MALTHUS
/ ON POLITICAL ECONOMY
I have to acknowledge the receipt of your
obliging letter, and with it, of two very interesting volumes on
Political Economy. These found me engaged in giving the leisure
moments I rarely find, to the perusal of Malthus' work on
population, a work of sound logic, in which some of the opinions of
Adam Smith, as well as of the economists, are ably examined. …
The differences of circumstance between this and the old countries
of. Europe, furnish differences of fact whereon to reason, in
questions of political economy, and will consequently produce
sometimes a difference of result. There, for instance, the quantity
of food is fixed, or increasing in a slow and only arithmetical
ratio, and the proportion is limited by the same ratio.
Supernumerary births consequently add only to your mortality. Here
the immense extent of uncultivated and fertile lands enables every
one who will labor, to marry young, and to raise a family of any
size. Our food, then, may increase geometrically with our laborers,
and our births, however multiplied, become effective. Again, there
the best distribution of labor is supposed to be that which places
the manufacturing hands alongside the agricultural; so that the one
part shall feed both, and the other part furnish, both with clothes
and other comforts. Would that be best here? Egoism and first
appearances say yes. Or would it be better that all our laborers
should be employed in agriculture? In this case a double or treble
portion of fertile lands would be brought into culture; a double or
treble creation of food be produced, and its surplus go to nourish
the now perishing births of Europe, who in return would manufacture
and send us in exchange our clothes and other comforts. Morality
listens to this, and so invariably do the laws of nature create our
duties and interests, that when they seem to be at variance, we
ought to suspect some fallacy in our reasonings. In solving this
question, too, we should allow its just weight to the moral and
physical preference of the agricultural, over the manufacturing,
man. My occupations permit me only to ask questions. They deny me
the time, if I had the information, to answer them. Perhaps, as
worthy the attention of the author of the Traite' d'Economie
Politique, I shall find them answered in that work. If they are
not, the reason will have been that you wrote for Europe; while I
shall have asked them because I think for America. |
Jean
Baptiste Say
1 Feb 1804 |
MALTHUS
/ ON POPULATION
Have you seen the new work of Malthus on
population? It is one of the ablest I have ever seen. Although his
main object is to delineate the effects of redundancy of population,
and to test the poor laws of England, and other palliations for that
evil, several important questions in political economy, allied to
his subject incidentally, are treated with a masterly hand. It is a
single octavo volume, and I have been only able to read a borrowed
copy, the only one I have yet heard of. Probably our friends in
England will think of you, and give you an opportunity of reading
it. |
Joseph
Priestley
29 Jan 1804 |
MARRIAGE
TO MARTHA SKELTON
On the 1st of January, 1772, I was married to
Martha Skelton, widow of Bathurst Skelton, and daughter of John
Wayles, then twenty-three years old. Mr. Wayles was a lawyer of much
practice, to which he was introduced more by his great industry,
punctuality, and practical readiness, than by eminence in the
science of his profession. He was a most agreeable companion, full
of pleasantry and good humor, and welcomed in every society. He
acquired a handsome fortune, and died in May, .1773, leaving three
daughters: the portion which came on that event to Mrs. Jefferson,
after the debts should be paid, which were very considerable, was
about equal to my own patrimony, and consequently doubled the ease
of our circumstances. |
Notes
for an Autobiography
6 Jan 1821 |
MASS
PRODUCTION
An improvement is made here in the construction of muskets,
which it may be interesting to Congress to know, should they at any
time propose to procure any. It consists in the making every part of
them so exactly alike, that what belongs to any one, may be used for
every other musket in the magazine. The government here has examined
and approved the method, and is establishing a large manufactory for
the purpose of putting it into execution. As yet, the inventor has
only completed the lock of the musket, on this plan. He will proceed
immediately to have the barrel, stock, and other parts, executed in
the same way. Supposing it might be useful in the United States, I
went to the workman. He presented me the parts of fifty locks taken
to pieces, and arranged in compartments. I put several together
myself, taking pieces at hazard as they came to hand, and they
fitted in the most perfect manner. The advantages of this, when arms
need repair, are evident. He effects it by tools of his own
contrivance, which, at the same time, abridge the work, so that he
thinks he shall be able to furnish the musket two livres cheaper
than the common price. But it will be two or three years before he
will be able to furnish any quantity. |
John
Jay
30 Aug 1785 |
MEDICAL
SCIENCE / CRIMINAL PRACTICES
A riot has taken place in New York, which I
will state to you from an eye witness. It has long been a practice
with the surgeons of that city, to steal from the grave bodies
recently buried. A citizen had lost his wife: he went the first or
second evening after her burial, to pay a visit to her grave. He
found that it had been disturbed, and suspected from what quarter.
He found means to be admitted to the anatomical lecture of that day,
and on his entering the room, saw the body of his wife, naked and
under dissection. He raised the people immediately. The body, in the
meantime, was secreted. They entered into, and searched the houses
of the physicians whom they most suspected, but found nothing. One
of them, however, more guilty or more timid than the rest, took
asylum in the prison. The mob considered this an acknowledgment of
guilt. They attacked the prison. The Governor ordered militia to
protect the culprit, and suppress the mob. The militia, thinking the
mob had just provocation, refused to turn out. Hereupon the people
of more reflection, thinking it more dangerous that even a guilty
person should be punished without the forms of law, than that he
should escape, armed themselves, and went to protect the physician.
They were received by the mob with a volley of stones, which wounded
several of them. They hereupon fired on the mob, and killed four. By
this time, they received a reinforcement of other citizens of the
militia horse, the appearance of which, in the critical moment,
dispersed the mob. So ended this chapter of history, which I have
detailed to you, because it may be represented as a political riot,
when politics had nothing to do with it. |
William
Carmichael
27 May 1788 |
MEXICO
/ CONDITIONS AND PROSPECTS
Mexico, where we learn from you that men of
science are not wanting, may revolutionize itself under better
auspices than the Southern provinces. These last, I fear, must end
in military despotisms. The different castes of their inhabitants,
their mutual hatreds and jealousies, their profound ignorance and
bigotry, will be played off by cunning leaders, and each be made the
instrument of enslaving the others. But of all this you can best
judge, for in truth we have little knowledge of them to be depended
on, but through you. But in whatever governments they end they will
be America~ governments, no longer to be involved in the
never-ceasing broils of Europe. The European nations constitute a
separate division of the globe; their localities make them part of a
distinct system; they have a set of interests of their own in which
it is our business never to engage ourselves. America has a
hemisphere to itself. It must have its separate system of interests,
which must not be subordinated to those of Europe. The insulated
state in which nature has placed the American continent, should so
far avail it that no spark of war kindled in the other quarters of
the globe should be wafted across the wide oceans which separate us
from them. |
Alexander
von Humboldt
6 Dec 1813 |
MISSISSIPPI
RIVER / CONTROL OF
… I feel very differently at another piece
of intelligence, to wit, the possibility that the navigation of the
Mississippi may be abandoned to Spain. I never had any interest
westward of the Alleghany; and I never will have any. But I have had
great opportunities of knowing the character of the people who
inhabit that country; and I will venture to say, that the act which
abandons the navigation of the Mississippi is an act of separation
between the eastern and western country. It is a relinquishment of
five parts out of eight, of the territory of the United States; an
abandonment of the fairest subject for the payment of our public
debts. |
James
Madison
30 Jan 1787 |
MONARCHY
I am sensible that there are defects in our
federal government, yet they are so much lighter than those of
monarchies, that I view them with much indulgence. I rely, too, on
the good sense of the people for remedy, whereas the evils of
monarchical government are beyond remedy. |
David
Ramsay
4 Aug 1787 |
MONEY
/ MINTING OF COINAGE
I should approve of your employing the Mint on
small silver coins, rather than on dollars and gold coins, as far as
the consent of those who employ it can be-obtained. It would be much
more valuable to the public to be supplied with abundance of dimes
and half dimes, which would stay among us, than with dollars and
eagles which leave us immediately. |
Robert
Patterson
29 Mar 1807 |
MONTICELLO
/ AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTION
I have been long endeavoring to procure the
Cork tree from Europe, but without success. A plant which I brought
with me from Paris died after languishing some time, and of several
parcels of acorns received from a correspondent at Marseilles, not
one has ever vegetated. I shall continue my endeavors, although
disheartened by the nonchalance of our Southern fellow citizens,
with whom alone they can thrive. It is now twenty-five years since I
sent them two shipments (about 500 plants) of the Olive tree of Aix,
the finest Olives in the world. If any of them still exist, it is
merely as a curiosity in their gardens; not a single orchard of them
has been planted. I sent them also the celebrated species of
Sainfoin [Sulia], from Malta, which yields good crops without a drop
of rain through the season. It was lost. The upland rice which I
procured fresh from Africa and sent them, has been preserved and
spread in the upper parts of Georgia, and I believe in Kentucky. But
we must acknowledge their services in furnishing us an abundance of
cotton, a substitute for silk, flax and hemp. The ease with which it
is spun will occasion it to supplant the two last, and its
cleanliness the first. Household manufacture is taking deep root
with us. I have a carding machine, two spinning machines, and looms
with the flying shuttle in full operation for clothing my own
family; and I verily believe that by the next winter this State will
not need a yard of imported coarse or middling clothing. I think we
have already a sheep for every inhabitant, which will suffice for
clothing, and one-third more, which a single year will add, will
furnish blanketing. |
James
Ronaldson
12 Jan 1813 |
MONTICELLO
/ AGRICULTURAL TECHNIQUE
We have had the most devastating rain which has
ever fallen within my knowledge. Three inches of water fell in the
space of about an hour. Every hollow of every hill presented a
torrent which swept everything before it. I have never seen the
fields so much injured. Mr. Randolph's farm is the only one which
has not suffered; his horizontal furrows arrested the water at every
step till it was absorbed, or at least had deposited the soil it had
taken up. Everybody in this neighborhood is adopting his method of
ploughing, except tenants who have no interest in the preservation
of the soil. |
William
A. Burwell
25 Feb 1810 |
MONTICELLO
/ CONDITION
I find on a more minute examination of my lands
than the short visits heretofore made to them permitted, that a ten
years' abandonment of them to the ravages of overseers, has brought
on them a degree of degradation far beyond what I had expected. As
this obliges me to adopt a milder course of cropping, so I find that
they have enabled me to do it, by having opened a great deal of
lands during my absence. I have therefore determined on a division
of my farm into six fields, to be put under this rotation: first
year, wheat; second, corn, potatoes, peas; third, rye or wheat,
according to circumstances; fourth and fifth, clover where the
fields will bring it, and buck-wheat dressings where they will not;
sixth, folding, and buckwheat dressings. But it will take me from
three to six years to get this plan under way. I am not yet
satisfied that my acquisition of overseers from the head of Elk has
been a happy one, or that much will be done this year towards
rescuing my plantations from their wretched condition. Time,
patience and perseverance must be the remedy; and the maxim of your
letter, "slow and sure," is not less a good one in
agriculture than in politics. I sincerely wish it may extricate us
from the event of a war, if this can be done saving our faith and
our rights. My opini6n of the British government is, that nothing
will force them to do justice but the loud voice of their people,
and that this can never be excited but by distressing their
commerce. But I cherish tranquillity too much, to suffer political
things to enter my mind at all. |
Tench
Coxe
1 May 1794 |
MONTICELLO
/ FARMING REPORT
The spring is remarkably backward. No oats
sown, not much tobacco seed, and little done in the gardens. Wheat
has suffered considerably. No vegetation visible yet but the red
maple, weeping willow and lilac. Flour is said to be at eight
dollars at Richmond, and all produce is hurrying down. |
James
Madison
17 Mar 1809 |
MONTICELLO
/ TENANT FARMING INTRODUCED
Having asked the favor of Mr. Hollingsworth to
look out for a person in his neighborhood who would be willing to go
to Virginia and overlook a farm for me, he informs me that you will
undertake it for a hundred and twenty dollars a year. He seems to
have mistaken me in the circumstance of time, as he mentions that
you would expect to go about the new year. I had observed to him
that I should not want a person till after the next harvest The
person who now takes care of the place is engaged for the ensuing
year, which finishes with us about November; but I should wish you
to be there by seed time in order to prepare the crop of the
following year. The wages are a good deal higher than I expected, as
Mr. Hollingsworth mentioned that the usual wages in your
neighborhood were from £25 to £30 Maryland currency.
However, I consent to give them, and the rather as there will be
some matters under your care beyond the lines of the farm. I have a
smith and some sawyers who will require to be seen once a day, and
the first year of your being there I shall have some people employed
in finishing a canal, who will also be td be attended to.
The place you are to overlook is that on which I live, and to which
I shall return in March next. It is 70 miles above Richmond, on the
North branch of James River, exactly where it breaks through the
first ridge of little mountains, near the village of
Charlottesville, in Albemarle county. It is 225 miles from Elkton, a
southwest course. From this description you may find it in any map
of the country. The climate is very temperate both summer and
winter, and as healthy as any part of America, without a single
exception.
The farm is of about five or six hundred acres of cleared land,
very hilly, originally as rich as any highlands in the world, but
much worried by Indian corn and tobacco. It is still however very
strong, and remarkably friendly to wheat and rye. These will be my
first object. Next will be grasses, cattle, sheep, and the
introduction of potatoes for the use of the farm, instead of Indian
corn, in as great a degree as possible. You will have from 12 to 15
laborers under you. They will be well clothed, and as well fed as
your management of the farm will enable us, for it is chiefly with a
view to place them on the comfortable footing of the laborers of
other countries that T come into another country to seek an
overlooker for them, as also to have my lands a little more taken
care. For these purposes I have long banished tobacco, and wish to
do the same by Indian corn in a great degree. The house wherein you
will live will be about half a mile from my own. You will, of
course, keep bachelor's house. It is usual with us to give a fixed
allowance of pork; I shall much rather substitute beef and mutton,
as I consider pork to be as destructive an article in a farm as
Indian corn. On this head we shall not disagree, and as I shall pass
Elkton in March, I will contrive to give you notice to meet me
there, when we may descend to other details. But for the present I
shall wish to receive your answer in writing, that I may know
whether you consider yourself as engaged, so that I need not look
out for another. I leave you free as to the time of going, from
harvest till Christmas. If you will get yourself conveyed as far as
Fredericksburg, which is as far as the stages go on that road, I
will find means of conveying you from thence, which will be 70
miles. So far respects the farm over which I wish to place you.
Besides this I have on the opposite side of the little river
running through my lands, 2000 acres of lands of the same quality,
and which has been cultivated in the same way, which I wish to
tenant out at a quarter of a dollar an acre, in farms of such sizes
as the tenants would choose. I would hire the laborers now employed
on them from year to year to the same tenants, at about 50 dollars
for a man and his wife, the tenant feeding and clothing them and
paying their taxes and those of the land, which are very trifling.
The lands to be leased for seven years or more, the laborers only
from year to year, to begin next November. I would like the farms to
be not less than 200 acres, because such a farmer would probably
like to hire a man and his wife as laborers. I have mentioned these
circumstances to you, because I have understood that tenants might
probably be got from Maryland, and perhaps it would be agreeable to
you to engage some of your acquaintances to go and settle so near
where you will be. Perhaps you could inform me in what other part of
Maryland or the neighboring States tenants might be more probably
found, and I should willingly incur the expertise of having them
sought for. Your assistance in this would particularly oblige me. I
would ease the rent of the first year, that the tenant might get
himself under way with as few difficulties as possible, but I should
propose restrictions against cultivating too great a quantity of
Indian corn. |
Samuel
Biddle
12 Dec 1792 |
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