“Jove fixed it certain that whatever day
  Makes man a slave takes half his worth away.”

And shortly after, he declares it “a suspicion only that the blacks are inferior in the endowments of body or mind,”—­that “in memory they are equal to the whites,”—­that “in music they are more generally gifted than the whites with accurate ears for time and tune.”

But there is one statement which we especially commend to those in search of an effective military policy in the present crisis.  Jefferson declares of the negroes, that they are “at least as brave as the whites, and more adventuresome.”  May not this truth account for the fact that one of the most daring deeds in the present war was done by a black man?

Still later, Jefferson says,—­“Whether further observation will or will not verify the conjecture that Nature has been less bountiful to them in the endowments of the head, I believe that in those of the heart she will be found to have done them justice.  That disposition to theft with which they have been branded must be ascribed to their situation, and not to any depravity of the moral sense.  The man in whose favor no laws of property exist probably feels himself less bound to respect those made in favor of others.  When arguing for ourselves, we lay it down as fundamental, that laws, to be just, must give reciprocation of right,—­that, without this, they are mere arbitrary rules of conduct, founded in force, and not in conscience; and it is a problem which I give to the master to solve, whether the religious precepts against the violation of property were not framed for him as well as his slave,—­and whether the slave may not as justifiably take a little from one who has taken all from him as he may slay one who would slay him.  That a change in the relations in which a man is placed should change his ideas of moral right and wrong is neither new, nor peculiar to the color of the blacks.”

Here Jefferson puts forth that very idea for which Gerrit Smith, a few years ago, was threatened with the penalties of treason.

But to quote further from the same source:—­

“Notwithstanding these considerations, which must weaken their respect for the laws of property, we find among them numerous instances of the most rigid integrity, and as many as among their instructed masters, of benevolence, gratitude, and unshaken fidelity.  The opinion that they are inferior in the faculties of reason and imagination must be hazarded with great diffidence.”

The old hot thought blazes forth again in the chapter on “Particular Manners and Customs.”  Can men speak against the proclamations of Abolition Conventions after such fiery words from Jefferson?