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Show THE MUCH QUOTED JEFFERSON When the United States was young u.se was made of young as well as old men. For instance, Thomas Jefferson, whose birth in 1713 we celebrate on the 13th of April, was only 26 when elected to the Virginia assembly. At 36 he was a member mem-ber of congress and governor of Virginia. Nearly all important im-portant biographers rank him as one of our quartet of greatest great-est men, Washington, Franklin and Lincoln being the other three. The epitaph this third president of the United States wrote for himself tells quite a bit about him: "Here lies buried Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence, In-dependence, of the statute of Virginia for religious freedom, and father of the University of Virginia." This friend and defender of the poor, this advocate of unci practicer of religious tolerance, this believer in "equal and exact justice to all men of whatever state" was the son i of an unlettered father of unusual common sense and a refined re-fined mother who descended, from a long line of lawyers, physician, statesman and noted clergman. lie was a college graduate lover of books, a brilliant example ex-ample of what niay be gained by humbly reading about the exjerience3 of others. He was an excellent mathematician, a lover of music and an adept in the use of his mother tongue. He was a man of great vision' far ahead of his times. Despite his great accomplishments he was a poor manager of his own finances. In his inaugural address he said: "Let us then, with a courage and, confidence, pursue our own federal and republican republi-can principles, our attachment to our Union and representative representa-tive government. Kindly separated by nature and a wide ocean from the exterminating havoc of one quarter of the globe; too high minded to endure the degradations of the others; possessing a chosen country, with room enough for our descendants to the hundredth and thousandth generation; genera-tion; entertaining a due sense of our equal right to the use of our own faculties to the acquisitions of our industry; to honor and, confidence from our fellow-citizens, resulting not from birth but from our actions, and their sense of them; enlightened by a benign religion, professed, indeed, and practiced prac-ticed in various forms, yet all of them inculcating honesty, truth, temperance, gratitude, and the love of man; acknowledging ack-nowledging and adoring an overruling Providense, which, by all its dispensations, proves that it delights in the happiness happi-ness of man here, and his greater happiness hereafter; with all these blessings what more is necessary to make us a happy and prosperous people? Still, one thing more, fellow-citizens fellow-citizens a wise and frugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, which shall leave them otherwise other-wise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, im-provement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government, and this is necessary to close the circle of our felecities." r . . |