vessel, its captain, and crew, is a very great one indeed, and, in
our opinion, more safely lodged with the territorial judge. We would
ourselves trust the tribunals of France to decide, when there is just
cause for so high-handed an act of authority over the persons and
property of so many of our citizens, to all of whom these tribunals will
stand in a neutral and impartial relation, rather than any single person
whom we may appoint as consul, who will seldom be learned in the laws,
and often susceptible of influence from private interest and personal
pique. With us, applications for the arrest of vessels, and of their
masters, are made to the admiralty courts. These are composed of the
most learned and virtuous characters in the several States, and the
maritime law, common to all nations, is the rule of their proceedings.
The exercise of foreign jurisdiction, within the pale of their own
laws, in a very high case, and wherein those laws have made honorable
provisions, would be a phenomenon never yet seen in our country, and
which would be seen with great jealousy and uneasiness. On the contrary,
to leave this power with the territorial judge will inspire confidence
and friendship, and be really, at the same time, more secure against
abuse. The power of arresting deserted seamen seems necessary for the
purposes of navigation and commerce, and will be more attentively and
effectually exercised by the consul, than by the territorial judge.
To this part of the tenth article, therefore, as well as to that which
requires the territorial judge to assist the consul in the exercise of
this function, we can accede. But the extension of the like power to
passengers, seems not necessary for the purposes either of navigation
or commerce. It does not come, therefore, within the functions of the
consul, whose institution is for those two objects only, nor within the
powers of a commissioner, authorized to treat and conclude a convention,
solely for regulating the powers, privileges, and duties of consuls.
The arrest and detention of passengers, moreover, would often be in
contradiction to our bills of rights, which, being fundamental, cannot
be obstructed in their operation by any law or convention whatever.
Consular institutions being entirely new with us, Congress think it wise
to make their first convention probationary, and not perpetual. They
propose, therefore, a clause for limiting its duration to a certain term
of years. If after the experience of a few years, it should be found to
answer the purposes intended by it, both parties will have sufficient
inducements to renew it, either in its present form, or with such
alterations and amendments, as time, experience, and other circumstances
may indicate.
The convention, as expressed in the French language, will fully answer
our purposes in France, because it will there be understood. But it will
not equally answer the purposes of France in America, because it will
not there be understood. In very few of the courts, wherein it may be
presented, will there be found a single judge or advocate, capable of
translating it at all, much less of giving to all its terms, legal
and technical, their exact equivalent in the laws and language of
that country. Should any translation which Congress would undertake to
publish, for the use of our courts, be conceived on any occasion not to
render fully the idea of the French original, it might be imputed as an
indirect attempt to abridge or extend the terms of a contract, at the
will of one party only. At no place are there better helps than here,
for establishing an English text equivalent to the French, in all its
phrases; no persons can be supposed to know what is meant by these
phrases, better than those who form them; and no time more proper to
ascertain their meaning in both languages than that at which they are
formed. I have, therefore, the honor to propose, that the convention
shall be faithfully expressed in English as well as in French, in two
columns, side by side, that these columns be declared each of them to be
text, and to be equally original and authentic in all courts of justice.
This, Sir, is a general sketch of the alterations, which our laws and
our manner of thinking render necessary in this convention, before the
faith of our country is engaged for its execution. Some of its articles,
in their present form, could not be executed at all, and others would
produce embarrassments and ill humor, to which it would not be prudent
for our government to commit itself. Inexact execution on the one part,
would naturally beget dissatisfaction and complaints on the other; and
an instrument intended to strengthen our connection, might thus become
the means of loosening it. Fewer articles, better observed, will better
promote our common interests. As to ourselves, we do not find the
institution of consuls very necessary. Its history commences in times of
barbarism, and might well have ended with them. During these, they were,
perhaps, useful, and may still be so in countries not yet emerged from
that condition. But all civilized nations at this day understand so
well the advantages of commerce, that they provide protection and
encouragement for merchant strangers and vessels coming among them.
So extensive, too, have commercial connections now become, that every
mercantile house has correspondents in almost every port. They address
their vessels to these correspondents, who are found to take better care
of their interests, and to obtain more effectually the protection of the
laws of the country for them, than the consul of their nation can. He is
generally a foreigner, unpossessed of the little details of knowledge
of greatest use to them. He makes national questions of all the
difficulties which arise; the correspondent prevents them. We carry on
commerce with good success in all parts of the world; yet we have not
a consul in a single port, nor a complaint for the want of one, except
from the persons who wish to be consuls themselves. Though these
considerations may not be strong enough to establish the absolute
inutility of consuls, they may make us less anxious to extend their
privileges and jurisdictions, so as to render them objects of jealousy
and irritation, in the places of their residence. That this government
thinks them useful, is sufficient reason for us to give them all the
functions and facilities which our circumstances will admit. Instead,
therefore, of declining every article which will be useless to us, we
accede to every one which will not be inconvenient. Had this nation been
alone concerned, our desire to gratify them might have tempted us to
press still harder on the laws and opinions of our country. But your
Excellency knows, that we stand engaged in treaties with some nations,
which will give them occasion to claim whatever privileges we yield to
any other. This renders circumspection more necessary. Permit me to add
one other observation. The English allow to foreign consuls scarcely any
functions within their ports. This proceeds, in a great measure, from
the character of their laws, which eye, with peculiar jealousy, every
exemption from their control. Ours are the same in their general
character, and rendered still more unpliant, by our having thirteen
parliaments to relax, instead of one. Upon the whole, I hope your
Excellency will see the causes of the delay which this convention has
met with, in the difficulties it presents, and our desire to surmount
them: and will be sensible that the alterations proposed, are dictated
to us by the necessity of our circumstances, and by a caution, which
cannot be disapproved, to commit ourselves to no engagements which we
foresee we might not be able o fulfil.
These alterations, with some other smaller ones, which may be offered
on the sole principle of joint convenience, shall be the subject of more
particular explanation, whenever your Excellency shall honor me with
a conference thereon. I shall then, also, point out the verbal changes
which appear to me necessary, to accommodate the instrument to the
views before expressed. In the mean time, I have the honor to be, with
sentiments of the most perfect respect and esteem, your Excellency’s
most obedient and most humble servant,
Th: Jefferson.
LETTER CXLIV.--TO DOCTOR GORDON, July 16, 1788
TO DOCTOR GORDON.
Paris, July 16, 1788.
Sir,
In your favor of the 8th instant, you mentioned that you had written to
me in February last. This letter never came to hand. That of April
the 24th came here during my absence on a journey through Holland and
Germany; and my having been obliged to devote the first moments after my
return to some very pressing matters, must be my apology for not having
been able to write to you till now. As soon as I knew that it would be
agreeable to you to have such a disposal of your work for translation,
as I had made for Dr. Ramsay, I applied to the same bookseller with
propositions on your behalf. He told me, that he had lost so much by
that work, that he could hardly think of undertaking another, and, at
any rate, not without first seeing and examining it. As he was the only
bookseller I could induce to give any thing on the former occasion,
I went to no other with my proposal, meaning to ask you to send me
immediately as much of the work as is printed. This you can do by
the Diligence, which comes three times a week from London to Paris.
Furnished with this, I will renew my proposition, and do the best for
you I can; though I fear that the ill success of the translation of
Dr. Ramsay’s work, and of another work on the subject of America, will
permit less to be done for you than I had hoped. I think Dr. Ramsay
failed from the inelegance of the translation, and the translator’s
having departed entirely from the Doctor’s instructions. I will be
obliged to you, to set me down as subscriber for half a dozen copies,
and to ask Mr. Trumbull (No. 2, North street, Rathbone Place) to pay
you the whole subscription price for me, which he will do on showing him
this letter. These copies can be sent by the Diligence. I have not yet
received the pictures Mr. Trumbull was to send me, nor consequently that
of M. de la Fayette. I will take care of it when it arrives. His title
is simply, Le Marquis de la Fayette.
You ask, in your letter of April the 24th, details of my sufferings by
Colonel Tarleton. I did not suffer by him. On the contrary, he behaved
very genteelly with me. On his approach to Charlottesville, which is
within three miles of my house at Monticello, he despatched a troop of
his horse, under Captain McLeod, with the double object of taking me
prisoner, with the two Speakers of the Senate and Delegates, who then
lodged with me, and of remaining there in _vidette_, my house commanding
a view often or twelve miles round about. He gave strict orders to
Captain McLeod to suffer nothing to be injured. The troop failed in
one of their objects, as we had notice of their coming, so that the
two Speakers had gone off about two hours before their arrival at
Monticello, and myself, with my family, about five minutes. But Captain
McLeod preserved every thing with sacred care, during about eighteen
hours that he remained there. Colonel Tarleton was just so long at
Charlottesville, being hurried from thence by the news of the rising of
the militia, and by a sudden fall of rain which threatened to swell the
river and intercept his return. In general he did little injury to the
inhabitants on that short and hasty excursion, which was of about sixty
miles from their main army, then in Spotsylvania, and ours in Orange. It
was early in June, 1781. Lord Cornwallis then proceeded to the Point of
Fork, and encamped his army from thence all along the main James River,
to a seat of mine called Elk-hill, opposite to Elk Island, and a little
below the mouth of the Byrd Creek. (You will see all these places
exactly laid down in the map annexed to my Notes on Virginia, printed by
Stockdale.) He remained in this position ten days, his own head-quarters
being in my house, at that place. I had time to remove most of the
effects out of the house. He destroyed all my growing crops of corn and
tobacco; he burned all my barns, containing the same articles of the
last year, having first taken what corn he wanted; he used, as was to be
expected, all my stock of cattle, sheep, and hogs, for the sustenance
of his army, and carried off all the horses capable of service; of those
too young for service he cut the throats; and he burned all the fences
on the plantation so as to leave it an absolute waste. He carried off
also about thirty slaves. Had this been to give them freedom, he would
have done right: but it was to consign them to inevitable death from
the small-pox and putrid fever, then raging in his camp. This I knew
afterwards to be the fate of twenty-seven of them. I never had news of
the remaining three, but presume they shared the same fate. When I say
that Lord Cornwallis did all this, I do not mean that he carried about
the torch in his own hands, but that it was all done under his eye; the
situation of the house in which he was, commanding a view of every part
of the plantation, so that he must have seen every fire. I relate these
things on my own knowledge, in a great degree, as I was on the ground
soon after he left it. He treated the rest of the neighborhood somewhat
in the same style, but not with that spirit of total extermination
with which he seemed to rage over my possessions. Wherever he went, the
dwelling-houses were plundered of every thing which could be carried
off. Lord Cornwallis’s character in England would forbid the belief that
he shared in the plunder; but that his table was served with the
plate thus pillaged from private houses, can be proved by many hundred
eye-witnesses. From an estimate I made at that time, on the best
information I could collect, I supposed the State of Virginia lost under
Lord Cornwallis’s hands, that year, about thirty thousand slaves; and
that of these, about twenty-seven thousand died of the small-pox and
camp-fever, and the rest were partly sent to the West Indies, and
exchanged for rum, sugar, coffee, and fruit, and partly sent to New
York, from whence they went, at the peace, either to Nova Scotia or
England. From this last place, I believe they have been lately sent to
Africa. History will never relate the horrors committed by the British
army, in the southern States of America. They raged in Virginia six
months only, from the middle of April to the middle of October, 1781,
when they were all taken prisoners; and I give you a faithful specimen
of their transactions for ten days of that time, and on one spot only.
_Ex pede Herculem_. I suppose their whole devastations during those six
months, amounted to about three millions sterling. The copiousness of
this subject has only left me space to assure you of the sentiments of
esteem and respect, with which I am, Sir, your most obedient, humble
servant,
Th: Jefferson.
LETTER CXLV.--TO JAMES MADISON, July 19, 1788
TO JAMES MADISON, _of William and Mary College_.
Paris, July 19, 1788.
Dear Sir,
My last letter to you was of the 13th of August last. As you seem
willing to accept of the crumbs of science on which we are subsisting
here, it is with pleasure I continue to hand them on to you, in
proportion as they are dealt out. Herschel’s volcano in the moon you
have doubtless heard of, and placed among the other vagaries of a head,
which seems not organized for sound induction. The wildness of the
theories hitherto proposed by him, on his own discoveries, seems to
authorize us to consider his merit as that of a good optician only. You
know also, that Doctor Ingenhouse had discovered, as he supposed from
experiment, that vegetation might be promoted by occasioning streams of
the electrical fluid to pass through a plant, and that other physicians
had received and confirmed this theory. He now, however, retracts it,
and finds by more decisive experiments, that the electrical fluid can
neither forward nor retard vegetation. Uncorrected still of the rage of
drawing general conclusions from partial and equivocal observations, he
hazards the opinion that light promotes vegetation. I have heretofore
supposed from observation, that light affects the color of living
bodies, whether vegetable or animal; but that either the one or the
other receives nutriment from that fluid, must be permitted to be
doubted of, till better confirmed by observation. It is always better to
have no ideas, than false ones; to believe nothing, than to believe what
is wrong. In my mind, theories are more easily demolished than rebuilt.
An Abbe here, has shaken, if not destroyed, the theory of De Dominis,
Descartes and Newton, for explaining the phenomenon of the rainbow.
According to that theory, you know, a cone of rays issuing from the sun,
and falling on a cloud in the opposite part of the heavens, is reflected
back in the form of a smaller cone, the apex of which is the eye of the
observer: so that the eye of the observer must be in the axis of both
cones, and equally distant from every part of the bow. But he observes,
that he has repeatedly seen bows, the one end of which has been very
near to him, and the other at a very great distance. I have often
seen the same thing myself. I recollect well to have seen the end of a
rainbow between myself and a house, or between myself and a bank, not
twenty yards distant; and this repeatedly. But I never saw, what he
says he has seen, different rainbows at the same time, intersecting
each other. I never saw coexistent bows, which were not concentric
also. Again, according to the theory, if the sun is in the horizon, the
horizon intercepts the lower half of the bow, if above the horizon, that
intercepts more than the half, in proportion. So that generally the bow
is less than a semicircle, and never more. He says he has seen it more
than a semicircle. I have often seen the leg of the bow below my level.
My situation at Monticello admits this, because there is a mountain
there in the opposite direction of the afternoon’s sun, the valley
between which and Monticello is five hundred feet deep. I have seen a
leg of a rainbow plunge down on the river running through the valley.
But I do not recollect to have remarked at any time, that the bow was
more than half a circle. It appears to me, that these facts demolish the
Newtonian hypothesis, but they do not support that erected in its stead
by the Abbe. He supposes a cloud between the sun and observer, and that
through some opening in that cloud, the rays pass, and form an iris on
the opposite part of the heavens, just as a ray passing through a hole
in the shutter of a darkened room, and falling on a prism there, forms
the prismatic colors on the opposite wall. According to this, we might
see bows of more than the half circle, as often as of less. A thousand
other objections occur to this hypothesis, which need not be suggested
to you. The result is, that we are wiser than we were, by having an
error the less in our catalogue; but the blank occasioned by it, must
remain for some happier hypothesist to fill up.
The dispute about the conversion and reconversion of water and air, is
still stoutly kept up. The contradictory experiments of chemists, leave
us at liberty to conclude what we please. My conclusion is, that art has
not yet invented sufficient aids, to enable such subtle bodies to make a
well defined impression on organs as blunt as ours: that it is laudable
to encourage investigation, but to hold back conclusion. Speaking one
day with Monsieur de Buffon on the present ardor of chemical inquiry, he
affected to consider chemistry but as cookery, and to place the toils
of the laboratory on a footing with those of the kitchen. I think it,
on the contrary, among the most useful of sciences, and big with future
discoveries for the utility and safety of the human race. It is yet,
indeed, a mere embryon. Its principles are contested; experiments seem
contradictory; their subjects are so minute as to escape our senses; and
their result too fallacious to satisfy the mind. It is probably an
age too soon, to propose the establishment of a system. The attempt,
therefore, of Lavoisier to reform the chemical nomenclature, is
premature. One single experiment may destroy the whole filiation of
his terms, and his string of sulfates, sulfiles, and sulfures may have
served no other end, than to have retarded the progress of the science,
by a jargon, from the confusion of which, time will be requisite to
extricate us. Accordingly, it is not likely to be admitted generally.
You are acquainted with the properties of the composition of nitre,
salt of tartar, and sulphur, called _pulvis fulminans_. Of this, the
explosion is produced by heat alone. Monsieur Bertholet, by dissolving
silver in the nitrous acid, precipitating it with lime-water, and drying
the precipitate on ammoniac, has discovered a powder, which fulminates
most powerfully, on coming into contact with any substance whatever.
Once made, it cannot be touched. It cannot be put into a bottle, but
must remain in the capsula, where dried. The property of the spathic
acid, to corrode flinty substances, has been lately applied by a Mr.
Puymaurin, to engrave on glass, as artists engrave on copper, with
aquafortis.
M. de la Place has discovered, that the secular acceleration and
retardation of the moon’s motion, is occasioned by the action of the
sun, in proportion as his excentricity changes, or, in other words,
as the orbit of the earth increases or diminishes. So that this
irregularity is now perfectly calculable.
Having seen announced in a gazette, that some person had found, in a
library of Sicily, an Arabic translation of Livy, which was thought to
be complete, I got the _chargé des affaires_ of Naples here, to write to
Naples to inquire into the fact. He obtained in answer, that an Arabic
translation was found, and that it would restore to us seventeen of the
books lost, to wit, from the sixtieth to the seventy-seventh, inclusive:
that it was in possession of an Abbe Vella, who, as soon as he shall
have finished a work he has on hand, will give us an Italian, and
perhaps a Latin translation of this Livy. There are persons, however,
who doubt the truth of this discovery, founding their doubts on some
personal circumstances relating to the person who says he has this
translation. I find, nevertheless, that the _chargé des affaires_
believes in the discovery, which makes me hope it may be true.
A countryman of ours, a Mr. Ledyard of Connecticut, set out from hence
some time ago for St. Petersburg, to go thence to Kamtschatka, thence
to cross over to the western coast of America, and penetrate through
the continent, to the other side of it. He had got within a few days’
journey of Kamtschatka, when he was arrested by order of the Empress
of Russia, sent back, and turned adrift in Poland. He went to London;
engaged under the auspices of a private society, formed there for
pushing discoveries into Africa; passed by this place, which he left
a few days ago for Marseilles, where he will embark for Alexandria and
Grand Cairo; thence explore the Nile to its source; cross the head of
the Niger, and descend that to its mouth. He promises me, if he escapes
through his journey, he will go to Kentucky, and endeavor to penetrate
westwardly to the South Sea.
The death of M. de Buffon you have heard long ago. I do not know whether
we shall have anything posthumous of his. As to political news, this
country is making its way to a good constitution. The only danger is,
they may press so fast as to produce an appeal to arms, which might have
an unfavorable issue for them. As yet the appeal is not made. Perhaps
the war, which seems to be spreading from nation to nation, may reach
them this would insure the calling of the States General, and this, as
is supposed, the establishment of a constitution.
I have the honor to be, with sentiments of sincere esteem and respect,
Dear Sir, your friend and servant,
Th: Jefferson.
LETTER CXLVI.--TO E. RUTLEDGE, July 18, 1788
TO E. RUTLEDGE.
Paris, July 18, 1788.
Dear Sir,
Messrs. Berard were to have given me particular accounts of the proceeds
of the shipments of rice made to them. But they have failed. I fear,
from what they mention, that the price has been less advantageous than
usual; which is unlucky, as it falls the first essay. If on the whole,
however, you get as much as you would have done by a sale on the spot,
it should encourage other adventures, because the price at Havre or
Rouen is commonly higher, and because I think you may, by trials, find
out the way to avail yourselves of the Paris retail price. The Carolina
rice, sold at Paris, is separated into three kinds; 1. the whole grains;
2. the broken grains; 3. the small stuff; and sell at ten, eight, and
six livres the French pound, retail. The whole grains, which constitute
the first quality, are picked out by hand. I would not recommend this
operation to be done with you, because labor is dearer there than here.
But I mention these prices, to show, that after making a reasonable
deduction for sorting, and leaving a reasonable profit to the retailer,
there should still remain a great wholesale price. I shall wish to know
from you, how much your cargo of rice shipped to Berard netts you, and
how much it would have _netted_ in hard money, if you had sold it at
home.