Jefferson in the Service of Revolutionary Virginia

THE slow pace at which the two great revolutions of the last century marched surprises anew every new inquirer. In our own day, a Louis Philippe slips across the Channel at the imminent risk of catching a cold, or a Louis Napoleon eagerly surrenders a sword he never used, and finds safety in an enchanting chateau ; and, behold, the revolution is accomplished! No one misses them. No one regrets them. They vanish from the scene like player kings, — as they are,— and if a movement is made for their return it is by men who take their wages for doing it. So completely have we outgrown that mighty illusion of the past, the divinity that hedged a king.

Mr. Carlyle opens his series of pictures of the French Revolution with the death of Louis XV. To have made the series complete, he might have begun with the execution of poor crazy Damiens, who pierced the skin of that monarch with a penknife in 1757, and was put to death with tortures inconceivable. Nothing could recall to the modern reader more forcibly the spell that once surrounded the kingly office. Nothing could better show what the French people had to overcome before they could think of a king as the mere chief magistrate of a nation, existing only for the nation’s convenience. The apology and explanation of the frenzies of the French Revolution was the awful majesty with which policy and religion had conspired to invest the name and person of the monarch.

It was not merely that the king had the power to inflict upon an irresponsible fanatic all the anguish which the frame of a powerful young man could endure. It was not merely that the wretch was burned with red-hot tongs by the parasites who arrested him ; that his eighty-two days of detention and trial were all days of keenest suffering ; that the art of torture was exhausted to wring from his lips the names of imaginary confederates ; that his right hand was slowly burnt off ; that he was torn with red-hot pincers, and melted lead and boiling pitch poured into his wounds ; that he was pulled to pieces by four horses ; that his body was burned to ashes, his house levelled with the dust, his innocent family banished, and bis relations forbidden to bear his name. The cowardice of kings has done or permitted such cruelty many times. The instructive fact in this case is, that France, Europe, the civilized world, looked on, and saw all that done, without disapproval ! The king was hailed with unaccustomed acclamations when next he appeared in public. When he pensioned or otherwise rewarded every man concerned in the trial and execution, from the judges to the torturers, he evidently did what France thought was becoming. A dozen diarists of the time have left minute narratives of the whole fell business ; but who intimates disapproval ? The woman of rank who expressed pity for the horses, as she watched their struggles to accomplish their part of the programme was supposed to have uttered a gay, sprightly thing, suited to the occasion. Even Voltaire, the chief opponent of the system of torture, made a jest of this victim’s agony ; for he held that torture, though absurd and monstrous in ordinary cases, might properly be employed when the life of a king had been aimed at.

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 5872, by JAMES R. OSGOOD & Co., in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.

In England and in English colonies king-worship was as much more profound and solemn as the character of the Saxon is deeper than that of the Celt. How else can we account for the submission of such an empire as that of Great Britain to such kings as the Four Georges, from whom it derived immense evils, and no good ? Whoever or whatever, during the last two centuries, has been right in England, the king has always been wrong. Whoever has been wise in England, the king has always been foolish. Whoever has assisted progress in England, the king has always obstructed it. During the reign of the first two of these royal Georges, the interests of a great empire were made subordinate to those of a petty continental state. The third spent his long life in warring upon that in the government of his country which constitutes a great part of Britain’s claim to the gratitude of our race. The fourth, so far as the finite mind of man can discern, lived but to show how nearly a man can resemble a brute, without undergoing an Ovid’s metamorphosis, and falling upon four legs.

But, being called by the name of KING, it was enough. From imperial Chatham, through all gradations of intelligence and power, down, past Dr. Johnson, to the lowest flunky that ever aired his “quivering calves” behind a carriage, Englishmen were proud to be called their subjects, and could not hold their souls upright in their presence. This is one of the mysteries of human nature for some future Darwin to investigate ; for it is something which we appear to have in common with the bees, the ants, some migratory birds, and some gregarious beasts.

Jefferson had one of the most radical of minds, superior to the illusions in which most men pass their lives ; but when, in the summer of 1774, he sat down to prepare a draft of Instructions for Virginia’s delegates to the Congress, which was to meet at Philadelphia in September, he thought of nothing more revolutionary than this : The Congress should unite in a most solemn and elaborate Address to the King ! The case had been argued, one would think, often enough. For nine years the separate Colonies had been petitioning and resolving. The press of both countries had teemed with the subject. Franklin had been elucidating it, and flashing wit upon it. If a gracious king did not understand the matter yet, there was small reason to hope that any further expenditure of mere ink would avail. Nevertheless, this young radical of Monticello deemed it the chief duty of the Continental Congress to argue the matter once more, and make another appeal to the justice of the king. The delegates from Virginia, he thought, should be instructed to propose to the Congress to present “ a humble and dutiful Address to his Majesty,” as the chief magistrate of the Empire, — an Empire governed by many legislatures, — informing him, that one of those legislatures, namely, the British Parliament, had encroached upon the rights of others, namely, those of the Thirteen American Colonies, and calling upon the king to interfere.

A humble and dutiful address! One who is familiar with the character of George III. can scarcely read Jefferson’s draft of Instructions with a serious countenance, so ludicrously remote was it from the king’s conception of the humble and the dutiful.

It was a frightfully radical way of opening the case to speak of the mighty British Parliament as the legislature of one portion of the king’s dominions. That was the point in dispute. It is not probable that, in 1774, Thomas Jefferson, a provincial lawyer, knew the secrets of the Court of St. James ; nor could it have been his intention to inflame the wrath of the British lion; but if he had known George III. from his childhood, and heard every Tory sentiment which his Scotch tutors had instilled into his unformed mind, he could not have produced a piece of writing better calculated to exasperate the king. In almost every sentence there was a sting, — the bitter sting of truth and good sense. Jefferson learned, by and by, to be a politician ; and he acquired the art of uttering offensive truths with the minimum of offence. Just as some noblemen, bigoted tories in theory, are most courteous democrats in practice, giving to every human creature they know or meet his due of consideration ; so he, a democrat in theory, became conciliatory and conservative in giving utterance to his opinions, anxious to narrow the breach between himself and his opponents. But in this paper he accumulated offence ; careless of everything but to get roughly upon paper the substantial truth of the matter, leaving it to the convention to invest that truth with becoming words.

The Congress, he thought, should address the king in a frank and manly manner, devoid of those servile expressions “which would persuade his Majesty that we are asking favors and not rights.” The king was to be invited to reflect “ that he is no more than the chief officer of the people, appointed by the laws, and circumscribed with definite powers, to assist in working the great machine of government, erected for their use, and, consequently, subject to their superintendence.” This sentence bluntly asked George III. to unlearn his whole education. The king was to be reminded, also, that the Colonies had been planted, and defended for a hundred and fifty years without costing the king’s treasury a shilling. Recently, since the commerce of America had become important to Great Britain, the home government had assisted to expel the French. For the same reason England had given aid to Portugal, and other allies, commercially important to her ; but the British Parliament did not claim, in consequence, a right to tax the Portuguese !

But this was inoffensive compared with his next point. In alluding to the oppressions suffered by the Colonies in the time of the Stuarts, the uncompromising radical held language that no king has ever been able to hear with patience: “A family of princes was then upon the British throne, whose treasonable crimes against their people brought on them afterwards the exertion of those sacred and sovereign rights of punishment, reserved in the hands of the people for cases of extreme necessity, and judged by the constitution unsafe to be delegated to any other judicature ” ! ! He spoke familiarly, too, of “the late deposition of his Majesty, King Charles, by the Commonwealth of England,” as a thing too obviously right to be defended. Equally right was it for some of the Colonies to choose to remain under Charles II. It was wholly their business ; they could have any king they liked, or no king. The people were sovereign ; the king was their head servant!

With regard to the various legislatures in the Empire, all of them were equally independent and equally sovereign. The parliament of Virginia had no right to pass laws for the government of the people of England, and the British legislature had no right to pass laws for the government of the people of Virginia. Hence, the whole series of absurd and iniquitous acts of the British legislature regulating the commerce and restricting the industry of the Colonies were VOID ! “ Can any one reason be assigned, why one hundred and sixty thousand electors in the island of Great Britain should give law to four millions in the States of America, every individual of whom is equal to every individual of them, in virtue, in understanding, and in bodily strength ? ” He enumerated the long catalogue of monstrous acts, from the amazing laws which forbade an American to make a hat or a nail, to the malignant tyranny which would drag an accused American three thousand miles to his trial. “ The cowards who would suffer a countryman to be torn from the bowels of their society, in order to be thus offered a sacrifice to Parliamentary tyranny, would merit that everlasting infamy now fixed on the authors of the act.”

The burden of these Instructions is decentralization. Already Jefferson saw the necessity of local government, the impossibility of a power on the banks of the Thames acting wisely for a Province on the shores of the James, the certainty that the momentary interests of a class near the law-making power would outweigh the permanent interests of the distant Province. The abolition of slavery, he remarked, was “ the great object of desire in the Colonies ” ; and, as a step towards that, Virginia had tried, again and again, to stop all further importations of slaves ; but every such law had been vetoed by the king himself, who thus preferred the advantage of “ a few British corsairs, to the lasting interests of the American

States, and to the rights of human nature deeply wounded by this infamous practice.”

In asserting that the great object of desire in the Colonies was the abolition of slavery, he expressed rather the feeling of his own set — the educated and high-bred young Whigs of the Southern Colonies — than the sentiments of the great body of slaveholders. He could boast that the first act of his own public life had been an attempt in that direction ; and he knew that his friend and ally, Richard Henry Lee, had opened his brilliant career by a motion to put an end to “ the iniquitous and disgraceful traffic ” in slaves. Virginia, this orator observed, was falling behind younger Colonies, because, “ with their whites, they import arts and agriculture, whilst we, with our blacks, exclude both.” Every man with whom Jefferson associated felt and spoke in this spirit. Wythe, R. H. Lee, Madison, Jefferson, and the flower of the young men of South Carolina, were all abolitionists ; and all of them used in 1774 the arguments which were so familiar to us in 1860.

Jefferson made a clean breast of it in these Instructions. He went to the root of the matter on every topic that he touched. He paid the king the extravagant homage of assuming, that, if a thing could be shown to be wrong or unlawful, his Majesty would refrain from doing it, as a matter of course. Hence, in descanting upon the odious presence of British troops in Massachusetts, he desired the king to be informed that he had “ no right to land a single armed man upon these shores” ; and that those regiments in Boston were subject to the laws of Massachusetts, like all other emigrants ! The king’s grandfather, George II., in the Seven Years’ War, found it convenient to bring over a body of his own Hanoverian troops to assist in the defence of England ; but be could not land a man of them till Parliament had given its consent, and specified the precise number that might be brought in. The States of America had the same right. “ Every State must judge for itself the number of armed men which they may safely trust among them, of whom they are to consist, and under what restrictions they are to be laid.”

Every State ! The word “ Colonies” seldom occurs in this document. The word “States ” supplies its place.

The wrongs of Boston, when he came to speak upon them, kindled his usually tranquil mind. He wanted it put to the king with all the force of which language was capable, that, while only a few men had been concerned in throwing the tea into the harbor, the closing of the port had reduced “ an ancient and wealthy town, in a moment, from opulence to beggary.” Men who had spent their lives in extending the commerce of the Empire, men who were absent in distant countries, men who sided with the king, all, all were involved in one indiscriminate ruin. This might be revenge ; it could not be justice.

Toward the close of his draft the author dropped the tone of a burgess instructing his representative, and talked directly to the king himself: “ Open your breast, sire, to liberal and expanded thought. Let not the name of George III. be a blot on the page of history..... The whole art of government consists in the art of being honest. Only aim to do your duty, and mankind will give you credit when you fail. No longer persevere in sacrificing the rights of one part of the Empire to the inordinate desires of another.” With several other brotherly observations equally suited to soothe the mind of a proud, ignorant, obstinate, and misguided king.

These radical doctrines found free acceptance among the planters of Jefferson’s own county of Albemarle. At least, Jefferson’s ascendency was such, that he was able to procure for them the support of the freeholders of the county.

It is interesting to notice that the details of politics were managed a hundred years ago very much as they are now. May we not say, as they were twenty centuries ago ? Who has forgotten the shock of surprise which he experienced upon opening for the first time a volume of Demosthenes’s speeches, to discover that WHEREAS and RESOLVED were forms as familiar to an Athenian audience as they are to us ; and that when, on a memorable occasion, Daniel Webster called for the reading of the resolution, he practised a device which Demosthenes used almost every time he spoke ? Thomas Jefferson wrote this draft of Instructions before he had been chosen a member of the convention which was to elect delegates to the Congress. But politics had already the character which we sofnetimes describe as “cut and dried.” He knew he was to be elected. The freeholders of Albemarle were to meet on the 26th of July, in order to choose two gentlemen to serve them in the double capacity of burgesses and members of the Williamsburg Convention. Those two gentlemen would also require Instructions, which should accord with the ponderous document that one of them intended to carry in his pocket to the convention. How could that conformity be better secured than by employing the same mind to execute both? In the resolutions passed by the freeholders of Albemarle, Jefferson caused himself and his colleague to be notified that no foreign legislature could rightfully exercise authority in an American Colony. This was the leading idea of his draft, which Franklin had promulgated seven years before.

Being duly elected and instructed, he left his home for Williamsburg some days before the time appointed for the meeting of the convention. How cold are words to express the tumult of desire with which this ardent young radical looked forward to meeting his friends on this occasion ! Everything we have of him belonging to this period shows a degree of excitement to which he was little accustomed. He knew well that Virginia was not yet prepared for such extreme good sense as he had inserted in the roll of manuscript which he carried with him. He had himself held the Franklinian theory for several years ; but, as yet, he knew but one other member of the House of Burgesses who fully accepted it, and that was his old friend and mentor, George Wythe. There was something revolting to the patriotic pride of Virginians in the doctrine that the political tie between Virginia and England was the same as that which connected England and Hanover, — only a king in common ! He wished to be promptly on the ground to talk the matter over with members, and, above all, with Patrick Henry, the idol of the people, whose irresistible eloquence alone could reconcile the public mind to novel or unwelcome ideas. It would not be the first time that Henry’s morning speech had conveyed to Virginia the results of a conference with Jefferson the evening before. An orator is never so potent as when he gives wings to truth which minds more patient than his own have evolved.

But Jefferson was not destined to sit in the Williamsburg Convention. On the road he was taken sick ; he could not continue his journey ; and, for the only time in his life, he was unable to perform a public duty from mere bodily inability. The intense mental excitement under which he had labored, the toil of composing in haste so extensive a piece, and the sudden change from the airy height of Monticello to the August heats of the lower country, proved too much even for his excellent constitution. But an author is strongly attached to the offspring of his brain. He sent forward to Williamsburg two copies of his work, one addressed to Peyton Randolph, who was to preside over the convention, and the other to Patrick Henry.

Mr. Henry was an idle, disorderly man of genius, — “ the laziest man in reading,’’ says Jefferson, “ I ever knew.” Whether he ever read this mass of manuscript (sixty or seventy pages of ordinary writing) will never be known ; for nothing was ever heard of the copy sent to him. But the chairman, Mr. Randolph, took public notice of his copy. He announced to the convention that he had received such a document from a member who was prevented from attending by sickness, and he laid it on the table for members to read if they chose. Most of them read it, and many approved it, though aware of its unsuitableness to the existing state of things. Probably not one member would have given it the stamp of his official approbation. It occurred to some, however, that it would make a timely pamphlet, and in that form it was published and extensively circulated with this title, “ A Summary View of the Rights of America.” Copies were sent to England. Mr. Burke, who saw in it a weapon of offence against the Ministry, changed it here and there, added sentences, and caused it to be published in England, where it ran through edition after edition. It procured for the author, to use his own language, “the honor of having his name inserted in a long list of proscriptions enrolled in a bill of attainder commenced in one of the Houses of Parliament, but suppressed in embryo by the hasty step of events.” The list included about twenty names, among which were John Hancock, Samuel Adams, John Adams, Peyton Randolph, and Patrick Henry.

In this pamphlet, the truth concerning both the nature and the history of the connection between the Colonies and Great Britain — the truth, without any reserves whatever — was stated for the first time; and it was so fully stated, that no one was ever able to add anything to it. The Declaration of Independence was only the substance of this pamphlet given in a moderate, brief, official form.

What anguish, what humiliation, to be laid aside at such a time, by a ridiculous summer disease, such as children get from eating green apples ! Such is man, high and mighty as he fancies himself to be. It must be owned, however, that the convention accomplished its work exceedingly well without Jefferson. Let us mark well the prodigious fact, that Virginia, in 1774, knew how to choose from her people, or, as Colonel Washington expressed it, her “ ten thousand taxables,” the seven men who best represented her, who could best serve her, and reflect most honor upon her. All the Colonies could do as much. We cannot. It is one of the Lost Arts. These seven were all members of the House of Burgesses, and hence were familiarly known to the members of the convention. Mr. Jefferson used to say that every individual of them was chosen for a particular reason. “ Ben Harrison,” as he styled him, was a jolly, self-indulgent, wealthy planter, without much knowledge of principles, or capacity for business ; but he perfectly represented his class, long the ruling class of the Colony; and, therefore, he was chosen one of the deputies. He had at home a son, eighteen months old, who was destined to preside over the nation, which the meeting of the Congress was to create. Richard Bland was chosen because he was considered the best writer in Virginia. Edmund Pendleton was regarded in the light of ballast ; since, besides possessing a vast fund of legal knowledge, he was prudence personified. Peyton Randolph had a genius for presiding over an assembly,— a man of weighty presence and imperturbable courtesy. Richard Henry Lee, the fluent and ornate orator, was sent to add argument, fact, and persuasion to Patrick Henry’s awakening peals. Henry himself was not selected for his eloquence alone, but also because he was the man of the people. He was the first eminent American instance of a certain combination of qualities that renders a man resistless before an unlettered people, — a common mind, uncommon talents, and the instinct of being popular. To these six the convention added the shining figure of Colonel Washington, now forty-two years of age, who united in himself the three possessions that captivate the greatest number of persons, — military glory, great wealth, and a fine person.

Virginia, I repeat, could choose her seven best and fittest, in 1774. But she could no more have done it then than New York can do it now, if her grossly ignorant laborers of foreign lineage had been admitted to the suffrage.

Seldom has an assembly so sedulously veiled a radical purpose under conservative forms, as this Williamsburg Convention of 1774. Still protesting “ inviolable and unshaken fidelity and attachment to our most gracious sovereign,” still professing regard and affection for their friends and fellow-subjects in other parts of the Empire, still declaring that they opposed everything which might have “the most distant tendency to interrupt or in any wise disturb his Majesty’s peace,” they nevertheless instructed their delegates that if that “despotic viceroy,” General Gage, should presume to attempt to execute his threats against Massachusetts, such conduct would “justify resistance and reprisal.” This might be termed a conditional declaration of war, and went far beyond anything in Jefferson’s draft of Instructions. The convention also pledged Virginia to a suspension of her business as a tobacco-producing State, if the home government persisted in its system of oppression. No more exportation of produce, no more importation of merchandise ! The convention only restrained their deputies in one particular. As it was then the first week of August, the tobacco crop was, to use the planters’ term, “ nearly made ” ; and, what was of more weight in their honest minds, it was eaten up, spent, pledged to London merchants for goods had and consumed. That crop, therefore, must go forward. Honor and necessity demanded it. But no more ! Unless American grievances were redressed by August 10, 1775, not a pound of Virginia tobacco should go to England; and Virginia would find some other way of earning her subsistence. As for tea, “ we view it with horror ! ” From this day, this very 6th of August, 1774, we will neither import it nor buy it ; no, nor even use the little we have on hand !

It is interesting to view the action of this convention, in connection with Jefferson’s paper. He, the philosopher, the man of books and thoughts, was chiefly concerned to get on paper the correct theory of the situation ; but the practical, English-minded men of the convention, who shrunk from the theory, had the clearest view of what was to be done. If General Gage stirs to carry out his proclamations, give him Lexington ! Meanwhile, we will retort the starvation of Boston upon British merchants and manufacturers ! Nothing could be better than Jefferson’s theory, except this exquisite practice ; and it was part of that practice to give the theory wings and so communicate it to the intelligence of both countries.

Colonel Washington, a very practical head, conceived the idea that the Congress might desire to know something exact respecting the population, commerce, and resources of each Colony. If it should come to a fight, it would certainly be desirable to know what means the central power would have at command. He took care to ascertain from George Wythe, Secretary of the House of Burgesses, how many men Virginia contained who were subject to taxation. Before leaving Williamsburg for Mount Vernon, he sent off a despatch to Richard Henry Lee, who had gone home, to ask him to lend his aid toward getting from the four custom-houses (one at the mouth of each river, York, James, Rappahannock, and Potomac) a statement of Virginia’s annual exports and imports. “P. S. If you should travel to Philadelphia by land, I should be glad of your company. Mr. Henry is to be at my house on his way, Tuesday, the 30th instant.”

In those electric days people were too full of the great business in hand to make any record of their feelings ; and, hence, it is only trifles recorded by chance that betray how vivid and universal was the interest in the subjects the Congress were to discuss. One Sunday morning, in this very August, 1774, an obnoxious tool of the Ministry went to church in Plymouth, Massachusetts. As soon as he entered, a large number of the congregation rose, left the building, and went home ! An act of this nature, which might not mean much in some communities, indicated in New England a deep and unchangeable resolve. Journalism was then an infant art. Interviewing — its latest acquisition, and one of its best, though liable to abuse — had not yet been borrowed from that great, first interviewer, James Boswell. Often, in those primitive days, the press could only reveal an intense and general excitement by silence. We know, from many sources, that Philadelphia was profoundly moved at the gathering of this Congress ; that the whole population was astir ; that two continents had followed with attentive minds those little groups of horsemen making their way through the woods from the various Colonies to this central city ; that kings, courts, ministries, politicians, philosophers, and peoples, in London, Paris, Berlin, Vienna, St. Petersburg, and Ferney (capital of Voltaire’s Empire), were speculating upon what might come of this unique proceeding. But when we look into the Philadelphia newspapers of the week, we find that they mentioned, in a quiet paragraph of three lines, that “ the gentlemen appointed to meet in the General Congress are arrived.” Nothing more ! Now and then, during the session of fifty-two days, some paper presented to the Congress was published without comment ; but no indication appears in the press either of the unusual nature of the assembly, or of the peculiar interest felt in its proceedings, or of the measures it discussed.

The king employed a similar device, it seems ; for when he received, at length, the eloquent and pathetic petition which the Congress addressed to him in the name of the Colonies, he sent it down to Parliament, as Franklin records, among a great heap of letters, handbills, newspapers, and pamphlets from America, and it was laid upon the table undistinguished by any recommendation, and unnoticed in the royal speech.

The sick Jefferson, while the deputies to the Congress were making their way to Philadelphia, resumed his journey, as it seems, and reached Williamsburg a few days after the convention adjourned. There he performed an important act. The courts had been closed throughout Virginia for several months, which left the lawyers little to do. The law fixing the fees of the various officers attached to the courts having expired by its own limitation, an act renewing the fees was pending in the House of Burgesses when Lord Dunmore abruptly dismissed the House in May, 1774; and hence, no courts had since been held. The people, not unwilling to bring home to their governor a sense of the absurd precipitancy of his conduct, appear to have submitted with pleasure to the deprivation. Jefferson never resumed practice. At thirty-one, after seven years’ successful exercise of his profession, he gave up his unfinished business into the hands of his friend and kinsman, Edmund Randolph, and so withdrew from the law, as it proved, forever.

His marriage, as we have seen, had doubled his estate, increasing the number of his slaves to more than eighty ; and the profits of his profession had added three thousand acres to his paternal farm. There had gathered about him, too, on his mountain-top, including his own family, his sister’s brood, his mother and brother, his Italian gardeners, the mechanics employed on his house, and his overseers, a patriarchal household of thirty-four persons. His presence at home was peculiarly needed at all times ; for his wife was not one of those robust ladies of the Old Dominion who could conduct a plantation as well as their husbands ; and she was generally absorbed in nourishing a life more feeble than her own. It was for such reasons, as we may presume, that he now withdrew from a profession that compelled him to be long absent from Albemarle. He felt himself strong enough to trust his future to glorious agriculture and the manly, homely arts that facilitate agriculture. He might build a mill for his own and his neighbors’ grain ; he might keep a few boys at work, making nails for his county ; he might convert some of his wood into timber and a little of his clay into bricks ; but, henceforth to the end of his days he derived the greatest part of his revenue from the culture of the soil. He was a farmer, as his fathers had been before him.

At a time when busy and capable men shrink from public office with a feeling resembling horror, it may be well to note that few persons have ever performed public duty at such a sacrifice of personal feeling and private interest as Thomas Jefferson. Even in old and highly organized communities, the head of such a household can be ill spared; but in Virginia, in a remote county, in a region where trained labor did not exist, and where men of much capacity could seldom be hired at all, and never for long, where rudest men tilled a new soil with rudest implements, and those men were slaves, nothing but the master’s eye could prevent the most reckless waste and ruinous mismanagement. Every frontier plantation was, of necessity, a little kingdom, in which the master had to furnish the whole daily requirement of authority and guidance. If a woodchopper broke a leg or a blood-vessel, it was Jefferson who was summoned; and if the baby had the measles, it was Jefferson who must prescribe. When the dam gave way, or a wheelbarrow broke down ; if a shop caught fire, or the lettuce was nipped by the frost ; if the cattle got into the wheat, or the small-pox into the negro quarter ; —it was still the master who had to furnish brain and nerve for the emergency. There was never a period, during his public life, when he had not reasons for remaining at home which most men would have felt to be sufficient.

An incident of this period shows the temper of the times and of the man. A copy of the non-importation agreement having reached him in August, 1774, he wrote to London to countermand the order which he had despatched in June for fourteen pairs of sashes ready glazed, and a little glass to mend with. Despatched, do I say ? Jefferson’s way of getting a letter across the ocean at this time had nothing in it that could be called despatch. When he had written his letter, the next thing was to find some one going into the lower country, who would take the trouble to get it on board a ship lying in one of the rivers, bound for London. A letter could be many a long day reaching salt water by this method. Before his letter had been long gone, word came that his sashes were finished, but the putty was not hard enough yet to brave the perils of the deep. It must harden “ about a month.” Hence, the sashes, which were ordered on the first of June, before the non-importation agreement had been contemplated, threatened to arrive about Christmas, when that agreement had become the main hope of a roused and patriotic continent. In these circumstances, he explained the matter to the committee in charge of the county where the sashes would be landed, and placed them at their disposal. “ As I mean,” said he, “ to be a conscientious observer of the measures generally thought requisite for the preservation of our independent rights, so I think myself bound to account to my country for any act of mine which might wear an appearance of contravening them.”

His own county was to have its Committee of Safety, elected, as in all the counties, by the freeholders, with due form and solemnity ; for, if the worst came to the worst, the Committees of Safety would wield, during an interregnum, the sovereign power. On New-Year’s day, 1775, this great business was done in Albemarle. A committee of fifteen was elected, with Thomas Jefferson at its head. For him, two hundred and eleven votes were cast, which was eleven more than any one else received ; one member getting but sixty-four.

A public duty of eminent importance called him away from home in the early days of the spring of 1775. The Williamsburg Convention of August, 1774, which had elected deputies to the first Congress, had adjourned to meet March 20, 1775. But not at Williamsburg ! Not at the capital of the Old Dominion ! Not under the eye of Dunmore, nor within easy reach of the marines of the men-of-war that lay in York River. During these years of agitation, a village had been slowly gathering upon the site of Virginia’s future capital,— its natural capital, — where the navigation of the James is interrupted, about midway between the ocean and the mountains, by islands and impassable rapids. Sea-going vessels of a hundred and fifty tons can ascend the winding river a hundred and fifty miles, as far as those rapids ; and, above them, for two hundred miles farther. barges could be poled and towed. Here, then, at this “carrying-place”, was the spot, of all others in Virginia, for Virginia’s mart, store-house, and counting-room. The banks of the river rise here into commanding heights, which afford a site as peculiar and picturesque as that of Edinburgh. Richmond was still but a straggling village, when the convention met there in March, 1775 ; and there was only one building in it fit for such an assembly, — the parish church of St. John, — which is still standing, little changed, surrounded by its spacious, ill-kept churchyard. It shows to what a point of excitement the Province had been wrought, that a parish church should have been used for such a purpose.

The convention sat eight days, — long enough to give an impulse to the course of events, and to decide the future career of Thomas Jefferson.

When we read of Patrick Henry’s wonderful displays of eloquence, we naturally figure to ourselves a spacious interior and a great crowd of rapt listeners. But, in truth, those of his orations which quickened or changed the march of events, and the thrill of which has been felt in the nerves of four generations, were all delivered in small rooms and to few hearers, never more than one hundred and fifty. The first thought of the visitor to St. John’s Church in Richmond is : Could it have been here, in this oaken chapel of fifty or sixty pews, that Patrick Henry delivered the greatest and best known of all his speeches ? Was it here that he uttered those words of doom, so unexpected, so unwelcome, “ We must fight”? Even here. And the words were spoken in a tone and manner worthy of the men to whom they were addressed, — with quiet and profound solemnity. The mere outline of the speech which we possess (with, here and there, a sentence or a phrase of such concentrated power that their every syllable is stamped indelibly upon the mind) shows that this untaught orator practised all the art of Demosthenes, while exhibiting all his genius. How strangely prophetic the sentence, “ The next gale that sweeps from the North will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms ” ! These words were spoken on the 23d of March, 1775, while the people were joyously repeating the news that the king had been so good as to receive the petition of the Congress. Nothing at the moment foretold the coming conflict, except the intuitive sense of this inspired yeoman.

He carried the convention with him. It was agreed that Virginia should arm ; and a committee of thirteen — a magical number henceforth — was named to concert a plan. Along with Patrick Henry, George Washington, R. H. Lee, Harrison, Pendleton, and others, the young member from Albemarle was appointed to serve on this committee. They agreed upon this : The more densely peopled counties should enroll, equip, supply, and drill companies of infantry ; the other counties should raise troops of horsemen ; all should wear the hunting-shirt, which, Colonel Washington told them, was the best possible uniform ; and all should set about the work of preparation at once.

On the last day of the session the convention performed the act which proved momentous to Mr. Jefferson. Lord Dunmore was governing Virginia without the assistance of its Legislature, but the necessities of the Province were such that it was thought he might be induced or compelled to summon it. Peyton Randolph, the Speaker of the House of Burgesses, had presided over the deliberations of the Congress ; and it accorded with the spirit and custom of that age (as with justice and good sense) never to change public servants except for a good reason. Hence it was certain he would be elected chairman of the next Congress, to meet on the 10th of May. The convention, not disposed to give a royal governor any fair occasion to complain, provided for his return to Virginia by voting that, in case Peyton Randolph should be obliged to leave the Congress before its adjournment, Thomas Jefferson should supply his place.

How graciously the king had received the Congress petition the members of this' convention may have learned before they left Richmond. Perhaps, in the very hour when Patrick Henry was warning them not to indulge in the illusions of hope, nor suffer themselves to be betrayed by a kiss, Lord Dunmore was penning a ridiculous proclamation, which showed the king’s antipathy to the Congress, and to everything that emanated from it: “ Whereas certain persons have presumed, without his Majesty’s authority or consent, to assemble together at Philadelphia,” and have called another and similar meeting for May next, “ I am commanded by the king to require all magistrates and other officers to use their utmost endeavors to prevent any such appointment of deputies, and to exhort all persons whatever within this government to desist from such an unjustifiable proceeding as highly displeasing to his Majesty.”

This document provoked derision only. But the governor’s next act was an act of war, which every man in Virginia felt like a blow, in one of the public squares of Williamsburg, in the very middle of the town, was the powder-magazine containing twenty barrels of gunpowder, the property of the Colony, and part of its usual means of defence against the Indians. This store, always precious, had now become an object of intense and even morbid interest. It was not merely that the Province was arming, and that everything relating to arms had acquired new value ; but, in times of public commotion, a community maintained by the labor of slaves is haunted by a dread of insurrection. Conscience makes cowards of us all. This fear, always latent, had recently become omnipresent in Virginia, and every man shuddered to think of the deluge of mischief and horror a rash coward like Dunmore could bring upon the Province by luring the negroes to his aid with the promise of freedom. To Dunmore, too, that powder had become interesting; for he was one man in a community that looked upon him as the enemy of all which they most prized. True, it was a community in which regard for law had become an instinct; and he was, if possible, the more safe in their midst because he was their enemy. But conscience made a coward of him also. He, too, feared the people he had wronged, as they feared the people whom they were always wronging.

In the dead of night, April 20th, a small party of marines filed from “ the palace ” grounds, followed by a small wagon belonging to Dunmore himself, and marched toward the magazine. For some time past a patrol of patriotic citizens had guarded the magazine at night, but, as no alarm occurred, they had gone home a little earlier every night, until, on this occasion, the streets of Williamsburg were silent an hour after midnight. The noble governor had apparently been watching for such a chance to steal the public property ; for, like General Gage, he wished to disarm his Province in a quiet way. That very night. Gage in Boston was reckoning up the cost of his attempt, in British dead and wounded. Dunmore had the key of the Williamsburg magazine. About three in the morning of the day after the battle of Lexington, Dunmore’s wagon, loaded with fifteen half-barrels of Virginia’s powder, was driven out of town, guarded by marines, and, soon after daylight, was conveyed on board of an English man-of-war, that lay in the James River, seven miles distant. The rest of the powder, which the noble Lord’s “little wagon” would not hold, was buried, as it seems, in the magazine itself.

In the morning, as soon as this puerile act was known, there arose a contest, not between the robbed and the robber, but between the Cool Heads and the Hot Heads of the town. The people filled the streets, excited and angry ; the patrol resumed their arms and gathered in the public square ; and everything was ripe for tumult. But the elders and chief men of the place, above all others Peyton Randolph, chairman of the Congress, and Mr. Nicholas, the head of the bar, moved about among the people, advising moderation and order; and, early in the day, a safety-valve was found. Williamsburg, small as it was, was a city blessed with a mayor, recorder, aldermen, and councilmen, who, on great emergencies, met in “ common hall,” and acted as one body. They met on this wild day, and agreed to present an humble address to his Excellency, the Right Honorable John, Earl of Dunmore, asking him why the Colony’s powder was taken away from its proper repository, and asking him to have it brought back. In his reply, this Right Honorable personage lied. He said he had heard of an insurrection in a neighboring county, and had thought it best to remove the powder to a place of greater safety. Having uttered this falsehood, he proceeded to show that it was a falsehood by promising, upon his word and honor, that if the powder should be wanted for an insurrection, it should be brought back in half an hour. But the Cool Heads succeeded in dispersing the people, and leaving the town for the night in charge of the patrol.

Dreadful rumors were in the air. The news of the plunder of the magazine sped from county to county, inflaming minds which no considerations of abstract tea could reach. He has taken our powder, our own powder, bought with our money, and stored for our common defence ! The dullest mind could feel all the wrong and much of the complex indignity of the act. In the night, too, while honest men were asleep !

And what tidings were on their way from the North ! Gage, also in the dead of night, had sent an armed force to disarm Massachusetts ! Her yeomen had risen upon them and driven them back again, a chase of thirty miles, and they had left a dead or wounded soldier on every furlong of the road ! This intelligence, following so quick upon the news of Dunmore’s exploit, startled every one into the conviction that the plunder of the magazine and the march of Gage’s troops were parts of a general scheme to deprive the Colonies of the means of defence. The newly formed companies seized such arms as they had, and rushed to their several rendezvous without waiting for orders, demanding to be led to the capital and recover their stolen powder. Never was a widely scattered community so instantly kindled ; for, before the news of Lexington had been in Virginia four days, there were assembled at Fredericksburg fourteen companies of horsemen ready to march to Williamsburg, seventy miles distant. And yet the Cool Heads triumphed once more. A letter from Peyton Randolph arrived in the nick of time, informing them that the governor had engaged to arrange the affair of the powder in a manner satisfactory to the Colony, and entreating the troops to return to their homes. By one majority, in a meeting of one hundred and two officers, this advice was accepted, and the troopers rode homeward. The Congress was to meet again in eleven days. It seemed best not to precipitate the Colony into war.

There was a man in Virginia, the king of Virginia, we may call him, Patrick Henry, who saw in this affair of the powder the best opportunity that had yet occurred of bringing home the controversy to the minds of the unthinking. “ You may talk in vain to them,” said he, to his friends, “about the duties upon tea; but tell them of the robbery of the magazine, and that the next step will be to disarm them, and you bring the subject home to their bosoms.” He called together the horsemen of his county of Hanover, harangued them, and began his march toward Williamsburg, joined as he advanced by squads of other companies ; until his band amounted to a hundred and fifty men. By the time the news of this movement reached the capital, rumor had swelled his force to five thousand infuriate patriots, armed to the teeth. Consternation filled the palace of the governor. He sent his wife and daughters on board the Fowey, man-of-war. The captain of that famous vessel garrisoned the palace with marines, and threatened, in case of an outbreak, to fire upon the town. Several of Patrick Henry’s friends rode in hot haste to induce him to turn back, but he held to his purpose, until, at the close of the second day’s march, he halted, sixteen miles from Williamsburg.

Lord Dunmore, in this extremity, called his Council together, — that select body whom the governor himself nominated and the king appointed. Being summoned, they repaired to the Council Chamber in the Capitol, their invariable place of meeting ; but the governor, panic-stricken, would not venture out, and commanded the Council to attend him in the palace. When they were seated in his presence, he stated the case, and said he was afraid the excited troopers who were approaching might, in their frenzy, seize upon a public magazine, which would infallibly bring down upon the Province the direst vengeance of an insulted king. To ward off this fearful peril from Virginia, he suggested that panacea of falling governments, — a proclamation. The youngest member of this Council of seven, and the only Whig among them, was John Page, the college friend of Jefferson and the confidant of his youthful love for Belinda. It was he who broke the long and awkward pause that followed the governor’s address by asking whether, in case the Council should agree to advise a proclamation, his Lordship would consent to restore the powder. The removal of the powder, continued Mr. Page, having caused the present tumult, tranquillity would be instantly restored by its restoration. “ Mr. Page,” exclaimed the governor, with the fury natural to such a brain at the reception of advice so simple and so wise, — “ Mr. Page, I am astonished at you ! ” And he brought down his lordly fist upon the table with a prodigious thump. To which the young councillor quietly replied, that, in giving his opinion, he had done his duty, and he had no other advice to give.

The curtain falls upon this scene. The next morning at sunrise, a messenger from the capital sought an interview with Patrick Henry in the tavern where he had passed the night. When the messenger left the tavern, he bore with him a written paper, of which the following is a copy : —

“ Doncastle’s Ordinary, New Kent, May 4, 1775. Received from the Honorable Richard Corbin, Esq., his Majesty’s Receiver-General, 330 pounds, as a compensation for the gunpowder lately taken out of the public magazine by the governor’s order ; which money I promise to convey to the Virginia delegates at the General Congress, to be, under their direction, laid out in gunpowder for the Colony’s use, and to be stored as they shall direct, until the next Colony Convention or General Assembly, unless it shall be necessary, in the mean time, to use the same in defence of the Colony. It is agreed that, in case the next convention shall determine that any part of the said money ought to be returned to the said Receiver-General, that the same shall be done accordingly, Patrick Henry, Jun.” ¹

Such was Virginia’s bloodless Lexington. The volunteers returned to their homes at once, and their leader, a few days after, set out for the Congress, escorted by a great retinue of horsemen, as far as the Potomac River. There was a neatness and finish to this triumph that captivated the continent, and made Patrick Henry inexpressibly dear to Virginia. The Province would have at once resumed its tranquillity, but for the incredible folly of the governor, who, totally bereft of sense and judgment, and emboldened by the presence of a royal squadron, still kept the peninsula in a broil.

From the distant summit of Monticello Jefferson watched the course of events with the interest natural to such a person, ever longing for a restoration of the ancient harmony and goodwill between the two countries. Lord Chatham’s bill of January, 1775, inspired by Franklin, which conceded everything the Colonies deemed essential, had given him hope, until the next ship brought the tidings of its summary and contemptuous rejection. The news of Lexington was fourteen days in reaching Albemarle, and then it arrived loaded with exaggeration, — “five hundred of the king’s troops slain.” In writing, a few days after, to the honored instructor of his youth, Professor Small, then physician and man of science in Birmingham, he spoke of Lexington as an “accident” that had “ cut off our last hope of reconciliation ” ; since “ a frenzy of revenge seemed to have seized all ranks of people.” We may judge of the strength of the tie between the mothercountry and the Colonies, by the fact that so un-English a mind as Jefferson’s clung with sentimental fondness to the union long after there was any reasonable hope of their preserving it“ My first wish,” he still wrote, late in 1775, “is a restoration of our just rights.” His second wish was to be able, consistently with honor and duty, to “withdraw totally from the public stage, and pass the rest of his days in domestic ease and tranquillity.” He did not claim to possess a disinterested patriotism, but avowed that the warmth of his wish for reconciliation with England was increased by his intense desire to stay at home. His pride as a citizen, too, was involved. He saw as clearly as the imperialminded Chatham, that Britain’s chance of remaining imperial lay in America. This truth was hidden from the world during England’s contest with Bonaparte, because she was able to waste in twenty years the revenue of three centuries, keeping a thousand ships in commission and subsidizing a continent. That looked imperial ; but it was mere reckless waste. The whole world now perceives that, when Great Britain threw her American Colonies away, she lapsed into insularity ; or, to use Jefferson’s words of 1775, she “returned to her original station in the political scale of Europe.” With the fond pride natural to the citizen, he desired his country to be vast, imposing, and powerful.

Brooding over Lexington and its consequences, he was startled by the intelligence that the contingency which would oblige him to become a member of the Congress was actually to occur: Lord Dunmore, in his panic and distraction, had been induced to summon the House of Burgesses. This would recall Peyton Randolph from Philadelphia, and send Thomas Jefferson thither to supply his place. The rash insolence of the captains of the king’s ships lying in the York River having roused the people of the peninsula nearly to the point Of investing the capital with an armed force, Lord Dunmore called together the Council and asked their advice. Summon the Burgesses, suggested a member. His Lordship, as usual with him when he was well advised, broke into a furious and senseless harangue ; and when he had finished, John Page calmly replied to him, point by point, his best argument being this : If you deprive the people of their usual, legal, constitutional representation, they will resort to conventions, which itself is revolution. The whole Council joined in this sentiment, and, at length, the governor accepted their advice, the writs were issued, and the 1st of June named as the day of meeting.

The air was highly electric. These rural Virginians had been slow to kindle ; for, until the foolish Dunmore and his naval captains had joined hands to threaten and insult them, Virginia’s part had been to sympathize with the victims of distant oppression, and resent wrongs done to a sister Colony'. But these vessels of war in their own rivers were now as maddening to them as Gage’s regiments were to Massachusetts. How welcome English men-ofwar had been in other days, when, under an awning, Virginian beauty had delighted to tread a spotless quarter-deck, and when at the balls in the Apollo no partners could be so agreeable as naval officers, splendid in the cumbrous uniform of the time ! All that was over forever. Williamsburg had ever been most lavish of politeness and hospitality to the king’s navy ; but at the mere rumor of Patrick Henry’s approach, Captain Montague had threatened to fire, not upon him, but upon the town. In making this threat, the captain, in the language of a Williamsburg Committee, “ had discovered the most hellish principles that can actuate a human mind ” ; and they advised the people to show him no “ other mark of civility besides what common decency and absolute necessity require.” Captain Montague was cut in Williamsburg by every Whig.

The 1st of June arrived. It had been a question with distant constituencies whether it would be safe for patriotic burgesses to venture down into that narrow peninsula, with menof-war in both rivers, and bodies of marines at the beck of a savage governor ; particularly as some members — Peyton Randolph, Patrick Henry, and Thomas Jefferson — had been menaced with a prosecution for treason. A paragraph advised every member to come “ prepared as an American ” ; and, accordingly, many members arrived at the capital clad in the hunting-shirt, and carrying the rifle, to which they had become accustomed in the trainingfield. Jefferson, now a member both of the Legislature of Virginia and of the General Congress, took Williamsburg on his way to Philadelphia, and there he met Peyton Randolph, fresh from the Congress. The Speaker asked him to delay his journey, and remain for a short time in his seat in the House of Burgesses. Lord North’s conciliatory proposition, as it was called, had been Dunmore’s pretext for summoning the House, and the Speaker desired the aid of Jefferson’s pen in drawing up Virginia’s answer to the same.

On Thursday, the 1st of June, for the last time, a royal governor and a loyal House of Virginian Burgesses exchanged the elaborate civilities usual on the first day of a session. The usual committee was appointed to reply to the governor’s courteous, conciliatory speech. Jefferson was a member of this committee, but he was charged to make a separate reply to the part of it which related to Lord North’s proposition ; and to this important duty he addressed himself. The duty, indeed, was doubly important, since the document he was to prepare would not only be the reply of Virginia to the ministerial scheme, but it would be America’s first response to it, as no other colonial legislature had been in session since its arrival.

Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Monday, the first days of the session, passed harmoniously enough. If the House was less humble than usual in the tone of its communications with the governor, it still protested its unshaken attachment to the king ; and there seemed a fair prospect of the session proceeding agreeably to its close. But, as I have observed, the air was electric. There was a revolution in the clouds. On Monday evening several young men went to the magazine in Williamsburg, intending to supply themselves with arms from the few weapons still remaining in the public store. Arms, at the moment, were in extreme request, and only he was happy who had a good weapon. On opening the door of the magazine, a spring-gun was discharged, loaded deep with swanshot, and two of the young men were badly wounded. One of them received two balls in his shoulder and another in his wrist ; the other had one finger cut off and another shattered. Upon examining the magazine, the party discovered that other spring-guns were set in it, and that no notice had been written up, warning intruders of the danger. The setting of these guns, it was immediately ascertained, was Dunmore’s work, done by his orders soon after Patrick Henry had disbanded his troop.

The cloud burst. The revolution had come. The Williamsburg companies seized their arms and rushed to the public squares. The indignation of the people at this dastardly act of their governor was not lessened by the consideration that the young men had been wounded while they were breaking the law. They might have fallen dead under the coward fire of those guns ; and the insult of fighting a patriotic and loyal people with weapons usually employed against poachers and trespassers was felt by every creature. Curses both loud and deep were hurled at the palace and its inmates; and though the Cool Heads again contrived to prevent anything like a breach of the peace, yet, at such a time, no potentate can so wall himself in, that the hatred and contempt of the people cannot reach him. The next morning, two hours before the early June dawn, the governor, his family, his abhorred secretary, and his chief servants, all fled in silence from the palace, and were driven ten miles down the peninsula to Yorktown, whence they were rowed off to the flag-ship of the armed squadron anchored there. He was governor of Virginia never again. He had still some savage mischief to do in the Province, as a mere marauder ; but when, at daybreak on the 8th of June, Lord Dunmore stepped on the quarterdeck of the king’s ship, George III. ceased to reign over Virginia. His governor had run away.

The House of Burgesses, with inexhaustible patience and courtesy, attempted to woo him back by assuring him that he would be, as he ever had been, safe in his palace, and that his residence on board a distant ship was in the highest degree inconvenient to them and irritating to the people. His reply amounted to this : Let the House frankly accept Lord North’s proposition, dismiss the militia companies, and rescind the non-importation agreement, and he would not only return to Williamsburg, but do all in his power to soothe the just anger of a gracious king against a rebellious Province.

Mr. Jefferson, meanwhile, had completed his paper upon Lord North’s scheme. That scheme merely proposed to let the Colonies tax themselves for the general expenses of the Empire, instead of being taxed by Parliament ; Parliament to fix the amount to be raised, and to have the spending of the money. Mr. Jefferson’s answer was courteous, clear, and decided. It was incomparably the best paper he had yet drawn, and it was adopted by the House with only a few verbal changes ; or, as the author expresses it, with “a dash of cold water on it here and there, enfeebling it somewhat.” His paper may be summed up in two sentences : 1. The ministerial scheme “ changes the form of oppression, without lightening its burden ” ; 2. It leaves our other wrongs unredressed. Having duly elaborated these points, he closed with a paragraph which, we may presume, he meant to be tender and conciliatory, but which, we know, was the quintessence of exasperation to the king and his party ; since it referred the subject for “final determination to the General Congress now sitting, before whom we shall lay the papers your lordship has communicated to us.”

“ For ourselves,” he continued, “ we have exhausted every mode of application which our invention could suggest as proper and promising. We have decently remonstrated with Parliament; they have added new injuries to the old. We have wearied our king with supplications ; he has not deigned to answer us. We have appealed to the native honor and justice of the British nation; their efforts in our favor have hitherto been ineffectual. What, then, remains to be done ? That we commit our injuries to the even-handed justice of that Being who doeth no wrong, earnestly beseeching him to illuminate the councils and prosper the endeavors of those to whom America hath confided her hopes ; that, through their wise directions, we may again see reunited the blessings of liberty, prosperity, and harmony with Great Britain.”

The governor’s reply to this eloquent and most reasonable address was in these words : “ Gentlemen of the House of Burgesses, it is with real concern that I can discover nothing in your address that I think manifests the smallest inclination to, or will be productive of, a reconciliation with the mothercountry.”

Jefferson did not wait to learn the governor’s opinion. The document which he had composed was accepted by the House, on the 10th of June, as Virginia’s reply to Lord North’s proposition ; and the next morning, in a onehorse chaise, with a copy of his address duly signed and certified in his pocket, he left Williamsburg for Philadelphia. With the assistance of two led horses to change with, he could not average more than twenty-two miles a day ; and so imperfectly marked were some parts of the road, that twice he employed a guide. He reached Philadelphia on that memorable 20th of June when George Washington received his commission from the Congress; and we may be sure that, before the General slept that night, Jefferson had communicated to him the substance of Virginia’s response to the Parliamentary scheme. He could not have let the General c .part for Massachusetts, without letting him know that his own native Province was at his back. The next morning, before taking his seat with the Congress, he could not but have seen Washington review the military companies of Philadelphia, and then ride away on his long journey, accompanied by General Schuyler and Charles Lee, and escorted by a Philadelphia troop of horsemen.

Twenty miles from Philadelphia General Washington met a messenger from the North, spurring forward to bear to Congress the news of Bunker Hill. Jefferson heard it before night. He was himself the bearer of tidings for which Congress had waited with solicitude ; but this was news to cast into the shade all bloodless events. How he gloried in the Yankees ! What a warmth of affection there was then — and will be again— between Massachusetts and Virginia ! “ The adventurous genius and intrepidity of those people is amazing,” Jefferson wrote to his brother-in-law, when the details of the action were known. They were fitting out, he said, light vessels, armed, with which they expected to clear the coast of “ everything below the size of a ship of war.” So magnanimous, too ! “ They are now intent on burning Boston as a hive which gives cover to Regulars ; and none are more bent on it than the very people who come out of it, and whose whole prosperity lies there.”

America did not feel it necessary or becoming, in those days, to scrimp her public men in the matter of salary. It was not, indeed, supposed possible to compensate an eminent public servant by any amount of money whatever ; but it was considered proper to facilitate his labors so far as money could do it. Virginia allowed her representatives in the Continental Congress forty-five shillings a day each, and a shilling a mile for their travelling expenses, besides “ all ferriages,” then no small item ; and the treasurer was authorized to advance a member two hundred pounds, if it would be convenient to him, before he left Virginia, the member to refund on his return home, if the sum advanced “shall happen to exceed his allowance.”

James Parton.