Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson
Chapter 100 : A dispute arising between two subjects of France, the one being in France and the othe

A dispute arising between two subjects of France, the one being in France and the other in the United States, the regular tribunals of France would seem ent.i.tled to a preference of jurisdiction. Yet the twelfth article gives it to their consul in America; and to the consul of the United States in France, in a like case between their citizens.

The power given by the tenth article, of arresting and sending back a 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 friends.h.i.+p, 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 a.s.sist the consul in the exercise of this function, we can accede. But the extension of the like power to pa.s.sengers, seems not necessary for the purposes either of navigation or commerce. It does not come, therefore, within the functions of the consul, whose inst.i.tution 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 pa.s.sengers, 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 inst.i.tutions 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 circ.u.mstances 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 establis.h.i.+ng 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 embarra.s.sments 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 inst.i.tution 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 circ.u.mstances 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 circ.u.mspection 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 circ.u.mstances, 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 t.i.tle 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 s.p.a.ce to a.s.sure 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. .h.i.therto 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 pa.s.s 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 r.e.t.a.r.d 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 pa.s.s, and form an iris on the opposite part of the heavens, just as a ray pa.s.sing 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 r.e.t.a.r.ded 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 gla.s.s, as artists engrave on copper, with aquafortis.

M. de la Place has discovered, that the secular acceleration and r.e.t.a.r.dation 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 _charge 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 circ.u.mstances relating to the person who says he has this translation. I find, nevertheless, that the _charge 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 pus.h.i.+ng discoveries into Africa; pa.s.sed by this place, which he left a few days ago for Ma.r.s.eilles, 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 const.i.tution. 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 const.i.tution.

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 s.h.i.+pments 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 const.i.tute 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 s.h.i.+pped to Berard netts you, and how much it would have _netted_ in hard money, if you had sold it at home.

You promise, in your letter of October the 23rd, 1787, to give me in your next, at large, the conjectures of your philosopher on the descent of the Creek Indians from the Carthaginians, supposed to have been separated from Hanno's fleet, during his periplus. I shall be very glad to receive them, and see nothing impossible in his conjecture. I am glad he means to appeal to similarity of language, which I consider as the strongest kind of proof it is possible to adduce. I have somewhere read, that the language of the ancient Carthaginians is still spoken by their descendants, inhabiting the mountainous interior parts of Barbary, to which they were obliged to retire by the conquering Arabs. If so, a vocabulary of their tongue can still be got, and if your friend will get one of the Creek languages, the comparison will decide. He probably may have made progress in this business: but if he wishes any inquiries to be made on this side the Atlantic, I offer him my services cheerfully; my wish being, like his to ascertain the history of the American aborigines.

I congratulate you on the accesion of your State to the new federal const.i.tution. This is the last I have yet heard of, but I expect daily to hear that my own has followed the good example, and suppose it to be already established. Our government wanted bracing. Still we must take care not to run from one extreme to another; not to brace too high. I own, I join those in opinion, who think a bill of rights necessary. I apprehend too, that the total abandonment of the principle of rotation in the offices of President and Senator, will end in abuse. But my confidence is, that there will, for a long time, be virtue and good sense enough in our countrymen, to correct abuses. We can surely boast of having set the world a beautiful example of a government reformed by reason alone, without bloodshed. But the world is too far oppressed to profit by the example. On this side of the Atlantic, the blood of the people has become an inheritance, and those who fatten on it, will not relinquish it easily. The struggle in this country is, as yet, of doubtful issue. It is, in fact, between the monarchy and the parliaments. The nation is no otherwise concerned, but as both parties may be induced to let go some of its abuses, to court the public favor.

The danger is, that the people, deceived by a false cry of liberty, may be led to take side with one party, and thus give the other a pretext for crus.h.i.+ng them still more. If they can avoid the appeal to arms, the nation will be sure to gain much by this controversy. But if that appeal is made, it will depend entirely on the disposition of the army, whether it issue in liberty or despotism. Those dispositions are not as yet known. In the mean time, there is great probability that the war kindled in the east, will spread from nation to nation, and, in the long run, become general.

I am, with the most sincere esteem and attachment, my dear; Sir, your friend and servant,