ultimately be stopped? No confidence can be placed in any answer to
this question. If they should ever pass the mountainous country which
separates the waters of the ocean from those of the Mississippi, there
may be circumstances which might aid their further progress, as far as
the Mississippi. That mountainous country commences about two hundred
miles from the sea coast, and consists of successive ranges passing
from northeast to southwest, and rising the one above the other to the
Allegany Ridge, which is the highest of all. From that, lower and lower
ridges succeed one another again, till having covered, in the whole, a
breadth of two hundred miles from southeast to northwest, they subside
into a plain, fertile country, extending four hundred miles to the
Mississippi, and probably much further on the other side, towards the
heads of the western waters. When this country shall become cultivated,
it will, for the reasons before explained, draw to it winds from
the east and west. In this case, should the sea breezes pass the
intermediate mountains, they will rather be aided than opposed in their
further progress to the Mississippi. There are circumstances, however,
which render it possible that they may not be able to pass those
intermediate mountains. 1. These mountains constitute the highest lands
within the United States. The air on them must consequently be very cold
and heavy, and have a tendency to flow both to the east and west. 2.
Ranging across the current of the sea breezes, they are in themselves,
so many successive barriers opposed to their progress. 3. The country
they occupy is covered with trees, which assist to weaken and spend
the force of the breezes. 4. It will remain so covered; a very small
proportion of it being capable of culture. 5. The temperature of its
air, then, will never be softened by culture.
Whether in the plain country between the Mississippi and Allegany
mountains, easterly or westerly winds prevail at present, I am not
informed. I conjecture, however, that they must be westerly: and I
think with you, Sir, that if those mountains were to subside into
plain country, as their opposition to the westerly winds would then be
removed, they would repress more powerfully those from the east, and of
course would remove the line of equilibrium nearer to the sea coast for
the present.
Having had occasion to mention the course of the tropical winds from
east to west, I will add some observations connected with them. They are
known to occasion a strong current in the ocean, in the same direction.
This current breaks on that wedge of land of which Saint Roque is the
point; the southern column of it probably turning off and washing the
coast of Brazil. I say probably, because I have never heard the fact,
and conjecture it from reason only. The northern column, having its
western motion diverted towards the north, and reinforced by the
currents of the great rivers Orinoko, Amazons, and Tocantin, has
probably been the agent which formed the Gulf of Mexico, cutting the
American continent nearly in two, in that part. It re-issues into the
ocean at the northern end of the Gulf, and passes by the name of the
Gulf Stream, all along the coast of the United States, to its northern
extremity. There it turns off eastwardly, having formed by its eddy, at
this turn, the Banks of Newfoundland. Through the whole of its course,
from the Gulf to the Banks, it retains a very sensible warmth. The
Spaniards are, at this time, desirous of trading to their Philippine
Islands, by the way of the Cape of Good Hope: but opposed in it by the
Dutch, under authority of the treaty of Munster, they are examining the
practicability of a common passage through the Straits of Magellan, or
round Cape Horn. Were they to make an opening through the Isthmus of
Panama, a work much less difficult than some even of the inferior canals
of France, however small this opening should be in the beginning, the
tropical current entering it with all its force, would soon widen it
sufficiently for its own passage, and thus complete in a short time,
that work which otherwise will still employ it for ages. Less country,
too, would be destroyed by it in this way. These consequences would
follow. 1. Vessels from Europe or the western coast of Africa, by
entering the tropics, would have a steady wind and tide to carry them
through the Atlantic, through America and the Pacific ocean, to every
part of the Asiatic coast, and of the eastern coast of Africa: thus
performing with speed and safety the tour of the whole globe, to within
about twenty-four degrees of longitude, or one fifteenth part of its
circumference; the African continent, under the line, occupying about
that space. 2. The Gulf of Mexico, now the most dangerous navigation in
the world on account of its currents and moveable sands, would become
stagnant and safe. 3. The Gulf Stream on the coast of the United States
would cease, and with that, those derangements of course and reckoning,
which now impede and endanger the intercourse with those States. 4. The
fogs on the Banks of Newfoundland,* supposed to be the vapors of the
Gulf Stream rendered turbid by cold air, would disappear. 5. Those Banks
ceasing to receive supplies of sand, weeds, and warm water, by the Gulf
Stream, it might become problematical what effect changes of pasture and
temperatures would have on the fisheries. However it is time to
relieve you from this long lecture. I wish its subject may have been
sufficiently interesting to make amends for its details. These are
submitted with entire deference to your better judgment. I will only
add to them, by assuring you of the sentiments of perfect esteem and
respect, with which I have the honor to be, Sir, your most obedient and
most humble servant,
Th: Jefferson.
[* This ingenious and probable conjecture, I found in a
letter from Dr. Franklin to yourself, published in the late
volume of the American Philosophical Transactions.]
LETTER XXXI.--TO GENERAL WASHINGTON, November 14, 1786
TO GENERAL WASHINGTON.
Paris, November 14, 1786.
Sir,
The house of Le Coulteux, which for some centuries has been the
wealthiest of this place, has it in contemplation to establish a great
company for the fur trade. They propose that partners interested
one half in the establishment, should be American citizens, born and
residing in the United States. Yet if I understood them rightly, they
expect that the half of the company which resides here, should make the
greatest part, or perhaps the whole of the advances, while those on
our side the water should superintend the details. They had, at first,
thought of Baltimore as the centre of their American transactions. I
have pointed out to them the advantages of Alexandria for this purpose.
They have concluded to take information as to Baltimore, Philadelphia,
and New York, for a principal deposit, and having no correspondent at
Alexandria, have asked me to procure a state of the advantages of that
place, as also to get a recommendation of the best merchant there, to be
adopted as partner and head of the business there. Skill, punctuality,
and integrity are the requisites in such a character. They will decide
on their whole information, as to the place for their principal factory.
Being unwilling that Alexandria should lose its pretensions, I have
undertaken to procure them information as to that place. If they
undertake this trade at all, it will be on so great a scale as to decide
the current of the Indian-trade to the place they adopt. I have no
acquaintance at Alexandria or in its neighborhood; but believing you
would feel an interest in the matter, from the same motives which I do,
I venture to ask the favor of you to recommend to me a proper merchant
for their purpose, and to engage some well informed person to send me a
representation of the advantages of Alexandria, as the principal deposit
of the fur trade.
The author of the political part of the _Encyclopédie Méthodique_
desired me to examine his article, _Etats Unis_. I did so. I found it
a tissue of errors; for in truth they know nothing about us here.
Particularly, however, the article Cincinnati was a mere philippic
against that institution: in which it appeared that there was an utter
ignorance of facts and motives. I gave him notes on it. He reformed
it, as he supposed, and sent it again to me to revise. In this reformed
state, Colonel Humphreys saw it.
I found it necessary to write that article for him. Before I gave it to
him, I showed it to the Marquis de la Fayette, who made a correction or
two. I then sent it to the author. He used the materials, mixing a great
deal of his own with them. In a work which is sure of going down to the
latest posterity, I thought it material to set facts to rights, as much
as possible. The author was well disposed; but could not entirely get
the better of his original bias. I send you the article as ultimately
published. If you find any material errors in it, and will be so good
as to inform me of them, I shall probably have opportunities of setting
this author to rights. What has heretofore passed between us on this
institution, makes it my duty to mention to you, that I have never heard
a person in Europe, learned or unlearned, express his thoughts on this
institution, who did not consider it as dishonorable and destructive
to our governments; and that every writing which has come out since
my arrival here, in which it is mentioned, considers it, even as now
reformed, as the germ whose developement is one day to destroy the
fabric we have reared. I did not apprehend this, while I had American
ideas only. But I confess that what I have seen in Europe, has brought
me over to that opinion; and that though the day may be at some
distance, beyond the reach of our lives perhaps, yet it will certainly
come, when a single fibre left of this institution will produce an
hereditary aristocracy, which will change the form of our governments
from the best to the worst in the world. To know the mass of evil which
flows from this fatal source, a person must be in France; he must see
the finest soil, the finest climate, the most compact state, the most
benevolent character of people, and every earthly advantage combined,
insufficient to prevent this scourge from rendering existence a curse to
twenty-four out of twenty-five parts of the inhabitants of this country.
With us, the branches of this institution cover all the states. The
southern ones, at this time, are aristocratical in their dispositions:
and that that spirit should grow and extend itself, is within the
natural order of things. I do not flatter myself with the immortality
of our governments: but I shall think little also of their longevity,
unless this germ of destruction be taken out. When the society
themselves shall weigh the possibility of evil, against the
impossibility of any good to proceed from this institution, I cannot
help hoping they will eradicate it. I know they wish the permanence of
our governments, as much as any individuals composing them.
An interruption here, and the departure of the gentleman by whom I send
this, oblige me to conclude it with assurances of the sincere respect
and esteem, with which I have the honor to be, Dear Sir, your most
obedient and most humble servant,
Th: Jefferson.
LETTER XXXII.--TO JAMES MADISON, December 16, 1786
TO JAMES MADISON.
Paris, December 16, 1786.
Dear Sir,
After a very long silence, I am at length able to write to you. An
unlucky dislocation of my right wrist has disabled me from using that
hand, three months. I now begin to use it a little, but with great pain;
so that this letter must be taken up at such intervals as the state of
my hand will permit, and will probably be the work of some days. Though
the joint seems to be well set, the swelling does not abate, nor the use
of it return. I am now, therefore, on the point of setting out, to
the south of France, to try the use of some mineral waters there, by
immersion. This journey will be of two or three months.
I enclose you herein a copy of the letter from the minister of finance
to me, making several advantageous regulations for our commerce. The
obtaining this has occupied us a twelvemonth. I say us, because I find
the Marquis de la Fayette so useful an auxiliary, that acknowledgements
for his co-operation are always due. There remains still something to do
for the articles of rice, turpentine, and ship duties. What can be done
for tobacco when the late regulation expires, is very uncertain. The
commerce between the United States and this country being put on a good
footing, we may afterwards proceed to try if any thing can be done to
favor our intercourse with her colonies. Admission into them for our
fish and flour, is very desirable: but, unfortunately, both those
articles would raise a competition against their own.
I find by the public papers, that your commercial convention failed in
point of representation. If it should produce a full meeting in May, and
a broader reformation, it will still be well. To make us one nation as
to foreign concerns, and keep us distinct in domestic ones, gives
the outline of the proper division of powers between the general and
particular governments. But to enable the federal head to exercise
the powers given it, to best advantage, it should be organized, as the
particular ones are, into legislative, executive, and judiciary. The
first and last are already separated. The second should be. When last
with Congress, I often proposed to members to do this, by making of
the committee of the States an executive committee during the recess of
Congress, and during its sessions to appoint a committee to receive and
despatch all executive business, so that Congress itself should meddle
only with what should be legislative. But I question if any Congress
(much less all successively) can have self-denial enough to go, through
with this distribution. The distribution, then, should be imposed
on them. I find Congress have reversed their division of the western
States, and proposed to make them fewer and larger. This is reversing
the natural order of things. A tractable people may be governed in large
bodies: but in proportion as they depart from this character, the extent
of their government must be less. We see into what small divisions the
Indians are obliged to reduce their societies. This measure, with the
disposition to shut up the Mississippi, gives me serious apprehensions
of the severance of the eastern and western parts of our confederacy. It
might have been made the interest of the western States to remain united
with us, by managing their interests honestly, and for their own good.
But the moment we sacrifice their interests to our own, they will see
it better to govern themselves. The moment they resolve to do this,
the point is settled. A forced connection is neither our interest,
nor within our power. The Virginia act for religious freedom has been
received with infinite approbation in Europe, and propagated with
enthusiasm. I do not mean by the governments, but by the individuals who
compose them. It has been translated into French and Italian, has been
sent to most of the courts of Europe, and has been the best evidence of
the falsehood of those reports, which stated us to be in anarchy. It
is inserted in the new _Encyclopédie_, and is appearing in most of the
publications respecting America. In fact, it is comfortable to see the
standard of reason at length erected, after so many ages, during which
the human mind has been held in vassalage by kings, priests, and nobles:
and it is honorable for us to have produced the first legislature who
had the courage to declare, that the reason of man may be trusted with
the formation of his own opinions.
*****
I thank you for your communications in Natural History. The several
instances of trees, &c. found far below the surface of the earth, as in
the case of Mr. Hay’s well, seem to set the reason of man at defiance.
I am, Dear Sir, with sincere esteem, your friend and servant,
Th: Jefferson.
LETTER XXXIII.--TO CHARLES THOMSON, December 17,1780
TO CHARLES THOMSON.
Paris, December 17,1780.
Dear Sir,
A dislocation of my right wrist has for three months past disabled me
from writing, except with my left hand, which was too slow and awkward
to be employed often. I begin to have so much use of my wrist as to be
able to write, but it is slowly, and in pain. I take the first moment
I can, however, to acknowledge the receipt of your letters of April the
6th, July the 8th and 30th. In one of these, you say you have not
been able to learn, whether, in the new mills in London, steam is the
immediate mover of the machinery, or raises water to move it. It is the
immediate mover. The power of this agent, though long known, is but
now beginning to be applied to the various purposes of which it is
susceptible. You observe, that Whitehurst supposes it to have been the
agent, which bursting the earth, threw it up into mountains and vallies.
You ask me what I think of this book. I find in it many interesting
facts brought together, and many ingenious commentaries on them. But
there are great chasms in his facts, and consequently in his reasoning,
These he fills up by suppositions, which may be as reasonably denied
as granted. A sceptical reader, therefore, like myself, is left in the
lurch. I acknowledge, however, he makes more use of fact, than any other
writer on a theory of the earth. But I give one answer to all these
theorists. That is as follows. They all suppose the earth a created
existence. They must suppose a creator then; and that he possessed
power and wisdom to a great degree. As he intended the earth for the
habitation of animals and vegetables, is it reasonable to suppose, he
made two jobs of his creation, that he first made a chaotic lump,
and set it into rotatory motion, and then waited the millions of ages
necessary to form itself? That when it had done this, he stepped in a
second time, to create the animals and plants which were to inhabit it?
As the hand of a creator is to be called in, it may as well be called
in at one stage of the process as another. We may as well suppose he
created the earth at once, nearly in the state in which we see it, fit
for the preservation of the beings he placed on it. But it is said, we
have a proof that he did not create it in its present solid form, but in
a state of fluidity: because its present shape of an oblate spheroid is
precisely that, which a fluid mass revolving on its axis would assume.
I suppose, that the same equilibrium between gravity and centrifugal
force, which would determine a fluid mass into the form of an oblate
spheroid, would determine the wise creator of that mass, if he made it
in a solid state, to give it the same spheroidical form. A revolving
fluid will continue to change its shape, till it attains that in which
its principles of contrary motion are balanced. For if you suppose them
not balanced, it will change its form. Now the same balanced form
is necessary for the preservation of a revolving solid. The creator,
therefore, of a revolving solid, would make it an oblate spheroid, that
figure alone admitting a perfect equilibrium. He would make it in that
form, for another reason; that is, to prevent a shifting of the axis of
rotation. Had he created the earth perfectly spherical, its axis might
have been perpetually shifting, by the influence of the other bodies
of the system; and by placing the inhabitants of the earth successively
under its poles, it might have been depopulated; whereas, being
spheroidical, it has but one axis on which it can revolve in equilibrio.
Suppose the axis of the earth to shift forty-five degrees; then cut it
into one hundred and eighty slices, making every section in the plane
of a circle of latitude, perpendicular to the axis: every one of these
slices, except the equatorial one, would be unbalanced, as there would
be more matter on one side of its axis than on the other. There could be
but one diameter drawn through such a slice, which would divide it into
two equal parts. On every other possible diameter, the parts would hang
unequal. This would produce an irregularity in the diurnal rotation.
We may, therefore, conclude it impossible for the poles of the earth
to shift, if it was made spheroidical; and that it would be made
spheroidical, though solid, to obtain this end. I use this reasoning
only on the supposition, that the earth has had a beginning. I am sure I
shall read your conjectures on this subject with great pleasure, though
I bespeak beforehand, a right to indulge my natural incredulity and
scepticism. The pain in which I write, awakens me here from my reverie,
and obliges me to conclude with compliments to Mrs. Thomson, and
assurances to yourself of the esteem and affection with which I am
sincerely, Dear Sir, your friend and servant,
Th: Jefferson.
P. S. Since writing the preceding, I have had a conversation on the
subject of the steam-mills, with the famous Boulton, to whom those of
London belong, and who is here at this time. He compares the effect of
steam with that of horses, in the following manner. Six horses, aided
with the most advantageous combination of the mechanical powers hitherto
tried, will grind six bushels of flour in an hour; at the end of which
time they are all in a foam, and must rest. They can work thus six hours
in the twenty-four, grinding thirty-six bushels of flour, which is
six to each horse, for the twenty-four hours. His steam-mill in London
consumes one hundred and twenty bushels of coal in twenty-four hours,
turns ten pair of stones, which grind eight bushels of flour an hour
each, which is nineteen hundred and twenty bushels in the twenty-four
hours. This makes a peck and a half of coal perform exactly as much as a
horse in one day can perform.
LETTER XXXIV.--TO COLONEL MONROE, December 18, 1786
TO COLONEL MONROE.
Paris, December 18, 1786.
Dear Sir,