LAFAYETTE,
MARQUIS DE
The Marquis de La Fayette is a most valuable
auxiliary to me. His zeal is unbounded, and his weight with those in
power, great. His education having been merely military, commerce
was an unknown field to him. But his good sense enabling him to
comprehend perfectly whatever is explained to him, his agency has
been very efficacious. He has a great deal of sound genius, is well
remarked by the King, and rising in popularity. He has nothing
against him, but the suspicion of republican principles. |
James
Madison
30 Jan 1787 |
LAFAYETTE,
MARQUIS DE
I was pleased to see the vote of Congress, of
September the i6th, on the subject of the Mississippi, as I had
before seen, with great uneasiness, the pursuits of other
principles, which I could never reconcile to my own ideas of probity
or wisdom, and from which, and my knowledge of the character of our
western settlers, I saw that the loss of that country was a
necessary consequence. I wish this return to true policy, may be in
time to prevent evil. There has been a little foundation for the
reports and fears relative to the Marquis de La Fayette. He has,
from the beginning, taken openly part with those who demand a
constitution; and there was a moment that we apprehended the
Bastile; but they ventured on nothing more, than to take from him a
temporary service, on which he had been ordered; and this, more to
save appearances for their own authority, than anything else; for at
the very time they pretended that they had put him into disgrace,
they were constantly conferring and communicating with him. Since
this, he has stood on safe ground, and is viewed as among the
foremost of the patriots. Everybody here is trying their hand at
forming declarations of rights. As something of that kind is going
on with you also, I send you two specimens from hence. The one is by
our friend of whom I have just spoken. You will see that it contains
the essential principles of ours, accommodated as much as could be,
to the actual state of things here. The other is from a very
sensible man,. a pure theorist, of the sect called the economists,
of which Turgot was considered as the head. The former is adapted to
the existing abuses, the latter goes to those possible, as well as
to those existing. |
James
Madison
12 Jan 1789 |
LAFAYETTE,
MARQUIS DE / DANGER TO
As it becomes more and more possible that the
Noblesse will go wrong, I become uneasy for you. Your principles are
decidedly with the Tiers Etat, and your instructions against them. A
complaisance to the latter on some occasions, and an adherence to
the former on others, may give an appearance of trimming between the
two parties, which may lose you both. You will, in the end, go over
wholly to the Tiers Etat, because it will be impossible for you to
live in a constant sacrifice of your own sentiments to the
prejudices of the Noblesse. But you would be received by the Tiers
Etat at any future day, coldly, and without confidence. This appears
to me the moment to take at once that honest and manly stand with
them which your own principles dictate. This will win their hearts
forever, be approved by the world, which marks and honors you as the
man of the people, and will be an eternal consolation to yourself.
The Noblesse, and especially the Noblesse of Auvergne, will always
prefer men who will do their dirty work for them. You are not made
for that. They will, therefore, soon drop you, and the people, in
that case, will perhaps not take you up. Suppose a scission should
take place. The Priests and Nobles will secede, the nation will
remain in place, and, with the King, will do its own business. If
violence should be attempted, where will you be? You cannot then
take side with the people in opposition to your own vote, that very
vote which will have helped to produce the scission. Still less can
you array yourself against the people. That is impossible. Your
instructions are, indeed, a difficulty. But to state this at its
worst it is only a single difficulty, which a single effort
surmounts. Your instructions can never embarrass you a second time,
whereas an acquiescence under them will reproduce greater
difficulties every day, and without end. Besides, a thousand
circumstances offer as many justifications of your departure from
Your instructions. Will it be impossible to persuade all parties
that (as for good legislation two Houses are necessary) the placing
the privileged classes together in one House, and the unprivileged
in another, would be better for both than a scission? I own, I think
it would. People can never agree without some sacrifices; and it
appears but a moderate sacrifice in each party, to meet on this
middle ground. The attempt to bring this about might satisfy your
instructions, and a failure in it would justify your siding with the
people, even to those who think instructions are laws of conduct.
Forgive me, my dear friend, if my anxiety for you makes me talk of
things I know nothing about. You must not consider this as advice. I
know you and myself too well to presume to offer advice. Receive it
merely as the expression of my uneasiness, and the effusion of that
sincere friendship with which I am, my dear Sir, yours
affectionately. |
Marquis
de Lafayette
6 May 1789 |
LAFAYETTE,
MARQUIS DE / CONCERN FOR
I am in great pain for the Marquis de La
Fayette. His principles, you know, are clearly with the people; but
having been elected for the Noblesse of Auvergne, they have laid him
under express instructions, to vote for the decision by orders and
not persons. This would ruin him with the Tiers Etat, and it is not
possible he could continue long to give satisfaction to the
Noblesse. I have not hesitated to press on him to burn his
instructions, and follow his conscience as the only sure clue, which
will eternally guide a man clear of all doubts and inconsistencies.
If he cannot effect a conciliatory plan, he will surely take his
stand manfully at once, with the Tiers Etat. He will in that case be
who he pleases with them, and I am in hopes that base is now too
solid to render it dangerous to be mounted on it. |
George
Washington
10 May 1789 |
LAND
/ AGRICULTURAL SCIENCE
I have long owed you a letter, for which my
conscience would not have let me rest in quiet but on the
consideration that the payment would not be worth your acceptance.
The debt is not merely for a letter the common traffic of every day,
but for valuable ideas, which instructed me, which I have adopted,
and am acting on them. I am sensible of the truth of your
observations that the atmosphere is the great storehouse of matter
for recruiting our lands, that though efficacious, it is slow in its
operation, and we must therefore give them time instead of the loads
of quicker manure given in other countries, that for this purpose we
must avail ourselves of the great quantities of land we possess in
proportion to our labor, and that while putting them to nurse with
the atmosphere, we must protect them from the bite and tread of
animals, which are nearly a counter-poise for the benefits of the
atmosphere. As good things, as well as evil, go in a train, this
relieves us from the labor and expense of cross fences, now very
sensibly felt on account of the scarcity and distance of timber. I
am accordingly now engaged in applying my cross fences to the repair
of the outer ones and substituting rows of peach trees to preserve
the boundaries of the fields, And though I observe your strictures
on rotations of crop~, yet it appears that in this I differ from you
only in words. You keep half your lands in culture, the other half
at nurse; so I propose to do. Your scheme indeed requires only four
years and mine six; but the proportion C f labor and rest is the
same. My years of rest, however, are employed, two e f them in
producing clover, yours in volunteer herbage, But I still understand
it to be your opinion that clover is best where lands will produce
them. In deed I think that the important improvement for which the
world is indebted to. Young is the substitution of clover crops
instead of unproductive fallows; and the demonstration that lands
are more enriched by clover than by volunteer herbage or fallows;
and the clover crops are highly valuable. That our red lands which
are still in tolerable heart will produce fine clover I know from
the experience of the last year; and indeed that of my neighbors had
established the fact. And from observations on accidental plants in
the fields which have been considerably harassed with corn, I
believe that even these will produce clover fit for soiling of
animals green. I think, therefore, I can count on the success of
that improver. My third year of rest will be devoted to cowpenning,
and to a trial of the buckwheat dressing. A further progress m
surveying my open arable lands has shewn me that I can have seven
fields in each of my farms where I expected only six; consequently
that I can add more to the portion of rest and ameliorating crops. I
have doubted on a question on which I am sure you can advise me
well, whether I had better give this newly acquired year as an
addition to the continuance of my clover, or throw it with some
improving crop between tw6 of my crops of grain, as for instance
between my corn and rye. I strongly incline to the latter, because I
am not satisfied that one cleansing crop in seven years will be
sufficient; and indeed I think it important to separate my
exhausting crops by alternations of amelioraters. With this view I
think to try an experiment of what Judge Parker informs me he
practises. That is, to turn in my wheat stubble the instant the
grain is off, and sow turnips to be fed out by the sheep. But
whether this will answer in our fields which are harassed, I do not
know. We have been in the habit of sowing only our freshest lands in
turnips, hence a presumption that wearied lands will not bring them.
But Young's making turnips to be fed on by sheep the basis of his
improvement of poor lands, affords evidence that though they may not
bring great crops, they will bring them in a sufficient degree to
improve the lands. I will try that experiment, however, this year,
as well as the one of buckwheat. I have also attended to another
improver mentioned by you, the winter vetch, and have taken measures
to get the seed of it from England, as also of the Siberian vetch
which Millar greatly commends, and being a biennial might perhaps
take the place of clover in lands which do not suit that. The winter
vetch I suspect may be advantageously thrown in between crops, as it
gives a choice to use it as green feed in the spring if fodder be
run short, or to turn it in as a green-dressing. My rotation, with
these amendments, is as follows: --
1. Wheat, followed the same year by turnips, to be fed on by the
sheep.
2. Corn and potatoes mixed, and in autumn the vetch to be used as
fodder in the spring if wanted, or to be turned in as a dressing.
3. Peas or potatoes, or both according to the quality of the field.
4. Rye and clover sown on it in the spring. Wheat may be
substituted here for rye, when it shall be found that the second,
third, fifth, and sixth fields will subsist the farm.
5. Clover.
6. Clover, and in autumn turn it in and sow the vetch.
7. Turn in the vetch in the spring, then sow buckwheat and turn
that in, having hurdled off the poorest spots for cowpenning. In
autumn sow wheat to begin the circle again.
I am for throwing the whole force of my husbandry on the
wheat-field, because it is the only one which is to go to market to
produce money. Perhaps the clover may bring in something in the form
of stock. The other fields are merely for the consumption of the
farm. Melilot, mentioned by you, I never heard of. The horse bean I
tried this last year. It turned out nothing. The President has tried
it without success. An old English farmer of the name of Spuryear,
settled in Delaware, has tried it there with good success; but he
told me it would not do without being well shaded, and I think he
planted it among his corn for that reason. But he acknowledged our
pea was as good an ameliorater and a more valuable pulse, as being
food for man as well as horse. The succory is what Young calls
Chicoria Intudbus. He sent some seed to the President, who gave me
some, and I gave it to my neighbors to keep up till I should come
home. One of them has cultivated it with great success, is very fond
of it, and gave tu& some seed which I sowed last spring. Though
the summer was favorable it came on slowly at first, but by autumn
became large and strong. It did not seed that year, but will the
next, and you shall be furnished with seed. I suspect it requires
rich ground, and then produces a heavy crop for green feed for
horses and cattle. I had poor success with my potatoes last year,
not having made more than 6o or 70 bushels to the acre. But my
neighbors having made good crops, I am not disheartened. The first
step towards the recovery of our lands is to find substitutes for
corn and bacon. I count on potatoes, clover, and sheep. The two
former to feed every animal on the farm except my negroes, and the
latter to feed them, diversified with rations of salted fish and
molasses, both of them wholesome, agreeable, and cheap articles of
food.
For pasture I rely on the forests by day, and soiling the evening.
Why could we not have a moveable airy cow house, to be set up in the
middle of the field which is to be dunged, and soil our cattle in
that through the summer as well as winter, keeping them constantly
up and well littered? This with me, would be in the clover field of
the first year, because during the second year it would be rotting,
and would be spread on it in fallow the beginning of the third, but
such an effort would be far above the present tyro state of my
farming. The grosser barbarisms in culture which I haye to encounter
are more than enough for all my attentions at present. The dung-yard
must be my last effort but one. The last would be irrigation. It
might be thought at first view, that the interposition of these
ameliorations or dressings between my crops will be too laborious,
but observe that the turnips and two dressings of vetch do not cost
a single ploughing. The turning the wheat-stubble for the turnips is
the fallow for the corn of the succeeding year. The first sowing of
vetches is on the corn (as is now practised for wheat), and the
turning it in is the flush-ploughing for the crop of potatoes and
peas. The second sowing of the vetch is on the wheat fallow, and the
turning it in is the ploughing necessary for sowing the buckwheat.
These three ameliorations, then, will cost but a harrowing each. On
the subject of the drilled husbandry, I think experience has
established its preference for some plants, as the turnip, pea,
bean, cabbage, corn, etc., and that of the broadcast for other
plants as all the bread grains and grasses, except perhaps lucerne
and Saint foin in soils and climates very productive of weeds. In
dry soils and climates the broadcast is better for lucerne and Saint
foin, as all the south of France can testify.
I have imagined and executed a mould-board which may be
mathematically demonstrated to be perfect, as far as perfection
depends on mathematical principles, and one great circumstance in
its favor is that it may be made by the most bungling carpenter, and
cannot possibly vary a hair's breadth in its form, by but gross
negligence. You have seen the musical instrument called a sticcado.
Suppose all its sticks of equal length, hold the fore-end
horizontally on the floor to receive the turf which presents itself
horizontally, and with the right hand twist the hind-end to the
perpendicular, or rather as much beyond the perpendicular as will be
necessary to cast over the turf completely. This gives an idea
(though not absolutely exact) of my mould-board. It is on the
principle of two wedges combined at right angles, the first in the
direct line of the furrow to raise the turf gradually, the other
across the furrow to turn it over gradually. For both these purposes
the wedge is the instrument of the least resistance. I will make a
model of the mould-board and lodge it with Colonel Harvie in
Richmond for you. This brings me to my thanks for the drill plough
lodged with him for me, which I now expect every hour to receive,
and the price of which I have deposited in his hands to be called
for when you please. A good instrument of this kind is almost the
greatest desideratum in husbandry. I am anxious to conjecture
beforehand what may be expected from the sowing turnips in jaded
ground, how much from the acre, and how large they will be? Will
your experience enable you to give me a probable conjecture? Also
what is the produce of potatoes and what of peas in the same kind of
ground? |
John
Taylor
29 Dec 1794 |
LAND
/ LAND ORDINANCE OF 1785
We have now lands enough to employ an infinite
number of people in their cultivation. Cultivators of the earth are
the most valuable citizens. They are the most vigorous, the most
independent, the most virtuous, and they are tied to their country,
and wedded to its liberty and interests, by the most lasting bonds.
As long, therefore, as they can find employment m this line, I would
not convert them into mariners, artisans, or anything else. But our
citizens will find employment in this line, till their numbers, and
of course their productions, become too great for the demand, both
internal and foreign. This is not the case as yet, and probably will
not be for a considerable time. As soon as it is, the surplus of
hands must be turned to something else. I should then, perhaps, wish
to turn them to the sea in preference to manufactures; because,
comparing the characters of the two classes, I find the former the
most valuable citizens. I consider the class of artificers as the
panders of vice, and the instruments by which the liberties of a
country are generally overturned. However, we are not free to decide
this question on principles of theory only. Our people are decided
in the opinion, that it is necessary for us to take a share in the
occupation of the ocean, and their established habits induce them to
require that the sea be kept open to them, and that that line of
policy be pursued, which will render the use of that element to them
as great as possible. I think it a duty in those entrusted with the
administration of their affairs, to conform themselves to the
decided choice of their constituents; and that therefore, we should,
in every instance, preserve an equality of right to them in the
transportation of commodities, in the right of fishing, and in the
other uses of the sea.
But what will be the consequence? Frequent wars without a doubt
Their property will be violated on the sea, and in foreign ports,
their persons will be insulted, imprisoned, &c., for pretended
debts, contracts, crimes, contra-band, &c., &C These insults
must be resented, even if we had no feelings, yet to prevent their
eternal repetition; or, in other words, our commerce on the ocean
and in other countries, must be paid for by frequent war. The
justest dispositions possible in ourselves, will not secure us
against it. It would be necessary that all other nations were just
also. Justice indeed, on our part, will save us from those wars
which would have been produced by a contrary disposition. But how
can we preyent those produced by the wrongs of other nati6ns? By
putting ourselves in a condition to punish them. W~akness provokes
insult and injury, while a condition to punish, often prevents them.
This reasoning leads to the necessity of some naval force; that
being the ouly weapon by which we can reach an enemy. I think it to
our interest to punish the first insult; because an insult
unpunished is the parent of many others. We are not, at this moment,
in a condition to do it, but we should put ourselves into it, as
soon as possible. If a war with England should take place, it seems
to me that the first thing necessary would be a resolution to
abandon the carrying trade, because we cannot protect it. Foreign
nations must, in that case, be invited to bring us what we want, and
to take our productions in their own bottoms. |
John
Jay
23 Aug 1785 |
LAND
/ LAND OWNERSHIP AND NATURAL RIGHTS
The question, whether one generation of men has a right to bind
another, seems never to have been started either on this or our side
of the water. Yet it is a question of such consequences as not only
to merit decision, but place also among the fundamental principles
of every government The course of reflection in which we are
immersed here, on the elementary principles of society, has
presented this question to my mind; and that no such obligation can
be transmitted, I think very capable of proof. I set out on this
ground, which I suppose to be self-evident, that the earth belongs
in usufruct to the living; that the dead have neither powers nor
rights over it. The portion occupied by any individual ceases to be
his when himself ceases to be, and reverts to the society. If the
society has formed no rules for the appropriation of its lands in
severality, it will be taken by the first occupants, and these will
generally be the wife and children of the decedent. If they have
formed rules of appropriation, those rules may give it to the wife
and children, or to some one of them, or to the ]egatee of the
deceased. So they may give it to its creditor. But the child, the
legatee or creditor, takes it, not by natural right, but by a law of
the society of which he is a member, and to which he is subject
Then, no man can, by natural right, oblige the lands he
occupied, or the persons who succeed him in that occupation, to the
payment of debts contracted by him. For if he could, he might during
his own life, eat up, the usufruct of the lands for several
generations to come; and then the lands would belong to the dead,
and not to the living, which is the reverse of our principle.
What is true of every member of the society, individually, is true
of them all collectively; since the rights of the whole can be no
more than the sum of the rights of the individuals. To keep our
ideas clear when applying them to a multitude, let us suppose a
whole generation of men to be born on the same day, to attain mature
age on the same day, and to die on the same day, leaving a
succeeding generation in the moment of attaining their mature age,
all together. Let the ripe age be supposed of twenty-one years, and
their period of life thirty-four years more, that being the average.
term given by the bills of mortality to persons of twenty-one years
of age. Each successive generation would, in this way, come and go
off the stage at a fixed moment, as individuals do now. Then I say,
the earth belongs to each of these generations during its course,
fully and in its own right. The second generation receives it clear
of the debts and incumbrances of the first, the third of the second,
and so on. For if the first could charge it with a debt, then the
earth would belong to the dead and not to the living.
To render this conclusion palpable, suppose that Louis the XIV and
XV had contracted debts in the name of the French nation, to the
amount of ten thousand milliards, and that the whole had been
contracted in Holland. The interest of this. sum would be five
hundred milliards, which is the whole rent-roll or net proceeds of
the territory of France. Must the present generation of men have
retired from the territory in which nature produces them, and. ceded
it to the Dutch creditors? No; they have the same rights over the
soil on which they were produced, as the preceding generations had.
They derive these rights not from them, but from nature. They, then,
and their soil are, by nature, clear of the debts of their
predecessors. To present this in another point of view, suppose
Louis XV. and his contemporary generation, had said to the money
lenders of Holland, give us money, that we may eat, drink, and be
merry in our day; and on condition you will demand no interest till
the end of thirty-four years, you shall then, forever after, receive
an annual interest of fifteen per cent. The money is lent on these
conditions, is divided among the people, eaten, drunk, and
squandered. Would the present generation be obliged to apply the
produce of the earth and of their labor, to replace their
dissipations? Not at all.
I suppose that the received opinion, that the public debts of one
generation devolve on the next, has been suggested by our seeing,
habitually, in private life, that he who succeeds to lands is
required to pay the debts of his predecessor; without considering
that this requisition is municipal only, not moral, flowing from the
will of the society, which has found it convenient to appropriate
the lands of a decedent on the condition of a payment of his debts;
but that between society and society, or generation and generation,
there is no municipal obligation, no umpire but the law of nature.
On similar ground it may be proved, that no society can make a
perpetual constitution, or even a perpetual law. The earth belongs
always to the living generation.. they may manage it, then, and what
proceeds from it, as they please, during their usufruct. They are
masters, too, of their own persons, and consequently may govern them
as they please. But persons and property make the sum of the objects
of government. The constitution and the laws of their predecessors
are extinguished then, in their natural course, with those whose
will gave them being. This could preserve that being, till it ceased
to be itself, and no longer. Every constitution, then, and every
law, naturally expires at the end of thirty-four years. If it be
enforced longer, it is an act of force, and not of right. It may be
said, that the succeeding generation exercising, in fact, the power
of repeal, this leaves them as free as if the constitution or law
had been expressly limited to thirty-four years only. In the first
place, this objection admits the right, in proposing an equivalent.
But the power of repeal is not an equivalent. It might be, indeed,
if every form of government were so perfectly contrived, that the
will of the majority could always be obtained, fairly and without
impediment But~ this is true of no form. The people cannot assemble
themselves; their representation is unequal and vicious. Various
checks are opposed to every legislative proposition. Factions get
possession of the public councils, bribery corrupts them, personal
interests lead them astray from- the general interests of their
constituents; and other impediments arise, so as to prove to every
practical man, that a law of limited duration is much more
manageable than one which needs a repeal.
This principle, that the earth belongs to the living and not to the
dead, is- of very extensive application and consequences in every
country, and most especially in France. It enters into the
resolution of the questions, whether the nation may change the
descent of lands holden in tail; whether they may change the
appropriation of lands given anciently to the church, to hospitals,
colleges, orders of chivalry, and otherwise in - perpetuity; whether
they may abolish the charges and privileges attached on lands,
including the whole catalogue, ecclesiastical and feudal; it goes to
hereditary offices, authorities and jurisdictions, to hereditary
orders, distinctions and appellations, to perpetual monopolies in
commerce, the arts or sciences, with a long train of et ceteras.
… |
James
Madison
6 Sep 1789 |
LAND
/ LAND SALES TO RETIRE GOVERNMENT DEBT
I am much pleased with your land ordinance, and
think it improved from the first, in the most material
circumstances. I had mistaken the object of the division of the
lands among the States. I am sanguine in my expectations of
lessening our debts by this fund, and have expressed my expectations
to the minister and others here. I see by the public papers, you
have adopted the dollar as your money unit. In the arrangement of
coins I proposed, I ought to have inserted a gold coin of five
dollars, which, being within two shillings of the value of a guinea,
would be very convenient. |
James
Monroe
28 Aug 1785 |
LAND
/ PRODUCTIVE USE OF
Your position that a small farm well worked and
well manned will produce more than a larger one ill-tended, is
undoubtedly true in a certain degree. There are extremes in this as
in all other cases. The true medium may really be considered and
stated as a mathematical problem: "Given the quantum of labor
within our command, and land ad libitum offering its spontaneous
contributions: required the proportion in which these two elements
should be employed to produce a maximum." It is a difficult
problem, varying probably in every country according to the relative
value of land and labor. The spontaneous energies of the earth are a
gift of nature, but they require the labor of man to direct their
operation. And the question is so to husband his labor. as to turn
the greatest quantity of this useful action of the earth to his
benefit. |
Charles
W. Peale
17 Apr 1813 |
LAND
/ SETTLEMENT
The time, too, is the present, before the
admission of the western States. I am very differently affected
towards the new plan of opening our land office, by dividing the
lands among the States, and selling them at vendue. It separates
still more the interests of the States, which ought to be made joint
in every possible instance, in order to cultivate the idea of our
being one nation, and to multiply the instances in which the people
shall look up to Congress as their head. And when the States get
their portions, they will either fool them away, or make a job of it
to serve individuals. Proofs of both these practices have been
furnished, and by either of them that invaluable fund is lost, which
ought to pay our public debt. To sell them at vendue, is to give
them to the bidders of the day, be they many or few. It is ripping
up the hen which lays golden eggs. If sold in lots at a fixed price,
as first proposed, the best lots will be sold first; as these become
occupied, it gives a value to the interjacent ones, and raises them,
though of inferior quality, to the price of the first. …
|
James
Monroe
17 Jun 1785 |
LAND
/ SETTLEMENT / PROCESS
I am glad to find we have 4,000,000 acres west
of Chafalaya. How much better to have every i6o acres settled by an
able-bodied militia man, than by purchasers with their hordes of
negroes, to add weakness instead of strength. |
Albert
Gallatin
24 Dec 1807 |
LAND
VALUES / AGRICULTURAL
I send you a small one in return, the work of a
very unlettered farmer, yet valuable, as it relates plain facts of
importance to farmers. You will discover that Mr. Binns is an
enthusiast for the use of gypsum. But there are two facts which
prove he has a right to be so: 1. He began poor, and has made
himself tolerably rich by his farming alone. 2. The county of
Loudon, in which he lives, had been so exhausted and wasted by bad
husbandry, that it began to depopulate, the inhabitants going
southwardly in quest of better lands. Binns' success has stopped
that emigration. It is now becoming one of the most productive
counties of the State of Virginia, and the price given for the lands
is multiplied manifold. |
John
Sinclair
30 Jun 1803 |
LANGUAGE
/ CHINESE
…It must take a life to learn the
characters only and then their expression of ideas must be very
imperfect. I imagine that some fortuitous circumstances will some
day call their attention to the simple alphabets of Europe, which
with proper improvements may be made to express the sounds of their
language as well as of others, and that then they may enter on the
field of science. I think missionaries to instruct them in our
alphabets would be more likely to take good effect and lead them to
the object of our religious missionaries than an abrupt introduction
of new doctrines for which their minds are in no wise prepared.
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Charles
Jared Ingersoll
20 Jul 1818 |
LANGUAGE
/ ENGLISH
I have been pleased to see that in all cases
you appeal to usage, as the arbiter of language; and justly consider
that as giving law to grammar, and not grammar to usage. I concur
entirely with you in opposition to Purists, who would destroy all
strength and beauty of style, by subjecting it to a rigorous
compliance with their rules.
I have been not a little disappointed, and made suspicious of my
own judgment, on seeing the Edinburgh Reviewers, the ablest critics
of the age, set their faces against the introduction of new words
into the English language; they are particularly apprehensive that
the writers of the United States will adulterate it. Certainly so
great growing a population, spread over such an extent of country,
with such a variety of climates, of productions, of arts, must
enlarge their language, to make it answer its purpose of expressing
all ideas, the new as well as the old. The new circumstances under
which we are placed, call for new words, new phrases, and for the
transfer of old words to new objects. An American dialect will
therefore be formed; so will a West-Indian and Asiatic as a Scotch
and an Irish are already formed. But whether will these adulterate,
or enrich the English language? Has the beautiful poetry of Burns,
or his Scottish dialect, disfigured it? Did the Athenians consider
the Doric, the Iionian, the Aeolic, and other dialects, as
is-figuring or as beautifying their language? Did they fastidiously
disavow Herodotus, Pindar, Theocritus, Sappho, Alcaeus, or Grecian
writers? On the contrary, they were sensible that the variety of
dialects, still infinitely varied by poetical license, constituted
the riches of their language, and made the Grecian Homer the first
of poets. |
John
Waldo
16 Aug 1813 |
LEWIS
AND CLARK EXPEDITION
In the journey which you are about to
undertake, for the discovery of the course and source of the
Missouri, and of the most convenient water communication from thence
to the Pacific Ocean, your party being small, it is to be expected
that you will encounter considerable dangers from the Indian
inhabitants. Should you escape those dangers, and reach the Pacific
Ocean, you may find it imprudent to hazard a return the same way,
and be forced to seek a passage round by sea, in such vessels as you
may find on the Western coast; but you will be without money,
without clothes, and other necessaries, as a sufficient supply
cannot be carried from hence. Your resource, in that case, can only
be in the credit of the United States; for which purpose I hereby
authorize you to draw on the Secretaries of State, of the Treasury,
of War, and of the Navy of the United States, according as you may
find your draughts will be most negotiable, for the purpose of
obtaining money or necessaries for yourself and men; and I solemnly
pledge the faith of the United States, that these draughts shall be
paid punctually at the date at which they are made payable. I also
ask of the consuls, agents, merchants, and citizens of any nation
with which we have intercourse or amity, to furnish you with those
supplies which your necessities may call for, assuring them of
honorable and prompt retribution; and our own consuls in foreign
parts, where you may happen to be, are hereby instructed and
required to be aiding and assisting to you in whatsoever may be
necessary for procuring your return back to the United States. And
to give more entire satisfaction and confidence to those who may be
disposed to aid you, I, Thomas Jefferson, President of the United
States of America, have written this letter of general credit for
you with my own hand, and signed it with my name. |
Meriwether
Lewis
4 Jul 1803 |
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