live freely and happily under institutions chosen by themselves. To go back to a primitive past, to the good old times, had been the dream of many political philosophers; but Jefferson's vision of that ancestral past was no dream, for it had originated in the only part of the inhabited earth where it could become a reality. This was the true background of the Declaration of Independence, the background of Jeffersonian democracy—a curious justification of the pioneer spirit by a student of history who cared little for abstract reasoning and philosophical constructions.

Thus far the national consciousness of Thomas Jefferson had been somewhat hazy. Born in Virginia and intensely devoted to the Old Dominion, he had never left his native habitat until he was sent as a delegate to Congress. There only did he realize the divergences of the different colonies and the imperious necessity for them to organize their life and to agree to some sort of a permanent compact. No dealings with foreign nations could be transacted, no efficient measures of protection against the common foe could be devised, unless the several States were held together by some sort of a common bond and had achieved some sort of a unity. While the Articles of Confederation were being discussed, he puzzled over the essence and meaning of these "natural rights" so often mentioned in the different committees on which he sat, and he preserved the result of his meditations in an unpublished document I had the good fortune to discover in the Library of Congress. First of all, he was led to establish a distinction between the fundamental natural rights, which the individual can exercise by himself, and another class of rights which cannot be safely enjoyed unless society provides adequate protection. In forming a society and in accepting a social compact, the first rights were to be reserved and to remain inalienable; rights of the second class, on the contrary, were partly given up in exchange for more security. This very simple distinction enabled the young delegate to do away with the old antinomy so perplexing to many political philosophers and to solve the difficulty against which Rousseau had vainly struggled in his Contrat social. The individual remained in full possession of certain rights; society was granted only part of the others, a part to be determined strictly in forming a social compact: the citizen no longer had to sacrifice all his rights on the altar of the country; he remained sovereign in a sovereign society.

What was true of individuals was true of the States coalescing to form a union or confederation. Each individual State remained sovereign and yielded only part of certain rights in order to obtain more security against foreign aggressors. To the right of expatriation for the individual corresponded the right of secession for the State. But from this recognition of the right to denounce the compact, it did not follow that Jefferson would have encouraged either the individual or the States to withdraw from the society thus formed in order to resume a precarious life by themselves. Even if he had been an anarchistic instead of being a truly "socialistic" political thinker, a few meetings of the committees on which he sat would have sufficed to demonstrate that, to the necessity of society for the individuals, corresponded the necessity of a union for the individual States. The Virginian had developed into a true American. Jefferson was thinking nationally and not sectionally; he was ready for the great rôle he was about to assume.

His five-year stay in Europe confirmed him in the opinion that there existed in America the germ of something infinitely precious, if somewhat precarious, and he realized that his country had really become the hope of the world. He was too fond of good music, good architecture, good dinners, good wines and long conversations not to appreciate fully the good points of life while in Paris. He praised the French for their achievements in the arts and sciences, and formed with many of them long-enduring friendships; but neither France, nor England, and even less Italy or Spain, were countries toward which men could turn their eyes when looking for a political "polar star." Traditions were too deeply rooted, prejudices of too long standing, class distinctions too sharply defined to leave room for any hope of ever seeing them establish within a reasonable time a tolerable form of government. On the contrary, unhampered by such hoary traditionalism and free to shape her destinies, America, provided she carefully avoided the dangers under which Europe was laboring, could not only establish the best possible form of government, but set an example to be followed by the rest of mankind.

These dangers were patent; they resulted from the existence of privileged classes or hereditary aristocracies, of State religions, censorship of the press and books, centralization and concentration in a few hands of all the financial and economic resources of the country. Anything that smacked of the European system was to be fought with the utmost energy, not only for the sake of America, but for the sake of the world. Such were the real reasons that justify the fight waged by Jefferson after his return from Europe against the tendencies represented by Hamilton. Not out of any sympathy for the Jacobins did he seem to favor the French Revolution; but, since America herself had become the battlefield of two opposed ideals, he sided with the one which, in his opinion, presented the smaller danger for the existence of his country.

Throughout the long-drawn-out battle, he remained convinced that only by avoiding any entanglement with European politics could America fulfill her destiny. The great obstacle to such an isolation was foreign commerce, for Jefferson clearly understood that economic and commercial bonds or dependence would necessarily entail political bonds and political dependence. America was to live in her own world, to pay her debts as soon as possible, to become industrially independent of Europe, to manufacture at home enough for her own consumption "and no more." She was also to seize every opportunity to eliminate dangerous neighbors, not that she really coveted any territory or colony held by foreign powers, not that she needed new land for a surplus of population; but she could not keep out of European politics if Europe remained at her doors and used her colonies as a "fulcrum for her intrigues." Spain was so weak that nothing had to be feared directly from her, but her colonies could be seized at any time by more powerful enemies; France should not be permitted again to set her foot on the American continent. As to England, she was to be expelled from her continental dominions whenever America would be strong enough to enforce the "American jus gentium", and the sea was to be neutralized.

Having removed all causes for foreign frictions and aggressions, America would be free to develop along her own lines. She was to remain for long years to come an agricultural nation; she would grow towards the west by attaching to herself new territories as their population increased. The Federal Government was to retain a minimum of power and attributions. It was to be carefully and constantly watched for fear of concentrating too much power in a few hands and in one place. Federal legislation was to be kept down, for the more laws, the worse the republic—"plurimae leges, pessima republica." There was nothing intangible, however, in the government which had been hastily put together at the close of the Revolution. It was desirable and necessary to preserve the main principles embodied in the Constitution in so far as they expressed the permanent and inalienable rights of the people and the States, but each generation had a right to determine anew the details of the legislation and how they chose to be