managed one day to mix some soot and water and with a toothpick to secretly write on a piece of paper which providentially came into his possession to a Princess who sympathized with him, the words: "I know not what disposition has been made of my plantation at Cayenne, but I hope that Madame Lafayette will take care that the negroes who cultivate it shall preserve their liberty." Pale and weak-a deeply suffering prisoner though he was-deprived of the air of heaven, his great soul did not wish the poor slaves which he had set free at his own expense, to be re-enslaved. A part of the time his wife, who was worthy to be the wife of a hero, shared his imprisonment. She was a woman who added lustre to his name. She was however but a tender woman and could not bear the suffering through which she was called to pass. Her devotion to her husband ultimately affected her health and cost her her life. Her mother, her grandmother, and her sister were executed by a ferocious populace on the gallows. She herself would have been executed had it not been for the death of Robespierre-a monster of iniquity, who had been educated by Jesuits as had an astonishingly large number of the men to whom France owed some of the worst features of this dreadful period in her history. Strange it was that the French at this time should have been so destitute of wisdom as to let a few leaders rivet upon them new chains of bondage, when in the United States three of the Presidents of the American Congress during the war for Independence were descended from the Huguenots, as was the distinguished Alexander Hamilton. Washington after having tried to effect Lafayette's liberation through American ministers at foreign Courts and by a special mission to Berlin finally wrote, not as the President of the United States but as George Washington—a man—to the Emperor of Germany,

to whose jurisdiction Lafayette had been removed, a noble letter. Whether this letter received the courtesy of a reply, or whether it was instrumental in causing Germany, when she finally surrendered Lafayette at the command of Napoleon, to deliver him to an American Representative may not now be known. To Lafayette's son Washington opened his own home.

After his imprisonment Lafayette again became one of the most distinguished friends of liberty in France, and continued to exert himself in behalf of civil and religious freedom. Napoleon in vain tried to tempt him to side with him in the interests of despotism. Louis XVIII., who had secret designs respecting America and against the cause of liberty in Europe not generally known, ordered his Solicitor General to accuse Lafayette, who at the time was a member of the House of Deputies of France, of treason. The accusation was formally made. Lafayette rising demanded a public inquiry in the Parliament of France before the nation. He proposed that his accusers should lay before the nation their charges and that he should submit to France without reserve what he had to say of the charges and that he should single out his adversaries no matter what their rank. The Bourbon king quailed before the challenge and the accusation was dropped, but the Bourbon king succeeded in preventing Lafayette from being for a time re-elected to the French Parliament. Lafayette in the mean time visited the United States and received such an ovation as no man had ever before received. Congress insisted upon his receiving as a small return for the money which he had once expended himself on the people of the United States, two hundred thousand dollars, in addition to ten thousand dollars which it had sent him when in prison, and in addition to a whole county of land. At a formal

reception given by Congress to this illustrious Frenchman, Henry Clay in the course of his address of welcome said: "The vain wish has been sometimes indulged, that Providence would allow the Patriot, after death to return to his country, and to contemplate the intermediate changes which had taken place-to view the forests felled, the cities built, the mountains levelled, the canals cut, the highways constructed, the progress of the arts, the advancement of learning, and the increase of population. General, your present visit to the United States is the realization of the consoling object of that wish." The distinguished orator, as he proceeded assured the guest of the Republic that in one respect he would find the people of America unaltered and that was in their affectionate and ardent gratitude to Lafayette and in their devotion to liberty. Lafayette in his feeling reply spoke of how the United States reflected "on every part of the world the light of a far superior civilization.

Lafayette after travelling three thousand miles in the United States returned to France, where he continued to exert himself in behalf of religious liberty, and in behalf of other great reforms. He became the acknowledged leader of the great revolution of 1830, and the Commander-in-chief of the National Guards. He placed Louis Philippe on the throne "a monarchy surrounded by republican institutions." He died full of honors and full of years and was buried beside the loving wife of his youth.

On Feb. 14th, 1815, Jefferson writing to Lafayette said: "A full measure of liberty is not now perhaps to be expected by your nation, nor am I confident they are prepared to preserve it. More than a generation will be requisite, under the administration of reasonable laws favoring the progress of knowledge in the general mass of the people, and their habituation to an independent

security of person and property, before they will be capable of estimating the value of freedom, and the necessity of a sacred adherence to the principles on which it rests for preservation. Instead of that liberty which takes root and growth in the progress of reason, if recovered by mere force or accident, it becomes, with an unprepared people, a tyranny still, of the many, the few, or the one. Possibly you may remember, at the date of the jeu de paume, how earnestly I urged yourself and the patriots of my acquaintance, to enter then into a compact with the King, securing freedom of religion, freedom of the press, trial by jury, habeas corpus, and a national Legislature, all of which it was known he would then yield, to go home, and let these work on the amelioration of the condition of the people, until they should have rendered them capable of more, when occasions would not fail to arise for communicating to them more. This was as much as I then thought them able to bear, soberly and usefully for themselves. You thought otherwise, and that the dose might still be larger. And I found you were right; for subsequent events proved they were equal to the constitution of 1791. Unfortunately, some of the most honest and enlightened of our patriotic friends, (but closet politicians merely, unpracticed in the knowledge of man,) thought more could still be obtained and borne. They did not weigh the hazards of a transition from one form of government to another, the value of what they had already rescued from those hazards, and might hold in security if they pleased, nor the imprudence of giving up the certainty of such a degree of liberty, under a limited monarch, for the uncertainty of a little more under the form of a republic. You differed from them. You were for stopping there, and for securing the constitution which the National Assembly had obtained. Here, too, you

were right; and from this fatal error of the republicans, from their separation from yourself and the constitutionalists in their councils, flowed all the subsequent sufferings and crimes of the French nation."

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Again writing to Lafayette on May 14th, 1817, Jefferson said: "But although our speculations might be intrusive, our prayers cannot but be acceptable, and mine are sincerely offered for the well-being of France. What government she can bear, depends not on the state of science, however exalted, in a select band of enlightened men, but on the condition of the general mind. That, I am sure, is advanced and will advance; and the last change of government was fortunate, inasmuch as the new will be less obstructive to the effects of that advancement. ** I wish I could give better hopes of our Southern brethren. The achievement of their independence of Spain is no longer a question. But it is a very serious one, what will then become of them? Ignorance and bigotry, like other insanities, are incapable of selfgovernment. They will fall under military despotism, and become the murderous tools of the ambition of their respective Bonapartes; and whether this will be for their greater happiness, the rule of one only has taught you to judge. No one, I hope, can doubt my wish to see them and all mankind exercising self-government, and capable of exercising it. But the question is not what we wish but what is practicable? As their sincere friend and brother, then, I do believe the best thing for them, would be for themselves to come to an accord with Spain, under guarantee of France, Russia and the United States, allowing to Spain a nominal supremacy, with authority only to keep the peace among them, leaving them otherwise all the powers of self-government, until their experience in them, their emancipation from their priests, and advance