that to retract the offer would subject themselves to the reproach of levity and ingratitude they, therefore, determined that the society should retain its existence, its meetings, and its charitable funds. The order was to be no longer hereditary; it was to be communicated to " no new members; the general meeting, instead of being annual, was to be triennial only. The eagle and riband, indeed, were to be retained, because they were worn, and they wished them to be worn by their friends who were in a country where they would not be objects of offence; but themselves never wore them. They laid them up in their bureaus, with the medals of American Independence, with those of the trophies they had taken, and the battles they had won."

Since that time, the society has excited so little public interest, or even notice, that its history is with difficulty traced. In some of the states it is yet continued, and the members hold, or until lately held, triennial meetings. In others, it has, after a lingering existence, been suffered to experience a silent dissolution. That of Virginia met in 1822, and not anticipating another meeting, took steps for the early transfer (long before decided on) of their funds to Washington College. The transfer was accordingly made in 1824, to the treasurer of Virginia, for that institution, and amounted to about 15,000 dollars.

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CHAPTER VIII.

Embarks at Boston. Meeting with Dr. Franklin in Paris. State of Society there. They endeavour to make commercial treaties. Their partial success and its causes. Publishes his Notes on Virginia. Theory of the degeneracy of animals in America. Statue of Washington. Remains sole minister. Negotiations against the tobacco monopoly. Asserts the doctrine of free trade. His qualifications of it. His opinion of a navy. Sends a model for the capitol at Richmond. The Barbary powers. Proposes a plan of resistance by combined forces. Causes of its failure. His multifarious correspondence. Negotiations with the Barbary states. Conference with the French minister on American commerce. Oglethorpe's heirs. Case of Lister Asquith. Taste for country life.

Mr. Jefferson appointed Minister to France.

1784-1786.

On the 7th of May, Congress having resolved to add a third minister plenipotentiary to Mr. Adams and Dr. Franklin, Mr. Jefferson received the appointment; and this was the fourth time that honour had been conferred on him. Two days before, a proposition had been made to reduce the salaries of foreign ministers, from eleven thousand one hundred and eleven dollars, to eight thousand. During the animated debate on this subject, Mr. Jefferson appears never to have voted; and as he was very regular in his attendance, the probability is, that he was aware that he was to be nominated, and that he refrained from motives of extreme delicacy-his vote being liable to misconstruction, whichever way he had given it. The salaries were thus fixed at nine thousand dollars, at which they have ever since continued, though, for the principal missions to Europe, it is confessedly inadequate.

On the 11th of May, Mr. Jefferson left Annapolis for Philadelphia, where his eldest daughter then was. He decided on taking her with him to France, and leaving the other two in the care of their aunt, Mrs. Eppes. He proceeded to Boston, with a view of embarking at that port. In this journey, he took pains to inform himself of the nature and extent of the commerce of each state, and even went to New Hampshire and Vermont, with the same object. They sailed on the 5th of July in a merchant ship, bound to Cowes, which place they reached in a short and pleasant passage of nineteen days. After a brief detention, in consequence of the illness of Miss Jefferson, they proceeded on to Havre, and remaining there three days, reached Paris on the 6th day of August, 1784.

He lost no time in calling on his distinguished colleague, Dr. Franklin, who was then living at Passy, a village in the neighbourhood of Paris. There were many points of congeniality between these individuals, and they seemed to have contracted a friendship from the time their acquaintance commenced, in 1775. As Dr. Franklin left the United States for France in the following year, they now met, after a separation of eight years. Besides the pleasures of renewed intercourse, they must, without doubt, have felt much patriotic congratulation, that their hopes and plans of 1776, which were then involved in the uncertainty of the future, had since been so happily realized, and that they were now representing their country as an independent nation, at the most polished court, and the most attractive capital of Europe; one too, which, in many points, was particularly suited to the tastes of both the ministers.

At that time, everything called philosophy, whether physical or moral, was greatly in vogue in Paris. Talent and industry had combined, of late years, to cast extraordinary lustre over the studies of nature, and the encyclopedists had

given to every branch of speculative science an éclat which poetry and literature had once monopolized. Never had a public minister been as popular in a foreign country as Franklin now was in Paris. His discoveries in electricity had given him a high rank among the men of science; and his reputation for political sagacity, and original views in government and political economy, was little inferior. These recommendations alone would have been sufficient to insure him the same general welcome in the polite circles of Paris that Hume and Gibbon so warmly acknowledge in their own case. But when it was recollected, that he had also borne a conspicuous part in that revolution which had dismembered a powerful rival of her most considerable colonies, and which was in so many ways gratifying to France, he became as great a favourite at court as among the savans and littérateurs of Paris. His very simplicity of manners, and plainness of dress, so strongly in contrast with the modes then prevalent in the world of fashion, gave an additional charm to his society, partly by its novelty, and partly because they had more of the ease and grace of nature, to which, however habituated to artificial forms of society, we never become insensible. He thus became recommended by fashion, where fashion had supreme sway; and the youthful and the aged of both sexes, the frivolous and the gay, as well as the grave and learned, paid him the unfeigned homage of their respect and admiration. When Mr. Jefferson reflected on the extraordinary public favour his colleague enjoyed, he seemed to feel it a misfortune that he was to succeed him as the sole minister of his country, conceiving that he must suffer so greatly by the comparison.

It was with this feeling that he answered the French minister, Vergennes, who, adverting to Dr. Franklin's intention of returning to America, remarked to Mr. Jefferson, "vous remplacez Mons. Franklin, je crois." To which he

promptly replied, that he succeeded Dr. Franklin; but no one could replace him. But although no one could be expected to hold the same high place in the regards of the Parisians as Dr. Franklin, it was no small advantage to Mr. Jefferson to have such a friend to introduce him. He thus at once obtained a passport to the most intelligent and cultivated society in that refined metropolis; and probably the United States did not then furnish another individual who could so well have supplied Dr. Franklin's place, at the court of Versailles, as Mr. Jefferson. He had gone to France with all the predilections for the country which national gratitude and his acquaintance with the most accomplished French officers in America could inspire, and all the resentment against England that war and a sense of national wrong could provoke. He was also imbued with the same combined taste for letters and science which was then the reigning mode in Paris. We accordingly find that he made a very favourable impression on the French nation: while they, their manners, tastes, and modes of living, obtained a place in his regards, which continued to his latest hour.

As Mr. Jefferson had been associated with Dr. Franklin and Mr. Adams, for the purpose of forming commercial treaties with the European nations, no time was lost in giving notice of his arrival to Mr. Adams, then at the Hague; and he soon joined them at Paris. Before they attempted any negotiation on the subject, they proposed a general protocol of their propositions, in conformity with the principles prescribed by Congress.

Their first attempt was to improve the commercial relations of the United States with France. But, in a conference with the Count de Vergennes, the minister for foreign affairs, he thought the future commercial intercourse between the two nations had better be left to the legislative regulations of both parties, according to their amicable dispositions.