LOC Original Quote Source
Page 413 Image from Cornell Library
The ambassador replied: It was writ-
ten in their Koran, that all nations
which had not acknowledged the
Prophet were sinners, whom it was
the right and duty of the faithful to
plunder and enslave; and that every
mussulman who was slain in this war-
fare was sure to go to paradise.
Joshua London Victory at Tripoli
At National Review
December 16, 2005, 9:55 a.m.
America’s Earliest Terrorists
Lessons from America’s first war against Islamic terror.
By Joshua E. London
Version2
Take, for example, the 1786 meeting in London of Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and Sidi Haji Abdul Rahman Adja, the Tripolitan ambassador to Britain. As American ambassadors to France and Britain respectively, Jefferson and Adams met with Ambassador Adja to negotiate a peace treaty and protect the United States from the threat of Barbary piracy.
These future United States presidents questioned the ambassador as to why his government was so hostile to the new American republic even though America had done nothing to provoke any such animosity. Ambassador Adja answered them, as they reported to the Continental Congress, “that it was founded on the Laws of their Prophet, that it was written in their Koran, that all nations who should not have acknowledged their authority were sinners, that it was their right and duty to make war upon them wherever they could be found, and to make slaves of all they could take as Prisoners, and that every Musselman who should be slain in Battle was sure to go to Paradise.”
Virgil Goode at TPMMuckraker
LOC Index
===
LOC Original Quote Source
View page 405
Ye~erson American Alinisler in France.
1872.]
JEFFERSON AMERICAN MINISTER IN FRANCE.
THE United States has contributed
to the diplomatic circles of the Old
World some incongruous members, he-
roes of the caucus and the stump, not
versed in the lore of courts, and un-
skilled in drawing-room arts. So,at
least, we are occasionally told by per-
sons who think it a prettier thing to
bow to a lady than to an audience, and
nobler to chat agreeably at dinner than
to discourse acceptably to a multitude.
Perhaps we shall do better in the diplo-
matic way by and by, when we have our
Civil Service College (to match West
Point and Annapolis) in which young
men will be especially trained for the
higher walks of public life. Hitherto,
our diplomatists have won their signal
successes simply by being good citi-
zens. We have never had a Talleyrand,
nor one of the Talleyrand kind (though
we came near it when Aaron Burr was
pressed for a foreign appointment), and
no American has ever been sent to lie
abroad for his countrys good. We
have had, however, besides a large
number of respectable ministers in the
ordinary way, three whose opportunity
was, at once, immense and unique,
Franklin, Jefferson, and Washburne,
and each of these proved equal to his
opportunity.
It is not as a record of diplomatic
service that Jeffersons five years~ resi-
dence in France is specially important
to us. France and America were like
lovers then, and it is not difficult to ne-
gotiate between lovers. His master in
the diplomatic art was the greatest
master of it that ever lived, Benja-
min Franklins excellence being, that
heconducted the intercourse of nations
on the principles which control men of
honor and good feeling in their private
business, who neither take, nor wish,
nor will have an unjust advantage, and
look at a point in dispute with their an-
tagonists eves as well as their own,
never insensible to his difficulties and
Ids scruples. It is what France did to
Jefferson that makes his long residence
there historically important; because
the mind he carried home entered at
once into the forming character of a
young nation, and became a part of it
forever. All these millions of people,
whom we call fellow-citizens, are more
or less different in their character and
feelings from what they would have
been, if; in the distribution of diplo-
matic offices in 1785, Congress had
sent Jefferson to London instead of
Paris, and appointed John Adams to
Paris instead of London.
At first, he had the usual embarrass-
ments of American ministers he
could read, but not speak the French
language, and he was sorely puzzled
how to arrange his style of living so as
not to go beyond his nine thousand
dollars a year. The language was a
difficulty which diminished every hour,
though he never trusted himself to
write French on any matter of conse-
quence; but the art of living, in the
style of a plenipotentiary, upon the al-
lowance fixed by Congress, remained
difficult to the end. Nor could he,
during the first years, draw much reve-
nue from Virginia. He left behind him
there so long a list of debts (the re-
sult of the losses and desolations of
the war), that the proceeds of two crops,
and the arrears of his salary as gov-
ernor voted by the legislature, only
sufficed to satisfy the most urgent of
them.
A Virginia estate was a poor thing
indeed in the absence of the master;
and, unhappily, the founders of the
government of the United States, in
arranging salaries, made no allowance
for the American fact, that the mere
absence of a man from home usually
lessens his income and increases his
expenditure. Even Franklin took it
for granted that we should always have
among us men of leisure~ most of whom
405
View page 406
406 .?/efferson Americvz Minister in France. [October,
would be delighted to serve the public
for nothing. Who, indeed, could have
foreseen a state of things, such as we
see around us now, when the richer a
man is the harder he works, and when,
in a flourishing city of a hundred thou-
sand inhabitants, not one man of lei-
sure can be found, nor one man of
ability who can afford~~ to go to the
legislature ? Jefferson, Adams, and
perhaps I may say, most of the public
men of the country, have suffered
agonies of embarrassment from the
failure of the first Congresses to adopt
the true republican principle of paying
for all service done the public at the
rate which the requisite quality of ser-
vice commands in the market. The
only great error, perhaps, of Washing-
tons career was his aristocratic dis-
dain of taking fair wages for his work,
an error which most of his succes-
sors and many of their most valued min-
isters have rued in silent bitterness.
Nay, he rued it himself. What anxious
hours Washington himself passed from
the fact that there were so few compe-
tent statesmen in the country who
chanced to be rich enough to live in
Philadelphia on the salary of a Secre-
tary of State!
Jefferson was somewhat longer than
usual in getting used to what he called
the gloomy and damp climate of
Paris, such a contrast to the warmth,
purity, and splendor of the climate of his
mountain home. We find him, too, still
mourning his lost wife, and writing to
his old friend Page, that his principal
happiness was now in the retrospect of
life. Moreover, the condition of hu-
man nature in Europe astonished and
shocked him beyond measure. He was
not prepared for it; he could not get
hardened to it. While experiencing all
those art raptures which we should pre-
sume he would, keenly enjoying the
music of Paris above all, and the archi-
tecture only less, falling in love with a
statue here and an edifice there, still,
he could not become reconciled to the
hideous terms on which most of the
people of France held their lives. At
his own pleasant and not inelegant
abode , gathered most that was brilliant,
amiable, or illustrious in Paris. Who
so popular as the minister of our dear
allies across the sea, the successor of
Franklin, the friend of Lafayette, the
man of science, the man of feeling, the
scholar and musical amateur reared in
the wilderness? He liked the French,
too, exceedingly. He liked their man-
ners, their habits, their tastes, and even
their food. He was glad to live in a
community, ~vhere, as he said, a man
might pass a life without encountering
a single rudeness, and where people
enjoyed social pleasures without eating
like pigs and drinking like Indians.
But none of these things could ever
deaden his heart to the needless misery
of man in France. Read his own
words:
First, to his young friend and pupil,
James Monroe, in June, 1785, when he
had been ten months in Paris: The
pleasure of the trip [to Europe] will be
less than you expect, but the utility
greater. It will make you adore your
own country, its soil, its climate, its
equality, liberty, laws, people, and man-
ners. My God! how little do my
countrymen know what precious bless-
ings they are in possession of, and
which no other people on earth enjoy!
I confess I had no idea of it myself.
To Mrs. Trist, in August, x785 : It
is difficult to conceive how so good a
people, with so good a king, so well-
disposed rulers in general, so genial a
climate, so fertile a soil, should beren-
dered so ineffectual for producing hu-
man happiness by one single curse,
that of a bad form of government. But
it is a fact, in spite of the mildness of
their governors, the people are ground
to powder by the vices of the form of
government. Of twenty millions of
people supposed to be in France, I am
of opinion there are nineteen millions
more wretched, more accursed in every
circumstance of human existence, than
the most conspicuously wretched indi-
vidual of the whole United States.
To an Italian friend in Virginia,
September, 1785 : Behold me, at
length, on the vaunted scene of Eu-
View page 407
1872.] ~Yfferson Arnerica;z Millister in France.
rope! You are, perhaps, curious to
know how it has struck a savage of the
mountains of America. Not advan-
tageously, I assure you. I find the
general fate of mankind here most de-
plorable. The truth of Voltaires ob-
servation offers itself perpetually, that
every man here must be either the
hammer or the anvil. It is a true pic-
ture of that country to which they say
we shall pass hereafter, and where we
are to see God and his angels in splen-
dor, and cro~vds of the damned tram-
pled under their feet.
To George Wythe, of Virginia, in
August, 1786: If anybody thinks that
kings, nobles, or prie~ts are good con-
servators of the public happiness, send
him here. It is the best school in the
universe to cure him of that folly. He
will see here, with his own eyes, that
these descriptions of men are an aban-
doned conspiracy against the happiness
of the people. Preach, my dear sir, a
crusade against ignorance establish
and improve the law for educating the
common people. Let our countrymen
know, that the people Mone can protect
us against these evils, and that the tax
which. will be paid for this purpose is
not more than the thousandth part of
what will be paid to kings, priests, and
nobles, who will rise up among us if
we leave the people in ignorance.
To General Washington, in Novem-
ber, 1786: To know the mass of evil
which flows from this fatal source [an
hereditary aristocracy], a person must
be in France; he must see the finest
soil, the finest climate, and the most
compact state, the most benevolent
character of people, and every earthly
advantage combined, insufficient to pre-
vent this sc6urge from rendering ex-
istence a curse to twenty-four out of
twenty-five parts of the inhabitants of
this country.
To James Madison, in January, 1787:
To have an idea of the curse of ex-
istence under a government of force,
it must be seen. It is a government
of wolves over sheep.
To another American friend, in Au-
gust, 1787: If all the evils which can
407
arise among us from the republican
form of government, from this day to
the day of judgment, could he put into
scale against what this country suffers
from its monarchical form in a week,
or England in a month, the latter would
preponderate. No race of kings has
ever presented above one man of com-
mon sense in twenty generations. The
best they can do is to leave things to
their ministers ; and what are their
ministers but a committee badly
chosen?
To Governor Rutledge of South
Carolina, August, 1787: The Euro-
pean are governments of kites over
pigeons.
To another American friend, in Feb-
ruary, 1788 : Ehe long-expected edict
at length appears. It is an acknowl-
edgment (hitherto withheld by the
laws) that Protestants can beget chil-
dren, and that they can die, and be
offensive unless buried. It does not
give them perrpission to think, to speak,
or to worship. It enumerates the hu-
miliations to which they shall remain
subject, and the burthens to which
they shall continue to be unjustly ex-
posed. What are we to think of the
condition of the human mind in a coun-
try, where such a wretched thing as
this has thrown the state into convul-
sions, and how must we bless our own
situation in a country, the most illiter-
ate peasant of which is a Solon, com-
pared with the authors of this law.
Our countrymen do not know their
own superiority.
Such were the feelings with which
he contemplated the condition of the
French people. But he was in a situ-
ation to know, also, how far the
great in France were really benefited.
by the degradation of their fellow-citi-
zens. Their situation was dazzlino~~
but there was, .he thought, no class in
America who were not happier than
they. Intrigues of love absorbed the
younger, intrigues of ambition the
elder. Conjugal fidelity being regarded
as something provincialand ridiculous,
there was no such thing known among
View page 408
408 .5~etferso;z Amcriccvz Illinisler in F,-cz;zce. [October,
them as that tranquil, permanent fe~
licity with which domestic society in
America blesses most of its inhabitants,
leaving them free to follow steadily
those pursuits which health and rea-
son approve, and rendering truly deli-
cious the intervals of those pursuits.
Such sentiments as these were in
vogue at the time, even among the
ruling class. Beaumarchaiss Marriage
of Figaro was in its first run when
Jefferson reached Paris. Doubtless,
he listened to the barbers soliloquy in
the fifth act (a stump speech ~ Za mode
de Paris), the longest soliloquy in a
modern comedy, in which Beaumar-
chais, as we should say, arraigns the
administration. I ~ya s thought of
for a government appointment, says
poor Figaro, but, unfortunately, I
was fit for it: an arithmetician was
wanted; a dancer got it. Jefferson
rarely mentions the theatre in his
French letters ; but the theatre in Paris
is like dinner, too familiar a matter to
get upon paper. Beaumarchais himself
he knew but too well, for the brilliant
dramatist was a claimant of sundry
millions from the honorable Congress
for stores furnished during the war
which puzzled and perplexed every
minister of the United States from
Franklin to Rives.
Our plenipotentiary was one of the
most laborious of men during his resi-
dence in Europe. He had need of all
his singular talent for industry. The
whole of a long morning he usually
spent in his office hard at work; and,
sometimes, as his daughter reports,
when he was particularly pressed, he
would take his papers and retire to a
monastery near Paris, in which he
hired an apartment, and remain there
for a week or two, all the world shut
out, till his task was done. In the
afternoon, he walked seven miles into
the country and back again; and in
the evening, music, art, science, and
society claimed him by turns. I must
endeavor, in a few words, to indicate
the nature and objects of such inces
cial duties. The two continents were
then as far apart as America is now
from Australia. It took Jefferson from
fourteen to twenty weeks to get an
answer from home; and if his letters
missed the monthly packet, there was
usually no other opportunity till the
next. It was ~part of his duty as min-
ister to send to Mr. Jay, Secretary for
the foreign affairs of Congress, not
only a regular letter of public news,
but files of the best newspapers. He
did, in fact, the duty of Own Corre-
spondent, as well as that of plenipo-
tentiary; with much that is now done
by consuls and commercial agents.
As it was then a part of the system of
governments in Europe to open letters
intrusted to the mail, important letters
had to be written in cipher; which was
a serious addition to the labor of all
official persons. An incident of Mr.
Jeffersons second year serves to show
at once the remoteness of America
from Europe, the difficulty of getting
information from one continent to
another, and th9 variety of employ-
ments which then fell to the lot of the
American minister. He received a
letter making inquiry concerning a
young man named Abraham Albert
Alphonso Gallatin, who had emigrated
from Switzerland to America six years
before, and of whose massacre and scalp-
ing by the Indians a report had lately
reached his friends in Geneva. It was
to the American minister that the dis-
tressed family (one of the most respec-
table in Switzerland) applied for infor-
mation concerning the truth of the
report. In case this young man had
fallen a victim to the savages, Mr. Jef-
ferson was requested to procure a certifi-
cate of his death and a copy of his ~vill.
It was in this strange way that Thomas
Jefferson first obtained knowledge of the
Albert Gallatin whom he was destined
to appoint Secretary of the Treasury.
France and America, I say, were
like lovers then. And yet, in one re-
spect, the new minister found French-
men disappointed with the results of
sant toil. the alliance between the two countries.
And, first, as to his public and offi- The moment the war closed, commerce
View page 409
1872.]
had resumed its old channel; so that
the new flag of stars and stripes, a
familiar object on the Thames, was
rarely seen in a port of France. Why
is this ? Mr. Jefferson was frequently
asked. Does friendship count for noth-
ing in trade? Is this the return France
had a right to expect from America?
Do Americans prefer their enemies to
their friends? The American minis-
ter made it his particular business, first,
to explain the true reason of this state
of things, and, then, to apply the only
remedy. In other words, he made
himself, both in society and in the au-
dience room of the Count de Vergennes,
an apostle of free-trade.
The spell of the protective system,
in 1785, had been broken in England,
hut not in France. Jefferson showed
the Count de Vergennes that it was
the measure of freedom of trade which
British merchants enjoyed that gave
them the cream of the worlds com-
merce. He told the Count (an excel-
lent man of business and an honorable
gentleman, but as ignorant as a king
of political economy) that if national
preferences could weigh with merchants,
the whole commerce of America would
forsake England and come to France.
But, said he, in substance, our mer-
chants cannot buy in France, because
you will not let them sell in France.
One day, he ~vent over the whole list
of American products, and explained
the particular restriction or system of
restrictions, which rendered it impossi-
ble for American merchants to sell it
in France at a profit. Indigo, France
had tropical islands, the planters of
which she must protect. Tobacco,
O heavens! in what a coil and tangle
of protection was that fragrant weed!
First~ the king had the absolute mo-
nopoly of the sale of it. Secondly, the
king had farmed the sale to some
great noblemen; who, in turn, had
sub-let the right to men of business.
These gentlemen had concluded a con-
tract with Robert Morris of Philadel-
phia, giving him an absolute monopoly
of the importation for three years.
Morris was to s~nd to France twenty
Yefferson American Minister in France. 409
thousand hogsheads a year at a fixed
price, and no other creature ~n earth
could lawfully send a pound of tobacco
to France.
The learned reader perceives that
there was a tobacco Ring in 1785,
which included king, noble men, French
merchants, and Mr. Jeffersons friend,
Robert Morris. When, in the course
of this enumeration, he came to the arti-
cle of tobacco, and explained the mode
in which it was protected, the Count
remarked that the king received so
large a revenue from tobacco, that it
could not be renounced. I told him,
as Mr. Jefferson relates, that we did
not wish it to be renounced, or even
lessened, but only that the monojoly
should be put down; that this might
be effected in the simplest manner by
obliging the importer to pay, on en-
trance, a duty equal to what the king
now received, or to deposit his tobacco
in the kings warehouses till it was
paid, and then permitting a free sale of
it. A/a foil said the Count, that
is a good idea; we must think of it.
They did think of it. Mr. Jefferson
kept them thinking during the whole of
his residence in Paris. In many letters
and in conversation, vivid with his own
clear conviction, and warm with his
earnest purpose to serve both coun-
tries, and man through them, he ex-
pounded the principles of free-trade.
Each of our nations, he said, has
exactly to spare the articles which the
other wants. We have a surplus of
rice, tobacco, furs, peltry, potash, lamp
oils, timber, which France wants; she
has a surplus of wines, brandies, escu-
lent oils, fruits, manufactures of all
kinds, which we want. The govern-
ments have nothing to do but not to
hinder their merchants from making
the exchange.
To the theory of free-trade every
thinking man, of course, assented. But
when it came to practice, he generally
found (as free-traders now do) that pri-
vate interest was too powerful for him.
It was in France very much as it was
in Portugal. After negotiating for
years with the Portuguese minister for
View page 410
410 Yefferson A mcrican Minister in France [October,
the free admission of American pro-
ducts, Jefferson succeeded in getting
his treaty signed and sent to Lisbon for
ratification. The astute old Portuguese
ambassador predicted its rejection.
Some great lords of the court, said
he to Mr. Jefferson, derive an impor-
tant part of their revenue from their
interest in the flour - mills near the
capital ; which the admission of Amer-
ican flour will shut up. They will pre-
vail upon the king to reject it. And
so it proved. Jefferson, however, was
not a man to prefer no bread to half a
loaf. He did really succeed in France,
after twelve months hard work and
vigilant attention, aided at every turn
by the Marquis de Lafayette, whose
zeal, to serve his other country across
the ocean knew no diminution while
he lived, in obtaining some few crusts
of free-trade for the merchants of
America; which had an important
effect in nourishing the infant com-
merce between the two countries. Nor
did he rest content with them. He
could not break the Morris contract,
nor even wish it broken; but, aided
by Lafayettes potent influence, he ob-
tained from the Ministry an engage-
ment that no contract of the same na-
ture should ever again be permitted.
To the last month of his stay in Europe,
we find, in his voluminous correspond-
ence, that he still strove to loosen what
he was accust~~med to call the shac-
kles upon trade.
His efforts in behalf of free-trade in
tobacco exposed him to the enmity of
Robert Morris and his kindred, one of
the most powerful circles in the United
States, including Gouverneur Morris,
as able and honorable an aristocrat as
ever stood by his order,a man of
Bismarckian acuteness, candor, integ-
rity, and humor. In writing of this
matter, in confidence, to James iVIon-
roe, Jefferson held this language: I
have done what was right, and I will
not so far wound my privilege of doing
that without regard to any mans inter-
est, as to enter into any explanations
of this paragraph with Robert Morris.
Yet I esteem him highly, and suppose
that hitherto he had esteemed me.
The paragraph to which he alludes
was one in a letter of the French min-
ister of finance, in which there was an
expression implying that Mr. Jefferson
had recommended the annulling of the
Morris Contract. This he had not
done. On th~ contrary, he had main-
tained that to annul it would be unjust.
But he deemed it unbecoming in him
as a public man to so much as correct
this misapprehension.
The reader, perhaps, has supposed
that the evils resulting from tariff-
tinkering, are peculiar to the United
States. Mr. Jefferson knew better.
As often as he succeeded in getting a
restriction upon trade loosened a little,
an injured Interest cried out; and did
not always cry in vain. In 1788, he
obtained a revisal of the tariff in favor
of American products, which admitted
American whale oil (before prohib-
ited) at a duty of ten dollars a ton.
This was a vast boon to Yankee whal-
ers. But an existing treaty between
France and England obliged France
to admit English oil on the terms of
the most favored nation. At once,
the English oils flowed in, over-
stocked the market, and lowered the
price to such a point that the French
fishermen and sealmen could not live.
An outcry arose, which the French
Ministry could not disregard. Then it
was proposed to exclude all European
oils which would not infringe the Brit-
ish treaty; and this idea Jefferson, #4
free-trader as he was, encouraged with
patriotic inconsistency, because, as he
says, it would give to the French and
American fisheries a monopoly of the
French market. The arr~t was drawn
up ministers were assembled; and in
a moment more it would have been
passed, to the enriching of Nantucket
and the great advantage of all the New
England coast. Just then, a minister
proposed to strike out the word Euro-
pean, which would make the measure
still more satisfactory to French oil-
men. The amendment was agree dto;
the arreit was signed; and, behold,
Nantucket excluded!
View page 411
1872.]
As soon as Jefferson heard of this
disaster, he put forth all his energies
in getting the arr~/ amended. Not
content with verbal and written remon-
strance, he took a leaf from Dr. Frank-
lins book, and caused a small treatise
upon the subject to be printed to entice
them to read it, particularly the new
minister, M. Neckar, who, minister as
he was, had some principles of econ-
omy, and will enter into calculations.
He succeeded in his object, and soon
had the pleasure of sending to Nan-
tucket, through Mr. Adams, a notifi-
cation that the whalemen might put
to sea in full confidence of being al-
lowed to sell their oil in French ports
on profitable terms. He testit~ed to
the generous aid he had had in this
business from Lafayette: He has
paid the closest attention to it, and
combated for us with the zeal of a
native.~~
Other curious incidents of his five
years war against the Protective Sys-
tem press for mention ; but, really, one
suffices as well as a thousand. It is
always the same story; the interests
of men against the rights of man,
temporary and local advantage opposed
to the permanent interest of the human
race, a shrinking from a fair, open
contest, and compelling your adversary
to go into the ring with one hand tied
behind him. Nevertheless, such is
the nature of man, that the progress
from restriction to freedom, whether in
politics, religion, or trade, must be slow
in order to be sure. It is huir~an to cry
Great is Diana of the Ephesians
when you live by making images of the
chaste goddess. Even Jefferson, a free-
trader by the constitution of his mind,
was not so very ill-content with a mo-
nopoly which shut English whalemen
out of the ports of France, and let his
own countrymen in. The principle
was wrong, but he could bear it in this
instance. It required many years of
pig-headed outrage to kill his proud
and yearning love for the land of his
ancestors, but the thing was done at
last with a completeness that left noth-
ing to be desired.
4.
Among the powers with which the
commissioners of the United States
endeavored to negotiate treaties of
amity and commerce on sublime
Christian principles, were Tunis, Al-
giers, Tripoli, and the high, glorious,
mighty, and most noble King, Prince,
and Emperor of Morocco. Before
Mr. Jefferson had held the post of
plenipotentiary many weeks, he was
reminded, most painfully, that those
powers were not yet, perhaps, quite
prepared to conduct their foreign affairs
in the lofty style proposed. A rumor
ran over Europe, that Dr. Franklin, on
his voyage to America, had been cap-
tured by the Algerines and carried to
Algiers; where, being held for ransom,
he bore his captivity with the cheerful-
ness and dignity that might have been
expected of him. Nor was such an
event impossible, nor even improbable.
The packets plying between Havre.and
New York were not considered safe
from the Algerine corsairs in 1785.
Nothing afloat was safe from them un-
less defended by superior guns, or pro-
tected by an annual subsidy. Among
the curious bits of information which
Jefferson contrived to send to Mr. Jay,
was a list of the presents made by the
Dutch, in 1784, to the aforesaid King,
Prince, and Emperor of Morocco. The
Dutch, we should infer from this cata-
logue, supplied the Emperor with the
n~eans of preying upon the commerce
of the world; for it consists of items
like these : 69 masts, 30 cables, 267
pieces of cordage, 70 cannon, 2! an-
chors, 285 pieces of sail-cloth, 1450
pulleys, ~i chests of tools, 12 quad-
rants, 12 compasses, 26 hour-glasses,
27 sea-charts, ~o dozen sail. needles, 24
tons of pitch ; besides such extraor-
dinary presents as 2 pieces of scarlet
cloth, 2 of green cloth, 280 loaves of
sugar, one chest of tea, 24 china punch-
bowls, 50 pieces of muslin, 3 clocks,
and one very large watch. He
learned, too, that Spain had recently
stooped to buy a peace from one of
these piratical powers at a cost of six
hundred thousand dollars.
It was in the destiny of Mr. Jeffer
Y~effcrxn Arnerica;z iJIi;zister in France.
View page 412
412 5efferson American Minister in France. [October -
son, at a later time, to extort a peace
from these pirates in another way, and,
in fact, to originate the system that rid
the seas of them forever. But, at
present, the country which he repre-
sented was not strong enough to de-
part from the established system of
purchase. The United States was
a gainer even by the treaty for which
Spain had paid so high a price, for
Spain was then in close alliance with
the republic which had humbled the
great enemy of the House of Bourbon.
In the spring of 1785 came news that
the American brig Betsy had been cap-
tured and taken to Morocco, where the
crew were held for ransom. It was the
good offices of Spain that induced the
King, Prince, and Emperor of Morocco
to make a present to the American
minister at Cadiz of the liberty of the
Betsys crew. But when Mr. Car-
michael waited on the Spanish ambas-
sador to thank him, in the best Span-
ish he could muster, for the friendly
act of the king, he was given to under-
stand that, unless the United States
sent an envoy to Morocco with pres-
ents for the Emperor, no more crews
would be released except on the usual
terms. Mr. Carmichael notified Mr.
Jefferson of these events, and added
that he feared further depredations
from the Algerines. Thirteen prizes
had recently been brought in by them;
chiefly Portuguese, he tI~ought. The
Americans, I hope, are too much fright-
ened already, said he, to venture
any vessels this way, especially during
the summer. And they ran some risk
even in the more northern latitudes.
A month later, Mr. Jefferson re-
ceived a doleful letter from three
American captains in Algiers, which
brought the subject home to him most
forcibly: We, the subjects of the
United States of America, having
the misfortune of being captured off
the. coast of Portugal, the 24th and
30th of July, by the Algerines, and
brou~,ht into this port, where we are
become slaves, and sent to the work-
houses, our sufferings are beyond our
expressing, or your conception
being stripped of all our clothes, and
nothing to exist on but two small cakes
of bread per day, without any other
necessaries of life. But the captains
had found a friend: Charles Logie,
Esq., British Consul, seeing our dis-
tressed situation, has taken us three
masters of vessels out of the work-
house, and has given security for us to
the Dey of Algiers, King of Cruelties.
The sailors, however, remained in the
workhouses, where they would certain-
ly starve, the captains thought, if Mr.
Jefferson could not at once prevail
upon Congress to grant them relief.
In writing this letter, the three cap-
tains provided Mr. Jefferson with seven
years trouble. During all the remain-
der of his residence at Paris, and years
after his return home, one of his chief
employments was to procure the deliv-
erance of those unfortunate prisoners
from captivity. After making some
provision for their maintenance, he ex-
plained to Congress the necessity of
treating with the pirates as the Span-
iards had done, money in hand. He
was authorized to give twenty thou-
sand dollars to the High and Mighty
Prince and Emperor of Morocco, and
the same sum to the King of Cruelties,
for a treaty of peace. Inadequate as
these sums were, they seemed stupen-
dous to a Congress distressed with the
debt of the Revolution, fearing to learn
by every arrival that their credit was
gone in Europe, through the failure of
their agents to effect a new loan. Jef-
ferson and Adams took the liberty of
doubling the price for a treaty with
Algiers; offering forty thousand dol-
lars for a treaty and the twenty prison-
ers. They felt that this was assuming
a responsibility which nothing could
justify but the emergency of the case.
The motives which led to it, wrote
Jefferson to Mr. Jay, must be found
in the feelings of the human heart, in a
partiality for those sufferers who are of
our own country, and in the obligations
of every government to yield protec-
tion to their citizens as the considera-
tion for their obedience. He assured
the secretary that it would be a corn-
View page 413
1872.] Yqft~erson America;: Zilinister in France.
fort to know that Congress did not dis-
approve this step. He received that
comfort in due time; but the forty
thousand dollars did not get the treaty,
nor bring home the captives. The
agents whom he despatched returned
with the report that upon such terms
no business could be done.
And so the affair drew on. In the
spring of 1786, Mr. Jefferson upon an
intimation received from Mr. Adams,
hurried over to London to confer with
the ambassador of Tripoli upon the
matter; supposing that whatever bar-
gain they might make with Tripoli
would be a guide in their negotiations
with Algiers and Morocco. The two
Americans met the ambassador, and
had a conversation with him which one
would think more suitable to A. D. 1100
than 1786. The first question discussed
b!etween them was, whether it were bet-
ter for the United States to buy a tem-
porary peace by annual payments, or a
permanent peace by what our English
friends elegantly style a lump sum.
The ambassador was much in favor of
a permanent peace. Any stipulated
annual sum, he said, might cease to
content his country, and an increased
demand might bring on a war, which
wouid interrupt the payments, and give
new cause of difference. It would be
much cheaper in the long run, he as-
sured them, for the United States to
come down handsomely at once and
make an end of the business.
That question having been duly con-
sidered, the Americans were ready to
listen to the terms; which were these
for a treaty of peace with Tripoli, to
last one year, with privilege of renewal,
twelve thousand five hundred guineas
to the government, and one thousand
two hundred and fifty guineas to the
a~nbassador; for a permanent peace,
thirty thousand g~iineas to the gov-
ernment, and three thousand guineas
to the ambassador; cash down on
receipt of signed treaty. N. B. Mer-
chandise not taken. On the same
terms, the ambassador assured them,
a peace could be had with Tunis; but
with regard to Algiers and Morocco,
413
he could not undertake to promise
anything. Peace with the four pirati-
cal powers, then, would cost Congress
at least six hundred and sixty thou-
sand dollars. If the affair had not
involved the life and liberty of coun-
trymen, the American commissioners
might have laughed at the dispropor-
tion between the sums they were em-
powered to offer and those demanded.
Disguising their feelings as best they
could, they took the liberty to make
some inquiries concerning the ground
of the ~iretensions to make war upon
nations who had done them no injury.
The ambassador replied: It was writ-
ten in their Koran, that all nations
which had not acknowledged the
Prophet were sinners, whom it was
the right and duty of the faithful to
plunder and enslave; and that every
mussulman who was slain in this war-
fare was sure to go to paradise. He
said, also, that the man who was the
first to board a vessel had one slave
over and above his share, and that
when they sprang to the deck of an
enemys ship, every sailor held a dag-
ger in each hand and a third in his
mouth; which usually struck such ter-
ror into the foe that they cried out for
quarter at once. It was the opinion of
this enlightened public functionary that
the Devil aided his countrymen in
these expeditions, for they were almost
always succe.sssful.
It is difficult for us to realize only
eighty-six years after this conv~rsation,
that it could ever have been held;
still less that the American commis-
sioners should have seriously reported
it to Mr. Jay, with an offer of their
best services in trying to borrow the
money in Holland or elsewhere, and in
concluding the several bargains for
peace with the four powers ; least of ~
all, that Mr. Jay should have submitted
the offers of the ambassador to Con-
gress. Congress, in their turn, referred
the matter back to Mr. Jay for his
opinion; which he gave with elabora-
tion and exactness. The substance of
his report was this : We cannot raise
the money, and it would be an injury
View page 414
Yreffcrson A meri~an Minister in France. LOctober,
414
to our credit to attempt to do so and
not succeed.
Mr. Jefferson was obliged, therefore,
to confine his efforts to the mere de-
liverance of the captives by ransom.
This, too, was a matter demanding the
most delicate and cautious handling;
for the price of a captive was regulated
like professional fees, according to the
wealth of the parties interested. Let
those professional pirates but suppose
a government concerned in a slaves
ransom, and the price ran up the scale
to a height most alarming. Jefferson
was obliged to conceal from every one,
and especially from the prisoners, that
he had any authority to treat for their
release; a course that brought upon
him, a kind of censure hard to bear in-
deed. While he was exerting every
faculty in behalf of the captives, he
~vould receive from thenr cruel let-
ters, as he termed them, accusing
him, not merely of neglecting their in-
terests, but of disobeying the positive
orders of Congress to negotiate their
ransom.
He availed himself, at length, of the
services of an order of monks called
The Mathurins, instituted for the pur-
pose of begging alms for the ransom of
Christian captives held to servitude
among the Infidels. Agents of theirs
constantly lived in the Barbary States,
searching out captives, and driving
hard bargains in their purchase. As it
~vas known that the Mathurins could
ransom cheaper than any other agency,
they were frequently employed by gov-
ernments and by families in procuring
the deliverance of captives. The chief
of the order received Mr. Jefferson
with the utmost benignity, and won his
favorable regard by making no allusion
to the religious heresy of the American
captives. He offered to undertake the
purchase, provided the most profound
secrecy were observed, and he thought
the twenty captives would cost Con-
gress ten thousand dollars. Congress
authorized the expenditure. But that
was the time when it overtaxed the
credit of the United States even to
subsist their half a dozen representa
tives in Europe. The moment I
have the money, Mr. Jefferson was
obliged to write, the business shall
be set in motion. But the money was
long in coming. A newgovernment
was forming at Philadelphia. All was
embarrassmefit in the finances and
confusion in the minds of the transi-
tory administration. The poor cap-
tives lingered in slavery year after year,
dependant for daily sustenanc~, for
months at a time, on advances made
by the Spanish ambassador. As late
as 1793, we still find Mr. Jefferson
busied about the same, prisoners in
Algiers.
While doing what he could for the
relief and protection of his own coun-
trymen, he set on foot a nobler scheme
for delivering the vessels of all the mar-
itime nations from the risk of capture
by these pirates. He drew up a plan,
which he submitted to the Diplomatic
Corps at Versailles, for keeping a joint
fleet of six frigates and six smaller ves-
sels in commission, one half of which
should be always cruising against the
corsairs, waging active war, until the
four Barbary States were willing to
conclude treaties of peace without sub-
sidy or price. Portugal, Naples, the
two Sicilies, Venice, Malta, Den mark,
and Sweden, all avowed a willing-
ness to share in the enterprise, pro-
vided France offered no opposition.
Having satisfied the ambassadors on
this point, he felt sure of success if
Congress would authorize him to make
the proposition as from them, and to
supl)ort it by undertaking to contribute
and maintain one of the frigates. But
the power of the Congress of the old
Confederacy, never sufficient, was now
waning fast. What could it ever do
but recommend the States to pay their
share of public expenses? And the
recommendations of *is nature, as
Jefferson remarked, were now so open-
ly neglected by the States, that Con-
gress declined an engagement which
they were conscious they could not
fulfil with punctuality. It was an ex-
cellent scheme. Jefferson had drawn
it up in great detail~ and with so much
View page 415
1872.] Yeffcrson American Minister in France. 415
forethought and good sense, that it
looks on paper as though it might have
answered the purpose.
It fell to the lot of Jefferson to nego-
tiate and sign a convention between
France and the United States which
regulated the consular services of both
nations. Does the reader happen to
know what despotic powers a consul
exercised formerly? He was a terrible
being. He was invested with much of
the sacredness and more than the au-
thority of an ambassador. The laws of
the country in which he lived could not
touch him, could neither confine his
person, nor seize his goods, nor search
his house. Over such of his country-
men as fell into his power he exercised
autocratic sway. If he suspected a pas-
senger of being a deserter or a criminal,,
he could send him home; if he caught
a ship in a contraband act, he could
order it back to its port. When Dr.
Franklin came to arrange the Consular
Service of the two countries, the Count
de Vergennes simply handed him a copy
of the Consular Convention established
between France and the Continental
powers; and this the Doctor accepted,
signed, and sent home for ratification,
supposing it to be ~the correct and
only thing admissible. Congress
received it, as Jefferson reports,
with the deepest concern. They
honored Dr. Franklin, they were at-
tached to the French nation, hut they
could not relinquish fundamental prin-
ciples. The convention was returned
to Jefferson, with new instructions and
powers ; and he succeeded, after a
long and difficult negotiation, in in-
ducing the French government to limit
those excessive consular powers. The
government, he explains, anticipated a
very extensive emigration from France
to the United States, which, under the
old consular system, they could have
controlled; and hence they yielded it
with the utmost reluctance, and inch
by inch. But they yielded it, at last,
with frankness and good-humor, and
the consular system was arranged as
we find it now.
XVhen we tarn from the plenipoten
tiarys public duties to his semi-official
and voluntary labors, it is impossible
not to be stirred to admiration and
gratitude. I do not know what public
man has ever been more solicitous to
use the opportunities which his office
conferred of rendering solid service to
his country, to institutions, to corpora-
tions, to individuals. He kept four
colleges Harvard, Yale, XVilliam and
Mary, and the College of Philadel
-phia advised of the new inventions,
discoveries, conjectures, books, that
seemed important. And what news he
had to send sometimes! It was he
who sent to America the most impor-
tant piece of mechanical intelligence
that pen ever recorded, the success
of the Watt steam-engine~ by means of
which a peck and a half of coal per-
forms as much work as -a Worse in a
day. He - conversed at Paris with
Boulton, who was Watts partner in
the manufacture of the engines, and
learned from his lips this astounding
fact. But it did not antound him in
the least, he mentions it quietly in
the postscript of a long letter; for no
man yet foresaw the revolution in. all
human affairs which that invention
was to effect. He went to see an en-
gine at work in London afterwards,
but he was only allowed to view the
outward parts of the machinery, and
he could not tell whether the mill
was turned by the steam immediate-
ly, or by a stream of water which the
steam pumped up.
We are all familiar with the system
of manufacturing watches, clocks, arms,
and other objects, in parts so exactly
alike that they can be used without
altering or fitting. It was Jefferson
who sent to Congress an account of
this admirable idea, which he derived
from its ingenious inventor, a French
mechanic. He also forwarded speci-
mens of the parts of a musket-lock, by
way of illustration. The system, which
was at first employed only in the man-
ufacture of arms, seems now about to
be applied to all manufactures. He
sent to Virginia particular accounts of
the construction of canals and locks,
View page 416
416 Ycfferson Amcrican Minister in France. [Octo1~er,
and of the devices employed in Europe
for improving and extending the navi-
gation of rivers ; information peculiar-
ly welcome to General Washington and
the companies formed under his aus-
pices to extend the navigation of the
James and the Potomac back to the
mountains.
Virginian as he was, he had a Yan-
kees love for an improved implement
or utensil, and he was always sending
something ingenious in that way to a
friend. He scoured Paris to find one
of the new lamps for Richard Hen-
ry Lee, failed to get a good one, tried
again in London, and succeeded. Mad-
ison was indebted to him for getting
made the most perfect watch the arts
could then produce, price six hundred
francs, and a portable copying-press
of his own contriving, besides a great
number of books for his library. A
stroll among the book-stalls was one
of his favorite afternoon recreations
during the whole of his residence in
Paris, so one of his daughters records,
and he picked up many hundreds of
prizes in the way of rare and curious
books, for Madison, Wythe, Monroe,
and himself.
Europe is still the chief source of
our intellectual nourishment; but when
Jefferson was minister in Paris, it was
the only source. America had con-
tributed nothing to the intellectual re-
sources of man, except Franklin; and
the best of Franklin was not yet acces-
sible. We had no art, little science,
no literature; not a poem, not a book,
riot a picture, not a statue, not an edi-
lice. Jefferson evidently recognized it
as a very important part of his duty
to be a channel of communication by
which the redundant intellectual wealth
of one continent should go to lessen
the poverty of the other. He had in
his note-book a considerable list of
Americans, such as Dr. Franklin,
James Madison, George Wythe, Ed-
mund Randolph, Dr. Stiles, of whom
he was the literary agent in Europe,
for whom he received the volumes of
the Encyclop~dia as they appeared, and
subscribed for copies of any work of
value which was announced for publica-
tion. In advance of international copy-
right, and, indeed, before Noah \Veb-
ster had procured a home copyright for
his spelling-book from a few of the
State legislatures (the beginning of
our copyrighf system), Jefferson aided
two American authors to gain some-
thing from the European sale of their
writings. He got forty guineas for an
early copy of Ramsays History of the
Revolutionary War for translation into
French; and when he found that the
London booksellers did not dare sell
the book, he sent for a hundred copies,
and caused it to be advertised in the
London papers, that persons in Eng-
land wishing the work could have it
from Paris, per dilzgence. Similar ser-
vice he rendered Dr. Gordon, author
of the History of the war to which he
had himself contributed.
Some opportunities whi
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