CHAPTER XVI.

MR. JEFFERSON'S HABITS OF LIFE IN HIS RETIREMENT-INCIDENTS OF HIS RESIDENCE AT MONTICELLO-THE MECKLENBURG DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE-MR. JEFFERSON'S PECUNIARY DIFFICULTIES—THE PLAN OF A LOTTERY-PUBLIC CONTRIBUTIONS TO HIS RELIEF-HIS LAST SICKNESSHIS DEATH-ESTIMATE OF HIS CHARACTER HIS RELIGIOUS OPINIONSDEFECTS OF HIS CHARACTER- -HIS WANT OF SINCERITY AND TRUTHFULNESS HIS FALSE CHARGES AGAINST MR. HAMILTON—EVIDENCE OF THEIR FALSEHOOD-HIS SECRET OPPOSITION TO THE FEDERAL CONSTITUTIONNOVEL AND ABSURD GROUNDS OF HIS OPPOSITION-CHIEF DIFFERENCE BETWEEN JEFFERSON and HAMILTON-CONCLUSION.

MR. JEFFERSON was sixty-six years of age when he retired, for the last time, from public life to the quietude and seclusion of his estate at Monticello. His property consisted of nearly seven thousand acres of land, and was worked by a hundred and thirteen slaves. He also possessed four thousand acres at Poplar Forest, on which there were eighty-five slaves. But although he was a large landed proprietor, his estates were not very productive; and the profuse hospitality which during many years he exercised at Monticello, very perceptibly diminished his resources from year to year. He had also a passion for building; and being deprived of the income which for eight years he had been in the habit of

receiving as President, he gradually became involved In recuniary difficulties. He thus describes his avocations in a letter of this date, to his illustrious friend Koskiusco:

"In the bosom of my family, and surrounded by my books, I enjoy a repose to which I have been long a stranger. My mornings are devoted to correspondence. From breakfast to dinner I am in my shops, my garden, or on horseback among my farms; from dinner to dark I give to society and recreation with my neighbors and friends; and from candle light to early bedtime I read. My health is perfect, and my strength considerably reinforced by the activity of the course I pursue; perhaps it is as great as usually falls to the lot of near sixty-seven years of age. I talk of plows and harrows, seeding and harvesting, with my neighbors, and of politics, too, if they choose, with as little reserve as the rest of my fellow-citizens, and feel at length the blessing of being free to say and do what I please, without being responsible for it to any mortal. A part of my occupation, and by no means the least pleasing, is the direction of the studies of such young men as ask it. They place themselves in the neighboring village, have the use of my library and counsel, and make a part of my society. In advising the course of their reading, I endeavor to keep their attention

fixed on the main objects of all science, the freedom and happiness of man." He concludes by advering to his pecuniary difficulties, and says he has to pass such a length of time in a thraldom of mind newe? before known to him. "But for this," he says, "nic happiness would have been perfect." Among those who thus profited by his counsels in the way spoken of, were Mr. Rives, the late Minister to France, and Francis W. Gilmer, late Professor of Law in the University of Virginia.

His workshops were those of carpenters, black, smiths, wheelwrights and nailsmiths. Mr. Jefferson was fond of exercising himself in mechanical employments. He had a small apartment adjoining his bed-room, in which there was a complete assortment of tools, in the use of which he had acquired much practical skill, and which at once enabled him to take exercise within doors, to find an agreeable relaxation for his mind, to repair any of his various instruments in physical science, and to execute any little scheme of the moment in the way of furniture or experiment. He had many very respectable workmen among his slaves, whose expertness had been greatly improved, both by his instructions and the diversified occupation which he afforded them. The carriage in which he ordinarily rode, his garden-seats, even some of his household furniture, were the joint work

of himself and his slaves. His favorite exercise, however, was riding on horseback, and he never was unprovided with handsome horses. It was the only thing in which he was lavish of money for his exclusive gratification; and the four which he purchased for his carriage when he was elected President, cost him two thousand dollars.

Thus year after year of the retirement of this celebrated man glided quietly away; yet occasionally diversified by pleasing and novel incidents. One of these was the correspondence which took place between Mr. Jefferson and Mr. John Adams. Another was the epistolary intercourse which occurred between him and the illustrious Madame de Stael. His correspondence with Mr. Adams elicited new and strange information in reference to the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence, from which it has been charged that Mr. Jefferson derived the chief ideas of his own draft of the American Declaration. This subject has been fiercely contested on both sides. The coincidences of expression between these two documents are SO remarkable as to justify the full conviction, that the one was in a great measure derived from the other. That the reader may judge for himself on this subject, we here insert this rare and interesting

document, as well as Mr. Adams' letter to Mr.

Jefferson on the subject:

Quincy, 22d of June, 1819. "DEAR SIR: May I enclose you one of the greatest curiosities, and one of the deepest mysteries that ever occurred to me; it is in the Essex Register of June the 5th, 1819. It is entitled, from the Raleigh Register, 'Declaration of Independence. How is it

possible that this paper should have been concealed from me to this day! Had it been communicated to me in the time of it, I know, if you do not know, that it would have been printed in every whig newspaper upon the continent. You know that if I had possessed it, I would have made the Hall of Congress echo and re-echo with it fifteen months. before your Declaration of Independence. What a poor, ignorant, malicious, short-sighted, crapulous mass is Tom Paine's Common Sense in comparison with this paper. Had I known it, I would have commented upon it from the day you entered Congress till the fourth of July, 1776.

"The genuine sense of America at that moment was never so well expressed before or since. Richard Caswell, William Hooper, and Joseph Hughes, the then representatives of North Carolina in Congress, you know as well as I; and you know that the