Page:The Conquest.djvu/143

 allowance of food and do a double allowance of work. Instead of an aristocracy of wealth, I would make an opening for an aristocracy of virtue and talent."

"But see to what Mr. Jefferson and his levelling system has brought us," cried even John Randolph of Roanoke, as one after another of the estates of thousands of acres slid into the hands of the people.

He prohibited the importation of slaves, and, if he could have done it, would have abolished slavery itself before it became the despair of a people.

"Franklin a great orator? Why, no, he never spoke in Congress more than five minutes at a time, and then he related some anecdote which applied to the subject before the House. I have heard all the celebrated orators of the National Assembly of France, but there was not one equal to Patrick Henry."

And then, confidentially, sometimes he told a tale of the Declaration of Independence. "I shall never cease to be grateful to John Adams, the colossus of that debate. While the discussion was going on, fatherly old Ben Franklin, seventy years old, leaning on his cane, sat by my side, and comforted me with his jokes whenever the criticisms were unusually bitter. The Congress held its meetings near a livery stable. The members wore short breeches and thin silk stockings, and with handkerchief in hand they were diligently employed in lashing the flies from their legs. So very vexatious was the annoyance, and to so great impatience did it arouse the sufferers, that they were only too glad to sign the Declaration and fly from the scene."

Two visits every year Jefferson made to his little principality of two hundred inhabitants at Monticello, a short one early in the Spring and a longer one in the latter part of Summer, when he always took his daughter Martha and family from Edge Hill with him, for it would not seem home without Martha to superintend.

Here Jefferson had organised his slaves into a great industrial school, had his own carpenters, cabinet-makers, shoe-makers, tailors, weavers, had a nail forge and made nails for his own and neighbouring estates,—his black