God
ever bless you, and preserve you in life and health.
Th: Jefferson.
LETTER XCIX.--TO JOHN ADAMS, January 21, 1812
TO JOHN ADAMS.
Monticello, January 21, 1812.
Dear Sir,
I thank you beforehand (for they are not yet arrived) for the specimens
of homespun you have been so kind as to forward me by post. I doubt not
their excellence, knowing how far you are advanced in these things
in your quarter. Here we do little in the fine way, but in coarse
and middling goods a great deal. Every family in the country is a
manufactory within itself, and is very generally able to make within
itself all the stouter and middling stuffs for its own clothing and
household use. We consider a sheep for every person in the family as
sufficient to clothe it, in addition to the cotton, hemp, and flax,
which we raise ourselves. For fine stuff we shall depend on your
northern manufactories. Of these, that is to say, of company
establishments, we have none. We use little machinery. The spinning
jenny, and loom with the flying shuttle, can be managed in a family; but
nothing more complicated. The economy and thriftiness resulting from
our household manufactures are such that they will never again be laid
aside; and nothing more salutary for us has ever happened than the
British obstructions to our demands for their manufactures. Restore free
intercourse when they will, their commerce with us will have totally
changed its form, and the articles we shall in future want from them
will not exceed their own consumption of our produce.
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