eration became a necessity. Seeing that
they could not oppress, men were led to think oppression wrong, and
toleration was exalted to a virtue. The theocratic spirit which
prevailed at first passed away, and the great principle was
established that governments have nothing to do with religion. It
does not require much penetration to discover that a government
which has unlimited power over the person and property of the
citizen will not long respect the scruples of his conscience.
Religious liberty gave birth to political freedom. The separation of
the settlements from each other, even in the same establishment, made
local provisions necessary for defence, and for the transaction of
local business, and led to the division of the government.

When united action was necessary, the colonies did not attempt to
reconcile their differences; they made a union for those purposes
which were common to all. The general principles which were asserted
during the Revolution were logical necessities of that event. It was
a rebellion against an unjust exercise of power. Why unjust? For no
other reason than because the Americans had an equal right with
Englishmen to govern themselves. But that right must be one which
was common to all men. The rebels knew this. They did not follow
Burke through his labored argument to prove that the measures of the
British ministry were inexpedient. They could not defend their
conduct before the world upon the narrow ground of a violation of the
relations between a dependency and its mother country. Those
relations were not understood, and such a defence would not have
been listened to. They appealed at once to the laws of God, and for
their justification addressed those universal human instincts which
give us our ideas of national and individual freedom. The
declaration that men are created equal excited no surprise _then_.
They believed it without a thought that it had entered the mind of a
fantastic recluse in the retirement of _l'Hermitage_, and, in
obedience to that belief, they severed the ties of tradition and
kindred, exposed their homes and the lives of those whose lives were
dearer to them than their own to the rage of civil war, and placed
all they hoped for and everything they loved upon the perilous
hazard of the sword.

At such a time Jefferson was led to the pursuit of politics. He was
not in the situation of one who, in disgust at the misery which
surrounds him, retires to his study,