to grow more slowly, and have a more 'homogeneous, more peaceable, and
more durable' government? But when it was found at a later day that the
new comers placed themselves at once in opposition to the better classes
and voted the Democratic ticket almost to a man, Jefferson proposed that
the period of residence required by the naturalization laws to qualify a
voter should be shortened. He had no objection to coercion before 1787.
Speaking of the backwardness of some of the colonies in paying their
quota of the Confederate expenses, he recommends sending a frigate to
make them more punctual. 'The States must see the rod, perhaps some of
them must be made to feel it.' His somersets of opinion and conduct are
endless. Once he talked of opening a market in the neighboring colonies
by force; at another time he advised his countrymen to abandon the sea
and let other nations carry for us; in 1785 we find him going abroad to
negotiate commercial treaties with all Europe. He objected to internal
improvements, and he sanctioned the Cumberland road. He proclaimed all
governments naturally hostile to the liberties of the people, until he
himself became a government. He made the mission to Russia for Mr.
Short, regardless of repeated declarations that the public business
abroad could be done better with fewer and cheaper ambassadors. The
unlucky sedition law was so unconstitutional in his judgment that he
felt it to be his duty, as soon as he mounted the throne, to pardon all
who had been convicted under it. But before he left the White House he
attempted to put down Federal opposition in the same way. Judges were
impeached; United States attorneys brought libel suits against editors,
and even prosecuted such men as Judge Reeve and the Rev. Mr. Backus of
Connecticut. It was a pet doctrine of Jefferson that one generation had
no right to bind a succeeding one; hence every constitution and all laws
should become null and every national debt void at the end of nineteen
years, or of whatever period should be ascertained to be the average
duration of human life after the age of twenty-one. He adhered to this
notion through life, although Mr. Madison, when urged by him to expound
it, gently pointed out its absurdity. When the news of the massacres of
September reached the United States at an unfortunate moment for the
Francoman party, Jefferson forgot this elementary principle and his
logic. He professed that he deplored the bloody fate of