When all the various attempts to enslave America by fraud; under guise of law; by military threats; by famine, massacre, breach of public faith, and open war: I say, when these things are considered on the one hand, and on the other the constitution expressing that some mode of government should be established "until an accommodation of the unhappy differences between Great Britain and America can be obtained; an event, which though traduced and treated as rebels, we still ardently desire:" I say, when these two points are contrasted, can we avoid revering the magnanimity of that great council of the state who after such injuries could entertain such a principle! But the virtuous are ever generous.

We do not wish revenge: we earnestly wish an accommodation of our unhappy disputes with Great Britain; for we prefer peace to war. Nay, there may be even such an accommodation as, excluding every idea of revenue by taxation or duty, or of legislation by act of parliaments, may vest the king of Great Britain with such a limited dominion over us as may tend, bona fide, to promote our true commercial interests and to secure our freedom and safety—the only just ends of any dominion.

But while I declare thus much on the one side, on the other it is my duty also to declare that in my opinion our true commercial interests cannot be provided for but by such a material alteration of the British acts of navigation as, according to the resolve of the honorable the Continental Congress, will "secure the commercial advantages of the whole empire to the mother country, and the commercial benefits of its respective members;" and that our liberties and safety cannot be depended upon if the king of Great Britain should be allowed to hold our forts and cannon, or to have authority over a single regiment in America, or

a single ship of war in our ports. For if he holds our forts he may turn them against us, as he did Boston against her proprietors; if he acquires our cannon he will effectually disarm the colony; if he has a command of troops among us, even if we raise and pay them, shackles are fixed upon us witness Ireland and her national army. The most express act of Parliament cannot give us security, for acts of Parliament are as easily repealed as made. Royal proclamations are not to be depended upon, witness the disappointments of the inhabitants of Quebec and St. Augustine. Even a change of ministry will not avail us, because, notwithstanding the rapid succession of ministers for which the British court has been famous during the present reign, yet the same ruinous policy ever continued to prevail against America. In short, I think it my duty to declare, in the awful seat of justice and before Almighty God, that in my opinion the Americans can have no safety but by the Divine favor, their own virtue, and their being so prudent as not to leave it in the power of the British rulers to injure them. Indeed, the ruinous and deadly injuries received on our side, and the jealousies entertained, and which, in the nature of things, must daily increase against us, on the other demonstrate to a mind in the least given to reflection upon the rise and fall of empires, that true reconcilement never can exist between Great Britain and America, the latter being in subjection to the former.

The Almighty created America to be independent of Britain. Let us beware of the impiety of being backward to act as instruments in the Almighty hand, now extended to accomplish his purpose, and by the completion of which alone, America, in the nature of human affairs, can be secure against the craft and insidious designs of her enemies, who think her prosperity and power already by far too great. In a word,

our piety and political safety are so blended, that to refuse our labors in this Divine work, is to refuse to be a great, a free, a pious, and a happy people!

And now, having left the important alternative, political happiness or wretchedness, under God, in a great degree in your own hands, I pray the Supreme Arbiter of the affairs of men so to direct your judgment, as that you may act agreeable to what seems to be his will, revealed in his miraculous works in behalf of America, bleeding at the altar of liberty!

JEFFERSON

THOMAS JEFFERSON was born at Shadwell, Albemarle County, in the

State of Virginia. At the age of five he was sent to school and completed his liberal education at William and Mary College, where he acquired a knowledge of the Latin, Greek and French languages, to which he added a familiarity with the higher mathematics and natural sciences seldom possessed by the young men of his times. After five years devoted to legal studies he was admitted to the bar, and quickly secured a lucrative practice. In 1768 he was elected from his county to the House of Burgesses, and continued to be annually returned until the outbreak of the Revolutionary War. It is to be noted that, although singularly successful at the bar, Jefferson was no orator, and, notwithstanding the fact that he was one of the foremost members of several deliberative bodies in the course of his life, he may truthfully be said never to have made a political speech. It was as a thinker, organizer and writer that he surpassed all of his contemporaries. Many of his writings, however, are admirably suited for declamation, and may therefore be fitly described as "orations." In 1774 he was chosen a delegate to the State Convention of Virginia, and was the author of the instructions sent by that body to its delegates in the Continental Congress. This document, published in a pamphlet, attracted great attention on both sides of the Atlantic, and placed Jefferson among the leaders, if not at the head, of the revolutionary movement in America. The Declaration of Independence, put forth by the colonies two years later, was out a perfected transcript of Jefferson's earlier paper. Jefferson resigned his seat in the Continental Congress in 1776, and also declined the appointment to go with Franklin to Paris, in order to take the place in the Legislature of Virginia to which he had been elected, because he considered that the future of his State depended upon a drastic transformation of its fundamental laws. Among the measures introduced in furtherance of his views may be specially mentioned the repeal of the laws of entail; the abolition of primogeniture and the substitution of equal partition of inheritance; the affirmation of the rights of conscience and the relief of the people from taxation for the support of a religion not theirs; and a system of general edu. cation. He also secured the passage of a bill forbidding the further importation of slaves into Virginia. In 1779 he was chosen Governor of his State, and continued to hold that office until 1782, soon after which he became a member

of the Congress of the Confederation. It was he who in the last-named body secured the adoption of the system of coinage which still obtains in the United States, and it was he who drafted the report of a plan for the government of the vast territory lying to the northwest of the Ohio River. Had another proposal of his been accepted, there would have been no War of Secession in 1861. We refer to his proposal that, "after the year 1800 of the Christian era, there shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in any of the States." In 1784 Jefferson was commissioned by Congress to serve as Minister Plenipotentiary in negotiating treaties of commerce with European States. He succeeded Franklin as Minister at the Court of Versailles in 1785, and continued to reside at Paris until 1790, when he became Secretary of State in Washington's first administration. As an earnest advocate of State sovereignty and decentralization, he gradually became the head of the Anti-Federalist party, and, thus finding himself at variance with the views held by President Washington and certain members of the Cabinet, he resigned his office in December, 1793, and retired to his country-seat, Monticello, where he remained until in 1796 he was made Vice-President at the election which called John Adams to the Presidency. On March 4, 1801, Jefferson was inaugurated President, and held the office for two terms. The most important act of his administration was the purchase of the vast Louisiana Territory. He might have been President for a third term, had he not firmly refused to be a candidate, although the Legislatures of five States formally requested him to accept the nomination. During the last seventeen years of his life, Jefferson remained in retirement, but he continued to be one of the most influential personages in the United States. He died on July 4, 1826.

DEMOCRACY DEFINED

FIRST INAUGURAL ADDRESS, DELIVERED MARCH 4, 1801

Friends and Fellow- Citizens:

CA

ALLED upon to undertake the duties of the first executive office of our country, I avail myself of the presence of that portion of my fellow-citizens which is here assembled, to express my grateful thanks for the favor with which they have been pleased to look toward me, to declare a sincere consciousness that the task is above my talents, and that I approach it with those anxious and awful presentiments which the greatness of the

J