genius on the moral side. It commands the respect of mankind more than
the most brilliant faculties--and it accomplishes more. We have only to
look at Washington's life to see what can be done by it.

When Governor of Virginia during the Revolutionary War, Jefferson showed
a want of spirit and of action; the same deficiency was more painfully
conspicuous in his dealings with the Barbary pirates and in the affair
of the Leopard and Chesapeake. The insults and spoliations of the
English and French under the orders in council and the Berlin and Milan
decrees were borne with equal meekness. He was for peace at all hazards,
and economy at any price. When at last he found he had exhausted his
favorite method, and that neither 'time, reason, justice, nor a truer
sense of their own interests' produced any effect upon the obstinate
aggressors, he could desire no better means of checking their
depredations upon our trade than to order our merchants to lay up their
ships and shut up their shops. It was a Japanese stroke of policy--to
revenge an insult by disembowelling oneself--hari kari applied to a
nation.

His was indeed a brilliant theory of government, if we take him at his
word. At home, freedom was to be invigorated by occasional rebellions,
not to be put down too sharply, for fear of discouraging the people--the
tree of liberty was to be watered with blood. Abroad, custom-house
regulations would keep the peace of the seas. Embargo and
non-intercourse must bring France and England to their good behavior.

Mr. Jefferson had his political panacea: all disorders would infallibly
be cured by it. He puffed it in his journals and extolled its virtues in
his state papers. He congratulated his countrymen upon his election; he
called it the revolution of 1800. Now at length they could try the