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episode hurried him on to a resignation. July 31st he sent to the President a letter in which a decided tone of bitterness is to be discovered. One passage will suffice: "At the close, therefore, of the ensuing month of September, I shall beg leave to retire to scenes of greater tranquillity, from those which I am every day more and more convinced that neither my talents, tone of mind, nor time of life fit me." Jefferson went more fully into his reasons: "I expressed to him [Washington] my excessive repugnance to public life, the particular uneasiness of my situation in this place where the laws of society oblige me always to move exactly in the circles which I know to bear me peculiar hatred, that is to say, the wealthy aristocrats, the merchants closely connected with England, the new created paper fortunes; that thus surrounded, my words were caught, multiplied, misconstrued, and even fabricated and spread abroad to my injury; that he (Washington) saw, also, that there was such an opposition of views between myself and another part of the administration as to render it peculiarly unpleasing and to destroy the necessary harmony." At the further solicitation of the President, however, Jefferson agreed to continue in office through December.

On December 31st, 1793, therefore, Jefferson finally transmitted his resignation, couched in terms of the warmest cordiality and profoundest respect towards the President. He received in reply a letter which goes far towards refuting the idea that there was at this time an alienation between Washington and Jefferson, or that Jefferson averted an approaching alienation by resigning. No stronger summary of Jefferson's service in the Cabinet can be given than Washington's stately words of commendation and personal regard:

"Dear Sir: Since it has been impossible to prevail upon you to forego any longer the indulgence of your desire for private life, the event, however anxious I am to avert it, must be submitted to. But I cannot suffer you to leave your station without assuring you that the opinion which I have formed of your integrity and talents, and which dictated your original nomination, has been confirmed by the fullest experience, and that both have been

displayed in the discharge of your duty. Let a conviction of my most earnest prayers for your happiness accompany you in your retirement; and while I accept, with the warmest thanks, your solicitude for my welfare, I beg you to believe that I am, dear sir, Yours, etc.,

George Washington."

RETIREMENT.

In January, 1794, Jefferson reached Monticello to enjoy a retirement* which he intended should last many years. He was now in his fifty-first year, and he imagined, to judge from his correspondence, that his constitution was shattered and that he had become an old man. This feeling was merely the reaction following upon his withdrawal from the severe strain of his Cabinet life; but it served to enhance the sincerity of his protestations of contentment with his new environment. As a matter of fact, his bodily strength was that of a much younger man—the result of his temperate and regular habits. A few months found him completely restored to health.

His domestic life had in it much to erase whatever unpleasant recollections he retained from his public service. Four years before his elder daughter, Martha, had become the wife of Thomas Mann Randolph, a distant kinsman, and the young couple with their two children now came to live at Monticello. Mrs. Randolph was a highly accomplished woman, attractive in manners and conversation, endowed with unusual good sense, and devoted to her father. His younger daughter, Maria, now in her seventeenth year, completed the circle. She had for three years lived with her father in Philadelphia. She closely resembled her mother in her beauty and frailness of health, and was distinguished among all of her acquaintances for the unselfishness of her character.

Jefferson's life was now of the quietest description. Though his habit of letter-writing was practically dropped (during the

*See Retirement, page 369.

year 1794 only nine letters are preserved as his correspondence), yet he wrote enough to acquaint us with his daily occupations. To his late colleague and successor in the State department, Edmund Randolph, he wrote the first letter of his retirement. In this he said: "I think it is Montaigne who has said that ignorance is the softest pillow on which a man can rest his head. I am sure it is true as to everything political, and shall endeavor to estrange myself to everything of that character. I indulge myself on one political topic only, that is, in declaring to my countrymen the shameless corruption of a portion of the representatives to the first and second Congresses and their implicit devotion to the Treasury." To Mr. Adams, the Vice-President, he wrote even more complacently: "The difference of my present and past situation is such as to leave me nothing to regret but that my retirement has been postponed four years too long. The principles on which I calculated the value of life are entirely in favor of my present course. I return to farming with an ardor which has got the better entirely of my love of study. Instead of writing ten or twelve letters a day, which I have been in the habit of doing as a thing of course, I put off answering my letters now, farmerlike, till a rainy day, and then find them sometimes postponed by other necessary occupations."

To Tenche Coxe, an old friend, he wrote in a vein which later furnished his opponents with a theme for much ridicule: "I am still warm whenever I think of those scoundrels [members of Congress who had profited by Hamilton's schemes], though I do it as seldom as I can, preferring infinitely to contemplate the tranquil growth of my lucern and my potatoes. I have so completely withdrawn myself from these spectacles of usurpation and misrule that I do not take a single newspaper, nor read one a month; and I feel myself infinitely happier for it."

According to his farm book, his estate comprised a total of 10,647 acres, but the greatest area under cultivation at any one time never reached two thousand acres. His slaves numbered one hundred and fifty-four. His domestic animals at the beginning of 1794 were thirty-four horses, five mules, two hun

dred and forty-nine cattle, three hundred and ninety hogs, and three sheep. A letter to the President shows the condition of his property: "I find, on a more minute examination of my lands than the short visits heretofore made to them permitted, that a ten years' abandonment of them to the ravages of overseers has brought on them a degree of degradation far beyond what I had expected. As this obliges me to adopt a milder course of cropping, so I find that they have enabled me to do it by having opened a great deal of land during my absence. I have, therefore, determined on a division of my farms into six fields, to be put in this rotation: first year, wheat; second, corn, potatoes, peas; third, rye or wheat, according to circumstances; fourth and fifth, clover when the field will bring it; and buckwheat dressings when they will not; sixth, folding and buckwheat dressings. But it will take me from three to six years to get this plan under way. I am not yet satisfied that my acquisition of overseers has been a happy one, or that much will be done this year towards rescuing my plantations from their wretched condition. Time, patience and perseverance must be the remedy; and the maxim of your letter, 'Slow and sure,' is not less a good one in agriculture than in politics."

Success attended Jefferson's efforts to reduce to system the affairs of his estate. A picture of the prosperity of Monticello and a pleasing sketch of its owner was drawn by RochefoucauldLiancourt, who visited Jefferson in 1796: "At present he is employed with activity and perseverance in the management of his farms and buildings; and he orders, directs, and pursues in the minutest detail every branch of business relative to them. I found him in the midst of harvest, from which the scorching heat of the sun does not prevent his attendance. His negroes are nourished, clothed, and treated as well as white servants could be. As he did not expect any assistance from the two small neighboring towns, every article is made on his farm. His negroes are cabinet-makers, carpenters, masons, bricklayers, smiths, etc. The children he employs in a nail factory, which yields already a considerable profit. The young and old negresses spin for the clothing of the rest. He animates them

by rewards and distinctions. In fine, his superior mind directs the management of his domestic concerns with the same ability, activity, and regularity which he evinced in the conduct of public affairs, and which he is calculated to display in any situation of life. In the superintendence of his household, he is assisted by his two daughters, Mrs. Randolph and Miss Maria, who are handsome, modest and amiable women."

It was in the summer of 1796 that Jefferson reduced to definite form his speculations on the subject of mould-boards of least resistance. He had been at work upon this problem for years, and it was with great pride that he finally solved it and put his ideal plows in operation in his own fields. In 1798, at the official request of the English Board of Agriculture, he forwarded to them a model and description of his plow; and, a year or so later, he also sent one to the Agricultural Society of the Seine. Indeed, it was generally understood in France that Jefferson was the discoverer of a formula for constructing, on mathematical principles, a mould-board of least resistance for plows.

Although immersed in subjects of scientific agriculture, Jefferson's mind had never really forsaken its old channels. His letters of 1795 and 1796 constantly revert to political topics. Washington's address to Congress in November, 1794, attracted his keenest interest. This concerned exclusively the measures which had been taken by the Executive to put down the revolts in western Pennsylvania against the Excise Law. Since the passage of the law in March, 1791, there had been throughout this section constant protests and popular disturbances. In the summer of 1794 these troubles culminated in a meeting of delegates at Pittsburg, at which a system of correspondence between the malcontents was established. Armed men continued to interrupt Federal officers in the discharge of their duties, and either drove them away or compelled them to pledge themselves not to attempt to serve processes. these measures had as their avowed purpose the repeal of the law. Before resorting to force the President issued a proclamation of warning to the law-breakers. Randolph, Jefferson's

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