The Correspondence of Thomas Jefferson
By Subject
RENT / AGRICULURAL / FRANCE
I am constantly roving about, to see what I have never seen before,
and shall never see again. In the great cities, I go to see what
travellers think alone worthy of being seen; but I make a job of it,
and generally gulp it all down in a day. On the other hand, I am never
satiated with rambling through the fields and farms, examining the
culture and cultivators, with a degree of curiosity which makes some
take me to be a fool, and others to be much wiser than I am. I have
been pleased to find among the people a less degree of physical misery
than I had expected. They are generally well clothed, and have a
plenty of food, not animal indeed, but vegetable, which is as
wholesome. Perhaps they are over-worked, the excess of the rent
required by the landlord obliging them to too many hours of labor in
order to produce that, and wherewith to feed and clothe themselves. .
. .It will be a great comfort to you, to know, from your own
inspection, the condition of all the provinces of your. own country,
and it will be interesting to them at some future day, to be known to
you. This is, perhaps, the only moment of your life in which you can
acquire that knowledge. And to do it most effectually, you must be
absolutely incognito, you must ferret the people out of their hovels
as I have done, look into their kettles, eat their bread, loll on
their beds under pretence of resting yourself, but in fact, to find if
they are soft. You will feel a sublime pleasure in the course of this
investigation, and a sublimer one hereafter, when you shall be able to
apply your knowledge to the softening of their beds, or the throwing a
morsel of meat into their kettle of vegetables.
to Marquis de Lafayette, 11 April 1787
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