ost matters attract no attention and
are not party tests. Only a few men of great industry and rare
powers are familiar with these. In the British House of Commons, it
is said, there are not more than thirty or forty such members. In
either branch of our Congress the proportion is no larger. It is a
great power to know that which others find it necessary to know; and
if to this information one adds good judgment and a persuasive
intellect, his influence will be almost unbounded. Young as he was,
no one could approach Jefferson without seeing that he had read and
thought much. While most of his comrades in Virginia had been
wasting their youth in horse-racing and cock-fighting, he had been an
enthusiastic student of books and Nature. Upon all subjects likely
to excite inquiry his knowledge was full and precise, and his
opinions those of a sagacious and philosophic mind. His manners were
attractive; he never engaged in dispute; he expressed himself freely
to those who sought his society for information or an intelligent
comparison of opinion; but his lips were closed in the presence of a
disputant. The patience with which he listened to others, and the
modest candor with which he expressed himself, usually disarmed the
contentions; when they did not, he went no farther. If his views
were false, he did not wish them to prevail; if they were true, he
felt certain that sooner or later they would prevail. A temperament
like this might have placed a less firm man under the imputation of
disingenuousness; but such an imputation could not rest upon him. No
one was in doubt as to his opinions. He generally anticipated inquiry,
and selected his ground before others saw that action would be
necessary. There were capable lawyers and men of wide experience in
our Revolutionary legislatures, but there was no one whose influence
was more powerful and felt upon a greater variety of subjects than
that of Jefferson.

He might, however, have possessed all of these characteristics, and
enjoyed the consideration among his fellow-legislators which they
confer, without being well known to the public, if he had not united
to them the ability to write elegant and forcible English. The
circumstances of the time made literary talents unusually valuable.
The daily press has driven the essayist out of the political field.
But for several generations elaborate disquisitions upon politics
had been usual in England; in this regard pamphlets then occup