ff!" to any interference by the general government with
the domestic institutions of the States. His speeches read better than
most of his contemporaries'. They are interesting in their exhibit of
a bitter and eccentric individuality, witty, incisive, and expressed in
a pungent and familiar style which contrasts refreshingly with the
diplomatic language and glittering generalities of most congressional
oratory, whose verbiage seems to keep its subject always at
arm's-length.

Another noteworthy writing of Jefferson's was his Inaugural Address of
March 4, 1801, with its programme of "equal and exact justice to all
men, of whatever state or persuasion, religious or political; peace,
commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances
with none; the support of the State governments in all their
rights; . . . absolute acquiescence in the decisions of the
majority; . . . the supremacy of the civil over the military authority;
economy in the public expense; freedom of religion, freedom of the
press, and freedom of person under the protection of the _habeas
corpus_, and trial by juries impartially selected."

During his six years' residence in France, as American minister,
Jefferson had become indoctrinated with the principles of French
democracy. His main service and that of his party--the Democratic, or,
as it was then called, the Republican party--to the young republic was
in its insistence upon toleration of all beliefs and upon the freedom
of the individual from all forms of governmental restraint. Jefferson
has some claims to rank as an author in general literature. Educated
at William and Mary College in the old Virginia capital, Williamsburg,
he became the founder of the University of Virginia, in which he made
special provision for the study of Anglo-Saxon, and in which the
liberal scheme of instruction and discipline was conformed, in theory,
at least, to the "university idea." His _Notes on Virginia_ are not
without literary quality, and one description, in particular, has been
often quoted--the passage of the Potomac through the Blue Ridge--in
which is this poetically imaginative touch: "The mountain being cloven
asunder, she presents to your eye, through the cleft, a small catch of
smooth blue horizon, at an infinite distance in the plain country,
inviting you, as it were, from the riot and ytumult roaring around, to
pass through the breach and participate of the calm below."

After the