certain measures of policy, but not at all in their principles. They both sought the peace of the country, not only as the best condition for developing its resources, but as an essential means for preserving the purity of its institutions. Neither could look with complacency on a standing army or a large naval establishment. They did not even consider them as essential in the present emergency, more imminent, perhaps, than any that could possibly occur at a future period.

Negotiation having failed, and both belligerents still continuing to plunder our commerce, Mr. Jefferson recommended, as the only remedy, a total abandonment of the ocean. Mr. Randolph's advice was to arm the merchant marine, and let them go forth and defend themselves in the highways of a lawful commerce. As the means of home defence, Jefferson recommended the construction and equipment of gunboats, in numbers sufficient to protect the harbors and seaports from sudden invasion. Randolph advised to arm the militia, put a weapon in the hands of every yeoman of the land, and furnish the towns and seaports with a heavy train of artillery for their defence.

In all this we perceive but one object-a defence of the natal soil (natale solum) by the people themselves, and a total abstinence from all aggression. "Pour out your blood," said these wise statesmen to the people; "pour out your blood in defence of your borders; but shed not a drop beyond." Happy for the country could this advice have always been followed! As Randolph foresaw and predicted, we came out of the war with Great Britain without a constitution; mainly to his exertions in after years are we indebted for its restoration. The late war with Mexico has engendered a spirit of aggression and of conquest among the people, and has taught the ambitious, aspiring men of the country, that military fame achieved in an hour is worth more than the solid reputation of a statesman acquired by long years of labor and self-sacrifice. Where these things are to end it does not require much sagacity to foresee. Let the people take warning in time, and give heed to the counsel of their wisest statesmen; let them dismiss their army and their navy, relieve the country of those burthensome and dangerous accompaniments of a military government, and trust to negotiation, justice, and their own energies and resources for defence. What was visionary and impracticable in the warlike days of Jefferson, is now wholly reasonable and

proper. What gunboats could not do, steam vessels can fully accomplish. For defence there is no need of a navy; for aggressive war, we trust the day may never come when it shall be called into requisition.

There was one subject on which Randolph and Jefferson differed so essentially that it would seem to indicate a more radical divergency of principles than we are willing to admit existed between them. They both sincerely labored to preserve a strict neutrality between the great belligerents of Europe; but when driven to extremity, and forced to choose between the one and the other, Jefferson would have selected France as a friend, whilst Randolph would have chosen England. In the days of John Adams these predilections would have marked their political characters as being essentially different on all the great principles of government. But Randolph contended that since that day circumstances had greatly altered. France was then a free republic, fighting for the liberties of Europe, while England was in coalition with the old monarchies to destroy them. France was now a military despotism, grasping at the empire of the world, while England was the only barrier in the way of universal conquest. To suffer old partialities and prejudices to influence their conduct in such a state of affairs, he thought, was the height of folly and madness. He had no greater friendship for England and her institutions than before; but she had become essential for his own protection, and he was willing to use her for that purpose. These views seem not only to be plausible, but just. A practical statesman, at that time, looking at events as they transpired around him, and gazing on the rapid strides of Napoleon towards universal conquest, would have coincided with Mr. Randolph-have exclaimed with him that it was poor consolation to reflect that we were to be the last to be devoured, and have taken refuge behind the floating batteries of England as the last retreat to the expiring liberties of the world. But Thomas Jefferson did not view the subject in this practical way he was the profound philosopher that looked at political causes and consequences in their radical and essential relations to each other, and the bold pioneer that dared to sacrifice what seemed to be the present interest to the future and more permanent welfare of his country.

In his judgment the great causes that produced the marvellous

events then daily transpiring on the theatre of Europe, had not changed; it was still the spirit of democracy contending against the old feudal aristocracy, which had so long oppressed and enslaved the nations. The crusade of Bonaparte, aside from his own personal ambition, had no other end but the overthrow of those rotten dynasties that sat like a leaden weight on the hearts of the people; and a revival of those old memories of privileges and franchises that lay buried and forgotten beneath the rubbish and worthless trivialities of a profligate court and a heartless monarchy.

To repress the numerous factions that were tearing her vitals within, and to beat back the myrmidons of power that assailed her from without, it was necessary that France should concentrate all her energies in the hands of a military despot. The times called for a dictator. But Napoleon himself was a phenomenon that must soon pass away; his long existence was incompatible with the just order of things; his downfall must be followed by a restoration of the Bourbons, or by a revival of the Republic, chastened and purified by the ordeal through which she had passed. Bonaparte saw to the root of the matter when he said, that in a few years Europe must be Republican or Cossack. Jefferson perceived and acted on this profound principle long before Bonaparte gave utterance to it. He knew well that England was the same now that she was in the days of the coalition; her allies were gone, because the arms of France and the insurrection of their own subjects had overturned their power; the French evil had spread over Europe, and her battle was still against that; the right of the people to pull down and to build up dynasties -the doctrine that governments belong to the people and not the people to governments, and that they can alter or abolish them at pleasure, were principles that she fought against and labored to repress and to destroy. Had she succeeded in overturning the power of Napoleon, she would have forced on the nations of Europe, by virtue of her cherished doctrine of legitimacy, the worst of all governments—a restoration of the old monarchies claiming to rule, not by the will of the people, but by the divine right of kings. It was not in the nature of Thomas Jefferson to aid in the remotest degree in the accomplishment of such an end. Besides all this, he knew there was no sympathy between the democracy of America and the aristocracy of England; the one was progressive, the other conservative;

the one readily embraced every measure that tended to elevate and to improve the masses of mankind, the other repressed every proposition that contemplated a change in the present order of things; the one held that government must spring from the will of the people, and is but an agent in the hands of their representatives for the good of the whole; the other that all wealth and power belong to the few, and government but an instrument to preserve and perpetuate their authority. Any coalition or union between elements so repugnant would have produced evil rather than good; it would have shed a malign influence ou the one hand, while on the other the contact would have been regarded as a vile contamination. Jefferson was the embodiment of American democracy; the masses of the people felt that he gave form and expression to the great sentiments that lay confused and voiceless in their own bosoms, and they knew that he would be faithful in following the impulses of that mighty concentration of a people's will in his own person: hence his influence over the public mind-his almost despotic sway over the legislation of the country. In 1806, a subservient legislature, in obedience to his secret wishes, voted him money without restriction to negotiate with Spain and France, when his public messages declared that negotiation was at an end, and breathed the strongest spirit of resistance. In 1807 his commissioners, his favorite negotiator, Monroe, being one of them, had made a treaty with England, as favorable as could be expected at that time, but he put it in his pocket and refused to submit it to the consideration of that branch of the government which had a right and might have advised its ratification. When Great Britain sent a special envoy to make reparation for the unauthorized

attack on the Chesapeake, he stood on an untenable point of etiquette, refused to receive or even to hear any propositions on that subject, and suffered the public mind to be inflamed by an unnecessary delay of adjustment. Before he had any official information of the orders

in council, issued in retaliation to the Berlin decree, on the mere authority of newspaper reports, he sent a secret message to Congress advising an embargo: in silence and in haste his will was obeyed-a sudden pause was given to business-at his command the people stood still, and let fall from their hands the implements of trade and the means of their subsistence. This measure, whether so intended or not, coincided with the views of Napoleon: while it could affect

France but slightly, it formed an essential part of that great continental system that had for its object the subjugation of England by a destruction of her commerce and manufactures.

sure.

Bonaparte approved, and the indomitable Saxon spirit of England refused to yield: the dire recoil was most severely felt at home, but the patriotism of the people increased with the disasters inflicted upon them; and they continued to follow their bold leader with a fortitude and intrepidity that would have persevered to the bitter end, had he not said, enough! and acquiesced in the repeal of his favorite meaJefferson stood to the people of America as Napoleon to the people of France-he embodied the will of a free and enlightened republic, devoted to the arts of peace, and governed by laws and a written constitution; Napoleon was the dread symbol of a wild democracy, sprung from the bosom of a volcano, chaotic in all its fiery elements, and armed with firebrands to burn up the dross and stubble of the worn-out and rotten monarchies that surrounded it; both were invincible, so long as they continued to stand in the focus, and to reflect the mighty energies that were concentrated in their own person.

We say, then, that the policy of Jefferson, viewed by a practical statesman, would seem to be unwise. It inflicted many evils on the country at the time, and entailed a lasting injury on the planting interests of the South: but it saved the principles of democracy; and it saved the country, if not from an actual participation in the Congress of Vienna, it saved them from a humiliating acquiescence in the holy alliance of despots, confederated under a solemn oath to smother and extinguish every sentiment of liberty that might dare to breathe its existence in the bosoms of their oppressed and degraded subjects.

CHAPTER XXXV.

JAMES MADISON-PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION.

MR. RANDOLPH was opposed to the elevation of James Madison to the presidency. His objections extended back to an early period in the political history of that gentleman. As we have said, the coun