mistake made by himself went far to confirm their prejudice. Jefferson’s nature was feminine; he was more refined than many women in the delicacy of his private relations, and even men as shameless as Callender himself winced under attacks of such a sort. He was sensitive, affectionate, and, in his own eyes, heroic. He yearned for love and praise as no other great American ever did. He hated the clergy chiefly because he knew that from them he could expect neither love nor praise, perhaps not even forbearance. He had befriended Callender against his own better judgment, as every party leader befriended party hacks, not because the leaders approved them, but because they were necessary for the press. So far as license was concerned, “The Prospect before us” was a mild libel compared with Cobbett’s, Coleman’s, and Dennie’s cataracts of abuse; and at the time it was written, Callender’s character was not known and his habits were still decent. In return for kindness and encouragement, Callender attempted an act of dastardly assassination, which the whole Federalist press cheered. That a large part of the community, and the part socially uppermost, should believe this drunken ruffian, and should laugh while he bespattered their President with his filth, was a mortification which cut deep into Jefferson’s heart. Hurt and angry, he felt that at bottom it was the old theological hatred in Virginia and New England which sustained this mode of warfare; that as he had flung Paine at them, they were flinging Callender at him. “With the aid of a lying renegade from Republicanism, the Federalists have opened all their sluices of calumny,” he wrote;[82] and he would have done wisely to say no more. Unluckily for him, he undertook to contradict Callender’s assertions. James Monroe was Governor of Virginia. Some weakness in Monroe’s character caused him more than once to mix in scandals which he might better have left untouched. July 7, 1802, he wrote to the President, asking for the facts in regard to Jefferson’s relations with Callender. The President’s reply confessed the smart of his wound:[83]-- “I am really mortified at the base ingratitude of Callender. It presents human nature in a hideous form. It gives me concern because I perceive that relief which was afforded him on mere motives of charity, may be viewed under the aspect of employing him as a writer.” He explained how he had pitied Callender, and repeatedly given him money. “As to myself,” he continued, “no man wished more to see his pen stopped; but I considered him still as a proper object of benevolence. The succeeding year [1800] he again wanted money to buy paper for another volume. I made his letter, as before, the occasion of giving him another fifty dollars. He considers these as proofs of my approbation of his writings, when they were mere charities, yielded under a strong conviction that he was injuring us by his writings.”