The hurry in which I wrote my letter to Mr. Madison, which is in your hands, occasioned an inattention to the difference between generations succeeding each other at fixed epochs, and generations renewed daily and hourly.  It is true that in the former case, the generation when at twenty-one years of age, may contract a debt for thirty-four yours, because a majority of them will live so long.  But a generation consisting of all ages, and which legislates by all its members above the age of twenty-one years, cannot contract for so long a time, because their majority will be dead much sooner.  Buffon gives us a table of twenty-three thousand nine hundred and ninety-four deaths, stating the ages at which they happened.  To draw from these the result I have occasion for, I suppose a society in which twenty-three thousand nine hundred and ninety-four persons are born every year, and live to the age stated in Buffon’s table.  Then, the following inferences may be drawn.  Such a society will consist constantly of six hundred and seventeen thousand seven hundred and three persons, of all ages.  Of those living at any one instant of time, one half will be dead in twenty-four years and eight months.  In such a society, ten thousand six hundred and seventy-five will arrive every year at the age of twenty-one years complete.  It will constantly have three hundred and forty-eight thousand four hundred and seventeen persons of all ages above twenty-one years, and the half of those of twenty-one years and upwards living at any one instant of time, will be dead in eighteen years and eight months, or say nineteen years.

Then, the contracts, constitutions, and laws of every such society become void in nineteen years from their date.

LETTER XIII.—­TO GENERAL KNOX, September 12,1789

TO GENERAL KNOX.

Paris, September 12,1789.

Sir,

In a letter which I had the honor of writing to the Secretary for Foreign Affairs, some three or four years ago, I informed him that a workman here had undertaken by the help of moulds and other means, to make all the parts of the musket so exactly alike, as that, mixed together promiscuously, any one part should serve equally for every musket.  He had then succeeded as to the lock both of the officer’s fusil and the soldier’s musket.  From a promiscuous collection of parts, I put together myself half a dozen locks, taking the first pieces which came to hand.  He has now completed the barrel, stock, and mounting of the officer’s fusil, and is proceeding on those of the soldier’s musket.  This method of forming the fire-arm appears to me so advantageous when repairs become necessary, that I thought it my duty not only to mention to you the progress of this artist, but to purchase and send you half a dozen of his officer’s fusils.  They are packed in a box marked T. J. No. 36, and are sent to Havre, from whence they shall be forwarded to New