Page:Kentucky Resolutions of 1798.djvu/25

Rh courageous friends of free speech and a free press. From this source Mr. Jefferson drew a wholesome dread of any incroachments upon the freedom of the individual in whatever sphere, and curtailments of it were too recent and too great for it to be regarded as a figment of his brain. It appealed to him very strongly, falling in as it did with his natural habit of thought. Many regarded it as sufficiently guaranteed by the Constitution, but his fear and unrest were never satisfied even by so perfect a continuing guaranty, and he never ceased to watch over it jealously. He showed the first force of his convictions on this subject in the particular enumeration in the Declaration of Independence of the rights of "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," again in his insistence upon the addition of a bill of rights to the Constitution, and in his watchful care throughout his career. There are many instances in which it behooves us to keep in view the dominant influence of this individualism on Mr. Jefferson's mind. It is not only the key to many of his own acts, but to the problems that afterwards grew out of them when it was attempted to wrest them to a widely different meaning. The natural result of these inclinations was exhibited in his steady advocacy of a general government of minimum power, a fostering of the influence of the States as the natural bulwarks against a strong central power, and his unwearied struggle for what was, indeed, the great end of all his policy, a democracy of the purest and simplest type, possessing all the power capable of