in the office which you are just about to lay down, and bidding you a respectful and affectionate farewell. "We have to thank you for the model of an administration conducted on the purest principles of republicanism; for pomp and state laid aside; patronage discarded; internal taxes abolished; a host of superfluous officers disbanded; the monarchic maxim, that a national debt is a national blessing, renounced, and more than THIRTY-THREE MILLIONS of our debt discharged; the native right to nearly one hundred millions of acres of our national domain extinguished; and without the guilt, or calamities of conquest, a vast and fertile region added to our country, far more extensive than her ORIGINAL possessions, bringing along with it the Mississippi and the port of Orleans, the trade of the west to the Pacific ocean, and in the intrinsic value of the land itself, a source of permanent and almost inexhaustible revenue. These are points in your administration which the historian will not fail to seize, to expand, and teach posterity to dwell upon with delight. Nor will he forget our peace with the civilised world, preserved through a season of uncommon difficulty and trial; the good-will cultivated with the unfortunate aborigines of our country, and the civilisation humanely extended among them; the lesson taught the inhabitants of the coast of Barbary, that we have the means of chastising their piratical encroachments, and awing them into justice; and that theme, on which above all, the historic genius will hang with rapture, the liberty of speech and of the press preserved inviolate, without which genius and science are given to man in vain. In the principles on which you have administered the government, we see only the continuation and maturity of the same virtues and abilities, which drew upon you in your youth the resentment of Dunmore. From the first brilliant and happy moment of your resistance to foreign tyranny, until the present day, we mark with pleasure and with gratitude the same uniform, consistent character, the same warm and devoted attachment to liberty and the republic, the same Roman love of your country, her rights, her peace, her honour, her prosperity, How blessed will be the retirement into which you are about to go! How deservedly blessed will it be! For you carry with you the richest of all rewards, the recollection of a life well spent in the ser Aa 2 vice of your country, and proofs the most decisive of the love, the gratitude, the veneration of your countrymen." In a letter to a friend, he thus pictures his return to private life:" Within a few days I retire to my family, my books and farms; and having gained the harbour myself, I shall look on my friends still buffeting the storm, with anxiety, indeed, but not with envy. Never did a prisoner, released from his chains, feel such relief as I shall on shaking off the shackles of power. Nature intended me for the tranquil pursuits of science, by rendering them my supreme delight. But the enormities of the times in which I have lived, have forced me to take a part in resisting them,* and to commit myself on the boisterous ocean of political passions. I thank God for the opportunity of retiring from them without censure, and carrying with me the most consoling proofs of public approbation." He retired to Monticello, about the middle of March, 1809; and gives the following account of his journey:-" I had a very fatiguing journey, having found the roads excessively bad, although I have seen them worse. The last three days I found it better to be on horseback, and travelled eight hours through as disagreeable a snow-storm as I was ever in. Feeling no inconvenience from the expedition but fatigue, I have more confidence in my vis vitæ than I had before entertained. The spring is remarkably backward." Having been welcomed home by the citizens of his county, he addressed them in the following strain of pious affection: " Returning to the scenes of my birth and early life, to the society of those with whom I was raised, and who have been ever dear to me, I receive, fellow citizens and neighbours, with inexpressible pleasure, the cordial welcome you are so good as to give me. Long absent on duties which the history of a wonderful era made incumbent on those called to them, the pomp, the turmoil, the bustle and splendour of office, have drawn but deeper sighs for the tranquil and irresponsible occupations of private life, for the enjoyment of an affectionate intercourse with you, my neigh * There is an obvious error here. Mr. Jefferson having commenced his political career before the revolution, and continued it through the administration of George Washington, which presented no enormities. The enormities began in 1792-3, with the French Revolution, bours and friends, and the endearments of family love, which nature has given us all, as the sweetener of every hour. For these I gladly lay down the distressing burden of power, and seek, with my fellow citizens, repose and safety under the watchful cares, the labours and perplexities of younger and abler minds. The anxieties you express to administer to my happiness, do, of themselves, confer that happiness; and the measure will be complete, if my endeavours to fulfil my duties in the several public stations to which I have been called, have obtained for me the approbation of my country. The part which I have acted on the theatre of public life, has been before them; and to their sentence I submit it: but the testimony of my native county, of the individuals who have known me in private life, to my conduct in its various duties and relations, is the more grateful, as proceeding from eye witnesses and observers-from triers of the vicinage. Of you, then, my neighbours, I may ask in the face of the world, whose ox have I taken, or whom have I defrauded? Whom have I oppressed, or of whose hand have I received a bribe to blind mine eyes therewith? On your verdict I rest with conscious security. Your wishes for my happiness are received with just sensibility, and I offer sincere prayers for your own welfare and prosperity." In this letter to his neighbours, we behold what may be considered as an official induction into the pursuits and enjoyments of private life; and certainly few men who have occupied the lofty stations of supreme power, have ever been better qualified to adorn with usefulness, or enjoy with reason, the calm avocations of a planter, a citizen, and a gentleman. Being a practical, as well as a theoretical farmer, his knowledge and skill admirably qualified him for the profitable cultivation of his estate. Deeply embued with a fine literary taste, profoundly versed in the sciences, and a complete master of mathematics, as well as an erudite Greek scholar, besides being conversant with most of the ancient and modern languages, he combined resources for an elegant literary retirement, seldom equalled, and never surpassed. His correspondence, too, of a literary, scientific, polítical, and friendly character, was diffused throughout every civilised country of Europe, as well as America, An object of rational curiosity to all strangers of distinction, and a fountain of literary refreshment to all travelling lite rati, his mansion of course, soon attracted successive crowds of Americans, and foreigners, to enliven his retirement, and tax his hospitality: so that the Ex-President of the United States, in his residence at Monticello, appeared rather to have acquired splendour, eclat, and followers, by his retirement, than to have sunk from a state of public magnificence to a condition of private obscurity. Such is the force of intrinsic merit over the adventitious and transient glare of external greatness. The Presidency could add nothing to the inherent greatness of Jefferson, but the genius of Jefferson ennobled with lustre the chair that had been consecrated to renown, by the virtues and greatness of Washington. Mr. Jefferson now occupied his leisure in the pursuits to which I have just alluded: the management of his farmsthe comfort of his guests the demands of his correspondents -the novelties of science the beauties of literature-and the free dispensation of advice and patronage to all useful enterprises, or learned experiments; never forgetting his darling passion of politics, to which he always recurred with delight, and in which he excelled to such perfection. In a letter to a friend, he thus describes the employment of his time:" My mornings are devoted to correspondence. From breakfast to dinner I am in my shops,* my garden, or on horseback among my farms; from dinner to dark I give to society and recreation with my neighbours and friends; and from candle-light to early bed-time, I read. My health is perfect, and iny strength considerably reinforced by the activity of the course I pursue; perhaps it is as great as usually falls to the lot of men sixty-seven years of age. I talk of ploughs and harrows, seeding and harvesting, with my neighbours, and of politics too, if they choose, with as little reserve as the rest of my fellow citizens, and feel, at length, the blessing of being free to say and do what I please, without being responsible for it to any mortal. A part of my occupation, and by no means the least pleasing, is the direction of the studies of such young men as ask it. They place themselves in the neighbouring village, and have the use of my library and counsel, and make a part of my society." This was in February, * He was always devotedly fond of mechanics, and worked like a Journeyman in what he called his shops; constructing various articles of utility, or decoration, for his farm, his house, or his chamber; besides those philosophical instruments and nick-nacks which men of curious minds are attached to. 1810. Curious to know his opinions on all subjects, we feel more peculiarly so to hear them on the great leading questions and events of the day. In 1810, some apprehension was entertained that Napoleon would, at no distant day, meditate the invasion and conquest of the United States. One of his correspondents having expressed this fear to him, Mr. Jefferson not only ridiculed it as a chimera, but demonstrated its impossibility, in the following singular strain of party delusion, and political sagacity:-" For fiveand-thirty years we have walked together through a land of tribulations; yet these have passed away, and So, I trust, will those of the present day. The toryism with which we struggled in '77, differed but in name from the federalism of '99, with which we struggled also; and the Anglicism of 1808, against which we are now struggling, is but the same thing still, in another form. It is a longing for a king, and an English king rather than any other. This is the true source of their sorrows and wailings." "The fear that Buonaparte will come over to us, and conquer us also, is too chimerical to be genuine. Supposing him to have finished Spain and Portugal, he has yet England and Russia to subdue. The maxim of war was never sounder than in this case, not to leave an enemy in the rear, and especially where an insurrectionary flame is known to be under the embers, merely smothered, and ready to burst at every point. These two subdued, (and surely the Anglomen will not think the conquest of England alone a short work) ancient Greece and Macedonia, the cradle of Alexander, his prototype, and Constantinople, the seat of empire for the world, would glitter more in his eye than our bleak mountains and rugged forests. Egypt, too, and the golden apples of Mauritania, have for more than half a century, fixed the longing eyes of France; and with Syria, you know, he has an old affront to wipe out. Then come Pontus and Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia and Bithynia, the five countries on the Euphrates and Tigris, the Oxus and Indus, and all beyond the Hyphasis, which bounded the glories of his Macedonian rival; with the invitations of his new British subjects on the banks of the Ganges, whom, after receiving |