conscious of feeling no difference between writing to the highest and lowest being on earth." Jefferson's first administration was marked by a reduction of the army, navy, diplomatic establishment and, to the uttermost, of governmental expenses; some reduction of the civil service, accompanied by a large shifting of offices to Republicans; and, above all, by the Louisiana Purchase (q.v.), following which Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, sent by Jefferson, conducted their famous exploring expedition across the continent to the Pacific (see LEWIS, MERIWETHER). Early in his term he carried out a policy he had urged upon the government when minister to France and when vice-president, by dispatching naval forces to coerce Tripoli into a decent respect for the trade of his country--the first in Christendom to gain honourable immunity from tribute or piracy in the Mediterranean. The Louisiana Purchase, although the greatest "inconsistency" of his career, was also an illustration, in corresponding degree, of his essential practicality, and one of the greatest proofs of his statesmanship. It was the crowning achievement of his administration. It is often said that Jefferson established the "spoils system" by his changes in the civil service. He was the innovator, because for the first time there was opportunity for innovation. But mere justice requires attention to the fact that incentive to that innovation, and excuse for it, were found in the absolute one-party monopoly maintained by the Federalists. Moreover, Jefferson's ideals were high; his reasons for changes were in general excellent; he at least so far resisted the great pressure for office--producing by his resistance dissatisfaction within his party--as not to have lowered, apparently, the personnel of the service; and there were no such blots on his administration as President Adams's "midnight judges." Nevertheless, his record here was not clear of blots, showing a few regrettable inconsistencies.[18] Among important but secondary measures of his second administration were the extinguishment of Indian titles, and promotion of Indian emigration to lands beyond the Mississippi; reorganization of the militia; fortification of the seaports; reduction of the public debt; and a simultaneous reduction of taxes. But his second term derives most of its historical interest from the unsuccessful efforts to convict Aaron Burr of treasonable acts in the south-west, and from the efforts made to maintain, without war, the rights of neutrals on the high seas. In his diplomacy with Napoleon and Great Britain Jefferson betrayed a painful incorrigibility of optimism. A national policy of "growling before fighting"--later practised successfully enough by the United States--was not then possible; and one writer has very justly said that what chiefly affects one in the whole matter is the pathos of it--"a philosopher and a friend of peace struggling with a despot of superhuman genius, and a Tory cabinet of