The Correspondence of Thomas Jefferson
By Subject
EUROPEAN AFFAIRS
Behold me at length on the vaunted scene of Europe! It is not
necessary for your information, that I should enter into details
concerning it. But you are, perhaps, curious to know how this new
scene has struck a savage of the mountains of America. Not
advantageously, I assure you. I find the general fate of humanity here
most deplorable. The truth of Voltaire's observation, offers itself
perpetually, that every man here must be either the hammer or the
anvil. It is a true picture of that country to which they say we shall
pass hereafter, and where we are to see God and his angels in
splendor, and crowds of the damned trampled under their feet. While
the great mass of the people are thus suffering under physical and
moral oppression, I have endeavored to examine more nearly the
condition of the great, to appreciate the true value of the
circumstances in their situation, which dazzle the bulk of spectators,
and, especially, to compare it with that degree of happiness which is
enjoyed in America, by every class of people. Intrigues of love occupy
the younger, and those of ambition, the elder part of the great.
Conjugal love having no existence among them, domestic happiness, of
which that is the basis, is utterly unknown. In lieu of this, are
substituted pursuits which nourish and invigorate all our bad
passions, and which offer only moments of ecstasy, amidst days and
months of restlessness and torment. Much, very much inferior, this, to
the tranquil, permanent felicity with which domestic society in
America blesses most of its inhabitants; leaving them to follow
steadily those pursuits which health and reason approve, and rendering
truly delicious the intervals of those pursuits.
In science, the mass of the people are two centuries behind ours;
their literati, half a dozen years before us. Books, really good,
acquire just reputation in that time, and so become known to us, and
communicate to us all their advances in knowledge. Is not this delay
compensated, by our being placed out of the reach of that swarm of
nonsensical publications which issues daily from a thousand presses,
and perishes almost in issuing? With respect to what are termed polite
manners, without sacrificing too much the sincerity of language, I
would wish my countrymen to adopt just so much of European politeness,
as to be ready to make all those little sacrifices of self, which
really render European manners amiable, and relieve society from the
disagreeable scenes to which rudeness often subjects it. Here, it
seems that a man might pass a life without encountering a single
rudeness. In the pleasures of the table, they are far before us,
because, with good taste they unite temperance. They do not terminate
the most sociable meals by transforming themselves into brutes. I have
never yet seen a man drunk in France, even among the lowest of the
people. Were I to proceed to tell you how much I enjoy their
architecture, sculpture, painting, music, I should want words. It is
in these arts they shine. The last of them, particularly, is an
enjoyment, the deprivation of which with us, cannot be calculated. I
am almost ready to say it is the only thing which from my heart I envy
them, and which, in spite of all the authority of the Decalogue, I do
covet.
to Mr. Bellini, 30 September 1785
|