Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 13.djvu/643

JEFFEKSON 615 nors, or kings to restrain us from doing right, that it be corrected in all its parts with a single eye to reason and the good of those for whose government it was framed." To this task he now devoted himself. Of the various measures introduced in furtherance of this purpose he says: "I considered four, passed or reported, as forming a system by which every fibre would be eradicated of ancient or future aristocracy, and a foundation laid for a govern ment truly republican." These were the repeal of the laws of entail, the abolition of primogeniture and equal partition of inherit ances, the restoration of the rights of conscience and relief of the people from taxation for the support of a religion not theirs, and a system of general education. He tried to add to these, but with out success, the introduction of trial by jury into the courts of chancery, and to provide for the gradual emancipation of the slaves. He did, however, introduce a bill, which passed without opposition, forbidding the further importation of slaves into the j State the only important change effected in the slave system of | Virginia during the revolutionary period. The importance he i attached to his work in Virginia at this time he showed by resign- : ing his seat in Congress, and by declining the appointment ten dered him by Congress in 1776, to go with Franklin to Paris, to assist j in negotiating treaties of commerce and alliance with France. In the third year of the war (1779), and just as the darkest and j most threatening clouds were gathering over Virginia, Jefferson was elected governor. The enemy had decided to carry the war into i the south. The commonwealth was almost defenceless, all her military resources having been exhausted in sustaining Washing ton s policy of driving the enemy out of the north. Arnold entered Richmond, recently become the capital, on the 5th of January 1781, and ravaged the place. The legislature, which had taken refuge at Charlottesville, were pursued and dispersed by Tarleton, who im mediately sent a party to capture Jefferson at Monticello. He narrowly escaped, his pursuers being in sight of him as he mounted his horse and rode off to join his family. Though Monticello was j spared by Tarleton s order, Jefferson s estate of Elk Hill, on the ! James river, was less fortunate. It was completsly despoiled by the j orders of Cornwallis. It was natural that the ineffectual resistance ! made to the enemy in Virginia should have exposed the governor s conduct to criticism, for few knew, as he did, that a more effective j defence was impossible without weakening the northern army, and totally disarranging the plans upon which the commander-in-chief wisely relied for the ultimate success of the national defence. An j investigation of his conduct was threatened ; but when it was ascer- j tained that he had been acting in harmony with the policy of Washington, the investigation was not only abandoned but the legis- i lature shortly after the expiration of his term of office resolved unani- j mously " That the thanks of the general assembly be given to our > formsr governor, Thomas Jefferson, for his impartial, upright, and attentive administration while in office. The assembly wish to de clare in the strongest manner the high opinion which they entertain of Mr Jefferson s ability, rectitude, and integrity as chief magistrate in this commonwealth, and mean, by thus publicly avowing their opinion, to obviate and to remove all unmerited censure." Jefferson became sensible that in the exhausted condition of Virginia, without money, without equipment, without troops, without any currency except the products of the soil, no governor not a trained soldier could hope to retain the confidence of the people during the crisis, and therefore he determined to decline re-election. In 1782 he was summoned by Congress to act as one of the plenipotentiaries to negotiate a treaty of peace with the mother country, but the business was found to be so far advanced before he was ready to sail that his appointment was recalled, and we j find him at the following winter session again occupying his seat in Congress, where, as chairman of the committee to which it was referred, he reported the definitive treaty of peace with England. At the succeeding session he introduced an elaborate report, and secured the adoption of the system of coinage which is still in vogue in the United States. In the same session he drafted the report of a plan for the government of the vast territory lying to the north west of the Ohio river, which Virginia had ceded to the Federal Government in 1780. Among other provisions which he suggested, and which were adopted, was one big with a rebellion of far more threatening proportions than that which its author had just assisted in bringing to a successful issue. The clause in question provided "that after the year 1800 of the Christian era there shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in any of the said States, otherwise than in punishment of crimes whereof the party shall be duly convicted to have been personally guilty," It was the attempt to organize States from this territory in defiance of this restriction that led to the war of 1861, and to the final, though costly, vindication of Jefferson s sagacity and forecast in 1783. _In 1784 Jefferson was again commissioned by Congress as minister plenipotentiary, this time to assist Franklin and Adams in negotiating treaties of commerce with European states. He joined his associates in Paris in July. The mission upon which he was sent proved somewhat premature. Jefferson, wisely judging that fuller and more correct information about America must pre cede any successful attempts to deal with European states to ad vantage, printed at his own expense, and distributed among his friends, some Notes on Virginia, which he had prepared two years before. It was in these notes that the oft-quoted passage occurs : "I tremble for my country when I think that God is just ; that his justice cannot sleep for ever ; that, considering numbers, nature, and natural means only, a revolution of the wheel of fortune, an ex change of situations, is among possible events ; that it may become probable by supernatural interference. The Almighty has no attribute that can take sides with us in such a contest. " A very bad translation of a copy of the Notes which had found its way to France having made its appearance in Paris, Jefferson felt he had no longer any motive for trying to limit their usefulness to the few discreet friends to whom he had addressed them. l In January 1785 Dr Franklin, after eight years residence at the French court, pressed his application to be relieved, and Jefferson was selected, as he gracefully put it in presenting his letters of credence, "to succeed him, for no one could replace him." Jefferson was excaedingly popular as a minister, and was fortunate in securing several important modifications of the French tariff in the interests of American commerce. In the summer of 1789 Washington, who had been elected president of the United States under the new constitution, gave Jefferson leave of absence, and soon after his arrival in America, " as well from motives of private regard as a conviction of public propriety," tendered him the office of secretary of state. Reluct ant as Jefferson was to leave Paris, he yielded at once to the wishes of the president, and entered upon the duties of his new office in March 1790. Alexander Hamilton, who was the head of the Federal party as distinguished from the Democratic, of which Jefferson was the most conspicuous representative, was appointed the secretary of the treasury. They represented the two great schools of political thought which contended for mastery in American politics, not only during Washington s administration, but for the succeeding sixty years, and until their differences were merged in the graver and more absorbing issues that grew out of the conflict between free and servile labour. Jefferson was an advocate of State sovereignty and of decentralization. He was strongly opposed to the leading features of the British constitution, and in cordial sympathy with the new school of politics which had recently begun to be felt in the government of France. His five years residence in that country had greatly strengthened him in these views, and they more or less affected his treatment of all questions that came before him as a cabinet minister. Hamilton s great fear, on the other hand, was that the central government under the new constitution would be too weak, and he favoured all measures that tended to exalt and strengthen the executive, and to bring the government more in harmony with that of England. Washington very prudently gave the victory to the partisan of neither theory, though his sym pathies were supposed to be more frequently with the Federal than with the Republican leader. The most perplexing questions which occupied Jefferson s atten tion as secretary of state grew out of the war declared by France in 1793 against Holland and Great Britain. What should be the neutral policy and what were to be insisted upon as the neutral rights of the United States? Upon this question both parties put forth their whole strength. The Repxiblicans, under Jefferson s lead, pretty generally sympathized with the French, and were inclined to authorize privateers to be fitted out in American ports to cruise against English vessels. This policy was energetically and wisely resisted by the Federalists, who were for peace with all and entangling alliances with none. Jefferson advocated the propriety of receiving a diplomatic representative from the French republic. In this his advice prevailed, and Genest was promptly sent as minister. With more zeal than discretion he proceeded at once to fit out privateers, and empower French consuls in the United States to organize courts of admiralty to condemn prizes. This led to heated discussions in the cabinet, and finally to the recall of Genest. Partly from discontent with a position in which he did not feel that he enjoyed the absolute, which meant pretty much the exclusive, confidence of the president, and partly because of the embarrassed condition of his private affairs, due mainly to the ravages of war, Jefferson resigned his seat in the cabinet December 31, 1793, and retired to Monticello. There he remained till the fall of 1796, when he was made vice-president at the election which called John Adams to the presidency. The duties of this position being limited to presiding over the Senate during its sessions, Jefferson spent most of the four years of his official term in improving his estate, and by his counsels directing the policy of the party of which he was the acknowledged leader. The excesses of the 1 Jefferson took a very modest view of this book, and in a purely literary point of view he could not afford to take any other ; but it was so thoroughly saturated with democratic-republican ideas, of which he was then the most complete living exponent, with the possible exception of Franklin, that it was widely and eagerly read, and no doubt did much to relax the. hold the doctrines of divine right and of passive obedience had upon the educated classes of France, an<l measur ably contributed to precipitate the pi-eat popular uprising in that kingdom, with which Europe was s /on to be convulsed.