ployed. Every interval which could be safely abstracted from his duties in the Legislature, was devoted to the preparation of the 'Revised Code of Virginia, or to a vigilant circumspection of the national affairs.

The following letter to Dr. Franklin, in Paris, evinces the triumphant satisfaction with which he contemplated the establishment of republicanism on the ruins of monarchy, in his native State, as well as the anxiety and zeal which he carried into every department of the public service. It is the fourth, in date, of his published correspondence.

"Honorable Sir, I forbear to write you news, as the time of Mr. "Virgina, August 13, 1777. Shore's departure being uncertain, it might be old before you receive it, and he can, in person, possess you of all we have. With respect to the State of Virginia in particular, the people seem to have laid aside the monarchical, and taken up the republican government, with as much ease as would have attended their throwing off an old, and putting on a new suit of clothes. Not a single throe has attended this important transformation. A half dozen aristocratical gentlemen, agonizing under the loss of pre-eminence, have sometimes ventured their sarcasms on our political metamorphosis. They have been thought fitter objects of pity than of punishment. We are at present in the complete and quiet exercise of well organized government, save only that our courts of justice do not open till the fall. I think nothing can bring the security of our continent and its cause into danger, if we can support the credit of our paper. To do that, I apprehend one or two steps must be taken. Either to procure free trade by alliance with some naval power able to protect it; or, if we find there is no prospect of that, to shut our ports totally to all the world, and turn our Colonies into manufactories. The former would be most eligible, because most conformable to the habits and wishes of our people. Were the British Court to return to their senses in time to seize the little advantage which still remains within their reach from this quarter, I judge that, on acknowledging our absolute independence and sovereignty, a commercial treaty beneficial to them, and perhaps even a league of mutual offence and defence, might, not seeing the expense or consequences of such a measure, be approved by our people, if nothing in the mean time, done on your part, should prevent it. But they will continue to grasp at their desperate sovereignty, till every benefit short of that is forever out of their reach. I wish my domestic situation had rendered it possible for me to join you in the very honorable charge confided to you. Residence in a polite Court, society of literati of the first order, a just cause and an approving God, will add length to a

life for which all men pray, and none more than your most obedient

and humble servant."

In addition to the crowd of military operations, which engaged the attention of the Legislature, two important transactions of a civil character, in both of which Mr. Jefferson took the lead, distinguished the autumnal session of 1777. These were, the ratification of the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union, proposed by Congress on the 17th of November, 176; and the adoption of a plan to dispose of the vast unappropriated lands of Virginia, on the western waters, the avails of which to be applied to the creation of a sinking fund, in aid of the taxes, for discharging the public debt. A loan office was established, in which the waste and unpatented lands were registered, and sold, from time to time, on moderate terms, for the benefit of the State. In the present posture of affairs, no measure could have been proposed, more directly and widely beneficial; it opened an incalculable resource for the support of the public credit.

The May session of 1778, also, notwithstanding the importunity of the war, and the unremitting assiduities of military preparation, was distinguished by a civil transaction, which is intimately blended with the reputation of Mr. Jefferson, and with the honor of our common country. We allude to the abolition of the Slave Trade. The bill for this purpose, it will be recollected, was introduced by him at the October session of '76, but was not acted upon finally, until the present, when a more particular illustration of its merits was promised, by a historical comparison of the efforts of other nations, in the same benevolent sphere. The British empire has claimed the honor of having set the example to the world, of the renunciation of this diabolical traffick; and Lord Castlereagh declared, in the House of Commons, on the 9th of February, 1818, that on the subject of making the slave trade punishable by law, Great Britain had led the way. A little attention to dates and transactions, will elucidate the historical truth on this point.

In the year 1791, Mr. Wilberforce, who is considered the father of African Abolition in England, made his first grand motion to that effect in the House of Commons. After a vehement and protracted debate, in the course of which, Mr. Fox said, that "if the House did not, by their vote, mark to all mankind their abhorrence of a practice so savage, so enormous, so repugnant to all laws, hu

man and divine, they would consign their character to eternal infamy,”—the motion was lost by a considerable majority. The ensuing year, he renewed his proposition, with unabated ardor, and again it was rejected by the House. They nevertheless manifested some relaxation in their resistance to the general principle, by voting a gradual abolition, the same year; but the House of Lords refused to concur. The same vote was again carried in 1794, in Commons, by a very thin House; but lost with the Peers, by a majority of forty-five to four. Similar results attended the annual and indefatigable exertions of the abolitionists, for the space of fourteen years; and it was not until the 25th of March, 1807, that England consented to renounce the Slave Trade, by a law which enacted, that no vessels should clear out for slaves from any port within the British dominions, after the 1st of May, 1807; and that no slave should be landed in the Colonies after the 1st of March, 1808. On the 16th of March, 1792, Denmark promulgated a law, which interdicted the Slave Trade on the part of Danish subjects, after the commencement of the year 1803; and which prescribed that all importations of slaves into the Danish dominions should cease at the same period. Sweden, who had never authorized the traffick, consented to its prohibition in 1813; and the King of the Netherlands in 1814. In France, Bonaparte interdicted it spontaneously and immediately on his return from Elba, in 1815. In 1816, Spain stipulated in a treaty with England, to renounce the trade entirely, after the 30th of March, 1820, in consideration of the sum of four hundred thousand pounds sterling. About the same time, also, a treaty was concluded by the same Power, with Portugal, in which she required the period of eight years to com plete the work of abolition, together with certain material changes in the commercial relations of the two countries.*

From the foregoing statement, it appears, that the high honor of having set the example in the magnanimous work of African Abolition, belongs clearly and absolutely to America. That Virginia was the first sovereign and independent State, herself a slave holding community, which renounced the nefarious commerce; that she preceded Great Britain twenty-nine years, and the other principal slave dealing Powers in Europe, except Denmark, more

* Walsh's Appeal, pp. 320-364.

than thirty-five years; and that among the multitude of statesmen and philanthropists, whose praises have been heralded through the universe, and deservedly so, for their splendid successes in this species of legislation, the merit of priority, and of self-denying patriotism, attaches irresistably and incontestibly to Mr. Jefferson. The Bill which he submitted to the Legislature, and which finally received their sanction, prohibited, under heavy penalties, the introduction of any slave into Virginia, by land or by water; and declared, that every slave imported contrary thereto, should be immediately free; excepting such as might belong to persons emigrating from the other States, or be claimed by discount, devise, or marriage, or be at that time, the actual property of any citizen of the Commonwealth, residing in any other of the United States, or belong to travellers making a transient stay, and carrying their slaves away with them. The circumstance ought not to be overlooked, that this important triumph was achieved amid the turbulence and anxiety of Revolution; thus exhibiting the sublime spectacle of a people legislating for the liberties of another and distant continent, before the recovery of their own. The example was followed up by Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Connecticut and Rhode Island, in the years 1780, '87, 'SS; and in 1794 the Congress of the United States interdicted the trade from all the ports of the Union, under severe penalties. Thus was the work of abolition finally consummated in America, and a great step taken towards eradicating the inveterate and hydra-headed evil. The cause of emancipation is a very different subject. We have already noticed the opinions, and the official labors of Mr. Jefferson upon that point; his future and indefatigable efforts in the same cause, diffused, as they are, through his whole life, will progressively develope themselves in the sequel.

In the month of February, 1779, the Committee of Revisors, having completed their respective tasks, convened at Williamsburg, to review, approve, and consolidate then into one Report. They came together day after day, and examined critically their several parts, scrutinizing and amending, until they had agreed on the whole. They had, in this work, embodied all the Common Law which it was thought necessary to alter, all the British Statutes, from Magna Charta to the present day, and all the laws of Virginia, from the establishment of their separate Legislature to the

present time, which they thought should be retained, within the compass of one hundred and twenty-six bills, making a printed folio of ninety pages only. A monument of codification, upon the republican model, almost incredible at that period! The whole of this herculean labor, the major part of which fell to Mr. Jefferson, was accomplished at detached and hurried intervals, amidst the complicated occupations and anxieties of the times, within the brief space of two years. In the execution of his part, Mr. Jefferson observed a rule, in relation to style, which may appear rather odd to the modern draughtsman. In reforming the ancient statutes, he preserved the diction of the text; and in all new draughts, he avoided the introduction of modern technicalities, and adopted the sample of antiquity; which, from its greater simplicity, would allow less scope for the chicanery of the lawyers, and remove from among the people, numberless liabilities to litigation. Against the labored phraseology of modern statutes, he has entered an amusing protest. Their verbosity,' says he, 'their endless tautologies, their involutions of case within case, and parenthesis within parenthesis, and their multiplied efforts at certainty, by saids and aforesaids, by ors and by ands, to make them more plain, have rendered them really more perplexed and incomprehensible, not only to common readers, but to the lawyers themselves.'

CHAPTER VI.

On the 18th of June, 1779, the Committee of Revisors communicated their Report to the General Assembly, accompanied by a letter to the Speaker, signed by Mr. Jefferson and Mr. Wythe, and authorized by Mr. Pendleton.

The Revised Code was not enacted in a mass, as was contemplated; the minds of the Legislature were not prepared for so extensive a transition, at once, and the violence of the times afforded little leisure for the business of metaphysical discussion and training. Some Bills were taken out, occasionally, from time to time, and passed; but the main body of the work was not entered upon, untill after the general peace, in 1785; "when," says Mr. Jefferson,