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1789.]

THOMAS JEFFERSON.

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avowed at an early date in his draft of the Declaration of Independence, and subsequently in the successful war which he made upon the old cavalier traditions of his native State; its laws of entails and primogeniture, and its church establishment, a war which broke down the hereditary fortunes and hereditary families, and put an end to the hereditary aristocracy of the Ancient Dominion.

Being sent to Paris as minister plenipotentiary a year or two after the peace, he arrived there, as he says, "when the American revolution seemed to have awakened the thinking part of the French nation from the sleep of despotism in which they had been sunk."

Carrying with him his republican principles and zeal, his house became the resort of Lafayette and others of the French officers who had served in the American revolution. They were mostly, he said, young men little shackled by habits and prejudices, and had come back with new ideas and new impressions which began to be disseminated by the press and in conversation. Politics became the theme of all societies, male and female, and a very extensive and zealous party was formed which acquired the appellation of the Patriot Party, who, sensible of the abuses of the government under which they lived, sighed for occasions of reforming it. This party, writes Jefferson, "comprehended all the honesty of the kingdom sufficiently at leisure to think, the men of letters, the easy bourgeois, the young nobility, partly from reflection, partly from the mode; for these sentiments became matter of mode, and, as such, united most of the young women to the party."

By this party Jefferson was considered high authority from his republican principles and experience, and his advice was con

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