James River settlements against Arnold in 1781, and to his escape from Tarleton at Carter's mountain.

When, on the termination of the war and the formation of the constitution, the public men of this country arrayed themselves under the banner of antagonist parties, Burr and Jefferson were found in the same ranks-the ranks, too, which were destined to be politically triumphant. And here we are struck with a sympathetic action, strongly illustrative of that unison. of spirit which, throughout, seems to have guided these two distinguished men. The military men of the revolution, who in all their trials had found none harder to bear than the want of a government compact and strong enough to sustain itself, when the constitutional parties were formed, generally espoused what are now known as the federal principles. Hamilton, Knox, Lee, Lincoln, Wayne, Morgan, St. Clair, Davie, and Howard, were all federalists in principle as in practice. They approved of the constitution, and they cordially sustained the first administration of the government. There was another class of men-men of the pen as well as of the sword—who, though not exactly harmonizing among themselves in doctrine with respect to the constitution, gave to Washington's administration a ready and resolute support. We refer to the leading statesmen of Virginia and the south-the Lees, Henry, Marshall, Harrison, Rutledge, the Pinckneys. Mr. Madison is the only eminent exception, and, but for the predominating influence of Mr. Jefferson, it is fair to presume that he would not have estranged himself from his true companions, but, following out the abstract opinions he had taught in the pages of "The Federalist," and the honest dictates of his heart, would have been found with Hamilton and Jay, by the side of Washington. With neither of these two bands, of statesmen

Our navy was also poisoned with federalism. Barry, Decatur, (father and son) Talbot, Truxton, Dale, and Preble, were active adherents of that party; and Mr. Jefferson, in a letter to Robert R. Livingston, in 1799, thus condemns the infant navy for its political heresies:-"The post, which circumstances constrain us to propose to you, is the secretaryship of the navy. Republicanism is so rare in those parts which possess nautical skill, that I cannot find it allied there to the other qualifications." We can fancy the spectres of the Vengeance and Insurgent flitting before his vision when he wrote this unjust denunciation of as true republicans as ever shed their blood for their country.

2 That in this respect we may not be supposed to do injustice to Mr. Madison, for whose character we have the highest respect, we will cite the authority of a writer who thought adhesion to Mr. Jefferson a cardinal virtue. In a note to an article on the Bank of the United States, in the 15th No. of the Southern Review, written soon after Mr. Madison's letter to Mr. Charles Jared Ingersoll in favour of the bank, the writer says: "When Mr. Jefferson lived, Mr. Madison went right; his

or soldiers, did Burr or Mr. Jefferson unite. While in the mind of the former, sympathy with his ancient comrades in arms was wholly inadequate to conquer untiring personal antipathies and unmitigated hate, the latter, on his return from Europe, redolent with French philosophy and French politics, submitted to adhesion just so long as official connection continued, and not a moment longer. Burr, a legitimate survivor of the Conway conspiracy, was found along with General Gates and one or two others, in willing opposition to the administration. While Mr. Jefferson (the parallel being still undisturbed), disdaining communion with the high spirited chivalry and patriotic wisdom of the south, willingly surrendered himself to the councils of factious hostility.

When, at a rather later period, the administration and opposition parties became more distinctly organised, Col. Burr and Mr. Jefferson may be said to have had nearly equal pretensions in the ranks of the party they joined. Mr. Jefferson was the leader, "primus inter pares," of the new democracy of Virginia. Burr was the leader, without a rival, of the democracy of New York. In these relations, the advantage as to mere partisanship was clearly on the side of Burr. Mr. Jefferson's principles, and his party, were far from being predominant in Virginia. They had to contend there with a formidably adverse power, the principles and popularity of the president, whose purity and patriotism no responsible public man then dared to question. A counterbalancing power less effectual than General Washington's personal and political influence and character would have been sooner overcome; but as it was, such was its weight, that so long as it was felt, the contest of antagonist principles in Virginia was a close one. Patrick Henry, than whom, so far as the principles of the constitution were involved, the federal party had no more determined opponent, was too honourably conscious of what was due to the president ever to be decoyed into opposition, or into cordial union with the party that was then acting adversely to the administration. "I love him," said this patriarch of democracy, speaking to Mr. Blair, of Marshall, in 1799, "because he feels and acts like a republican and an American; and I know but one other who equally deserves my confidence." And in a private letter to the same gentleman, written a few weeks before his death, he uses this language, which we cannot help quoting, if it be relevant only to show that the fountain of Virginia democracy then poured forth pure

original anti-republican tendencies were suppressed, and he became an able and strenuous advocate of the people's rights. Since Mr. Jefferson's death, he has chosen to coalesce with men so many grades inferior to his own talents and standing, that we look at the change with surprise and regret." We need not say we are far from endorsing this doctrine.

waters at its head. "The conduct of France has made it the interest of the great family of mankind to wish the downfall of her present government; because its existence is incompatible with that of all others within its reach. And while I see the danger that threatens ours, from her intrigues and her arms, I ain not so much alarmed as at the apprehension of her destroying the great pillars of all government and social life. I mean virtue, morality, and religion. This is the armour-and this alone-which renders us invincible. These are the tactics we should study. If we lose these we are conquered-fallen, indeed. In vain may France show and vaunt her diplomatic skill and brave troops; so long as our manners and principles remain sound, there is no danger. But believing, as I do, that these are in danger; that infidelity, in its broadest sense, under the name of philosophy, is fast spreading; and that, under the patronage of French manners and principles, every thing that ought to be dear to men is covertly and successfully assailed, I feel the value of those men amongst us, who hold out to the world the idea that our continent is to exhibit an originality of character; and that, instead of that imitation and inferiority which the countries of the old world have been in the habit of exacting from the new, we shall maintain that high ground upon which nature has placed us, and that Europe will alike cease to rule us, and gives us modes of thinking.""

With such "deluded democrats" in his own ranks, or with so predominant an adverse influence as was Washington's in Virginia, Colonel Burr and his party had not to contend in New York. Hamilton, King, and Jay, though a powerful triumvirate, were not invincible by the machinations and intrigues which Burr and his political sappers brought to bear on them, and which only failed when directed to undermine and destroy the deep-seated popularity of the president. At the election of 1800, owing to their active efforts, the democratic ticket was successful in New York, and Jefferson and Burr, by a most unlooked for coincidence, were placed before the world as the two individuals who most equally divided the affection and confidence of the great party then commencing its dominion in our country. As is well known, each of the two had seventythree votes, and no election being made by the people it devolved on the house of representatives, which body determined the doubtful chance in favour of Mr. Jefferson. Nor should it

'Mr. Jefferson felt this division in his own ranks most sensibly. In a letter to John Taylor, dated Monticello, Nov. 26, 1798, he says, "I should not apprehend (danger) out of the state, if all was sound within. But there is a most respectable part of our state who have been enveloped in the X. Y. Z. delusion, and who destroy our unanimity for the present moment." Vol. III. p. 403.

be forgotten, that Mr. Jefferson himself, at this time, regarded Colonel Burr as one of the pillars of the democratic party. As soon as the triumph of that party was ascertained, but before it was even suspected that the two leaders would themselves come in conflict, Mr. Jefferson wrote to Colonel Burr as follows: "While I must congratulate you, my dear sir, on the issue of this contest, because it is more honourable, and doubtless more grateful to you than any station within the competence of the chief magistrate, yet, for myself, and for the substantial service of the public, I feel most sensibly the loss we sustain of your aid in our new administration. It leaves a chasm in my arrangements which cannot adequately be filled up. I had endeavoured to compose an administration, whose talents, integrity, names and dispositions, should at once inspire unbounded confidence in the public mind, and insure a perfect harmony in the conduct of the public business. I lose you from the list, and am not sure of all the others. Accept my affectionate and respectful salutations, &c.""

And again, as an odd contrast with the expressions of personal regard and confidence in the above extract, though in perfect consonance with the opinion of Burr's high political standing, we find Mr. Jefferson, in his "Ana," under date of 26th January, 1804, saying:-"I never saw Colonel Burr till he came as a member of the senate, (1791). His conduct very soon inspired me with distrust. I habitually cautioned Mr. Madison against trusting him too much. . With these impres

sions of Colonel Burr, there had never been an intimacy between us, and but little association. When I destined him for a high appointment, it was out of respect for the favour he had obtained with the republican party, by his extraordinary exertions and success in the New York election of 1800."2

With the election of 1801, the historical parallel may be said to cease. Mr. Jefferson became president, with unbounded popularity and unmeasured influence; and Burr, submitting to the common fate of all who do not vault from the vice presidential to the presidential chair, was comparatively forgotten, until the unfortunate duel with General Hamilton drove him into obscurity, from which, except in the mad Mississippi attempt in 1806, he never afterwards emerged. Abandoned by his political friends, who had gone to worship the rising sun of democracy, pursued by the unmitigated hatred of Mr. Jefferson, whose philosophy never taught him to forget the fright of 1800, detested by his political enemies, who saw in him not only the active agent of their defeat, but the destroyer of their leader, the last twenty-five years of his life were passed in utter oblivion

Jefferson's Works, iii. 445.

2 Id. iv. 520.

and insignificance. Those of his countrymen who only knew him personally during this long void of fame can scarcely realize what he once was, and what, in the fair calculation of chances, he might have been.

While Mr. Jefferson and Colonel Burr were friends and political associates, there was between them, on most points, perfect unison of opinion-on one or two of them, not entirely uninteresting, the volume before us throws some light. We presume that it is no longer a matter of doubt that there was, on the part of Mr. Jefferson, not only a bitter but an active hostility to General Washington. Those who were attentive observers of the times, opponents as well as friends, never doubted it, and Mr. Jefferson's memoirs and letters fully confirm it. The idle distinction between opposition to men and opposition to measures, even if ever available, will not serve to exculpate Mr. Jefferson from the charge of an insidious and active hostility, uttered, on all occasions, when there seemed to be no danger of disclosure to its unsuspecting object, to every measure of the administration after he left it, and to much that was done before. In his letters to his foreign correspondents (e. g. to Mazzei) he palpably libelled the president for his official course, and scarcely troubled himself to draw the faintest line between personal and official acts.

Burr's hostility to Washington was unmitigated, but it was not disguised, and from the date of his unexplained quarrel with the commander in chief in 1776 to the hour of his death, his purpose seems to have been unwavering to lose no oportunity to depreciate his character and talents, and to question the purity of his motives. His shrewdness, however, convincing him that it was in vain to attempt to inspire any portion of the American people with even a suspicion of the integrity and spotless purity of the father of his country, his anxious effort seems to have been to show the world that Washington was a man without any extraordinary reach of mind, and especially destitute of military ability. Mr. Davis tells us in his preface, that Colonel Burr was especially anxious to mingle the tale of personal grievances with this memoir, and to make it the medium of a harsh critique on General Washington's military character. This, the biographer very prudently refused to do, and the refusal seems for a time to have put in jeopardy Mr. Davis's literary project. The curious reader may collate with this trait of Burr, Mr. Jefferson's delineations of Washington's character, in which, if he finds an involuntary and honest tribute to his virtue, it is paid uniformly at the expense of his abilities. Sometimes, as in the celebrated letter to Doctor Jones, the portrait is so highly finished, praise and censure, approval and doubt are so interwoven, that it is no easy matter