would obtain its fair number of votes, in spite of local influence. Yet it was found on trial, that party preferences swallowed up every other, and that the only effect of the double vote was to bring the election to the House of Representatives, in cases in which it would not otherwise have taken place, and thus to enable a minority to produce embarrassment and confusion, and, perhaps, defeat the will of the nation altogether. Thirdly. It was not foreseen that the House of Representatives might fail to make an election, as no provision was made for that case; and still less was it supposed possible that it would think of using its own refusal to exercise a power, expressly given, as a reason for usurping a power that was not given. And yet, if we are to credit the statements made by Mr. Jefferson to his friends, confirmed by other actors in that memorable drama, such a purpose was seriously entertained, and was prevented only by the fear that the contiguous states would resort to force to put down the usurpation.

Let human wisdom be admonished by these facts to distrust itself in the formation of all organic laws which have not been tested by experience. Even where statesmen adopt good general principles, and justly estimate their natural and ordinary operation, something not foreseen in the infinity of accidents to which all human concerns are exposed, often supervenes, and changes the course of action. We do not mean to say that this danger ought to deter us from attempting amendment in this very important part of our federal polity, but, assuredly, it ought to make us act with extreme caution. If it is to be revised, as very many believe it should be, we think that the best time to do it, is at the beginning of a new administration; for although personal and local considerations will act as "disturbing forces," here too, in the decisions of the states, their operation will be weaker at that time than any other.

Of Mr. Jefferson's life, during the eight years he was President, it is unnecessary to say much, as his measures are familiar to all, and his history is comprehended in that of his country. We have here his opinions on these measures expressed to his confidential friends, more minutely and explicitly than the public had them before; and we now have certainty, where much before was conjecture.

It here appears, beyond any question, that Mr. Jefferson, at the time he purchased Louisiana, thought not only that it could not be admitted into the Union, without an amendment to the Constitution, but that he himself, in seizing the fugitive occurrence, which so much advanced the good of the country, had done an act beyond the Constitution." The reasons on which

his opinion was founded, are given at length in a letter to Wilson C. Nicholas, in September, 1803. The whole history of this acquisition, so creditable to Mr. Jefferson's diplomacy, as well as to his prudence as a statesman, is very fully developed in the Correspondence.

It also appears that he adopted a notion very prevalent at that time, and long since in the Atlantic States, that the separation of the Mississippi States from the confederacy, was by no means improbable; and in commenting on such an event, he says, "we think we see their happiness in their union, and we wish it. Events may prove it otherwise; and if they see their interest in separation, why should we take side with our Atlantic rather than our Mississippi descendants? It is the elder and the younger son differing. God bless them both, and keep them in union, if it be for their good, but separate them, if it be better." It was not then perceived that the Western States, in addition to those motives to union which apply to all the States, have some that are peculiar to themselves, since the navigation of the Mississippi must always be important to their prosperity, and it can be permanently secured to them only by a maritime people, which the Atlantic States are, and they never can be.

Mr. Jefferson is entitled to the praise, and no mean praise it is, of having retained, when in power, the same principles of government which he had previously professed, and to have been both active and persevering in carrying them into execution.He inculcated simplicity by discontinuing public levees, and the practice of addressing both houses of Congress in person. He lessened his patronage by recommending the repeal of the bankrupt and excise laws, and the reduction of the navy. With this diminution of the sources of revenue, the public affairs were administered with so much economy, that he paid off nearly half of the public debt. In some of these cases there were not wanting ready pretexts for abandoning his former maxims, if he had been so disposed.

But some parts of his policy neither obtained the sanction of public approbation at the time, nor have stood the test of subsequent experience. On the subject of a navy his mind seems to have undergone several vacillations, and of late years he had sided with those who believed that our country was incapable of supporting the expense of an efficient navy-that it would burthen the nation with a perpetual, and still increasing debt; and after all, that we should, in the event of a war with England, only have been building ships for her. The events of the last war have, we trust, annihilated these opinions forever.

The only species of naval defence which had his countenance, the gun-boats, has been very generally condemned, but by a censure, perhaps, too indiscriminate. The error was not in recommending this species of armament, but in relying on them to the exclusion of ships of war. Every maritime nation in Europe, we believe, has gun-boats for the defence of some of its harbours; the English and French certainly; and the only occasion, if we mistake not, in which Admiral Nelson was ever foiled, was by gun-boats at Boulogne.

The dry docks proposed by Mr. Jefferson, also furnished a fruitful theme of ridicule and attack to his political adversaries; and yet, a plan, agreeing in its chief features with his, bas been since adopted, both in this country and in Europe, for preventing ships from early decay, by keeping them out of the water and protecting them from the weather.

Mr. Jefferson's prejudices against Great-Britain, for her former wrongs, and his resentment for her recent aggressions, consummated, as they were, by the attack on the Chesapeake, were overbalanced by his love of peace. Nothing would have been easier than for him to have improved that cause of irritation into a war, if he had so chosen, and had been as subservient to the views of France as his enemies pretended. And his proclamation, indicating that such was his policy, was the only act of his administration, he says, which his opponents approved. The embargo which was resorted to as a substitute for war, it must be admitted, now that the passions which justified or condemned it, have subsided, was a high-handed measure; in prohibiting our citizens, for an indefinite time, from venturing their own ships, laden with their own merchandize, on the ocean, and in depriving a large part of the community of their ordinary means of support, without producing open resistance to the laws, he showed that the bonds of the Union are stronger than its warmest friends once ventured to expect.

The loyalty of our citizens was strongly exemplified on another occasion during this administration: we allude to Aaron Burr's conspiracy. Mr. Jefferson writes to Mr. Bowdoin, our Minister in France, "Although at first, he [Burr] proposed a separation of the western country, and on that ground, received encouragement and aid from Yrujo, according to the usual spirit of his government towards us, yet he very early saw that the fidelity of the western country was not to be shaken, and turned himself wholly towards Mexico. And so popular is an enterprise on that country in this, that we had only to lie still, and he would have had followers enough to have been in the city of Mexico in six weeks." Yet, notwithstanding this popularity of

his undertaking, no sooner was it known that it had not the sanction of the government, than the necromancer's charm was broken-the visions of wealth and empire that he had conjured up, disappeared-and the fancied conqueror of Mexico, deserted by his followers, was at once transformed into a wretched fugitive from justice. When all danger from this weak imitation of a wicked example was at an end, and the author of the criminal enterprise had been overtaken and brought to justice, we think the agency of the Executive ought to have terminated also at least, that it should have manifested no feeling in the result; and there are few letters in the whole collection, that we read with less satisfaction than those in which Mr. Jefferson manifests his anxiety for the conviction of the chief conspirator. One side had, indeed, made this a party question, and, in such cases, the other is not slow to follow the evil example; but the President of the United States ought to have been superior to this feeling, and from the moment that Burr's infamy was known, he should have been below Mr. Jefferson's enmity.

We had intended to say something on Lewis and Clark's expedition, as one of the events by which Mr. Jefferson's administration was illustrated, and concerning which we are surprised to see no letter in the whole collection; but the length of our preceding remarks warns us to hasten to a conclusion.

In March, 1809, his second term of service expired, and he withdrew to private life at the same mature age of sixty-six, at which both his predecessors, and his two immediate successors quitted the Presidency. Two days before that event, he thus writes to a friend:

"Within a few days, I retire to my family, my books and farms; and having gained the harbour myself, I shall look on my friends still buffetting the storm, with anxiety indeed, but not with envy. Never did a prisoner, released from his chains, feel such relief as I shall, on shaking off the shackles of power. Nature intended me for the tranquil pursuits of science, by rendering them my supreme delight. But the enormities of the times in which I have lived, have forced me to take a part in resisting them and to commit myself on the boisterous ocean of political passions. I thank God for the opportunity of retiring from them without censure, and carrying with me the most consoling proofs of public approbation."

In this retirement, with unimpaired health, and a mind in full vigour, his time was as much occupied as ever. It was divided between his attention to his private affairs, which had been often ill-managed by his agents-his studies-the claims made on it by numerous visitants-and an extensive correspondence. Of

the last, he complains most bitterly in a letter to the elder Mr. Adams, and states that on counting up the letters he had received in the year 1820, he found they amounted to twelve hundred and sixty-seven, "many of them requiring answers of elaborate research, and all to be answered with due attention and consideration."

In such of the letters written in the remaining seventeen years of his life, as are now given to the world, we have his opinions on many important subjects at great length; and where the reader may be inclined to dissent from them, as he no doubt will in many instances, he must still admire the ingenuity of the reasoning, and can never fail to derive profit from the perusal. The subjects of the greatest interest, and considered most at length, are banks of circulation; national debts; the science of medicine; the common law of England, how far obligatory here; religion; instruction of youth; the constitution of Virginia; the independence of judges; the English constitution; the successes of Bonaparte; and lotteries, morally and politieally considered; on all of which we may consider that he has deliberately written so many essays, in the form of letters to his friends.

It is a source of very pleasing reflection to find, in the last volume of the Correspondence, that Mr. Adams and Mr. Jefferson, who had been, in early life, fellow-labourers in the great work of the Revolution-then rivals-and then, in the struggle between their respective parties, wholly alienated from each other-should, in the evening of their days, again come together and renew their first friendship. The letters of Mr. Jefferson to this venerable friend, sometimes playful, sometimes learned, and always containing moral and political reflections, befitting his long experience and wide survey of human concerns, are among the most agreeable parts of the work.

It gives a kindred pleasure too, to find, that there is little or nothing in these volumes to detract from the exalted and almost spotless character of General Washington; or to countenance the opinion once entertained, that Mr. Jefferson was his enemy. The character drawn of that illustrious man in the letter to Dr. Jones, in 1814, is sufficient to repel that imputation, though it will be considered by some, as scarcely doing justice to the original; but the letter to Mr. Van Buren, written ten years afterwards, and on several accounts more likely to express his deliberate and precise opinion, contains a splendid eulogy on him, who, "of all men, is best entitled to the appellation of the Father of the Republic."