in the preamble, it was finally passed; and a singular proposition proved, that its protection of opinion was meant to be universal. Where the preamble declares, that coercion is a departure from the plan of the Holy Author of our religion, an amendment was proposed, by inserting the words 'Jesus Christ,' so that it should read, 'a departure from the plan of Jesus Christ, the Holy Author of our religion; the insertion was rejected by a great majority, in proof that they meant to comprehend, within the mantle of its protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mahometan, the Hindoo, and Infidel of every denomination."

This celebrated Act has been the standing model of legislation for the security of religious freedom, in all parts of the Union, from that day to the present; and there is not, we believe, a State, that has legislated at all upon the subject, which has not incorporated, either in its Constitution, or its Statutory Code, the substance of its provisions, and, in some instances, its phraseology to a considerable

extent.

On its promulgation, in 1785, it excited unbounded admiration, and was copied into every newspaper, which made any pretensions to liberality, with enthusiastic comments. In Europe, it produced a considerable sensation. It was translated into all the principal languages, copied into the newspapers, reviews, and encyclopedias, and applauded beyond measure by the statesmen and philosophers of the ancient world. Mr. Jefferson was in France when the intelligence was received in Europe, resident Minister at the Court of Versailles; and in his private letters to America, of that date, frequent mention is made of the admiration expressed for the Act of Religious Freedom, and the Revised Code generally.

In a letter to Mr. Wythe, dated Paris, August 13, 1786, he thus writes:

"The European papers have announced, that the Assembly of Virginia were occupied on the revisal of their code of laws. This with some other similar intelligence, has contributed much to convince the people of Europe, that what the English papers are constantly publishing of our anarchy, is false; as they are sensible, that such a work is that of a people only, who are in perfect tranquillity. Our act for freedom of religion is extremely applauded. The ambassadors and ministers of the several nations of Europe, resident at this court, have asked of me copies of it, to send to their sovereigns, and it is inserted at full length in several books now in the press; among others, in the new Encyclopedie. I think it will produce considerable good, even in these countries, where ignorance,

superstition, poverty, and oppression of body and mind, in every form, are so firmly settled on the mass of the people, that their redemption from them can never be hoped. If all the sovereigns of Europe were to set themselves to work, to emancipate the minds of their subjects from their present ignorance and prejudices, and that, as zealously as they now endeavor the contrary, a thousand years would not place them on that high ground, on which our common people are now setting out. Ours could not have been so fairly placed under the control of the common sense of the people, had they not been separated from their parent stock, and kept from contamination, either from them, or the other people of the old world, by the intervention of so wide an ocean. To know the worth of this, one must see the want of it here."

Again, in a letter to Mr. Madison, dated Paris, Dec. 16, 1786, he communicates the same information, in such a manner, that it loses no interest by the repetition.

"The Virginia act for religious freedom has been received with infinite approbation in Europe, and propagated with enthusiasm. I do not mean by the governments, but by the individuals who compose them. It has been translated into French and Italian, has been sent to most of the courts of Europe, and has been the best evidence of the falsehood of those reports, which stated us to be in anarchy. It is inserted in the new Encyclopedie, and is appearing in most of the publications respecting America. In fact, it is comfortable to see the standard of reason at length erected, after so many ages, during which the human mind has been held in vassalage by kings, priests, and nobles: and it is honorable for us to have produced the first legislature who had the courage to declare, that the reason of man may be trusted with the formation of his own opinions."

The next distinguishing and fundamental change recommended by the Revisal, regarded the freedom of the unhappy sons of Africa; and proposed, directly, the Emancipation of all Slaves born after the passage of the act. The Bill reported by the Revisors, did not itself contain this proposition; but an amendment containing it, was prepared, to be offered to the Legislature, whenever the bill should be taken up. "It was thought better," says the Author, "that this should be kept back, and attempted only, by way of amendment." It was further agreed, to embrace in the residuary proposition a clause, directing, that the after born Slaves should continue with their parents to a certain age, then be brought up at the public expense, to tillage, arts or sciences, according to their geniuses, till the females should be eighteen, and the males twenty-one years of age,

when they should be colonized to such place as the circumstances of the time should render most proper, sending them out with arms, implements of household and the handicraft arts, seeds, pairs of the useful domestic animals, &c.; to declare them a free and independent people, and extend to them our alliance and protection, till they should have acquired strength; and to send vessels, at the same time, to other parts of the world for an equal number of white inhabitants, to induce whom to migrate thither, proper encourage ments were to be proposed. But when the Bill was taken up by the Legislature, in 1785, neither Mr. Jefferson, nor Mr. Wythe, his chief coadjutor in the undertaking, were members; the former being absent on the Legation to France, and the latter, an officer of the judiciary department; so the contemplated amendment was not proposed, and the Bill passed unaltered, being a mere digest of the existing laws on the subject, without any intimation of a plan for future and general emancipation.

If there was any one question connected with the freedom and happiness of mankind, on which the genius of Mr. Jefferson kindled into an extravagance, seemingly incompatible with sobriety and right reason, it was that of the Emancipation of Slaves. It was hardly possible for him, as he declared, to write and be temperate on the subject. The quotations already given to the reader, exhibit abundant evidence of the intensity with which he yearned, to use his own language, "for the moment of delivery to this oppressed description of men." The following vehement exhortation was penned in France, on learning the passage of the Slave Bill, in Virginia, without the adoption of his concerted amendment.

"What a stupendous, what an incomprehensible machine is man! who can endure toil, famine, stripes, imprisonment, and death itself, in vindication of his own liberty, and, the next moment, be deaf to all those motives whose power supported him through his trial, and inflict on his fellow men a bondage, one hour of which is fraught with more misery, than ages of that which he rose in rebellion to oppose! But we must await, with patience, the workings of an overruling Providence, and hope that that is preparing the deliverance of these our suffering brethren. When the measure of their tears shall be full, when their groans shall have involved heaven itself in darkness, doubtless a God of justice will awaken to their distress, and by diffusing light and liberality among their oppressors, or at length, by his exterminating thunder, man

ifest his attention to the things of this world, and that they are not left to the guidance of a blind fatality."

The following paragraph, in allusion to the same transaction of the Legislature, was written at the age of seventy-seven, and found among his papers at the time of his death. Time but added emphasis to his appalling predictions, and strengthened his attachment to the plan of redemption, which he originally proposed.

"It was found that the public mind would not yet bear the proposition, nor will it bear it even at this day, (1821.) Yet the day is not distant, when it must bear and adopt it, or worse will follow. Nothing is more certainly written in the book of fate, than that these people are to be free; nor is it less certain, that the two races, equally free, cannot live in the same government. Nature, habit, opinion have drawn indelible lines of distinction between them. It is still in our power to direct the process of emancipation and deportation, peaceably, and in such slow degree, as that the evil will wear off insensibly, and their place be, pari passu, filled up by free white laborers. If, on the contrary, it is left to force itself on, human nature must shudder at the prospect held up. We should in vain look for an example in the Spanish deportation. or deletion of the Moors. This precedent would fall far short of our case."

The Bill for proportioning Crimes and Punishments in cases heretofore capital' occupies a proud niche in the temple of revolutionary reform. The changes which it proposed in the Criminal Code of the old world, were of the most extensive character, and such as modern experience has proved abundantly adequate to the protection and good order of society, while they saved a great amount of individual suffering and slaughter. Theoretical writers had shaken, profoundly, the barbarous opinions which prevailed on the subject of penal jurisprudence; among whom Mr. Jefferson mentions Beccaria, in particular, as having "satisfied the reasonable world, of the unrightfulness and inefficacy of the punishment of crimes by death." But no mitigation had been effected in practice; and the Author of this act stands before the world, as the first official lawgiver, who, having advanced to the true theory of criminal ethics, went boldly and rationally to work to incorporate it in the mechanism of civil government. The legitimate object of all punishment being, in his opinion, disciplinary, rather than vindicatory, he made the reformation of the offender, the fundamental maxim of his theory; and graduated his scale of penal sanctions

by that standard. The punishment of death putting this object entirely out of the question, he restrained its infliction to cases, in which reformation was either hopeless, or too hazardous to attempt. Modern codifyers and moral philosophers have, without exception, adopted the same principle for their guide; and, pursuing it to a still greater extent, have effected still greater improvements on the ancient economy. It led eventually to the suggestion of the Penitentiary system, now so well tested by experience, as to have become nearly universal; and the idea has of late been carried so far as to have brought seriously in question, the right and utility of capital punishment, in any case. That strong confidence in the innate virtue of man, which was so conspicuous in the character of Mr. Jefferson, and which led him to exclude the agency of force from every member of the body politic, which came under his control, placed him at once on the high and humane ground, in relation to criminal jurisprudence, which forms a prominent object of prosecution with the philanthropists and utilitarians of the present day. The following letter, inclosing the Bill to one of his colleagues, for examination, is worthy of being preserved.

"Monticello, November 1, 1778. "Dear Sir-I have got through the bill for proportioning crimes and punishments in cases heretofore capital,' and now enclose it to you with the request that you will be so good, as scrupulously to examine and correct it, that it may be presented to our committee, with as few defects as possible. In its style I have aimed at accuracy, brevity, and simplicity, preserving however, the very words of the established law, wherever their meaning had been sanctioned by judicial decisions, or rendered technical by usage. The same matter, if couched in the modern statutory language, with all its tautologies, redundancies, and circumlocutions, would have spread itself over many pages, and been unintelligible to those whom it most concerns. Indeed, I wished to exhibit a sample of reformation in the barbarous style, into which modern statutes have degenerated from their ancient simplicity. And I must pray you to be as watchful over what I have not said, as what is said; for the omissions of this bill have all their positive meaning. I have thought it better to drop, in silence, the laws we mean to discontinue, and let them be swept away by the general negative words of this, than to detail them in clauses of express repeal. By the side of the text I have written the notes I made, as I went along, for the benefit of my own memory. They may serve to draw your attention to questions, to which the expressions or the omissions of the