Note 1261 — Chapter XII
Reading edition
Jefferson to Mazzei, April 24, 1796; Works: Ford, viii, 237-41. The letter as published in America, although it had undergone three translations (from English into Italian, from Italian into French, and from French into English again), does not materially differ from Jefferson's original.
It greatly angered the Federalist leaders. Jefferson calls the Federalists "an Anglican, monarchical & aristocratical party." The Republicans had "the landed interests and men of talent"; the Federalists had "the Executive, the Judiciary," the office-holders and office-seekers—"all timid men who prefer the calm of despotism to the boisterous sea of liberty, British merchants & Americans trading on British capital, speculators & holders in the banks & public funds, a contrivance invented for the purposes of corruption," etc.
Jefferson thus refers to Washington: "It would give you a fever were I to name to you the apostates who have gone over to these heresies, men who were Samsons in the field & Solomons in the council, but who have had their heads shorn by the whore England." It was this insult to Washington which Marshall resented most bitterly.
Jefferson must have known that Mazzei would probably publish this letter. Writing at Paris, in 1788, of Mazzei's appointment by the French King as "intelligencer," Jefferson said: "The danger is that he will overact his part." (Jefferson to Madison, July 31, 1788; Works: Ford, v, 425.)
The Republicans frankly defended the Mazzei letter; both its facts and "predictions" were correct, said the Aurora, which found scarcely "a line in it which does not contain something to admire for elegance of expression, striking fact, and profound and accurate penetration." (Aurora, May 26, 1800.)