personal felicity, and that it will be my pride to cultivate a continuance of that esteem, regard, and friendship, of which you do me the honour to assure me."

And never my fellow-citizens, did he swerve in thought, word, or action, from the pledge contained in that letter.

The time that transpired between the years '93 and '97, was the noon-tide of Mr. Jefferson's life. It was spent amidst all the delights that elegant retirement, cultivated taste, a tranquil mind, a clear conscience, an affectionate family, and intellectual society, could concentrate.

Upon the retirement of General Washington from the Presidency, the choice of the people fell upon the two venerated men whose exit has been so singularly combined. Together they rose to the highest offices in the gift of their country, and together we will hope, have arisen to " higher habitations, eternal in the heavens."

The office of Vice-President is one of the highest dignity; but not calculated for the display of conspicuous talents. Its leading duties are those of Moderator of a deliberative assembly. To discharge these with judgment, firmness, consistency, and impartiality, is, however, no simple duty in times of party excitement. But it was not enough for Mr. Jeffer son to study and fulfil these duties for himself alone; with his habitual attention to the good of others, the results of his investigations and experience were embodied in that little volume, which now gives the law to deliberative assemblies through the union.

While, however, the philosopher was calmly prosecuting, in his chamber, the most appropriate service that his leisure could be devoted to; the continent rang from north to south, with the most virulent and savage abuse of him, that it was possible for the vilest of passions to heap upon their victim: and it must be acknowledged that his partizans were not far behind his opponents in recrimination.

The canvass for the election of 1801, was warm and animated; conducted with much ability, and we regret we cannot add, with much liberality and candor.

It eventuated in the elevation of Mr. Jefferson to the Presidency. In that decision South Carolina acted a conAnd never spicuous part; she gave the deciding vote.

surely was a vote given under circumstances of greater selfdenial.

Among the rivals of Mr. Jefferson, was the most venerated of her sons; one, in whose talents, integrity and wisdom, was reposed such high trust, that party considerations were abandoned to give place to it. Of the two votes then required to be indiscriminately given, the one was sacred to Jefferson; the other was tendered to the venerable Pinckney. Had he accepted it, he had been President. But it pleased Him who directs counsels to his own wise purposes, that it should be otherwise; and on the 4th of March, 1801, Thomas Jefferson entered on the Presidency.

With him commenced a new era in the administration of the government.

I come not here, my fellow-citizens, to contrast the merits of parties or of measures. It is no time, when convened around the grave of our departed friend; to give place to human pride and party triumph. Mutual charity to each other's intentions, a cordial forgiveness of injuries, gratitude to Him who sent us able rulers, and who has so signally blessed their efforts to serve us; these and these alone are the appropriate sentiments on this occasion. What eulogy can compare wiht that feeling which has here brought together all parties, all ages, all denominations, in one signal expression of gratitude. What eulogy so great as that sentiment which brings us together as one people, animated by one soul, no longer distracted by party animosities, irritated by injurious suspicions, not glancing at each other the angry eye of jealousy and distrust, but uniting as one loving family, in the obsequies of a venerated parent! As the grave closes over the remains of our departed benefactor, so let memory close over the past, or let it be recalled only to guard us against its recurrence!

There is every reason to believe that our jealousies have arisen from mutual misunderstandings. Confident I am, that the party-tenets avowed by Mr. Jefferson are so simple, so unexceptionable, that they need but be explained to command the approbation of every candid mind.

May not one among the humblest, though not least confidential of his correspondents, be permitted to deliver them recently authenticated under his own signature?

Monticello, June 16, '23.—“ Our object was" (says he) "to maintain the will of the majority of the convention, and of the people themselves; we believed with them, that man was a rational animal, endowed by nature with rights, and with an innate sense of justice, and that he could be restrained from wrong, and protected in right, by moderate powers confined to persons of his own choice, and held to their duties by dependence on his own will. We believed, that the complicat ed organization of kings, nobles, and priests was not the wisest nor best to effect the happiness of associated man ; that wisdom and virtue were not hereditary; that the trappings of such a machinery, consumed by their expense, those earnings of industry they were meant to protect; and by the inequalities they produced exposed liberty to sufferance.We believed that men enjoying in ease and security the full fruits of their own industry, enlisted by all their interests on the side of law and order, habituated to think for themselves' and to follow their reason as their guide, would be more easily and safely governed, than with minds nourished in error, and vitiated and abused, as in Europe, by ignorance, indigence, and oppression. The cherishment of the people then was our principle.

"Composed as we were of the landed and labouring interests of the country, we could not be less anxious for a government of law and order than were the inhabitants of the cities, and whether our efforts to save the principles and form of our Constitution have not been salutary, let the present republican freedom, order, and prosperity of our country determine.

History may distort truth, and will distort it for a time, by the superior efforts at justification of those who are conscious of needing it most. Nor will the opening scenes of our present government be seen in their true aspect, until the letters of the day, now held in private hoards, shall be broken up and laid open to public view. What a treasure will be found in Gen. Washington's cabinet in the hands of as candid a friend to truth as he was himself!" &c.

As to the doctrines and views of Mr. Jefferson's political opponents, let us hope he altogether misunderstood them.Certain I am, that of those whom I have known, few, very few would have hesitated to abandon their leaders had they suspected them of the views which have been confidently attributed to them. I mean not to vindicate the opinions of Mr. Jefferson on this subject, or examine the evidence upon which those opinions were adopted. But I will say that however erroneous those views may be, he was sincere in entertaining them: and that, entertaining them, it was impossible he could have done otherwise than sound the alarm—than awaken the attention of the nation to the subject-than cry out to us, "Watch, and what I say unto you, I say unto all, Watch."

The time of feverish apprehension is, we hope, gone by.The establishment of certain great principles in the construction of the constitution, and in the administration of the general government has banished apprehension. But to the remotest ages of our existence, the spirit of Jefferson will sound the cry from the watchtower—" Beware;" And woe to those days when a salutary watchfulness shall give place to a supine confidence or indolent inattention: a manly acquiescence in the exercise of constitutional powers; indulgence to the errors, and confidence in the motives of an administration, are entirely consistent with a guarded examination of their views and measures.

We claim it as the just attribute of Mr. Jefferson's administration, that he practically illustrated those maxims of government which he inculcated on his adherents. What in

stance can be adduced of his favoring the application of either of those two great engines of public patronage-the expenditure of public money, or the multiplication of public appointments? His administration was literally the reign of frugality. Nor yet of parsimony for when some great national object presented itself, no one was more ready to draw upon the public purse. It was not the expenditure of money that he dreaded; it was the expenditure of money where it could corrupt, by creating that bane of morals and independence, a money influence.

Witness the purchase of Louisiana; the greatest political event next to our revolution that our history will ever commemorate; a bloodless conquest of a country exceeding in extent the greatest monarchy in Europe. Posterity will do justice to this mighty acquisition; but the mind at the present day is lost in its very vastness. There is no country like the valley of the Mississippi on the face of the globe. Follow the mighty ampitheatre of rocks that nature has heaped around it. Trace the ten thousand rivers that unite their waters in the mighty Mississippi; count the happy millions that already crowd and animate their banks-loading their channels with a mighty produce. Then see the whole, bound by the hand, of nature in chains which God alone can sever, to a perpetual union at one little connecting point; and by that point fastening itself by every tie of interest, consanguinity, and feeling, to the remotest promontory on our Atlantic coast. A few short years have done all this; and yet ages are now before us: ages in which myriads are destined to multiply through. out its wide spread territory, extending the greatness and the happiness of our country from sea to sea.

What would we have been without the acquisition of Louisiana? What were we before it? God and nature fixed the unalterable decree, that the nation which held New-Orleans should govern the whole of that vast region. France, Spain, and Great-Britain, had bent their envious eyes upon it. And their intrigues, if matured, would eventually have torn from us