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Show Thomas Jefferson TODAY is Jefferson day. Had he lived to this time he would have been a hundred and sixty-seven years old. But he would not have been any better known than he already is. Thomas Jefferson was very much of a man. It was he who wrote that all men are created equal and endowed with certain inalienable rights, among which are life, liberty and the pursuit pur-suit of happiness. But when he said that all men were equal, he meant that they ought, to all have equal opportunities op-portunities before the law. He did not mean to say that they all started on an equal intellectual intel-lectual ground or equal patriotic grounds, but that in this country every chance that the country coun-try presents ought to be open to them. His theory of government was that all free men should have equality under tne law. But he, even the great Thomas, took occasionally to a little demagogism. For instance, when he went to Washington as president of the United States, while all his life ho had been ramous on his plantation for the strict rules that governed his home for instance, that a gentleman should always be dressed like a gentleman at dinner, and that all the courtesies of life should be extended ex-tended to guests and to neighbors according to their condition, he dressed shabbily for two years after he got to Washington, just to show his Innate In-nate democracy, and at the same time to express a sort of contempt for the strict rules which governed George Washington when he was in that same position, because old George would never receive when president except he was dressed in a full continental uniform, including sash and sword. Jefferson was not a warrior, so he left off the uniform and left off the sword. Then he had queer ideas in many ways. He wanted a jubilee year every fifty years to have every one's debts forgotten and all men in prison discharged. But he was a very great man, all the same. He bewailed the presence of slavery in the United States and expressed the fear that upon that rock the Union would be split in twain after a while. He wanted the lands better cultivated, culti-vated, he wanted a protective tariff that skilled labor might grow up in this county and the country coun-try be self-dependent without any help from the outside. He sometimes wished that an ocean of fire might roll between this country and all foreign for-eign countries for a ' term of years until the American race could be fully established. A party was founded on his teachings. Only in some things, as Homer says: "Jove, in listening listen-ing to the prayers of men, granted some and Ignored Ig-nored others." And so the Democracy are willing to call old Thomas the father of their party, and they cling to many of his decrees and those that do not suit them they ignore and fall back on Jackson, who was really much more to their hearts than ever was Jefferson. And lately they are picking up the idea and explpiting it that after all Abraham Lincoln was M & Democrat after the Jef- M ferson school, i$fP nt fair to either Jeffer- son or Lincoln, tj&yfo$hey were not great in M the same way. Lwpwas raised up as the fl savior of his country, fulfilled his mission and then, as though to protect his own reputation, M the assassin cut off his years in a moment. Jef- M ferson lived to a great old age, maintained his M greatnesB to the end, and it is good for all M Americans every year to stop on his birthday M and hail his spirit in the other world. jH |