His wife's fortune, as he informs us, doubled his own, and placed him in a position of pecuniary independence. He soon abandoned his profession, and thenceforward his career was a public one. He entered political life at the time when it first became evident that a war with England must occur, and threw himself into the extreme party. He was admirably fitted for success in a legislative body. His talents were deliberative, rather than executive. He had no power in debate, but he possessed qualities which we believe are more uniformly influential in a public assemblage,--tact, industry, a conciliatory disposition, and systematic habits of thought. He was always familiar with the details of legislation. The majority of the members of a legislature can seldom know much about its business. Those questions which excite popular attention and become party tests are inquired into; but most matters attract no attention and are not party tests. Only a few men of great industry and rare powers are familiar with these. In the British House of Commons, it is said, there are not more than thirty or forty such members. In either branch of our Congress the proportion is no larger. It is a great power to know that which others find it necessary to know; and if to this information one adds good judgment and a persuasive intellect, his influence will be almost unbounded. Young as he was, no one could approach Jefferson without seeing that he had read and thought much. While most of his comrades in Virginia had been wasting their youth in horse-racing and cock-fighting, he had been an enthusiastic student of books and Nature. Upon all subjects likely to excite inquiry his knowledge was full and precise, and his opinions those of a sagacious and philosophic mind. His manners were attractive; he never engaged in dispute; he expressed himself freely to those who sought his society for information or an intelligent comparison of opinion; but his lips were closed in the presence of a disputant. The patience with which he listened to others, and the modest candor with which he expressed himself, usually disarmed the contentions; when they did not, he went no farther. If his views were false, he did not wish them to prevail; if they were true, he felt certain that sooner or later they would prevail. A temperament like this might have placed a less firm man under the imputation of disingenuousness; but such an imputation could not rest upon him. No one was in doubt as to his opinions. He generally anticipated inquiry, and selected his ground before others saw that action would be necessary. There were capable lawyers and men of wide experience in our Revolutionary legislatures, but there was no one whose influence was more powerful and felt upon a greater variety of subjects than that of Jefferson.