In a country professing Christianity, Jefferson's religious views were liable to the grossest misconception. Both he and Franklin had been scorched by French rationalism; Jefferson at the inflammable period of life, and when renowned for his conspicuous zeal in pulling down the English Episcopal establishment in Virginia. Franklin was too discreet a man to offend prejudice, while Jefferson easily appeared more irrelig. ious than he really was. The latter's views, in fact, approached skepticism more nearly in 1787* than at the time of his accession to the Presidency and in mature life. Never a blasphemer nor a scoffer at divine truths, but one rather who applied scientific methods to resolving those problems of future existence clear only to the eye of faith, Jefferson respected the right of private judgment in the interpretation of creeds, actually investigated for himself, and claimed constantly that religion was a matter which lay between man and his God, evinced, as concerned the world, by each one's daily life. He was no foe to the moralities and decencies of life; but as a public exemplar, singularly pure in his visible relations, attached to the home life, constant to the memory of the wife who died early, and like both a father and mother to his daughters. In religious views he came into near accord with Priestley; showing much fondness for comparing Christ's teachings with those of the great pagan philosophers. Rejecting, or rather waiving, points of Scriptural inspiration, he was certainly not less than a Deist; and more than this, he was well convinced of the loftiness of the Christian system, and the sublime humanity of its great Founder.†

* Cf. Jefferson's correspondence on this point.

† See Jefferson's Works, 1803, 1801; 7 Jefferson's Works, 55; Randall's Jefferson; Jefferson's Domestic Life. Here the President is seen sitting with the Bible in his hands, for hours, upon the death of his younger daughter in 1801; or cutting out from a Testament the discourses of Christ and pasting them upon the leaves of a scrap-book, in admiration of "the most innocent, the most benevolent, the most eloquent, and sublime character that ever has been exhibited to man." "Such," writes Jefferson, glowingly, "are the fragments remaining us to show a master-workman, and that his system of morality was the most benevolent and sublime probably that has ever been taught, and consequently more perfect than those of any of the ancient philosophy."

1801-9.

JEFFERSON'S RELIGIOUS VIEWS.

85

Reason is the triumph of the intellect, faith of the heart; and whether the one or the other shall best illumine the dark mysteries of our being, they only are to be despaired of who care not to explore. The reticence of one, by no means indifferent, exposed him in his life to unmerited calumny. That honesty should be commended as the best policy was abhorrent from such lips, and low toned, though Washington had inculcated a similar maxim.* The New England clergy identified all the worst excesses of the French revolution with Jefferson; coupled his name with Paine's; warned their congregations in 1800 that the election of such a man would be the signal for breaking down the pulpits, burning up Bibles, and enthroning the goddess of reason. To such anathemas of the Puritan priesthood Jefferson made antiphonal response, quite as severe.† Had Jefferson made the tour of New England, while President, much of this mutual distrust might have subsided; for strangely enough, while that section has never quite done his memory justice, the religious principles he favored, then unpopular, have since been so closely identified with the Pilgrim race, that Jeffersou might almost be thought a New England progenitor.

Delicate in discrimination, Jefferson did not fail to appreciate the most admirable points of the Eastern political system; the town meetings, which focalized self-government and gave public spirit so many rallying points; the district schools, too, which spread universal intelligence. In Virginia he had proposed a bill for the diffusion of knowledge, and it was his

* Cf. Washington's first and Jefferson's second inaugural address. + See Jefferson's Works, March, 1801, etc.; allusions to the "Jewish perversity" of New Englanders, and the leaders filled with the witchburning spirit, who viewed all advances in science as dangerous innovations. "But I am in hopes," he would add, "of the Eastern people; their good sense will dictate to them they had better go to the mountain; that they will find their interest in acquiescing in the liberty and science of their country, and that the Christian religion, when divested of the rags in which they have enveloped it, and brought to the original purity and simplicity of its benevolent institutor, is a religion of all others most friendly to liberty, science, and the freest expansion of the human mind."

constant effort to break up its counties into something like wards or townships with a primary school for each. The Virginia county system nourished great abuses; and the electors assembling from distant points, this incongruous mass took whatever shape might please a few artful individuals. These men would appoint themselves to the local offices and parcel out the county administration.*

How strange a contrast did Jefferson's first administration present to the parallel one of Bonaparte in France. While the one was fast accustoming America's six millions to the control of their public concerns, the other was steadily reducing the great Latin republic, which had exalted him, down to a condition of utter helplessness, making himself the despot of the people by flattering the popular vanity. Jefferson stimulated the arts of peace, simplified the ideal of authority, carried happiness to the humblest homes. Napoleon enlarged the pomps of his court, instituted titles of honor, racked the poor hamlet to increase his army, and excited the sensuous ambition of conquest, in the hope of diverting and repressing the free spirit of the age. One opened his party to let in all mankind, the other sought vacant crowns and revenues for members of his family. Precisely the means of which Jefferson had warned America to beware,-and here, we may trust, with exaggerated alarm,-had been employed with rapid success during these few years for perverting the French republic to a monarchy; and by means of standing armies, the absorption of legislative powers by an executive who relied upon force, the election of that executive for life, the misuse of popular forms, the enlargement of court ceremonials, a successful military leader, but lately unknown, gained a coronet. Here the pendulum swung towards the people all-powerful; abroad the hands on the dial-plate had stopped at the emperor allpowerful.

* See 7 Jefferson's Works, 17 (1816). Jefferson knew of one county where a particular family got possession of the bench, and for a whole generation excluded all who were not of its own clan or connection.

MARCH 4, 1805-MARCH 3, 1807.

THE intelligent reader of this day, who looks back upon the first and highly prosperous administration of Jefferson, may fairly comprehend its best aims and achievements. Not so, however, with the cultured of Jefferson's own times.

Jefferson was not the first President slandered in office, but he was the first President slandered in office by American men of letters. His unrelenting foes were the socially privileged, the academic and patrician class. Well born and well educated, he nevertheless reached out for popular support, not through but outside of a privileged order, thereby offending old prejudices in favor of a nobility influential in public affairs.* Our literati and poetasters are seen wetting the cambric over the prone descent of the country to ruin, or

* In proof of the vehemence with which our men of letters assailed Jefferson we may pass over the elegiac utterances of Theramenes, Curtius, and their fellows in the Federal press, who exhibit a morbid propensity to leap into gulfs in order to confer imaginary benefits upon their fellow-countrymen, and examine such purely literary productions of the age as the "Portfolio," of Philadelphia, and Fessenden's "Democracy Unveiled." The "Portfolio," the only well-established literary periodical in the United States of this era, was edited by Dennie, a lav preacher, styled by his admirers “the American Addison." Thomas G. Fessenden, who was elevated into prominence by his successfal satire, "A Terrible Tractoration," employed the Hudibrastic verse in a poem of several cantos upon the Jefferson administration. In this latter poem, "Democracy Unveiled," with its abundant foot-notes, will be found a fair digest of the lampoons of the day against the men and measures of Jefferson's administration.

producing squibs, parodies, and epigrams upon the theme of "Tall Tom and dingy Sally."* The satirist traces American democracy and the new philosophy of equality to French illuminism and infidelity; and after suspending our Republican leaders, great and small, on the gibbet, he admonishes the common people, first, to give power to none but men honest and long-tried; next, to be content each with his private station, and thank God that if he lacks brains he is blessed with health certainly and a competence.†

Jefferson's philanthropy, his faith in man's perfectibility and capacity for social advancement, theories which those fixed in the Old World habits could not quickly accept, gave a wholesome leaven to his policy, despite all errors of practice. Maxims which nowadays are accepted as truisms had as yet been dimly comprehended by men of the highest education. Government was to them a matter of constraint rather than willing compliance; the general opinion ought to be directed, not obeyed; the passions of mankind were to be excited, not soothed; protection, not the greatest possible freedom for individual enterprise, could best promote the general wealth and happiness. The Prussian king's maxim, that "the prosperity of a state depends upon the discipline of its armies," had still many advocates; nor was Ames solitary in thinking the acquisition of Louisiana by money mean and despicable when the territory might have been seized by force. To rectify a wrong by negotiation instead of taking prompt revenge upon the hostile nation, was commonly pronounced cowardly and unstatesmanlike.

Jefferson's second inauguration took place in the Senate Chamber, at the usual noon hour of March 4th. March 4. Chief Justice Marshall administered the oath of office to him and the new Vice-President, Clinton. The exercises were public, and both Houses of Congress attended. Before being sworn in Jefferson read an inaugural address,

*See Portfolio, 1803; supra, p. 35.

†Thomas G. Fessenden's Democracy Unveiled.

See F. Ames's Works, October, 1803.