the most promising subjects from the elementary schools, whose parents were too poor to educate them, who should be transferred to the district institutions at the public expense. And from the district institutions also, a certain number annually were to be selected, of the most promising character, but whose parents were unable to incur the burthen, who should be sent on to the University, to receive the ultimate degree of intellectual cultivation. Genius and worth would thus be sought out of every walk of life; and, to adopt a favorite sentiment of the author, the veritable aristocracy of nature would be completely prepared by the laws, for defying and defeating the pseudo-aristocracy of wealth and birth, in the competition for public trusts.

It was farther in the contemplation of the author, had his system been carried into operation, to have imparted to the wards or hundreds, all those portions of self-government, for which they are best qualified; by confiding to them the care of their poor, their roads, police, elections, the nomination of jurors, administration of justice in small cases, and elementary exercises of militia; in short, to have made them little republics, with a warden at the head of each, for all those concerns which, being under their eye, they would better manage than the larger republics of the county, or State. A general call of ward meetings by the wardens, on the same day throughout the State, would at any time embody the genuine sense of the people, on any required point, and present a forcible illustration of democratic govern

ment.

The three several bills, for the ward schools, the district institutions, the University, and for the establishment of a library and gallery, were all brought before the legislature, in the year 1796. The first only was acted upon, and finally adopted; but with an amendment which completely 'defeated it. They inserted a provision leaving it to the court of each county to de

termine for itself, when the act should be carried into execution. The effect of the bill being to throw on wealth the education of the poor, and the justices being unwilling to incur the responsibility, the plan was not suffered to commence in a single county. The proposition to erect the College of William and Mary into a University, encountered insuperable impediments. The present college was an establishment purely of the church of England; the visitors were required to be all of that church; the professors to subscribe its thirtynine articles; the students to learn its catechism; and one of its fundamental objects was declared to be, to raise up ministers for that church. The dissenters took alarm, lest the enlargement of the institution might give an ascendency to the Anglican seet, and refused to act upon the proposition. The bill for the establishment of a library and gallery met a similar fate; and thus no part of this grand and beneficial system was ever permitted to take effect.

6

Perhaps there was no one feature of the revised code, on which Mr Jefferson placed a more justly exalted estimate, than that which proposed the diffusion of education universally and impartially among the people. Knowledge is unquestionably, to use an expression of his own, the key-stone of the political arch,' in popular governments, and the only foundation which can be laid for permanent freedom and prosperity. Upon this point he was enthusiastically pertinacious. His efforts were perseveringly directed to its attainment, in the form originally proposed by him, on all possible occasions which subsequently offered; and on his final retirement from public affairs, he made it the great business of his life. Being in Europe, as before stated, at the time the main body of the revisal was entered on, he was prevented from raising his voice and uttering his opinions in the legislature, with the power and authority he had formerly done; but his letters to

his friends in Virginia, of that date, abound with the most eloquent persuasions of the importance of carrying into effect those portions of the work, which he deemed most essential to the freedom and happiness of the people. Among these, the bill under consideration occupied a prominent share of his solicitude; as is manifested by the following extract of a letter to Mr Wythe, dated Paris, August 13, 1786.

'I think by far the most important bill in our whole code, is that for the diffusion of knowledge among the people. No other sure foundation can be devised for the preservation of freedom and happiness. If any body thinks, that kings, nobles, or priests are good conservators of the public happiness, send him here. It is the best school in the universe to cure him of that folly. He will see here, with his own eyes, that these descriptions of men are an abandoned confederacy against the happiness of the mass of the people. The omnipotence of their effect cannot be better proved, than in this country particularly, where, notwithstanding the finest soil upon earth, the finest climate under heaven, and a people of the most benevolent, the most gay and amiable character of which the human form is susceptible; where such a people, I say, surrounded by so many blessings from nature, are loaded with misery by kings, nobles, and priests, and by them alone. Preach, my dear Sir, a crusade against ignorance: establish and improve the law for educating the common people. Let our countrymen know, that the people alone can protect us against these evils, and that the tax which will be paid for this purpose, is not more than the thousandth part of what will be paid to kings, priests and nobles, who will rise up among us, if we leave the people in ignorance. The people of England, I think, are less oppressed than here. But it needs but half an eye to see, when among them, that the foundation is laid in their dispositions for the establishment of a despotism. Nobility, wealth, and pomp are the objects of their admiration. They are by no means the free minded people, we suppose them in America. Their learned men, too,

are few in number, and are less learned, and infinitely less emancipated from prejudice than those of this country.'

Such are some of the innovations on the established order of things, contained in the celebrated revised code of Virginia, in 1779; of all which, Mr Jefferson was the originator and draughtsman. It is impossible, at the present day, to form an adequate idea of this great political work, or of the genius and application it required. On the authority of Mr Madison we are enabled to say, that it, perhaps, exceeded the severest of Mr Jefferson's public labors.' And the whole of this magnificent undertaking was executed during the short interval of three years, chiefly by an individual, and carried into action mainly by his own efforts; supported, indeed, by able and faithful coadjutors from the ranks of the house, very effective as seconds, but who would not have taken the field as leaders. The natural equality of the human race, the first maxim of the author's political creed, was the governing principle of his present general institute. Four of the bills reported were remarkable illustrations of this principle, sufficient to crush forever the eternal antagonism of artificial aristocracy, against the rights and happiness of the people.' They were marshalled in phalanx by the author, for the express purpose of carrying out the principle of equality in all its latitude, as appears by his own record of the transaction.

'I considered four of these bills, passed or reported, as forming a system by which every fibre would be eradicated of ancient or future aristocracy; and a foundation laid for a government truly republican. The Repeal of the Laws of Entail would prevent the accumulation and perpetration of wealth, in select families, and preserve the soil of the country from being daily more and more absorbed in mortmain. The Abolition of Primogeniture, and equal partition of inheritances, removed the feudal and unnatural distinctions, which

made one member of every family rich, and all the rest poor, substituting equal partition, the best of all Agrarian laws. The Restoration of the Rights of Conscience relieved the people from taxation for the support of a religion not theirs; for the establishment was truly of the religion of the rich, the dissenting sects being entirely composed of the less wealthy people; and these, by the Bill for a General Education, would be qualified to understand their rights, to maintain them, and to exercise with intelligence their parts in self-government: and all this would be effected, without the violation of a single natural right of any one individual citizen. To these, too, might be added, as a farther security, the introduction of the trial by jury into the chancery courts, which have already engulphed, and continue to engulph, so great a proportion of the jurisdiction over our property.'

Our detail of the public and official services of Mr Jefferson, must now give place to an incident in private life, which discovers his social affections, and his general philanthropy. At the memorable surrender of Burgoyne in "77, it will be recollected, about four thousand British troops fell prisoners of war into the hands of the American general; and by an express article in the capitulation it was provided, that the surrendering army should be retained in America, until an authentic ratification of the convention entered into between the belligerents, should be received from the British government. The troops were at first ordered to Boston, where they remained about a twelve-month, when they were removed to Charlottesville, in Virginia, a short distance from Monticello. They arrived at the latter place, in January 1779, harassed by a long journey, during a most inclement season, and doomed to encounter the severest hardships on their arrival, from the unfinished state of their barracks, the insufficiency of stores, and the condition of the roads, which rendered the prospect of a timely and competent supply of subsistence almost hopeless.