n?" I asked.

"Come into the house, and I will show you something," said the
venerable man, then tottering to the grave. I went, and he showed me
some letters addressed to him by persons in Virginia, presenting, in no
very enviable light, the character of Jefferson. When I had read them,
he remarked: "You must not suppose I am anxious to prejudice your
youthful mind against the great favorite of your people. It is not so.
You seem solicitous to learn something of the men who have had so much
agency in the establishment of the Government and the formation of the
opinions of the people, that I am willing you should see upon what my
opinions have, in a great degree, been formed. Mr. Jefferson is still
living, and still writing. His pen seems to have lost none of its
vigor, nor his heart any of its venom. You will hear him greatly
praised, and greatly abused. I knew him at one time, but never
intimately, and may be said only to know him as a public man; what of
his private character I know, comes from the statements of others, and
general report. You have just seen some of these statements. I knew the
writers of these letters well, and know their statements to be entitled
to credit, and I believe them. They assure me that Mr. Jefferson is
without moral principle. His public conduct must convince every one of
his want of political principle. His whole life has been a bundle of
contradictions. He has had neither chart nor compass by which to
regulate his course, but has universally adopted the expedient.

"That he has a great and most vigorous intellect is beyond all
question; but most of its emanations have been the _ad captandum_ to
seize the current, and sail with it. He saw the democratic proclivity
of the people, he concentrated it by the use of his pen, and he has
aided its expansion, until it threatens ruin to the Government. He
knows it, and he still perseveres. Under the plea of inviting
population, he advocated the extension of the franchise to aliens, and
was really the parent from whose brain was born the naturalization
laws, making citizens of every nationality, and giving them all the
powers of the Government, extending suffrage to every pauper in the
land, increasing to the utmost the material for the demagogue, and thus
depriving the intelligence of the country of the power to control it.
The specious argument that if a man is compelled to serve in the
militia and defend the country, he should be entitled to