The Savage Jefferson Photogravure from the Original Engraving by Edward Savage, Tus rate engraving was made by the artist Edward Savage at present in the ossession of the Pennsylvania Mistorical Society, THE WRITINGS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON Monticello Edition CONTAINING HIS AUTOBIOGRAPHY, NOTES ON VIRGINIA, PARLIA- PUBLISHED IN THEIR ENTIRETY FOR THE FIRST TIME INCLUDING ALL OF THE ORIGINAL MANUSCRIPTS, DEPOSITED IN THE DEPARTMENT JEFFERSON'S CONTRIBUTION TO A FREE PRESS. Perhaps the strongest utterance of faith in the power of a free, honest and liberty-loving press, made by man, was Jefferson's declaration: "Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter." Was this too high praise of newspapers? History furnishes the answer: it was the press and the printed letters of Payne, Jefferson, Madison, Adams and others, read in every nook and corner of the colonies, which aroused the people of America to secure independence, rather than the thrilling eloquence of the Patrick Henrys, heard by small audiences; and almost every right won for the people since Guttenberg has owed its success to the agitation, argument and exhortation of newspaper and pamphlet. Indeed, but for the invention of the art of printing and its wise use by men like Jefferson, who were devoted to liberty, the floodtide of freedom would have been centuries later in reaching the shores of the New World. In a letter from Paris on Shays's Rebellion, which shows that VOL. XVIII-A |