whom also he forwarded volumes of the Encyclopædia as they appeared. He found time to plan the Capitol at Richmond on the model of the Maison Quarrée; and though his plan was modified by an architect for the worse, yet Fiske Kimball in his valuable book Thomas Jefferson, Architect, declares that "both in form and in principle the Virginia Capitol was the first work of the classical revival in the United States . . . and is a landmark of first importance."

Last but not least we must recall Jefferson's services to American agriculture. He sent seeds of various grasses, acorns of the cork oak, a whole cargo of olive plants, and information about innumerable fruits and vegetables to agricultural societies, scientific farmers, and botanists in Charleston, Philadelphia, and elsewhere. It is said that his gifts of Italian rice to the planters of South Carolina enabled them to produce the best rice in the world. He sent them also seed rice from the Levant, from Egypt, from the East Indies, and from Cochin China, which last he procured from a "young prince of that country lately gone from hence." Was there ever such an Ambassador?

CHAPTER II

THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

"See

J

What crimes it costs to be a moment free.”

- BYRON

EFFERSON's part in the early scenes of the French Rev

olution while reform was still the watchword;

before reason had yielded to passion and order to chaos deserves attention for several reasons. He was an eye witness, a vigilant and competent observer of all that passed from the Assembly of the Notables in February, 1787, to the storming of the Bastille in July, 1789. But he was much more than an observer. In spite of his diplomatic position and a delicate sense of its proprieties he saw what went on from the inside as well as from the outside. Lafayette, the most energetic of the Patriots or Reformers, was his confidential friend, his pupil in the art and theory of government, looking to him at every crisis for guidance and counsel. His own republicanism was unimpeachable. His faith in popular government, his championship of popular rights, his passion for individual liberty were known to all. Yet from the moment when he saw light breaking through the long darkness of oppression, from the moment when he saw the edifice of tyranny beginning to crumble, he was for moderation and piecemeal reform. Those who tried later on to represent Jefferson as a Jacobin, a leveller, a fanatic, on the strength of a few violent sentences and exaggerated phrases

wrenched from his private letters, have strangely distorted his political and public character; for the uncompromising idealist in theory was always moderated and controlled by the realist who sought the attainable, measuring with practiced eye times, seasons, and opportunities. Never were his prescience and sagacity put to a more severe test than in 1788 and 1789, when he might well have been tempted to join the doctrinaires who were for sweeping away all obstacles and encumbrances, all customs and institutions in order to found a new system of government on abstract formulas and natural rights. But he looked at the people. He saw ignorance, superstition, total inexperience of self-government. He felt that the "Illumination" was too partial and too superficial to support a revolution or to maintain a republic with success. His whole influence therefore was on the side of limiting the monarchy, aiming rather at an English than an American constitution. "Be moderate; take what you can get without violence; encourage the King to travel quietly along the road which leads to a tolerable and workable government" this is the sum and substance of his counsels to the Patriots. In his autobiographical Memoir a very careful and even minute account is given of these transactions. "I was," he writes, "in circumstances peculiarly favorable for a knowledge of the truth. Possessing the confidence and intimacy of the leading Patriots, and more than all of the Marquis Fayette, their head and Atlas, who had no secrets from me, I learned with correctness the views and proceedings of that party; while my intercourse with the diplomatic missionaries of Europe at Paris, all of them with the court, and eager in prying into its councils and proceedings, gave me a knowledge of these also. My information was always and immediately com

mitted to writing in letters to Mr. Jay and often to my friends, and a recurrence to these letters now insures me against errors of memory."

Students of the French Revolution in its early stages. who wish to form a judgment upon the conduct and wisdom of the Patriots, and upon the reasons why a mild wellmeaning monarch lost his throne and his head, will find good material in the pages of Jefferson's Memoir and in his correspondence. To follow his letters and narrative in detail is beyond our present scope, and we must be content with a brief sketch of Jefferson's opinions and observations. He dates the commencement of the Reforms, which through bad fortune or bad management ended in revolution, from the decision made towards the end of 1786 to convene an assembly of the Notables, an ancient practice which had not been resorted to since 1626. The reason for this was that Calonne, the Finance Minister, had come to the end of his tether. He had acted on a principle best described in his own words: "A man who requires to borrow must appear rich, and to appear rich he must dazzle by his expenditure." For a time he had been successful; but the credit of the state was now exhausted. Confidence, inflated by profusion and extravagance, had evaporated; so the minister proposed to the King that they should call the notables, restore the Turgot programme, induce the wealthy to bear their fair share of taxation, and so get rid of the deficit. Unfortunately Vergennes, whose influence with the privileged nobles and clergy might have induced them to accept Calonne's projects, died in February, 1787, just before the Notables met; and his successor, Count de Montmorin, lacked the strength, capacity, and reputation to carry sweeping measures of reform.

In his account of the more remote causes of the French Revolution, Jefferson lays stress upon American influences. Celebrated writers, he says, had already sketched good principles on the subject of government; but it was the American Revolution that first awakened the thinking part of the French nation from the sleep of despotism. The officers who returned from America were mostly young men comparatively free from the shackles of habit and prejudice, and therefore open to suggestions of common sense and to notions of common rights. They returned full of new ideas and impressions, which were soon disseminated in the press. "Conversation assumed new freedom; politics became the theme of all societies, male and female; and a very extensive and zealous party was formed, which acquired the appellation of the Patriotic Party, who sensible of the abusive government under which they lived - sighed for occasions of reforming it. This party comprehended all the honesty of the kingdom, sufficiently at leisure to think the men of letters, the easy bourgeois, the young nobility, partly from reflection, partly from mode." It happened that the dissipations of the Queen and court, the abuses of the Pension List, and a dilapidated administration had exhausted the public credit. To impose new taxes by the authority of the King was known to be impossible, and the only resource therefore was to appeal to the nation which might be induced to grant money to the government if the King and his ministers would consent to the Reforms so long overdue.

Calonne's financial character and accounts would not bear scrutiny. Villedeuil took his place, and Lomenie de Brienne, Archbishop of Toulouse, was appointed chief Minister. On his return from Holland in April, 1787, Jefferson found Paris in high ferment. The Archbishop was