of 25,000, lived in a furnished palace, and became the chief magistrate of ten millions of people.

It was during this year that Mr. Jefferson became acquainted with John Ledyard, the American traveller, who had come to Paris with the hope of forming a company to engage in the fur trade of the western coast of America. Being disappointed in this project, Mr. Jefferson, knowing his enterprising character and love of travel, suggested to him to undertake to explore the American continent, by traversing Europe and Asia to Kamschatka, and crossing over from thence in a Russian vessel to Nootka sound, from which place he could travel over land to the United States. This scheme fell in so well with Ledyard's adventurous spirit, that he readily embraced it, and immediately took means for carrying it into execution.

Mr. Jefferson undertook to procure the permission of the empress of Russia, and for that purpose interested her minister, de Semoulin, and Baron Grimm, her special correspondent; but permission being refused, on the alleged ground that the enterprise was chimerical, Ledyard persevered, and set off for St. Petersburg, under the expectation of being able to convince the empress that his scheme was practicable. On his arrival there, finding that she was on a visit to the Crimea, he set out, and proceeded on towards the Pacific, but was soon arrested, by order of the empress, and sent back to Poland.

Ledyard expressed great gratitude to Mr. Jefferson for the attentions and other favours shown him while in Paris, and it would seem that he owed principally to Mr. Jefferson and the Marquis de La Fayette the means of support. In one of his letters to a friend, he says, “I make these trips to Paris often; sometimes to dine with this amiable Frenchman, (La Fayette,) and sometimes our minister, who is a brother to me."

There was at the time an air of mystery in the order made

* Mr. Jefferson was mistaken in supposing that Ledyard was within 200 miles of the Pacific coast. He reached no further than Yakutsk, which is reckoned to be 2017 versts, equal to 1345 miles from Kamschatka. When he was seized, he was 2855 versts from the Pacific, in consequence of having retraced a part of his course to accompany Captain Bellings, a Russian officer, to Irkutsk.

by the empress for Ledyard's seizure, the reason assigned being, that he was regarded as a French spy. It, however, is now evident that it originated either in the political jealousy of the government, which did not wish the attention of other powers called to the settlements the empress was then making on the north-west coast of America, or the commercial jealousy of the merchants at Irkutsk, who were engaged in the fur trade. Had he succeeded in reaching the north-west coast, it seems hardly possible he could have traversed this continent, without having his progress arrested by imprisonment or death, from some of the savage tribes whom he would have encountered in his journey. Nor would his voyage have cast much additional light, either on the character of the aborigines, or their origin. In their general appearance, the Indians of this continent resemble the Kalmucks of Asia enough to make it probable that they are scions of the same stock, as Ledyard believed, and it remains for the researches of philology, which has done so much in that way, to afford further proofs of their affinity.

Had Ledyard, however, succeeded in his subsequent attempt to penetrate into the interior of Africa, he might have anticipated much of that addition to geographical knowledge, which has been since made by Parke, Denham, Clapperton, and

others.

He seems to have felt the liveliest attachment to Mr. Jefferson. Though he lived only about three months after he arrived in Egypt, he wrote three letters to his benefactor. In one of them, he thus warmly expresses himself: "Having been in Cairo only four days, I have not seen much of particular interest for you; and, indeed, you will not expect much of this kind from me. My business is in another quarter, and the information I seek totally new. Any thing from this place would not be so.

"At all events, I shall never want a subject when it is to you I write. I shall never think my letter an indifferent one, when it contains the declaration of my gratitude and affection for you; and this, notwithstanding you thought hard of me for being employed by an English Association, which hurt me much while I was at Paris. You know your own heart, and if my suspi

cions are groundless, forgive them, since they proceed from the jealousy I have, not to lose the regard you have, in time past, been pleased to honour me with. You are not obliged to esteem me, but I am obliged to esteem you, or to take leave of my senses, and confront the opinions of the greatest and best characters I know. If I cannot, therefore, address myself to you as a man you regard, I must do it as one that regards you for your own sake, and for the sake of my country, which has set me the example."

In a letter to Mr. Jay, of January the 9th, Mr. Jefferson complains of the publication of his despatches of the 27th of May preceding, in which he had detailed a conversation with the Count de Vergennes on the subject of tobacco. "It will," he says, "tend to draw on the count the formidable phalanx of the farms; to prevent his committing himself to me in any conversasion which he does not mean for the public papers; to inspire the same diffidence into all other ministers with whom I might have to transact business; to defeat the little hope, if any hope existed, of getting rid of the farm on the article of tobacco; and to damp that freedom of communication which the resolution of Congress of May the 3d, 1784, was intended to re-establish."

His sensibility to every thing which might affect the reputation of his countrymen, even in small things, is manifested by a letter he wrote about this time to Monsieur de Creve Coeur, in which he asserted, for the farmers of New Jersey, the claim to the invention of the rim of a carriage wheel of one single piece, which had been recently spoken of in England, as an invention of that country. He says, the practice of making such wheels had long existed in New Jersey, and that it had been communicated by Dr. Franklin, when in London, to the very man who had there obtained the patent for it, as he had admitted to Mr. Jefferson himself.

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CHAPTER X.

Political troubles of France. Meeting of the Notables. Shay's insurrection in Massachusetts. Newspapers. Thoughts on Government. Navigation of the Mississippi. Visits the South of France. His style of travelling. Nismes. Secret overtures from a Brazilian and a Mexican. His views of the new Constitution of the United States. Debt due to French officers. Is joined by his younger daughter. Note to the French minister. Cultivation of the vine and olive compared. His opinions on the power of coercion on the states-Moral philosophy -Religion-Travelling. Advice in a law question. Statuary costume. Increasing discontents in France. Effects of European wars on the United States. Progress of the French Revolution. Letter to Mr. Wythe. Imports the bones of a Moose. Imputed project of the English ministry.

1787.

Ar this period, when nearly all Europe wore the face of peace and order; when its two most powerful states, England and France, had apparently laid aside not only their ancient animosity, but even their commercial jealousy, and had entered into a treaty of a more liberal character than the world had before witnessed, there were causes secretly at work to bring about a convulsion, which, besides overturning all former establishments, whether of policy, religion, or morals, in the country where it broke out, agitated to its centre every civilized nation on the globe. Other revolutions have decided the political destiny of nations have given freedom to people, or have transferred them from one set of rulers to another; yet customs, manners, habits, and ways of thinking remained unchanged. Even where conquest has been followed by a change in the institutions and character either of the vanquished or the victors, that

change has been gradual and slow. But in the French Revolution, the changes of power and of property, were not greater than that of opinion, and all these changes were almost immediate. The desire of reform soon became the love of innovation, until a prurient thirst for novelty, seeking gratification in every thing, from the highest to the lowest concerns of life, subverted all that seemed most stable by time, habit or affection.

Those who have speculated on this great event have dwelt on particular circumstances, as its direct causes, such as the financial embarrassments of the nation: the spirit of independence which had been for some years manifested by the Parliaments: the influence of their men of letters, who were mostly free thinkers in religion, and republicans in government: the American Revolution, the success of which, by gratifying the national pride of the French, had endeared its cause to their affections: and some have even supposed that, but for the imbecile character of Louis XVI. and the indiscretions of his queen, the throne of France would have yet retained its ancient splendour, and its monarch his place in the hearts of the people.

That each of these circumstances contributed to bring about the revolution at the precise time it happened, and to give it the very form and character it assumed, will be ready conceded: but it seems probable, that there were causes yet deeper than those, which had been long silently at work, and which must, at no remote period, have wrought an entire change in the civil condition of France, though none of the circumstances referred to had ever existed; though the American Revolution had not occurred; though the reigning monarch had possessed firmness and decision, and the Parliaments had wanted them; though Voltaire and Rousseau had never lived; and though the public debt had not exceeded the resources of the treasury.

If we take a general survey of the progress of society in modern Europe, we shall perceive the following great causes of change, operating steadily and universally, though with unequal steps, in different times and places: science of every description is constantly acquiring new facts, discovering new relations, and settling new principles: all the useful arts of life receive a simi