he effected a restoration of the rights of conscience, and this overthrew all hope of an Established Church; he forced on the bill for general education,—­for thus, he said, would the people be “qualified to understand their rights, to maintain them, and to exercise with intelligence their parts in self-government.”  In all this work his keen common sense always cut his way through questions at which other men stopped or stumbled.  Thus, in the discussion on primogeniture, when Isaac Pendleton proposed, as a compromise, that they should adopt the Hebrew principle and give a double portion to the eldest son, Jefferson cut at once into the heart of the question.  As he himself relates,—­“I observed, that, if the eldest son could eat twice as much, or do double work, it might be a natural evidence of his right to a double portion; but being on a par in his powers and wants with his brothers and sisters, he should be on a par also in the partition of the patrimony.  And such was the decision of the other members.”

But such fierceness against the bulwarks of aristocracy, and such keenness in cutting through its heavy arguments, carried him farther.  Logic forced him to pass from the attack on aristocracy to the attack on slavery, just as logic forces the Confederate oligarchs of to-day to pass from the defence of slavery to the defence of aristocracy.  He was sure to fight this vilest of tyrannies, and he gave quick thrusts and heavy blows.  In 1778 he brought in a bill to prevent the further importation of slaves into Virginia.  “This,” he says, “passed without opposition, and stopped the increase of the evil by importation, leaving to future efforts its final eradication.”  Years afterward he wrote as follows:—­“I have sometimes asked myself whether my country is better for my having lived at all:  I do not know that it is.  I have been the instrument of doing the following things.”  Of these things there were just ten.  Just ten great worthy deeds in a life like Jefferson’s!—­and one of these he declares “the act prohibiting the importation of slaves.”

Close upon this followed a fiercer grapple,—­his third great legislative attack on slavery.  In his revision of the Virginia laws he reported “a bill to emancipate all slaves born after the passing of the act.”  Attached to this was a plan for the instruction of the young negroes thus set free.

To follow Jefferson and understand him, we must bear in mind that the Virginia which educated him was not behind a dozen smaller States in fertility, enterprise, and republican feeling.  Its best men were haters of slavery.  The efforts of its leaders were directed to other things than plans for taxing oysters or filching the gains of free negroes.  Forth from the Virginia of that time were hurled against negro slavery the thrilling invectives of Patrick Henry, the startling prophecies of Madison, and the declaration of Washington, “For the abolition of slavery by law my vote shall not be wanting.”