scheme was too great even for the Democrats. Mr. Jefferson was forced,
in the teeth of theory, to send a squadron against the Barbary pirates.
He consoled himself by ordering the commodore not to overstep the
strict line of defence, and to make no captures. It was to be a display
of latent force. Strange as it may seem, he once doubted the expediency
of encouraging immigration. Emigrants from absolute monarchies, as they
all were, they would either bring with them the principles of government
imbibed in early youth, or exchange these for an unbounded
licentiousness. 'It would be a miracle were they to stop precisely at
the point of temperate liberty.' Would it not be better for the nation
to grow more slowly, and have a more 'homogeneous, more peaceable, and
more durable' government? But when it was found at a later day that the
new comers placed themselves at once in opposition to the better classes
and voted the Democratic ticket almost to a man, Jefferson proposed that
the period of residence required by the naturalization laws to qualify a
voter should be shortened. He had no objection to coercion before 1787.
Speaking of the backwardness of some of the colonies in paying their
quota of the Confederate expenses, he recommends sending a frigate to
make them more punctual. 'The States must see the rod, perhaps some of
them must be made to feel it.' His somersets of opinion and conduct are
endless. Once he talked of opening a market in the neighboring colonies
by force; at another time he advised his countrymen to abandon the sea
and let other nations carry for us; in 1785 we find him going abroad to
negotiate commercial treaties with all Europe. He objected to internal
improvements, and he sanctioned the Cumberland road. He proclaimed all
governments naturally hostile to the liberties of the people, until he
himself became a government. He made the mission to Russia for Mr.
Short, regardless of repeated declarations that the public business
abroad could be done better with fewer and cheaper ambassadors. The
unlucky sedition law was so unconstitutional in his judgment that he