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sent mode of life less violent than any other. It allowed him to be at home nearly two-thirds of the year, was neither preceded nor followed by any special duties, and required the performance at no time of any other than those of presiding over the deliberations of the Senate, a body consisting then of but 32 members, and distinguished for the order and quiet dignity of its proceedings. And as the presiding officer is not entitled to a vote, except when the Senate is equally divided, he is excluded from the angry conflicts of party, and may, if it suits his temper, be a mere spectator, and a calm spectator too, of the field of controversy. It was these circumstances of security, together with the strong disgust with which he had witnessed the scenes of party strife three years before, which recommended the present office to his favour. We may also presume that the pleasures of refined and intelligent society, of which he could now partake, without that alloy which formerly attended them, contributed their share in making the change agreeable.

Nor is it unlikely that the salary attached to the office was not insignificant in his eyes,* for although he was never covetous of money, and had always shown as much disinterestedness as any of his compatriots, yet his estate, ample as it was, had never been productive, and he was even then in debt. His correspondence shows too that the claims on his bounty were sufficiently numerous and frequent to exhaust a much larger and better managed estate than his own ever was. Besides he had always shown a decided taste-almost a passion for building. He had, in his Notes of Virginia, severely criticised the architecture of his native state; his interest in the art, as well as his knowledge of it, had been greatly improved by observation during his residence in France, and he was stimulated both by his own predilections, and by the severity of his former strictures, to give his countrymen a better specimen of architectural skill; being aware that he who had been so unsparing of his criticisms on others, would himself be the object of rigid scrutiny. He had

This conjecture has received confirmation from that friend who best knew his situation and was most in his confidence.

therefore been for some time engaged in enlarging and embellishing his house at Monticello, and had more than once, for the correction of some unforeseen defect, or in execution of some happier after thought, been engaged in pulling down, and rebuilding what had been recently constructed.

From all these considerations he probably entered on the duties of his new office with more unmixed satisfaction than if he had been chosen chief magistrate, beset as it was with difficulties and dangers; and the gratification afforded by the second office in the nation, as well as from the almost equal vote for the first, had on his happy temper, the effect of putting him in a good humour with all the world. It was in this spirit of benignity and good feeling that he wrote the letter to Mr. Adams, which Mr. Madison, who was at the principal scene of the war, and in the thickest of the fight, deemed it unseasonable to deliver, as one which was almost certain to produce no reciprocal feelings in Mr. Adams, and to have no other effect than to make him question either the sincerity or self-respect of the writer.

Mr. Jefferson arrived in Philadelphia on the 2nd of March, for the purpose of taking the oath required as vice president, and becoming for a time the guest of Mr. Madison, he waited on Mr. Adams, the president elect, who, on the next morning, returned his visit. Of this visit Mr. Jefferson gives the following account:

"He found me alone in my room, and shutting the door himself, he said he was glad to find me alone, for that he wished a free conversation with me. He entered immediately on an explanation of the situation of our affairs with France, and the danger of a rupture with that nation, a rupture which would convulse the attachments of this country; that he was impressed with the necessity of an immediate mission to the Directory; that it would have been the first wish of his heart to have got me to go there, but that he supposed it was out of the question, as it did not seem justifiable for him to send away the person destined to take his place, in case of accident to himself, nor decent to remove from competition one who was a rival in the public favour. That he had therefore concluded to send a mission, which, by its dignity, should satisfy France, and by its se

lection from the three great divisions of the continent, should satisfy all parts of the United States; in short, that he had determined to join Gerry and Madison to Pinckney, and he wished me to consult Mr. Madison for him."

Mr. Jefferson concurred in the propriety of the remarks as to himself, and added that his inclinations would never permit him to cross the Atlantic again; that he would consult with Mr. Madison, but feared he would not accept, as he had invariably refused the same mission during General Washington's administration; which opinion, on consulting Mr. Madison, was confirmed. A few days afterwards, on Mr. Adams being informed of Mr. Madison's determination, he said that, on consultation, some objections to that nomination had been raised which he had not contemplated, and he proceeded with excuses which evidently embarrassed him, until they parted.* Mr. Jefferson's natural inference from the preceding facts was, that "Mr. Adams, in the first moments of the enthusiasm of the occasion (his inauguration) forgot party sentiments, and as he never acted on any system, but was always governed by the feeling of the moment, he intended for the time to steer impartially between the parties, but that on meeting his cabinet two or three days afterwards, he had been diverted by it from his first purpose, to favour party objects.

Mr. Jefferson soon returned to Monticello after the inauguration, and continued there till the last of April, when he again set out for Philadelphia, as Congress was convened on the 15th May. It appears by a letter of Mr. Jefferson to Mr. Gerry of Massachusetts, that his good feelings towards Mr. Adams had then undergone no abatement. He takes this occasion of parrying the charge of inconsistency for again accepting office, declaring that when he left the place of secretary of state, it was in the firmest contemplation of never more returning to Philadelphia: that the suggestions in the newspapers that he was looking to the presidential chair, he considered as intended merely to excite odium against him: that he never in his life exchanged a word with any person on the subject, until he was

* Jeff. Cor., Vol. IV.

generally brought forward as a competitor with Mr. Adams, confidently adding what his whole correspondence confirms:"Those with whom I then communicated could say, if it were necessary, whether I met the call with desire, or even with a ready acquiescence; and whether, from the moment of my first acquiescence, I did not devoutly pray that the very thing might happen that has happened. The second office of this government is honourable and easy, the first is but a splendid misery."

In adverting to the attempts which would be made to create discord between him and Mr. Adams, Mr. Jefferson remarks:"These machinations will proceed from the Hamiltonians by whom he is surrounded, and who are only a little less hostile to him than to me. It cannot but damp the pleasure of cordiality when we suspect it is suspected. I cannot help thinking that it is impossible for Mr. Adams to believe that the state of my mind is what it really is; that he may think that I view him as an obstacle in my way. I have no supernatural power to impress truth in the mind of another, nor he any to discover that the estimate which he may form, on a just view of the human mind, as generally constituted, may not be just in its application to a special constitution. This may be a source of private uneasiness to us; I honestly confess that it is so to me at this time."

On our foreign relations he says, "I do sincerely wish with you that we could take our stand on a ground perfectly neutral and independent towards all nations. It has been my constant object throughout public life: and with respect to the English and French, particularly, I have too often expressed to the former my wishes, and made to them propositions, verbally and in writing, officially and privately, to official and private characters, for them to doubt of my views, if they would be content with equality. Of this they are in possession of several written and formal proofs, in my own hand writing. But they have wished a monopoly of commerce and influence with us, and they have in fact attained it. When we take notice that their's is the workshop to which we go for all we want; that with them centre, either immediately or ultimately, all the labours of our

hands and lands; that to them belongs, either openly or secretly, the great mass of our navigation; that even the factorage of their affairs here is kept to themselves by factitious citizenships; that these foreign and false citizens now constitute the great body of what are called our merchants, fill our sea-ports, are planted in every little town and district of the interior country, sway every thing in the former places by their own votes, and those of their dependants in the latter, by their insinuations and the influence of their legers; that they are advancing fast to a monopoly of our banks and public funds, and thereby placing our public finances under their control; that they have in their alliance the most influential characters in and out of office; when they have shown that by all these bearings on the different branches of the government, they can force it to proceed in whatever direction they dictate, and bend the interests of this country entirely to the will of another; when all this, I say, is attended to, it is impossible for us to say we stand on independent ground-impossible for a free mind not to see and to groan under the bondage to which it is bound. If any thing after this could excite surprise, it would be that they have been able so far to throw dust in the eyes of our own citizens, as to fix on those who wish merely to recover self-government, the charge of subserving one foreign influence because they resist submission to another."

This picture of the means which England then possessed of influencing public opinion in the United States, will scarcely appear exaggerated to those who were acquainted with the state of the times; but it must be remembered that it required their united force to counteract the national animosity which the war of independence, then fresh in the recollections of all, had engendered, and the lively sympathy for the French nation felt by the American people. The very circumstance that the subjects of Great Britain, priding themselves on their birth-place, and avowing their attachment to her government, and hatred for her great rival, were to be seen in every part of our country, produced a degree of reaction which was sometimes equivalent to their direct influence. As a proof of it, the anti-Anglican VOL. II.-3

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