own judgment. Nor would the mischief stop there. A precedent would be established, which might be extended until ministers of the government should be admitted on that floor, to explain and support the plans they had digested and reported, thereby laying a foundation for an aristocracy or a detestable monarchy. Mr. Tucker seconded the motion of Mr. Page. He hoped the house was not already weary of executing and sustaining the powers vested in them by the Constitution; and yet the adoption of this clause would argue that they thought themselves less adequate than an individual to determine what burdens their constituents were able to bear. This was not answering the high expectations that had been formed of their exertions for the general good, or of their vigilance in guarding their own and the people's rights. But nothing could equal the ferment and disquietude occasioned throughout the country by the proposition which came from the Senate, to confer titles on the President and other officers of government. The committee of the Senate reported, that it was proper to style the President his highness the President of the United States of America, and Protector of their liberties. In some of the newspapers the President was called his highness the President General. Some even went farther, and declared that as he represented the majesty of the people, he might even be styled "His Majesty," without reasonable offence to republican ears. The Senate was de nominated most honorable, and the same epithet was applied to the members of that body. For instance, it was published that the most honorable Rufus King and the most honorable Philip Schuyler were appointed senators. And when Mrs. Washington came to NewYork, she was accompanied by the "lady of the most honorable Robert Morris." The representatives, and even the secretaries of the executive departments were favored with no higher title than honorable. This habit of conferring titles and drawing distinctions between the different departments of government, and extending those titles and distinctions to persons no way connected with the government, had become very common, and would unquestionably have grown into something worse, but for the debates called forth in the House of Representatives, and the indignation shown by the leading members of that body against such proceedings. "What, sir," said Mr. Tucker, "is the intention of this business? Will it not alarm our fellow-citizens? will it not give them just cause of alarm? Will they not say, that they have been deceived by the Convention that framed the Constitution? That it has been contrived with a view to lead them on by degrees to that kind of government which they have thrown off with abhorrence? Shall we not justify the fears of those who are opposed to the Constitution, because they considered it as insidious and hostile to the liberties of the people ?" "Titles, sir," said Mr. Page, " may do harm and have done harm. If we contend now for a right to confer titles, I apprehend the time will come when we shall form a reservoir for honor, and make our President the fountain of it. In such case may not titles do an injury to the Union? They have been the occasion of an eternal faction in the kingdom we were formerly connected with, and may beget like inquietude in America; for I contend, if you give the title, you must follow it with the robe and the diadem, and then the principles of your government are subverted." Such were the men with whom John Randolph daily associated, such were the high-toned principles of liberty he was daily accustomed to hear. It was not from the reading of books in his closet, nor from second-hand that he acquired his knowledge of politics, and that extensive acquaintance with the leading characters of the country for which he was so remarkable, but from familiar intercourse with the statesmen and sages who laid the foundations of the government, and commenced the first superstructure of laws and precedents to serve as guides and examples to the statesmen who should come after them. It was the fortune of this young man to behold the Government in its feeble beginnings, like the simple shepherds on the snowy Vesolo, gazing in the overshadowed fountain of the Po with his scanty waters. Mirando al fonte ombroso It was his destiny also never to lose sight of it, but to follow it through near half a century of various fortune, now enfeebled by war and faction, now strengthened and enlarged by new States and new powers. How like the Po! he receives as a sovereign the Adda and the Tessino in his course, how ample he hastens on to the sea, how he foams, how mighty his voice, and to him the crown is assigned. Che 'l Adda, che 'l Tessino CHAPTER X. THOMAS JEFFERSON. In the winter of the year 1790-1, Philadelphia had again become, as in times of the old Continental Congress, the great centre of attraction. By a recent Act it had been made the seat of the Federal Government for ten years. The national legislature, adjourning the 12th of August in New-York, were to assemble the first Monday in December in the new Capitol. The papers and officers of all the Executive Departments were removed thither early in October, under the conduct of Col. Hamilton, the Secretary of the Treasury. The President returning from Mount Vernon about the 1st of December, took up his lodgings in a house belonging to Robert Morris, which had been hired and fitted up for the purpose. And Tuesday, the 7th of December, the 3d session of the 1st Congress was organized in the new Court House of the city, which had been tendered to the government by the town authorities. We find also our young friend, in this general removal, transferred to the city of Philadelphia. He took up his residence at No. 154 Arch-street, where he continued with short intervals, till the spring of 1794, when he returned to Virginia. He was attached to the family of Edmund Randolph, the Attorney General of the United States-the same person his mother pointed him to as the model of an orator, worthy of his imitation. Edmund Randolph was a kinsman in the collateral line. He was the son of John Randolph, the King's Attorney General about the time of the Revolution. "Mr. Randolph," says Wirt, "was, in person and manners, among the most elegant gentlemen in the colony, and in his profession one of the most splendid ornaments of the bar." He was the son of Si John (Knight), who was the son of William of Turkey Island, the great American progenitor of the family. Edmund Randolph inherited many of the accomplishments of his father. But he was more showy than solid. He was also of a vacillating character; voting against the Constitution, then violent in its favor; striving at first to steer above the influence of party, he was at length ingulfed and swept away by its current. "Friend Edmund," said John Randolph years afterwards, "was like the aspen, like the chameleon, ever trembling, ever changing." We may, therefore, suppose that his influence over the mind and character of his pupil was not so great as that of another kinsman who was also a member of General Washington's Cabinet. We allude to Thomas Jefferson, the first cousin of John Randolph's father, and the intimate friend of his youth. Mr. Jefferson had been abroad some years as Minister to France. Returning on a visit to America, he was invited by General Washington to take charge of the State Department. The invitation was accepted, and he was no soonor installed in office in the spring of 1790, than he became the head and leader of the Republican StateRights Party, then struggling intó existence. Is was not the exalted station alone, but other circumstances that forced him into this unenviable and critical position. The author of the doctrine of State Rights and its eloquent defender, George Mason, and Patrick Henry, were both in retirement. The latter had been offered a seat in the Senate at its organization, but declined. It was tendered to him the second time, on the death of Col. Grayson; he again declined on the ground that he was too old to fall into those awkward imitations which have now become fashionable, spoken in allusion to the levees of Mrs. Washington, and the etiquette observed in presentations at the Executive Mansion. Richard Henry Lee was still in the Senate. He was the gentleman, the scholar, and the orator, but his thoughts ran too much in the smooth channel of established forms, his oratory too elaborate and polished, his disposition too indolent and unambitious to make him the fit leader of a party just coming into existence in a new era, with new thoughts, new principles, and an untried experiment before them. Thomas Jefferson was the man. The qualities of his mind, his education and previous course of life, fitted him to be the bold and intrepid pioneer of that untried course the people had entered upon. His mind, not of the Platonic cast, was eminently perceptive. The abstract had no charms for him-the spiritual no existence. Devoted to the natural sciences, his metaphysics savored of materialism. Locke's Philosophy of the Senses bounded his conceptions of the human understanding. And the French Disciples, who pursued the doctrines of their master, to the legitimate consequence of sensualism and infidelity, were his chief authorities on all questions of morality and religion. He was a bold, free thinker, bound to no school. "I never submitted the whole system of my opinions," says he, "to the creed of any party of men whatever, in religion, in philosophy, in politics, or in any thing else." He was born in a country in the vigor of its youth, untrammelled by habit, and new in all its social relations. He was a child of the Revolution. His ardent temper was kindled by its stormy passions, and his bold intellect grasped the master idea of that great popular movement, which was unfettered freedom to mind, body, and estate. By him the law of primogeniture was destroyed in Virginia, religious freedom established, and universal liberty and equality proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence. His ruling desire to strike the padlock from the mind, and the fetter from the limbs of mankind, was rather strengthened than abated by his long residence abroad under a despotic government. Being a man of letters and of taste, he was in intimate association with the great writers and master spirits that set the ball of the French Revolution in motion. In boldness and freedom of discussion they surpassed even himself. Speaking of them he says, "the writers of this country (France) now taking the field freely, and unrestrained, or rather revolted by prejudice, will rouse us all from the errors in which we have been hitherto rocked." A witness of the assembling of the States General, May, 1789, he rejoiced in the downfall of the worn-out French monarchy, of which that was the signal; and was the friend and adviser of those who sought to rebuild on its ruins a freer government, with broader and deeper foundations. He heard the rights of man, the origin of government, the abuses and limitations of power, more freely dis |