heeded by the "chivalry" of the South; but what
could patriotic gentlemen do when their estates were wasting away by
litigation and unsuccessful farming?

It was amid such surroundings that Jefferson began his career. Although
he could not make a speech, could hardly address a jury, he had
sixty-eight cases the first year of his practice, one hundred and
fifteen the second, one hundred and ninety-eight the third. He was,
doubtless, a good lawyer, but not a remarkable one, law business not
being to his taste. When he had practised seven years in the general
court his cases had dropped to twenty-nine, but his office business had
increased so as to give him an income of L400 from his profession, and
he received as much more from his estate, which had swelled to nearly
two thousand acres. His industry, his temperance, his methodical ways,
his frugality, and his legal research, had been well rewarded. While not
a great lawyer, he must have been a studious one, for his legal learning
was a large element in his future success. At the age of thirty-one he
was a prominent citizen, a good office lawyer, and a rising man, with
the confidence and respect of every one who knew him,--and withal,
exceedingly popular from his plain manners, his modest pretensions, and
patriotic zeal. He was not then a particularly marked man, but was on
the road to distinction, since a new field was open to him,--that of
politics, for which he had undoubted genius. The distracted state of the
country, on the verge of war with Great Britain, called out his best
energies. While yet but a boy in college he became deeply interested in
the murmurings of Virginia gentlemen against English misgovernment in
the Colonies, and early became known as a vigorous thinker and writer
with republican tendencies. William Wirt wrote of him that "he was a
republican and a philanthropist from the earliest dawn of his
character." He entered upon the stormy scene of politics with remarkable
zeal, and his great abilities for this arena were rapidly developed.

Jefferson's political career really dates from 1769, when he entered the
House of Burgesses as member for Albermarle County in the second year of
his practice as a lawyer, after a personal canvass of nearly every voter
in the county, and supplying to the voters, as was the custom, an
unlimited quantity of punch and lunch for three days. The Assembly was
composed of about one hundred members, "gentlemen" of course, among