=_171._= CHARACTER OF THOMAS JEFFERSON. Of all those who controlled the helm of affairs during the time of the Revolution, and while the Constitution and the forms of our National and State Institutions were carefully organized, there is none who has been more generally popular, more commonly beloved, more usually believed to be necessary to the Legislation and Administration of his country, than Thomas Jefferson. It may not be said of him that of all those famous men he could least have been spared; for in the rare and great qualities for patiently and wisely conducting the vast affairs of State and Nation in pressing emergencies, he seems to have been wanting. But his grand merit was this--that while his powerful opponents favored a strong government, and believed it necessary thereby to repress what they called the lower classes, he, Jefferson, believed in Humanity; believed in a true Democracy. He respected labor and education, and upheld the right to education of all men. These were the Ideas in which he was far in advance of all the considerable men, whether of his State or of his Nation--ideas which he illustrated through long years of his life and conduct. The great debt that the Nation owes to him is this--that he so ably and consistently advocated these needful opinions, that he made himself the head and the hand of the great party that carried these ideas into power, that put an end to all possibility of class-government, made naturalization easy, extended the suffrage and applied it to judicial office, opened a still wider and better education to all, and quietly inaugurated reforms, yet incomplete, of which we have the benefit to this day, and which, but for him, we might not have won against the party of Strong Government, except by a difficult and painful Revolution. * * * * * =_Wendell Phillips,[51] 1811-._= From "A Lecture delivered in December, 1861." =_172._= THE WAR FOR THE UNION.