action, as Demosthenes defines oratory to be, and at the same time his elocution and rhetoric may be unexceptionable, yet he maybe in fact totally lacking in every element which goes to make up real greatness.

It may be correctly claimed that one may win distinction and renown by energy and tact, and yet be deficient in both wit and learning. But usually men are measured by the success they make in life, just as a carpenter is measured by his "chips"; and accepting this measure, it is exceedingly rare to find one who reaches above the rank of a ward politician, unless he possesses those real elements of greatness which I choose to class as honesty, sobriety, manliness, sympathy, energy, education, knowledge and fairness. I agree that a great tactician may not per se be a great man, but I do say that one who possesses this element, usually embodies those other elements which are accepted ordinarily as the true ingredients of greatness.

Jefferson did not rank in oratory with the Adamses, the Randolphs, James Otis and Patrick Henry, who were contemporaneous with him. He was, therefore, not by nature great in the sphere of oratory, and in his public utterances he does not always show the habit of radical thought which gave the great Democratic party, which lived and ruled our country throughout the larger part of the nineteenth century, that tremendous moral force peculiar to that marvelous organization which he founded and fostered throughout his long, useful and eventful life. Yet his speeches, if they may be classed as such, were clear, logical, forceful, convincing. In politics, in literature, in everything that concerned the world's forward movement in his day, his intellectual sympathies were universal, or as nearly so as it was possible for any man's to be. Men less learned and with lesser power of reason and thoughtfulness than he, have moved audiences to frenzy and have carried them at will; but Jefferson, without this peculiar gift, certainly possessed a sufficiency of this power, which the broad culture of the scholar and the steadfast tension of the thinker can give to any man. His addresses and writings are pregnant with profound aphorisms, and through his great genius transient questions were often transformed into eternal truths. His arguments were condensed with such admirable force of clearness that his utterances always found lodgment in the minds of both auditors and readers. Sensitive in his physical organization, easily moved to tenderness, and incapable of malice, he had that ready responsiveness to his own emotions as well as to those of others, which always characterizes genius.

While it may be said that oratory was not an art with Jefferson, yet his ideas on all governmental questions were always so clear and strong and well matured that he never failed to express them forcefully and effectively. His wonderful intellect, upon all important occasions, never failed to take hold on principle, justice, liberty and moral development, without which, as a part of its essence, the greatest mind can never express itself adequately. His State papers and his addresses and writings reveal the highest order of intellect, and are marked with a degree of originality peculiarly Jeffersonian. The doctrines he proclaimed and the principles he promulgated were so logical and sound that they are cherished yet, and it is believed by millions of our countrymen that they are as imperishable as the stars. Jefferson's philosophical ideas of democratic government are as much alive to-day as they were when he was at the zenith of his glory in life, and this cannot be said of any other illustrious American who was contemporaneous with him. It may be truthfully claimed that the lamp of liberty, which he, perhaps more than any other one American of his times helped to light, will never go out; and it may also be stated, with an equal degree of truthfulness, that the brilliant star of his own personal and political greatness will never set.

Some American writers have, from their standpoints of review, animadverted upon certain alleged weaknesses of Jefferson as a great national character. Although I do not indorse his position as favoring "States' Rights" and a Federal Government of restricted powers, as over against the broader doctrine promulgated by Washington, Adams, Jay and Hamilton, of a centralized government or Union which, when national questions are involved, should be, at all times, the supreme power of the country, yet I concede to him wonderful foresight in advocating a Constitution that would grant to the States the greatest possible latitude. Other critics have also barked along the trail of this distinguished man of destiny, charging him with being a demagogue, a jingoist, an infidel and the like, but their barking has made him all the greater, and has added new laurels to his marvelous career. Faults he may have had, but who has not? Weaknesses he may have had, but who is universally wise and strong? Burke, in his incomparable speech in the English Parliament on the East India bill, spoke for many great men in history when he thus alluded to the younger Fox: "He has faults; but they are faults, that though they may, in a small degree, tarnish the lustre, and sometimes impede the march of his abilities, have nothing in them to extinguish the fire of great virtues. In those faults there is no mixture of deceit, of hypocrisy, of pride, of ferocity, of complexional despotism, or want of feeling for the distress of mankind."

Like Charles James Fox, to whom Edmund Burke referred, Thomas Jefferson was the foremost Commoner of his day, and he allowed no opportunity to pass unimproved, to lift the common people to higher conceptions of life and duty. Such men are rare, and I am glad to be able conscientiously to place the name of Thomas Jefferson, in many important respects, and particularly as the champion of the rights of the common people, pre-eminently above all the other distinguished Americans of his generation; and I wish it understood that I make this statement upon a fair comprehensive knowledge of the acts and works of the leading men of that period of our country's history.

Jefferson in early life accepted the idea or theory that the first and most general truth in history is that men ought to be free. He evidently felt that if happiness is the end of the human race, then freedom is the condition, and that this freedom should not be a kind of a half escape from thralldom and tyranny, but it should be ample and absolute. This theory is most admirably expressed in the opening of the Declaration of Independence, of which he was the sole author, and which was adopted almost literally as he wrote it: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these rights governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute a new government, laying its foundations, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness." Democratic principles cannot be more clearly expressed than in the language above quoted, nor can any creed be more clearly defined. It is but just to state, therefore, that no individual American represents more distinctively the constructive power of the principles of popular government than Thomas Jefferson, who was then as now the greatest of all Virginians save one—Washington. In all of his public acts he was upheld by his confidence in the people, and he was so tactful at all times that he never allowed himself to wander at any great distance from the masses of his fellows. His faith in the reserve power of the people was imposing, and by this trustfulness he stamped himself as the matchless leader of his times, and among the greatest leaders of all