the young lady to defer marriage until he should have spent several years abroad. This diplomatic appointment would enable him to realize his dream in an almost ideal way. He debated long and anxiously whether he should go or not. After three days of waiting, the messenger who brought word of his appointment returned to Congress with this answer: "It would argue great insensibility in me could I receive with indifference so confidential an appointment from your body. My thanks are a poor return for the partiality they have been pleased to entertain for me. No cares for my own person nor yet for my private affairs would have induced one moment's hesitation to accept the charge. But circumstances very peculiar to the situation of my family, such as neither permit me to leave or to carry it, compel me to ask leave to decline a service so honorable, and at the same time so important to the American cause."

Jefferson took his seat in the first republican House of Delegates that met in Virginia on the first day of the session, and entered at once upon a labor of reform that was to prove the greatest work of his life, and that revolutionized the public and private law of the State. The code of Virginia, when he and Wythe and Madison took hold of it to make it reasonable and human and just, was a strange pot-pourri of tyranny, cruelty' and bigotry. Its penal code, like that of the mother country before the days of Bentham, was as unscientific as it was severe. At every county seat there was a pillory, a whipping-post, and stocks. A general law commanded the erection of these instruments of torture in the yards of all court-houses. The duckingstool for babbling women could be added if such was the local option. The laws in force relating to religion were as intolerant as the age in which they had been passed-the age of the wrongly named "Toleration Act." To call in question the Trinity or to be a deist was punishable with imprisonment without bail. To be a Catholic debarred a man of the right to teach, to own a horse or a gun, or to give testimony in a court of law. A Protestant minister not of the Anglican faith could be legally drummed out of the country. The right of voting

was limited to those owning twenty-five acres of land with a house thereon, or one hundred acres without a house. In an incorporated city a man could not vote unless he was the owner of land within the city limits. Harsh naturalization laws discouraged immigration. The law of entail and primogeniture flourished as in England.

Jefferson's first attack upon the old order of things was directed against a class to which he himself belonged-the aristocracy. Much of the best land of Virginia descended from oldest son to oldest son by way of entail. Such land was not liable for debt, could not be bequeathed by will, could not be alienated even with the consent of the owner without special act of the legislature. Such a system of land tenure was opposed to one of Jefferson's pet theories—to wit, that one generation has no right to bind succeeding generations; that the usufruct of the earth belongs to the living, not to the dead. Entails, he said, were "contrary to good policy, tended to deceive honest traders who gave credit on the visible possession of such estates, discouraged the holder from improving his land, and sometimes did injury to the morals of youth by rendering them independent of and disobedient to their par ents." "To annul this privilege, and, instead of an aristocracy of wealth, of more harm and danger than benefit to society, to make an opening for the aristocracy of virtue and talent," Jefferson introduced his bill for the abolition of entails. It met, of course, with the fiercest resistance. Strenuous efforts were made to amend the bill in such a way as to break its force. But Jefferson stood firm, and the bill passed substantially in the form in which he desired. Tenure by fee tail was abolished; lands and slaves could no longer be prevented by law from falling into the hands of their rightful owners. There was now but one prop for the landed aristocracy. That was the principle of primogeniture, and through the efforts of Jefferson that, too, was soon removed. The blow dealt by these reforms fell heavily on the old families and the recoil upon Jefferson was severe. The great land holders of the State were henceforth his bitter

enemies, and their children and children's children became ← enemies of his memory.

Jefferson's next measure was perhaps as important in its far reaching effects as the one just mentioned. He introduced into the legislature and carried through it a bill for the naturalization of foreigners. The conditions of becoming a citizen were made easier than any other government perhaps had ever before dared to make them. The alien was simply to show a residence of two years within the State, declare his intentions of remaining in the State, and give assurances of his good faith and loyalty. Minors, the children of naturalized parents, were admitted to citizenship without legal formalities, as were minors who came to America without their parents. The extremely liberal features of this bill were embodied by Congress in its first naturalization law, and incorporated in all subsequent legislations respecting citizenship. Notwithstanding the war and the unfavorable naturalization laws, immigrants were coming into Virginia at this time by thousands and it was not an unwise political move upon the part of Jefferson to come forward as the champion of the strangers' rights in their new home. It is not suggested, however, that he was induced by ulterior political reasons to introduce the bill. Easy naturalization* and easy expatriation were a part of his general theory of easy govern

ment.

The next act of Jefferson in the legislature was one that he regarded—and students of politics will agree with him-as being of more importance than the Declaration of Independence. He brought up the subject of religious liberty, attempting to secure the enactment of the following just and comprehensive law: "No man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, ministry, or place whatsoever; nor shall be enforced, restrained, molested, or burdened in his body or goods; nor shall otherwise suffer on account of his religious opinions or belief; but all men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinion in matters of religion; and

*See Naturalization, page 314. †See Expatriation, page 212.

the same shall in no wise diminish, enlarge or affect their civil capacities."

The advocacy of this measure brought on the bitterest contest in which Jefferson was ever engaged. It was the beginning of his long warfare with the clergy. In terms peculiar to theological combat he was denounced as the enemy of religion and as an atheist. The clergy at first were successful. The bill failed to pass. Some of its provisions, however, were acceded to by the legislature. The law declaring unorthodox opinion to be criminal was repealed, attendance at church was made voluntary and dissenters were allowed to withhold their contributions from the Episcopal Church. These were substantial gains, but they were far from religious liberty as aimed at by Jefferson. For three years he fought for the complete separation of Church and State, and then, being called to a higher station, he left his plans in the hands of his able and indispensable coadjutors, George Wythe, and his young disciple, James Madison. In 1786, after a struggle of ten years, Jefferson had the supreme satisfaction of seeing his bill pass without material change.

He did not over-estimate the importance of his efforts in behalf of religious liberty.* If the Republic of the United States is new in any important sense, if it has introduced anything really novel among human institutions, that new thing is the separation of Church and State. The world has had its democracies, its republics, its governments with a trinal division of powers, its representative systems, but it has never before known such a thing as a free state existing side by side with a free church, and along with this an almost perfect freedom of religious opinion. This is what Virginia needed and what the United States needed, and Jefferson saw the need more clearly than any man of his time.

The man who wrote the words "all men are created equal" could not but be expected to chafe under the institutions of slavery. Jefferson was an abolitionist in theory, but practical abolition presented insuperable objections to his mind. His

*See Religion, page 357.

plan was to bring about the freedom of the negroes by gradual emancipation.* He drew up and offered a bill preventing the further importation of slaves by sea or land. This bill, which readily passed, was intended as the first of a series that should remove every vestige of slavery from the State. His scheme, briefly stated, was to regard as lawfully free all slave-born children, to educate them at the public expense, and when they were grown, to transplant them to some distant and isolated colony where they might enjoy under a mild protectorate the privileges of self-government. He did not believe that the negro could live as a free man side by side with the white man, but he did most sincerely believe that he ought to be free. And he believed that he would be free. "Nothing," he said, "was more clearly written in the book of fate." Very little nevertheless, came of his elaborate scheme for emancipation. "The public mind would not bear it," he said; and it does not appear that after the Revolutionary period he was ever very industrious in his efforts to prepare the public mind to bear it.

A bill that was dearer even to Jefferson's heart than that for the freedom of the slaves was one for the diffusion of knowledge. He saw that a democracy must rest upon the enlightenment of the masses and he brought forward his system; free elementary schools for all the children of the State for a term of three years; high schools at convenient places for superior and ambitious youths; a State university at the top. Many States of the Union have adopted this system, but Virginia was not prepared for it when Jefferson proposed it. The measure failed in the legislature more completely than any of its author's cherished reforms.

Early in 1777 Jefferson proposed to the legislature a complete revision of the laws of Virginia. The proposal was adopted, and he was appointed chairman of the revising committee. His colleagues on the committee were Edmund Pendleton, George Wythe, George Mason and T. L. Lee.

*See Emancipation, page 201.

†See Slavery, page 382.

#See Education, page 194.