the attempt, which it is in their power to prolong as much as they please; and, at all events, they would boast of having endeavoured the recovery of what a former ministry had abandoned, it is possible."

"A similar surmise has come in a letter from a person in Rotterdam to one at this place. I am satisfied that the king of England believes the mass of our people to be tired of their independence, and desirous of returning under his government; and that the same opinion prevails in the ministry and nation. They have hired their news-writers to repeat this lie in their Gazettes so long, that they have become the dupes of it themselves. But there is no occasion to recur to this, in order to account for their arming. A more rational purpose avowed, that purpose executed, and when executed, a solemn agreement to disarm, seem to leave no doubt that the re-establishment of the stadtholder was their object. Yet, it is possible that, having found this court will not make war in this moment for an ally, new views may arise, and they may think the moment favourable for executing any purposes they may have in our quarter." He, therefore, earnestly recommends that the present season of truce, or peace, should be used to fill our magazines with arms.

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CHAPTER XI.

Mr. Jefferson's views of the Federal Constitution. His two principal objections. Visits Holland. National credit in Amsterdam. Prisoners in Algiers. Plan of liberating them. Expenses of American ministers. Consular convention. Gordon's History of the American Revolution. Some opinions in physical science-faith in its improvements. Silas Deane's letter book. Claims of French officers. Memoir on the admission of American fish oil into France. Asks leave to return home. Views of the future policy of the United States. Progress of the French Revolution. Meeting of the states-general. Scarcity of bread in Paris. Complaints of French officers against the United States.

1787-1789.

IN September, of the present year, the convention which had met in Philadelphia to form a federal constitution, terminated its labours, after a session of four months, with closed doors, and submitted the constitution it had framed to the people of the several states for their ratification. Mr. Jefferson seems, at an early period, to have been dissatisfied with it, both on account of some of the articles it contained, and of others it omitted. His opinions can be collected from his remarks to his several correspondents. It not only gratifies our curiosity to know the first impressions on this important subject, of one whose opinions afterwards became the standard of orthodoxy with the democratic party of the country, but as these speculations of Mr. Jefferson have been since tested by experience, they cannot but be instructive in the intricate science of government, whether that experience has tended to invalidate or confirm them.

In November he writes to Mr. Adams, "How do you like our new constitution? I confess there are things in it which stagger all my dispositions to subscribe to what such an assembly has proposed. The house of federal representatives will not be adequate to the management of affairs, either foreign or federal. Their president seems a bad edition of a Polish king. He may be elected from four years to four years for life. Reason and experience prove to us that a chief magistrate so continuable is an office for life. When one or two generations shall have proved that there is an office for life, it becomes on every succession worthy of intrigue, of bribery, force, and even of foreign interference. It will be of great consequence to France and England to have America governed by a Galloman or Angloman. Once in office, and possessing the military force of the union without the aid or check of a council, he would not be easily dethroned, even if the people could be induced to withdraw their votes from him. I wish at the end of the four years they had made him for ever ineligible a second time."

To Colonel Smith he says of the constitution, "there are very good articles in it, and very bad. I do not know which preponderate. What we have lately read in the history of Holland, in the chapter on the stadtholder, would have sufficed to set me against a chief magistrate eligible for a long duration, if I had ever been disposed towards one: and what we have always read of the elections of Polish kings, would have forever excluded the idea of one continuable for life." Apprehending that arguments would be drawn for this enlargement of the powers of the federal government generally, and of its executive, in particular, from the recent insurrection in Massachusetts, he speaks of it not only as an unimportant affair, but as scarcely to be deprecated. "God forbid," he exclaims, "we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion. The people cannot be all, and always well informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented, in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions, it is a lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. We have had thirteen states independent for eleven

years. There has been one rebellion. That comes to one rebellion in a century and a half for each state. What country before ever existed a century and a half without a rebellion? And what country can preserve its liberties, if its rulers are not warned, from time to time, that this people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed, from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure. Our convention has been too much impressed by the insurrection of Massachusetts; and on the spur of the moment, they are setting up a kite to keep the henyard in order."

But in a letter to Mr. Madison, in December, he discloses his opinions more at length. The features of the constitution which he approved, were the self-acting power of the general government, by which it could peaceably go on without recurring to the state legislatures: the separation of the legislative, executive and judiciary powers: the powers of taxation given to the Legislature: and the election of the House of Representatives by the people. He doubts, however, whether the members would be as well qualified for their duties when chosen by the people, as if they were chosen by the Legislature. He was captivated by the compromise between the great and the small states-the latter, having the equality they asserted in the Senate; the former, the proportion of influence they regarded as their right in the House of Representatives. He preferred too the voting by persons, instead of by states: and he approved the qualified negative given to the executive, though he would have liked it still better if the judiciary had been invested with a similar check.

The grounds of his disapprobation were, the omission of a bill of rights, providing, clearly and without the aid of sophisms, for the freedom of religion, freedom of the press, security against standing armies, restriction of monopolies, trial by jury, and against all suspensions of the habeas corpus. He denied the principle that all is reserved which is not given to the gene

ral government; because he thought that inferences to the contrary might be drawn from the instrument itself, and because, in the articles of the old confederation, there was such an express reservation. He also disliked the abandonment of the principle of rotation in office, especially in that of the president, and infers that, in consequence of the omission, he will be elected for life. The election of a president of America, he thinks, will some years hence be much more interesting to some nations of Europe than the election of a king of Poland ever was. He presses this point at great length, by arguments drawn from the examples of the Roman Emperors, the Popes, Emperors of Germany, Kings of Poland, and Deys of the Ottoman Empire: and he ascribes what he regards as too liberal a grant of power to the federal government, to the alarm excited by the Massachusetts insurrection. He speaks lightly of this; and having appealed to experience, to decide whether peace is best preserved by giving energy to the government, or information to the people, he thus concludes: "This last, is the most certain and the most legitimate engine of government. Educate and inform the whole mass of the people. Enable them to see that it is their interest to preserve peace and order, and they will preserve them. And it requires no very high degree of education to convince them of this. They are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty. After all, it is my principle, that the will of the majority should prevail. If they approve the proposed construction in all its parts, I shall concur in it cheerfully, in hopes they will amend it, whenever they shall find it works wrong."

To another friend he writes, "as to the new constitution, I find myself nearly a neutral. There is a great mass of good in it, in a very desirable form; but there is also, to me, a bitter pill or two.

He seems to have gradually become more in favour of it as a whole, and to have looked to amendments for the purpose of incorporating with it a bill of rights, and such other principles as he deemed salutary. To the re-cligibility of the president, he never ceases to object, as immediately pregnant with the