public service.

He managed to find time for the study of natural history, of which he had always been particularly fond. He also recommenced the study of law-in which he was no mean proficient -and of literature, which he had never wholly neglected, even in the midst of engrossing public business. He was temporarily summoned, in 1829, after nearly twelve years of seclusion, to serve as a member of the Convention that met to revise the constitution of the State of Virginia; and also acted as Rector of the University of that State. But the infirmities of age were pressing severely upon him; and after serving for a few months in the Convention, he finally returned to his estates, and steadfastly refused all future participation in public affairs-whether local or general-in Virginia or in Washington. But though he lived a retired, he by no means endured a lonely life. His house at Montpelier was the resort of all the celebrated men of his time, more especially of the leading politicians of his own party. His conversation was particularly fascinating, not only for its wit and humour, and the fund of anecdote at his command, but for his reasoning and argumentative power, and his sound, temperate, and comprehensive views upon public affairs, and all the leading

questions of the time. He died in 1836, in the eighty-fifth year of his age, being survived by his wife-a general favourite in all society-to whom he had been united for forty-two years. He left no family, but a reputation second to that of no statesman or public functionary of his age and country, Washington and Jefferson alone excepted.

With these remarks may be concluded the personal history of the five principal founders of the Independence of the United States, each differing from the other in character, acquirements, and achievements, but none differing from his fellows in zeal and utility in the building up of the great edifice of American liberty, which already begins to overshadow the world.

353

THE DANGERS OF ULTRA-DEMOCRACY.

In tracing the lives and the work of the five great men who were mainly instrumental in founding the Republic of the United States, and who endeavoured so to shape its laws and mould its destinies as to secure for it not alone an independence able to withstand all probable attack, but a stability equal, if not superior, to that of the oldest empires and monarchies of Europe and Asia, we have shown that their work was one of the most difficult recorded in history. But when they rested from their labours, they each and all entertained doubts, misgivings, or fears of the durability of the apparently splendid edifice of democratic liberty which they had reared for the world's wonder. The independence of the thirteen colonies, or, as they afterwards called themselves, "States," was not secured without painful and long-continued struggles, which, without the aid of France, then

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engaged in a war with Great Britain, might, after all, have proved abortive. The union which they formed amongst each other was not established on such a firm and satisfactory basis as to allay jealousies, prevent all future animosities, dissensions, and disagreements, or to reconcile conflicting ideas and interests. The opinions of these five men were by no means in complete accord, and were shared, in their several degrees of divergency, by large classes of the people. Unanimity was impossible; but compromise, difficult though it appeared during many stages of the parturition, was attainable. And it was attained, with more or less willing adhesion, on the part of all the thirteen States.

The form of the future Government presented no difficulty of choice. A kingdom or an empire was impossible, and, if possible, would have been impolitic and unwise. The man did not exist out of whom the Americans could have fashioned either a king or an emperor, unless it were George Washington, whom nineteen out of twenty Americans would have refused to acknowledge in either of those capacities, and who was, besides, much too wise, prudent, and far-seeing a statesman to accept the perilous and uncertain responsibility. A Dictator might have been more

easily found; but the bold ambition and the high genius necessary in the man who would strive for the dictatorship, and be able to retain it, were nonexistent. Even the materials of a Cromwell were wanting. Washington, if he had been a younger and more ambitious man, might have afforded a not very distant approximation to the character. Even a Republic on the model of the republics of antiquity and of the middle ages was not possible, on account of the absence of the aristocratic element in American society-that element which formed the main ingredient of all the ancient democracies. There was but one form of aristocracy in America, and that was the aristocracy of colour— by the unwritten laws and usages of which every white citizen was a virtual aristocrat, compared with his dark-skinned brother.

Each of the thirteen original States was of necessity a pure democracy, after it had thrown off the yoke of Great Britain; and it was absolutely necessary that the union of those States should rest on a democratic, and indeed on an ultra-democratic basis. The democratic form of government is theoretically the best, wisest, and most natural that a people or a nation can establish. Government by the people and for the benefit of the people is the perfection of