momentum, into action; and, although the whole of the other States were known to be in favor of the measure, yet the organization of this little selfish minority enabled it to overrule the Union. What could the unwieldy counties of the Middle, the South, and the West do? Call a county meeting; and the drunken loungers at and about the court-houses would have collected, the distances being too great for the good people and the industrious generally to attend. As Cato, then, concluded every speech with the words, Carthago delendum est, so do I every opinion with the injunction, DIVIDE THE COUNTIES INTO WARDS."

But the embargo lasted to the end of his term. To the end of his days, he believed, that, if it had been faithfully observed by the whole people, it would have saved the country the war of 1812, and procured, what that war did not procure, an explicit renunciation of the claim to board and search. The two great powers of Europe gave it their approval,- Napoleon Bonaparte and the Edinburgh Review. There was then living in a secluded village of Massachusetts a marvellous boy of thirteen, famous in his county for the melodious verses which he had been writing for four or five years past, some of which had been published in the county paper, and one had been spoken with applause at a school exhibition. This wonderful boy, hearing dreadful things said on every side of the embargo, wrote a poem on the subject, which was published in Boston, in 1808, with this title, "The Embargo; or, Sketches of the Times. A Satire. Together with the Spanish Revolution and other Poems. By WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT." That the father of Bryant, and the other ruling spirits of New England, should have refused their support to the embargo, is almost of itself enough to show that the system was too far in advance of the time to be long effectual. But it answered the purpose of delay; which, in the peculiar circumstances, was an immense advantage. "If," said the president once, "we can delay but for a few years the necessity of vindicating the laws of nature on the ocean, we shall be the more sure of doing it with effect. The day is within my time as well as yours, when we may say by what laws other nations shall treat us on the sea. And we will say it."

How many things were settled, how many happily begun, during these eight years! At the president's recommendation, the term of residence before naturalization was restored from fourteen years to

five. He tried, but failed, to procure a recession of the District of Columbia to Virginia and Maryland, a district which the government needs as much as it does Terra del Fuego. The policy was settled, so far as brilliant precedent could settle it, of paying off public debt with all the rapidity that the country can reasonably bear. A great public debt exaggerates the importance, the magnitude, and the complexity of government; and it is a Jeffersonian principle, that government should be as small a thing as it can be without sacrifice of its desirable efficiency. During these eight years, the ocean ports were fortified to a degree, that, at least, enabled the government to slam the door in an enemy's face, and keep it shut during the next war; a successful contest was carried on in a distant sea; the militia were re-organized and re-armed; the western posts were widely extended; taxes were sensibly diminished; thirty-three millions of the old debt were extinguished; and the only pecuniary embarrassment the administration ever experienced was a surplus, always increasing, for which there was no suitable or legal outlet. Every act and every word of the administration was a proclamation of welcome to all the world! All the world came thronging to these western shores, bringing with them power, wealth, hope, resolve, and all the stuff, material and immaterial, of which empire is made. When Jefferson came into power in 1801, that man was a wonder to his friends who had seen the nearest of the western lakes; when Jefferson retired in 1809, Astor was busy with his expedition to found a town on the Pacific coast.

The general policy of the government with regard to the Indians. was then established as it has since remained.. Jefferson had more Indian business than all the other presidents put together. To "extinguish" their titles by fair purchase, to introduce among them the arts of civilization, to accustom them to depend more upon agriculture and less upon hunting, and to push them gently back over the Mississippi in advance of the coming pioneer, these were among the objects which he desired most to promote. He was not sanguine of speedy results. That is an amusing passage in his second Inaugural, in which he explains the hinderances in the way of the Indian's improvement, and, at the same time, gives some of his white brethren a box on the ear. Habit, custom, pride, prejudice, and ignorance, he says, all hold the Indians back; but, in addition to these internal foes to progress, there were among them

"crafty and interested individuals who feel themselves something in the present order of things, and fear to become nothing in any other." These were the medicine-men; who "inculcate a sanctimonious reverence for the customs of their ancestors; that whatsoever they did, must be done through all time; that reason is a false guide, and to advance under its counsel, in their physical, moral, or political condition, is perilous innovation; that their duty is to remain as their Creator made them, ignorance being safety, and knowledge full of danger. In short, my friends, among them is seen the action and counteraction of good sense and bigotry: they, too, have their anti-philosophers, who find an interest in keeping things in their present state, who dread reformation, and exert all their faculties to maintain the ascendency of habit over the duty of improving our reason and obeying its mandates." This is an exact description of the arts and arguments employed, four or five years after, by the Prophet, brother of Tecumseh, in rousing the Ohio tribes to war upon the white men.

CHAPTER LXVII.

CORRESPONDENCE WITH MRS. ADAMS.

THE last two years of Mr. Jefferson's second term were laborious and troubled; and the old longing for home, rest, and tranquillity gained full possession of him. The precedent of retiring at the end of eight years had not then acquired the force of law, and he could unquestionably have been elected to a third term. But eight years of the presidency is enough for any man. General Washington himself in eight years exhausted his power to render good service in that office; and Jefferson never for a moment had a thought but to retire at the end of his second term. During his presidency, one sad, irreparable breach had been made in the circle upon which he relied for the solace of his old age. His younger daughter, Maria, Mrs. Eppes, died at Monticello, in 1804. He stood then upon the pinnacle of his career. Triumph of every kind had followed his endeavors, and a great majority of the people gave him heartfelt approval. It was then that this blow fell. "My loss," he wrote to his oldest friend, John Page, "is great indeed. Others may lose of their abundance; but I, of my want, have lost even the half of all I had."

Among the letters of condolence which reached him on this occasion was one from Mrs. Adams, which led to the most interesting correspondence of these years. The president, without knowing it, had given the deepest offence to this gifted lady; but when the intelligence reached her secluded home on the Massachusetts coast, of the death of the lovely girl whom she had taken to her arms in London eighteen years before, and had cherished ever since as a friend, her tenderness proved stronger than her resentment, and she was moved irresistibly to write to the bereaved father. She told him she would have done so before if he had been only the private

inhabitant of Monticello; but reasons of various kinds had withheld her pen, until the powerful feelings of her heart burst through the restraint. She recalled the incidents of her acquaintance with his daughter; and, after distantly alluding to the recent estrangement between the families, expressed "the sincere and ardent wish," that he might find comfort and consolation in this day of his sorrow and affliction. This, she said, was the desire of "her who once took pleasure in subscribing herself his friend."

In his acknowledgment, after due recognition of her goodness to his daughter and to himself, he frankly told her what had given him personal offence in the conduct of Mr. Adams: "I can say with truth, that one act of Mr. Adams's life, and one only, ever gave me a moment's personal displeasure. I did consider his last appointments to office as personally unkind. They were from among my most ardent political enemies, from whom no faithful co-operation could ever be expected, and laid me under the embarrassment of acting through men whose views were to defeat mine, or to encounter the odium of putting others in their places. It seems but common justice to leave a successor free to act by instruments of his own choice. If my respect for him did not permit me to ascribe the whole blame to the influence of others, it left something for friendship to forgive; and after brooding over it for some little time, and not always resisting the expression of it, I forgave it cordially, and returned to the same state of esteem and respect for him which had so long subsisted.”

She replied with great spirit and ability, without a whisper to her husband of what was transpiring. General Washington, she said, had left no vacancies for his successor to fill; and she was sure that Mr. Adams, in the last appointments, had meant no disrespect to his successor; nor, indeed, had it been certain, until after many of them had been made, that Mr. Jefferson was to be his successor. That point disposed of, she opened her heart as to the causes of offence which Mr. Adams had against him. One of these was his remission of the fine of Callender, condemned under the Sedition Law for a libel upon President Adams. Besides: "One of the first acts of your administration was to liberate a wretch who was suffering the just punishment of his crimes for publishing the basest libel, the lowest and vilest slander, which malice could invent or calumny exhibit, against the character and reputation of your predecessor; of