fifty-six signers of the declaration, seven were not members of Congress when it passed.

On July 5th Congress adopted a resolution ordering that the Declaration be sent to the several assemblies, conventions, and councils of safety, and to all the officers of the continental armies. In this way it was soon proclaimed throughout the United States. It met with the most enthusiastic ratification and adoption. From New Hampshire to Georgia there were bonfires, torchlight processions, the firing of guns, and ringing of bells. "The people," said Samuel Adams, "seemed to recognize this resolution as though it was a decree promulgated from heaven."

The Declaration of Independence has been severely criticised both for its style and for the principles it enunciates, but its place among the great papers of history is secure, and criticism of it is becoming idle and uninteresting. That it contained nothing new was perhaps the feature that won for it the affection of the world. Jefferson claimed nothing new for it. When charged with rehashing old sentiments and copying from Locke and Otis when he wrote it, he denied the charge of plagiarism, but acknowledged that there were no new ideas or new sentiments in it. Nevertheless, the declaration is no servile imitation. It was written from the shoulder. "I turned to neither book nor pamphlet while writing it," says Jefferson. How peculiarly it was an embodiment of his own ideas is seen in a sentence in a letter to his friend Fleming, written three days before the Declaration was passed. "If any doubts has (sic) arisen as to me, my country will have my political creed in the form of the declaration which I was lately directed to draw." Jefferson was brimful of ideas of reform when he wrote the Declaration, and he aimed to make it a profession of his political faith. His faith was that of a democrat, and the Declaration of Independence is a formal expression of the beliefs and aspirations of the democracy of his time. It is a remarkable paper, because it so successfully proclaims the spirit of the age in which it was written.

JEFFERSON AS A LAW-GIVER.

Jefferson's interest in the affairs of Congress could not crowd out his interest in the affairs of his own State. Virginia, and not the United States, was as yet his country. When the Convention declared for independence it took steps to provide for a form of government for the new order of things. While Jefferson was in Philadelphia working on the great document that has secured his fame, he found time to prepare outlines of a Constitution for the new Virginia. He sent his plan to the President of the Convention, but it arrived too late. The construction of a new Constitution had already proceeded so far that it was not deemed wise to go back and open up for debate matters that had been agreed upon by the assembly after long discussion. Jefferson's preamble, however, written in the spirit of, and bearing a strong similitude to, the Declaration of Independence, was adopted as an amendment and prefixed to the new Constitution.

We have seen that Jefferson was re-elected to Congress in June, 1776, but in September he resigned his seat, claiming at the time that the situation of his domestic affairs demanded this step. In the memoir of his life, written in 1820, he gives an entirely different reason for leaving Congress. He there says: "A meeting of the (Virginia) legislature was to be held in October and I had been elected a member by my county. I knew that our legislation under the regal government had many very vicious points which urgently required reformation, and I thought I could be of more use in forwarding that." Whatever his motives have been, whatever the true reason was, he vacated his seat in Congress and entered the Virginia legisla

ture.

About this time (October, 1776) Jefferson was selected by Congress to go to France with Franklin and Silas Deane, for the purpose of effecting a treaty of alliance. It was the dream of his youth to visit Europe. The cause of his ill-success in his first love affair has been attributed to the fact that he asked

the young lady to defer marriage until he should have spent several years abroad. This diplomatic appointment would enable him to realize his dream in an almost ideal way. He debated long and anxiously whether he should go or not. After three days of waiting, the messenger who brought word of his appointment returned to Congress with this answer: "It would argue great insensibility in me could I receive with indifference so confidential an appointment from your body. My thanks are a poor return for the partiality they have been pleased to entertain for me. No cares for my own person nor yet for my private affairs would have induced one moment's hesitation to accept the charge. But circumstances very peculiar to the situation of my family, such as neither permit me to leave or to carry it, compel me to ask leave to decline a service so honorable, and at the same time so important to the American cause."

Jefferson took his seat in the first republican House of Delegates that met in Virginia on the first day of the session, and entered at once upon a labor of reform that was to prove the greatest work of his life, and that revolutionized the public and private law of the State. The code of Virginia, when he and Wythe and Madison took hold of it to make it reasonable and human and just, was a strange pot-pourri of tyranny, cruelty and bigotry. Its penal code, like that of the mother country before the days of Bentham, was as unscientific as it was severe. At every county seat there was a pillory, a whipping-post, and stocks. A general law commanded the erection of these instruments of torture in the yards of all court-houses. The duckingstool for babbling women could be added if such was the local option. The laws in force relating to religion were as intolerant as the age in which they had been passed-the age of the wrongly named "Toleration Act." To call in question the Trinity or to be a deist was punishable with imprisonment without bail. To be a Catholic debarred a man of the right to teach, to own a horse or a gun, or to give testimony in a court of law. A Protestant minister not of the Anglican faith could be legally drummed out of the country. The right of voting

was limited to those owning twenty-five acres of land with a house thereon, or one hundred acres without a house. In an incorporated city a man could not vote unless he was the owner of land within the city limits. Harsh naturalization laws discouraged immigration. The law of entail and primogeniture flourished as in England.

Jefferson's first attack upon the old order of things was directed against a class to which he himself belonged-the aristocracy. Much of the best land of Virginia descended from oldest son to oldest son by way of entail. Such land was not liable for debt, could not be bequeathed by will, could not be alienated even with the consent of the owner without special act of the legislature. Such a system of land tenure was opposed to one of Jefferson's pet theories-to wit, that one generation has no right to bind succeeding generations; that the usufruct of the earth belongs to the living, not to the dead. Entails, he said, were "contrary to good policy, tended to deceive honest traders who gave credit on the visible possession of such estates, discouraged the holder from improving his land, and sometimes did injury to the morals of youth by rendering them independent of and disobedient to their par ents." "To annul this privilege, and, instead of an aristocracy of wealth, of more harm and danger than benefit to society, to make an opening for the aristocracy of virtue and talent," Jefferson introduced his bill for the abolition of entails. met, of course, with the fiercest resistance. Strenuous efforts were made to amend the bill in such a way as to break its force. But Jefferson stood firm, and the bill passed substantially in the form in which he desired. Tenure by fee tail was abolished; lands and slaves could no longer be prevented by law from falling into the hands of their rightful owners. There was now but one prop for the landed aristocracy. That was the principle of primogeniture, and through the efforts of Jefferson that, too, was soon removed. The blow dealt by these reforms fell heavily on the old families and the recoil upon Jefferson was severe. The great land holders of the State were henceforth his bitter

It

enemies, and their children and children's children became enemies of his memory.

Jefferson's next measure was perhaps as important in its far reaching effects as the one just mentioned. He introduced into the legislature and carried through it a bill for the naturalization of foreigners. The conditions of becoming a citizen were made easier than any other government perhaps had ever before dared to make them. The alien was simply to show a residence of two years within the State, declare his intentions of remaining in the State, and give assurances of his good faith and loyalty. Minors, the children of naturalized parents, were admitted to citizenship without legal formalities, as were minors who came to America without their parents. The extremely liberal features of this bill were embodied by Congress in its first naturalization law, and incorporated in all subsequent legislations respecting citizenship. Notwithstanding the war and the unfavorable naturalization laws, immigrants were coming into Virginia at this time by thousands and it was not an unwise political move upon the part of Jefferson to come forward as the champion of the strangers' rights in their new home. It is not suggested, however, that he was induced by ulterior political reasons to introduce the bill. Easy naturalization* and easy expatriation were a part of his general theory of easy govern

ment.

The next act of Jefferson in the legislature was one that he regarded-and students of politics will agree with him-as being of more importance than the Declaration of Independence. He brought up the subject of religious liberty, attempting to secure the enactment of the following just and comprehensive law: "No man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, ministry, or place whatsoever; nor shall be enforced, restrained, molested, or burdened in his body or goods; nor shall otherwise suffer on account of his religious opinions or belief; but all men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinion in matters of religion; and

*See Naturalization, page 314. †See Expatriation, page 212.