We can all now realize what an effect the equality of inheritance has upon the framework of society; how it tears down an artificial and superficial, though fairappearing structure, and substitutes for it another more enduring, and in every way better adapted to secure the liberty and happiness and independence of man.

In his own State, and in the South generally, the abolition of primogeniture and entail has thus far secured a fair distribution of wealth, but a worse thing than primogeniture is taking its place in some of the Northern States - especially in New York — where it has become a fad with some of the rich families to leave by will nearly all of their stupendous estates, not to the oldest son, who might possibly feel that he had enough money and "go in for" something else, but to that one of the sons, who comes nearest resembling the founder of the family fortune in his greed for money, and in his capacity for making it in short, to the best "money-grubber" in the stock.

The peculiar thing is that Jefferson procured the passage of these "laws striking at the ascendency and domination of great, respectable and respected classes" by an appeal to the reason of a body in which those classes themselves were numerously represented, and of which classes Jefferson himself was a member, for he was a holder of extensive lands and an owner of very many slaves, and in his own family an eldest son. But he did not secure their passage without a fight—a fight not as acrimonious as it would have been, if anybody but Jefferson had been the advocate of the reforms, nor if the struggle had taken place elsewhere than in Virginia, where it was a tradition that political oppo

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nents, however divergent their views, must in public be personally courteous to one another. Men of more than respectable talents, however among them the Pendletons and Nicholases- met him in the breach. When frontal attack failed, they resorted to attacks on the flank. For example, when the law to abolish entails was proposed, Mr. Pendleton, desiring to emasculate it, moved an amendment that the holders of such property might convey it in fee simple, "if they chose to do so," and came within a few votes of securing the passage of the amendment!

Proceeding with his work of reformation, on October 14th, he procured leave to bring in a bill for the naturalization of foreigners, and reported the bill upon this subject on the same day. This bill is remarkable, not only because it outlines an American policy towards those seeking our shores, which became afterwards permanent, except for a short interruption by the Federalists during alien and sedition law times and a brief menace during Know-Nothing days, but it is remarkable as being the first public legislative denial of the doctrine of indefeasible allegiance. To this I have referred. Both these, it may be safely asserted, have become for us permanent and irrevocable national policies.

Among other then notable and far-reaching things, he subjected land, just like other property, to the payment of debts. He made it a fluid asset. This was very important in connection with the work of democratizing. You cannot completely free the man, unless you free the land. Man- the worker, land — the fulcrum - these two, in ultimate analysis, are all.

Against the proposed abolition of primogeniture, Pendleton made a strong stand in committee in behalf of his class, and when he found a majority against him, resorted to a ruse, by proposing to adopt "the Hebrew principle," that is, to give the oldest son a double portion. Jefferson, quaintly, but decisively, answered, that "if the eldest son could eat twice as much, or do double work, it might be a natural evidence of his right to inherit a double portion; but being on a par in his powers and wants, with his brothers and sisters, he should be on a par also in the partition of the patrimony." The committee agreed with him.

These laws exerted for all time their democratizing influence over the people of Virginia, and, by their example which was imitated elsewhere, a beneficent influence over all America, but especially in the new States created out of the old Territory of Virginia, where he and his ideas were all his life intensely popular. John Esten Cooke, in his "History of Virginia," says:

"After 1800, Virginia gradually assumed a new physiognomy. Dress and manners underwent a change. The aristocratic planter, with his powder and silk stockings, gave place to the democratic citizen, with his plain clothes and plain manners. The theories of Jefferson were adopted as the rule of society. ... Class distinctions were ignored as a remnant of social superstition."

On the 13th of August, 1777, Jefferson wrote to Franklin as follows:

...

"With respect to the State of Virginia, the people seem to have laid aside the monarchical and taken up the republican government, with as much ease as would have attended their throwing off an old and putting on a new suit of clothes. Not a

single throe has attended this important transformation. A half-dozen aristocratical gentlemen, agonizing under the loss of preeminence, have sometimes ventured their sarcasms on our political metamorphosis.”

In one graphic sentence, Thomas E. Watson, in his "Life and Times of Jefferson," gives the effect of Jefferson's work in democratizing Virginia institutions: "He unfettered the land, changed the tenure from fee tail to fee simple, made the soil democratic, and made the law to correspond. . Mind and tongue were unfettered. Religious liberty came to all." Truly "a State made over," and virtually by one man, whom shallow-pates have called a "doctrinaire!" That old quotation comes to my mind: "They said he was a dreamer, but his dreams came true."

What is a doctrinaire?

Burke, the prince of rhetoricians, says of Chatham, the elder Pitt: "For a wise man he seemed to me at that time to be too much governed by general maxims." But history records practically nothing left by Burke to mark his impress on institutions and history, while she records Chatham as an empire builder.

Yet, let us not give Jefferson all the credit. Old Virginia had the heart and head to follow him in every respect, except concerning slavery; to embrace a democracy of equal rights, equal opportunities without legal or artificial privileges, and thus democratic has she remained "so shedding light" that all good States may imitate her example.

Jefferson always contended that despite its admirable town-government system, the governing spirit of Federalist New England was not genuinely democratic.

This has "amused" some of the late writers, who assume to wear the old Federalist mantle, under the impression that it sets them aside as something "superior!"

Mr. C. Edward Merriam, of the University of Chicago, has written a very interesting book entitled, "American Political Theories," published by the Macmillan Company in 1903, the perusal of which, under this head, I recommend to the reader. Among other things which he makes perfectly plain is the fact that the system of government advocated by the early Puritans was based upon neither equality nor democracy; it was a theocratic government, with pretty nearly all the power directedly or indirectly wielded by the clergy so much so that only church members could become "freemen;" that is, a part of the governing community. This was the case by law in Massachusetts and New Haven, and by actual practice in Plymouth and Connecticut. As he says, it was Roger Williams, not the Puritans, who stood for democracy, in New England. He taught limiting the activity of the state to what were called "breaches of the second table," a new phrase to me, when I struck it. The first four commandments were called the first table, because they related to the duty of man to God, and the last six were called the second table, because they related to the duties of man to man. In essential basic character, Roger Williams' view of the limits of the state in the affairs of men is not unlike that of Thomas Jefferson.

Merriam cites that John Cotton in 1644 denounced democracy as "the meanest and worst of all forms of