f
12 Conservative.
stand the test of truth and reason. * * *
If persecuted , it will be generally read.
Every man in the United States will
think it a duty to buy a copy , in vindi
cation of his right to buy and to read
what he pleases. I have just been read
ing the new constitution of Spain. One
of its fundamental bases is expressed in
these words : 'The Roman Catholic
religion , the only true one , is , and al
ways shall be , that of the Spanish na
tion. ' I wish this presented to those
who question what you may sell , or we
may buy , with a request to strike out
the words 'Roman Catholic' and to in
sert the denomination of their own re
ligion. "
That Jefferson was not a bigot on any
side of such questions was evinced by
his contributing , the same year that the
above was written , $50 to the American
Bible Society , "for the purposes of the
society , sincerely agreeing with you
that there never was a more pure and
sublime system of morality delivered to
man than is found in the four evangel
ists. " This was live years after his final
retirement , and thus free from all pos
sible suggestion of its having been the
act of a demagogue.
John Adams appears to have shared
largely the opinions of Jefferson 011
most subjects save politics. He wrote
to his friend "I of
: am weary philo
sophers , theologians , politicians and his
torians. I think I can now say I have
read away bigotry , if not enthusiasm.
What does 'unbe
Priestley mean by an
liever , ' when he applies it to you ? How
much did ho 'unbelieve' himself ? So
far from sentencing you to perdition , 1
hope soon to meet you in another coun
try. In what sense , and to what extent ,
the Bible is law , may give rise to as
many doubts and quarrels as any of our
civil , political , military , or maritime
laws , to irritate factions of every sort.
I dare not look beyond my nose into
futurity. "
Adams laments his lack of books , in
letters to Jefferson. "I wish I owned
this book ( D'Argens's 'Treatise on the
Universe' ) and one hundred thousand
more that I want every clay. Phil
osophy looks with an impartial eye on
all terrestrial religions. I have exam
ined all , as well as my narrow sphere ,
my straitened means , and my busy
life would allow mo , and the result is
that the Bible is the best book in the
world. There is a book which I wish
I possessed. It has never crossed the
Atlantic. It is entitled 'Acta Sanc
torum , ' in forty-seven volumes , in
folio. What would I give to possess
in one immense mass , one stupendous
draught , all the legends , true , doubtful ,
and false. "
What an insatiable lielluo librorum
must Adams have been , to long to read
that ponderous and inexhaustible the
saurus of ancient theology , the Bollan-
dist 'Lives of the Saints' ! Jefferson
tells him in reply : "I had supposed
them defunct , with the Society of Jes
uits of which they were. * * *
Fifty-two volumes in folio , of the 'Acta
Sanctorum , ' in dog-Latin , would be a
formidable enterprise to the most la
borious German. I suspect , with yon ,
they are the most enormous mass of lies ,
frauds , hypocrisy , and imposture , that
was ever heaped together on this globe. "
Jefferson was an ingrained optimist ,
looking upon the best side of human
nature and human destiny. His faith
in the ultimate soundness and good
sense of the people was literally illimit
able. Asked by Adams if ho would
ngreo to live his seventy-three years
over again , ho answered : "I say yea.
I think with you that it is a good world
on the whole. " Of politics , he says :
"I have taken final leave. I have given
up newspapers in exchange for Tacitus
and Thucydides , for Newton and Euclid ,
and I find myself much the happier. I
am on horseback three or four hours
every day. "
He looked with toleration , not com
mon among scholars of classic training
and severe taste , upon those changes
and innovations in language which time
and progress bring about. He instanced
the modern copious vocabulary of the
French tongue , in contrast with the
Procrustean dictionary of the French
Academy , outside of which no word
was to be used or tolerated. "What do
we not owe to Shakspere , " asked he"for
his free and magical creation of words ? "
At the same time , Jefferson , when
asked to approve a scheme for reformed
or phonetic spelling , declined , on the
ground that Franklin's and other re
formed English alphabets had failed to
make any lodgment in the public mind.
"It is very difficult to persuade the great
bed } * of mankind to give up what they
have once learned , and are now masters
of , for something to be learned anew. "
Jefferson's judgments of noted men
and books were sometimes sweeping.
"Blackstone and Hume have made Tor
ies of all England , and are making Tor
ies of those young Americans , whoso na
tive feelings of independence do not
place them above wily sophistries. These
two books have done more towards the
suppression of the liberties of man
than the million of men in arms of
Bonaparte , and the millions of human
lives with the sacrifice of which ho will
stand loaded before the judgment-seat
of his Maker. " And to Madame Do
Stael ho wrote : "Tho day will como
when a just posterity will give to their
hero the only pro-eminence ho has
earned , that of having been the greatest
of the destroyers of the human race. "
He writes that Plato's Republic "was
the heaviest task-work I over went
through. While wading through the
whimsies , the puerilities , and unintelli
gible jargon , I laid it down often to ask
how the world should have so long con
sented to give reputation to such nou-
sense as this ? * * * He is
one of the race of genuine sophists , who
has escaped the oblivion of his breth
ren ; first , by the elegance of his diction ,
but chiefly by the adoption and incor
poration of his whimsies into the body
of artificial Christianity. "
And Adams eagerly concurs : "I took
upon mo the severe task of going through
all his worlcs. My disappointment was
very great , my astonishment was
greater , and my disgust shocking. "
Jefferson , many years before it was
proposed , oven in cultivated Massachus
etts , recorded his approval of the princi
ple that no person should over acquire the
rights of citizenship until he could read
and write. This was in a letter to Dupont
do Nemours , April 24 , 1816. And it is
to be said , to his immortal honor , that
he proposed , as early as the Revohition-
ary period , a comprehensive system of
free common schools for Virginia , from
which the best scholars were to be se
lected for higher education , at public
expense. "Worth and genius , " said
Jefferson , "would thus have been sought
out from every conUitioii of life , and
completely prepared by education for
defeating the competition of wealth and
birth for public trusts. "
Jacob North &
A COMING insc 1)Ublishers of
TOKY or NK- ; ? ' > ;
IIR ASKA. Lincoln , Neb. , will
issue from their
house a work entitled "A Comprehen
sive History of Nebraska and the Trans-
Mississippi Exposition , " which is now in
course of preparation. That history
will contain biographical sketches and
photographs of many of the progressive
men and representative women of each
county in the commonwealth. J. Sterl
ing Morton is editor in charge of the
work.
St'lt ° ° *
RKAL PATRIOTS.
M a s s a c h u s etts
during the past week has lost two of its
most patriotic citizens John M. Forbes
and Sherman Hoar. They represented
different generations , and the veteran
was old enough to have been the grand
father of the younger man , but Hoar at
thirty-eight represented the same typo
of character and embodied the same do-
votiou to the public interests as Forbes
through all his eighty-five years. As
types of rOal patriots , the older and the
younger alike deserve recognition be
yond the boundaries of their state.
Mr. Forbes was , by occupation , a busi
ness man , but a business man to whom
business was always something moro
than a mere means of making money.
Beginning , as a youth , in the China tea
trade which his Boston iiucles had al
ready built up , ho became later a great
developer of the railroad system in the
West , while Michigan and Illinois were
still only emerging from the period of
frontier life. It was Mr. Forbes who
pushed through a region of straggling
