bution, that good government is effected. Were not this great country already divided into States, that division must be made, that each might do for itself what concerns itself directly, and what it can so much better do than a distant authority Every State again is divided into counties, each to take care of what lies within its local bounds; each county again into townships or wards, to manage minuter details; and every ward into farms, to be governed each by its individual proprietor. Were we directed from Washington when to sow, and when to reap, we should soon want bread. It is by this partition of cares, descending in gradation from general to particular, that the mass of human affairs may be best managed, for the good and prosperity of all. I repeat that I do not charge the judges with wilful and ill-intentioned error; but honest error must be arrested, where its toleration leads to public ruin. As, for the safety of society, we commit honest maniacs to Bedlam, so judges should be withdrawn from their bench, whose erroneous biases are leading us to dissolution. It may, indeed, injure them in fame or in fortune; but it saves the Republic, which is the first and supreme law.

T

HE great principles of right and wrong are legible to every reader; to pursue them requires not the aid of many counselors. The whole art of government consists in the art of being honest. Only aim to do your duty, and mankind will give you credit where you fail.

¶ To serve the Public faithfully, and at the same time to please it entirely, is impracticable.

THE

HERE are extraordinary situations which require extraordinary interposition. An exasperated people who feel that they possess power are not easily restrained within limits strictly regular.

LET

ET those flatter who fear: it is not an American art. To give praise where it is not due might be well from the venal, but would ill beseem those who are asserting the rights of human nature. They know, and will, therefore, say, that kings are the servants, not the proprietors of the people.

¶Those who labor in the earth are the chosen people of God

T

HE bill for establishing religious freedom in the United States, the principles of which had, to a certain degree been enacted before, I had drawn in all of the latitude of reason and right. It still met with opposition; but with some mutilations in the preamble, it was finally passed; and a singular proposition proved that its protection of opinion was meant to be universal. Where the preamble declares that coercion is a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion, an amendment was proposed, by inserting the words "Jesus Christ," so that it should read, "a departure from the plan of Jesus Christ, the holy author of our religion;" the insertion was rejected by a great majority, in proof that they meant to comprehend, within the mantle of its protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mohammedan, the Hindoo and Infidel of every denomination.

IAM not prepared to say that the first magistrate of a

nation can not commit treason against his country, or is unamenable to its punishment; nor yet that, where there is no written law, no regulated tribunal, there is not a law in our hearts, and a power in our hands, given for righteous employment in maintaining right, and redressing wrong IO

NE free and independent legislature hereby takes upon itself to suspend the powers of another, free

and independent as itself, thus exhibiting a phenomenon unknown in Nature, the creator and creature of its own power. Not only the principles of commonsense, but the common feelings of human nature must be surrendered up, before his majesty's subjects here can be persuaded to believe that they hold their political existence at the will of a British Parliament. Shall these governments be dissolved, their property annihilated, and their people reduced to a state of Nature, at the imperious breath of a body of men whom they never saw, in whom they never confided, and over whom they have no powers of punishment or removal, let their crimes against the American public be ever so great? Can any one reason be assigned why one hundred and sixty thousand electors in the island of Great Britain should give law to four millions in the States of America, every individual of whom is equal to every individual of them in virtue, in understanding and in bodily strength? Were this to be admitted, instead of being a free people, as we have hitherto supposed, and mean to continue ourselves, we should suddenly be found the slaves, not of one but of one hundred sixty thou

sand tyrants; distinguished, too, from all others, by this singular circumstance, that they are removed from the reach of fear, the only motive which holds the hand of a tyrant

TH

HE appeal to the rights of man, which had been made in the United States, was taken up by France, first of the European nations. From her, the spirit has spread over those of the South. The tyrants of the North have allied indeed against it; but it is irresistible. Their opposition will only multiply its millions of human victims; their own satellites will catch it, and the condition of man through the civilized world will be finally and greatly ameliorated. This is a wonderful instance of great events from small causes. So inscrutable is the arrangement of causes and consequences in this world, that a two-penny duty on tea, unjustly imposed in a sequestered part of it, changes the condition of all its inhabitants.

¶ I steer my bark with Hope in the head, leaving Fear astern

I

HAVE sometimes asked myself whether my country is the better for my having lived at all? I do not know

that it is. I have been the instrument of doing the following things; but they would have been done by others

some of them, perhaps, a little better: The Rivanna had never been used for navigation; scarcely an empty canoe had ever passed down it. Soon after I came of age, I examined its obstructions, set on foot a subscription for removing them, got an Act of Assembly passed, and the

thing effected, so as to be used completely and fully for carrying down all our produce.

¶ The Declaration of Independence.

¶ I proposed the demolition of the Church establishment, and the freedom of religion. It could only be done by degrees; to wit, the act of 1776, c 2, exempted dissenters from contributions to the Church, and left the Church clergy to be supported by voluntary contributions of their own sect; was continued from year to year, and made perpetual 1779, c 36.

The act putting an end to entails.

¶ The act prohibiting the importation of slaves.

¶ The act concerning citizens, and establishing the natural right of man to expatriate himself, at will.

¶ The act changing the course of descents, and giving the inheritance to all the children, etc., equally, I drew as part of the revisal.

¶ In 1789 and 1790, I had a great number of olive-plants, of the best kind, sent from Marseilles to Charleston, for South Carolina and Georgia. They were planted and are flourishing; and, though not yet multiplied, they will be the germ of that cultivation in those States.

¶ In 1790, I got a cask of heavy upland rice, from the River Denbigh, in Africa, about lat. 9° 30' North, which I sent to Charleston, in hopes it might supersede the culture of the wet rice, which renders South Carolina and Georgia so pestilential through the Summer. It was divided and a part sent to Georgia. I know not whether it has been attended to in South Carolina; but it has spread in the upper parts of Georgia, so as to have become almost general and is highly prized. Perhaps it may answer in Tennessee