n, his barns burned, his crops destroyed and many of his
slaves run off.

He declined a third election, and in the autumn of 1782, to his
inconsolable sorrow, his wife died, leaving three daughters, the
youngest a babe.

In the following November, he took his seat in congress at Annapolis,
and during that session he proposed and caused the adoption of our
present system of decimal currency.

In May, 1784, he was again elected plenipotentiary to France to assist
Franklin and Adams in negotiating commercial treaties with foreign
nations. He arrived in Paris in July, and in May, succeeding, became
sole plenipotentiary to the king of France for three years from March
10, 1785.

Jefferson's residence in France produced a profound impression upon
him and had much to do in crystallizing his ideas of the true form of
government.

That country was groveling under the heel of one of the most hideous
systems that the baseness of man ever conceived. Who has not read of
the nobleman who, when his coachman ran over a child and crushed out its
life, was only concerned lest its blood should soil his carriage, or of
the poor peasants who were compelled to beat the bogs all night long,
to prevent the frogs from croaking and thereby disturbing the slumber of
their lordly masters? The condition of no people could be more horrible,
than that of the lower classes in France previous to the uprising, with
its excesses that horrified the world.

Jefferson enjoyed the music, the art and the culture of the gay capital,
but could never shake off the oppression caused by the misery of the
people.

"They are ground to powder," he said, "by the vices of the form of
government which is one of wolves over sheep, or kites over pigeons."

He took many journeys through the country and made it a practice to
enter the houses of the peasants and talk with them upon their affairs
and manner of living. He often did this, using his eyes at the same
time with the utmost assiduity. All that he learned deepened the
sad impression he had formed, and he saw with unerring prevision the
appalling retribution that was at hand.

But Jefferson was not the officer to forget or neglect his duties to his
own government, during the five years spent in France.

Algiers, one of the pestilent Barbary States, held a number of American
captives which she refused to release except upon the payment of a large
ransom. It had been the custom for years for the powerful Ch