a phalanx of republican patriots, equally devoted to their country, equally inflamed with ambition, but more enthu-. siastic and wild in their notions of liberty; and scarcely less distinguished by talents, genius and learning. At the head of this party stood, proudly pre-eminent, the subject of this biography, assisted by James Madison, Aaron Burr, James Monroe, William B. Giles, and others of inferior note, and less creditable reputation. The former party represented the monied influence, and comprehended the higher orders of society; law, divinity, medicine, commerce and agriculture, or the great landed interest; and from its inherent rigour, both physical and mental, assumed a moral force, which, in the usual course of human events, must have proved invincible to all extraneous assaults. On the adverse side, stood the less intelligent and more penurious people; those whose passions were easily inflamed by the cry of liberty, and whose indignation was promptly provoked by the suspicion of oppression, tyranny, or the unjust exercise of power. To this party, the excise law, and the French revolution, were objects easily understood, as composing the essence of tyranny on the one hand, and liberty on the other; and their leaders did not fail to apply the fire-brand, where they discovered the combustibles. But the vast moral influence of the character of Washington, arrested, for a time, the explosion of these inflamma, tory elements, and decided the victory in favour of that party which represented the wealth, intelligence, virtue and talent of the country, in a greater degree than did its clamourous and honest adversaries, who fancied they be held equality of riches and pleasures in the promised gifts of equal rights, universal suffrage and democratical government; not reflecting, that, however ardently candidates for office may profess lenity, officers are compelled to observe justice; and that the professions of partisans to gain popular support, are never intended as a rule of action, for the incumbent, when invested with power.

It was upon this subject, of a successor to Washington, that Mr. Jefferson addressed the following letter to Mr. Madison; in which his aversion to public life is depicted in colours so strong and glowing, as to stagger belief how he could ever be persuaded to overcome so invincible a repugnance to its cares! This letter discloses more of the character of its great author, than could be furnished in a

volume of dissertation; and I, therefore, make no apology for its quotation, which, as it flows from his own lips, cannot be open to dispute.

TO JAMES MADISON.

Monticello, April 27, 1795. "Dear Sir, Your letter of March the 23d, came to hand the 7th of April, and notwithstanding the urgent reasons for answering a part of it immediately, yet, as it mentioned that you would leave Philadelphia within a few days, I feared that the answer might pass you on the road. A letter from Philadelphia, by the last post, having announced to me your leaving that place the day preceding its date, I am in hopes this will find you in Orange. In mine, to which yours of March the 23d was an answer, I expressed my hope of the only change of position I ever wished to see you make, and I expressed it with entire sincerity, because there is not another person in the United States, who, being placed at the helm of our affairs, my mind would be so completely at rest for the fortune of our political bark, The wish, too, was pure and unmixed with any thing respecting myself personally.

"For as to myself, the subject had been thoroughly weighed and decided on, and my retirement from office had been meant from all office, high or low, without exception. I can say too, with truth, that the subject had not been presented to my mind by any vanity of my own. I knew myself and my fellow citizens, too well to have ever thought of it. But the idea was forced upon me by continual insinuations in the public papers, while I was in office. As all these came from a hostile quarter, I knew that their object was to poison the public mind as to my motives, when they were not able to charge me with facts. But the idea being once presented to me, my own quiet required that I should face it and examine it. I did so, thoroughly, and had no difficulty to see that every reason which had determined me to retire from the office I then held, operated more strongly against that which was insinuated to be my object. I de cided then on those general grounds which could alone be present to my mind at that time, that is to say, reputation, tranquillity, labour; for as to public duty, it could not be a topic of consideration in my case. If these general considerations were sufficient to ground a firm resolution never

to permit myself to think of the office, or be thought of for it, the special ones which have supervened on my retirement, still more insuperably bar the door to it. My health is entirely broken down within the last eight months; my age requires that I should place my affairs in a clear state;* these are sound, if taken care of, but capable of considerable dangers if longer neglected; and above all things, the delights I feel in the society of my family, and in the agricultural pursuits in which I am so eagerly engaged. The little spice of ambition which I had in my younger days,t has long since evaporated, and I set still less store by a posthumous than present name. In stating to you the heads of reasons which have produced my determination, I do not mean an opening for future discussion, or that I may be reasoned out of it. THE QUESTION IS FOREVER CLOSED WITH ME; my sole object is to avail myself of the first opening ever given me from a friendly quarter, (and I could not with decency do it before,) of preventing any division or loss of votes, which might be fatal to the republican interest. If that has any chance of prevailing, it must be by preventing the loss of a single vote, and by concentrating all its strength upon one object. Who this should be, is a question I can more freely discuss with any body than yourself. In this I painfully feel the loss of Monroe. Had he been here, I should have been at no loss for a channel through which to make myself understood, if I have been misunderstood by any body through the instrumentality of Mr. Fenno and his abettors. I long to see you.

TH. JEFFERSON.".

*Mr. Jefferson was then but 52 years old!!!

AMBITION is the passion peculiar to age-VANITY to youth!

Judge Marshall, in his life of Washington alludes to the establishment of a paper, by Mr. Jefferson, then Secretary of State, called the National Gazette, the leading articles of which, attacking Washington, Hamilton, and their measures, were alleged to flow from the pen of Jefferson himself! The journal in question was certainly devoted to Mr. Jefferson; but how far his pen, or opinions, entered into its columns, it is perhaps, at this period, impossible to ascertain. The imputation, at the present day, would convey little reproach, having become a common practice. If it were true of Mr. Jefferson, we can only remark, that less eminent for greatness, and less powerful in public veneration, than Washington; he might find it necessary, in coping with Hamilton and Adams, to employ the PRESS in their depreciation, and make use of its influence to sustain himself, even

There is much in this letter to excite enquiry and reflection. Is it possible, that Jefferson should have been so averse to the Presidency? Is it possible, that he would not quit his farm for the empire of the universe; and yet, a few years after, accept of the Vice Presidentship of the United States. That Jefferson was a great man, cannot be doubted; but that he was also liable to the frailties of human nature, is here made too manifest to be doubted.

It is difficult to suppose, that Mr. Jefferson had no che

at the expense of Washington. How far the practice is calculated to sap the foundations of liberty, is another question. Adams and Hamilton, the abettors of Fenno,' on their part, resorted to the same means of aggression and defence, and employed the press against Mr. Jefferson.

His employment of CALLENDER, an impoverished Scotch adventurer, of some talents, but no character and principle, to traduce the reputation of Washington, has been denied by some and extenuated by others; but enough is known to dispel all doubt of the agency of Mr. Jefferson in this unfortunate transaction; an agency which we cannot but deplore, as it exposes one of those frailties of a great mind, which so often interposes between the reach of perfection, to which genius so naturally aspires, to arrest admiration from turning to IDOLATRY; and to chequer humanity with some traits of its native imperfection. It must be allowed, as some atonement for his transgression, that Mr. Jefferson lived to lavish unbounded encomiums on the father of his country; and to confess that his great virtues extorted the homage of the world, and excited the admiration and applause of all parties. In the same manner, his employment of FRENEAU for the same purpose, he has fully admitted in his 'AÑAS,' where he says, speaking of an interview with Washington, "He adverted to a piece in Freneau's paper of yesterday; he said he despised all their attacks on him personally, but that there never had been an act of the government, not meaning in the executive line only, but in any line, which that paper had not abused. He had also marked the word republic thus (V) where it was applied to the French republic. He was evidently sore and warm, and I took his intention to be that I should interpose in some way with Freneau, perhaps withdraw his appointment of translating clerk to my office. But I will not do it. HIS PAPER HAS SAVED OUR CONSTITUTION, which was galloping fast into monarchy, and has been checked by no one means so powerfully as by THAT PAPER. It is well and universally known, that it has been that paper which has checked the career of the monocrats; and the President, not sensible of the designs of the party, has not, with his usual good sense and sang froid, looked on the efforts and effects of this free press, and seen, that though some bad things have passed through it to the public, yet the good have preponderated immensely."

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rished views of supreme power at this time, when the whole course of his retirement was marked by epistolary effusions of political rancour and bitterness, unequalled in the history of a politician of the higher order,' and which even tempted him to assail the character of the great and pure Washing ton, as an advocate of English monarchy; because he stood aloof from the intrigues of all parties, and disdained to tarnish his integrity by a collision with any faction-looking to his country, and his country only, as the idol of his ado ration. In the following extract of a letter to Mazzei,' we have a lamentable instance of the wide difference that obtains between a patriot statesman, whose labours had contributed to found the institutions of his country, and the partisan politician, rankling under the triumph of rivals, and panting and fretting to get his foot on his enemies, as the stepping-stone to supreme power.

"MY DEAR FRIEND,

TO P. MAZZEI.

Monticello, April 24, 1796. "The aspect of our politics has wonderfully changed since you left us. In place of that noble love of liberty and republican government, which carried us triumphantly through the war, an Anglican monarchical and aristocratical party has sprung up, whose avowed object is to draw over us the substance, as they have already done the forms of the British government. The main body of our citizens, however, remain true to their republican principles; the whole landed interest is republican, and so is a great mass of talents. Against us are the executive, the judiciary, two out of three branches of the legislature, all the officers of the government, all who want to be officers, all timid men who prefer the calm of despotism to the boisterous sea of liberty, British merchants, and Americans trading on British capitals, speculators and holders in the banks and public funds, a contrivance invented for the purposes of corruption, and for assimilating us in all things to the rotten as well as the sound parts of the British model. It would give you a fever were I to name to you the apostates who have gone over to these heresies men who were Samsons in the field, and Solomons in the council, but who have had their heads shorn by the harlot England. In short, we are likely to preserve the liberty we have obtained only by unremitting labours and perils. But we shall preserve it; and our mass of