the dancers bowed to them,--and how Mrs. Knox
mounted the steps unbidden, and, finding the sofa too small for three,
had to go down. We are told that at one time John Adams cried, "Damn
'em! you see that an elective government will not do,"--and that at
another he complimented a little boy who was a Democrat, saying, "Well,
a boy of fifteen who is not a Democrat is good for nothing,--and he is
no better who is a Democrat at twenty." Of this bit of treason Jefferson
says, "Ewen told Hurt, and Hurt told me." These are not mere scraps,
published by an indiscreet editor. They were revised by Mr. Jefferson in
1818, when he was seventy-five years old, after, as he says, the
passions of the time were passed away,--with the intention that they
should be published. It is humiliating to record this act. No
justification for it is possible. It is idle to say that these
revelations were made to warn the country of its danger. As evidence
they are not entitled to a thought. More flimsy gossip never floated
over a tea-table. Besides, for such a purpose they should have been
published when the contest was in progress, when the danger was
imminent, not after the men whom he arraigned were defeated and most of
them in their graves. Equally unsatisfactory is the excuse, that they
illustrate history. This may be true, but it does not acquit Mr.
Jefferson. Pepys tells us more than Hume about the court of Charles II.,
and Boswell's Life of Johnson is the best biography in the
language,--but he must be a shabby fellow who would be either a Boswell
or a Pepys. Mr. Randall's excuse, that the act was done in
self-vindication, is the worst of all. Jefferson was the victor and
needed no defence, surely not so mean and cowardly a defence. That a
grave statesman should stoop to betray the confidence of familiar
intercourse,--that a skeptical inquirer, who systematically rejected
everything which did not stand the most rigid tests, should rely on the
ridiculous gossip of political circles,--that a deliberate and
thoughtful man should jump to a conclusion as quickly as a child, and
assert it with the intolerance of a Turk, certainly is a strange
anomaly. We can account for it only by supposing that upon the subject
of a monarchy he was a little beside himself. It is certain, that,
through some weakness, he was made to forget gentlemanly propriety, and
the plainest rules for the sifting of testimony;--let us believe that
the general opinions which he