"The spirit of the times," he said "may alter, will alter. Our rulers will become corrupt, our people careless. A single zealot may become persecutor, and better men be his victims. It can never be too often repeated, that the time for fixing every essential right, on a legal basis, is while our rulers are honest, and ourselves united. From the conclusion of this war we shall be going down hill. It will not then be necessary to resort every moment to the people for support. They will be forgotten, therefore, and their rights disregarded. They will forget themselves, but in the sole faculty of making money, and will never think of uniting to effect a due respect for their rights. The shackles, therefore, which shall not be knocked off at the conclusion of this war, will remain on us long, will be made heavier and heavier, till our rights shall revive or expire in a convulsion."

With the special design, therefore, of heading, in person, the great work of political regeneration, which he had sketched for his country, and for mankind, he early signified his determination to relinquish his station in the National Councils; and was instantly thereupon elected to a seat in the Legislature of Virginia.

Before following him into that body, however, the order of time requires us to notice a singular mark of distinction conferred on him by Congress. He had been absent from Philadelphia but a few days, before he received the appointment of Commissioner to France, in conjunction with Dr. Franklin, to negotiate treaties of alliance and commerce with that government. Silas Dean, then in France, acting as agent for procuring military supplies, and for sounding the dispositions of the government towards us, was joined with them in the commission. The appointment was made on the last day of September, 1776. Greater importance was attached to the successful issue of the transaction, than to any other that had yet been meditated. The prevailing object of declaring Independence, had been to secure the countenance and assistance of foreign Powers; and towards France, chivalrous, highminded France,-whose friendship and co-operation appeared the most likely to be obtained, the hopes of the country were undividedly directed.

If any thing could mark more unequivocally, the respect of Congress for the abilities of Mr. Jefferson, as manifested by this appointment, it was the fact of their having associated a young man of thirty-three, with a venerable philosopher of seventy, then the most distinguished civil character in America.

But the same reasons which influenced his retirement from Congress, induced him to decline accepting the foreign station also, as appears by the following letter addressed to the President of Congress. "Williamsburg, October 11, 1776.

"Honorable Sir,-Your favor of the 30th, together with the resolutions of Congress, of the 26th ultimo, came safe to hand. It would argue great insensibility in me, could I receive with indifference, so confidential an appointment from your body. My thanks are a poor return for the partiality they have been pleased to entertain for me. No cares for my own person, nor yet for my private affairs, would have induced one moment's hesitation to accept the charge. But circumstances very peculiar in the situation of my family, such as neither permit me to leave, nor to carry it, compel me to ask leave to decline a service so honorable, and, at the same time, so important to the American cause. The necessity under which I labor, and the conflict I have undergone for three days, during which I could not determine to dismiss your messenger, will, I hope, plead my pardon with Congress; and I am sure there are too many of that body to whom they may with better hopes confide this charge, to leave them under a moment's difficulty in making a new choice. I am, sir, with the most sincere attachment to your honorable body, and the great cause they support, their and your most obedient, humble servant.

But a more adequate and interesting revelation of his motives, than is contained in the above letter, is found among his private Memoranda. After repeating the domestic causes already stated, he says: "Isaw, too, that the laboring oar was really at home, where much was to be done, of the most permanent interest, in new-modelling our governments, and much to defend our fanes and firesides, from the desolations of an invading enemy, pressing on our country in every point. I declined, therefore, and Dr. Lee was appointed in my place."

CHAPTER V.

Mr. Jefferson took his seat in the Legislature of Virginia, on the 7th of October, 1776, the opening day of the session. The first ob ject of reform, which arrested the attention of his enquiring mind, was the Judiciary System; the organization of which, upon the broad basis of reason and common sense, struck him as a measure of superlative importance. Besides being indispensable, in great part, to meet the external revolution of the government, such a scheme of improvement, was eminently calculated to attach the popular bias to the new order of things,-which should always be the first business of the Reformer. In the French Revolution, for instance, the principle of a la mode simply, which arranged all the handsome young women on the side of democracy, was an engine of more power in that Nation, than the two hundred thousand men of the King. But the potent enthusiasm of new opinions, will subside with the novelty of them, and expire in a more potent revulsion, unless fortified by the gradual attainment of such real advantages as are competent to satisfy the reasonable anticipations of the adherent multitude. No man had studied, with more fidelity, the operations of the human mind, or knew how to control them with more certainty and effect, than Mr. Jefferson. He was less adapted than many others, to raise the tempest, but no one was better fitted to ride on, and direct it. He was clearly the magician of the age in this way; and the secret of his power lay in his mode of exerting and applying it. The cherishment of the people was the vital principle of his policy, and the spring of his unprecedented success. The object, which he was now about to forward, was an eminent illustration of this wise policy. The administration of justice, is a subject of profound and universal concernment. It comes home to the business and bosoms of men.' The measure which should engraft it, in sound and judicious forms, upon the infant body politic, would be an example of disinterested reform, that would concentrate, at once, the energies of popular favor.

On the 11th of October, therefore, he obtained leave to bring in a Bill for the establishment of Courts of Justice. The proposition

was referred to a committee, of which he was chairman. He draft ed the ordinance; submitted it to the committee, by whom it was approved; and reported it to the House, where, after passing through the ordinary course, it was adopted with unanimity.

The system proposed by Mr. Jefferson, was simple in its organization, and highly republican in its spirit. It is retained, essentially unimpaired, in the existing code of Virginia. It established the model for succeeding Legislatures, in the different States, as they successively proceeded to the same duty; and its main features are observable in the Judiciary Systems of all our State governments, at the present day.

It divided the State into counties, and erected three distinct grades of Courts-County, Superior, and Supreme. The quality and extent of jurisdiction, prescribed to each grade, were similar to the prevailing divisions on that subject, in the United States. The trial by jury was guarded with extreme circumspection. In all questions of fact, or of fact and law combined, the reference to a jury was made imperative in the Courts of Law; and the framer of the bill had designed to make it imperative also, in the Court of Chancery; but the provision was defeated in the House, by the introduction of a discretionary clause, on motion of Mr. Pendleton, a gentleman of high English prejudices. The consequence has been, that as no suiter will say to his judge, 'Sir, I distrust you, give me a jury,' juries are rarely, perhaps never, seen in that Court, but when ordered by the Chancellor of his own accord.

On the following day, October 12, he brought forward his celebrated Bill for the abolition of the Law of Entails. This was a cardinal measure, and a bold one for the political semi-barbarism of that age. Nor could a body of men have been easily selected, upon whose sensibilities the proposition would have grated with more harshness, than upon the refined aristocracy of a Virginia Assembly. The strong lines of discrimination, which were impressed upon the society of Virginia, during the early stages of the settlement, are celebrated in history; nor has the genius of her republican institutions been successful, as yet, in obliterating those artificial and dissocializing distinctions, or in extinguishing the high aristocratical spirit which they engendered. In the earlier times of the Colony, when lands were to be obtained for little or nothing, certain provident individuals procured large grants; and, desirous of founding great

families for themselves, settled them on their descendants in fee tail. The transmission of these estates from generation to generation, in the same name, raised up a distinct set of families, who, being privileged by the law, in the perpetuation of their wealth, were thus formed into a Patrician order, distinguished by the splendor and luxury of their establishments. This order, having in process of time, engulphed the greater part of the landed property, and with it, the political power of the Province, remained stationary, in general, on the grounds of their forefathers; for there was no emigration to the westward in those days. The Irish, who had gotten possession of the valley between the Blue-Ridge and the North Mountain, formed a barrier over which none ventured to leap; and their manners presented no attractions to the opulent lowlanders to settle among them.

"In such a state of things," says Mr. Jefferson, "scarcely admitting any change of station, society would settle itself down into several strata, separated by no marked lines, but shading off imperceptibly from top to bottom, nothing disturbing the order of their repose. There were, then, first aristocrats, composed of the great landholders who had seated themselves below tide water on the main rivers, and lived in a style of luxury and extravagance, insupportable by the other inhabitants, and which, indeed, ended, in several instances, in the ruin of their own fortunes. Next to these were what may be called half breeds; the descendants of the younger sons and daughters of the aristocrats, who inherited the pride of their ancestors, without their wealth. Then came the pretenders, men who from vanity or the impulse of growing wealth, or from that enterprize which is natural to talents, sought to detach themselves from the plebeian ranks, to which they properly belonged, and imitated, at some distance, the manners and habits of the great. Next to these, were a solid and independent yeomanry, looking askance at those above, yet not venturing to jostle them. And last and lowest, a feculum of beings called overseers, the most abject, degraded, unprincipled race; always cap in hand to the dons who employed them, and furnishing materials for the exercise of their pride, insolence, and spirit of domination."

By birth and fortune, Mr. Jefferson belonged to the aristocracy; but his intellectual tastes revolted him from the indolent and voluptuous habits which marked the lives of that order; and his political principles attached him, by early and indissoluble sympathies, to the solid and independent yeomanry, whom he represents as 'looking askance' at those above them.