Washington, lay in this trait of his character, which carried him into theories and experiments, positions and principles, that involved him in a perpetual warfare of politics, religion, morals, and metaphysics.

6

It cannot be doubted but that Jefferson lived into an era very different in its predominant characteristics from the political age in which Washington flourished as President. The epoch of Jefferson was the second stage in our national existence, a stage of more refinement and luxury than that of Washington's time, a middle epoch between honesty and corruption which favoured duplicity and finesse, without plunging into open political debaucheries. Jefferson too, having been so long at the French court, assisted to produce this lamentable laxity of the political moral sentiment of the people; and it is to this trait of his character that we are, perhaps, to refer his change of opinion as to the honesty of John Adams, when, with a credulity not common to old age, he believed all the palavering of that Angloman,' in vindication of his character from the authorship of the alien and sedition laws; as if, as President, he could divest himself of his constitutional responsibility for the measures of his administration. It must ever excite astonishment, that Jefferson could for a moment tolerate the idea of the irresponsibility of the Executive, by giving John Adams credit for his interested expurgation from the turpitude of the obnoxious laws of his Presidentship; receiving his ipse dixit in a matter where the strongest testimony would naturally become liable to cross examination, and reasonable distrust; but thus to admit Mr. Adams' pleading in his own favour, and in crimination of others unjustly, betrayed in Jefferson a credulity, or a lust of conciliating the good opinion of his rivals, which it is difficult to reconcile either to his philosophical acumen, or to his sense of justice. True, he tells us his motive, that he would not have the world think that political competition could beget personal hostility between him and a rival! Yet if it did produce personal feelings, it mattered not what the world should think of it, even supposing it possible to deceive the world by such an artifice. But still there must always remain left a number of individuals in the opposite party, with whom reconciliation is hopeless. Thus, though Jefferson became nominally reconciled to John Adams, yet he died full of indignation and hatred against Timothy Pickering, and opened the grave

It was

of Hamilton to give a last blow to the dead lion. impossible to make the world believe what he did not believe himself, that he cherished no personal animosity against his greatest political enemy and rival. The ferocity of party hatred between rivals has no limits but the grave; it assassinated Alexander Hamilton, it persecuted De Witt Clinton to death, it ostracised John C. Calhoun and Henry Clay, it did attempt to destroy WASHINGTON himself; and never will become less bitter while men are actuated by the passions that destroy their greatness.

Both understood human nature well, and had studied man with success; but Washington had a peculiar intuition for penetrating to the true characters of men, and ascertaining at a glance what objects they were best adapted to accomplish. His first cabinet has never been equalled in talent by any subsequent one; and his selection of JEFFERSON, as Secretary of State, evinces his extraordinary sagacity in immediately penetrating to the strong bias of men, and finding out for what station their talents best qualified them. In this faculty Washington was superior to Jefferson, although the latter was largely gifted with the same instinct of genius,

A command over the passions of men—an intimate knowledge with the springs of human actions-a power to stimulate or restrain, direct, or control, the judgments and conduct of others, has always been thought to imply the highest scope of genius. This constituted a peculiar charm in the character of Washington, while Mr. Jefferson could boast of very little of it. It was this gift of genius which enabled Washington to keep his troops together, when without pay, provision, clothing or shelter, and thus save his country! Jefferson, in a certain measure possessed some of the same genius, but not of that exalted quality which distinguished the first President, who could reconcile men to the extreme of suffering from affection to his person, and reverence for his virtues. Mr. Jefferson's control and influence was of rather an opposite character, as they followed him from motives of interest; and yet, in both cases, the object to be obtained was much the same, though the feeling of personal veneration may have been different. But this power over others in Washington, extended to all occasions, and all men, under every variety of situation, which was not the case with Mr. Jefferson.

To counterbalance this disadvantage, Mr. Jefferson was more social, more companionable, more colloquial than his great predecessor: and hence he entertained a greater variety of guests, and practised a more extended hospitality: being not only the Magnus Apollo of all politicians of every grade, but the oracle of authors, schoolmasters, book-makers, inventors, dreamers, schemers, and the whole tribe of those who claim affinity to Apollo, Minerva, Mercury, or Mammon. But this disposition had its attendant evils; it seduced him into expenditures not justified by the income of his estate, and left him in his old age poor and embarrassed; when his political doctrines had, in a great measure, grown out of fashion, and his services to his country had to be recalled to the recollection of the age by the vigour and pathos of his own pen, in order to procure a law to dispose of his estate by lottery; a favour granted to all others, almost without solicitation, and for objects of the most frivolous nature.

In respect to their personal economy, therefore, Washington had more wisdom and prudence, and perhaps less hospitality and warmth of friendship; but he manifested his wisdom, in not leaving himself naked, to the cold ingratitude of a selfish world, and compelled to make appeals to his country, when that country had become deaf to his claims: and in this sense, the verdict of history seems to have ratified the distrust of Washington in the virtue of the people. There was this difference too, between them on this point, that WASHINGTON never received a cent of the people's money for his public services; while Mr. Jefferson obtained hundreds of thousands of dollars from the national treasury for his services to government; and which rendered his want of economy a perfect contrast to the wise liberality of expenditure practised by the father of his country.

Without supposing Jefferson to have been actuated by sordid motives, which would be to suppose him divested of all laudable ambition, in his pursuit of the highest honours of the nation, it may be esteemed a reasonable cause of regret, that, like Washington, he did not decline all compensation: and yet a doubt may be started whether that country will not be less liable to corruption, that allows a liberal compensation to its public officers, instead of tempting the rich to serve the people for nothing, and eventually subjecting the public honours to be purchased by the opulent.

It was worthy of remark, even to the generations in which these great men flourished, that they differed as much in their exteriors as in their minds; the apparel of Washington being adapted to his station and rank in life, equally free from ostentatious display and inappropriate meanness; while that of Jefferson was far inferior to his rank, as if he even courted the applause of the people by seeming to approach to the condition of the labouring classes, by his coarse and plain clothes, often in direct contradiction to his rank, and obviously in designed contrast to the dresses of those whom he stigmatised as monarchists. In this fashion of extreme humility, he was imitated by other prominent men of the party, who were rallying their strength in opposition to Washington, especially by Albert Gallatin, and all those demagogues who hoped to make up for the hollowness of their hearts, by the popular cut and colour of their garments; as if political orthodoxy resided in the texture of the cloth, and the folds of their mantles, instead of the texture of their minds, and the honesty of their principles. Whatever virtue, however, resided in these plain republican coats, no affectation of it was attempted by Washington and his friends, who seemed perfectly willing to be judged by the virtues of the inward man; leaving their garments to the taste of the mercer and the skill of the taylor, with such criticisms as little minds might feel disposed to make on so small a subject.

That Mr. Jefferson was deficient in that energy of character, which characterised his great predecessor, was shown by his forbearance to resent in a proper manner, the insulting aggressions of France and England, during the period of the Berlin and Milan decrees, and the attack on the Chesapeake; when the character of the republic sunk in his hands to the lowest point of pusillanimous dejection; and when a proper degree of vigour would have restored it to its wonted honour and fame. Washington, though careful at all times to shun war, never failed to extort the respect of foreign powers.

Mr. Jefferson was more fortunate than Washington, in having his life protracted to an old age, which introduced him, as it were into the company of posterity, to behold the effects of the two systems of government which he had opposed as monarchical, and which he had practised as republican; but which were, in fact, only two modes of the

same federal government! It was also his fortune to live to behold the victories on sea and land of the war of 1812; but he seems to have been insensible to his own agency in the production of many of the disasters which that war brought upon the country, and which were clearly to be traced to his system of depending on the MILITIA in time of war, and his favourite theory of non-taxation, and a total independence of the monied influence. As democrats were pledged by Jefferson, never to tax the people, the first consequence of the war was the prostration of public credit, and the result of that was universal defeat on every quarter; while, at the same time, his State right doctrine found a practical illustration in the Hartford Convention, that struck off one-half of the fiscal resources and moral weight of the empire, from co-operating in the war. But, although Mr. Jefferson lived through all these bitter fruits of his erroneous policy, yet he does not appear to have been sensible that he was instrumental, as he indubitably was, in producing them: for they were the inevitable effects of the great democratic system which he so proudly displayed to the world, in his eloquent pen. But his correspondence furnishes no gleam of suspicion, that the force of such lamentable experience ever shook the scales of political fanaticism from his eyes; for though he exults much in the splendour of our naval victories that wreathed gems of glory round the brows of our Bainbridge, our Decatur, and our Hull, yet he never seemed conscious of his own error of policy, in respect to our naval system, which would have reduced its actions to our harbours, and its seventy-fours to the cockle-shell dimensions of a gun-boat.

How superior in this respect was Washington!-who founded public credit on a just system of taxation, as a source of revenue to pay the interest, and redeem the principal-who, from experience, pronounced militia to be incapable of waging protracted war-and who consolidated into a system that fiscal power without which war wants its sinews, and government its wheels.

Thus the reaction caused by the Jefferson system only confirmed the wisdom of the Washington policy: and in the last extremity of disgrace and poverty, Madison was compelled to plan a national bank of FIFTY MILLIONS capital, to raise an army of 50,000 men, and to increase the navy to royal power and splendour; besides resorting to