French mission in order that his democratic and decentralizing theories might not interfere to thwart the drafting of a "strong" Constitution. Jefferson's correspondence, however, furnishes no support for such a view. He realized the necessity for a central control over our commerce and our foreign relations. On the very eve of his departure for France he wrote from Boston to James Madison: "I find the conviction growing strongly that nothing can preserve our confederacy unless the bonds of union be strengthened." This was after a visit to the principal towns of the New England States to study their commerce.

Jefferson also found himself is substantial agreement with the new Constitution when it reached him in Paris in finished form. In a long letter to Madison, written December 20, 1787, he commended the security of the Federal Government from interference by the State Legislatures, the grant of the taxing power to Congress, the division of the National Government into its three great departments, the election of the House of Representatives by popular vote, the equal representation of the States in the Senate, the voting in both Houses by individuals and not by States, the veto power of the President (though he would like to have seen it exercised in conjunction with the judiciary), and 'many other good things of far less moment.' He repeated his assertion in a letter to Francis Hopkin

son, March 13, 1789: "I approved from the first moment the great mass of what is in the new Constitution."

What Jefferson found amiss in the Constitution was, first of all, that it did not contain a Bill of Rights guaranteeing to every citizen such fundamental liberties as freedom of speech and religion, habeas corpus, trial by jury, the right of petition, and the like. Even in a democratic government, conducted wholly by the people's representatives, Jefferson still thought these rights should be explicitly safeguarded and not merely left to be inferred. The second point that Jefferson objected to was the reeligibility of officers, especially the President, "who might be transformed by successive reëlections, which he would be tempted to secure by foul means, if fair means failed, into a virtual dictator." In a postscript Jefferson thought it might be well, in view of "the instability of our laws," if the Constitution provided that a year must expire between the engrossing of a bill and its passage, or in case of 'urgency" that a two-thirds vote instead of a bare majority should be necessary.

Despite these objections to the Constitution (which are much less serious than those of Hamilton, who is reckoned among its "champions") Jefferson wanted the Constitution to be adopted by the necessary nine States "in order to insure what was good in it," while the other four States should

hold off until a newly assembled convention added the desired amendments. He soon came over to the "Massachusetts plan," however, of ratification with the recommendation to Congress of further amendment. "I learn with great pleasure the progress of the new Constitution," he wrote to Colonel Carrington in May, 1788; "the general adoption is to be prayed for, and I wait with great anxiety the news from Maryland and South Carolina, which have decided [on ratification] before this; and with [anxiety] that Virginia, now in session, may give the ninth vote of approbation. There could then be no doubt of North Carolina, New York, and New Hampshire. We should give Rhode Island time. I cannot conceive but that she will come to rights in the long run. Force in whatever form would be a dangerous precedent." The "general adoption" was secured, Rhode Island finally came in, and the bill of rights was added in the first ten amendments, passed in the first session of Congress and ratified by the States. The indefinite reëligibility of the President was not forbidden by law, but Washington and Jefferson set the example of retirement from the office after the second term, which has been followed to this day.

The radicalism of Jefferson's democracy comes out more strongly in the correspondence of his Paris days than at any other time of his life. His contact with the courts of Europe only confirmed

in him the opinion of the happiness of the American republic. "My God!" he wrote to Monroe in the summer of 1788, "how little do my countrymen know what precious blessings they are in possession of, and which no other people on earth enjoy." He found the French people "ground to powder by the vices of their form of government." "Of 20,000,000 people supposed to be in France," he writes to a friend in Philadelphia, "I am of opinion there are 19,000,000 more wretched, more accursed in every circumstance of human existence than the most conspicuously wretched individual in the whole United States." Kings he thought the bane of their people. There was not a crowned head in Europe, he wrote to Washington, "whose talents or merits would entitle him to be elected a vestryman in any parish in America." There was scarcely an evil in Europe, he said, which might not be traced to their kin as its source, nor a good which was not derived from the "small fibres of republicanism existing among them." If all the evils that could arise under a republican form of government from now till the day of judgment could be weighed against the evils which France suffered in a week or England in a month from its monarchical government, the scales would incline in favor of the former. No race of kings had ever produced more than one man of common sense in twenty generations. The best behavior of kings was to leave

things alone: wherever they meddled it was to do harm. Of course, many of these sentiments are ridiculous exaggerations. When Jefferson wrote them Frederick the Great had been dead less than two years!

The same suspicion of anything approaching arbitrary power or despotic government led Jefferson to condone revolution in words which have often been quoted to prove that he was little better than an anarchist. Shays's Rebellion in Massachusetts in 1786-7 did not seem to him ominous. It was only a proof that the people had "liberty enough," and he would not have had them have less. "If the happiness of the mass of the people can be secured at the expense of a little tempest now and then, or even of a little blood," he wrote Doctor Stiles, the president of Yale College, in acknowledging an honorary degree, "it will be a precious purchase. Malo libertatem periculosam quam quietam servitutem!" To others also he "talked some very bad nonsense" about seditious uprisings, declaring that no country should be too long without a revolution; that no country could be safe unless its rulers were warned from time to time that the people possessed the power and spirit of resistance; that between a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government he would not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter; that the lives lost in a century or two in such a good cause as rebellions