This page has been validated.
SENTIMENTS OF JEFFERSON.
9
those eternal laws that bind the penalty to the transgression?
Is it not true now, as of the past, that "the nation and kingdom that will not serve Thee shall perish, yea, those nations shall be utterly wasted"? Could the spirits of departed American heroes return, with what increased emphasis would they reiterate the burning words that expressed their feelings and principles on this momentous question!
Referring to the struggle for American independence, and the palpable inconsistency of those who achieved it, Thomas Jefferson said:
"What an incomprehensible machine is man, who can endure toil, famine, stripes, imprisonment, and death itself, in vindication of his own liberty, and the next moment be deaf to all those motives whose power supported him through his trial, and inflict on his fellow-men a bondage, one hour of which is fraught with more misery than ages of that which he rose in rebellion to oppose! . . Can the liberties of a nation be thought secure, when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with his wrath? Indeed, I tremble for my country, when I reflect that God is just; that his justice can not sleep for ever; that, considering numbers, nature, and natural means only, a revolution of the wheel of fortune, an exchange of situation, is among possible events; that it may become probable by supernatural interference. The Almighty has no attribute which can take side with us in such a contest."
If, then, every attribute of the Almighty is against the continuance of this system of oppression,
