Mr. Cutting does full justice to the honorable dispositions of the legislature of South Carolina towards their foreign creditors.  None have yet come into the propositions sent to me, except the Van Staphorsts.

The clanger of famine here has not ceased with a plentiful harvest.  A new and unskilful administration has not yet got into the way of bringing regular supplies to the capital.  We are in danger of hourly insurrection for the want of bread; and an insurrection once begun for that cause, may associate itself with those discontented for other causes, and produce incalculable events.  But if the want of bread does not produce a commencement of disorder, I am of opinion the other discontents will be stifled, and a good and free constitution established without opposition.  In fact, the mass of the people, the clergy, and army, (excepting the higher orders of the three bodies) are in as compact an union as can be.  The National Assembly have decided that their executive shall be hereditary, and shall have a suspensive negative on the laws; that the legislature shall be of one House, annual in its sessions and biennial in its elections.  Their declaration of rights will give you their other general views.  I am just on my departure for Virginia, where the arrangement of my affairs will detain me the winter; after which (say in February) I shall go on to New York, to embark from some northern port for France.  In the mean while and always, I am with great and sincere esteem, Dear Sir, your friend and servant.

Th:  Jefferson.

LETTER XV.—­TO JOHN JAY, September 19, 1789

TO JOHN JAY.

Paris, September 19, 1789.

Sir,

I had the honor of addressing you on the 30th of the last month.  Since that, I have taken the liberty of consigning to you a box of officers’ muskets, containing half a dozen, made by the person and on the plan which I mentioned to you in a letter which I cannot turn to at this moment, but I think it was of the year 1785.  A more particular account of them you will find in the enclosed copy of a letter which I have written to General Knox.  The box is marked T. J. No. 36, is gone to Havre, and will be forwarded to you by the first vessel bound to New York, by Mr. Nathaniel Cutting, an American gentleman establishing himself there.

Recalling to your mind the account I gave you of the number and size of ships fitted out by the English last year, for the northern whale-fishery, and comparing with it what they have fitted out this year, for the same fishery, the comparison will stand thus: 

     Years.  Vessels.  Tons.  Men.

     1788. 255 75,436 10,710

     1789. 178 51,473 7,476

     Difference. 77 23,963 3,234

By which you will perceive, that they have lost a third of that fishery in one year, which I think almost entirely, if not quite, ascribable to the shutting the French ports against their oil.  I have no account of their southern fishery of the present year.