Chapter XII: Part 12

But the French question had another side in its reaction on American parties.[11] Jefferson did not read excesses in Paris as warnings against democracy, but as warnings against the abuses of monarchy; nor did he regard Bonaparte's _coup d'état_ as revealing the weakness of republics, but rather as revealing the danger of standing armies; he did not look on the war of the coalitions against France as one of mere powers, but as one between forms of government; and though the immediate fruits of the Revolution belied his hopes, as they did those of ardent humanitarians the world over, he saw the broad trend of history, which vindicated his faith that a successful reformation of government in France would insure "a general reformation through Europe, and the resurrection to a new life of their people." Each of these statements could be reversed as regards Hamilton. It is the key to an understanding of the times to remember that the War of Independence had disjointed society; and democracy--which Jefferson had proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence, and enthroned in Virginia--after strengthening its rights by the sword, had run to excesses, particularly in the Shays' rebellion, that produced a conservative reaction. To this reaction Hamilton explicitly appealed in the convention of 1787; and of this reaction various features of the constitution, and Hamiltonian federalism generally, were direct fruits. Moreover, independently of special incentives to the alarmist and the man of property, the opinions of many Americans turned again, after the war, into a current of sympathy for England, as naturally as American commerce returned to English ports. Jefferson, however, far from America in these years and unexposed to reactionary influences, came back with undiminished fervour of democracy, and the talk he heard of praise for England, and fearful recoil before even the beginning of the revolution in France, disheartened him, and filled him with suspicion.[12] Hating as he did feudal class institutions and Tudor-Stuart traditions of arbitrary rule,[13] his attitude can be imagined toward Hamilton's oft-avowed partialities--and Jefferson assumed, his intrigues--for British class-government with its eighteenth-century measure of corruption. In short, Hamilton took from recent years the lesson of the evils of lax government; whereas Jefferson clung to the other lesson, which crumbling colonial governments had illustrated, that governments derived their strength (and the Declaration had proclaimed that they derived their just rights) from the will of the governed. Each built his system accordingly: the one on the basis of order, the other on individualism--which led Jefferson to liberty alike in religion and in politics. The two men and the fate of the parties they led are understandable only by regarding one as the leader of reaction, the other as in line with the American tendencies. The educated classes characteristically furnished Federalism with a remarkable body of alarmist leaders; and thus it happened that Jefferson, because, with only a few of his great contemporaries, he had a thorough trust and confidence in the people, became the idol of American democracy.

As Hamilton was somewhat officious and very combative, and Jefferson, although uncontentious, very suspicious and quite independent, both men holding inflexibly to opinions, cabinet harmony became impossible when the two secretaries had formed parties about them and their differences were carried into the newspapers;[14] and Washington abandoned perforce his idea "if parties did exist to reconcile them." Partly from discontent with a position in which he did not feel that he enjoyed the absolute confidence of the president,[15] and partly because of the embarrassed condition of his private affairs, Jefferson repeatedly sought to resign, and finally on the 31st of December 1793, with Washington's reluctant consent, gave up his portfolio and retired to his home at Monticello, near Charlottesville.

Here he remained improving his estate (having refused a foreign mission) until elected vice-president in 1796. Jefferson was never truly happy except in the country. He loved gardening, experimented enthusiastically in varieties and rotations of crops and kept meteorological tables with diligence. For eight years he tabulated with painful accuracy the earliest and latest appearance of thirty-seven vegetables in the Washington market. When abroad he sought out varieties of grasses, trees, rice and olives for American experiment, and after his return from France received yearly for twenty-three years, from his old friend the superintendent of the _Jardin des plantes_, a box of seeds, which he distributed to public and private gardens throughout the United States. Jefferson seems to have been the first discoverer of an exact formula for the construction of mould-boards of least resistance for ploughs. He managed to make practical use of his calculus about his farms, and seems to have been remarkably apt in the practical application of mechanical principles.

In the presidential election of 1796 John Adams, the Federalist candidate, received the largest number of electoral votes, and Jefferson, the Republican candidate, the next largest number, and under the law as it then existed the former became president and the latter vice-president. Jefferson re-entered public life with reluctance, though doubtless with keen enough interest and resolution. He had rightly measured the strength of his followers, and was waiting for the government to "drift into unison" with the republican sense of its constituents, predicting that President Adams would be "overborne" thereby. This prediction was speedily fulfilled. At first the reign of terror and the X. Y. Z. disclosures strengthened the Federalists, until these, mistaking the popular resentment against France for a reaction against democracy--an equivalence in their own minds--passed the alien and sedition laws. In answer to those odious measures Jefferson and Madison prepared and procured the passage of the Kentucky and Virginia resolutions. These resolutions later acquired extraordinary and pernicious prominence in the historical elaboration of the states'-rights doctrine. It is, however, unquestionably true, that as a startling protest against measures "to silence," in Jefferson's words, "by force and not by reason the complaints or criticisms, just or unjust, of our citizens against the conduct of our agents," they served, in this respect, a useful purpose; and as a counterblast against Hamiltonian principles of centralization they were probably, at that moment, very salutary; while even as pieces of constitutional interpretation it is to be remembered that they did not contemplate nullification by any single state, and, moreover, are not to be judged by constitutional principles established later by courts and war. The Federalist party had ruined itself, and it lost the presidential election of 1800. The Republican candidates, Jefferson and Aaron Burr (q.v.), receiving equal votes, it devolved upon the House of Representatives, in accordance with the system which then obtained, to make one of the two president, the other vice-president. Party feeling in America has probably never been more dangerously impassioned than in the three years preceding this election; discount as one will the contrary obsessions of men like Fisher Ames, Hamilton and Jefferson, the time was fateful. Unable to induce Burr to avow Federalist principles, influential Federalists, in defiance of the constitution, contemplated the desperate alternative of preventing an election, and appointing an extra-constitutional (Federalist) president _pro tempore_. Better counsels, however, prevailed; Hamilton used his influence in favour of Jefferson as against Burr, and Jefferson became president, entering upon his duties on the 4th of March 1801. Republicans who had affiliated with the Federalists at the time of the X. Y. Z. disclosures returned; very many of the Federalists themselves Jefferson placated and drew over. "Believing," he wrote, "that (excepting the ardent monarchists) all our citizens agreed in ancient whig principles"--or, as he elsewhere expressed it, in "republican forms"--"I thought it advisable to define and declare them, and let them see the ground on which we can rally." This he did in his inaugural, which, though somewhat rhetorical, is a splendid and famous statement of democracy.[16] His conciliatory policy produced a mild schism in his own party, but proved eminently wise, and the state elections of 1801 fulfilled his prophecy of 1791 that the policy of the Federalists would leave them "all head and no body." In 1804 he was re-elected by 162 out of 176 votes.

Jefferson's administrations were distinguished by the simplicity that marked his conduct in private life. He eschewed the pomp and ceremonies, natural inheritances from English origins, that had been an innocent setting to the character of his two noble predecessors. His dress was of "plain cloth" on the day of his inauguration. Instead of driving to the Capitol in a coach and six, he walked without a guard or servant from his lodgings--or, as a rival tradition has it, he rode, and hitched his horse to a neighbouring fence--attended by a crowd of citizens. Instead of opening Congress with a speech to which a formal reply was expected, he sent in a written message by a private hand. He discontinued the practice of sending ministers abroad in public vessels. Between himself and the governors of states he recognized no difference in rank. He would not have his birthday celebrated by state balls. The weekly levée was practically abandoned. Even such titles as "Excellency," "Honourable," "Mr" were distasteful to him. It was formally agreed in cabinet meeting that "when brought together in society, all are perfectly equal, whether foreign or domestic, titled or untitled, in or out of office." Thus diplomatic grades were ignored in social precedence and foreign relations were seriously compromised by dinner-table complications. One minister who appeared in gold lace and dress sword for his first, and regularly appointed, official call on the president, was received--as he insisted with studied purpose--by Jefferson in negligent undress and slippers down at the heel. All this was in part premeditated system[17]--a part of Jefferson's purpose to republicanize the government and public opinion, which was the distinguishing feature of his administration; but it was also simply the nature of the man. In the company he chose by preference, honesty and knowledge were his only tests. He knew absolutely no social distinctions in his willingness to perform services for the deserving. He held up to his daughter as an especial model the family of a poor but gifted mechanic as one wherein she would see "the best examples of rational living." "If it be possible," he said, "to be certainly conscious of anything, I am conscious of feeling no difference between writing to the highest and lowest being on earth."

Jefferson's first administration was marked by a reduction of the army, navy, diplomatic establishment and, to the uttermost, of governmental expenses; some reduction of the civil service, accompanied by a large shifting of offices to Republicans; and, above all, by the Louisiana Purchase (q.v.), following which Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, sent by Jefferson, conducted their famous exploring expedition across the continent to the Pacific (see LEWIS, MERIWETHER). Early in his term he carried out a policy he had urged upon the government when minister to France and when vice-president, by dispatching naval forces to coerce Tripoli into a decent respect for the trade of his country--the first in Christendom to gain honourable immunity from tribute or piracy in the Mediterranean. The Louisiana Purchase, although the greatest "inconsistency" of his career, was also an illustration, in corresponding degree, of his essential practicality, and one of the greatest proofs of his statesmanship. It was the crowning achievement of his administration. It is often said that Jefferson established the "spoils system" by his changes in the civil service. He was the innovator, because for the first time there was opportunity for innovation. But mere justice requires attention to the fact that incentive to that innovation, and excuse for it, were found in the absolute one-party monopoly maintained by the Federalists. Moreover, Jefferson's ideals were high; his reasons for changes were in general excellent; he at least so far resisted the great pressure for office--producing by his resistance dissatisfaction within his party--as not to have lowered, apparently, the personnel of the service; and there were no such blots on his administration as President Adams's "midnight judges." Nevertheless, his record here was not clear of blots, showing a few regrettable inconsistencies.[18] Among important but secondary measures of his second administration were the extinguishment of Indian titles, and promotion of Indian emigration to lands beyond the Mississippi; reorganization of the militia; fortification of the seaports; reduction of the public debt; and a simultaneous reduction of taxes. But his second term derives most of its historical interest from the unsuccessful efforts to convict Aaron Burr of treasonable acts in the south-west, and from the efforts made to maintain, without war, the rights of neutrals on the high seas. In his diplomacy with Napoleon and Great Britain Jefferson betrayed a painful incorrigibility of optimism. A national policy of "growling before fighting"--later practised successfully enough by the United States--was not then possible; and one writer has very justly said that what chiefly affects one in the whole matter is the pathos of it--"a philosopher and a friend of peace struggling with a despot of superhuman genius, and a Tory cabinet of superhuman insolence and stolidity" (Trent). It is possible to regard the embargo policy dispassionately as an interesting illustration of Jefferson's love of peace. The idea--a very old one with Jefferson--was not entirely original; in essence it received other attempted applications in the Napoleonic period--and especially in the continental blockade. Jefferson's statesmanship had the limitations of an agrarian outlook. The extreme to which he carried his advocacy of diplomatic isolation, his opposition to the creation of an adequate navy,[19] his estimate of cities as "sores upon the body politic," his prejudice against manufactures, trust in farmers, and political distrust of the artisan class, all reflect them.

When, on the 4th of March 1809, Jefferson retired from the presidency, he had been almost continuously in the public service for forty years. He refused to be re-elected for a third time, though requested by the legislatures of five states to be a candidate; and thus, with Washington's prior example, helped to establish a precedent deemed by him to be of great importance under a democratic government. His influence seemed scarcely lessened in his retirement. Madison and Monroe, his immediate successors--neighbours and devoted friends, whom he had advised in their early education and led in their maturer years--consulted him on all great questions, and there was no break of principles in the twenty-four years of the "Jeffersonian system." Jefferson was one of the greatest political managers his country has known. He had a quick eye for character, was genuinely amiable, uncontentious, tactful, masterful; and it may be assumed from his success that he was wary or shrewd to a degree. It is true, moreover, that, unless tested by a few unchanging principles, his acts were often strikingly inconsistent; and even when so tested, not infrequently remain so in appearance. Full explanations do not remove from some important transactions in his political life an impression of indirectness. But reasonable judgment must find very unjust the stigma of duplicity put upon him by the Federalists. Measured by the records of other men equally successful as political leaders, there seems little of this nature to criticize severely. Jefferson had the full courage of his convictions. Extreme as were his principles, his pertinacity in adhering to them and his independence of expression were quite as extreme. There were philosophic and philanthropic elements in his political faith which will always lead some to class him as a visionary and fanatic; but although he certainly indulged at times in dreams at which one may still smile, he was not, properly speaking, a visionary; nor can he with justice be stigmatized as a fanatic. He felt fervently, was not afraid to risk all on the conclusions to which his heart and his mind led him, declared himself with openness and energy; and he spoke and even wrote his conclusions, how ever bold or abstract, without troubling to detail his reasoning or clip his off-hand speculations. Certain it is that there is much in his utterances for a less robust democracy than his own to cavil at.[20] Soar, however, as he might, he was essentially not a doctrinaire, but an empiricist; his mind was objective. Though he remained, to the end, firm in his belief that there had been an active monarchist party,[21] this obsession did not carry him out of touch with the realities of human nature and of his time. He built with surety on the colonial past, and had a better reasoned view of the actual future than had any of his contemporaries.

Events soon appraised the ultra-Federalist judgment of American democracy, so tersely expressed by Fisher Ames as "like death ... only the dismal passport to a more dismal hereafter"; and, with it, appraised Jefferson's word in his first inaugural for those who, "in the full tide of successful experiment," were ready to abandon a government that had so far kept them "free and firm, on the visionary fear that it might by possibility lack energy to preserve itself." Time soon tested, too, his principle that that government must prove the strongest on earth "where every man ... would meet invasions of the public order as his own personal concern." He summed up as follows the difference between himself and the Hamiltonian group: "One feared most the ignorance of the people; the other the selfishness of rulers independent of them." Jefferson, in short, had unlimited faith in the honesty of the people; a large faith in their common sense; believed that all is to be won by appealing to the reason of voters; that by education their ignorance can be eliminated; that human nature is indefinitely perfectible; that majorities rule, therefore, not only by virtue of force (which was Locke's ultimate justification of them), but of right.[22] His importance as a maker of modern America can scarcely be overstated, for the ideas he advocated have become the very foundations of American republicanism. His administration ended the possibility, probability or certainty--measure it as one will--of the development of Federalism in the direction of class government; and the party he formed, inspired by the creed he gave it, fixed the democratic future of the nation. And by his own labours he had vindicated his faith in the experiment of self-government.

Jefferson's last years were devoted to the establishment of the university of Virginia at Charlottesville, near his home. He planned the buildings, gathered its faculty--mainly from abroad--and shaped its organization. Practically all the great ideas of aim, administration and curriculum that dominated American universities at the end of the 19th century were anticipated by him. He hoped that the university might be a dominant influence in national culture, but circumstances crippled it. His educational plans had been maturing in his mind since 1776. His financial affairs in these last years gave him grave concern. His fine library of over 10,000 volumes was purchased at a low price by Congress in 1815, and a national contribution ($16,500) just before his death enabled him to die in peace. Though not personally extravagant, his salary, and the small income from his large estates, never sufficed to meet his generous maintenance of his representative position; and after his retirement from public life the numerous visitors to Monticello consumed the remnants of his property. He died on the 4th of July 1826, the fiftieth anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, on the same day as John Adams. He chose for his tomb the epitaph: "Here was buried Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of American Independence, of the statute of Virginia for religious freedom, and father of the university of Virginia."

Jefferson was about 6 ft. in height, large-boned, slim, erect and
sinewy. He had angular features, a very ruddy complexion, sandy hair,
and hazel-flecked, grey eyes. Age lessened the unattractiveness of his
exterior. In later years he was negligent in dress and loose in
bearing. There was grace, nevertheless, in his manners; and his frank
and earnest address, his quick sympathy (yet he seemed cold to
strangers), his vivacious, desultory, informing talk, gave him an
engaging charm. Beneath a quiet surface he was fairly aglow with
intense convictions and a very emotional temperament. Yet he seems to
have acted habitually, in great and little things, on system. His
mind, no less trenchant and subtle than Hamilton's, was the most
impressible, the most receptive, mind of his time in America. The
range of his interests is remarkable. For many years he was president
of the American philosophical society. Though it is a biographical
tradition that he lacked wit, Molière and _Don Quixote_ seem to have
been his favourites; and though the utilitarian wholly crowds
romanticism out of his writings, he had enough of that quality in
youth to prepare to learn Gaelic in order to translate Ossian, and
sent to Macpherson for the originals! His interest in art was
evidently intellectual. He was singularly sweet-tempered, and shrank
from the impassioned political bitterness that raged about him; bore
with relative equanimity a flood of coarse and malignant abuse of his
motives, morals, religion,[23] personal honesty and decency; cherished
very few personal animosities; and better than any of his great
antagonists cleared political opposition of ill-blooded personality.
In short, his kindness of heart rose above all social, religious or
political differences, and nothing destroyed his confidence in men and
his sanguine views of life.

AUTHORITIES.--See the editions of Jefferson's _Writings_ by H. A.
Washington (9 vols., New York, 1853-1854), and--the best--by Paul
Leicester Ford (10 vols., New York, 1892-1899); letters in
Massachusetts Historical Society, _Collections_, series 7, vol. i.; S.
E. Forman, _The Letters and Writings of Thomas Jefferson, including
all his Important Utterances on Public Questions_ (1900); J. P. Foley,
_The Jefferson Cyclopaedia_ (New York, 1900); the _Memoir,
Correspondence_, &c., by T. J. Randolph (4 vols., Charlottesville,
Va., 1829); biographies by James Schouler ("Makers of America Series,"
New York, 1893); John T. Morse ("American Statesmen Series," Boston,
1883); George Tucker (2 vols., Philadelphia, 1837); James Parton
(Boston, 1874); and especially that by Henry S. Randall (3 vols., New
York, 1853), a monumental work, although marred by some special
pleading, and sharing Jefferson's implacable opinions of the
"Monocrats." See also Henry Adams, _History of the United States
1801-1817_, vols. 1-4 (New York, 1889-1890); Herbert B. Adams, _Thomas
Jefferson and the University of Virginia_ (U. S. bureau of education,
Washington, 1888); Sarah N. Randolph, _Domestic Life of Thomas
Jefferson_ (New York, 1871); and an illuminating appreciation by W. P.
Trent, in his _Southern Statesmen of the Old Régime_ (New York, 1897);
that by John Fiske, Essays, _Historical and Literary_, vol. i. (New
York, 1902), has slighter merits. (F. S. P.)

FOOTNOTES:

[1] It was embarrassed with a debt, however, of £3749, which, owing
to conditions caused by the War of Independence, he really paid three
times to his British creditors (not counting destruction on his
estates, of equal amount, ordered by Lord Cornwallis). This greatly
reduced his income for a number of years.

[2] The first law of its kind in Christendom, although not the
earliest practice of such liberty in America.

[3] George Mason and Thomas L. Lee were members of the commission,
but they were not lawyers, and did little actual work on the
revision.

[4] Capital punishment was confined to treason and murder; the former
was not to be attended by corruption of blood, drawing, or
quartering; all other felonies were made punishable by confinement
and hard labour, save a few to which was applied, against Jefferson's
desire, the principle of retaliation.

[5] This plan applied to the south-western as well as to the
north-western territory, and was notable for a provision that slavery
should not exist therein after 1800. This provision was defeated in
1784, but was adopted in 1787 for the north-western territory--a step
which is very often said to have saved the Union in the Civil War;
the south-western territory (out of which were later formed
Mississippi, Alabama, &c.) being given over to slavery. Thus the
anti-slavery clause of the ordinance of 1784 was not adopted; and it
was preceded by unofficial proposals to the same end; yet to it
belongs rightly some special honour as blazoning the way for federal
control of slavery in the territories, which later proved of such
enormous consequence. Jefferson in the first draft of the Ordinance
of 1784, suggested the names to be given to the states eventually to
be formed out of the territory concerned. For his suggestions he has
been much ridiculed. The names are as follows: Illinoia, Michigania,
Sylvania, Polypotamia, Assenisipia, Charronesus, Pelisipia, Saratoga,
Metropotamia and Washington.

[6] He owned at one time above 150 slaves. His overseers were under
contract never to bleed them; but he manumitted only a few at his
death.

[7] During this time he assisted in negotiating a treaty of amity and
commerce with Prussia (1785) and one with Morocco (1789), and
negotiated with France a "convention defining and establishing the
functions and privileges of consuls and vice-consuls" (1788).

[8] Patrick Henry humorously declaimed before a popular audience that
Jefferson, who favoured French wine and cookery, had "abjured his
native victuals."

[9] Jefferson did not sympathize with the temper of his followers who
condoned the zealous excesses of Genet, and in general with the
"misbehaviour" of the democratic clubs; but, as a student of English
liberties, he could not accept Washington's doctrine that for a
self-created permanent body to declare "this act unconstitutional,
and that act pregnant with mischiefs" was "a stretch of arrogant
presumption" which would, if unchecked, "destroy the country."

[10] John Basset Moore, _American Diplomacy_ (New York, 1905).

[11] Compare C. D. Hazen, _Contemporary American opinion of the
French Revolution_ (Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, 1897).

[12] It was at this period of his life that Jefferson gave expression
to some of the opinions for which he has been most severely
criticized and ridiculed. For the Shays' rebellion he felt little
abhorrence, and wrote: "A little rebellion now and then is a good
thing ... an observation of this truth should render honest
republican governors so mild in their punishment of rebellions as not
to discourage them too much. It is a medicine necessary for the sound
health of government" (_Writings_, Ford ed., iv. 362-363). Again,
"Can history produce an instance of rebellion so honorably
conducted?... God forbid that we should ever be twenty years without
such a rebellion.... What signify a few lives lost in a century or
two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the
blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure" (Ibid. iv.
467). Again he says: "Societies exist under three forms--(1) without
government, as among our Indians; (2) under governments wherein the
will of every one has a just influence.... (3) under governments of
force.... It is a problem not clear in my mind that the first
condition is not the best." (Ibid. iv. 362.)

[13] He turned law students from Blackstone's toryism to Coke on
Littleton; and he would not read Walter Scott, so strong was his
aversion to that writer's predilection for class and feudalism.

[14] Hamilton wrote for the papers himself; Jefferson never did. A
talented clerk in his department, however, Philip Freneau, set up an
anti-administration paper. It was alleged that Jefferson appointed
him for the purpose, and encouraged him. Undoubtedly there was
nothing in the charge. The Federalist outcry could only have been
silenced by removal of Freneau, or by disclaimers or admonitions,
which Jefferson did not think it incumbent upon himself--or, since he
thought Freneau was doing good, desirable for him--to make.

[15] Contrary to the general belief that Hamilton dominated
Washington in the cabinet, there is the president's explicit
statement that "there were as many instances" of his deciding against
as in favour of the secretary of the treasury.

[16] See also Jefferson to E. Gerry, 26th of January 1799
(_Writings_, vii. 325), and to Dupont de Nemours (x. 23). Cf.
Hamilton to J. Dayton, 1799 (_Works_, x. 329).

[17] In 1786 he suggested to James Monroe that the society of friends
he hoped to gather in Albemarle might, in sumptuary matters, "set a
good example" to a country (i.e. Virginia) that "needed" it.

[18] See C. R. Fish, _The Civil Service and the Patronage_ (Harvard
Historical Studies, New York, 1905), ch. 2.

[19] Jefferson's dislike of a navy was due to his desire for an
economical administration and for peace. Shortly after his
inauguration he expressed a desire to lay up the larger men of war in
the eastern branch of the Potomac, where they would require only "one
set of plunderers to take care of them." To Thomas Paine he wrote in
1807: "I believe that gunboats are the only _water_ defence which can
be useful to us and protect us from the ruinous folly of a navy."
(_Works_, Ford ed., ix. 137.) The gunboats desired by Jefferson were
small, cheap craft equipped with one or two guns and kept on shore
under sheds until actually needed, when they were to be launched and
manned by a sort of naval militia. A large number of these boats were
constructed and they afforded some protection to coasting vessels
against privateers, but in bad weather, or when employed against a
frigate, they were worse than useless, and Jefferson's "gunboat
system" was admittedly a failure.

[20] See e.g. his letters in 1787 on the Shays' rebellion, and his
speculations on the doctrine that one generation may not bind another
by paper documents. With the latter may be compared present-day
movements like the initiative and referendum, and not a few
discussions of national debts. Jefferson's distrust of governments
was nothing exceptional for a consistent individualist.

[21] In his last years he carefully sifted and revised his
contemporary notes evidencing, as he believed, the existence of such
a party, and they remain as his _Ana_ (chiefly Hamiltoniana). The
only just judgment of these notes is to be obtained by looking at
them, and by testing his suspicions with the letters of Hamilton,
Ames, Oliver Wolcott, Theodore Sedgwick, George Cabot and the other
Hamiltonians. Such a comparison measures also the relative judgment,
temper and charity of these writers and Jefferson. It must still
remain true, however, that Jefferson's _Ana_ present him in a far
from engaging light.

[22] "Jefferson, in 1789, wrote some such stuff about the will of
majorities, as a New Englander would lose his rank among men of sense
to avow."--Fisher Ames (Jan. 1800).

[23] He was classed as a "French infidel" and atheist. His attitude
toward religion was in fact deeply reverent and sincere, but he
insisted that religion was purely an individual matter, "evidenced,
as concerns the world by each one's daily life," and demanded
absolute freedom of private judgment. He looked on Unitarianism with
much sympathy and desired its growth. "I am a Christian," he wrote in
1823, "in the only sense in which he (Jesus) wished any one to be;
sincerely attached to his doctrines in preference to all others;
ascribing to himself every human excellence, and believing he never
claimed any other."

JEFFERSON CITY (legally and officially the City of Jefferson), the capital of Missouri, U.S.A., and the county-seat of Cole county, on the Missouri river, near the geographical centre of the state, about 125 m. W. of St Louis. Pop. (1890), 6742; (1900), 9664, of whom 786 were foreign-born and 1822 were negroes; (1910 census), 11,850. It is served by the Missouri Pacific, the Chicago & Alton, and the Missouri, Kansas & Texas railways. Its site is partly in the bottom-lands of the river and partly on the steep banks at an elevation of about 600 ft. above the sea. A steel bridge spans the river. The state capitol, an imposing structure built on a bluff above the river, was built in 1838-1842 and enlarged in 1887-1888; it was first occupied in 1840 by the legislature, which previously had met (after 1837) in the county court house. Other prominent buildings are the United States court house and post office, the state supreme court house, the county court house, the state penitentiary, the state armoury and the executive mansion. The penitentiary is to a large extent self-supporting; in 1903-1904 the earnings were $3493.80 in excess of the costs, but in 1904-1906 the costs exceeded the earnings by $9044. Employment is furnished for the convicts on the penitentiary premises by incorporated companies. The state law library here is one of the best of the kind in the country, and the city has a public library. In the city is Lincoln Institute, a school for negroes, founded in 1866 by two regiments of negro infantry upon their discharge from the United States army, opened in 1868, taken over by the state in 1879, and having sub-normal, normal, college, industrial and agricultural courses. Coal and limestone are found near the city. In 1905 the total value of the factory product was $3,926,632, an increase of 28.2% since 1900. The original constitution of Missouri prescribed that the capital should be on the Missouri river within 40 m. of the mouth of the Osage, and a commission selected in 1821 the site of Jefferson City, on which a town was laid out in 1822, the name being adopted in honour of Thomas Jefferson. The legislature first met here in 1826; Jefferson City became the county-seat in 1828, and in 1839 was first chartered as a city. The constitutional conventions of 1845 and 1875, and the state convention which issued the call for the National Liberal Republican convention at Cincinnati in 1872, met here, and so for some of its sessions did the state convention of 1861-1863. In June 1861 Jefferson City was occupied by Union forces, and in September-October 1864 it was threatened by Confederate troops under General Sterling Price.

JEFFERSONVILLE, a city and the county-seat of Clark county, Indiana, U.S.A., situated on the N. bank of the Ohio river, opposite Louisville, Kentucky, with which it is connected by several bridges. Pop. (1890), 10,666; (1900), 10,774, of whom 1818 were of negro descent and 615 were foreign-born; (1910 census), 10,412. It is served by the Baltimore & Ohio South-western, the Cleveland, Cincinnati, Chicago & St Louis, and the Pittsburg, Cincinnati, Chicago & St Louis railways, and by three inter-urban electric lines. It is attractively situated on bluffs above the river, which at this point has a descent (known as the falls of the Ohio) of 26 ft. in 2 m. This furnishes good water power for manufacturing purposes both at Jeffersonville and at Louisville. The total value of the factory product in 1905 was $4,526,443, an increase of 20% since 1900. The Indiana reformatory (formerly the Southern Indiana penitentiary) and a large supply dépôt of the United States army are at Jeffersonville. General George Rogers Clark started (June 24, 1778) on his expedition against Kaskaskia and Vincennes from Corn Island (now completely washed away) opposite what is now Jeffersonville. In 1786 the United States government established Fort Finney (built by Captain Walter Finney), afterwards re-named Fort Steuben, on the site of the present city; but the fort was abandoned in 1791, and the actual beginning of Jeffersonville was in 1802, when a part of the Clark grant (the site of the present city) was transferred by its original owner, Lieut. Isaac Bowman, to three trustees, under whose direction a town was laid out. Jeffersonville was incorporated as a town in 1815, and was chartered as a city in 1839.

JEFFREY, FRANCIS JEFFREY, LORD (1773-1850), Scottish judge and literary critic, son of a depute-clerk in the Court of Session, was born at Edinburgh on the 23rd of October 1773. After attending the high school for six years, he studied at the university of Glasgow from 1787 to May 1789, and at Queen's College, Oxford, from September 1791 to June 1792. He had begun the study of law at Edinburgh before going to Oxford, and now resumed his studies there. He became a member of the speculative society, where he measured himself in debate with Scott, Brougham, Francis Horner, the marquess of Lansdowne, Lord Kinnaird and others. He was admitted to the Scotch bar in December 1794, but, having abandoned the Tory principles in which he had been educated, he found that his Whig politics seriously prejudiced his legal prospects. In consequence of his lack of success at the bar he went to London in 1798 to try his fortune as a journalist, but without success; he also made more than one vain attempt to obtain an office which would have secured him the advantage of a small but fixed salary. His marriage with Catherine Wilson in 1801 made the question of a settled income even more pressing. A project for a new review was brought forward by Sydney Smith in Jeffrey's flat in the presence of H. P. Brougham (afterwards Lord Brougham), Francis Horner and others; and the scheme resulted in the appearance on the 10th of October 1802 of the first number of the _Edinburgh Review_. At the outset the _Review_ was not under the charge of any special editor. The first three numbers were, however, practically edited by Sydney Smith, and on his leaving for England the work devolved chiefly on Jeffrey, who, by an arrangement with Constable, the publisher, was eventually appointed editor at a fixed salary. Most of those associated in the undertaking were Whigs; but, although the general bias of the Review was towards social and political reforms, it was at first so little of a party organ that for a time it numbered Sir Walter Scott among its contributors; and no distinct emphasis was given to its political leanings until the publication in 1808 of an article by Jeffrey himself on the work of Don Pedro Cevallos on the _French Usurpation of Spain_. This article expressed despair of the success of the British arms in Spain, and Scott at once withdrew his subscription, the _Quarterly_ being soon afterwards started in opposition. According to Lord Cockburn the effect of the first number of the _Edinburgh Review_ was "electrical." The English reviews were at that time practically publishers' organs, the articles in which were written by hackwriters instructed to praise or blame according to the publishers' interests. Few men of any standing consented to write for them. The _Edinburgh Review_, on the other hand, enlisted a brilliant and independent staff of contributors, guided by the editor, not the publisher. They received sixteen guineas a sheet (sixteen printed pages), increased subsequently to twenty-five guineas in many cases, instead of the two guineas which formed the ordinary London reviewer's fee. Further, the review was not limited to literary criticism. It constituted itself the accredited organ of moderate Whig public opinion. The particular work which provided the starting-point of an article was in many cases merely the occasion for the exposition, always brilliant and incisive, of the author's views on politics, social subjects, ethics or literature. These general principles and the novelty of the method ensured the success of the undertaking even after the original circle of exceptionally able men who founded it had been dispersed. It had a circulation, great for those days, of 12,000 copies. The period of Jeffrey's editorship extended to about twenty-six years, ceasing with the ninety-eighth number, published in June 1829, when he resigned in favour of Macvey Napier.

Jeffrey's own contributions, according to a list which has the sanction of his authority, numbered two hundred, all except six being written before his resignation of the editorship. Jeffrey wrote with great rapidity, at odd moments of leisure and with little special preparation. Great fluency and ease of diction, considerable warmth of imagination and moral sentiment, and a sharp eye to discover any oddity of style or violation of the accepted canons of good taste, made his criticisms pungent and effective. But the essential narrowness and timidity of his general outlook prevented him from detecting and estimating latent forces, either in politics or in matters strictly intellectual and moral; and this lack of understanding and sympathy accounts for his distrust and dislike of the passion and fancy of Shelley and Keats, and for his praise of the half-hearted and elegant romanticism of Rogers and Campbell. (For his treatment of the lake poets see WORDSWORTH, WILLIAM.)

A criticism in the fifteenth number of the _Review_ on the morality of Moore's poems led in 1806 to a duel between the two authors at Chalk Farm. The proceedings were stopped by the police, and Jeffrey's pistol was found to contain no bullet. The affair led to a warm friendship, however, and Moore contributed to the _Review_, while Jeffrey made ample amends in a later article on _Lalla Rookh_ (1817).

Jeffrey's wife had died in 1805, and in 1810 he became acquainted with Charlotte, daughter of Charles Wilkes of New York, and great-niece of John Wilkes. When she returned to America, Jeffrey followed her, and they were married in 1813. Before returning to England they visited several of the chief American cities, and his experience strengthened Jeffrey in the conciliatory policy he had before advocated towards the States. Notwithstanding the increasing success of the _Review_, Jeffrey always continued to look to the bar as the chief field of his ambition. As a matter of fact, his literary reputation helped his professional advancement. His practice extended rapidly in the civil and criminal courts, and he regularly appeared before the general assembly of the Church of Scotland, where his work, though not financially profitable, increased his reputation. As an advocate his sharpness and rapidity of insight gave him a formidable advantage in the detection of the weaknesses of a witness and the vulnerable points of his opponent's case, while he grouped his own arguments with an admirable eye to effect, especially excelling in eloquent closing appeals to a jury. Jeffrey was twice, in 1820 and 1822, elected lord rector of the university of Glasgow. In 1829 he was chosen dean of the faculty of advocates. On the return of the Whigs to power in 1830 he became lord advocate, and entered parliament as member for the Perth burghs. He was unseated, and afterwards returned for Malton, a borough in the interest of Lord Fitzwilliam. After the passing of the Scottish Reform Bill, which he introduced in parliament, he was returned for Edinburgh in December 1832. His parliamentary career, which, though not brilliantly successful, had won him high general esteem, was terminated by his elevation to the judicial bench as Lord Jeffrey in May 1834. In 1842 he was moved to the first division of the Court of Session. On the disruption of the Scottish Church he took the side of the seceders, giving a judicial opinion in their favour, afterwards reversed by the house of lords. He died at Edinburgh on the 26th of January 1850.

Some of his contributions to the _Edinburgh Review_ appeared in four
volumes in 1844 and 1845. This selection includes the essay on
"Beauty" contributed to the _Ency. Brit._ The _Life of Lord Jeffrey,
with a Selection from his Correspondence_, by Lord Cockburn, appeared
in 1852 in 2 vols. See also the _Selected Correspondence of Macvey
Napier_ (1877); the sketch of Jeffrey in Carlyle's _Reminiscences_,
vol. ii. (1881); and an essay by Lewis E. Gates in _Three Studies in
Literature_ (New York, 1899).

JEFFREYS, GEORGE JEFFREYS, 1ST BARON (1648-1689), lord chancellor of England, son of John Jeffreys, a Welsh country gentleman, was born at Acton Park, his father's seat in Denbighshire, in 1648. His family, though not wealthy, was of good social standing and repute in Wales; his mother, a daughter of Sir Thomas Ireland of Bewsey, Lancashire, was "a very pious good woman." He was educated at Shrewsbury, St Paul's and Westminster schools, at the last of which he was a pupil of Busby, and at Trinity College, Cambridge; but he left the university without taking a degree, and entered the Inner Temple as a student in May 1663. From his childhood Jeffreys displayed exceptional talent, but on coming to London he occupied himself more with the pleasures of conviviality than with serious study of the law. Though he never appears to have fallen into the licentious immorality prevalent at that period, he early became addicted to hard drinking and boisterous company. But as the records of his early years, and indeed of his whole life, are derived almost exclusively from vehemently hostile sources, the numerous anecdotes of his depravity cannot be accepted without a large measure of scepticism. He was a handsome, witty and attractive boon-companion, and in the taverns of the city he made friends among attorneys with practice in the criminal courts. Thus assisted he rose so rapidly in his profession that within three years of his call to the bar in 1668, he was elected common serjeant of the city of London. Such advancement, however, was not to be attained even in the reign of Charles II. solely by the aid of disreputable friendships. Jeffreys had remarkable aptitude for the profession of an advocate--quick intelligence, caustic humour, copious eloquence. His powers of cross-examination were masterly; and if he was insufficiently grounded in legal principles to become a profound lawyer, nothing but greater application was needed in the opinion of so hostile a critic as Lord Campbell, to have made him the rival of Nottingham and Hale. Jeffreys could count on the influence of respectable men of position in the city, such as Sir Robert Clayton and his own namesake Alderman Jeffreys; and he also enjoyed the personal friendship of the virtuous Sir Matthew Hale. In 1667 Jeffreys had married in circumstances which, if improvident, were creditable to his generosity and sense of honour; and his domestic life, so far as is known, was free from the scandal common among his contemporaries. While holding the judicial office of common serjeant, he pursued his practice at the bar. With a view to further preferment he now sought to ingratiate himself with the court party, to which he obtained an introduction possibly through William Chiffinch, the notorious keeper of the king's closet. He at once attached himself to the king's mistress, the duchess of Portsmouth; and as early as 1672 he was employed in confidential business by the court. His influence in the city of London, where opposition to the government of Charles II. was now becoming pronounced, enabled Jeffreys to make himself useful to Danby. In September 1677 he received a knighthood, and his growing favour with the court was further marked by his appointment as solicitor-general to James, duke of York; while the city showed its continued confidence in him by electing him to the post of recorder in October 1678.

In the previous month Titus Oates had made his first revelations of the alleged popish plot, and from this time forward Jeffreys was prominently identified, either as advocate or judge, with the memorable state trials by which the political conflict between the Crown and the people was waged during the remainder of the 17th century. The popish plot, followed by the growing agitation for the exclusion of the duke of York from the succession, widened the breach between the city and the court. Jeffreys threw in his lot with the latter, displaying his zeal by initiating the movement of the "abhorrers" (q.v.) against the "petitioners" who were giving voice to the popular demand for the summoning of parliament. He was rewarded with the coveted office of chief justice of Chester on the 30th of April 1680; but when parliament met in October the House of Commons passed a hostile resolution which induced him to resign his recordership, a piece of pusillanimity that drew from the king the remark that Jeffreys was "not parliament-proof." Jeffreys nevertheless received from the city aldermen a substantial token of appreciation for his past services. In 1681 he was created a baronet. In June 1683 the first of the Rye House conspirators were brought to trial. Jeffreys was briefed for the crown in the prosecution of Lord William Howard; and, having been raised to the bench as lord chief justice of the king's bench in September, he presided at the trials of Algernon Sidney in November 1683 and of Sir Thomas Armstrong in the following June. In the autumn of 1684 Jeffreys, who had been active in procuring the surrender of municipal charters to the crown, was called to the cabinet, having previously been sworn of the privy council. In May 1685 he had the satisfaction of passing sentence on Titus Oates for perjury in the plot trials; and about the same time James II. rewarded his zeal with a peerage as Baron Jeffreys of Wem, an honour never before conferred on a chief justice during his tenure of office. Jeffreys had for some time been suffering from stone, which aggravated the irritability of his naturally violent temper; and the malady probably was in some degree the cause of the unmeasured fury he displayed at the trial of Richard Baxter (q.v.) for seditious libel--if the unofficial _ex parte_ report of the trial, which alone exists, is to be accepted as trustworthy.

In August 1685 Jeffreys opened at Winchester the commission known in history as the "bloody assizes," his conduct of which has branded his name with indelible infamy. The number of persons sentenced to death at these assizes for complicity in the duke of Monmouth's insurrection is uncertain. The official return of those actually executed was 320; many hundreds more were transported and sold into slavery in the West Indies. In all probability the great majority of those condemned were in fact concerned in the rising, but the trials were in many cases a mockery of the administration of justice. Numbers were cajoled into pleading guilty; the case for the prisoners seldom obtained a hearing. The merciless severity of the chief justice did not however exceed the wishes of James II.; for on his return to London Jeffreys received from the king the great seal with the title of lord chancellor. For the next two years he was a strenuous upholder of prerogative, though he was less abjectly pliant than has sometimes been represented. There is no reason to doubt the sincerity of his attachment to the Church of England; for although the king's favour was capricious Jeffreys never took the easy and certain path to secure it that lay through apostasy; and he even withstood James on occasion, when the latter pushed his Catholic zeal to extremes. Though it is true that he accepted the presidency of the ecclesiastical commission, Burnet's statement that it was Jeffreys who suggested that institution to James is probably incorrect; and he was so far from having instigated the prosecution of the seven bishops in 1688, as has been frequently alleged, that he disapproved of the proceedings and rejoiced secretly at the acquittal. But while he watched with misgiving the king's preferment of Roman Catholics, he made himself the masterful instrument of unconstitutional prerogative in coercing the authorities of Cambridge University, who in 1687 refused to confer degrees on a Benedictine monk, and the fellows of Magdalen College, Oxford, who declined to elect as their president a disreputable nominee of the king.

Being thus conspicuously identified with the most tyrannical measures of James II., Jeffreys found himself in a desperate plight when on the 11th of December 1688 the king fled from the country on the approach to London of William of Orange. The lord chancellor attempted to escape like his master; but in spite of his disguise as a common seaman he was recognized in a tavern at Wapping--possibly, as Roger North relates, by an attorney whom Jeffreys had terrified on some occasion in the court of chancery--and was arrested and conveyed to the Tower. The malady from which he had long suffered had recently made fatal progress, and he died in the Tower on the 18th of April 1689. He was succeeded in the peerage by his son, John (2nd Baron Jeffreys of Wem), who died without male issue in 1702, when the title became extinct.