The news & observer. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 1894-current, 1899-06-25
THOMAS JEFFERSON.

chief end of the Virginia gentleman.
LOYAL to king and church, these fox
hunting deep-drinking and gallant Vir-
Sinians We're ready to risk life and limb
against any odds, in defence of the di-
vine right of kings, and the ecclesiastical
supremacy of the Church of England.
From his four years study of the law,
and after mastering completely Coke on
Iyttleton, which he had read and re
read and carefully annotated, jefferson
stepped into world of crystaliZed
wrong and robbery, made UP from ages
of legal precedent, and sanctified by So
called religion but not IN vain had he
studied the black letter pages of that
sterling old Wing text book, OF which
Jefferson afterwards wrote:
Coke Lyttleton was the universal law
book of students, and a sOunder Wing
never wrote, nor of profounder learning
in the orthodox doctrines of the British
Constitution, or in what was called
British liberties.
Our lawyers We're then all Wings.
But when this black letter text and I'M
couth but cunning learning got out OF
fashion. and the honeyed ManSheldSm
of Blackstone became the students horn
book. from that moment that profession
(the nursery of our Congress- began to
slide into Toryism. and nearly all the
, young brood of lawyers are now of that
line. They suppose themselves, indeed
to be Wings. because they no longer
know what Whigism or Republicanism
means"
When. therefore, in 1865. young JEFF
ferson, fresh from Coke Lyttleton. stood
at the door of the lobby of the House of
nd oY.l
Patrick Henry denounce in burning
words the Stamp Act and the whole sys-
tenn of kingcraft, the seed fell into the
ground well prepared for the truth.
SLAVERY.
In 1869. Jefferson entered public life
as a member of the House of Burgesses
from his native countyOfAlbemarle. His
first measure was to provide for the
gradual emancipation of slaves, but it
resulted in utter failure. and is now only
valuable as indicating the settled
opinions of Jefferson upon the subject of
slavery. and his fearleSsneSs in graphing
with the overwhelming public sentiment
of his State an its favor.
Whilst slave owner all of his life.
Mr.. Jefferson was opposed to the lnsti-
tuition and desired its gradual extinction
Like many intelligent men in the slave
holding states. he deprecated the exist
ence of slavery, but resented the state
ment that the people of these states were
alone responsible for the evil. or that
those who had originally introduced
slaves through their own avarice had the
right to interfere afterwards with the
property of the citizens to whom the
slaves had been sold
With prophetic vision. Jefferson saw
the dreadful panorama of war and DESC
lati0n which must accompany the end of
slavery, unless peaceful means We're
adopted for that purpose. Speaking of
gradual emancipation, he says in his au-
photography, written when he was sew
enty-seven years old:
1T was found that the public mind
would not yet bear the proposition, nor
will it bear it even at this day. Yet the
day is not distant when it must bear
and adopt it. or worse will follow Moth
ing is more certainly written in the book
of fate than that these people are to be
free, nor is it less certain that the two
races, equally free, cannot live in the
same government
One portion of this prediction has been
verified. and African slavery has been
drowned in the tears and blood of both
North and South.
AT the same time it is not difficult to
realize how utterly beyond the imagina-
ton OF any moral man fifty years ago.
must have been the idea not of enamel
patton, hut that the emancipatel slave
would grasp the ballot and participate
IN the government of the country.
we know now that the Negro race.
with ats parasitic tendencies and strong
local attachments, will never submit 10
colonization, and that this phianthropic
dream has vanished before the logic Of
events. The negro is component part
OF our civilization, and must so remain.
1t as the very irony of history that of
all the slave-holding States, Virginia
should have suffered most i'm defending
an institution forced upon her people by
the greed Of Old and New England. in
opposition to the Judgment and wishes of
her most distinguished men.
AS far back as 171O Virginia had pro-
tested against the introduction of Afri-
can slaves, but the protest was silenced
by the royal edict, and the traffic went
on.
In 1I16. Jefferson framed with his
own hand an indictment of the King of
Great Britain, in the following words:
HE has waged cruel war against hui
man nature itself, violating its most
sacred rights of life and liberty. in the
persons of distant people who never
offended him; captivating them and car
rylng them into slavery in another hemis
phere, or to incur miserable death in
their transportation thther.
This piratical warfare. the oppro-
brium OF infidel powers, is the warfare
of the Christian King of Great Britain.
Determined to keep open a market where
men should be bought and sold, he has
prostituted his negative for suppressing
every Legislative attempt to prohibit or
restrain this execrable commerce
And that this assemblage of horrors
might want mo fact of distinguished die,
he is now exciting those very people to
rise in arms among us and to purchase
that liberty of which he has deprived
them by numbering the people on whom
ne mas obtruded them, thus paving off |
former crimes committed against the |
ilbertes of one people with crimes which |
ne urges them to commit against tbe
lives of another