M7 



JKFFKKSOX, THOMAS. 



:KV, FKAXCIS. 



it declared to be indebted to Mr. Jefferson's administration, the aoquj- 

 ition of Louisiana, and with it the free navigation of the Mis*iippi, 

 are not forgotten. Mr. Jefferson esrly caw the iro|>orUno<i of the 

 United State* possessing this great outlet for the commerce of the 

 warteru states, and strongly urged it while he was secretary of state 

 under Geueral Washington. The object waa aooompliihed in 1803, 

 when Louisiana raa purchased from the French fur 15,000,000 

 dollar*. 



Mr. Jefferson himself thought that the moot important service 

 which he ever rendered to hi* country wan hi* opposition to the 

 fed- ral party during the presidency of Mr. Adams, while he was him- 

 nlf vice-president of the United States. Himself in the Senate and 

 Mr. Oallatin in the House of Representatives bad alone to sustain 

 the brunt of the battle, and to keep the republican party together. 

 The re action that ensued drove Mr. Adams from his office, and 

 placed Mr. Jefferson there. Mr. Jefferson's administration was charac- 

 terised by a zealous and unwearied activity in the promotion of all 

 those measures which he believed to be for the general welfare. He 

 never allowed considerations of relationship or friendship to bias him 

 in the flection of proper persons for offices ; he always found, as he 

 ays, that there were better men for every place than any of his own 

 connexions. 



The Isat years of his life, though spent in retirement, were not 

 wasted in inactivity. He continued his habits of early rising and 

 constant occupation ; he maintained a very extensive correspondence 

 with all parts of the world ; received at hi* table a great number of 

 visitors, and was actively engaged in the foundation and direction of 

 the University of Virginia, which was established mainly in conse- 

 quence of his persevering exertions, by the state of Virginia near the 

 village of Charlottesville, a few miles from Monticello. 



Mr. Jefferson died July 4th 1826, the day of the celebration, juet 

 half a century after that on which the Declaration of Independence 

 was signed. Mr. Adams died on the same day. Mr. Jefferson is 

 burird in the grounds near his own house. A simple inscription, 

 which was found among his papers after bis death, recording him as 

 the author of the Declaration of American Independence, of the 

 Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom, and Father of the Univer- 

 sity of Virginia, is placed on bis tomb. The fact of his having been 

 president of the United States is not mentioned. 



The latter days of Mr. Jefferson were embittered by pecuniary 

 difficulties, which were owing in some measure to the neglect of his 

 estates during his long absence on the public service; and in a 

 great degree to on obligation which he incurred to pay a friend's 

 debts. 



In tho 4th vol. of his Memoirs, &c, p. 439, are printed Ms 

 'Thoughts on Lotteries,' which were written at the time when he 

 was making his application to the legislature of Virginia for per- 

 mission to sell his property by lottery, in order to pay his debts 

 and make some provision for his family. The general arguments in 

 defence of lotteries are characterised by Mr. Jefferson's usual felicity 

 of expression and ingenuity, and they are also in like manner per- 

 vaded by the fallacies which are involved in many, if not all, of his 

 political and moral (peculations. But this paper has merits which 

 entitle it to particular attention. It contains a brief recapitulation 

 of his services ; and is in fact the epitome of the life of a man who 

 for sixty years was actively employed for his country. " I came," 

 he say, "of age in 1764, and was soon put into 'the nomination of 

 justices of the county in which I live, and at the first election follow- 

 ing I became one of its representatives in the legislature; I was 

 thence sent to the old Congress; then employed two years with 

 Mr. Fendleton and Wythe on the revisal and reduction to a single 

 code of tho whole body of the British Statutes, the acts of our 

 Assembly, and certain parts of the common law ; then elected 

 governor ; next to the legislature, and to Congress again ; sent to 

 Europe as minister plenipotentiary ; appointed secretary of state to 

 the new government: elected vice-president and president; and 

 lastly, a visitor and rector of the university of Virginia. In these 

 different offices, with scarcely any interval between them, I have been 

 in the public service now sixty-one years, and during the far greater 

 part of that time in foreign countries or in other states." 



This is the outline of Mr. Jefferson's public life ; to fill it up would 

 be to write the history of the United States, from the troubles which 

 preceded the Declaration of Independence to Mr. Jefferson's retire- 

 ment from the presidency in 1809. 



The piper from which we have already made one extract presents 

 us with his services in soother point of view, still more interesting, 

 t is an epitome of those great measures which were due mainly 

 or entirely to bis firm resolution, unwearied industry, and singleness 

 of iniud, in bis pursuit of objects which he believed essential to the 

 stability and happiness of his country. 



14 If legislative fervices are worth mentioning, and the stamp of 

 liberality and equality, which was necessary to be impressed on our 

 laws in the first crisis of our birth as a nation, wai of any value, 

 they will find that the leading and most important laws of that day 

 were pit-purcd by roycelf, and carried chiefly by my efforts; sup- 

 ported, indeed by able and faithful coadjutors from the ranks of the 

 House, very effective as seconds, but who Would not have taken the 

 li'-ld as leaders. 



" The prohibition of the further importation of slaves was the first 

 of these manures in time. 



' This waa followed by the abolition of entails, which broke up the 

 hereditary and high-handed aristocracy, which, by accumulating 

 immen-e masses of property in single lines of families, bad divided 

 our country into two distinct orders of nobles and plebeians. But 

 further to complete the equality among our citizens, so essential to 

 the maintenance of republican government, it waa neoetaary to aboliah 

 the principle of primogeniture. I drew the law of descent*, giving 

 equal inheritance to sons and daughters, which made a part of the 

 revised code. 



" The attack on the establishment of a dominant religion waa first 

 made by myself. It could be carried at first only by a suspension of 

 salaries for one year, by battling it again at the next session for 

 another year, and so from year to year, until the public mind waa 

 ripened for the bill for establishing religious freedom, which I had 

 prepared for the revised code also. This was at length established 

 permanently, and by the efforts of Mr. Madison, being myself in 

 Europe at the time that work WHS brought forward. 



" To these particular services I think I might add the establishment 

 of our university, as principally my work, acknowledging at the same 

 time, as I do, the great assistance received from my able colleagues of 

 the visitation." 



When Mr. Jefferson was a member of the colonial legislature, he 

 made an effort for tho emancipation of slaves ; but all proposal* of 

 that kind, as well as for stopping tho importation of slaves, were 

 discouraged during the colonial government. The iiuportut 

 slaves into Virginia, whether by sea or laud, was stopped in 1778, 

 in the third year of the Commonwealth, by a bill brought in by Mr. 

 Jefferson, which passed without opposition, and, as Mr. Jefferson 

 observes, " stopped the increase of the evil by importation, leaving to 

 future efforts its final eradication." The Act for the Abolition of 

 Entails was not carried without some opposition, and that for the 

 abolition of the Established Anglican Church was not finally carried 

 till 1786, though before the Revolution the majority, or at least a 

 large number of the people had become dissenters from tho church. 



Mr. Jefferson married, in 1772, Martha Skelton, the widow of 

 Bathurst Skelton. She died ten years after their marriage. Ono 

 daughter, and a numerous family of grand-children and great-groud- 

 childrcn survived him. 



He was the author of ' Notes on Virginia,' which have been several 

 times printed; but his reputation as a writer rests on his official papers 

 and correspondence. "As an author," aa his biographer remarks, "he 

 has left no memorial that is worthy of his genius; for the public 

 papers drawn by him are ail mired rather for the patriotic spirit 

 which dictated them than for the intellectual power which they 

 exhibit. They presented no occasion for novelty of thought or argu- 

 ment, or diction. His purpose waa only to make a judicious and 

 felicitous use, of that which everybody knew and would assent to ; 

 and this object he bos eminently fulfilled." Much has been said and 

 conjectured as to the religious opiniona of Mr. Jeffer-on, and his sup- 

 posed infidelity has been the ground of much bitter attack on his 

 character. In the latter part of bin life he used to call himself a 

 Uuitari.ni when questioned on the subject by auy of his friends. 

 Perhaps his published correspondence presents the bent means of 

 judging of his religious opinions. Though approving of the morality 

 which the Gospel inculcates, he speaks, to say the least, disrespectfully 

 of the founder of Christianity, and contemptuously of his apostles and 

 immediate followers. 



(Tucker, Life of Jeffenon, 2 vols., London, 1837 ; Jefferson, 

 Ifemoirt, Corretpondcncc, ttc., London, 1829.) 



JEFFREY, FRANCIS, was bora in Edinburgh, on the 23rd at 

 October 1773, in the upper part of a house now marked No. 7, 

 Charles-street, George-square. Jits father, George Jeffrey, was one of 

 the depute clerks of the Court of Session ; his mother, Henrietta 

 Loudouu, waa the daughter of a Lanarkshire former. They hud a 

 rather numerous family, Francis being the eldest son, though not the 

 eldest child. In the year 1781 he was sent to the llu-h School of 

 Edinburgh, where he. was for four years under the care of one- of the 

 under-masters, Mr. Luke Fraser a worthy man, whose celebrity 

 depends on his having, in three successive classes, three pupils no leu 

 fuuious than Walter Scott, Jeffrey, and Brougham. Jeffrey's class- 

 fellows, while he was under Mr. Fraser, used afterwards to remember 

 him aa " a little, clover, anxious boy, always near the top of his class, 

 and who never lost a place without shedding tears." From Fraser'a 

 class, he pa-sed, in regular course, iu the year 1785 to that of the 

 rector, Dr. Adam, the author of thu 'Roman Antiquities, 1 and noted 

 alike for his scholarship and the simple integrity of his character. 

 Jeffrey, as well a* Scott, used afterwards to speak with the highest 

 re-pect of this good old man. It was in the winter of 1786-87, while 

 still attending Dr. Adam's clans, that Jeffrey, then a boy in his four- 

 teenth year, saw the poet Burns. He was walking alonj; the High- 

 street, when ho was attracted by the appearance of a man on the 

 pavement, who, from his dress and manner, scemeil to be from the 

 country, but in whose looks otherwise there was something uncommon. 

 It was Burns, theu on his first visit to Edinburgh; and as "the little 

 black fellow " was gazing at him, some one standing at a shop door 

 new said to him " Ay, laddie, you may wcel look at that man ; that's 



