you doing for your colonies? They will be lost if not more effectually succoured. Indeed no future efforts you can make will ever be able to reduce the blacks. All that can be done in my opinion will be to compound with them as has been done formerly in Jamaica. We have been less zealous in aiding them, lest your government should feel any jealousy on our account. But in truth we as sincerely wish their restoration, and their connection with you, as you do yourselves. We are satisfied that neither your justice nor their distresses will ever again permit their being forced to seek at dear & distant markets those first necessaries of life which they may have at cheaper markets placed by nature at their door, & formed by her for their support.-What is become of Mde de Tessy and Mde de Tott? I have not heard of them since they went to Switzerland. I think they would have done better to have come & reposed under the Poplars of Virginia. Pour into their bosoms the warmest effusions of my friendship & tell them they will be warm and constant unto death. Accept of them also for Mde de la Fayette & your dear children -but I am forgetting that you are in the field of war, & they I hope in those of peace. Adieu my dear friend! God bless you all. Yours affectionately. TO THE U. S. MINISTER TO FRANCE. J. MSS. PHILADELPHIA, June 16, 1792. DEAR SIR,-My last to you was of Mar 28. Yours of Apr 6. & 15. came to hand three days ago. With respect to the particular objects of commerce susceptible of being placed on a better footing, on which you ask my ideas they will shew themselves by the inclosed table of the situation of our commerce with France and England. That with France is stated as it stood at the time I left that country, when the only objects whereon change was still desireable, were those of salted provisions, tobacco & tar, pitch & turpentine. The first was in negotiation when I came away, & was pursued by Mr. Short with prospects of success till their general tariff so unexpectedly deranged our commerce with them as to other articles. Our commerce with their West Indies had never admitted amelioration during my stay in France. The temper of that period did not allow even the essay, and it was as much as we could do to hold the ground given us by the Marshal de Castries' Arret admitting us to their colonies with salted provisions &c. As to both these branches of commerce, to wit, with France & her colonies, we have hoped they would pursue their own proposition of arranging them by treaty, & that we could draw that treaty to this place. There is no other where the dependance of their colonies on our states for their prosperity is so obvious as here, nor where their negotiator would feel it so much. But it would be imprudent to leave to the uncertain issue of such a treaty, the reestablishment of our commerce with France on the footing on which it was in the beginning of their revolution. That treaty may be long on the anvil; in the meantime we cannot consent to the late innovations without taking measures to do justice to our own navigation. This object therefore is particularly recommended to you, while you will also be availing yourself of every opportunity which may arise of benefiting our commerce in any other part. I am in hopes you will have found the moment favorable on your arrival in France when M. Claviere was in the ministry and the dispositions of the National Assembly favorable to the ministers.-Your cypher has not been sent hitherto because it required a most confidential channel of conveyance. It is now committed to Mr. Pinckney, who also carries the gazettes, laws & other public papers for you. We have been long without any vessel going to Havre. Some of the Indian tribes have acceded to terms of peace. The greater part however still hold off, and oblige us to pursue more vigorous measures for war.-I inclose you an extract from a circular letter to our Consuls, by which you will perceive that those in countries where we have no diplomatic representative, are desired to settle their accounts annually with the minister of the U. S. at Paris. This business I must desire you to undertake. The act concerning Consuls will be your guide, & I shall be glad that the 1st of July be the day to which their accounts shall be annually settled, & paid, and that they may be forwarded as soon after that as possible to the office of the Secretary of state, to enter into the general account of his department which it is necessary he should make up always before the meeting of Congress. P. S. I have said nothing of our whale oil, because I believe it is on a better footing since the Tariff than before. I inclose you a letter from a person in Lyons to Mr. Short, desiring inquiries might be made after a M. de S Pry, with the result of the inquiries. I am unable to say how you will find the letter writer, as I have no information but what is in the letter itself. NOTES ON ARTHUR YOUNG'S LETTER.' J. MSS. [June 18, 1792.] Pa. 3. Is the labour (of Negroes @ £9. sterl.) to be commanded in any amount?-if taken by the year it may be com 1 Young wrote to Washington concerning American agriculture, and Jefferson undertook to prepare some notes on the subject, resulting in the above. They were sent to Young, who commented on them as follows: "Mr. Jefferson's Virginia calculation comes much nearer to the point; but I cannot admit it; he reckons 60l. a year increasing value of negroes, and 1567. a year rise in value of land. These articles may be fact in certain circumstances but they will not do for comparisons. In the first place, to have a considerable value invested in slaves, is a hazardous capital; and there is no man in the world who would not give 60%, a year on six thousand acres, to be able to change slaves to cows and sheep: he cannot otherwise command labour, and therefore must keep them; but the profit in any other light than labourers, is inadmissible. As to the rise on lands, it may be fair; but taking place equally, perhaps, in Europe, it must not come into the account. During the last ten years, land in England has risen one third in value. Correcting thus Mr. Jefferson's account, his capital pays eleven per cent. as in (D). There are, however, many deductions to be made; as wear and tear of implements, carriage, team, seed, VOL. VI.-6 manded in any amount: but not if wanted on particular occasions only as for harvest, for particular dressings of the land, &c. Pa. 4. The labour of a negro Mr. Young reckons cent. per cent dearer than the labour of England.-To the hirer of a negro man repairs of buildings, white servants, overseers, &c. &c. These ought, as I conjecture, to amount to near 2007. a year, which, if so, would reduce the profit in the gross to about eight per cent. "But I have a heavier objection than this, and which bears upon the pith of the subject. How can Mr. Jefferson produce annually five thousand bushels of wheat, worth 750%. by means of a cattle product of only 1257.? I do not want to come to America, to know that this is simply impossible: at the commencement of a term it may do, but how long will it last? This is the management that gives such products, as eight and ten bushels an acre. Arable land can yield wheat only by means of cattle and sheep; it is not dung that is wanted so much as a change of products: repose under grasses is the soul of management ; and all cleaning and tillage to be given in the year that yields green winter food. By such a system, you may produce, by means of forty oxen and five hundred sheep, five thousand bushels of wheat; and if you raise the oxen to fifty, and sheep to six hundred, you may have so much more wheat; but it is only by increasing cattle that you can increase wheat permanently. 125/. from cattle to 750/. from wheat, would reduce the finest farm in the world to a caput mortuum; that is to say to ten bushels an acre which must be nearly such.” These comments Washington submitted to Jefferson, who wrote Washington in reply: “PHILADELPHIA, June 28, 1793. DEAR SIR,-I should have taken time ere this, to have considered the observations of Mr. Young, could I at this place have done it in such a way as would satisfy either him or myself. When I wrote the notes of the last year, I had never before thought of calculating what were the profits of a capital invested in Virginia agriculture. Yet that appeared to be what Mr. Young most desired. Lest therefore, no other of those whom you consulted for him, should attempt such a calculation, I did it; but being at such a distance from the country of which I wrote, and having been absent from that, and from the subject in consideration, many years, I could only, for my facts, recur to my own recollection, weakened by time, and very different applications, and I had no means here of correcting my facts. I, therefore, hazarded the calculation, rather as an essay of the mode of calculating the profits of a Virginia estate, than as an operation which was to be ultimately relied on. When I went last to Virginia, I put the press copy of those notes into the hands of the most skilful and successful farmer in the part of the country of which I wrote. He omitted to return them to me, which adds another impediment to my resuming the subject here. But indeed, if I had them, I could only present the same facts, with some corrections, and some justifications of the principles of calculation. This would not, and, ought not, to satisfy Mr. Young. When I return his hire will cost £9. and his subsistence, cloathing & tools £6. Making £15. sterl. or at the most it may sometimes be £18.-To the owner of a negro his labour costs as follows. Suppose a negro man of 25. years of age costs £75. sterling he has an home, I shall have time and opportunity of answering Mr. Young's inquiries fully. I will first establish the facts, as adapted to the present times, and not to those to which I was obliged to recur by recollection, and I will make the calculation on rigorous principles. The delay necessary for this, will, I hope, be compensated by giving something which no endeavors on my part shall be wanting to make worthy of confidence. In the mean time, Mr. Young must not pronounce too hastily on the impossibility of an annual production of 750/ worth of wheat, coupled with a cattle product of 1257. My object was to state the product of a good farm, under good husbandry, as practised in my part of the country. Manure does not enter into this, because we can buy an acre of new land cheaper than we can manure an old one. Good husbandry with us, consists in abandoning Indian corn and tobacco: tending small grain, some red clover, fallowing, and endeavouring to have, while the lands are at rest, a spontaneous cover of white clover. I do not present this as a culture judicious in itself, but as good, in comparison with what most people there pursue. Mr. Young has never had an opportunity of seeing how slowly the fertility of the original soil is exhausted, with moderate management of it. I can affirm, that the James river low-grounds, with the cultivation of small grain, will never be exhausted; because we know, that, under that cultivation, we must now and then take them down with Indian corn, or they become, as they were originally, too rich to bring wheat. The high-lands where I live, have been cultivated about sixty years. The culture was tobacco and Indian corn, as long as they would bring enough to pay the labour; then they were turned out. After four or five years rest, they would bring good corn again, and in double that time, perhaps, good tobacco. Then they would be exhausted by a second series of tobacco and corn. Latterly we have begun to cultivate small grain; and excluding Indian corn, and fallowing, such of them as were originally good, soon rise up to fifteen or twenty bushels the acre. We allow that every labourer will manage ten acres of wheat, except at harvest. I have no doubt but the coupling cattle and sheep with this, would prodigiously improve the produce. This improvement, Mr. Young will be better able to calculate than any body else. I am so well satisfied of it myself, that having engaged a good farmer from the head of Elk (the style of farming there you know well), I mean in a farm of about five hundred acres of cleared land, and with a dozen labourers to try the plan of wheat, rye, potatoes, clover, with a mixture of some Indian corn with the potatoes, and to push the number of sheep. This last hint I have taken from Mr. Young's letters, which you have been so kind as to communicate to me. I had never before considered, with due attention, the profit from that animal. I shall not be able to put the farm into that form exactly the ensuing autumn, but against another I hope I shall; and I shall attend |