No More Learning

This sunlight linked me through the ages to
that past consciousness. From all the ages my soul desired to
take that soul-life which had flowed through them, as the sun-
beams had continually poured on earth. As the hot sands take
up the heat, so would I take up that soul-energy. Dreamy in
appearance, I was breathing full of existence; I was aware of
the grass-blades, the flowers, the leaves on hawthorn and tree. I
seemed to live more largely through them, as if each were a
pore through which I drank. The grasshoppers called and leaped,
the green-finches sang, the blackbirds happily fluted, all the air
hummed with life. I was plunged deep in existence, and with
all that existence I prayed.
Through every grass-blade in the thousand thousand grasses;
through the million leaves, veined and edge-cut, on bush and
tree; through the song-notes and the marked feathers of the bird;
through the insects' hum and the color of the butterfly; through
the soft warm air and the flecks of clouds dissolving, -I used
them all for prayer with all the energy the sunbeams had poured
unwearied on the earth since Sesostris was conscious of them on
the ancient sands; with all the life that had been lived by vigor-
ous man and beauteous woman since first in dearest Greece the
dream of the gods was woven; with all the soul-life that had
flowed a long stream down to me,- I prayed that I might have
a soul more than equal to, far beyond my conception of, these
things of the past, the present and the fullness of all life; not
only equal to these, but beyond, higher, and more powerful
than I could imagine; that I might take from all their energy,
a


## p. 8222 (#422) ###########################################

82 2 2
RICHARD JEFFERIES
grandeur, and beauty, and gather it into me; that my soul might
be more than the cosmos of life.
I prayed with the glowing clouds of sunset, and the soft light
of the first star coming through the violet sky. At night, with
the stars according to the season: now with the Pleiades, now
with the Swan, or burning Sirius, and broad Orion's whole con-
stellation, red Aldebaran, Arcturus, and the Northern Crown;
with the morning star, the light-bringer, once now and then
when I saw it, a white-gold ball in the violet-purple sky, or
framed about with pale summer vapor, floating away as red
streaks shot horizontally in the east. A diffused saffron ascended
into the luminous upper azure.
The disk of the sun rose over
the hill; Auctuating with throbs of light, his chest heaved in
fervor of brilliance. All the glory of the sunrise filled me with
broader and furnace-like vehemence of prayer that I might have
the deepest of soul-life, the deepest of all, deeper far than all this
greatness of the visible universe and even of the invisible; that
I might have a fullness of soul till now unknown, and utterly
beyond my own conception.
In the deepest darkness of the night, the same thought rose
in my mind as in the bright light of noontide. What is there
which I have not used to strengthen the same emotion ?
THE BREEZE ON BEACHY HEAD
From Nature Near London)
T"
He waves coming round the promontory before the west wind
still give the idea of a flowing stream, as they did in
Homer's days. Here beneath the cliff, standing where beach
and sand meet, it is still; the wind passes six hundred feet over-
head: but yonder, every larger wave rolling before the breeze
breaks over the rocks; a white line of spray rushes along them,
gleaming in the sunshine; for a moment the dark rock-wall dis-
appears, till the spray sinks.
The sea seems higher than the spot where I stand, its surface
on a higher level, - raised like a green mound, -as if it could
burst it and occupy the space up to the foot of the cliff in a
moment. It will not do so, I know: but there is an infinite pos-
sibility about the sea; it may do what it is not recorded to have


## p. 8223 (#423) ###########################################

RICHARD JEFFERIES
8223
done. It is not to be ordered; it may overleap the bounds human
observation has fixed for it. It has a potency unfathomable.
There is still something in it not quite grasped and understood,
something still to be discovered, a mystery.
So the white spray rushes along the low broken wall of rocks,
the sun gleams on the flying fragments of the wave; again it
sinks, and the rhythmic motion holds the mind, as an invisible
force holds back the tide. A faith of expectancy, a sense that
something may drift up from the unknown, a large belief in the
unseen resources of the endless space out yonder, soothes the
mind with dreamy hope.
The little rules and little experiences — all the petty ways of
narrow life — are shut off behind by the ponderous and impassa-
ble cliff; as if we had dwelt in the dim light of a cave, but com-
ing out at last to look at the sun, a great stone had fallen and
closed the entrance, so that there was no return to the shadow.
The impassable precipice shuts off our former selves of yester-
day, forcing us to look out over the sea only, or up to the deeper
heaven.
These breadths draw out the soul; we feel that we have wider
thoughts than we knew; the soul has been living as it were in
a nutshell, all unaware of its own power, and now suddenly finds
freedom in the sun and the sky. Straight, as if sawn down
from turf to beach, the cliff shuts off the human world, for the
sea knows no time and no era; you cannot tell what century it
is from the face of the sea. A Roman trireme suddenly round-
ing the white edge-line of chalk, borne on wind and oar from
the Isle of Wight towards the gray castle at Pevensey (already
old in olden days), would not seem strange. What wonder could
surprise us coming from the wonderful sea ?
The little rills winding through the sand have made an islet
of a detached rock by the beach; limpets cover it, adhering like
rivet-heads. In the stillness here, under the roof of the wind so
high above, the sound of the sand draining itself is audible.
From the cliff, blocks of chalk have fallen, leaving hollows as
when a knot drops from a beam. They lie crushed together
at the base, and on the point of this jagged ridge a wheatear
perches.
There are ledges three hundred feet above; and from these
now and then a jackdaw glides out and returns again to his
place, where, when still and with folded wings, he is but a speck


## p. 8224 (#424) ###########################################

8224
RICHARD JEFFERIES
(
of black. A spire of chalk still higher stands out from the wall;
but the rains have got behind it, and will cut the crevice deeper
and deeper into its foundation. Water too has carried the soil
from under the turf at the summit over the verge, forming brown
streaks.
Upon the beach lies a piece of timber, part of a wreck; the
wood is torn and the fibres rent where it was battered against
the dull edge of the rocks. The heat of the sun burns, thrown
back by the dazzling chalk; the river of ocean flows ceaselessly,
casting the spray over the stones; the unchanged sky is blue.
Let us go back and mount the steps at the Gap, and rest on
the sward there. I feel that I want the presence of grass. The
sky is a softer blue, and the sun genial; now the eye and the
mind alike are relieved — the one of the strain of too great soli-
tude (not the solitude of the woods), the other of too brilliant
and hard a contrast of colors. Touch but the grass, and the
harmony returns; it is repose after exaltation.
A vessel comes round the promontory. It is not a trireme
of old Rome, nor the "fair and stately galley Count Arnaldus
hailed with its seamen singing the mystery of the sea; it is but
a brig in ballast, high out of the water, black of hull and dingy
of sail; still it is a ship, and there is always an interest about a
ship. She is so near, running along but just outside the reef,
that the deck is visible. Up rises her stern as the billows come
fast and roll under; then her bow lifts, and immediately she
rolls, and loosely swaying with the sea, drives along.
The slope of the billow now behind her is white with the
bubbles of her passage, rising too from her rudder. Steering
athwart with a widening angle from the land, she is laid to clear
the distant point of Dungeness. Next a steamer glides forth,
unseen till she passed the cliff; and thus each vessel that comes
from the westward has the charm of the unexpected. Eastward
there is many a sail working slowly into the wind, and as they
approach, talking in the language of flags with the watch on the
summit of the Head.
Once now and then the great Orient pauses on her outward
route to Australia, slowing her engines: the immense length of
her hull contains every adjunct of modern life; science, skill, and
civilization are there. She starts, and is lost sight of round the
cliff, - gone straight away for the very ends of the world. The
incident is forgotten, when one morning as you turn over the


## p. 8225 (#425) ###########################################

RICHARD JEFFERIES
8225
newspaper, there is the Orient announced to start again. It is
like a tale of enchantment: it seems but yesterday that the Head
hid her from view; you have scarcely moved, attending to the
daily routine of life, and scarce recognize that time has passed at
all. In so few hours has the earth been encompassed.
The sea-gulls as they settle on the surface ride high out of
the water, like the mediæval caravels, with their sterns almost as
tall as the masts. Their unconcerned flight, with crooked wings
unbent, as if it were no matter to them whether they flew or
floated, in its peculiar jerking motion reminds one of the lap-
wing; the heron has it too, a little: as if aquatic or water-side
birds had a common and distinct action of the wing.
Sometimes a porpoise comes along, but just beyond the reef;
looking down on him from the verge of the cliff, his course can
be watched. His dark body, wet and oily, appears on the surface
for two seconds; and then, throwing up his tail like the fluke of
an anchor, down he goes. Now look forward along the waves
some fifty yards or so, and he will come up, the sunshine gleam-
ing on the water as it runs off his back, to again dive, and re-
appear after a similar interval. Even when the eye can no longer
distinguish the form, the spot where he rises is visible, from the
slight change in the surface.
The hill receding in hollows leaves a narrow plain between
the foot of the sward and the cliff; it is plowed, and the teams
come to the footpath which follows the edge; and thus those who
plow the sea and those who plow the land look upon each other.
The one sees the vessel change her tack, the other notes the
plow turning at the end of the furrow. Bramble-bushes project
over the dangerous wall of chalk, and grasses fill up the inter-
stices, a hedge suspended in air; but be careful not to reach too
far for the blackberries.
The green sea is on the one hand, the yellow stubble on the
other. The porpoise dives along beneath, the sheep graze above.
Green seaweed lines the reef over which the white spray Aies,
blue lucerne dots the field. The pebbles of the beach seen from
the height mingle in a faint blue tint, as if the distance ground
them into colored sand. Leaving the footpath now, and crossing
the stubble to “France,” as the wide open hollow in the down is
called by the shepherds, it is no easy matter in dry summer
weather to climb the steep turf to the furze line above.
XIV-515.


## p. 8226 (#426) ###########################################

8226
RICHARD JEFFERIES
Dry grass is as slippery as if it were hair, and the sheep
have fed it too close for a grip of the hand. Under the furze
(still far from the summit) they have worn a path - a narrow
a
ledge, cut by their cloven feet — through the sward. It is time
to rest; and already, looking back, the sea has extended to an
indefinite horizon. This climb of a few hundred feet opens a
view of so many miles more. But the ships lose their individu-
ality and human character; they are so far, so very far away,
they do not take hold of the sympathies; they seem like sketches
- cunningly executed, but only sketches -- on the immense can-
vas of the ocean. There is something unreal about them.
On a calm day, when the surface is smooth as if the brimming
ocean had been stroked, — the rod passed across the top of the
measure, thrusting off the irregularities of wave; when the dis-
tant green from long simmering under the sun becomes pale;
when the sky, without cloud, but with some slight haze in it,
likewise loses its hue, and the two so commingle in the pallor of
heat that they cannot be separated, - then the still ships appear
suspended in space. They are as much held from above as
upborne from beneath.
They are motionless, midway in space – whether it is sea or
air is not to be known. They neither float nor fly, they are sus-
pended. There is no force in the flat sail, the mast is lifeless,
the hull without impetus. For hours they linger, changeless as
the constellations; still, silent, motionless, phantom vessels on a
void sea.
Another climb up from the sheep-path, and it is not far then
to the terrible edge of that tremendous cliff which rises straighter
than a ship's side out of the sea, six hundred feet above the
detached rock below, where the limpets cling like rivet heads,
and the sand rills run around it. But it is not possible to look
down to it: the glance of necessity falls outwards, as a raindrop
from the eaves is deflected by the wind, because it is the edge
where the mold crumbles; the rootlets of the grass are exposed;
the chalk is about to break away in flakes.
You cannot lean over as a parapet, lest such a fake
should detach itself; lest a mere trifle should begin to fall,
awakening a dread and dormant inclination to slide and finally
plunge like it. Stand back; the sea there goes out and out to
the left and to the right, and how far is it to the blue overhead ?
over


## p. 8227 (#427) ###########################################

RICHARD JEFFERIES
8227
The eye must stay here a long period and drink in these dis-
tances, before it can adjust the measure and know exactly what
it sees.
Here, reclining on the grass — the verge of the cliff rising a
little shuts out the actual sea — the glance goes forth into the
hollow unsupported. It is sweeter towards the corn-ricks, and
yet the mind will not be satisfied, but ever turns to the unknown.
The edge and the abyss recall us; the boundless plain — for it
appears solid as the waves are leveled by distance — demands the
gaze. But with use it becomes easier, and the eye labors less.
There is a promontory standing out from the main wall, whence
you can see the side of the cliff, getting a flank view, as from a
tower.
The jackdaws occasionally floating out from the ledge are as
mere specks from above, as they were from below. The reef
running out from the beach, though now covered by the tide, is
visible as you look down on it through the water; the seaweed,
which lay matted and half dry on the rocks, is now under the
wave. Boats have come round, and are beached; how helplessly
little they seem beneath the cliff by the sea!
On returning homewards towards Eastbourne, stay awhile by
the tumulus on the slope. There are others hidden among the
furze; butterflies Autter over them, and the bees hum round by
day; by night the night-hawk passes, coming up from the fields
and even skirting the sheds and houses below. The rains beat
on them, and the storm drives the dead leaves over their low
green domes; the waves boom on the shore far down.
How many times has the morning star shone yonder in the
east? All the mystery of the sun and of the stars centres around
these lowly mounds.
But the glory of these glorious downs is the breeze. The air
in the valleys immediately beneath them is pure and pleasant;
but the least climb, even a hundred feet, puts you on a plane
with the atmosphere itself, uninterrupted by so much as the tree-
tops. It is air without admixture. If it comes from the south
the waves refine it; if inland, the wheat and flowers and grass
distill it. The great headland and the whole rib of the promon-
tory is wind-swept and washed with air; the billows of the atmo-
sphere roll over it.
The sun searches out every crevice amongst the grass, nor is
there the smallest fragment of surface which is not sweetened by


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8228
RICHARD JEFFERIES
air and light. Underneath, the chalk itself is pure, and the turf
thus washed by wind and rain, sun-dried and dew-scented, is a
couch prepared with thyme to rest on. Discover some excuse to
be up there always, to search for stray mushrooms,— they will be
stray, for the crop is gathered extremely early in the morning, -
or to make a list of flowers and grasses; to do anything, and if
not, go always without any pretext. Lands of gold have been
found, and lands of spices and precious merchandise; but this is
the land of health.
There is the sea below to bathe in, the air of the sky up
hither to breathe, the sun to infuse the invisible magnetism of
his beams. These are the three potent medicines of nature, and
they are medicines that by degrees strengthen not only the body
but the unquiet mind. It is not necessary to always look out
over the sea. By strolling along the slopes of the ridge a little
way inland, there is another scene where hills roll on after hills
till the last and largest hides those that succeed behind it.
Vast cloud-shadows darken one, and lift their veil from an.
other; like the sea, their tint varies with the hue of the sky over
them. Deep narrow valleys - lanes in the hills - draw the foot-
steps downwards into their solitude; but there is always the de-
licious air, turn whither you will, and there is always the grass,
the touch of which refreshes. Though not in sight, it is pleasant
to know that the sea is close at hand, and that you have only to
mount to the ridge to view it. At sunset the curves of the shore
westward are filled with a luminous mist.
Or if it should be calm, and you should like to look at the
massive headline from the level of the sea, row out a mile from
the beach. Eastwards a bank of red vapor shuts in the sea; the
wavelets — no larger than those raised by the oar- on that side
are purple as if wine had been spilt upon them, but westwards
the ripples shimmer with palest gold.
The sun sinks behind the summit of the downs, and slender
streaks of purple are drawn along above them. A shadow comes
forth from the cliff; a duskiness dwells on the water; something
tempts the eye upwards, and near the zenith there is a star.


## p. 8229 (#429) ###########################################

8229
THOMAS JEFFERSON
(1743-1826)
BY PAUL LEICESTER FORD
He consideration of Thomas Jefferson from the literary aspect
involves a certain anomaly; for superficially he was not
merely no maker of books, but took great pains that most
of the productions of his pen should be only for the eye of his few
intimates, or should, if issued to the public, appear without his name.
His only important book, the Notes on Virginia,' - which has been,
of all works produced south of Mason and Dixon's Line, the most fre-
quently reprinted, — was written to oblige a single man, was then
privately printed that a few friends might have copies, and was pub-
lished only when it was no longer possible to prevent the appearance
of a pirated edition. The Summary View of the Rights of British
America, the Declaration of Independence, the Bill for Religious Free-
dom, the Territorial Ordinance of 1784, and the Kentucky Resolutions
of 1798, were all mere drafts of papers intended for the use of public
bodies, necessarily appearing without his name; and so well was the
secret of authorship kept that the origin of two of them became the
subject of serious historical controversy. Almost the only important
paper definitely put forth with his name was his inaugural address as
President; which has been hailed as the platform of a new party, but
which in fact was rather an expression of its highest culmination, and
therefore by no means an influential factor afterwards.
Yet the fact remains that the writings of no single American have
so powerfully influenced American thought and history. Jefferson
was one of the most prolific of writers; and if not himself a direct
molder of public thought through the press, he indirectly affected
public sentiment to an unmeasurable degree. Hamilton must be re-
futed: he wrote to James Madison, roughing out the line of argument
to be taken, and begged him to enter the lists. A States-Rights view
of the Constitution was needed: he inspired John Taylor to write it.
His views on religion ought to be made public: he outlined a book,
sent it to Joseph Priestley, and succeeded in getting him to under-
take the task. It was Jefferson's often repeated assertion that he
never wrote for the press; yet by means of his confidants, no man of
his times approached him in the public expression of his ideas. He


## p. 8230 (#430) ###########################################

8230
THOMAS JEFFERSON
worked in fact through other men; and his twenty-five thousand let-
ters, in contrast to his half-dozen State papers of moment, revealed
the methods by which he influenced public opinion, and created that
mass of doctrine, nowhere formulated, that is to-day known as “the
Jeffersonian principles. ”
The consensus of both public opinion and history has assigned to
this man rank with Washington, Franklin, and Lincoln, as the four
Americans who have reached the greatest eminence through pub-
lic service. But while granting this position, a curious distinction
is made, which deserves careful consideration. All men achieving
political prominence are the object of attack, necessarily involving
not merely criticism of their measures, but also of their character.
Washington was accused of murder, treachery, corruption, hypocrisy,
ingratitude, moral cowardice, and private immorality; Franklin was
charged with theft, debauchery, intrigue, slander, and irreligion; while
the manifold charges against Lincoln remain within the memory of
many now living: and so there is nothing strange in the fact that
Jefferson was accused of dishonesty, craftiness, slander, irreligion, im-
morality, cowardice, and incompetence. The contrast consists in the
fact that while the failings of Washington, Franklin, and Lincoln have
long since been forgotten, and their characters absolutely established
in universal estimation, yet towards Jefferson there is still manifested
by many a distinct partisan dislike; and as a natural corollary, by
another class a distinct partisan affection. Our newspapers, our public
orators, and even our histories, to this day give criticism or praise
to him that rings so strongly as to suggest a conflict with the living,
rather than judgment of the dead. No particular act of Jefferson
excited any greater political opposition than did some advocated or
enforced by Washington, Franklin, or Lincoln; and it is therefore
necessary to seek some deeper reason for this difference than mere
personality or policy. Without for a moment belittling the work of
these others, the conclusion is forced that they worked for what was
temporary, in the sense that when done it passed from the category
of what is debatable to that which is decided; while what Jefferson
worked for were issues of permanent importance,- in other words,
that he was, and therefore still is, merely an expression of forces
permanent in man; and to that fact is due the controversy which
still centres about his name.
This is in effect to maintain that the political theories and usages
originated or adopted by the great democrat have a far deeper and
broader principle underlying them than is always recognized. In
popular estimation, Jefferson stands as the founder of the Democratic
party, and the developer of the theory of States-Rights; and on these
foundations are based the so-called "Jeffersonian principles, and the


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THOMAS JEFFERSON
8231
respect and acceptance, as well as the criticism and contravention,
accorded to them. That this basis was deemed sufficient during his
life, is natural; for judgment of a living man must always be partial
and superficial. That this limited view should during that time ac-
quire prestige and momentum enough to project it into history, is
not strange; the more that the logical conclusions of certain theories
advanced by him suited the policy of one of our political parties.
The acceptance of this narrow view has enabled his antagonists and
critics to charge him with hypocrisy, opportunism, and even lack of
any political principles; and the contradictions and instability they
have cited in his opinions and conduct have embarrassed even his
most devoted adherents. If this view is still to be accepted, these
criticisms must stand; and judged by them, the marvel of the Fed-
eralists and his later critics, that he should have been the chosen
instrument of American democracy, is proper. The scholarly and
recluse nature of his tastes and studies; the retiring and limited
character of his intercourse with the world; the influence of his social
equals; his dislike of party and personal antagonism; and his sensi-
tiveness to abuse and criticism,— make his acceptance of that leader-
ship as strange a problem as that the people should have chosen for
their representative a man lacking nearly all of the personal qualities
which are presumed to win popularity with the masses. And it is
only explicable from the standpoint of his critics as the success of
an ambitious and unprincipled self-seeking man, attained by astute-
ness and chicane so great as to deceive the people.
But if the people embody the total of human thought and experi-
ence, as our political theories maintain, there are better reasons than
these for his elevation, and for the political influence his name has
carried for over one hundred years; better reasons than the leader-
ship of a party, or a fine-spun theory of the respective powers of the
State and national governments. The explanation of these anomalies
lies deeper than any mere matter of individuality, party success, or
rigid political platform. Thus an understanding of what he endeav-
ored to accomplish, explains or softens many of his apparent contra-
dictions and questionable acts. The dominant principle of his creed
was, that all powers belonged to the people; and that governments,
constitutions, laws, precedents, and all other artificial clogs and
<protections,” are entitled to respect and obedience only as they
fulfill their limited function of aiding — not curtailing — the greatest
freedom to the individual. For this reason he held that no power
existed to bind the people or posterity, except in their own acts.
For this reason he was a strict construer of the national Constitution
where he believed it destructive of personal freedom; and he con-
strued it liberally where it threatened to limit the development of


## p. 8232 (#432) ###########################################

8232
THOMAS JEFFERSON
the people. He was the defender of the State governments; for he
regarded them as a necessary division for local self-government and
as natural checks on the national power, and so a safeguard to the
people. That he appealed to them in his Resolutions of 1798 was
because he believed the people for once unable to act for their own
interest; and the theories of that paper are a radical and short-lived
contradiction of his true beliefs. Because he believed the national
judiciary and the national bank to be opposed to the will of the
people, he attacked them. Because he believed he was furthering
the popular will, he interfered in the legislative department and
changed office-holders. Because he wished the people free to think
and act, he favored separation from England, abolition of religion, and
the largest degree of local self-government. As already suggested,
his methods and results were not always good, and his character and
conduct had many serious flaws. Yet in some subtle way the people
understood him, and forgave in him weaknesses and defects they
have seldom condoned. And eventually this judgment will universally
obtain, as the fact becomes clearer and clearer that neither national
independence nor State sovereignty, with the national and party
rancors that attach to them, were the controlling aim and attempt
of his life; that no party or temporary advantage was the object of
his endeavors, but that he fought for the ever enduring privilege of
personal freedom.
Recognition of the principles for which he fought does not, how-
ever, imply indorsement of his methods and instruments. Many of
his failings can be traced to cowardice; the physical side of which
was well known to his age, and the moral side of which is visible in
nearly erything he did wrote. Yet even with this allowance, it
is difficult to reconcile such a faith as his in the people, with his
constant panics over the smallest events. Indeed, it is hard to believe
it possible that a man so instinct with the popular mood could shy
wildly at the levees of Washington, and the birth-night balls, as evi-
dences of a monarchical tendency; or conceive that his walking to
his inauguration, and his reception of a foreign minister in soiled
linen and slippers down at the heel,” were serious political maneu-
If he truly believed this «the strongest government on earth,”
it seems little less than fatuous in him to declare that the scribbling
of one abusive editor had “saved our Constitution,” and to refer the
success of the Democratic party in 1800 to the influence of another.
Still more of his defects can be accounted for by the influence of
those with whom he labored: Demos being seldom scrupulous in its
ways, and fighting without the feelings or code that go to make war-
fare a duel of equal conditions. His patronage of such hack libelers
as Freneau, Bache, Duane, Paine, and Callender, to say nothing of
vres.


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THOMAS JEFFERSON
8233
the half rebellious democratic societies made up chiefly of the mobs
of the large cities and the moonshiners” of the mountains, is well-
nigh impossible to account for without a confession of the lack of
certain moral qualities innate in most men, and of the noblesse oblige
of his class.
Not less extraordinary is the freedom and sweepingness of his
criticism of the financial plans of Hamilton,-certainly the ablest
financier ever in charge of our national treasury,— when Jefferson
himself was seldom able to add up a column of figures correctly, for
over fifty years of his life was hopelessly insolvent, almost brought
about the national mortification of the public arrest for debt of the
President of the United States, was the recipient of several public
subscriptions that he might live, and in his last years even urged
the Legislature of Virginia to allow a lottery in his behalf. As he
was blind morally in many respects, so too he seemed blind to the
greatest truth of our governing principle,- the rights of the minority,
as compared with those of the majority. «The will of the majority
is the natural law of society," he wrote; and except for the moment-
ary attitude taken in the Resolutions of 1798, he never urged what
is so obvious to any but partisans. On the contrary, his course in
Virginia in the destruction of the old aristocracy, and his attack on
the Supreme Court, show how absolutely he was lacking in the spirit
of majority and minority compromise which is really the basis of
republican government. It is true that in his inaugural address he
said, “We are all Republicans: we are all Federalists;» but this
only referred to the Federalists who were already coalescing with the
Republicans, and towards the leaders of the opposing party he ever
held an intolerant and unforgiving course.
A study of his life goes far to explain these facts. From his
father, Peter Jefferson, an uneducated Indian-fighter, pioneer, and
surveyor, he received an inheritance both of common-sense and of
sympathy with the masses. From his mother, Jane Randolph, came
a strain of the best gentry blood of Virginia; a line at once famous
for its lawyers and statesmen, and shadowed by hereditary insanity.
These dual heritages from his parents were both of vital influence
in his career. Born on April 2d, 1743, at Shadwell, Virginia, on the
foot-hills of the Blue Ridge, then one of the most western of settle-
ments, the frontier life unquestionably developed the qualities he had
received from his father; and bred in this cradle of democracy, he was
ever after able to appreciate and to sympathize with the spirit. Nor
was his mother's influence less potent; for, carefully educated at Will-
iam and Mary College, and with an entrée to the best society of the
colony, he became the cultivated gentleman that he was. From this
double or complex nature flowed curious results. During his whole


## p. 8234 (#434) ###########################################

8234
THOMAS JEFFERSON
life he was fighting the battle of the masses, yet at no period did he
ever associate with them save in his own county, and then only as a
great planter, or county squire; nor is there discernible in anything
he did or wrote, the feeling of personal as opposed to theoretical lik-
ing for mankind. Humane, sympathetic, broad-minded, he always was
in his views and actions; but in relations to his fellow-kind he seems
to have had a distinct repugnance to association with hoi polloi. On
the contrary, the chief happiness of his life was found in his inter-
course with his social equals; and when his adoption of the people's
cause had produced social ostracism by the society of Philadelphia, so
that old friends of his crossed the street merely to avoid touching
their hats to him," and in his own words, “many declined visiting
me with whom I had been on terms of the greatest friendship and
intimacy,” he ever after, when alluding to the period, used expres-
sions implying that he had endured the keenest suffering. With
scarcely an exception, democracy the world over has fought its bat-
tles with self-made men as leaders; men near enough the soil not to
feel, or at least able to resist, the pressure of higher social forces:
but Jefferson was otherwise, and the suffering this alienation and dis-
crimination caused him is over and over again shown by his reiter-
ated expressions of hatred of the very politics to which he gave the
larger part of his life.
Nor was it merely by heritage that Jefferson took rank with
the «classes ); for intellectually as well, he belonged among them.
From his youth he was a close and hard student: he stated himself
that he studied over ten hours a day; and James Duane asserted in
1775 that Jefferson was the greatest rubber-off of dust that he had
met with; that he has learned French, Spanish, and wants to learn
German. ” He believed in the study of original sources; and in his
desire to study these, even taught himself Anglo-Saxon that he might
investigate the development of English law. Only when theorizing
on the great principles controlling society does he seem to have
taken distinct enjoyment in the political side of his career; and this
distinction no doubt accounts for his great reputation as a theoret-
ical statesman, and his almost absolute failure in every executive
office he held. Not the least influence in his life was his intense
interest in everything scientific. An eclipse, a new animal or plant,
the meteorology or the longitude of a place, or any other scientific
datum, was eagerly sought for. Mathematics was another youthful
passion, and to this late in life he returned. In his early days he
took great pleasure in music, fiction, and poetry; but with advancing
years he lost this liking to such a degree that he himself said of
the last, “So much has my relish for poetry deserted me that at
present I cannot read even Virgil with pleasure. ” In the words of a


## p. 8235 (#435) ###########################################

THOMAS JEFFERSON
8235
»
biographer, “His instincts were those of a liberal European noble-
man, like the Duc de Liancourt; and he built himself at Monticello
a chateau above contact with man. ” Here the management of his
farm was his constant delight, but chiefly on its experimental or sci-
entific side, and it is to be noted that practically it never yielded
him a profit; here he gathered an unusually fine library of standard
books (for the time); and here, except for his few intimates, he shut
out the world.
The result of these influences was that from his early manhood
he became a thorough skeptic of tradition and precedent; and in his
own words, he never feared to follow truth and reason, to whatever
results they led, and bearding every authority which' stood in their
way. ” In fact, all through his life there was a certain affectation of
original thinking; and a contemporary who knew him well declared
that “it constituted a part of Mr. Jefferson's pride to run before the
times in which he lived. ” This foible made him dreaded by the
conservatives, and the Federalists were never tired of charging him
with being a radical and a man of sublimated theories; but in the
main his imagination was balanced by an almost equally strong logical
quality of mind.
Almost alone of the Revolutionary leaders, Jefferson was born on
the frontier. Among those conditions he passed the formative period
of his life; and as representative of this region he made his first
essay in politics in 1765, and naturally as an advocate and defender
of the democratic mountaineers. In the Virginia Assembly, in which
his earliest battles were fought, the strongest line of party division
was between the aristocratic “planter” interest - great landed and
slaveholding proprietors, with the prestige and inertia of favorable
laws and offices - and the “settler” interest inhabiting the frontier,
far from the law or protection of government, but strong in numbers,
independence, and necessities; and in these conflicts he learned how
absolutely selfish and grasping all class legislation is. Then came the
Revolution; and Jefferson saw governments deriving their authority
from laws innumerable, and their force from the strongest nation of
Europe, utterly destroyed, with hardly a blow, merely through their
non-recognition by the masses. With the Committees of Safety and
the Congresses that succeeded, and in which he took a prominent
part, he saw the experiment of “a government of the people, by the
people, for the people, established and tested. Even more: he was
the leader in Virginia from whom the great democratic movement
received its greatest impulse; and chiefly by his measures were the
State church swept away, and the laws of entail and primogeniture
abolished, — reforms which, in his own words, inaugurated “a sys-
tem by which every fibre would be eradicated of ancient or future


## p. 8236 (#436) ###########################################

8236
THOMAS JEFFERSON
aristocracy, and a foundation laid for a government truly republican. "
Had he been in America between 1784 and 1788, he too might have
become doubtful as to how far the masses could control themselves;
for the reaction of the Revolutionary struggle was severe, and strained
democratic institutions almost to anarchy. He would have seen, too,
his bills for the establishment of a vast system of public schools and
libraries but dead letters, and his act for religious freedom result in
the closing of many churches. But in these years he was serving as
our minister to France, and witnessing there another great struggle
between the privileged and unprivileged. So he returned to America
in 1789 true to the influences and lessons of his life, which had
taught him to believe that only the people truly knew what the
people needed; that those who could take care of themselves were
wise and practical enough to help care for the nation; and that the
only way of enforcing laws was that they should be made by those
who were to obey them. In this country, then in a state of reaction
from the anarchy of the last few years, he found his theories in
disfavor with the conservative, and government slipping more and
more from the control of the governed. Though he reluctantly
accepted the appointment of Secretary of State under the new gov-
ernment, to oblige Washington, he disapproved very quickly the
Federalist concept of national powers; and after vainly opposing the
policy of the administration in which he had taken office, both openly
and by stealth, he finally sought voluntary retirement as the great-
est protest he could make. Even in this, however, his opposition
was maintained; and when finally the Federalist party, misled by
its leaders, revolted the nation by its actions, Jefferson was swept
into power as the representative of the other extreme. Twice he
was chosen President, and nearly every Legislature in the Union
petitioned him to serve a third term; but he declined, and passed
into retirement, from which he never was tempted, and in which he
died on July 4th, 1826, — exactly fifty years after the adoption of his
Declaration of Independence.
Parl
benester ford


## p. 8237 (#437) ###########################################

THOMAS JEFFERSON
8237
THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE, 1776
Copy prepared by Jefferson to show his draft and the wording adopted by
Congress
ONGRESS proceeded the same day* to consider the declaration of
Friday preceding, and on Monday referred to a conıme of the
whole. The pusillanimous idea that we had friends in England worth
keeping terms with, still haunted the minds of many. For this rea-
son those passages which conveyed censures on the people of Eng-
land were struck out, lest they should give them offence. The clause
too, reprobating the enslaving the inhabitants of Africa, was struck
out in complaisance to South Carolina and Georgia, who had never
attempted to restrain the importation of slaves, and who on the con-
trary still wished to continue it. Our northern brethren also I believe
felt a little tender under those censures; for tho' their people have
very few slaves themselves, yet they had been pretty considerable
carriers of them to others. The debates having taken up the greater
parts of the 2d, 3d & 4th days of July were,t in the evening of the
last, closed; the declaration was reported by the commce , agreed
to by the house, and signed by every member present except Mr.
Dickinson. As the sentiments of men are known not only by what
*Monday, July 1. No sitting was held on Saturday.
+ The Resolution for independence was under discussion on the ist of
July; the Declaration on July 2d, 3d, and 4th.
| The question whether the Declaration was signed on the 4th of July, as
well as on the 2d of August, has been a much vexed one; but a careful study
of it must make almost certain that it was not. The MS. Journal of Con-
gress) (that printed by order of Congress being fabricated and altered) merely
required its «authentication, which we know from other cases was by the
signatures of the president and secretary; who accordingly signed it by order
and in behalf of the Congress,) and the printed copies at once sent out had only
these signatures. It is also certain that several of the members then in Con-
gress would have refused to sign it on that day, and that the Congress there-
fore had good cause to postpone the signing till certain of the delegations
should receive new instructions, or be changed; and also till its first effect
on the people might be seen. For these reasons the Declaration was not
even entered in the journal, though a blank was left for it; and when it was
inserted at a later period, the list of signers was taken from the engrossed
copy,— though had there been one signed on the 4th of July, it would certainly
have been the one printed from, as including the men who were in Congress
on that day and who voted on the question, instead of one signed by a num-
ber of men who were neither present nor members when the Declaration was
adopted. Moreover, though the printed journal afterwards led John Adams to
believe and state that the Declaration was signed on the 4th, we have his
contemporary statement, on July 9th, that «as soon as an American seal is


## p. 8238 (#438) ###########################################

8238
THOMAS JEFFERSON
1
they receive, but what they reject also, I will state the form of the
declaration as originally reported. The parts struck out by Congress
shall be distinguished by a black line drawn under them; & those
inserted by them shall be placed in the margin or in a concurrent
column.
A Declaration by the representatives of the United States of
America, in General Congress assembled
When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for
one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected
them with another, and to assume among the powers of the
earth the separate & equal station to which the laws of nature
and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions
of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which
impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created
equal; that they are endowed by their creator with inherent and
inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, &
the pursuit of happiness: that to secure these rights,
governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers
from the consent of the governed; that whenever any form of
government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right
of the people to alter or abolish it, & to institute new govern-
ment, laying it's foundation on such principles, & organizing it's
powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect
their safety & happiness. Prudence indeed will dictate that gov-
ernments long established should not be changed for light and
transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that
certain
prepared, I conjecture the Declaration will be subscribed by all the members. ”
And we have the positive assertion of McKean that no person signed it on
that day); and this statement is substantiated by the later action of Congress
in specially permitting him to sign what he certainly would have already done
on the 4th, had there been the opportunity. Opposed to these direct state-
ments and probabilities, we have Jefferson's positive statement, three times
repeated, that such a signing took place; but as he follows his nearly contem-
porary one with the statements that it was «signed by every member present
except Mr. Dickinson, when we have proof positive that all the New York
delegates refused to even vote, much less sign, and that Dickinson was not
even present in Congress on that day, it is evident that this narrative is not
wholly trustworthy.


## p. 8239 (#439) ###########################################

THOMAS JEFFERSON
8239
alter
To prove
mankind are more disposed to suffer while evils are sufferable,
than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they
are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses & usurpations
begun at a distinguished period and pursuing invariably the same
object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism,
it is their right, it is their duty to throw off such government, &
to provide new guards for their future security. Such has been
the patient sufferance of these colonies; & such is now the neces.
sity which constrains them to expunge their former sys-
tems of government. The history of the present king of Great
repeated Britain is a history of unremitting injuries & usurpations,
among which appears no solitary fact to contradict the uniform
all having tenor of the rest but all have in direct object the estab-
lishment of an absolute tyranny over these states.
this, let facts be submitted to a candid world for the truth of
which we pledge a faith yet unsullied by falsehood.
He has refused his assent to laws the most wholesome &
necessary for the public good.
He has forbidden his governors to pass laws of immediate &
pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his
assent should be obtained; & when so suspended, he has utterly
neglected to attend to them.
He has refused to pass other laws for the accommodation of
large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the
right of representation in the legislature, a right inestimable to
them, & formidable to tyrants only.
He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual,
uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public
records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance
with his measures.
He has dissolved representative houses repeatedly, & con-
tinually for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the
rights of the people.
He has refused for a long time after such dissolutions to cause
others to be elected, whereby the legislative powers, incapable
of annihilation, have returned to the people at large for their


## p. 8240 (#440) ###########################################

8240
THOMAS JEFFERSON
obstruct-
ed
exercise, the state remaining in the meantime exposed to all the
dangers of invasion from without & convulsions within.
He has endeavored to prevent the population of these states;
for that purpose obstructing the laws for naturalization of for-
eigners, refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations
hither, & raising the conditions of new appropriations of lands.
He has suffered the administration of justice totally to
cease in some of these states refusing his assent to laws by
for establishing judiciary powers.
He has made our judges dependant on his will alone, for the
tenure of their offices, & the amount & pament of their salaries.
He has erected a multitude of new offices by a self-assumed
power and sent hither swarms of new officers to harass our people
and eat out their substance.
He has kept among us in times of peace standing armies and
ships of war without the consent of our legislatures.
He has affected to render the military independant of, &
superior to the civil power.
He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction
foreign to our constitutions & unacknowledged by our laws, giv-
ing his assent to their acts of pretended legislation for quartering
large bodies of armed troops among us; for protecting them by
a mock-trial from punishment for any murders which they should
commit on the inhabitants of these states; for cutting off our
trade with all parts of the world; for imposing taxes on us
without our consent; for depriving us [] of the benefits
in many
of trial by jury; for transporting us beyond seas to be cases
tried for pretended offences; for abolishing the free system of
English laws in a neighboring province, establishing therein an
arbitrary government, and enlarging it's boundaries, so as to ren-
der it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the
same absolute rule into these states; for taking away our
charters, abolishing our most valuable laws, and altering
fundamentally the forms of our governments; for suspending our
own legislatures, & declaring themselves invested with power to
legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
colonies


## p. 8241 (#441) ###########################################

THOMAS JEFFERSON
8241
his pro-
He has abdicated government here withdrawing his by de-
claring
governors, and declaring us out of his allegiance and pro- us out of
tection.
tection,
He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt and
waging
our towns, & destroyed the lives of our people.
against
war
us.
leled in
barbar-
insurrec-
tion
among
us, & has
2
He is at this time transporting large armies of foreign mer-
cenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation & tyranny
already begun with circumstances of cruelty and perfidy
scarcely
[ ] unworthy the head of a civilized nation.
paral-
He has constrained our fellow citizens taken captive the most
on the high seas to bear arms against their country, to ous ages,
become the executioners of their friends & brethren, or
& totally
to fall themselves by their hands.
He has [ ] endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of excited
domestic
our frontiers the merciless Indian savages, whose known
rule of warfare is an undistinguished destruction of all
ages, sexes, & conditions of existence.
He has incited treasonable insurrections of our fellow-citizens,
with the allurements of forfeiture & confiscation of our property.
He has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating
it's most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a dis-
tant people who never offended him, captivating & carrying them
into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death
in their transportation thither. This piratical warfare, the oppro-
brium of INFIDEL powers, is the warfare of the CHRISTIAN king of
Great Britain. Determined to keep open a market where MEN
should be bought & sold, he has prostituted his negative for sup-
pressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this
execrable commerce. And that this assemblage of horrors might
want no fact of distinguished die, he is now exciting those very
people to rise in arms among us, and to purchase that liberty of
which he has deprived them, by murdering the people on whom
he also obtruded them: thus paying off former crimes committed
against the LibERTIES of one people, with crimes which he urges
them to commit against the lives of another.
XIV-516


## p. 8242 (#442) ###########################################

8242
THOMAS JEFFERSON
free
ren.
warrant-
able
tis
In every stage of these oppressions we have petitioned for
redress in the most humble terms: our repeated petitions have
been answered only by repeated injuries.
A prince whose character is thus marked by every act which
may define a tyrant is unfit to be the ruler of a [] people
who mean to be free. Future ages will scarcely believe
that the hardiness of one man adventured, within the short com-
pass of twelve years only, to lay a foundation so broad & so
undisguised for tyranny over a people fostered & fixed in princi-
ples of freedom.
Nor have we been wanting in attentions to our British breth-
We have warned them from time to time of attempts by
their legislature to extend a jurisdiction over these our an un-
states. We have reminded them of the circumstances of
our emigration & settlement here, no one of which could
warrant so strange a pretension: that these were effected at the
expense of our own blood & treasure, unassisted by the wealth
or the strength of Great Britain: that in constituting indeed our
several forms of government, we had adopted one common king,
thereby laying a foundation for perpetual league & amity with
them: but that submission to their parliament was no part of
our constitution, nor ever in idea, if history may be credited:
and, we [] appealed to their native justice and magna- have
nimity as well as to the ties of our common kindred to and we
disavow these usurpations which were likely to interrupt conjured
them by
our connection and correspondence. They too have been
would in
deaf to the voice of justice & of consanguinity, and when evitably
occasions have been given them, by the regular course of their
laws, of removing from their councils the disturbers of our har-
mony, they have, by their free election, re-established them in
power. At this very time too they are permitting their chief
magistrate to send over not only soldiers of our common blood,
but Scotch & foreign mercenaries to invade & destroy us. These
facts have given the last stab to agonizing affection, and manly
spirit bids us to renounce forever these unfeeling brethren. We
must endeavor to forget our former love for them, and hold
have


## p. 8243 (#443) ###########################################

THOMAS JEFFERSON
8243
them as we hold the rest of mankind, enemies in war, in peace
friends. We might have been a free and a great people together;
but a communication of grandeur & of freedom it seems is below
their dignity. Be it so, since they will have it. The road to
happiness & to glory is open to us too. We will tread
it apart from them, and acquiesce in the necessity which therefore
and hold
denounces our eternal separation [ ]!
We must
them as
we hold
the rest
of man-
kind,
enemies
in war,
in peace
friends.
We therefore the represent-
We therefore the represent-
atives of the United States of atives of the United States of
America in General Congress America in General Congress
assembled do in the name & assembled, appealing to the su-
by authority of the good people preme judge of the world for
of these states reject & renounce the rectitude of our intentions,
all allegiance & subjection to do in the name, & by the au-
the kings of Great Britain & thority of the good people of
all others who may hereafter these colonies, solemnly publish
claim by, through or under & declare that these united col-
them: we utterly dissolve all onies are & of right ought to
political connection which may be free & independent states;
heretofore have subsisted be- that they are absolved from all
tween us & the people or par- allegiance to the British crown,
liament of Great Britain: & and that all political connection
finally we do assert & declare between them & the state of
these colonies to be free & in- Great Britain is, & ought to be,
dependent states, & that as free totally dissolved; & that as free
& independent states, they have & independent states they have
full power to levy war, conclude full power to levy war, conclude
peace, contract alliances, estab- peace, contract alliances, estab-
lish commerce, & to do all other lish commerce & to do all other
acts & things which independent acts & things which independant
states may of right do.
states may of right do.


## p. 8244 (#444) ###########################################

8244
THOMAS JEFFERSON
And for the support of this And for the support of this
declaration we mutually pledge declaration, with a firm reliance
to each other our lives, our for- on the protection of divine prov.
tunes, & our sacred honor. idence we mutually pledge to
each other our lives, our for-
tunes, & our sacred honor. *
*
ex-
The Declaration thus signed on the 4th on paper, was engrossed
on parchment, & signed again on the 2d. of August.
On Friday July 12. the Committee appointed to draw the articles
of confederation reported them, and on the 22d. the house resolved
themselves into a committee to take them into consideration. On the
30th. & 31st. of that month and ist. of the ensuing, those articles
were debated which determined the proportion or quota of money
which each state should furnish to the common treasury, and the
manner of voting in Congress. The first of these articles was
pressed in the original draught in these words. « Art. XI. All
charges of war & all other expenses that shall be incurred for the
common defence, or general welfare, and allowed by the United
States assembled, shall be defrayed out of a common treasury, which
shall be supplied by the several colonies in proportion to the number
of inhabitants of every age, sex & quality, except Indians not paying
taxes, in each colony, a true account of which, distinguishing the
white inhabitants, shall be triennially taken & transmitted to the
Assembly of the United States. "
* This is printed just as Jefferson prepared it for the press, the reproduction
being from his first draft, now in the Department of State. In addition, they
have a fair copy, made by Jefferson for Madison, which was reproduced in the
(Madison Papers. ) The “fair copy » laid before Congress has disappeared, if
ever preserved. A copy given to Mazzei was given by him to the Countess
de Tessie in France, and has been lost sight of, as well as a copy sent to
Edmund Pendleton. But in the possession of the Hon. Elliot Danforth of
Albany is a copy which may possibly be the latter. In the American Philo-
sophical Society is the copy he sent to R. H. Lee, which is printed in Lee's
(Life of R. H. Lee. )
+ This is an interlineation made at a later period — apparently after the
question as to the signing of the Declaration was raised. Jefferson has also
written the following on a slip and pasted it on the sheet:-
“Some erroneous statements of the proceedings on the declaration of inde-
pendence having got before the public in latter times, Mr. Samuel A. Wells
asked explanations of me, which are given in my letter to him of May 12, 19.
before and now again referred to. I took notes in my place while these
things were going on, and at their close wrote them out in form and with cor-
rectness, and from 1 to 7 of the two preceding sheets are the originals then
written; as the two following are of the earlier debates on the Confederation,
which I took in like manner. ”


## p. 8245 (#445) ###########################################

THOMAS JEFFERSON
8245
ON FICTION
From a letter to Robert Skipwith, August 3d, 1771
I
SAT down with the design of executing your request to form
a catalogue of books to the amount of about £50 sterl. , but
could by no means satisfy myself with any partial choice I
could make. Thinking therefore it might be agreeable to you,
I have framed such a general collection as I think you would
wish and might in time find convenient to procure. Out of this
you will choose for yourself to the amount you mentioned for
the present year, and may hereafter proceed in completing the
whole. A view of the second column in this catalogue would, I
suppose, extort a smile from the face of gravity. Peace to its
wisdom! Let me not awaken it. A little attention, however, to
the nature of the human mind evinces that the entertainments
of fiction are useful as well as pleasant. That they are pleasant
when well written, every person feels who reads. But wherein
is its utility ? asks the reverend sage, big with the notion that
nothing can be useful but the learned lumber of Greek and
Roman reading with which his head is stored.
I answer, everything is useful which contributes to fix in
the principles and practice of virtue. When any original act of
charity or of gratitude, for instance, is presented either to our
sight or imagination, we are deeply impressed with its beauty,
and feel a strong desire in ourselves of doing charitable and
grateful acts also. On the contrary, when we see or read of any
atrocious deed, we are disgusted with its deformity and conceive
an abhorrence of vice. Now every emotion of this kind is an
exercise of our virtuous dispositions; and dispositions of the mind,
like limbs of the body, acquire strength in exercise. But exer-
cise produces habit; and in the instance of which we speak,
the exercise, being of the moral feelings, produces a habit of
thinking and acting virtuously. We never reflect whether the
story we read be truth or fiction. I appeal to every reader of
feeling and sentiment, whether the fictitious murder of Duncan
by Macbeth in Shakespeare does not excite in him as great a
horror of villainy as the real one of Henry IV. by Ravaillac, as
related by Davila ? And whether the fidelity of Nelson and gen-
erosity of Blandford in Marmontel do not dilate his breast and
elevate his sentiments as much as any similar incident which real


## p. 8246 (#446) ###########################################

8246
THOMAS JEFFERSON
history can furnish? We are therefore wisely framed to be as
warmly interested for a fictitious as for a real personage. The
field of imagination is thus laid open to our use, and lessons
may be formed to illustrate and carry home to the heart every
moral rule of life. Thus a lively and lasting sense of filial duty
is more effectually impressed on the mind of a son or daughter
by reading King Lear' than by all the dry volumes of ethics
and divinity that ever were written. This is my idea of well-
written romance, or tragedy, comedy, and epic poetry.
THE MORAL INFLUENCE OF SLAVERY
From Notes on Virginia,' 1782
It
T is difficult to determine on the standard by which the man-
ners of a nation may be tried, whether catholic or particular.
It is more difficult for a native to bring to that standard the
manners of his own nation, familiarized to him by habit. There
must doubtless be an unhappy influence on the manners of our
people produced by the existence of slavery among us.
The
whole commerce between master and slave is a perpetual exer-
cise of the most boisterous passions, - the most unremitting des-
potism on the one part and degrading submissions on the other.
Our children see this, and learn to imitate it; for man is an
imitative animal. This quality is the germ of all education in
him. From his cradle to his grave he is learning to do what
he sees others do. If a parent could find no motive either in
his philanthropy or his self-love for restraining the intemperance
of passion towards his slave, it should always be a sufficient one
that his child is present. But generally it is not sufficient. The
parent storms; the child looks on, catches the lineaments of
wrath, puts on the same airs, in the circle of smaller slaves gives
a lcose to the worst of passions, and thus nursed, educated, and
daily exercised in tyranny, cannot but be stamped by it with
odious peculiarities. The man must be a prodigy who can retain
his manners and morals undepraved by such circumstances. And
with what execrations should the statesman be loaded who, per-
mitting one-half the citizens thus to trample on the rights of
the other, transforms those into despots and these into enemies,
destroys the morals of the one part and the amor patria of the
other! For if a slave can have a country in this world, it must


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THOMAS JEFFERSON
82 47
be any other in preference to that in which he is born to live
and labor for another; in which he must lock up the faculties of
his nature, contribute as far as depends on his individual endeav-
ors to the evanishment of the human race, or entail his own
miserable condition on the endless generations proceeding from
him. With the morals of the people, their industry is destroyed.
For in a warm climate, no man will labor for himself who can
make another labor for him. This is so true, that of the propri.
.
etors of slaves a very small proportion indeed are ever seen to
labor. And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when
we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds
of the people that these liberties are of the gift of God ? that
they are not to be violated but with his wrath ? Indeed I trem-
ble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that his
justice cannot sleep forever; that considering numbers, nature,
and natural means only, a revolution of the wheel of fortune,
an exchange of situation, is among possible events; that it may
become probable by supernatural interference! The Almighty
has no attribute which can take side with us in such a contest.
But it is impossible to be temperate, and to pursue this subject
through the various considerations of policy, of morals, of history
natural and civil. We must be contented to hope they will force
their way into every one's mind. I think a change already per-
ceptible, since the origin of the present revolution.
The spirit
of the master is abating, that of the slave rising from the dust,
his condition mollifying; the way, I hope, preparing under the
auspices of heaven for a total emancipation, and that this is dis-
posed in the order of events to be with the consent of the mas-
ters, rather than by their extirpation.
LETTER TO MR. HOPKINSON
M'
Paris, December 23d, 1786.
Dear Sir:
Y LAST letter to you was dated August 14th. Yours of May
27th and June 28th were not then received, but have
been since. I take the liberty of putting under your cover
another letter to Mrs. Champis, as also an inquiry after a Dr.
Griffiths.