world, preserved through a season of uncommon difficulty and trial; the good will cultivated with the unfortunate aborigines of our country, and the civilization 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, which, above all others, the historic genius will hang upon with rapture, the liberty of speech and 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 and 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.

66

you are

How blessed will be the retirement into which 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 service of your country, and proofs the most decisive of the love, the gratitude, the veneration of your countrymen.

"That your retirement may be as happy as your life has been virtuous and useful; that our youth may see, in the blissful close of your days, an additional inducement to form themselves on your model, is the devout and earnest prayer of your fellow citizens who compose the General Assembly of Virginia."

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CHAPTER XIII.

Mr. Jefferson returns to Monticello. Friendship between the President and Ex-President. Complimentary Addresses. Schemes of passing his time-how far successful. Pecuniary difficulties, and their cause. His studies. Address from the Legislature of New York. Orders the dismission of a prosecution for a libel against him. Mr. Erskine's arrangement-its disavowal-his Letter to the President. Vocabularies of Indian Languages. Letter to the Spanish Minister. To Mr. Gallatin. To Mr. Rodney. Kosciusko. His workshop. To Dr. Jones on Cabinet consultations. His Views of Napoleon's successes-on the English Constitution-on British Policy. To J. B. Colvin,

1809-1810.

MR. JEFFERSON waited to witness the inauguration of his successor before he left the seat of government, and sat at the right hand of the President elect, while he delivered his inaugural address.

A day or two before he left Washington, he wrote to Mons. Dupont de Nemours in Paris: "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 part in resisting them, and to commit myself on the boisterous ocean of political passions. I thank God for the oppor

tunity of retiring from them without censure, and carrying with me the most consoling proofs of public appro

bation."

He reached Monticello about the middle of March, after a fatiguing journey over roads always particularly bad at that season; and, in the course of it, travelled eight hours on horseback through an unusually severe hail-storm. He felt, however, no other inconvenience from the expedition than fatigue, and had, as he says, more confidence in his vis vitæ than he had before entertained. He wrote to Mr. Madison a day or two afterwards very freely and fully on public affairs.

It presents a spectacle as pleasing as it is rare to see these distinguished men thus changing places as to rank without any change in their feelings of friendship and of perfect equality-the one arrogating nothing for what he had been, and the other for what he was, but each manifesting the same kind feelings, tempered with respect, which they had felt before, and continued to feel ever afterwards. Each seemed unconscious that one of them was elevated to the highest dignity which an American citizen could attain, or that the other had descended from that dignity to the common level of his countrymen. In this letter Mr. Jefferson remarks to his successor, "that he knows no government which would be so embarrassing in war as ours. This would proceed very much from the lying and licentious character of our papers; but much also from the wonderful credulity of the members of Congress in the floating lies of the day." The evil, too, he thought increased with the protraction of the sessions, and in case of a war, he apprehended they would tend to become permanent. He fervently prayed that war might be avoided, but admitted it might be less injurious than "unresisted depredation."

He had numerous complimentary addresses on his return to private life. Among these, two in the county of Albe

marle; one from the Society of Baptists, and the other from the citizens of the county generally.

sure.

Mr. Jefferson had now reached the age of sixty-six, and though possessed of a vigour of mind and body unusual at that period, yet he withdrew from the cares and fatigues of political life, not merely with resignation, but with real pleaHe promised himself in the tranquillity of retirement, in the society of his daughter and her numerous family, and in the delights of study, a degree of unmixed happiness that he had never yet experienced. He had hitherto been labouring for the good of his country, and with that had naturally been associated the desire of popular esteem. These objects had engrossed the best part of his busy life, and what remained he determined to dedicate to pursuits more congenial to his temper and affections, as well as better suited to his years. His expectations were as well founded

as such estimates of the future ever are; and he had as much enjoyment of life as falls to the lot of most men. If he did not experience all that he anticipated, it was because “man never is, but always to be blessed."

In the quiet even tenor of his subsequent life, in the management of his farms, in his course of reading, and in his domestic relations-there is little of incident to furnish the materials of biography. These peaceful occupations exhibit indeed very interesting traits of character, but these may be presented by general results, or a few prominent and characteristic facts, rather than by reiterated details. The reader may therefore now expect to receive only these general notices; and it will be from Mr. Jefferson's extensive correspondence that we shall hereafter principally draw for the residue of this work. It not only shows us his speculative views on various subjects, but as these often exerted a controlling influence on the members of his party, who maintained the ascendancy during his life, his writings often have the character of acts no less than of opinions.

At Mon-
He had

One of the plans for the future which he seems to have prescribed to himself, was to have an entire reform in the management of his estate, that hitherto, under the management of thriftless or faithless agents, had yielded him little or no profit. His landed property then consisted of 5682 acres attached to Monticello, on which he had 113 slaves; and 4164 acres at Poplar Forest, on which he had 85 slaves. At this estate he made tobacco, as well as wheat. ticello, wheat was the only crop made for market. a flour mill on the Rivanna, on which he had expended, in money and labour on the dam, and a canal and locks on the Rivanna, what he used to estimate at 30,000 dollars. But as he had to provide all these slaves with clothing; to purchase iron, salt, medicines, sometimes even provisions, and to pay overscers; when these disbursements were made, he had little left to defray the current expenses of his family, and of a table always as liberally supplied with guests as abundant in its fare.

He had a few years previous to this time formed the scheme of renting out his land to industrious and managing farmers, whom he expected from Maryland; and that disposition of his property would have been the best he could have made, but the scheme failed.

From the year 1807, when the embargo was laid,* to the peace of 1815, the profits of landed estates, with a few brief exceptions, were, under the best management, very small; and under the disadvantages of Mr. Jefferson's estates, it is probable that his yielded scarcely any profit, since the proceeds of a part of his Poplar Forest lands were absorbed in

*If then he had sought to continue the embargo in complaisance to the wishes of Napoleon, as his enemies alleged, there never was an act of more disinterested generosity; for there were few persons in the United States who more sensibly felt that measure than himself, because there were few whose incomes were proportionally so much diminished.