Page 272.‘Comportera, peut être, une population de 30,000,000.’ The territory of the United States contains about a million of square miles, English. There is, in them, a greater proportion of fertile lands, than in the British dominions in Europe. Suppose the territory of the United States, then, to attain an equal degree of population, with the British European dominions; they will have an hundred millions of inhabitants. Let us extend our views to what may be the population of the two continents of North and South America, supposing them divided at the narrowest part of the isthmus of Panama. Between this line and that of 50° of north latitude, the northern continent contains about five millions of square miles, and south of this line of division, the southern continent contains about seven millions of square miles. I do not pass the 50th degree of northern latitude in my reckoning, because we must draw a line somewhere, and considering the soil and climate beyond that, I would only avail my calculation of it, as a make-weight, to make good what the colder regions, within that line, may be supposed to fall short in their future population. Here are twelve millions of square miles, then, which, at the rate of population before assumed, will nourish twelve hundred millions of inhabitants, a number greater than the present population of the whole globe is supposed to amount to. If those who propose medals for the resolution of questions, about which nobody makes any question, those who have invited discussion on the pretended problem, Whether the discovery of America was for the good of mankind? if they, I say, would have viewed it only as doubling the numbers of mankind, and, of course, the quantum of existence and happiness, they might have saved the money and the reputation which their proposition has cost them. The present population of the inhabited parts of the United States is of about ten to the square mile; and experience has shown us, that wherever we reach that, the inhabitants become uneasy, as too much compressed, and go off, in great numbers, to search for vacant country. Within forty years, their whole territory will be peopled at that rate. We may fix that, then, as the term, beyond which the people of those States will not be restrained within their present limits; we may fix that population, too, as the limit which they will not exceed, till the whole of those two continents are filled up to that mark; that is to say, till they shall contain one hundred and twenty millions of inhabitants. The soil of the country, on the western side of the Mississippi, its climate, and its vicinity to the United States, point it out as the first which will receive population from that nest. The present occupiers will just have force enough to repress and restrain the emigrations, to a certain degree of consistence. We have seen, lately, a single person go, and decide on a settlement in Kentucky, many hundred miles from any white inhabitant, remove thither with his family and a few neighbors, and though perpetually harassed by the Indians, that settlement in the course of ten years has acquired thirty thousand inhabitants; its numbers are increasing while we are writing, and the State, of which it formerly made a part, has offered it independence.
Page 280, line five. ‘Huit des onze Etats,’ &c. Say, ‘there were ten States present; six voted unanimously for it, three against it, and one was divided: and seven votes being requisite to decide the proposition affirmatively, it was lost. The voice of a single individual of the State which was divided, or of one of those which were of the negative, would have prevented this abominable crime from spreading itself over the new country. Thus we see the fate of millions unborn, hanging on the tongue of one man, and Heaven was silent in that awful moment! But it is to be hoped it will not always be silent, and that the friends to the rights of human nature will, in the end, prevail.
On the 16th of March, 1785, it was moved in Congress, that the same proposition should be referred to a committee, and it was referred by the votes of eight States against three. We do not hear that any thing further is yet done on it.’
Page 286. ‘L’autorité du Congrès étoit nécessaire.’ The substance of the passage alluded to, in the journal of Congress, May the 26th, 1784, is, ‘That the authority of Congress to make requisitions of troops, during peace, is questioned; that such an authority would be dangerous, combined with the acknowledged one of emitting or of borrowing money; and that a few troops only, being wanted, to guard magazines and garrison the frontier posts, it would be more proper, at present, to recommend than to require.’
Mr. Jefferson presents his compliments to M. de Meusnier, and sends him copies of the thirteenth, twenty-third, and twenty-fourth articles of the treaty between the King of Prussia and the United States.
If M. de Meusnier proposes to mention the facts of cruelty, of which he and Mr Jefferson spoke yesterday, the twenty-fourth article will introduce them properly, because they produced a sense of the necessity of that article. These facts are, 1. The death of upwards of eleven thousand American prisoners, in one prison-ship (the Jersey), and in the space of three years. 2. General Howe’s permitting our prisoners, taken at the battle of Germantown, and placed under a guard, in the yard of the State-house of Philadelphia, to be so long without any food furnished them, that many perished with hunger. Where the bodies lay, it was seen that they had eaten all the grass around them, within their reach, after they had lost the power of rising or moving from their place. 3. The second fact was the act of a commanding officer: the first, of several commanding officers, and, for so long a time, as must suppose the approbation of government. But the following was the act of government itself. During the periods that our affairs seemed unfavorable, and theirs successful, that is to say, after the evacuation of New York, and again after the taking of Charleston, in South Carolina, they regularly sent our prisoners, taken on the seas and carried to England, to the East Indies. This is so certain, that in the month of November or December, 1785, Mr. Adams having officially demanded a delivery of the American prisoners sent to the East Indies, Lord Caermarthen answered, officially, ‘that orders were immediately issued for their discharge.’ M. de Meusnier is at liberty to quote this fact. 4. A fact, to be ascribed not only to the government, but to the parliament, who passed an act for that purpose, in the beginning of the war, was the obliging our prisoners, taken at sea, to join them, and fight against their countrymen. This they effected by starving and whipping them. The insult on Captain Stanhope, which happened at Boston last year, was a consequence of this. Two persons, Dunbar and Lowthorp, whom Stanhope had treated in this manner (having particularly inflicted twenty-four lashes on Dunbar), meeting him at Boston, attempted to beat him. But the people interposed, and saved him. The fact is referred to in that paragraph of the Declaration of Independence, which says, ‘He has constrained our fellow citizens, taken captive on the high seas, to bear arms against their country, to become the executioners of their friends and brethren, or to fall themselves by their hands.’ This was the most afflicting to our prisoners, of all the cruelties exercised on them. The others affected the body only, but this the mind; they were haunted by the horror of having, perhaps, themselves shot the ball by which a father or a brother fell. Some of them had constancy enough to hold out against half-allowance of food and repeated whippings. These were generally sent to England, and from thence to the East Indies. One of them escaped from the East Indies, and got back to Paris, where he gave an account of his sufferings to Mr. Adams, who happened to be then at Paris.
M. de Meusnier, where he mentions that the slave-law has been passed in Virginia, without the clause of emancipation, is pleased to mention, that neither Mr. Wythe nor Mr. Jefferson was present, to make the proposition they had meditated; from which, people, who do not give themselves the trouble to reflect or inquire, might conclude, hastily, that their absence was the cause why the proposition was not made; and, of course, that there were not, in the Assembly, persons of virtue and firmness enough to propose the clause for emancipation. This supposition would not be true. There were persons there, who wanted neither the virtue to propose, nor talents to enforce the proposition, had they seen that the disposition of the legislature was ripe for it. These worthy characters would feel themselves wounded, degraded, and discouraged by this idea. Mr. Jefferson would therefore be obliged to M. de Meusnier to mention it in some such manner as this. ‘Of the two commissioners, who had concerted the amendatory clause for the gradual emancipation of slaves, Mr. Wythe could not be present, he being a member of the judiciary department, and Mr. Jefferson was absent on the legation to France. But there were not wanting in that Assembly, men of virtue enough to propose, and talents to vindicate this clause. But they saw, that the moment of doing it with success, was not yet arrived, and that an unsuccessful effort, as too often happens, would only rivet still closer the chains of bondage, and retard the moment of delivery to this oppressed description of men. What a stupendous, what an incomprehensible machine is man! who can endure toil, famine, stripes, imprisonment, and death itself, in vindication of his own liberty, and, the next moment, be deaf to all those motives whose power supported him through his trial, and inflict on his fellow men a bondage, one hour of which is fraught with more misery, than ages of that which he rose in rebellion to oppose! But we must await, with patience, the workings of an overruling Providence, and hope that that is preparing the deliverance of these our suffering brethren. When the measure of their tears shall be full, when their groans shall have involved heaven itself in darkness, doubtless, a God of justice will awaken to their distress, and by diffusing light and liberality among their oppressors, or, at length, by his exterminating thunder, manifest his attention to the things of this world, and that they are not left to the guidance of a blind fatality.’
[The following are the articles of the treaty with Prussia,
referred to in the preceding observations.]
Article 13. And in the same case, of one of the contracting parties being engaged in war with any other power, to prevent all the difficulties and misunderstandings, that usually arise respecting the merchandise heretofore called contraband, such as arms, ammunition, and military stores of every kind, no such articles, carried in the vessels, or by the subjects or citizens of one of the parties, to the enemies of the other, shall be deemed contraband, so as to induce confiscation or condemnation, and a loss of property to individuals. Nevertheless, it shall be lawful to stop such vessels and articles, and to detain them for such length of time, as the captors may think necessary to prevent the inconvenience or damage that might ensue from their proceeding, paying, however, a reasonable compensation for the loss such arrest shall occasion to the proprietors: and it shall further be allowed to use, in the service of the captors, the whole or any part of the military stores so detained, paying the owners the full value of the same, to be ascertained by the current price at the place of its destination. But in the case supposed, of a vessel stopped for articles heretofore deemed contraband, if the master of the vessel stopped will deliver out the goods supposed to be of contraband nature, he shall be admitted to do it, and the vessel shall not, in that case be carried into any port, nor further detained, but shall be allowed to proceed on her voyage.