lity, I pray you to accept the homage of the great and constant respect and attachment with which I have the honour to be "TH: JEFFERSON."

He soon after set out for Monticello, where he hoped to find that peace of mind which public employment had long since ceased to afford him.

467

CHAPTER XIX.

Mr. Jefferson's motives for retiring from public life. His continued connexion with the Republican Party. Description of Monticello. Mr. Madison's Commercial Restrictions-arguments for and against them in Congress. State of parties on this Question. A naval force provided. British Order in Council of the 5th of November. The Measures in Congress to which it gave rise. The Chief Justice sent as Minister to England. Each party accuses the other of foreign attachments. Arrangement of each under different classes of citi

zens.

1794.

THUS Mr. Jefferson, after having been actively engaged in the affairs of his country at home and abroad, for twenty-five years, had now, at the age of fifty, returned to private life, for which he had qualities and resources that peculiarly fitted him, and for which too he had always expressed a strong predilection. Here he would find leisure to gratify his lively relish for letters; to make observations in physics and natural history; and, in the society of his daughters and grandchildren, cultivate the domestic affections. With these sources of happiness, which were more fondly desired from their having been hitherto enjoyed only at brief intervals, and his rare cheerfulness of temper, he would probably have been content to pass the remainder of his life at Monticello with as little of repining or chagrin as ever attended the premature retirement of a states

man.

His motives for withdrawing from public affairs have been, as usual, variously interpreted by his friends and his enemies. The

former alleged that, dissatisfied with some parts of the policy of the administration, discouraged by his failure to defeat the most pernicious of Hamilton's measures, and harassed by the labours of incessant controversy in the cabinet and out of it, he had determined to bid a final adieu to a life of vexation and disappointment; and that since it was not allowed him to serve his country by his counsels, he had sought peace in unambitious and philosophical retirement. But his political adversaries denied that private life was his ultimate object. They insisted, on the contrary, that it was used as a more effectual means for the furtherance of his ambitious views; that in the attitude in which he had been recently placed of defending the executive and of opposing Genet, he was in danger of losing the confidence and affections of the party to whom he had hitherto looked for support; and there could be no better time for him to retreat from so delicate a position than when his late official support of the administration had softened his opponents, and even won from them a certain degree of favour, without sensibly diminishing the confidence and adherence of his own party; and that he now withdrew from public affairs in the full expectation of being a candidate for the presidency, on the retirement of General Washington.

It is not always practicable to fathom men's motives, for they are sometimes not known or not distinctly avowed to themselves. Mr. Jefferson's own declarations repeatedly made with every appearance of sincerity, and consistently with his frequent refusals of public office and resignations after he had accepted, all concur to assure us that he would have contentedly remained a private individual at Monticello. It is not, however, to be supposed that he felt indifferent to the great events which were then passing in Europe, and still less to the political contests of the day in his own country; nor with his views, would such apathy have been creditable to his patriotism or love of civil liberty. He meant no doubt in his retirement to keep a watchful eye on the proceedings both of Congress and the administration, and to avail himself of his popularity in the nation, to counteract by his counsels the antirepublican tendencies of

the men in power, and of the English party generally. Whether there mingled with these feelings the ambition of attaining the chief power himself cannot now be known. But it is reasonable to suppose that he was not exempt from the desire of self-aggrandizement, if it could be attained without undue sacrifices. With ambition thus tempered and regulated, whether it was disguised from him or not, it seems unfair to charge with him affecting the virtues of humility, and with pretending to disclaim and despise what he secretly coveted, and sedulously sought to attain.

But whatever may have been his views in retiring, he was destined not long to remain in a state of quiet neutrality. The unanimous voice of his party soon proclaimed him the man of their choice to succeed General Washington; and as it is not known that he made any very earnest opposition to their wishes, it may be presumed that he contented himself with a passive acquiescence. The part which he did take, after it was distinctly ascertained that he was to be the candidate of the democratic party, cannot now be easily traced. There is little evidence of it to be found in his correspondence; and there probably never existed any other, except in the conversations and suggestions which passed between him and his numerous visiters, and from them were diffused throughout Virginia, and even the union. Of these, there remains no memorial save what may still linger in the faded recollections of his surviving fellow labourers. It is certain that Monticello was, in this and the two succeeding years, the head-quarters of those opposed to the federal policy, and that few measures of the republican party in Congress were undertaken without his advice or concurrence. He even had an agency in directing the attacks of the opposition journals; and manuscript draughts of bills, resolutions, and reports prepared by him about that period, are yet exhibited by those who are curious in autographs, or in the political history of the times. Some of the members of Congress from Virginia, Kentucky, and the southern states, were his intimate friends; and with a part of these he communicated not only by letter, but also by a personal intercourse during the summer on their

visits to the watering-places in the mountains of Virginia. Among his most frequent visiters were Mr. Madison, Mr. Monroe, and Mr. Giles.

It would seem that no course could have been more prudent, if political advancement had been Mr. Jefferson's object, than that which he took in withdrawing from public affairs. The impression was universal that he had quitted the administration because he did not cordially approve its course; and while he thus secured the confidence and favour of one party, the negative character of a retreat from the field of contest, did not ex cite the hostility of the other; and the ability with which he had defended the administration against the complaints of Mr. Genet, had even obtained for him a portion of their esteem and respect. This minister, by his intemperate zeal, had offered himself as a victim by which Mr. Jefferson was able to propitiate his enemies without giving offence to his friends.

The letters of Mr. Jefferson, written about this time, all speak of his having abstracted himself from politics, and that he was engrossed by the appropriate pursuits of a country gentleman in Virginia. The first which he wrote after his return to Monticello was addressed to his successor, Mr. Edmund Randolph, and dated Feb. 3d, 1794. In that he asserts that he read no newspapers, except those of Richmond, and that he indulged himself in a single political topic; and this was, he says, in declaring to his countrymen "the shameless corruption of a portion of the representatives in the first and second Congresses, and their implicit devotion to the treasury. I think," he adds, "I do good in this, because it may produce exertions to reform the evil, on the success of which the form of the government is to depend."

In another letter to Mr. Madison, dated April 3d, he also remarks: "I have never seen a Philadelphia paper since I left it, till those you enclosed me; and I feel myself so thoroughly weaned from the interest I took in the proceedings there, while there, that I have never had a wish to see one, and believe that I shall never take another newspaper of any sort. I find my mind totally absorbed in my rural occupations."