ward sign that he had read them. To Edmund Randolph, prior to that time, Jefferson had written, "I have preserved through life a resolution, set in a very early part of it, never to write in a public paper without subscribing my name, and to engage openly an adversary who does not let himself be seen, is staking all against nothing.'

In a letter, September 9, 1792, to General Washington, who had told Jefferson that articles in Freneau's paper "tended to produce a separation in the Union," and attacking him indirectly, though thinking him "fool enough to swallow the little sugar plums here and there thrown out to him,' Jefferson defended himself for giving Freneau, the poet, an appointment in his office. He declared that his expectations looked only to the chastisement of the aristocratical and monarchical writers, and not to any criticism on the proceedings of the government: that Hamilton could see no motive for any appointment but that of making a convenient partisan, but he knew that talents and science were with him a sufficient recommendation. Freneau, as a man of genius, found a preference with him, and he added: "Freneau and Fenno are rivals for the public favors; the one courts them by flattery, the other by censure; and I believe it will be admitted that one has been as servile as the other severe. But is not the dignity, and even decency of government committed, when one of its ministers enlists himself as an anonymous writer

or paragraphist, for either the one or the other of them? And where the press is free, no one ever will. If virtuous, he need not fear the operation of attack and defence. Nature has given to man no other means of sifting the truth, either in religion, law or politics. I think it is as honorable to the government neither to know nor to notice sycophants or censure, as it would be undignified and criminal to pamper the former and persecute the latter."

Mr. Jefferson was the more severely abused for giving a position in the State Department to Mr. Freneau, probably because the power exerted by his paper was the cause of the loss of popular favor by the Federalists in the administration. Hamilton's defenders dared not admit that it was because Freneau's paper was destroying their idol's hold upon the confidence of the country, though that was the motive that prompted the criticisms of Mr. Jefferson for retaining the editor in the public service. Therefore, the Federalists declared the retention of Freneau to be a want of courtesy to his associates in the administration and a breach of moral duty. To that criticism George Tucker in his "Life of Jefferson" makes this conclusive

answer:

"But against no aspersion of his enemies is his vindication more easy. On the public measures thus condemned, his opinions were known, in the cabinet and out of it, to be diametrically opposite

to those of Mr. Hamilton, their chief adviser; and while the press was made to assail him, his opinions, and motives, he surely had a right to use the same weapon in their defence. But further: according to his views of the interests of the country, and of the object and tendency of Hamilton's policy, it was not only his right, but his duty, to endeavor to operate upon public opinion, which was to be the final arbiter between them. In availing himself of this auxiliary, he seems never to have transcended the bounds of legitimate warfare. He practiced no concealment either of his principles or of his patronage of Freneau; he betrayed no confidence; he countenanced no doctrines in that paper which he did not maintain everywhere else. It does not appear that he ever wrote for the paper, for that did not accord with his notions either of prudence or propriety; but had he done so, he might have defended himself by the example of his political antagonist. It must also be recollected that the political principles and measures of Hamilton and his adherents were the chief objects of attack in the National Gazette, while the President, who was never confounded with them was always treated with decorum and respect. In every respect, then, the charge appears to be frivolous or unfounded.

"Mr. Jefferson had yet a further ground of vindication, had he needed it, though he never deigned to make use of it; and this was the fact, that the National Gazette was not set up by him, but by

Mr. Madison and General Henry Lee, then Governor of Virginia, and afterwards so warm a Federal partisan, for the double purpose of assisting Freneau, who had been their fellow collegian at Princeton, and of affording the public an opportunity of hearing the arguments of both the parties that then divided the country."

Though he did not personally write for the press he had well-matured opinions as to the duty of a political editor. He gave expression to his opinion in the following letter, written in 1811 from Monticello to William Duane: "I think an editor should be independent, that is, of personal influence, and not be moved from his opinions on the mere authority of an individual. But, with respect to the general opinion of the political section with which he habitually accords, his duty seems very like that of a member of Congress. Some of these, indeed, think that independence requires them to follow always their own opinion, without respect for that of others. This has never been my opinion, nor my practice, when I have been of that or any other body, differing on a political question from those whom I knew to be of the same political principles with myself, and with whom I generally thought and acted. A consciousness of the fallibility of the human mind and of my own in particular, with a respect for the accumulated judgment of my friends, has induced me to suspect erroneous impressions on myself, to suppose my own opinion wrong,

and to act with them on theirs. The want of this spirit of compromise, or of self-distrust, proudly but falsely, called independence, is what gives the Federalists victories which they could never obtain if these brethren could learn to respect the opinion of their friends more than their enemies, and prevent many able and learned men from doing all the good they otherwise might do." Of Duane he wrote to Mr. Wirt: "I believe Duane to be a very honorable man and sincerely republican; but his passions are stronger than his prudence, and his personal as well as general antipathies render him. very intolerant. These traits lead him astray and require his readers, even those who value him for his steady support of the republican cause, to be on their guard against his occasional observations.'

The critics of Mr. Jefferson have been wont to attribute what, in his lifetime, they termed his over-trust in the capacity of the people for selfgovernment, to the views he imbibed in France. No doubt the spectacle of a people in a country where "every man must be a hammer or an anvil" at a time when the love of liberty and the rights of man inspired the best portion of the people of that country to demand a larger voice in governing themselves, had a permanent influence upon his life and views. But he secured the repeal of the law of primogeniture and church establishment, and drafted provisions for future constitutions, insuring the freedom to write and speak without