ly tried for a high misdemeanor in
organizing forces against Spain within the United States. In this
prosecution, as in the impeachment of Judge Chase of the Supreme Court,
executive encouragement and aid were offensively open and notorious.

When the embargo had almost ruined the commercial States of the Union,
it was modified by a non-intercourse act with France and England, to
take effect on March 4, 1809, the last day of Jefferson's term.

At the close of his second term Jefferson permanently retired from
office, and spent his remaining years at Monticello.

By a singular coincidence both he and John Adams died on July 4, 1826,
just fifty years after they had signed the Declaration of Independence.

The brief facts already recited clearly indicate the character of the
man. He was a bold and original thinker. With him mere precedent was
without weight. By nature he was a democrat, plain, simple, and
unostentatious. He not only believed in the capacity of the people for
self-government, but in their honest wish to govern aright. In the
struggle of the Revolution his devotion to the rights of the people
against English tyranny took the form of religious enthusiasm. In France
he witnessed the sufferings and misery of the down-trodden poor, whose
wild vengeance he believed to be justified by the long ages of
oppression and wrong under which they had groaned.

He distrusted power and naturally sought to restrict its exercise.
Hating monarchy, he feared to delegate large powers of government even
in republican forms. Hating an aristocracy, he encouraged the masses to
demand equality in civil, political, and social rights.

His political inconsistencies resulted from the usual impossibility of
reconciling theory and practice. When his opponents were in power, their
purposes, he thought, were accomplished through violations of the
constitution. An equally dangerous exercise of power by his friends
failed to excite his alarm. Feeling conscious within himself of an
honest purpose to subserve the good of the people and to perpetuate
their liberties, he found ready justification for every act having, in
his judgment, those ends in view.

America has produced no man so dear to the masses of its people as
Thomas Jefferson. He was an iconoclast, but the images broken by him
were the idols of a past age, and no longer deserved the worship of a
free people.

[Signature of the author.]

ALEXANDER HAMILTON

(1757-1804