Declaration of Independence, and he had committed no indictable offense. Luther Martin was his leading lawyer, and in the hands of Luther Martin, the debate being on questions of law, Randolph was a lightweight, indeed.

Mr. Jefferson had countenanced, and indirectly encouraged, the impeachment of Chase, but he had not committed himself. Holding serenely aloof, he viewed Randolph's discomfort philosophically, though he was chagrined at Chase's escape.

Randolph, of Roanoke, was not a patient manenduring much and thinking no evil-and he did not relish what appeared to be the task of raking chestnuts out of the fire for other people, especially when the fire was particularly hot and the chestnuts refused to be raked. It is thought that the sudden decline in his admiration for Thomas Jefferson dated from the collapse of the Chase impeachment.

In matters of legislative reform Mr. Jefferson had to proceed slowly. He treated as null the appointments Mr. Adams had made at the close of his term, and as soon as possible prevailed upon Congress to repeal the act creating the circuit courts.

The Federalists very strongly resisted Mr. Jefferson in his assault upon the Federal judiciary. They realized the advantage they held there quite as fully as the Republicans did, and they contested every inch of ground. By the time the Circuit

Court Act had been repealed and the impeachment of Judge Chase had failed, Mr. Jefferson appears to have been convinced that he could do nothing more without running the risk of splitting up his own party. To himself and to the Republicans generally it afterward became a source of regret that nothing more was done to put limits on the power of Congress and of the judiciary. The troubles with England, the disunion tendencies in the Eastern States, the quasi-Federalism of Mr. Madison, the continual alarmist outcries of political enemies -all acted as brakes to the wheel of Jeffersonian purpose.

To dream in the studio is one thing, to conduct an administration is another. It is this difference between theory and practise which makes Jefferson seem inconsistent.

From the time that he first realized the unique position of the Federal judiciary in our system, Mr. Jefferson was its bitter enemy. It violated all his ideas of Democracy. Its judges were not amenable to popular control. There was no rotation in office, no short terms, no frequent appeals to the people. A body so independent of the popular will, and clothed with the tremendous power of setting aside the statutes of every State and of the United States, was by the very law of its nature antagonistic to the principle upon which democratic government is founded. The will

of the people, the preference of the majority, was sovereign, according to Republican theory; but here was a sovereignty more permanent than Presidents and Senates, more untrammeled than the Executive or the Legislature, and its final word was law supreme, overriding cabinets, lawmakers, and people. By its very constitution, such a tribunal would be out of touch with the masses, would feel no popular impulse, would inevitably tend to become aristocratic, if not autocratic, in method and in purpose. By the elemental selfishness of human nature, it would eternally seek to broaden the bounds of its empire. Jefferson dreaded it, prophesied against it, bewailed its irresistible power.

Reading his gloomy forecasts, one almost believes he anticipated government by injunction and the advent of the deputy marshal. But we doubt if even his wildest fears could have pictured a situation in which Congress is not allowed to put the income tax upon a millionaire, and when the sympathizer with labor is enjoined from persuasion and peaceful aid.

CHAPTER XLII

THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE

ONE of the eternally convincing proofs of Mr. Jefferson's range of vision as a statesman is the importance which he attached to the West while it was still a wilderness. He was quick to encourage George Rogers Clarke when he offered to invade the vast Illinois country. When Governor of Virginia, he pushed the frontier of his State to the banks of the Mississippi, and held it there with a fort. While minister to France he had urged Ledyard to go across Europe to Kamchatka, pass the strait, and from the shores of the Pacific explore the country back to the settlements in the East.

When Spain had demanded full control of the Mississippi, and John Jay had proposed to yield to the Spanish demands for the closure of the river, Jefferson and Madison both realized what Jay and Washington did not-the vast importance of the Mississippi to the American people.

Prof. John Fiske, in his Critical Period of American History, holds up George McDuffie, "the very able Senator from South Carolina," to the scorn of posterity because Mr. McDuffie failed to

foresee the value of the unpeopled wilderness in the northwestern part of the republic. This was very short-sighted in Mr. McDuffie, and serves to lower him as a statesman. But South Carolina was not the only State which had a "very able Senator." Massachusetts had one-Daniel Webster-a "very able Senator," indeed.

The value of the Northwestern lands was passed upon by him as well as by McDuffie, and Prof. John Fiske, of New England, fails to cite the opinion of Mr. Webster.

The very able Senator from Massachusetts expressed himself in these words:

"What do we want with this vast worthless area? This region of savages and wild beasts, of deserts of shifting sands and whirlwinds of dust, of cactus and prairie-dogs? To what use could we ever hope to put these great deserts, or those endless mountain ranges, impenetrable and covered to their base with eternal snow? What can we ever hope to do with the western coast, a coast of three thousand miles, rock-bound, cheerless, uninviting, and not a harbor on it? What use have we for this country?"

Thus spoke Daniel Webster, "the very able Senator" from Massachusetts. All of which merely goes to show that neither George McDuffie nor Daniel Webster had the far-seeing statesmanship which Thomas Jefferson and Napoleon Bona