Thomas Jefferson, a Character Sketch Part 12

The article of dress is, perhaps, that in which economy is the least to be recommended.

All, too, will bear in mind this sacred principle, that though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will, to be rightful, must be reasonable; that the minority possess their equal rights, which equal laws must protect, and to violate which would be oppression.

A good cause is often injured more by ill-timed efforts of its friends than by the arguments of its enemies.

Persuasion, perseverance, and patience are the best advocates on questions depending on the will of others.

I hold it, that a little rebellion, now and then, is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical. An observation of this truth should render honest republican governors so mild in their punishment of rebellions, as not to discourage them too much. It is a medicine necessary for the sound health of government.

No race of kings has ever presented above one man of common sense in twenty generations.

With all the defects in our Const.i.tution, whether general or particular, the comparison of our government with those of Europe, is like a comparison of Heaven with h.e.l.l. England, like the earth, may be allowed to take the intermediate station.

I have a right to nothing, which another has a right to take away.

Educate and inform the whole ma.s.s of the people. Enable them to see that it is their interest to preserve peace and order, and they will preserve them.

When we get piled upon one another in large cities, as in Europe, we shall become corrupt as in Europe, and go to eating one another as they do there.

Health, learning, and virtue will insure your happiness; they will give you a quiet conscience, private esteem and public honor.

If I were to decide between the pleasures derived from the cla.s.sical education which my father gave me, and the estate left me, I should decide in favor of the farmer.

Good humor and politeness never introduce into mixed society a question on which they foresee there will be a difference of opinion.

The general desire of men to live by their heads rather than their hands, and the strong allurements of great cities to those who have any turn for dissipation, threaten to make them here, as in Europe, the sinks of voluntary misery.

I have often thought that if Heaven had given me choice of my position and calling, it should have been on a rich spot of earth, well watered, and near a good market for the productions of the garden. No occupation is so delightful to me as the culture of the earth, and no culture comparable to that of the garden.

I sincerely, then, believe with you in the general existence of a moral instinct. I think it is the brightest gem with which the human character is studded, and the want of it as more degrading than the most hideous of the bodily deformities.

I must ever believe that religion substantially good, which produces an honest life, and we have been authorized by one (One) whom you and I equally respect, to judge of the tree by its fruit.

Where the law of majority ceases to be acknowledged there government ends, the law of the strongest takes its place, and life and property are his who can take them.

Those who labor in the earth are the chosen people of G.o.d, if ever He has a chosen people, whose b.r.e.a.s.t.s he has made this peculiar deposit for substantial and genuine virtue, it is the focus in which He keeps alive that sacred fire, which otherwise might escape from the face of the earth.

The wise know their weakness too well to a.s.sume infallibility; and he who knows most knows best how little he knows.

TEN CANONS FOR PRACTICAL LIFE.

1. Never put off till to-morrow what you can do today.

2. Never trouble another for what you can do yourself.

3. Never spend your money before you have it.

4. Never buy what you do not want, because it is cheap; it will be dear to you.

5. Pride costs us more than hunger, thirst and cold.

6. We never repent of having eaten too little.

7. Nothing is troublesome that we do willingly.

8. How much pain have cost us the evils which have never happened.

9. Take things always by their smooth handle.

10. When angry count ten before you speak; if very angry, a hundred.

ADAMS AND JEFFERSON.

By Daniel Webster

Discourse in Commemoration of the Lives and Services of John and Thomas Jefferson, Delivered in Faneuil Hall, August 2, 1826.

This is an unaccustomed spectacle. For the first time, fellow-citizens, badges of mourning shroud the columns and overhang the arches of this hall. These walls, which were consecrated, so long ago, to the cause of American liberty, which witnessed her infant struggles, and rung with the shouts of her earliest victories, proclaim, now, that distinguished friends and champions of that great cause have fallen. It is right that it shall be thus. The tears which flow, and the honors that are shown when the founders of the republic die, give hope that the republic itself may be immortal. It is fit, by public a.s.sembly and solemn observance, by anthem and by eulogy, we commemorate the services of national benefactors, extol their virtues, and render thanks to G.o.d for eminent blessings, early given and long continued, to our favored country.

Adams and Jefferson are no more; and we are a.s.sembled, fellow-citizens, the aged, the middle-aged, and the young, by the spontaneous impulse of all, under the authority of the munic.i.p.al government, with the presence of the chief-magistrate of the commonwealth, and others, its official representatives, the university, and the learned societies, to bear our part in those manifestations of respect and grat.i.tude which universally pervade the land. Adams and Jefferson are no more. On our fiftieth anniversary, the great day of national jubilee, in the very hour of public rejoicing, in the midst of echoing and re-echoing voices of thanksgiving, while their own names were on all tongues, they took their flight together to the world of spirits.

If it be true that no one can safely be p.r.o.nounced happy while he lives, if that event which terminates life can alone crown its honors and its glory, what felicity is here! The great epic of their lives, how happily concluded! Poetry itself has hardly closed ill.u.s.trious lives, and finished the career of earthly renown, by such a consummation. If we had the power, we could not wish to reverse this dispensation of the Divine Providence. The great objects of life were accomplished, the drama was ready to be closed. It has closed; our patriots have fallen; but so fallen, at such age, with such coincidence, on such a day, that we cannot rationally lament that that end has come, which we know could not long be deferred.

Neither of these great men, fellow-citizens, could have died, at any time, without leaving an immense void in our American society. They have been so intimately, and for so long a time blended with the history of the country, and especially so united, in our thoughts and recollections, with the events of the revolution [text destroyed] the death of either would have touched the strings of public sympathy. We should have felt that one great link connecting us with former times, was broken; that we had lost something more, as it were, of the presence of the revolution itself, and of the act of independence, and were driven on, by another great remove, from the days of our country's early distinction, to meet posterity, and to mix with the future. Like the mariner, whom the ocean and the winds carry along, till he sees the stars which have directed his course and lighted his pathless way descent, one by one, beneath the rising horizon, we should have felt that the stream of time had borne us onward till another luminary, whose light had cheered us and whose guidance we had followed, had sunk away from our sight.

But the concurrence of their death on the anniversary of independence has naturally awakened stronger emotions. Both had been presidents, both had lived to great age, both were early patriots, and both were distinguished and ever honored by their immediate agency in the act of independence. It cannot but seem striking and extraordinary, that these two should live to see the fiftieth year from the date of that act; that they should complete that year; and that then, on the day which had fast linked forever their own fame with their country's glory, the heavens should open to receive them both at once. As their lives themselves were the gifts of Providence, who is not willing to recognize in their happy termination, as well as in their long continuance, proofs that our country and its benefactors are objects of His care?

Adams and Jefferson, I have said, are no more. As human beings, indeed they are no more. They are no more, as in 1776, bold and fearless advocates of independence; no more, as on subsequent periods, the head of the government; no more, as we have recently seen them, aged and venerable objects of admiration and regard. They are no more. They are dead. But how little is there of the great and good which can die! To their country they yet live, and live forever. They live in all that perpetuates the remembrance of men on earth; in the recorded proofs of their own great actions, in the offspring of their intellect, in the deep-engraved lines of public grat.i.tude, and in the respect and homage of mankind. They live in their example; and they live, emphatically, and will live, in the influence which their lives and efforts, their principles and opinion, now exercise, and will continue to exercise, on the affairs of men, not only in their own country, but throughout the civilized world. A superior and commanding human intellect, a truly great man, when Heaven vouchsafes so rare a gift, is not a temporary flame, burning bright for a while, and then expiring, giving place to returning darkness. It is rather a spark of fervent heat, as well as radiant light, with power to enkindle the common ma.s.s of human mind; so that when it glimmers in its own decay, and finally goes out in death, no night follows, but it leaves the world all light, all on fire, from the potent contact of its own spirit. Bacon died; but the human understanding roused by the touch of his miraculous wand to a perception of the true philosophy and the just mode of inquiring after truth, has kept on its course successfully and gloriously. Newton died; yet the courses of the spheres are still known, and they yet move on in the orbits which he saw, and described for them, in the infinity of s.p.a.ce.

No two men now live, fellow-citizens, perhaps it may be doubted whether any two men have ever lived in one age, who, more than those we now commemorate, have impressed their own sentiments, in regard to politics and government, on mankind, infused their own opinions more deeply into the opinions of others, or given a more lasting direction to the current of human thought. Their work doth not perish with them. The tree which they a.s.sisted to plant will flourish, although they water it and protect it no longer; for it has struck its roots deep, it has sent them to the very center; no storm, not of force to burst the orb, can overturn it; its branches spread wide; they stretch their protecting arms broader and broader, and its top is destined to reach the heavens. We are not deceived. There is no delusion here. No age will come in which the American revolution will appear less than it is, one of the greatest events in human history. No age will come in which it will cease to be seen and felt, on either continent, that a mighty step, a great advance, not only in American affairs, but in human affairs, was made on the 4th of July, 1776. And no age will come we trust, so ignorant or so unjust as not to see and acknowledge the efficient agency of these we now honor in producing that momentous event.

We are not a.s.sembled, therefore, fellow-citizens, as men overwhelmed with calamity by the sudden disruption of the ties of friends.h.i.+p or affection, or as in despair for the republic by the untimely blighting of its hopes. Death has not surprised us by an unseasonable blow. We have, indeed, seen the tomb close, but it has closed only over mature years, over long-protracted public service, over the weakness of age, and over life itself only when the ends of living had been fulfilled.

These suns, as they rose slowly and steadily, amidst clouds and storms in their ascendant, so they have not rushed from their meridian to sink suddenly in the west. Like the mildness, the serenity, the continuing benignity of summer's day, they have gone down with slow-descending, grateful, long-lingering light; and now that they are beyond the visible margin of the world, good omens cheer us from "the bright track of their fiery car!"

There were many points of similarity in the lives and fortunes of these great men. They belonged to the same profession, and had pursued its studies and its practice, for unequal lengths of time indeed, but with diligence and effect. Both were learned and able lawyers. They were natives and inhabitants, respectively, of those two of the colonies which at the revolution were the largest and most powerful, and which naturally had a lead in the political affairs of the times. When the colonies became in some degree united, by the a.s.sembling of a general congress, they were brought to act together in its deliberations, not indeed at the same time, but both at early periods. Each had already manifested his attachment to the cause of the country, as well as his ability to maintain it, by printed addresses, public speeches, extensive correspondence, and whatever other mode could be adopted for the purpose of exposing the encroachments of the British parliament, and animating the people to a manly resistance. Both, were not only decided, but early, friends of independence. While others yet doubted, they were resolved; where others hesitated, they pressed forward. They were both members of the committee for preparing the declaration of independence, and they const.i.tuted the sub-committee appointed by the other members to make the draft. They left their seats in congress, being called to other public employment, at periods not remote from each other, although one of them returned to it afterward for a short time. Neither of them was of the a.s.sembly of great men which formed the present const.i.tution, and neither was at any time member of congress under its provisions.

Both have been public ministers abroad, both vice-presidents and both presidents. These coincidences are now singularly crowned and completed.

They have died together; and they died on the anniversary of liberty.

When many of us were last in this place, fellow-citizens, it was on the day of that anniversary. We were met to enjoy the festivities belonging to the occasion, and to manifest our grateful homage to our political fathers. We did not, we could not here forget our venerable neighbor of Quincy. We knew that we were standing, at a time of high and palmy prosperity, where he had stood in the hour of utmost peril; that we saw nothing but liberty and security, where he had met the frown of power; that we were enjoying everything, where he had hazarded everything; and just and sincere plaudits rose to his name, from the crowds which filled this area, and hung over these galleries. He whose grateful duty it was to speak to us, [Hon, Jos.h.i.+ah Quincy] on that day, of the virtues of our fathers, had, indeed, admonished us that time and years were about to level his venerable frame with the dust. But he bade us hope that "the sound of a nation's joy, rus.h.i.+ng from our cities, ringing from our valleys, echoing from our hills, might yet break the silence of his aged ear; that the rising blessings of grateful millions might yet visit with glad light his decaying vision." Alas! that vision was then closing forever. Alas! the silence which was then settling on that aged ear was an everlasting silence! For, lo! in the very moment of our festivities, his freed spirit ascended to G.o.d who gave it! Human aid and human solace terminate at the grave; or we would gladly have borne him upward, on a nation's outspread hands; we would have accompanied him, and with the blessings of millions and the prayers of millions, commended him to the Divine favor.

While still indulging our thoughts, on the coincidence of the death of this venerable man with the anniversary of independence, we learn that Jefferson, too, has fallen, and that these aged patriots, these ill.u.s.trious fellow-laborers, have left our world together. May not such events raise the suggestion that they are not undesigned, and that Heaven does so order things, as sometimes to attract strongly the attention and excite the thoughts of men? The occurrence has added new interest to our anniversary, and will be remembered in all time to come.

The occasion, fellow-citizens, requires some account of the lives and services of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. This duty must necessarily be performed with great brevity, and in the discharge of it I shall be obliged to confine myself, princ.i.p.ally, to those parts of their history and character which belonged to them as public men.

John Adams was born at Quincy, then part of the ancient town of Braintree, on the 19th of October, (old style,) 1735. He was a descendant of the Puritans, his ancestors having early emigrated from England, and settled in Ma.s.sachusetts. Discovering early a strong love of reading and of knowledge, together with the marks of great strength and activity of mind, proper care was taken by his worthy father to provide for his education. He pursued his youthful studies in Braintree, under Mr. Marsh, a teacher whose fortune it was that Josiah Quincy, Jr., as well as the subject of these remarks, should receive from him his instruction in the rudiments of cla.s.sical literature. Having been admitted, in 1751, a member of Harvard College, Mr. Adams was graduated, in course, in 1755; and on the catalogue of that inst.i.tution, his name, at the time of his death, was second among the living alumni, being preceded only by that of the venerable Holyoke. With what degree of reputation he left the university is not now precisely known. We know only that he was a distinguished in a cla.s.s which numbered Locke and Hemmenway among its members. Choosing the law for his profession, he commenced and prosecuted its studies at Worcester, under the direction of Samuel Putnam, a gentleman whom he has himself described as an acute man, an able and learned lawyer, and as in large professional practice at that time. In 1758 he was admitted to the bar, and commenced business in Braintree. He is understood to have made his first considerable effort, or to have attained his first signal success, at Plymouth, on one of those occasions which furnish the earliest opportunity for distinction to many young men of the profession, a jury trial, and a criminal cause. His business naturally grew with his reputation, and his residence in the vicinity afforded the opportunity, as his growing eminence gave the power, of entering on the large field of practice which the capital presented. In 1766 he removed his residence to Boston, still continuing his attendance on the neighboring circuits, and not unfrequently called to remote parts of the province.

In 1770 his professional firmness was brought to a test of some severity, on the application of the British officers and Soldiers to undertake their defense, on the trial of the indictments found against them on account of the transactions of the memorable 5th of March. He seems to have thought, on this occasion, that a man can no more abandon the proper duties of his profession, than he can abandon other duties.

The event proved, that, as he judged well for his own reputation, he judged well, also, for the interest and permanent fame of his country.

The result of that trial proved, that notwithstanding the high degree of excitement then existing in consequence of the measures of the British government, a jury of Ma.s.sachusetts would not deprive the most reckless enemies, even the officers of that standing army quartered among them which they so perfectly abhorred, of any part of that protection which the law, in its mildest and most indulgent interpretation, afforded to persons accused of crimes.

Without pursuing Mr. Adams's professional course further, suffice it to say, that on the first establishment of the judicial tribunals under the authority of the state, in 1776, he received an offer of the high and responsible station of chief-justice of the supreme court of his state.

But he was destined for another and a different career. From early life, the bent of his mind was toward politics, a propensity which the state of the times, if it did not create, doubtless very much strengthened.

Public subjects must have occupied the thoughts and filled up the conversation in the circles in which he then moved, and the interesting questions at that time just arising could not but sieve on a mind like his, ardent, sanguine, and patriotic. The letter, fortunately preserved, written by him at Worcester, so early as the 12th of October, 1755, is a proof of very comprehensive views, and uncommon depth of reflection, in a young man not yet quite twenty. In this letter he predicted the transfer of power, and the establishment of a new seat of empire in America; he predicted, also, the increase of population in the colonies; and antic.i.p.ated their naval distinction, and foretold that all Europe combined could not subdue them. All this is said not on a public occasion or for effect, but in the style of sober and friendly correspondence, as the result of his own thoughts. "I sometimes retire,"