154 THOMAS JEFFERSON 



was fought not so much to gain new liberties as to 

 preserve old ones. It was the British in this case that 

 were the innovators, and the Americans that were the 

 conservatives. This is the true historical light in 

 which to study our Revolution, and so this large- 

 minded young student of Bracton and Coke under- 

 stood it. Because in later years Jefferson came to be 

 the head of a party which sympathized with revolu- 

 tionary France, there has come into existence a leg- 

 endary view of him as a sort of French doctrinaire 

 politician and disciple of Rousseau. Nothing could be 

 more grotesquely absurd. Jefferson was broad enough 

 to learn lessons from France, but he was no French- 

 man in his politics ; and we shall not understand him 

 until we see in him simply the earnest but cool-headed 

 representative of the rural English freeholders that 

 won Magna Charta and overthrew the usurpations of 

 the Stuarts. 



It was chiefly in drawing up state papers that Jeffer- 

 son excelled in Congress, and herein he played a part 

 for the whole country like that which Samuel Adams 

 had played in the legislature of Massachusetts in the 

 earlier scenes of the Revolution. As an orator Jeffer- 

 son never figured at all. With all his remarkable 

 strength and vigour his voice was weak and husky, so 

 that he found it hard to speak in public. He had 

 besides a nervous shrinking from hearing himself talk 

 on the spur of the moment about things which he 

 knew he could so much better deal with sitting at his 

 desk. And then he was utterly wanting in combative- 

 ness. However he might evoke contention by his 

 writings, its actual presence was something from which 

 his deliberate, introspective, and delicately poised 



