this melted off their majority, and dismayed the heroes of the party. The Senate alone remained undismayed to the last. Firm to their purpose, regardless of public opinion, and more disposed to coerce than to court it, not a man of the majority gave way in the least."

Mr. Jefferson, in answer to a letter received from Mr. Gideon Granger of Connecticut, afterwards post-master general, speaks of the inconveniences which would arise if the New England states should continue to support the principles of the federalists, though a majority in Congress should entertain different sentiments; and he presents some strong views of the true principles of our government, which were well calculated to produce effect among the soberminded in that part of the Union. "Our country," he says, "is too large to have all its affairs directed by a single government. Public servants at such a distance, and from under the eye of their constituents, must, from the circumstance of distance, be unable to administer and overlook all the details necessary for the good government of the citizens, and the same circumstance, by rendering detection impossible to their constituents, will invite the public servants to corruption, plunder, and waste. And I verily believe, that if the principle were to prevail, of a common law being in force in the United States, (which principle possesses the general government at once of all the powers of the state governments, and reduces us to a single consolidated government,) it would become the most corrupt government on the carth. You have seen the practices by which the public servants have been enabled to cover their conduct, or, where that could not be done, delusions by which they have varnished it for the eye of their constituents. What an augmentation of the field for jobbing, speculating, plundering, office-building and office-hunting would be produced by an assumption of all the state powers into the hands of the

general government." To the following rule of action in our civil affairs, most reflecting minds will yield assent:'Let the general government be reduced to foreign concerns only, and let our affairs be disentangled from those of all other nations, except as to commerce, which the merchants will manage the better, the more they are left free to manage for themselves, and our general government may be reduced to a very simple organization, and a very unexpensive one; a few plain duties to be performed by a few servants."

Mr. Jefferson, as the most efficient individual of the democratic party, the centre around which they all rallied, and the leader who skilfully guided their councils, had always been a prominent object of vituperation for the federal prints; but ever since he had been the declared candidate of his party for the presidency, slander had been more unremitting in its attacks; as well as more bitter and extravagant in its falsehoods. He notices one of these calumnies in an answer to a letter he had received from a Connecticut correspondent, and which serves as a specimen of the rest :-" If the reverend Cotton Mather Smith of Shena believed this [that a day will come when the false witness will meet a judge who has not slept over his slanders'] as firmly as I do, he surely never would have affirmed that I had obtained my property by fraud and robbery; that in one instance I had defrauded and robbed a widow and fatherless children of an estate to which I was executor, of ten thousand pounds sterling, by keeping the property and paying them in money at the nominal rate, when it was worth no more than forty for one, and that all this could be proved.' Every tittle of it is false; there not having existed a single circumstance of my life to which any part of it can hang. I never was executor but in two instances, both of which having taken place about the beginning of the revolution, which withdrew

me immediately from all private pursuits, I never meddled with either executorship. In one of the cases only were there a widow and children. She was my sister. She retained and managed the estate in her own hands, and no part of it was ever in mine. In the other, I was a copartner, and only received, on a division, the equal portion allotted to me."

We may here notice another proof of Mr. Jefferson's propensity to look at everything with the eye of hope, in a letter which he wrote to Dr. Rush, of Philadelphia, September 23rd. In speaking of the yellow fever, which had of late years made great ravages in the principal cities and towns of the Atlantic states, he remarks," When great evils happen, I am in the habit of looking out for what good may arise from them as consolations to us, and Providence has in fact so established the order of things, as that most evils are the means of producing some good. The yellow fever will discourage the growth of great cities in our nation, and I view great cities as pestilential to the morals, the health, and the liberties of mankind. True, they nourish some of the elegant arts, but the useful ones can thrive elsewhere; and less perfection in the others, with more health, virtue, and freedom would be my choice."

These opinions of the mischievous effects of great cities were entertained at that time by many of our political speculators; and if they are well-founded, it would follow that the evils, moral and physical, which they ascribe to cities, are the inevitable portion of our species, since these congregations of men are the necessary consequence of a dense population, and of the social instinct. They arise too from the natural distribution of population, by which the sum of human comfort and enjoyment is enhanced. Labour and skill are thus rendered more efficacious, both for those who live in the country, and those who live in the cities. They

are favourable, moreover, to science, to most kinds of knowledge, as well as to practical art; and it is in the collision and rivalry of different minds that the important sciences of legislation, government, and jurisprudence, by which the safe and permanent enjoyment of all other blessings are secured to us, are best cultivated and matured.

But if, in spite of all these advantages, they are, on the whole, unfavourable to virtue and happiness, they must be regarded as evils, and should be discouraged. Be it so: and yet the immoral tendencies of cities may perhaps be not a necessary, but an accidental consequence, and under those improved forms of society to which we seem in many respects tending, cities may be found to favour some virtues as much as the country favours others. In making the estimate of their comparative advantages, it is not easy for one to make just allowance for his peculiar tastes, by which he is led to overrate or underrate particular virtues and manners. Thus the forms of social intercourse, which custom introduces in cities, will offend some by their seeming insincerity, and will be recommended to others by their fitness for the intercourse of those who are strangers to each other, or who are made over-sensitive by refinement. Extreme politeness is not required for the blunt feelings of the rustic, but is a necessary safeguard for the delicate sensibility of a highly cultivated mind, as the defences against the inclemency of the seasons, which are indispensable to the civilized man, are not needed by the savage. These forms arc, it is true, in part compounded of dissimulation, but in this instance dissimulation loses its character of vice in its utility. One clown may tell another that he is ugly and awkward, is foolish or disagreeable, without giving mortal offence, or making the other seriously unhappy. But after an individual has become refined by mental cultivation, and the constant chafing of society, he would be as effectually re

strained from these offensive acts by benevolence and sympathy, as by a hypocritical and interested desire of pleasing; and should the former qualities be wanting, and the latter motive alone prevail, this must be regarded as a less evil than that he should mortify the feelings of others without any benefit to himself.

But the advocates for the superior purity of rural life may say, that though the excessive delicacy and sensitiveness which cities produce, may make dissimulation the lesser of two evils, yet they should be held responsible for that lesser evil, as they create its cause. Let this be conceded, and still it may be questioned whether there is a greater sum of virtue in the country than in town. If some vices find a more congenial soil in the cities, do not others find it in the country? Do not the former present as favourable a theatre for generosity and charity and disinterestedness and philanthropy-all the virtues, in short, which arise from a delicate sympathy, or for the exercise of the severer virtues of fortitude, bravery, justice, and self-denial? The difference in this respect is probably inconsiderable. Cities certainly

appear to afford more opportunity for the growth of virtue and vice-as weeds and flowers shoot with equal vigour in the same hotbed; and according as an individual is there placed in circumstances which favour the one or the other, will he be more virtuous or vicious than if he were placed in the country. Here then we accordingly find the extremes, not only of poverty and wealth, but of virtue and depravity. Here we meet with the most thorough misers, and the dispensers of princely munificence-here the self-devoted раtriot and the degenerate coward-here with the blood-thirsty assassin, the untiring visiter of the sick, the generous reliever of the necessitous, and even the kind consoler of criminals. And if we do not see such instances of the utter