York.  The barrels and furniture are to their stocks, to prevent the warping of the wood.  The locks are in pieces.  You will find with them tools for putting them together, also a single specimen of his soldier’s lock.  He formerly told me, and still tells me, that he shall be able, after a while, to furnish them cheaper than the common musket of the same quality, but at first, they will not be so cheap in the first cost, though the economy in repairs will make them so in the end.  He cannot tell me exactly, at what price he can furnish them.  Nor will he be able, immediately, to furnish any great quantity annually; but with the aid of the government, he expects to enlarge his establishment greatly.  If the situation of the finances of this country should oblige the government to abandon him, he would prefer removing with all his people and implements to America, if we should desire to establish such a manufacture, and he would expect our government to take all his implements, on their own account, at what they have cost him.  He talked of about three thousand guineas.  I trouble you with these details, and with the samples, 1.  That you may give the idea of such an improvement to our own workmen, if you think it might answer any good end. 2.  That all the arms he shall have for sale, may be engaged for our government, if he continues here, and you think it important to engage them. 3.  That you may consider, and do me the honor of communicating your determination, whether in the event of his establishment being abandoned by this government, it might be thought worth while to transfer it to the United States, on conditions somewhat like those he has talked of.

I have the honor to be, with sentiments of the most perfect esteem and respect, Sir, your most obedient, humble servant,

Th:  Jefferson.

LETTER XIV.—­TO E. RUTLEDGE, September 18, 1789

TO E. RUTLEDGE.

Paris, September 18, 1789.

Dear Sir,

I have duly received your favor by Mr. Cutting, enclosing the paper from Doctor Trumbull, for which I am very thankful.  The conjecture that inhabitants may have been carried from the coast of Africa to that of America, by the trade winds, is possible enough; and its probability would be greatly strengthened by ascertaining a similarity of language, which I consider as the strongest of all proofs of consanguinity among nations.  Still a question would remain between the red men of the eastern and western sides of the Atlantic, which is the stock, and which the shoot.  If a fact be true, which I suspect to be true, that there is a much greater number of radical languages among those of America than among those of the other hemisphere, it would be a proof of superior antiquity, which I can conceive no arguments strong enough to overrule.