the country, that probably it will never get the shape originally intended till it is recast. At the moment when I am writing these words, the country is striving to rid itself of that miserable fag-end of one of Hamilton's ridiculous ingenuities, the electoral colleges. Perhaps in 1887, the hundredth anniversary of the constitutional convention, the country may be ripe for a second constitutional convention, which will thoroughly Jeffersonize the general government; making it the simple, strong, and strictly limited agency which the people meant it should be, and desire that it shall be. Why have a written constitution if it is not to be religiously complied with? How safe, how wise, how adapted to our limited human capacity, the simple theory of the general government which Jefferson and Madison defended?

Called to administer the government, we find Jefferson still attended by that strange, and, I may, say startling good luck, that pursued him from the cradle to the grave. A general peace promptly followed his inauguration; and when that peace was broken (an event that brought woe upon the rest of Christendom), it enabled him to add to his country the most valuable acquisition which it was possible for it to receive. While Europe shuddered to hear the muttering of the coming storm, three gentlemen in Paris quietly arranged the terms on which the United States were to possess the mouths of the Mississippi, and an empire which the Mississippi drained. But I venture again to affirm, that, much as he was favored by fortune, his merit was equal to his fortune. He rose to every opportunity, and improved to the very uttermost all his chances. Since civil government was founded, never was a government administered with such strict, such single-hearted, such noble-minded, such wise fidelity. Ages hence, when all the nations will be republican and federated, the administration of Jefferson, Madison, Gallatin, and Dearborn will be loved and venerated as the incomparable model, to be aimed at always if never reached.

There was of course some shade to this bright picture of human excellence. Jefferson, too, was a limited and defective person, like all the rest of our race. The first rank among mortals is justly assigned to the discoverers of truth, and the second to those who heroically render new truth available for human use. Toscanelli, who taught Columbus that he could reach the East by sailing to the West, represents the first order of men; and the heroic mariner who

directed his prow westward, and sailed dauntless till a new world had been reached, is the type of the second. Of our own generation, Charles Darwin will probably be regarded by posterity as our first man of the first order, and John Brown as a specimen of the second. It cannot be said that Jefferson belonged to either of these illustrious classes. Nor can we claim for him a place among men of genius, the pets and darlings of mankind, who cheer, amuse, soften, and exalt the care-laden sons of men.

Our faults appear to spring from the same root as our excellencies. A man of very quick, warm sympathies, cool intellect, and good temper is not the person to pioneer a conviction. He is apt to have so clear a sense of the necessity which antagonists are under to think just as they do think, that he forbears to assail their opinions. Some readers of Jefferson's letters will feel, that, occasionally, he carried his tolerance of other people's sentiments to a point beyond what courtesy demanded. In writing, for example, to Isaac Story, one of the few New England clergymen who sided with him in politics, he goodnaturedly used expressions that seemed to imply a belief which we know he repudiated. This respectable clergyman had sent him some speculations with regard to the transmigration of souls, and improved the occasion to compliment him upon his inaugural address. Jefferson replied, "The laws of nature have withheld from us the means of physical knowledge of the country of spirits; and revelation has, for reasons unknown to us, chosen to leave us in the dark as we were. When I was young, I was fond of the speculations which seemed to promise some insight into that hidden country; but observing at length that they left me in the same ignorance in which they had found me, I have for very many years ceased to read or think concerning them, and have reposed my head on that pillow of ignorance which a benevolent Creator has made so soft for us, knowing how much we should be forced to use it. I have thought it better, by nourishing the good passions and controlling the bad, to merit an inheritance in a state of being of which I can know so little, and to trust for the future to Him who has been so good for the past.”

And again, at the close of this kind and wise letter, he uses similar language.

"I am happy in your approbation of the principles I avowed on entering on the government. Ingenious minds, availing themselves of the imperfection of language, have tortured the expressions out

of their plain meaning, in order to infer departures from them in practice. If revealed language has not been able to guard itself against misinterpretations, I could not expect it."

The complaisance to a clerical friend that prompted the use of the words revelation and revealed seems to me to have been excessive and needless. Nothing could have been more absurd than for him to obtrude opposition to a belief which so many of the virtuous people of Christendom then cherished; but it was not necessary to lend it support. Very few such instances, however, occur in the nine volumes of his writings which we possess, and none occur in his letters to persons whom he might be supposed interested to conciliThe belief implied in the use of the word revelation is one to which no intelligent person can be indifferent; because, if it is true, it is the most important of all beliefs, and, if false, it is the most obstructive and misleading.

ate.

I cannot agree with those who think he ought, being an abolitionist, to have emancipated his slaves. There are virtuous and heroic acts, which, when they are done, we passionately admire, but which, at the same time, we have no right to demand or expect. Few persons acquainted with the history and character of John Brown could avoid having some sense of the real sublimity of his conduct; but who can pretend that human affairs admit of being generally conducted on the John Brown principle? If Jefferson, on coming to a clear sense of the iniquity of slavery and the impossibility of inducing Virginia to abolish it, had set his slaves free, and led them forth with his daughter Martha holding his right hand, Maria the left, and the slaves marching behind with their bundles and their children, and he had conducted them to a free territory, and established them as freemen and freeholders, standing by them till they were able to take care of themselves, he would have done one of those high, heroic deeds which contemporaries call Quixotic, and posterity sublime. And if, while the young patriarch was on the march, a mob of white trash had set upon him and killed him, contemporaries might have said it served him right, and centuries hence his name might serve as the pretext for a new religion, and nations contend for the possession of his tomb. But no one has a right to censure him for not having done this, except a person who has given proof, that, in similar circumstances, he would have done it. Such individuals and there are a few such in each generation-seldom censure any one.

We must admit, then, that he belonged neither to the first nor to the second order of human beings. He was not the discoverer of the truths he loved, nor did he promote their acceptance by any of the heroic methods. He did not always avoid the errors to which his cast of character rendered him peculiarly liable.

But the sum of his merit was exceedingly great. He was an almost perfect citizen. He loved and believed in his species. Few men have ever been better educated than he, or practised more habitually the methods of an educated person. He defended the honor of the human intellect when its natural foes throughout Christendom conspired to revile, degrade, and crush it. After Washington, he was the best chief magistrate of a republic the world has ever known; and, in some material particulars, he surpassed Washington. He keenly enjoyed his existence, and made it a benefaction to his kind.

INDEX.