price for them might be obtained. When soliciting this permission, and after enumerating his many and important services, he concludes: "And what remuneration do I ask? Money from the treasury? Not a cent. I ask nothing from the earnings or labours of my fellow citizens. I wish no man's comforts to be abridged for the enlargement of mine. For the ser vices rendered on all occasions, I have been always paid to my full satisfaction. I never wished a dollar more than what the law had fixed on. My request is, only to be permitted to sell my own property freely to pay my own debts. To sell it, I say, and not to sacrifice it; not to have it gobbled up by speculators to make fortunes for themselves, leaving unpaid those who have trusted to my good faith, and myself without resource in the last and most helpless stage of life. If permitted to sell it in a way which will bring me a fair price, all will be honourably and honestly paid, and a competence left for myself, and for those who look to me for subsistence. To sell it in a way which will offend no moral principle, and expose none to risk but the willing, and those wishing to take the chance of gain. To give me, in short, that permission which you often allow to others for purposes not more moral." It was on this occasion that he produced his "Thoughts on Lotteries;" in which the arguments are at least specious, if not sound; and in which he endeavours to show, with what success we will enable the reader to judge, that the objections urged against lotteries equally militate against other speculations which have never been thought opposed to morality or propriety. A

short extract may not be uninteresting, and will prove the still unsubdued vigour of his pen:

"It is a common idea, that games of chance are immoral. But what is chance? Nothing happens in this world without a cause. If we know the cause, we do not call it chance; but if we do not know it, we say it was produced by chance. If we see a loaded die turn its lightest side up, we know the cause, and that it is not an effect of chance; but whatever side an unloaded die turns up, not knowing the cause, we say it is the effect of chance. Yet the morality of a thing cannot depend on our knowledge or ignorance of its cause. Not knowing why a particular side of an unloaded die turns up, cannot make the act of throwing it, or of betting on it, immoral. If we consider games of chance immoral, then every pursuit of human industry is immoral, for there is not a single one that is not subject to chance; not one wherein you do not risk a loss for the chance of some gain. The navigator, for example, risks his ship in the hope (if she is not lost in the voyage) of gaining an advantageous freight. The merchant risks his cargo to gain a better price for it. A landholder builds a house on the risk of indemnifying himself by a rent. The hunter hazards his time and trouble in the hope of killing game. In all these pursuits, you stake some one thing against another which you hope to win. But the greatest of all gamblers is the farmer. He risks the seed he puts into the ground, the rent he pays for the ground itself, the year's labour on it, and the wear and tear of his cattle and gear, to win a crop, which the chances of too much or too little rain, and general uncertainties of weather, insects, waste, &c. often make a total or partial loss. These, then, are games of chance. Yet so far from being immoral, they are indispensable to the existence of man, and every one has a natural right to choose for his pursuit such one of them as he thinks most likely to furnish him subsistence. Almost all these pursuits of chance produce something useful to society. But there are some which produce nothing, and endanger the well-being of the individuals engaged in them, or of others depending on them. Such are games with cards, dice, billiards, &c. And although the pursuit of them is a matter of natural right, yet society, perceiving the irresistible bent of some of its members to pursue them, and the ruin produced by them to the families depending on these individuals, consider it as a case of insanity, quoad hoc, step in to protect the family and the party himself, as in other cases of insanity, infancy, imbecility, &c., and suppress the pursuit altogether, and the natural right of following it. There are some other games of chance, useful on certain occasions, and injurious only when carried beyond their useful bounds. Such are ensurances, lotteries, raffles, &c. These they do not suppress, but take their regulation under their own discretion

The ensurance of ships on voyages is a vocation of chance, yet useful, and the right to exercise it, therefore, is left free. So of houses against fire, doubtful debts, the continuance of a particular life, and similar cases. Money is wanting for a useful undertaking, as a school, &c., for which a direct tax would be disapproved. It is raised, therefore, by a lottery, wherein the tax is laid on the willing only, that is to say, on those who can risk the price of a ticket without sensible injury, for the possibility of a higher prize. An article of property, insusceptible of division at all, or not without great diminution of its worth, is sometimes of so large value as that no purchaser can be found while the owner owes debts, has no other means of payment, and his creditors no other chance of obtaining it but by its sale at a full and fair price. The lottery is here a salutary instrument for disposing of it, where many run small risks for the chance of obtaining a high prize. In this way, the great estate of the late Colonel Byrd (in 1756) was made competent to pay his debts, which, had the whole been brought into the market at once, would have overdone the demand, would have sold at half or quarter the value, and sacrificed the creditors, half or three fourths of whom would have lost their debts. This method of selling was formerly very much resorted to, until it was thought to nourish too much a spirit of hazard. The legislature were therefore induced, not to suppress it altogether, but to take it under their own special regulation. This they did, for the first time, by their act of 1769, c. 17., before which time, every person exercised the right freely; and since which time, it is made unlawful but when approved and authorized by a special act of the legisla

ture.

"We have seen, then, that every vocation in life is subject to the influence of chance; that, so far from being rendered immoral by the admixture of that ingredient, were they abandoned on that account man could no longer enhgist: tha among them, every one has a natural right to choose that which he thinks most likely to give him comfortable subsistence; but that while the greater number of these pursuits are productive of something which adds to the necessaries and comforts of life, others again, such as cards, dice, &c. are entirely unproductive, doing good to none, injury to many, yet so easy, and so seducing in practice to men of a certain constitution of mind, that they cannot resist the temptation, be the consequences what they may; that in this case, as in those of insanity, idiocy, infancy, &c. it is the duty of society to take them under its protection, even against their own acts, and to restrain their right of choice of these pursuits, by suppressing them entirely; that there are others, as lotteries particularly, which although tiable to chance also, are useful for many purposes, and are therefore retained and placed under the discretion of the legis lature, to be permitted or refused according to the circumstan

ces of every special case, of which they are to judge; that between the years 1782 and 1820, a space of thirty-eight years only, we have observed seventy cases, where the permission of them has been found useful by the legislature, some of which are in progress at this time. These cases relate to the emolument of the whole state, to local benefits of education, of navigation, of roads, of counties, towns, religious assemblies, private societies, and of individuals under particular circumstances which may claim indulgence or favour. The latter is the case now submitted to the legislature, and the question is, whether the individual soliciting their attention, or his situation, may merit that degree of consideration which will Justify the legislature in permitting him to avail himself of the mode of selling by lottery, for the purpose of paying his debts."

But few more incidents belong to the eventful life of Mr. Jefferson. The full vigour of his mind, indeed, remained unimpaired until a very short period before he fell into the grave. The few remaining circumstances attending the close of his life, we give in the words of the "American Biography," a work to which we have already acknowledged our obligations. No language more appropriate could be employed, and no one seems better qualified than this author to portray the final scene of departing greatness.

"The year 1826 being the fiftieth since the establishment of our independence, it was determined universally throughout the United States, to celebrate it as a jubilee, with unusual rejoicing; preparations to this end were made in every part of the country; and all means were taken to impart to the celebration the dignity which was worthy of the country and the event. The citizens of Washington, the metropolis of the nation, among other things invited Mr. Jefferson, as one of the surviving signers of the Declaration of Independence, to unite with them in their festivities; this request he was obliged to decline; but the letter in

which he signified his regret, is left to us as a monument of his expiring greatness. On the twenty-fourth of June, when the hand of death was already upon him, he expressed in this letter all those characteristick sentiments which through life had so strongly marked him-the delight with which he looked back to the period; when his country had made its glorious election between submission and the sword—the joy he felt in its consequent prosperity-the hope he indulged, that the time would yet come when civil and religious freedom should bless all the world-his ardent wish, that the return of that day should keep fresh in us the recollection of our rights, and increase our devotion to them, and the affectionate remembrance with which he dwelt on the kindness he had experienced from his fellow citizens. He thus addresses the mayor of Washing

ton:

'Respected sir-The kind invitation I received from you, on the part of the citizens of the city of Washington, to be present with them at their celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of American independence, as one of the surviving signers of an instrument, pregnant with our own, and the fate of the world, is most flattering to myself, and heightened by the honourable accompaniment proposed for the comfort of such a journey. It adds sensibly to the sufferings of sickness, to be deprived by it of a personal participation in the rejoicings of that day; but acquiescence under circumstances is a duty not placed among those we are permitted to control. I should, indeed, with peculiar delight, have met and exchanged there, congratulations, personally, with the small band, the remnant of the