ose into despots and these
into enemies, destroys the morals of the one and the _amor
patriae_ of the other! And can the liberties of a nation be
thought secure, when we have removed their only firm basis,--a
conviction in the minds of the people that their liberties are the
gifts of God, that they are not to be violated but with His
wrath?" (Now bursts forth prophecy. The whole page flames in a
moment.) "Indeed, I tremble for my country when I reflect that God
is just; that His justice cannot sleep forever; that, considering
numbers, nature, and natural means only, a revolution of the wheel
of Fortune, an exchange of situation, is among possible events;
that it may become probable by supernatural interference! The
Almighty has no attribute which can take side with us in such a
contest."

Well may Jefferson say, immediately after this, that "it is impossible to
be temperate and to pursue this subject through the various considerations
of policy, of morals, of history natural and civil." For no Abolitionist
ever branded the slave-system with words more fiery.

In 1784 Jefferson drew up the ordinance for the government of the Western
Territory. One famous clause runs thus:--

"After the year 1800 of the Christian era there shall be neither
slavery nor involuntary servitude in any of the said States,
otherwise than in punishment of crimes whereof the party shall
have been convicted to be personally guilty."

In Randall's "Life of Jefferson," a work in many respects admirable, this
clause is glossed with the declaration that Jefferson intended merely to
prevent an immense new importation of slaves from Africa to fill the
Territory; but Mr. Randall would have shown far greater insight, had he
added to this half-truth, that the idea of legally grasping and strangling
this curse flows from the ideas of the "Notes" as hot metal flows from
fiery furnace,--that the Ordinance of 1784 was but a minting of that true
metal drawn from those old glowing thoughts and words.

But Jefferson's hatred of slavery is not less fierce in his letters.

Dr. Price writes a pamphlet in England against slavery, and straightway
Jefferson seizes his pen to urge him to write more, and more clearly for
America, and more directly at American young men, saying, in
encouragement,--"Northward of the Chesapeake you may find, here and there,
an opponent to your doctrine, as you may find