Page:Transportation and colonization.djvu/49

 CHAPTER III.

is no longer possible to ascertain with any degree of accuracy the number of convicts transported to the West Indies and the American colonies previous to the war of American independence. During the publication of the Encyclopedie Methodique, in the year 1785, the article Etats Unis was submitted by its author, M. Meusnier [sic], to President Jefferson, who was then American minister plenipotentiary at the court of France; and, in reference to this class of persons, to which the French editor had alluded as one of the three classes that peopled America, Jefferson supplied him with the following remarks:—