Not only they are well formed in body and in mind as the homo sapiens Europaeus, but from what we know of their eloquence it is of a superior lustre.... I may challenge the whole orations of Demosthenes and Cicero, and of many more prominent orators, if Europe has furnished any more eminent, to produce a single passage, superior to the speech of Logan, a Mingo chief, to Lord Dunmore when Governor of this State.
But his temper was thoroughly aroused when he discovered that Abbé Raynal had undertaken to apply the theory of Buffon to the white men who had settled in America.
If this were true and if climateric conditions were such as to prevent mental and physical growth there would be little hope for the newly constituted country to ever become a great nation. Nature itself pronouncing against the Americans what chance could they have to be able to ever come up to the level of the older nations. Sentenced to remain forever an inferior race, this struggle to conquer independence would have proved futile, and sooner or later, they would fall the prey of superior people.
Never before had Jefferson been so deeply stirred and moved, never before had he felt so thoroughly American as in his spirited answer to Raynal, when he claimed for the new-born country not only unlimited potentialities, but actual superiority over the mother country:
"America has not yet produced one good poet." When we shall have existed as a people as long as the Greeks did before they produced a Homer, the Romans a Virgil, the French a Racine and Voltaire, the English a Shakespeare and Milton, should this reproach be still true, we will inquire from what unfriendly causes it has proceeded, that the other countries of Europe and quarters of the earth shall not have inscribed any name in the roll of poet. But neither has America produced "one able mathematician, one man of genius in a single art or science." In war we have produced a Washington, whose memory will be adored while liberty shall have votaries, whose name will triumph over time, and will in future ages assume its just station among the most celebrated worthies of the world, when that wretched philosophy shall be forgotten which would have arranged him among the degeneracies of nature. In Physics we have produced a Franklin, than whom no one of the present age has made more important discoveries, nor has enriched philosophy with more, or more ingenious solutions of the phaenomena of nature.... As in philosophy and war, so in government, in oratory, in painting, in the plastic arts, we might show that America, though but a child of yesterday, has already given hopeful proofs of genius, as well as of the nobler kinds, which arouse the best feelings of man, which call him into action, which substantiate his freedom, and conduct him to happiness, as of the subordinate, which serve to amuse him only. We therefore suppose that this reproach is as unjust as it is unkind: and that, of the geniuses which adorn the present age, America contributes her full share.... The present war having so long cut off all communications with Great Britain, we are not able to make a fair estimate of the state of science in the country. The spirit in which she wages war, is the only sample before our eyes, and that does not seem the legitimate offspring either of science or civilization. The sun of her glory is fast descending to the horizon. Her Philosophy has crossed her channel, her freedom the Atlantic, and herself seems passing to that awful dissolution whose issue is not given human foresight to scan.
This is the fullest and most complete expression of national consciousness and national pride yet uttered by Jefferson. The American eagle was spreading her wing and preparing to fly by herself. The American transcended the Virginian and looked confidently at the future.
In Query VIII, we come again to a question of national importance. The country being what it is, it would take at least one hundred years for Virginia to reach the present square-mile population of Great Britain. The question then arises whether a larger population being desirable, the State should not encourage foreigners to settle in as large numbers as possible. To unrestricted immigration, Jefferson, fearful for the integrity of the racial stock, fearful also for the maintenance of institutions so hardly won and yet so precariously established, was unequivocally opposed. In a most remarkable passage he stated the very reasons that after him were to be put forth again and again, until a policy of selective and restrictive immigration was finally adopted. I would not say that he was a hundred and fifty years ahead of his time, but a hundred and fifty years ago he formulated with his usual "felicity of expression", feelings and forebodings which existed more or less confusedly in many minds. When he spoke thus he was more of a spokesman than a prophet of America:
Every species of government has its specific principles. Ours perhaps are more peculiar than those of any other in the universe. It is a composition of the freest principles of the English constitution, with others derived from natural right and natural reason. To these nothing can be more opposed than the maxims of absolute monarchies. Yet from such we are to expect the greatest number of immigrants. They will bring with them the principles of the governments they leave, imbibed in their early youth; or, if able to throw them off, it will be in exchange for an unbounded licentiousness, passing, as is usual, from one extreme to another. It would be a miracle were they to stop precisely at the point of temperate liberty. These principles, with their language, they will transmit to their children. In proportion to their numbers, they will share with us the legislation. They will infuse into it their spirit, warp and bias its directions, and render it a heterogeneous, incoherent, distracted mass.... Is it not safer to wait with patience 27 years and three months longer for the attainment of any degree of population desired or expected? May not our government be more homogeneous, more peaceable, more durable? Suppose 20 millions of republican Americans [were] thrown all of a sudden into France, what would be the condition of that kingdom? If it would be more turbulent, less happy, less strong, we may believe that the addition of half a million of foreigners to our present numbers would produce a similar effect here.... I mean not that these doubts should be extended to the importation of useful artificers.... Spare no expence in obtaining them. They will after a time go to the plough and to the hoe; but in the mean time they will teach us something we do not know.
Everything is there! That America is essentially and should remain an Anglo-Saxon civilization; the fear that unassimilated immigration may corrupt the institutions of the country and bring into it uneradicable germs of absolutism; the admission even that America needs a certain class of immigrants, of specialists to develop new arts and new industries. In 1781, Jefferson was not only an American, but a hundred per cent. American, and the sentiments he expressed then were to reëcho in the halls of Congress through the following generations whenever the question was discussed.