, here and there, a
murderer." He speaks hopefully of the disposition in Virginia to "redress
this enormity,"--calls the fight against slavery "the interesting
spectacle of justice in conflict with avarice and oppression,"--speaks of
the side hostile to slavery as "the sacred side." The date is 1785.

This welcome to Dr. Price's onslaught will serve as antidote to Mr.
Randall's poisonous declaration, that Jefferson was opposed to
interference with slave institutions by those living outside of Slave
States.

In 1786 Jefferson wrote to correct M. de Meusnier's statement of the
efforts already made for emancipation; and, referring to the holding of
slaves by a people who had clamored loudly and fought bravely for freedom,
he says,--

"What a stupendous, what an incomprehensible machine is man,--who
can endure toil, famine, stripes, imprisonment, and death itself,
in vindication of his own liberty, and, in the next moment, be
deaf to all those motives whose power supported him through his
trial, and inflict on his fellow-men _a bondage one hour of which
is fraught with more misery than ages of that which he rose in
rebellion to oppose_!"

Here, in Jefferson himself, then, is the source of that venom with which
earnest men, throughout the land, are stinging to death the organization
which stole his name to destroy his ideas.

In 1788, Jefferson, being Minister at Paris, receives a note from M. de
Warville tendering him membership in the Society for the Abolition of the
Slave-Trade. Jefferson is forced by his peculiar position to decline, but
he takes pains to say,--"You know that nobody wishes more ardently to see
an abolition not only of the trade, but of the _condition_ of slavery."

Here is no non-committalism, no wistful casting about for loop-holes, no
sly putting out of hooks to catch backers, not the feeblest germ of
quibble or lie. The man answers more than he is asked. Is there not, in
the present dearth, something refreshing in this old candor?

But some have thought Jefferson's later expressions against slavery
wanting in heartiness. Let us examine.

The whole world knows, that, when a wrong stings a man, making him fierce
and loud, his _direct_ expressions have often small value; but that his
_parenthetical_ expressions often have great value. This is one of the
simplest principles in homely every-day criticism, serving truth-seekers,
wherever wordy war rages, whether among st