owed to the firm. He referred also to his personal debt to another company, Kippen & Co. of Glasgow, and explained his refusal to pay interest on British debts for the period of the Revolutionary War, basing his argument on economic and practical, rather than political, reasons. The letter, preceded by an introduction of several paragraphs, had appeared in the Richmond Examiner of 7 Mch., which James Callender sent to TJ on 10 Mch. The Aurora, without identifying the Virginia paper as its source, on 5 Apr. printed the introductory paragraphs and the 1787 letter, appending language that TJ suggested in the statement above (see notes 1, 4, and 12 below).

The Virginia agent of Farell & Jones was Richard Hanson. For the February 1790 meeting in Albemarle County between Hanson and the executors of Wayles’s estate—TJ and his brothers-in-law, Henry Skipwith and Francis Eppes—and the resulting settlement, see Vol. 15:674–6.

In the Aurora several sentences intervene between two passages taken from the document above (see note 4). That intervening text may have been the result of TJ’s suggestion that Wilson Cary Nicholas write something in addition to TJ’s recounting of specific details.

The additional claim did not involve Wayles’s debt from tobacco trading but the disposition of the cargo of The Prince of Wales in 1772. That cargo, unspecified in the document above, consisted of Africans sold into slavery in Virginia, and the other consignee was Richard Randolph. Failing in court, Hanson laid the claim before the bilateral commission established under Article 6 of the Jay Treaty (Vol. 30:426–30). A landmark effort to reach assets in the possession of Randolph’s heirs, initiated by Wayles’s executors and joined by other creditors, failed with a final ruling by the Virginia Court of Appeals in November 1799; see Bill in Chancery of Wayles’s Executors against the Heirs of Richard Randolph, [on or before 2 Mch. 1795].

In the Aurora of 5 Apr. TJ’s letter to Jones was preceded by the following introduction taken from the Richmond Examiner of 7 Mch. and printed under the heading “Account of Mr. Jefferson’s British Debts”:

“It is the fate of every man whose virtue and talents have elevated him in society, to excite the envy and hatred of many; among persons thus disposed, some are imperceptibly carried into error, others are designedly criminal.—The steady industry displayed by the assailants of virtue exceeds infinitely that of its defenders; and unfortunately, the meditated injury has its full effect before the person accused is aware of it, and instead of parrying the blow, he has the wound to heal.—In this situation of things, so rare is benevolence to be found amongst us, so little interest do we generally take in the welfare of our fellow-men, that we are apt to imagine we have discharged our duty when we declare our belief of the innocence of the accused, and content ourselves under the self-approbation, that we have done nothing to injure the feelings of the sufferer.

“The evils to society which we permit to remain, without our utmost exertions to remove, may answer well enough with people who are negatively good, or who believe that virtue consists in abstaining from evil: I think differently: and thinking as I do, will never permit the people to be duped by false accusations levelled against their most meritorious and deserving servants. If in the charges, which from my best judgement I am obliged to make against public characters, I pass into error, the principle which governs me, ought also to draw forth an advocate for truth and virtue, on the opposite side of the question.

“For some time past, a great clamour has been made through the United States, respecting debts due from Mr. Jefferson to British merchants: I have taken some trouble to inform myself upon this subject, and I confess, that although I did not believe the charge to be correct, as to the idea which it was intended to convey of that gentleman’s honor; I had no conception, that his enemies would be driven to attack him upon a subject, which if fairly examined, would add so considerably to the lustre of his character.

“In the year 1774, before a shilling of paper money had been issued, Mr. Jefferson sold about five thousand acres of land in Cumberland and Bedford counties, to pay his proportion of a debt due from the estate of Mr. Wayles to Farrel and Jones. He offered the bonds to their agent immediately, who refused to take them. The money was paid to Mr. Jefferson in 1779 and 1780, and he carried it to the treasury of Virginia, as the laws pressed on all to do, who owed money to British subjects; declaring that the public would pay it over, dollar for dollar. This delusion soon passed away, and it became evident, that the public neither could nor ought to pay according to the nominal value. The reader will perceive the loss which Mr. Jefferson sustained, and that if he had been disposed to quibble no event could have afforded him a more plausible pretext: But it appears that this gentleman considered himself still answerable to Farrel and Jones, and therefore settled with their agent otherwise.

“The next debt in succession, was one due to Kippen, and company for whom, Mr. Lyle of Manchester was agent. I called upon that gentleman for information respecting Mr. Jefferson’s conduct in the settlement of this claim, who assured me that it was strictly honourable. Mr. Lyle told me that as soon as the Vice President returned from his mission to France, he waited upon him, and made immediate arrangements for payment, deducting the 8 years war interest.

“Concerning the war interest, I think the annexed letter from Mr. Jefferson, will be quite satisfactory. But exclusive of his particular situation, and the losses which he sustained, probably from his conspicuous services during the revolutionary contest; I know of not a solitary instance in which the eight years interest has been paid if objected to by the defendants counsel; and I fancy it was the opinion of the federal judges assembled in Philadelphia, that the war interest ought to be deducted, if a special reason for avoiding it could be assigned—and surely no reason could be assigned with more forcible propriety, than that the British themselves had destroyed the means. But to my mind, there is the best evidence of the equity of withholding the eight years interest; the juries have uniformly deducted it, although the counsel for the plaintiff has often assigned peculiar and strong reasons, springing from the manner in which the debt originated, why it should be allowed.

“The following letter from Mr. Jefferson while in Paris, is now submitted to the public. It was not procured from him but having been produced in court by Jones’s agent in another case, was by the counsel of that agent candidly and honorably read in court, as an act of justice to Mr. Jefferson, got thus into the press, and has since been used by the advocates for the payment of British debts, and by them, very much complimented.”

In the Examiner the final paragraph of the introduction read: “The following letter from Mr. Jefferson while in Paris, is now submitted to the public. It was not procured from him by me, but on the other hand, has been used by the advocates for the payment of British debts, and by them, very much complimented.”

The Aurora appended the following footnote, keyed by an asterisk to the final word of the introduction: “We add from unquestionable authority, that soon after Mr. Jefferson’s return from France, arrangements were made with the agent of Farrel and Jones, and a deposit placed in his hands, to the amount of the claim against Mr. Jefferson.”

Some phrasing in the introductory comments repeats language from TJ’s letter to Jones, such as “before a shilling of paper money had been issued” (in the letter TJ gave the date of that sale of land as 1776 rather than 1774). However, particular details in the introduction, such as the quantity of land TJ sold, the counties in which it lay, and his receipt of payment in 1779–80, do not appear in the 1787 letter and must have come from a source familiar with the transactions (see TJ to George Jefferson, 14 Oct. 1799).

In 1790, in what proved to be an unsuccessful attempt to pay off his debt to the Kippen firm in five years, TJ had given bonds to James Lyle of Manchester, Virginia, who represented Henderson, McCaul & Co., the successor to the Kippen company (Herbert E. Sloan, Principle and Interest: Thomas Jefferson and the Problem of Debt [New York, 1995], 1820; MB description begins James A. Bear, Jr., and Lucia C. Stanton, eds., Jefferson’s Memorandum Books: Accounts, with Legal Records and Miscellany, 1767–1826, Princeton, 1997, The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, Second Series description ends , 1:7; Vol. 16:212–13; Vol. 29:2024).

The Supreme Court—“the federal judges assembled in Philadelphia”—did not have occasion to rule on the specific issue of interest on debts during the Revolution, although as the author of the introductory comments stated, Virginia juries generally disallowed interest for the war years when deciding creditors’ claims (Charles F. Hobson, “The Recovery of British Debts in the Federal Circuit Court of Virginia, 1790 to 1797,” VMHB description begins Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, 1893– description ends , 92 [1984], 193–5).

Duane provided material for John Wood’s controversial 1802 book, History of the Administration of John Adams, which printed TJ’s letter to Jones with some alteration of the introductory comments that had appeared in the Aurora in April 1800 and omitted everything appended to the foot of the letter in that newspaper (John Wood, The History of the Administration of John Adams, Esq. Late President of the United States [New York, 1802], 441–9; Kline, Burr description begins Mary-Jo Kline, ed., Political Correspondence and Public Papers of Aaron Burr, Princeton, 1983, 2 vols. description ends , 2:641–8, 696–8, 713–16; see Sowerby, description begins E. Millicent Sowerby, comp., Catalogue of the Library of Thomas Jefferson, Washington, D.C., 1952–59, 5 vols. description ends No. 506).