456 A PERSONAL ACCIDENT. [CHAP. XI. can rice; and attention was called to general arrêts temporarily reducing the duty on the exportation of wines to all countries. Thus some very important advantages were secured to Ameri can commerce, and concessions made in the gross in its favor, which were made, we think, to no other country in the world at the time. On the 4th day of September, Mr. Jefferson met with an accident thus described by his daughter Martha: "At one o'clock he always rode or walked. He frequently walked as far as seven miles in the country. Returning from one of those rambles, he was joined by some friend, and being earnestly engaged in conversation he fell and fractured his wrist. He said nothing at the moment, but holding his suffering limb with the other hand, he continued the conversation till he arrived near to his own house, when, informing his companion of the accident, he left him to send for the surgeon. The fracture was a compound one, and probably much swollen before the arrival of the surgeon; it was not set, and remained ever after weak and stiff. While disabled by the accident, he was in the habit of writing with his left hand, in which he soon became tolerably expert, the writing being well formed, but stiff." He was four or five miles from his lodgings when the disaster occurred. Grasping the fractured wrist tightly with his left band, he continued the conversation so quietly and with so little alteration of countenance, that his companion, as his daughter intimates, had no suspicion of the extent of the accident until they were on the point of parting-though he was suffering the most intense pain. This was a good illustration of the calm and silent fortitude which always characterized him, where his own bodily suffering or danger was alone concerned. The extremest bodily agony hardly ever drew from him a groan or a complaint. And we have another familiar trait conspicuously developed. The pocket account-book contains several entries written in his ordinary hand on the forenoon of the day of the accident. In the afternoon there is an entry of the purchase of some "buttons" and "gloves," in the cramped, stiff, perpendicular characters of a man writing for the first time with his left hand-yet made so slowly and carefully that they are as legible as print! The pain of a badly fractured limb, and of an unsuccessful attempt to set it, was not sufficient to stop, for a single afternoon, his inflexible system in keeping his accounts! The letter of M. de Calonne to Mr. Jefferson will be found in the Dip. Corr. of U. S vol. iii. p. 160. by In Ban. mister juge for zu of which charge to Pansuster. 2. jrd French & nephew, a bill drawn on me pod Goldsmith for books of 10 And do for 19th livraison of Encyclopedie. viz I. I. Madison 24 24 ~1786. Kitchen exp netite depences. postage washing 143 Aug. 21-25. Aug. 26 234" (29) 2132-% (20) = 49 120-9- 73.14. 32.15 Sep. 4. p. for buttons 22./10. gloves 4/6 soing the king's library 31. Madrid 6f 7.* seeing machine of Marly. 6. the Chateau of p Petit fowards dinner at Mearly 12f pd at Louvechiense of I. paid seeing Gardes meubles 12f - for books 3/10. 10 p Valade for a picture 96f 13 pa hive of Piang forte 12 f 14 p2 Charpentier for a press for M. de lafayette grf for clamps 12f 21.pt clothes for Patsy 64 fis - Cent Mazzer 36f 22. pt postage 106f17 - Petit on acet 93 ₤3 DET... & Corneillon engraving 27f di for picture 40€ 2. state of expences of September. Sep1-4 10 — 16 17-23 | 24-30 Kitchen exp 266-6-6206-11 172-10 116-4-6 (20) (26) (22) (13) Office Pet dep ences 49-3 57.4 128-19 Postage 634-0.6294-13-6305-4381-8-61611-6-6 ACCOUNT KEPT WHILE MA JEFFERSON'S RIGHT WRIST WAS BROKEN. CHAP. XI.] VIEWS OF A NEW U. S. GOVERNMENT. 457 This left-hand chirography continues to the middle of November; and it, for some time after, alternates with the other. He never again wrote rapidly or easily with his right hand. On the 14th of November, Mr. Jefferson wrote General Washington a letter, explaining his agency in furnishing or correcting the remarks on the Cincinnati Society, in the Encyclopédie Méthodique, and it shows his increasing jealousy of that institution, and his increasing (if that was possible) hostility to monarchical and aristocratic government. We shall begin, from this period, to get occasional expressions from Mr. Jefferson on a point becoming one of paramount interest at home-the formation of a more solid national government. He thus alludes to the Annapolis Convention, and the then coming one at Philadelphia, which framed the present United States Constitution. We get a clear view of what Jefferson thought in advance-thought originally-should be the general form and construction of the federal government: "I find by the public papers, that your commercial convention failed in point of representation. If it should produce a full meeting in May, and a broader reformation, it will still be well. To make us one nation as to foreign concerns, and keep us distinct in domestic ones, gives the outline of the proper division of powers between the general and particular governments. But to enable the federal head to exercise the powers given it, to best advantage, it should be organized, as the particular ones are, into legislative, executive, and judiciary. The first and last are already separated. The second should be. When last with Congress, I often proposed to members to do this, by making of the committee of the States an executive committee during the recess of Congress, and during its sessions, to appoint a committee to receive and dispatch all executive business, so that Congress itself should meddle only with what should be legislative. But I question if any Congress (much less all successively) can have self-denial enough to go through with this distribution." He thus, in the same letter, spoke of the final passage of the act for religious freedom (his own) by the Virginia Legislature : "It is comfortable to see the standard of reason at length erected, after so many ages, during which the human mind has been held in vassalage by kings, priests, and nobles: and it is honorable for us to have produced the first legislature who had the courage to declare, that the reason of man may be trusted with the formation of his own opinions." In a letter to Monroe (December 18th), he mentioned that "some symptoms" had given him reason to suspect that his opposition to the monopoly of importing tobacco by the Far 458 JOURNEY-HONORARY APPOINTMENT, ETC. [СНАР. XI. mers-General, had given offence to Robert Morris of Philadelphia, who was "profiting from the abuse." He added: "I have done what was right, and I will not so far wound my privilege of doing that, without regard to any man's interest, as to enter into any explanations of this paragraph with him. Yet I esteem him highly, and suppose that hitherto he had esteemed me." He alluded, in the same, to a contemplated journey : "I am now about setting out on a journey to the south of France, one object of which is to try the mineral waters there, for the restoration of my hand; but another is, to visit all the seaports where we have trade, and to hunt up all the inconveniencies under which it labors, in order to get them rectified. I shall visit, and carefully examine too, the canal of Languedoc." And here is a dream, more and more henceforth recurringbut yet long and weary years from its realization: "On my return, which will be early in the spring, I shall send you several livraisons of the Encyclopedia, and the plan of your house. I wish to heaven, you may continue in the disposition to fix it in Albemarle. Short will establish himself there, and perhaps Madison may be tempted to do so. This will be society enough, and it will be the great sweetener of our lives. Without society, and a society to our taste, men are never contented. The one here supposed, we can regulate to our minds, and we may extend our regulations to the sumptuary department, so as to set a good example to a country which needs it, and to preserve our own happiness clear of embarrassment." Receiving the honorary degree of Doctor of Laws from the Senatus Academicus of Yale College, Mr. Jefferson acknowledged the honor in a letter to Dr. Stiles, the President of the institution, December 24th; and he subjoined the following characteristic remarks in relation to "Shay's insurrection," information of which had lately reached him: "The commotions that have taken place in America, as far as they are yet known to me, offer nothing threatening. They are a proof that the people have liberty enough, and I could not wish them less than they have. 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, it will be a precious purchase. Malo libertatem periculosam quam quietem servitutem.' Let common sense and common honesty have fair play, and they will soon set things to rights.” According to our floating recollections, Mr. Jefferson here substituted "periculosam" for "inquietam," in the original— willing to declare that he preferred a dangerous-instead of a |