be divided. This is a difficulty from which the constitution has provided no issue. It is both my duty and inclination, therefore, to relieve the embarrassment, should it happen; and in that case, I pray you and authorize you fully, to solicit on my behalf, that Mr. Adams may be preferred. He has always been my senior, from the commencement of our publick life, and the expression of the publick will being equal, this circumstance ought to give him the preference. And when so many motives will be operating to induce some of the members to change their vote, the addition of my wish may have some effect to preponderate the scale."

In February, the votes for the first and second magistrates of the Union were opened and counted in the presence of both houses; and the highest number appearing in favour of Mr. Adams, and the second in favour of Mr. Jefferson, the first was declared to be President, and the second the Vice President of the United States for four years, to commence on the fourth day of the ensuing March.

Most of the four succeeding years was passed tranquilly by Mr. Jefferson, in his favourite retreat at Monticello. During this period, we find but little notice of him among the publick records of the day, and consequently not much to communicate to the reader.

The following extract from one of his letters written at this time, and in which he frankly and explicitly exhibits his political principles, feelings, and attachments, may not be entirely uninteresting: "I do, then, with sincere zeal, wish an inviolable preservation of our present federal constitution, according to the true sense in which it was adopted by the states, that in

which it was advocated by its friends, and not that which its enemies apprehended, who, therefore, became its enemies and I am opposed to the monarchizing its features by the forms of its administration, with a view to conciliate a first transition to a President and Senate for life, and from that to a hereditary tenure of these offices, and thus to worm out the elective principle. I am for preserving to the states the powers not yielded by them to the Union; and to the legislature of the Union its constitutional share in the division of powers; and I am not for transferring all the powers of the states to the general government, and all those of that government to the Executive branch. I am for a gov.

ernment rigorously frugal and simple, applying all the possible savings of the publick revenue to the discharge of the national debt; and not for a multiplication of officers and salaries merely to make partisans, and for increasing, by every device, the publick debt, on the principle of its being a publick blessing. I am for relying, for internal defence, on our militia solely, till actual invasion, and for such a naval force only as may protect our coast and harbours from such depredations as we have experienced; and not for a standing army in time of peace, which may overawe the publick sentiment; nor for a navy which, by its own expense, and the eternal wars into which it will implicate us, will grind us with publick burdens, and sink us under them. I am for free commerce with all nations; political connexion with none; and little or no diplomatick establishment and I am not for linking ourselves by new treaties with the quarrels of Europe; entering that field of slaughter to preserve their balance, or joining in

the confederacy of kings to war against the principles of liberty. I am for freedom of religion, and against all manœuvres to bring about a legal ascendency of one sect over another; for freedom of the press, and against all violations of the constitution to silence by force, and not by reason, the complaints of criticisms, just or unjust, of our citizens against the conduct of their agents. And I am for encouraging the progress of science in all its branches; and not for raising a hue and cry against the sacred name of philosophy; for awing the human mind by stories of rawhead and bloody-bones to a distrust of its own vision, and to repose implicitly on that of others; to go backwards instead of forwards to look for improvement; to believe that government, religion, morality, and every other science were in their highest perfection in the ages of the darkest ignorance, and that nothing can ever be devised more perfect than what was established by our forefathers. To these I will add, that I was a sincere well wisher to the success of the French revolution, and still wish it may end in the establishment of a free and well-ordered republick; but I have not been insensible under the atrocious depredations they have committed on our commerce. The first object of my heart is my own country. In that is embarked my family, my fortune, and my own existence. I have not one farthing of interest, nor one fibre of attachment out of it, nor a single motive of preference of any one nation to another, but in proportion as they are more or less friendly to us."

But a new election was now approaching, and the hopes and wishes of the republican party were again

fixed upon Mr. Jefferson. At this time party divisions were drawn to a strong and inseparable line, and were particularly distinguished by virulence and acrimony. They rested, in a great measure, upon points of foreign policy, and on foreign predilections or aversions. Mr. Adams had been rendered unpopular by his apparent apathy towards the French revolution, and by the charges repeatedly made, that himself and party were favourably inclined towards Great Britain. The expenditure of money under his administration, for building a navy, and for other purposes, was thought by many to have been impolitick, or useless; and the enactment of an alien law, by which the President was authorized to compel suspected foreigners to leave the country; and of the sedition law, which provided that the authors and publishers of false and malicious accusations against the President and members of Congress should be prosecuted and criminally punished, was loudly and vehemently condemned. Under the sedition law, several persons, and those of considerable notoriety on the political arena, had already been imprisoned. The sympathies of the people were awakened in their behalf, and inflammatory writers had aroused their passions and incited their indignation against those at whose instance they were confined.— The federalists supported Mr. Adams and General Pinckney; the republicans, Mr. Jefferson and Colonel Burr; and both parties being animated by the prospect of success, the contest was maintained with uncommon ardour.

But a most untoward and unlooked-for event now oceurred. By the constitution, as it existed at that period,

each elector voted for two men without designating which was to be President; and he who obtained the greatest number of votes was to be President, and the nearest to him Vice President. Mr. Jefferson and Colonel Burr had an equal number of votes, and the election, according to the constitution, was to be decided by the House of Representatives. Here it also most singularly occurred, that the states were, for a long time, equally divided; and hopes were expressed by his friends, and fears reluctantly admitted by his opponents, that Mr. Burr would be elected to the office of President. Week after week were the people kept in intense solicitude, while the contest was thus maintained; again and again the voting went round, and the result continued the same; and every exertion was made to raise to the highest office of the nation, a man who had not received for that purpose a solitary vote of the people. The time limited by the constitution for the election of a President had nearly arrived, and there was danger that government must come to a pause, or be resolved into its original elements. At length, after thirty-five ineffectual ballots, one of the representatives of the state of Maryland made publick the contents of a letter to himself, written by Mr. Burr, in which he declined all pretensions to the Presidency, and authorized him to disclaim, in his name, any competition with Mr. Jefferson. On this specifick declaration, two federal members, who represented the states which had heretofore voted blank, withdrew, and permitted the republican members from those states to become a majority. Consequently, on the thirty-sixth