The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 | Page 5

the
strict line of defence, and to make no captures. It was to be a display of
latent force. Strange as it may seem, he once doubted the expediency of
encouraging immigration. Emigrants from absolute monarchies, as they

all were, they would either bring with them the principles of
government imbibed in early youth, or exchange these for an
unbounded licentiousness. 'It would be a miracle were they to stop
precisely at the point of temperate liberty.' Would it not be better for
the nation to grow more slowly, and have a more 'homogeneous, more
peaceable, and more durable' government? But when it was found at a
later day that the new comers placed themselves at once in opposition
to the better classes and voted the Democratic ticket almost to a man,
Jefferson proposed that the period of residence required by the
naturalization laws to qualify a voter should be shortened. He had no
objection to coercion before 1787. Speaking of the backwardness of
some of the colonies in paying their quota of the Confederate expenses,
he recommends sending a frigate to make them more punctual. 'The
States must see the rod, perhaps some of them must be made to feel it.'
His somersets of opinion and conduct are endless. Once he talked of
opening a market in the neighboring colonies by force; at another time
he advised his countrymen to abandon the sea and let other nations
carry for us; in 1785 we find him going abroad to negotiate commercial
treaties with all Europe. He objected to internal improvements, and he
sanctioned the Cumberland road. He proclaimed all governments
naturally hostile to the liberties of the people, until he himself became a
government. He made the mission to Russia for Mr. Short, regardless
of repeated declarations that the public business abroad could be done
better with fewer and cheaper ambassadors. The unlucky sedition law
was so unconstitutional in his judgment that he felt it to be his duty, as
soon as he mounted the throne, to pardon all who had been convicted
under it. But before he left the White House he attempted to put down
Federal opposition in the same way. Judges were impeached; United
States attorneys brought libel suits against editors, and even prosecuted
such men as Judge Reeve and the Rev. Mr. Backus of Connecticut. It
was a pet doctrine of Jefferson that one generation had no right to bind
a succeeding one; hence every constitution and all laws should become
null and every national debt void at the end of nineteen years, or of
whatever period should be ascertained to be the average duration of
human life after the age of twenty-one. He adhered to this notion
through life, although Mr. Madison, when urged by him to expound it,
gently pointed out its absurdity. When the news of the massacres of

September reached the United States at an unfortunate moment for the
Francoman party, Jefferson forgot this elementary principle and his
logic. He professed that he deplored the bloody fate of the victims as
much as any man, but they had perished for the sake of future
generations, and that thought consoled him. Finally, the man who had
announced in a public address, that he considered it a moral duty never
to subscribe to a lottery, nor to engage in a game of chance, petitioned
the Legislature of Virginia for permission to dispose of his house and
lands in a raffle, and in his memorial recapitulated his services to the
country to strengthen his claim upon their indulgence.
Jefferson professed great faith in human nature; but he meant the
human nature of the uneducated and the poor. Kings, rulers, nobles,
rich persons, and generally all of the party opposed to him, were
hopelessly wrong. The errors of the people, when they committed any,
were accidental and momentary; but in the other class, they were proofs
of an ineradicable perversity. His faith in human reason as the only
power for good government must have been shaken by the students of
his university in Virginia. Their lawless conduct seemed to indicate that
the time had hardly yet come when the old and vulgar method of
authority and force could be dispensed with. The University of Virginia
was a favorite project of Jefferson and an honorable memorial of his
love of education and of letters. Although it may be considered a failure,
it has failed from no fault of his. But we may judge of the real extent of
Jefferson's toleration, when we read in a letter written about this
university: 'In the selection of our law professor we must be rigorously
attentive to his political principles.'
It is easy to know what would be Jefferson's position if by some
miracle of nature he were living in these times. If