ed change; and finally, that an appeal should be made, for the decision of so important a question, to the sentiments and wishes of the people at large. The petitions, on the other hand, expatiated in bewitching strains, upon the burning theme of liberty; and blended with unanswerable demonstrations of right and reason, the pathetic expostulations of bereaved freemen.

The subject was referred to the Committee of the whole House,. on the state of the country, with the multitude of appertaining memorials and remonstrances. "These," says Mr. Jefferson in 1820, "brought on the severest contests in which I have ever been engaged. Our great opponents, were Mr. Pendleton and Robert Carter Nicholas; honest men, but zealous churchmen." The majority of the Legislature, unfortunately, were of the same religious stamp, which forced an alteration in the mode of attack, on the leader of the reform party. Finding he could not maintain the ground on which he set out, he varied his position from absolute, to partial abolition; and after vehement contests in the committee, almost daily, from the 11th of October, to the 5th of December, he prevailed so far only, as to repeal the laws, which rendered criminal the maintenance of any religious opinions, the forbearance of repairing to church, or the exercise of any mode of worship. By the same act also, he secured a provision, exempting dissenters from contibutions to the support of the established church, and suspending, until the next session only, levies on the members of the church for the salaries of their own incumbents. But his opponents carried in a declaratory saving, that religious assemblies ought to be regulated, and that provision ought to be made for continuing the succession of the clergy, and superintending their conduct. They succeeded also, in incorporating an express reservation of the ultimate question,-Whether a general assessment should not be established by law, on every one, to support the pastor of his choice; or whether all should be left to free and voluntary contributions. This question, the last prop of the tottering hierarchy, reduced the struggle to one of pure principle. The particular object of the dissenters being secured, they deserted the volunteer champion of their cause, and went over, in troops, to the advocates of a general assessment. This step, the natural proclivity of the sectarian mind, showed them incapable of religious liberty, upon an expansive scale, or broader than their own interests, as schismatics.

But the defection of the dissenters, painful as it was, only stimulated his desire for total abolition, as it developed more palpably, the evidences of its necessity. He remained unshaken at his post; and brought on the reserved question, at every session, from '76 to '79; during which time, he could only obtain a suspension of the levies from year to year, until the session of '79, when, by his unwearied exertions, the question was carried definitively, against a general assessment, and the establishment of the Anglican church entirely overthrown.

This achievment is one of the standing monuments of that glory-hallowed age, and of its great intellectual magician. The Revolution itself, with its catalogue of civil and political liberations, would have been but a compromise, without it, between despotism and freedom; and the balance would have been against us, in the same proportion as the liberties of a nation depend more on the moral, than on the political condition of its inhabitants. If ever there was an occasion, when the American people might glory in the superiority of their discoveries in the science of government, over the aggregate attainments of the nations of the earth, and boast of having produced a legislator, wiser than the wisest of their own, greater than the greatest of antiquity, it was that on which the Author of this act, peaceably, and by the mere force of reason, banished from their political code, a heresy, fundamental in character, consecrated by immemorial adoption, universal and uninterrupted transmission, and cherished by the most indomitable prejudices of the human mind. The history of the world presents no other example of a dissolution of Church and State, uncrimsoned by the blood of the martyr, or unattended, sooner or later, by a reestablishment of the union, upon the basis of a more powerful sectarism. It belonged to America, guided by the unsophisticated counsels of a native lawgiver, to establish the legitimate theory on this momentous subject, by exempting the operations of the human mind, in toto, from the jurisdiction of civil government. The other nations of the earth, catching their inspiration from the American altar, are approximating, in slow degrees, to the same beneficent result; and the time is not far distant, probably, when the policy of Mr. Jefferson will be universally recognized and put in practice. Who, then, can set limits to the magnitude of this political innovaion, or the merits of its unrestrained originator? It is from such

conquests, achieved by such means, that the correct standard is derived, which determines the relative preponderance of empires, as of individuals, in the scale of greatness, power, and respectability.

Thus was the cause of religious liberty astonishingly advanced. But still the work was incomplete. Statutory oppressions were disannulled; but those which existed at the common law, continued in force; nor were the advantages already gained, secured by any positive legislative sanction. The proceedings hitherto, upon the subject, were of a belligerent character; and although crowned with unexampled success, were regarded by the mover, in great part, as an experiment upon public opinion, 'indicative,' as he expressed it, 'of the general pulse of reformation.' The immortal barrier which he subsequently erected, in perpetual security of the rights, of which he had already procured the recognition, forms the inimitable conclusion of this impressive drama. We allude to his celebrated Religious Freedom Bill, universally regarded as the chiefest of the bulwarks of human rights. As it constitutes a part of his general Code of Revisal, the merits of this bill will be more particularly considered, when we come to develope the features of that vast and recondite labor.

The next prominent corruption of the Monarchy, which Mr. Jefferson regarded as fatally inconsistent with the republican change, was the existence, and the practice of slavery. We have already seen him, on two occasions, exerting his talents, and raising his prophetic voice, in awful admonition, against the continuance of this atrocious and wide spread injustice. The result of his former attempt in the Legislature, which was based upon manumission, or the permission to emancipate, had convinced him, of the utter impracticability of maintaining that ground; and of the necessity of attacking the evil in such mode as should militate less diamatrically against the interests and prejudices of the reigning population. He took his stand, therefore, upon a proposition to abolish the execrable commerce in slaves; which, by stopping importation, would arrest the increase of the evil, and diminish the obstacles to eventual eradication. But the business of the war pressing heavily upon the Legislature, the subject was not acted upon definitively, until the session of '78, when the bill was carried without opposition, and the slave trade triumphantly abolished in Virginia. The vast importance of this measure, and the grounds

upon which the author may contest the merit of priority, with the world, in the benevolent enterpise of African emancipation, will be explained at greater length, when we arrive at that period of his legislative history.

The next object of public improvement, which struck the attentive mind of Mr. Jefferson as being of immediate urgency, was the removal of the Seat of Government. The situation of Williamsburg was so exposed, that it might be captured at any time in war, by the enemy running up, in the night, either of the rivers between which it lay, landing a force above, and taking possession; without the possibility of saving either the officers and archives of the government, or the military magazines. The Seat of Government had been originally fixed at Jamestown, the first settlement of the colonists; whence it had been afterwards removed a few miles inland, to Williamsburg. But at that time the settlements had not extended beyond the tide waters; now they had crossed the Allegany; and the centre of population had travelled far into the interior, from what it had been. In view of these considerations he submitted a proposition, early in October, for the removal of the government seat from Williamsburg to Richmond, the present metropolis; but it did not prevail until the session of May, '79.

Such were some of the astonishing feats of legislation, with which Mr. Jefferson commenced the process of republicanizing the institutions of America, in the first regular Legislature that was organized on the dissolution of the Monarchy. They were all, it will be perceived, of an elementary character, and highly democratic in their object and tendency. But still, the unique and deeply interesting work was only begun-so thought the reaching and untrammelled Innovator who contrived it. The original plan which he had proposed to himself, on determining to leave the floor of Congress, comprehended the entire resolution, and recasting into other forms, of the anciently established and generally received bases of civil government.

"So far," says he, in his brief notes of these transactions, "we were proceeding in the details of reformation only; selecting points of legislation, prominent in character and principle, urgent, and indicative of the strength of the general pulse of reformation. When I left Congress in '76, it was in the persuasion, that our whole code must be reviewed, adapted to our republican

form of government; and now, that we had no negatives of Councils, Governors and Kings to restrain us from doing right, that it should be corrected in all its parts, with a single eye to reason and the good of those for whose government it was framed."

In pursuance of his original design, therefore, he now brought forward a proposition, which stands recorded in the Statute books of Virginia, in the following terms.

"Whereas, on the late change which hath of necessity been introduced into the form of government in this country, it is become also necessary to make corresponding changes in the laws heretofore in force; many of which are inapplicable to the powers of government as now organized, others are founded on principles heterogeneous to the republican spirit; others, which long before such change, had been oppressive to the people, could yet never be repealed while the regal power continued; and others, having taken their origin while our ancestors remained in Britain, are not so well adapted to our present circumstances of time and place; and it is also necessary to introduce certain other laws, which, though proved by the experience of other States to be friendly to liberty and the rights of mankind, we have not heretofore been permitted to adopt ; and whereas a work of such magnitude, labor, and difficulty, may not be effected during the short and busy term of a session of Assembly:

"Be it therefore enacted, by the General Assembly of the Commonwealth of Virginia, and it is hereby enacted by the authority of the same, That a committee, to consist of five persons, shall be appointed by joint ballot of both Houses, (three of whom to be a quorum,) who shall have full power and authority to revise, alter, amend, repeal, or introduce all or any of the said laws, to form the same into Bills, and report them to the next meeting of the General Assembly".

The resolution was passed on the 24th of October, "76, and on the 5th of November, Mr. Jefferson, as chairman, was associated in a commission with Edmund Pendleton, George Wythe, George Mason, and Thomas Ludwell Lee, to execute the contemplated revisal. The Commissioners were elected by a joint ballot of both Houses; and the choice resulted in the selection of an assemblage of characters, which united the first order of capacity, intelligence, and legal research, to a preponderance of the rankest revolutionary principles. Suitable provisions were added, to render the execution of a work of such magnitude and difficulty, as easy and expeditious as practicable; and such was the importance attached to the result of their labors, that the Assembly excused Mr. Wythe from