respected men in America to see it then. Not as many lives were lost by the guillotine as in many a single battle, fought about next to nothing and in some few battles fought to maintain the amour propre of a king's mistress. Nor were there as many lives lost by the guillotine, probably, as many a single generation of kings and nobles and priests had snuffed out, in an equal length of time, as the result of poverty, neglect, insanitation, and overtaxation, caused by general misgovernment.

Jefferson saw all this - all honor to him for having seen it, and for having refused to permit himself and his followers in America to be dragged into a senseless American counter-revolution, because a people blindly and brutally striving for liberty in France had temporarily failed, and had failed no more by their own ignorance and cruelty, than by the hostile coalescence of kings, and of beneficiaries of special privilege, all over Europe. It must never be forgotten that the domestic violence in France was but a protest-blind, unreasoning, barbarous — but still a protest, against this coalescence between privileged enemies of popular right at home and the beneficiaries of monarchical, aristocratic, and plutocratic privilege abroad-kings, nobles, ecclesiastics, and fund-holders. Truly Jefferson came back from France "a republican militant.” Happy for us that he was in France, so to come back!

A letter to Mr. Short, dated January 3, 1793, shows how Jefferson, unlike so many other intelligent men in America and in England, saw, beyond the struggle and the bloodshed, to the hoped-for issue itself - saw the things that were to be permanent and not temporary.

After describing how the French people had become Jacobins by the almost necessary stress and drive of circumstance, he says:

"In the struggle, which was necessary, many guilty persons fell without the forms of trial, and with them some innocent. These I deplore as much as anybody, and shall deplore some of them to the day of my death. But I deplore them, as I should have done had they fallen in battle. It was necessary to use the arm of the people a machine not quite so blind as balls and bombs - but blind to a certain degree. A few of their cordial friends met at their hands the fate of enemies. But time and truth will rescue and embalm their memory, while their posterity will be enjoying that very liberty for which they would never have hesitated to offer up their lives. The liberty of the whole earth was depending upon the issue of that contest. Was ever such a prize won with so little innocent blood?"

By this time Gouverneur Morris was in Paris and was becoming very "properly" "disgusted" with the fact that "booksellers and venders of skins and grocers" were being placed in civil office! It was not to be long before John Adams would in America voice this same high-flown contempt for common folks. We find Mr. Morris about this time - at least his Memoir says so urging Lafayette "to preserve, if possible, some constitutional authority to the body of the nobles, as the one means of preserving any liberty for the people." Isn't that "going some" for an American, who almost thus far had been getting on very well without having ever met a nobleman, except of the God-made sort? We find him commenting unfavorably upon the fact that "Jefferson, with all the leaders of liberty here, is desirous of annihilating distinctions of

order"! This was not quite true, as a matter of fact, because Jefferson had not yet thought it wise to go that far in France. He was emphatically urging, however, the withdrawal of the hurtful special privileges of the clergy and nobility, which exempted them from taxation and made all the heavy services and taxes fall upon the poor.

Jefferson did not confide in Morris, who knew nothing of what he wanted. At that very time and up to the day he left France he believed that France was not yet ready for anything more than a limited constitutional monarchy. As late as November 18, 1788, he says, in a letter to Mr. Madison speaking of the French people: "The misfortune is that they are not yet ripe to receive the blessings to which they are entitled."

He, nearly first of all English-speaking great men, saw the immense influence of the example of France upon the civilization of the world. He writes: "I considered a successful reformation of government in France as insuring a general reformation through Europe, and the resurrection to new life of their people now ground to dust by the abuses of the governing powers." Long afterwards it came to be a generally recognized fact that convulsions in France were always followed by convulsions all over Europe

and 1848.

as in 1830

It was doubtful if, in advising an understanding with the court, on the limited monarchy basis, Jefferson was wise. The fight had by now gone too far. It had recently become evident that the sincerity of the court and of the courtiers simply could not be relied

upon. The people were compelled to do one of two things, and they soon realized the fact

either desist from their struggle for liberty, or else intimidate the aristocracy.

The charter which, at the request of some of the patriotic party, he drew up, can be found in his works, either edition. It was an immense step forward for the French people.

Gouverneur Morris and Jefferson never did each other justice. They were men so far apart in temperament and in political creed that it was well nigh impossible. Morris was cynical, sneering, distrustful of every sort of elevating sentiment the hard, practical man of affairs; — fond of speculation, withal - yet acute;— honest, but utterly incapable of believing that anybody professing a faith in the rule of the masses of the people could be otherwise than hypocritical. Jefferson was as we know him to be.

Jefferson saw clearly the real causes of the French Revolution saw too that its excesses were not to be charged solely to the passions and cruel vengeance and ignorance of the people, but in just proportion also to the long oppression which had preceded and produced their ignorance, and to the almost fiendish contempt for the people, which had had its result in arousing avenging passions against the noblesse who entertained it. Carlyle afterwards, partially, and Charles Dickens, very clearly, saw what Jefferson did, but neither quite as sympathetically. How clearly he saw it all would be, if I had space or time, worth demonstrating at the risk of tediousness.

When, on the 4th of August, the National Assembly abolished all class privileges, Jefferson says: "Thus there went down at one sweeping blow all titles of rank, all the abusive privileges of feudalism, the tithes and casuals of the clergy, all provincial privileges." Then the Declaration of Rights was adopted, and then a committee appointed to draft a constitution, and then that most extraordinary compliment paid to Mr. Jefferson, when the chairman of this committee wrote him a letter, dated July 20th, requesting him to “assist” at their deliberations. Of course, Jefferson knew better the duties of an ambassador than to take any such open and public part in the formation of the constitution of a country, to the court of which he was accredited. It shows, nevertheless, the remarkable influence of the man, which was demonstrated throughout his life, wherever he happened to be.

Here Jefferson ceased to be a spectator of the great European drama. It will be noted that it was before the great excesses which shocked the civilized world had occurred.

Parton says, in his "Jefferson's Return From France" -Atlantic Monthly, 1872- and I am glad to find somebody who agrees with me about that:

"The narrative of events written by Jefferson in extreme old age, brief, cold and colorless as it is, taken in connection with his numerous letters, official and private, written at the time, will be prized by the individual, who will, at length, evolve the French Revolution from the chaos of material in which it is now involved. Unfortunately, Jefferson went too far in extirpating his egotism. He was not vain enough; he was curiously reticent concerning his own part in important events; he instinctively veiled them and his