every scrap of paper he could discover bearing the hand-writing of Thomas Jefferson, and this he has religiously preserved for public inspection, without ever appearing to be conscious that it mattered whether the contents were a state dispatch or an invoice for a washer-woman. The whole is a scene of chaos; the editor, as if appalled by the confusion which he himself has made, renounces altogether the functions that belong to his character. Never does he venture to show himself, from first to last, within the four corners of this goodly structure, which he has erected to the demon of disorder; no--neither as historian, to add to the facts, nor as commentator to explain them-neither as a friend does he enforce the perfections of his hero, nor as an enemy does he deny them : not even once is he found peeping through the humble opening of an annotation, into a single page of this wilderness of words. Imperturbably phlegmatic, through the long night of two thousand pages and upwards, our editor never once opens his lips, and since Mr. Jefferson himself was not in a condition to tell us that he died, the abstemious Mr. Randolph cautiously declines to supply the omission.

And yet, from such materials as Mr. Jefferson has left behind him, it would be in the competency of a very dull man, provided with the fruits of a long acquaintance with his subject, to form a very valuable addition to our biography. Mason, we believe, was the first who employed the plan of writing lives, by which a considerable part of the record is furnished by the hero himself. The life of Gray, by that author, is, on this account, one of the most valuable and charming biographical performances that we have valuable, because the developement of his own character is the work of the poet himself, carried on under circumstances when he was neither courting the favour nor fearing the opinions of the world. Hayley adopted the plan of his predecessor Mason, and connecting together, as easily so mechanical a hand might, those beautiful epistles breathed from the impassioned soul of Cowper, showed by what simple means the really valuable object of biography was to be attained.

Had Mr. Randolph, the editor of the volumes before us, been acquainted with the examples which we have just alluded to, he might have given us some three hundred agreeable pages instead of the thousands that he has cast forth; instead of piling paper upon paper, relating to matters that are unutterably remote from any feeling or curiosity, that any man now in existence can possibly entertain, Mr. Randolph might have consigned the whole of them to that oblivion, which full surely will be their ultimate fate; and further-instead of the olio of all sorts, of which this epistolary collection consists--here a speculation upon criminal law-there an essay on the commercial susceptibilities of whale oil-now a treatise on the belief of the primitive Christians, followed by the notes of a Journey undertaken in the south of Europe in search of

the natural history of Rice;-instead of this strange and grotesque jumble of morals and trade, Algerine pirates and the Yankee monetary system, we might have an orderly arrangement of Mr. Jefferson's opinions upon various interesting questions of politics, religion, science, domestic economy, &c., and thus might a most excellent and meritorious man be seen in the natural comeliness of an unstained character, instead of being obscured, deformed,subjected, in short, to every species of optical distortion-in consequence of the medium through which he is presented to us by Mr. Randolph.

But we must now leave the Editor in order to render justice to the subject of these volumes. We have never been able to discover in the men, who had the immortal honour of laying the foundation of American independence, any of those grand characteristics which would entitle them to the name of Great. They had no master intellect amongst them-no overwhelming mind capable of striking out some original path for its own illustrious and solitary career. But they possessed qualities immeasurably more estimable; they had to a man the precious virtue of true loyalty to their country; they were reared up in the simplicity in which alone genuine patriotism can thrive; and earnestly seeking, without a moment's deviation to the right, or to the left, the interest of their country, they unerringly found and established it. Without any practicable standards to refer to in the crisis, when they were compelled to organize a plan of self government, they did no more than apply to the more enlarged sphere of a political government, those maxims of mutual convenience which instinct and experience had taught them to adopt, in the ordinary concerns of life, and as yet, at least, their efforts have been crowned with

success.

He

As one of those admirable characters, Thomas Jefferson deserves to have his name honourably handed down to posterity. The account of his early life is furnished by Mr. Jefferson himself, and forms the most interesting portion of those tedious volumes. appears to have been born in 1744, in America, and is studious to trace his ancestry to Wales, where, it is not impossible, that he would find a link to connect him with one of the antediluvian stocks which abound in that sequestered region. Whilst yet a student of law at Williamsburg, he had the good fortune to hear the debate in the House of Burgesses, when the famous resolutions against the Stamp Act, were proposed by Patrick Henry. The impression of Henry's eloquence, on that occasion, probably had a considerable share in shaping the destinies of the young student; for it seems to have been still fresh in his memory, after he had attained the age of seventy-seven.

We are not going to repeat the story of the American revolution. But it is impossible for us ever to revert to that event without, as often as we do so, expressing our wonder at the unexampled folly

and wickedness of the British Government, in its conduct to the American colonies. The latter would have been satisfied with almost any thing. Even the act of parliament, which was to close Boston port, had not suggested to the Americans the idea of a complete separation from the mother country. Jefferson was elected member of the Convention, which met in Philadelphia in September of the same year, in whch capacity he undertook to prepare some documents for public use. The limited ambition of the American at the time, cannot be better described than they are in the following extract from the imperfect memoir which Jefferson has left us.

In this I took the ground that, from the beginning, I had thought the only one orthodox or tenable, which was, that the relation between Great Britain and these colonies was exactly the same as that of England and Scotland, after the accession of James and until the Union, and the same as her present relations with Hanover, having the same executive chief, but no other necessary political connection; and that our emigration from England to this country gave her no more right over us, than the emigrations of the Danes and Saxons gave to the present authorities of the mother country, over England. In this doctrine, however, I had never been able to get any one to agree with me but Mr. Wythe.'-p. 7.

Jefferson must have, therefore, been regarded as an ultra, in consequence of holding opinions which, before two years, no American almost dared to avow, on account of their moderation.

The circumstances, which attended the declaration of Independence, receive additional interest from the little history which is here given of its concoction. Jefferson certainly held the pen ; but several erasures and alterations were made in this document by his colleagues, Adams and Franklin. A fac simile of the instrument is annexed to these volumes, as it appears written by Jefferson, and corrected by the others. Although it breathes throughout a fierce hatred of the British government, especially of the person of the Monarch, in the writer; yet judging from the variations of language introduced by Adams and Franklin, Jefferson seems to us to be the more temperate of the three. A far more important part of this memoir is the brief summary of the debates which took place in Congress, on the vital question of Independence, in June and July, 1776. The principal points urged on both sides, were noted by Jefferson on the spot, and are now given for the first time to the public in the same concentrated form, as Hume has adopted in his history, with reference to political discussions.

The period, during which Jefferson sat in the Senate, may be regarded as the first division of his public life. He proved himself, on all occasions, a vigilant and assiduous legislator, apprehending, with prompt and just discrimination, the true interests of his country, and pursuing them with perseverance and fortitude. He himself boasts, as he well might with justifiable feelings of pride, that he was the foremost to endeavour to impress on the infant constitution of his country, the characters of a bold freedom, and a comprehen

sive equality. The measures for prohibiting the further importation of slaves-for abolishing entails, as well as the principle of primogeniture (both being obviously inconsistent with a republican institution) have Jefferson for their parent-and the great act for establishing religious liberty, though actually indebted for its success to Madison, was first made acceptable to the public mind by Jefferson. A great deal of praise is also due to the latter, for his unceasing efforts in the cause of education in America. There was, however, one stage of his senatorial life, to which he reverts with peculiar triumph, namely, the resistance which he personally made against federal principles and proceedings, during the administration of Mr. Adams. He says

Their usurpations and violations of the constitution at that period, and their majority in both Houses of Congress, were so great, so decided, and so daring, that after combating their aggressions, inch by inch, without being able in the least to check their career, the republican leader thought it would be best for them to give up their useless efforts there, go home, get into their respective legislatures, embody whatever of resistance they could be formed into, and, if ineffectual, to perish there as in the last ditch. All, therefore, retired, leaving Mr. Gallatin alone in the House of Representatives, and myself in the Senate, where I then presided as Vice President. Remaining at our posts, and bidding defiance to the browbeatings and insults by which they endeavoured to drive us off also, we kept the mass of republicans in phalanx together, until the legislatures could be brought up to the charge; and nothing on earth is more certain, than that if myself particularly, placed by my office of VicePresident at the head of the republicans, had given way and withdrawn from my post, the republicans throughout the Union would have given up in despair, and the cause would have been lost for ever. By holding on, we obtained time for the legislatures to come up with their weight; and those of Virginia and Kentucky particularly, but more especially the former, by their celebrated resolutions, saved the constitution at its last gasp. No person who was not a witness of the scenes of that gloomy period, can form any idea of the afflicting persecutions, and personal indignities we had to brook. They saved our country, however.'-vol. iv. p. 445.

The whole tenor of his life proves that Jefferson held to republicanism, as to a religion. His belief in the immortality of the American democracy, never faltered for a moment. In this respect, there was a vast difference between himself and Washington, who from temperament perhaps, or education, often betrayed to his chosen circle, and, indeed, showed by some of his public acts, that he had his misgivings as to the stability of the institution, which we have not the slightest doubt he would have gladly yielded his heart's blood to cement. Jefferson, with that rectitude of heart and judgment which always distinguishes him, writing many years after the death of Washington, makes these remarks on his departed colleague.

He was no monarchist from preference of his judgment. The sound

And

ness of that gave him correct views of the rights of man, and his severe justice devoted him to them. He has often declared to me, that he considered our new constitution as an experiment on the practicability of republican government, and with what dose of liberty man could be trusted for his own good; that he was determined the experiment should have a fair trial, and would lose the last drop of his blood in support of it. these declarations he repeated to me the oftener and the more pointedly, because he knew my suspicions of Colonel Hamilton's views, and probably had heard from him the same declarations which I had, to wit, "that the British Constitution, with its unequal representation, corruption, and other existing abuses, was the most perfect government which had ever been established on earth, and that a reformation of these abuses would make it an impracticable government." I do believe that General Washington had not a firm confidence in the durability of our government. He was naturally distrustful of men, and inclined to gloomy apprehensions; and I was ever persuaded, that a belief that we must at length end in something like a British Constitution, had some weight in his adoption of the ceremonies of levees, birth-days, pompous meetings with Congress, and other forms of the same character, calculated to prepare us gradually for a change which he believed possible, and to let it come on with as little shock as might be to the public mind.'—-vol, iv. pp. 242,

243.

Jefferson declares that this is the opinion which he formed of Washington, after thirty years of intimate acquaintance with him. The general character of the latter, sketched by the same hand, cannot but prove, under those circumstances, very interesting.

His mind was great and powerful, without being of the very first order; his penetration strong, though not so acute as that of a Newton, Bacon, or Locke; and as far as he saw, no judgment was ever sounder. It was slow in operation, being little aided by invention or imagination, but sure in conclusion. Hence the common remark of his officers, of the advantage he derived from councils of war, where, hearing all suggestions, he selected whatever was best; and certainly no general ever planned his battles more judiciously. But if deranged during the course of the action, if any member of his plan was dislocated by sudden circumstances, he was slow in a readjustment. The consequence was, that he often failed in the field, and rarely against an enemy in station, as at Boston and York. He was incapable of fear, meeting personal dangers with the calmest unconcern. Perhaps the strongest feature in his character was prudence, never acting until every circumstance, every consideration, was maturely weighed; refraining if he saw a doubt, but, when once decided, going through with his purpose, whatever obstacles opposed. His integrity was most pure, his justice the most inflexible I have ever known; no motives of interest or consanguinity, of friendship or hatred, being able to bias his decision. He was, indeed, in every sense of the words, a wise, a good, and a great man. His temper was naturally irritable and high toned; but reflection and resolution had obtained a firm and habitual ascendancy over it. If ever, however, it broke its bonds, he was most tremendous in his wrath. In his expences he was honourable, but exact; liberal in contributions to whatever promised utility; but frowning and un