wages, direct their swords against their leaders or their country. Go on, then, in your generous enterprise with gratitude to Heaven for past success, and confidence of it in the future. For my own part, I ask no greater blessing than to share with you the common danger and common glory. If I have a wish dearer to my soul than that my ashes may be mingled with those of a Warren and Montgomery, it is that these American States may never cease to be free and independent.

JEFFERSON

THOMAS JEFFERSON was born at Shadwell, Albemarle County, in the

State of Virginia. At the age of five he was sent to school and completed his liberal education at William and Mary College, where he acquired a knowledge of the Latin, Greek and French languages, to which he added a familiarity with the higher mathematics and natural sciences seldom possessed by the young men of his times. After five years devoted to legal studies he was admitted to the bar, and quickly secured a lucrative practice. In 1768 he was elected from his county to the House of Burgesses, and continued to be annually returned until the outbreak of the Revolutionary War. It is to be noted that, although singularly successful at the bar, Jefferson was no orator, and, notwithstanding the fact that he was one of the foremost members of several deliberative bodies in the course of his life, he may truthfully be said never to have made a political speech. It was as a thinker, organizer and writer that he surpassed all of his contemporaries. Many of his writings, however, are admirably suited for declamation, and may therefore be fitly described as "orations." In 1774 be was chosen a delegate to the State Convention of Virginia, and was the author of the instructions sent by that body to its delegates in the Continental Congress. This document, published in a pamphlet, attracted great attention on both sides of the Atlantic, and placed Jefferson among the leaders, if not at the head, of the revolutionary movement in America. The Declaration of Independence, put forth by the colonies two years later, was but a perfected transcript of Jefferson's earlier paper. Jefferson resigned his seat in the Continental Congress in 1776, and also declined the appointment to go with Franklin to Paris, in order to take the place in the Legislature of Virginia to which he had been elected, because he considered that the future of his State depended upon a drastic transformation of its fundamental laws. Among the measures introduced in furtherance of his views may be specially mentioned the repeal of the laws of entail; the abolition of primogeniture and the substitution of equal partition of inheritance; the affirmation of the rights of conscience and the relief of the people from taxation for the support of a religion not theirs; and a system of general edu. cation. He also secured the passage of a bill forbidding the further importation of slaves into Virginia. In 1779 he was chosen Governor of his State, and continued to hold that office until 1782, soon after which he became a member

of the Congress of the Confederation. It was he who in the last-named body secured the adoption of the system of coinage which still obtains in the United States, and it was he who drafted the report of a plan for the government of the vast territory lying to the northwest of the Ohio River. Had another proposal of his been accepted, there would have been no War of Secession in 1861. We refer to his proposal that, "after the year 1800 of the Christian era, there shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in any of the States." In 1784 Jefferson was commissioned by Congress to serve as Minister Plenipotentiary in negotiating treaties of commerce with European States. He succeeded Franklin as Minister at the Court of Versailles in 1785, and continued to reside at Paris until 1790, when he became Secretary of State in Washington's first administration. As an earnest advocate of State sovereignty and decentralization, he gradually became the head of the Anti-Federalist party, and, thus finding himself at variance with the views held by President Washington and certain members of the Cabinet, he resigned his office in December, 1793, and retired to his country-seat, Monticello, where he remained until in 1796 he was made Vice-President at the election which called John Adams to the Presidency. On March 4, 1801, Jefferson was inaugurated President, and held the office for two terms. The most important act of his administration was the purchase of the vast Louisiana Territory. He might have been President for a third term, had he not firmly refused to be a candidate, although the Legislatures of five States formally requested him to accept the nomination. During the last seventeen years of his life, Jefferson remained in retirement, but he continued to be one of the most influential personages in the United States. He died on July 4, 1826.

DEMOCRACY DEFINED

FIRST INAUGURAL ADDRESS, DELIVERED MARCH 4, 1801

Friends and Fellow-Citizens:

ALLED upon to undertake the duties of the first executive office of our country, I avail myself of the presence of that portion of my fellow-citizens which is here assembled, to express my grateful thanks for the favor with which they have been pleased to look toward me, to declare a sincere consciousness that the task is above my talents, and that I approach it with those anxious and awful presentiments which the greatness of the

charge and the weakness of my powers so justly inspire. A rising nation spread over a wide and fruitful land, traversing all the seas with the rich productions of their industry, engaged in commerce with nations who feel power and forget right, advancing rapidly to destinies beyond the reach of mortal eye; when I contemplate these transcendent objects, and see the honor, the happiness, and the hopes of this beloved country committed to the issue and the auspices of this day, I shrink from the contemplation, and humble myself before the magnitude of the undertaking. Utterly, indeed, should I despair, did not the presence of many whom I here see remind me that in the other high authorities provided by our Constitution I shall find re sources of wisdom, of virtue, and of zeal on which to rely under all difficulties. To you, then, gentlemen, who are charged with the sovereign functions of legislation, and to those associated with you, I look with encouragement for that guidance and support which may enable us to steer with safety the vessel in which we are all embarked, amid the conflicting elements of a troubled world.

During the contest of opinion through which we have passed, the animation of discussions and of exertions has sometimes worn an aspect which might impose on strangers unused to think freely and to speak and to write what they think; but this being now decided by the voice of the nation, announced according to the rules of the Constitution, all will, of course, arrange themselves under the will of the law, and unite in common efforts for the common good. All, too, will bear in mind this sacred principle, that though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will, to be rightful, must be reasonable; that the minority possess their equal rights, which equal law must

protect, and to violate would be oppression. Let us, then, fellow-citizens, unite with one heart and one mind; let us restore to social intercourse that harmony and affection without which liberty, and even life itself, are but dreary things. And let us reflect, that, having banished from our land that religious intolerance under which mankind so long bled and suffered, we have yet gained little, if we countenance a political intolerance as despotic, as wicked, and capable of as bitter and bloody persecutions. During the throes and convulsions of the ancient world, during the agonizing spasms of infuriated man, seeking through blood and slaughter his long-lost liberty, it was not wonderful that the agitation of the billows should reach even this distant and peaceful shore; that this should be more felt and feared by some and less by others; and should divide opinions as to measures of safety; but every difference of opinion is not a difference of principle. We have called by different names brethren of the same principle. We are all Republicans: we are all Federalists. If there be any among us who would wish to dissolve this Union, or to change its republican form, let them stand undisturbed as monuments of the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated, where reason is left free to combat it. I know, indeed, that some honest men fear that a republican government cannot be strong; that this government is not strong enough. But would the honest patriot, in the full tide of successful experiment, abandon a government which has so far kept us free and firm, on the theoretic and visionary fear that this government, the world's best hope, may, by possibility, want energy to preserve itself? I trust not. I believe this, on the contrary, the strongest government on earth. I believe it the only one where every man, at the call of the law,