Томас Джефферсон
The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, Vol. 2 (of 9)
TO MR. IZARD
Paris, July 17, 1788.
Dear Sir, * * * * * * * * *
I cannot but approve your idea of sending your eldest son, destined for the law, to Williamsburg. The professor of Mathematics and Natural Philosophy there, (Mr. Madison, cousin of him whom you know,) is a man of great abilities, and their apparatus is a very fine one. Mr. Ballini, professor of Modern Language, is also an excellent one. But the pride of the Institution is Mr. Wythe, one of the Chancellors of the State, and professor of law in the College. He is one of the greatest men of the age, having held without competition the first place at the bar of our general court for twenty-five years, and always distinguished by the most spotless virtue. He gives lectures regularly, and holds moot courts and parliaments wherein he presides, and the young men debate regularly in law and legislation, learn the rules of parliamentary proceeding, and acquire the habit of public speaking. Williamsburg is a remarkably healthy situation, reasonably cheap, and affords very genteel society. I know no place in the world, while the present professors remain, where I would so soon place a son.
I have made the necessary inquiries relative to a school for your second son. There are only two here for the line of engineering. I send the prospectus of the best, which is so particular in its details as to enable you to judge for yourself on every point. I will add some observations. I have never thought a boy should undertake abstruse or difficult sciences, such as Mathematics in general, till fifteen years of age at soonest. Before that time they are best employed in learning the languages which is merely a matter of memory. The languages are badly taught here. If you propose he should learn the Latin, perhaps you will prefer the having him taught it in America, and of course, to retain him there two or three years more. At that age, he will be less liable to lose his native language, and be more able to resist the attempts to change his religion. Probably three or four years here would suffice for the theory of engineering, which would leave him still time enough to see something of the practice either by land or sea, as he should choose, and to return home at a ripe age. Decide on all these points as you think best, and make what use of me in it you please. Whenever you choose to send him, if I am here, and you think proper to accept my services towards him, they shall be bestowed with the same zeal as if he were my own son.
The war in Europe threatens to spread. Sweden, we suppose, has commenced hostilities against Russia, though we do not yet certainly know it. I have hoped this country would settle her internal disputes advantageously and without bloodshed. As yet none has been spilt, though the British newspapers give the idea of a general civil war. Hitherto, I had supposed both the King and parliament would lose authority, and the nation gain it, through the medium of its States General and provincial Assemblies, but the arrest of the deputies of Bretagne two days ago, may kindle a civil war. Its issue will depend on two questions. 1. Will other provinces rise? 2. How will the army conduct itself? A stranger cannot predetermine these questions. Happy for us that abuses have not yet become patrimonies, and that every description of interest is in favor of national and moderate government. That we are yet able to send our wise and good men together to talk over our form of government, discuss its weaknesses and establish its remedies with the same sang-froid as they would a subject of agriculture. The example we have given to the world is single, that of changing our form of government under the authority of reason only, without bloodshed.
I enclose herein a letter from Count Sarsfield to Mrs. Izard, to whom I beg to present my respects. I am, with great sincerity, dear Sir, your friend and servant.
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 Dr. 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 effects 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 Abbé 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 semi-circle, and never more. He says he has seen it more than a semi-circle. 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 Abbé. He supposes a cloud between the sun and the 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 re-conversion 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 sulphates, sulphites, and sulphures, 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 however. Once made, it cannot be touched. It cannot be put into a bottle, but must remain in the capsule, 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 eccentricity 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 Abbé 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 ensure 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.
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 on 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.
You promise, in your letter of October the 23d, 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 enquiries 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 accession of your State to the new federal constitution. 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 is 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 crushing 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 meantime, 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.
TO MR. CUTTING
Paris, July 24, 1788.
Dear Sir,—I am indebted to your favor of the 11th instant for many details which I have not received otherwise. Not-withstanding a most extensive and laborious correspondence which I keep up with my friends on the other side the water, my information is slow, precarious and imperfect. The New York papers, which I receive regularly, and one or two correspondents in Congress, are my best sources. As you are desirous of having, before your departure for South Carolina, a sketch of European affairs, as they are seen from this position, I will give you the best I can, taking no notice of the "bruit de Paris," which, like the English newspapers, are but guesses, and made generally by persons who do not give themselves the trouble of trying to guess right. I will confine myself to facts, or well-founded probabilities, and among these must necessarily repeat a great deal of what you know already. Perhaps all may be of that description.
The war undertaken by the Turks, unadvisedly, as was conjectured, has been attended with successes which are now hastening the public opinion to the other extreme; but it should be considered that they have been small successes only, in the partizan way. The probable event of the war can only be calculated after a great general action, because it is in that we shall see whether the European discipline has been overrated, and the want of it in the Turks exaggerated. Russia certainly undertook the war unwillingly, and the Emperor, it is thought, would now be glad to get out of it, but the Turks, who demanded a restitution of the Crimea, before they began the war, are not likely to recede from that demand, after the successes they have obtained, nor can Russia yield to it without some more decisive event than has yet taken place. A small affair on the Black Sea, which is believed, though not on grounds absolutely authentic, is calculated to revive her spirits. Twenty-seven gun boats, Russian, have obliged fifty-seven, commanded by the Captain Pacha himself, to retire after an obstinate action. The Russians were commanded by the Prince of Nassau, with whom our Paul Jones acted as volunteer, and probably directed the whole business. I suppose he must have been just arrived, and that his command has not yet been made up. He is to be rear-admiral, and always to have a separate command. What the English newspapers said of remonstrances against his being received into the service, as far as I can learn from those who would have known it, and would have told it to me, was false, as is everything those papers say, ever did say, and ever will say. The probability, and almost certainty, that Sweden will take a part in the war, adds immensely to the embarrassments of Russia, and will almost certainly prevent her fleet going to the Mediterranean. It is tolerably certain that she has been excited to this by the Court of London, and that she has received, through their negotiations, a large subsidy from the Turks (about three millions of thalers), yet the meeting of the two fleets, and their saluting, instead of fighting each other, induces a suspicion that if he can hinder the Russian expedition by hectoring only, he may not mean to do more. Should this power really engage in the war, and should it at length spread to France and England, I shall view the Swedish separation from France as the event which alone decides that the late subversion of the European system will be ultimately serious to France. This power, with the two empires, and Spain, was more than a match for England, Prussia and Holland by land, and balanced them by sea. For on this element France and Spain are equal to England, and Russia to Holland. Sweden was always supposed on the side of France, and to balance Denmark, on the side of England, by land and sea; but if she goes over decidedly into the English scale, the balance at sea will be destroyed by the amount of the whole force of these two powers, who can equip upwards of sixty sail of the line. There is a report, credited by judicious persons, that the Dutch patriots, before their suppression, foreseeing that event, sent orders to the East Indies to deliver Trincomale to the French, and that it has been done. My opinion is, either that this is not true, or that they will re-deliver it, and disavow their officer who accepted it. If they did not think Holland, and all its possessions, worth a war, they cannot think a single one of those possessions worth it. M. de St. Priest has leave to go to the waters. Probably he will then ask and have leave to come to Paris, and await events. The English papers have said the works of Cherbourg were destroyed irreparably. This is a mathematical demonstration that they are not. The truth is, that the head of one cone has been very much beaten off by the waters. But the happiness of that undertaking is, that all its injuries improve it. What is beaten from the head widens the base, and fixes the cone much more solidly. That work will be steadily pursued, and, in all human probability, be finally successful. They calculate on half a million of livres, say £20,000 sterling, for every cone, and that there will be from seventy to eighty cones. Probably they must make more cones, suppose one hundred, this will be two millions of pounds sterling. Versailles has cost fifty millions of pounds sterling. Ought we to doubt then that they will persevere to the end in a work small and useful, in proportion as the other was great and foolish?
The internal affairs here do not yet clear up. Most of the late innovations have been much for the better. Two only must be fundamentally condemned; the abolishing, in so great a degree, of the parliaments, and the substitution of so ill-composed a body as the cour pleniere. If the King has power to do this, the government of this country is a pure despotism. I think it a pure despotism in theory, but moderated in practice by the respect which the public opinion commands. But the nation repeats, after Montesquieu, that the different bodies of magistracy, of priests and nobles, are barriers between the King and the people. It would be easy to prove that these barriers can only appeal to public opinion, and that neither these bodies, nor the people, can oppose any legal check to the will of the monarch. But they are manifestly advancing fast to a constitution. Great progress is already made. The provincial assemblies, which will be a very perfect representative of the people, will secure them a great deal against the power of the crown. The confession lately made by the government, that it cannot impose a new tax, is a great thing: the convocation of the States General, which cannot be avoided, will produce a national assembly, meeting at certain epochs, possessing at first probably only a negative on the laws, but which will grow into the right of original legislation, and prescribing limits to the expenses of the King. These are improvements which will assuredly take place, and which will give an energy to this country they have never yet had. Much may be hoped from the States General, because the King's dispositions are solidly good; he is capable of great sacrifices; all he wants to induce him to do a thing, is to be assured it will be for the good of the nation. He will probably believe what the States General shall tell him, and will do it. It is supposed they will reduce the parliament to a mere judiciary. I am in hopes all this will be effected without convulsions. The English papers have told the world, with their usual truth, that all here is civil war and confusion. There have been some riots, but as yet not a single life has been lost, according to the best evidence I have been able to collect. One officer was wounded at Grenoble. The arrest of the twelve deputies of Bretagne a fortnight ago, I apprehended would have produced an insurrection; but it seems as if it would not. They have sent eighteen deputies more, who will probably be heard. General Armand was one of the twelve, and is now in the Bastille. The Marquis de La Fayette, for signing the prayer which these deputies were to present, and which was signed by all the other nobles of Bretagne resident in Paris (about sixty in number), has been disgraced, in the old-fashioned language of the country; that is to say, the command in the south of France this summer, which they had given him, is taken away. They took all they could from such others of the subscribers as held anything from the Court. This dishonors them at Court, and in the eyes and conversation of their competitors for preferment. But it will probably honor them in the eyes of the nation. This is as full a detail as I am able to give you of the affairs of Europe. I have nothing to add to them but my wishes for your health and happiness, and assurances of the esteem with which I have the honor to be, dear Sir, your most obedient, and most humble servant.
