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true that a poor attempt was made in aftertimes to wound the honor of his administration. But he bore a charmed character; and this, like every other blow that has ever been aimed at it, only recoiled to crush his accuser, and to leave him the brighter and stronger for the assault.

Mr. Jefferson, meanwhile, was not less strenuously and successfully engaged at home, in forwarding and confirming the great objects of the Revolution, and making it a revolution of mind, as well as of government. Marking, with that sagacity which distinguished him, the series of inventions by which tyranny had contrived to tutor the mind to subjection, and educate it in In 1781, his alert and active mind, which habits of servile subordination, he proceeded in watched the rising character of his new-born Virginia, with the aid of Pendleton and Wythe, country with all the jealous vigilance of an anxto break off the manacles, one by one, and de-ious father, found a new occasion to call him liver the imprisoned intellect from this debasing into the intellectual field. Our country was yet sorcery. The law of entails, that feudal con- | but imperfectly known in Europe. Its face, its trivance to foster and nourish a vicious aristoc- soil, its physical capacities, its animals, and racy at the expense of the community, had at a even the men who inhabited it, were so little previous period been broken up, on their sug- known, as to have furnished to philosophers gestion; and property was left to circulate abroad a theme of unfounded and degrading freely, and impart health and vigor to the ope- speculation. Those visionaries, dreaming over rations of society. The law of primogeniture, theories which they wanted the means or the that other feudal contrivance to create and inclination to confront with facts, had advanced, keep up an artificial inequality among men among others, the fantastic notion, that even whom their Creator had made equal, was now man degenerated by transplantation to Amerrepealed, and the parent and his children were ica. To refute this insolent position, and to restored to their natural religion. And, above place his country before Europe and the world all, that daring usurpation on the rights of the on the elevated ground she was entitled to hold, Creator, as well as the creature, which pre- the Notes on Virginia were prepared and pubsumes to dictate to man what he shall believe, lished. He there pointed to Washington, to and in what form he shall offer the worship of Franklin, and to Rittenhouse, as being alone his heart, and this, too, for the vile purpose of sufficient to exterminate this heresy; and we strengthening the hands of a temporal tyrant, may now point to Jefferson and to Adams, as by feeding and pampering the tools of his power, sufficient to annihilate it. This pure and proud was indignantly demolished, and the soul was offering on the altar of his country, "The Notes restored to its free communion with the God on Virginia," honored its author abroad not who gave it. less than at home; and when, shortly afterwards, the public service called him to Europe, it gave him a prompt and distinguished passport into the highest circles of science and literature.

The preamble to the bill establishing religious freedom in Virginia, is one of the most morally sublime of human productions. By its great author it was always esteemed as one of his happiest efforts, and the measure itself one of his best services, as the short and modest epitaph left by him attests. Higher praise cannot and need not be given to it than to say, it is in in all respects worthy of the pen which wrote the Declaration of Independence; that it breathes the same lofty and noble spirit, and is a fit companion for that immortal instrument.

The legislative enactments that have been mentioned, form a small part only of an entire revision of the laws of Virginia. The collection of bills passed by these great men (one hundred and twenty-six in number), presents a system of jurisprudence, so comprehensive, profound and beautiful, so perfectly, so happily adapted to the new state of things, that, if its authors had never done any thing else, impartial history would have assigned them a place by the side of Solon and Lycurgus.

Thus actively and usefully employed in guarding the fame, and advancing the honor and happiness of his country, the war of the Revolution came to its close; and on the 19th of October, 1781, of which this day is the anniversary, Great Britain bowed to the ascendency of our cause. Her last effective army struck her standard on the heights of York, and peace and independence came to bless our land.

Mr. Adams was still abroad when this great consummation of his early hopes took place; and, although the war was over, a difficult task still remained to be performed. The terms of peace were yet to be arranged, and to be arranged under circumstances of the most complicated embarrassment. That the acknowledgment of our independence was to be its first and indispensable condition was well understood; and Mr. Adams, then at the Hague, with that In 1779, Mr. Jefferson was called to assume decision which always marked his character, the helm of government in Virginia, in succes- refused to leave his post and take part in the sion to Patrick Henry. He took that helm at negotiation at Paris, until the powers of the the moment when war, for the first time, had British commissioner should be so enlarged as entered the limits of the commonwealth. With to authorize him to make that acknowledgment what strength, fidelity, and ability he held it, unequivocally. I will not detain you by a reunder the most trying circumstances, the high-hearsal of what you so well know, the difficul est testimonials now stand on the journals of ties and intricacies by which this negotiation Congress, as well as those of Virginia. It is was protracted. Suffice it to say, that the firm

ness and skill of the American commissioners | diversified continent: discussions with the ministriumphed on every point. The treaty of peace was executed, and the last seal was thus put to the independence of these States.

Thus closed the great drama of the American Revolution. And here for a moment let us pause. If the services of our departed fathers had closed at this point, as it did with many of their compatriots-with too many, if the wishes and prayers of their country could have averted it-what obligations, what honors, should we not owe to their memories! What would not the world owe to them! But, as if they had not already done enough, as if, indeed, they had done nothing while any thing yet remained to be done, they were ready, with renovated youth and elastic step, to take a new start in the career of their emancipated country.

The Federal Constitution was adopted, and a new leaf was turned in the history of man. With what characters the page should be inscribed-whether it should open a great era of permanent good to the human family, or pass away like a portent of direful evil, was now to depend on the wisdom and virtue of America. At this time our two great patriots were both abroad in the public service: Mr. Adams in England, where, in 1787, he refuted, by his great work, "The Defence of the American Constitutions," the wild theories of Turgot, De Mably, and Price; and Mr. Jefferson in France, where he was presenting in his own person a living and splendid refutation of the notion of degeneracy in the American man. On the adoption of the Federal Constitution, they were both called home, to lend the weight of their character and talents to this new and momentous experiment on the capacity of man for self-government. Mr. Adams was called to fill the second office under the new government, the first having been justly conferred by the rule "detur fortiori:" and Mr. Jefferson, to take the direction of the highest Executive Department. The office of Vice President afforded, as you are aware, no scope for the public display of talent. But the leisure which it allowed, enabled Mr. Adams to pour out from his full fraught mind, another great political work, his Discourses on Davila; and, while he presided over the Senate with unexceptionable dignity and propriety, President Washington always found in him an able and honest adviser, in whom his confidence was implicit and unbounded.

Mr. Jefferson had a theatre that called for action. The Department of State was now, for the first time, to be organized. Its operations were all to be moulded into system, and an intellectual character was to be given to it, as well as the government to which it belonged, before this nation and before the world. The frequent calls made by Congress for reports on the most abstruse questions of science connected with government, and on those vast and novel and multifarious subjects of political economy, peculiar to this wide-extended and

ters of foreign governments, more especially with those of France and England and Spain, on those great and agitating questions of international law, which were then continually arising; and instructions to our own ministers abroad, resident at the courts of the great belligerent powers, and who had consequently the most delicate and discordant interests to manage; presented a series of labors for the mind, which few, very few men in this or any other country could have sustained with reputation. How Mr. Jefferson acquitted himself, you all know. It is one of the peculiarities of his character to have discharged the duties of every office to which he was called, with such exact, appropriate, and felicitous ability, that he seemed, for the time, to have been born for that alone. As an evidence of the unanimous admiration of the matchless skill and talent with which he discharged the duties of this office, I hope it may be mentioned, without awaking any asperity of feeling, that when, at a subsequent period, he was put in a nomination by his friends for the office of President, his adversaries publicly objected-" that nature had made him only for a Secretary of State."

President Washington having set the great example, which has ingrafted on the constitution as firmly as if it had formed one of its express provisions, the principle of retiring from the office of President at the end of eight years, Mr. Adams succeeded him, and Mr. Jefferson followed Mr. Adams in the office of Vice President.

Mr. Adams came into the office of President at a time of great commotion, produced chiefly by the progress of the revolution in France, and those strong sympathies which it naturally generated here. The spirit of party was high, and in the feverish excitement of the day much was said and done, on both sides, which the voice of impartial history, if it shall descend to such details, will unquestionably condemn, and which the candid and the good on both sides lived, themselves, to regret. One incident I will mention, because it is equally honorable to both the great men whom we are uniting in these obsequies. In Virginia where the opposition ran high, the younger politicians of the day, taking their tone from the public journals, have, on more occasions than one, in the presence of Mr. Jefferson, imputed to Mr. Adams a concealed design to sap the foundations of the republic, and to supply its place with a monarchy, on the British model. The uniform answer of Mr. Jefferson to this charge will never be forgotten by those who have heard it, and of whom (as I have recently had occasion to prove) there are many still living, besides the humble individual who is now addressing you. It was this: "Gentlemen, you do not know that man: there is not upon this earth a more perfectly honest man than John Adams. Concealment is no part of his character; of that he is utterly incapable: it is not in his nature

to meditate any thing that that he would not publish to the world. The measures of the general government are a fair subject for difference of opinion. But do not found your opinions on the notion, that there is the smallest spice of dishonesty, moral or political, in the character of John Adams; for I know him well, and I repeat it, that a man more perfectly honest never issued from the hands of his Creator." And such is now, and has long been, the unanimous opinion of his countrymen.

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lican administration, on the true basis, and in the true spirit of the constitution; and that by them the measures of all the succeeding administrations have been continually brought to the standard of Mr. Jefferson's, as to an established and unquestionable test, and approved or condemned in proportion to their accordance with that standard. These are facts which are known to you all. Another fact I will mention, because it redounds so highly to the honor of his magnanimous and patriotic rival. It is this: that that part of Mr. Jefferson's administration, and of his successor treading in his steps, which was most violently opposed, the policy pursued towards the British Government subsequent to 1806, received the open, public, and powerful support of the pen, as well as the tongue, of the great sage of Quincy. The banished Aristides never gave a nobler proof of pure and disinterested patriotism. It was a genuine emanation from the altar of the Revolution, and in perfect accordance with the whole tenor of the life of our illustrious patriot sage.

Of the measures adopted during his administration you do not expect me to speak. I should offend against your own sense of propriety were I to attempt it. We are here to mingle together over the grave of the departed patriot, our feelings of reverence and gratitude for services whose merit we all acknowledge: and cold must be the heart which does not see and feel, in his life, enough to admire and to love, without striking one string that could produce one unhallowed note. History and biography will do ample justice to every part of his character, public and private; and impartial posterity will correct whatever errors Waiving all comment on Mr. Jefferson's pubof opinion may have been committed to his lic measures, there is yet a minor subject, which, prejudice by his cotemporaries. Let it suffice standing where we do, seems to be a peculiar for us, at this time, to know, that he adminis-propriety in noticing; for, small as it is, it is tered the government with a pure, and honest, and upright heart; and that whatever he advised, flowed from the master passion of his breast, a holy and all-absorbing love for the happiness and honor of his country.

Mr. Jefferson, holding the Vice Presidency, did not leave even that negative office, as, indeed, he never left any other, without marking his occupancy with some useful and permanent vestige. For it was during this term that he digested and compiled that able manual which now gives the law of proceeding, not only to the two Houses of Congress, but to all the legislatures of the States throughout the Union. On Mr. Adams's retirement, pursuing the destiny which seems to have tied them together, Mr. Jefferson again followed him in the office which he had vacated, the Presidency of the United States; and he had the good fortune to find, or to make a smoother sea. The violence of the party storm gradually abated, and he was soon able to pursue his peaceful course without any material interruption. Having forborne, for the obvious reasons which have been suggested, to touch the particulars of Mr. Adams's administration, the same forbearance, for the same reasons, must be exercised with regard to Mr. Jefferson. But, forbearing details, it will be no departure from this rule to state in general the facts, that Mr. Jefferson continued at the helm for eight years, the term which the example of Washington had consecrated; that he so administered the government as to meet the admiration and applause of a great majority of his countrymen, as the overwhelming suffrage at his second election attests; that by that majority he was thought

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strikingly characteristic of the man, and we have an immediate interest in the subject. It is this: the great objects of national concern, and the great measures which he was continually projecting and executing for the public good, on a new and vast scheme of policy wholly his own, and stamped with all the vigor and grandeur of his Olympic mind, although they were such as would not only have engrossed but overwhelmed almost any other man, did not even give full employment to him; but with that versatile and restless activity which was prone to busy itself usefully and efficaciously with all around him, he found time to amuse himself and to gratify his natural taste for the beautiful, by directing and overlooking in person, (as many of you can witness,) the improve ments and ornaments of this city of the nation: and it is to his taste and industry that we owe, among other things which it were needless to enumerate, this beautiful avenue,* which he left in such order as to excite the admiration of all who approached us.

Having closed his administration, he was followed by the applause, the gratitude, and blessings of his country, into that retirement which no man was ever better fitted to grace and enjoy. And from this retirement, together with his precursor, the venerable patriarch of Quincy could enjoy that supreme of all earthly happiness, the retrospect of a life well and greatly spent in the service of his country and mankind. The successful warrior, who has desolated whole empires for his own aggrandizement, the successful usurper of his country's rights and liberties, may have their hours of

Pennsylvania Avenue.

swelling pride, in which they may look back with a barbarous joy upon the triumph of their talents, and feast upon the adulation of the sycophants that surround them: but night and silence come; and conscience takes her turn. The bloody field rises upon the startled imagination. The shades of the slaughtered innocent stalk, in terrific procession, before the couch. The agonizing cry of countless widows and orphans invades the ear. The bloody dagger of the assassin plays in airy terror before the vision. Violated liberty lifts her avenging lance and a down-trodden nation rises before them in all the majesty of its wrath. What, what are the hours of a splendid wretch like this, compared with those that shed their poppies and their roses upon the pillows of our peaceful and virtuous patriots! Every night bringing to them the balm and health of repose, and every morning offering to them "their history in a nation's eyes!" This, this it is to be greatly virtuous: and be this the only ambition that shall ever touch an American bosom !

Still unexhausted by such a life of service in the cause of his country, Mr. Jefferson found yet another and most appropriate employment for his old age; the erection of a seat of science in his native State. The University of Virginia is his work. His, the first conception; his, the whole impulse and direction; his, the varied and beautiful architecture, and the entire superintendence of its erection: the whole scheme of its studies, its organization, and government, are his. He is, therefore, indeed the father of the University of Virginia. That it may fulfil, to the full extent, the great and patriotic purposes and hopes of its founder, cannot fail to be the wish of every American bosom. This was the last and crowning labor of Mr. Jefferson's life: a crown so poetically appropriate, that fancy might well suppose it to have been wreathed and placed on his brow by the hand of the epic muse herself.

It is the remark of one of the most elegant writers of antiquity, in the beautiful essay which he has left us "on Old Age," that "to those who have not within themselves the resources of living well and happily, every age is oppressive; but that to those who have, nothing is an evil which the necessity of nature brings along with it." How rich our two patriots were in these internal resources, you all know. How lightly they bore the burden of increasing years was apparent from the cheerfulness and vigor with which, after having survived the age to which they properly belonged, they continued to live among their posterity. How happy they were in their domestic relations, how beloved by their neighbors and friends, how revered and honored by their country and by the friends of liberty in every quarter of the world, is a matter of open and public notoriety. Their houses were the constant and thronged resort of the votaries of virtue, and science, and genius, and patriotism, from every portion of the civilized globe; and no one ever left them without

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confessing that his highest expectations had been realized, and even surpassed in the interview.

Of "the chief of the Argonauts," as Mr. Jefferson so classically and so happily styled his illustrious friend of the north, it is my misfortune to be able to speak only by report. But every representation concurs in drawing the same pleasing and affecting picture of the Roman simplicity in which that Father of his Country lived; of the frank, warm, cordial, and elegant reception that he gave to all who approached him; of the interesting kindness with which he disbursed the golden treasures of his experience, and shed around him the rays of his descending sun. His conversation was rich in anecdote and characters of the times that were past; rich in political and moral instruction; full of that best of wisdom which is learnt from real life, and flowing from his heart with that warm and honest frankness, that fervor of feeling and force of diction, which so strikingly distinguished him in the meridian of his life. Many of us heard that simple and touching account_given of a parting scene with him, by one of our eloquent divines: When he rose up from that little couch behind the door, on which he was wont to rest his aged and weary limbs, and with his silver locks hanging on each side of his honest face, stretched forth that pure hand, which was never soiled even by suspicion, and gave his kind and parting benediction. Such was the blissful and honored retirement of the sage of Quincy. Happy the life, which, verging upon a century, had met with but one serious political disappointment! and even for that, he had lived to receive a golden atonement, "even in that quarter in which he had garnered up his heart."

Let us now turn for a moment to the patriot of the south. The Roman moralist, in that great work which he has left for the government of man in all the offices of life, has descended even to prescribe the kind of habitation in which an honored and distinguished man should dwell. It should not, he says, be small, and mean, and sordid: nor, on the other hand, extended with profuse and wanton extravagance. It should be large enough to receive and accommodate the visitors which such a man never fails to attract, and suited in its ornaments, as well as its dimensions, to the character and fortune of the individual. Monticello has now lost its great charm. Those of you who have not already visited it, will not be very apt to visit it, hereafter; and, from the feelings which you cherish for its departed owner, I persuade myself, that you will not be displeased with a brief and rapid sketch of that abode of domestic bliss, that temple of science. Nor is it, indeed, foreign to the express purpose of this meeting, which, in looking to "his life and character," naturally embraces his home and his domestic habits. Can any thing be indifferent to us, which was so dear to him, and which was a subject of such just admiration to

the hundreds and thousands that were contin- | array of the fossil productions of our country, ually resorting to it, as to an object of pious pil-mineral and animal; the polished remains of grimage?

those colossal monsters that once trod our forests, and are no more; and a variegated display of the branching honors of those "monarchs of the waste," that still people the wilds of the American Continent.

From this hall he was ushered into a noble saloon, from which the glorious landscape of the west again bursts upon his view; and which, within, is hung thick around with the finest productions of the pencil-historical paintings of the most striking subjects from all countries, and all ages; the portraits of distinguished men and patriots, both of Europe and America, and medallions and engravings in end

The mansion house at Monticello, was built and furnished in the days of his prosperity. In its dimensions, its architecture, its arrangements, and ornaments, it is such a one as became the character and fortune of the man. It stands upon an elliptic plain, formed by cutting down the apex of a mountain; and, on the west, stretching away to the north and the south, it commands a view of the Blue Ridge for a hundred and fifty miles, and brings under the eye one of the boldest and most beautiful horizons in the world: while, on the east, it presents an extent of prospect, bounded only by the spherical form of the earth, in which na-less profusion. ture seems to sleep in eternal repose, as if to While the visitor was yet lost in the contemform one of her finest contrasts with the rude plation of these treasures of the arts and scienand rolling grandeur on the west. In the wide ces, he was startled by the approach of a strong prospect, and scattered to the north and south, and sprightly step, and turning with instinctive are several detached mountains, which contrib-reverence to the door of entrance, he was met ute to animate and diversify this enchanting by the tall, and animated, and stately figure of landscape; and among them, to the south Wil- the patriot himself-his countenance beaming liss' Mountain, which is so interestingly depicted with intelligence and benignity, and his outin his Notes. From this summit, the Philoso- stretched hand with its strong and cordial prespher was wont to enjoy that spectacle, among sure, confirming the courteous welcome of his the sublimest of nature's operations, the loom- lips. And then came that charm of manner ing of the distant mountains; and to watch the and conversation that passes all description-so motions of the planets, and the greater revolu- cheerful-so unassuming so free, and easy, and tion of the celestial sphere. From this summit, frank, and kind, and gay-that even the young too, the Patriot could look down, with uninter- and overawed, and embarrassed visitor at once rupted vision, upon the wide expanse of the forgot his fears, and felt himself by the side of world around, for which he considered himself an old and familiar friend. There was no effort, born; and upward, to the open and vaulted no ambition in the conversation of the philoso heavens which he seemed to approach, as if to pher. It was as simple and unpretending as keep him continually in mind of his high re- nature itself. And while in this easy manner sponsibility. It is indeed a prospect in which he was pouring out instruction, like light from you see and feel, at once, that nothing mean or an inexhaustible solar fountain, he seemed conlittle could live. It is a scene fit to nourish those tinually to be asking, instead of giving informagreat and high-souled principles which formed tion. The visitor felt himself lifted, by the conthe elements of his character, and was a most tact, into a new and nobler region of thought, noble and appropriate post for such a sentinel and became surprised at his own buoyancy and over the rights and liberties of man. vigor. He could not, indeed, help being astounded, now and then, at those transcendent leaps of the mind, which he saw made without the slightest exertion, and the ease with which this wonderful man played with subjects which he had been in the habit of considering among the argumenta crucis of the intellect. then there seemed to be no end to his knowledge. He was a thorough master of every subject that was touched. From the details of the humblest mechanic art, up to the highest summit of science, he was perfectly at his ease, and every where at home. There seemed to be no longer any terra incognita of the human understanding: for, what the visitor had thought so, he now found reduced to a familiar garden walk; and all this carried off so lightly, so playfully, so gracefully, so engagingly, that he won every heart that approached him, as certainly as he astonished every mind.

Approaching the house on the east, the visitor instinctively paused, to cast around one thrilling glance at this magnificent panorama: and then passed to the vestibule, where, if he had not been previously informed, he would immediately perceive that he was entering the house of no common man. In the spacious and lofty hall which opens before him, he marks no tawdry and unmeaning ornaments; but before, on the right, on the left, all around, the eye is struck and gratified with objects of science and taste, so classed and arranged as to produce their finest effect. On one side, specimens of sculpture set out, in such order, as to exhibit at a coup d'ail the historical progress of that art; from the first rude attempts of the aborigines of our country, up to that exquisite and finished bust of the great patriot himself, from the master hand of Caracci. On the other side, the visitor sees displayed a vast collection of specimens of Indian art, their paintings, weapons,

ements and manufactures; on another, an

And

Mr. Jefferson was wont to remark, that he never left the conversation of Dr. Franklin without carrying away with him something

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