Page:History of Journalism in the United States.djvu/183

Rh dent and ofifered the courtesy of many dinner parties. "But I cannot describe the wonder and mortification with which the table conversation filled me. Politics were the chief topic and a preference for kingly over republican government was evidently the favorite sentiment. An apostate I could not be, nor yet a hypocrite, and I found myself for the most part the only advocate on the republican side of the question, unless among the guests there chanced to be some member of that party from the legislative house."

During the struggle against England before the Revolution, Jefferson had always shown a strong democratic inclination. When in France he heard of the constitution, and commented on its weakness in the lack of a Bill of Rights. After it was adopted he insisted that there must be amendments protecting freedom of speech and the freedom of the press.

Jefferson's correspondence while abroad reveals the fact that he had been a careful student of the newspapers and regarded them as a potent factor in the new kind of government that was being set up in the United States. Writing to Hogendorp from Paris, on October 13, 1785, he declared that "the most effectual engines for this purpose are the newspapers," referring to the reconciliation between the British Government and America. He accused the British Government of filling the newspapers of England with paragraphs against America, the purpose of which was two-fold; first, "to reconcile their own people to the defeat they had suffered and, second, to keep the English people from emigrating to America."

The importance attached by Jefferson to the home newspapers is shown in a letter sent to Francis Hopkinson