For  these  and  other  reasons,  Mr. Jefferson  was  disposed  to  regard
the  negro  race  as  naturally  inferior;  though  he  expresses  himself  on
the  point  with  the  hesitation  natural  to  a  scientific  luiud  provided
ivith  a  scant  supply  of  facts. On  the  political  question,  he  was
clear  :  the  two  races  could  not  live  together  in  peace  as  equals. The
attempt  to  do  so,  he  thought,  wouhl  "divide  Virginians  into  parties,
and  produce  convulsions  which  would  probahly  never  end  but  in  the
extermination  of  the  one  or  the  otlier  race."  Here  was  a  problem  for
i,  knot  of  young  legislators,  without  a  precedent  to  guide  them  in  aL
the  known  history  of  man  !

Tile  gro^s  ignorance  of  the  white  inhabitants,  except  one  small
class,  was  another  too  obvious  fact. They  were  almost  as  ignorant
as  Europeans,  with  fewer  restraints  than  Europeans. Almost  eveij
glinipse  we  get  of  the  poorer  Virginians  of  that  day  is  a  revelation
of  rude  and  reckless  ignorance. Wo  have  in  the  Memoirs  of  Elkanah
Watson,  who  rode  through  Virginia  in  1778,  an  election  scene  at
Hanover  Court  House,  which  must  have  been  a  startling  contrast  to
the  elections  he  had  witnessed  in  his  native  Massachusetts,  where  an
election  was  a  solemnity  opened  with  prayer. The  '■  whole  conn-
try,"  he  records,  was  assembled. "The  moment  I  alighted,  a
wretcheil,  pug-nosed  fellow  assailed  me  to  swap  watches. 1  had
hardly  shaken  him  off  when  I  was  attacked  by  a  wild  Irishman,
who  insisted  on  my  swapping  horses  with  bim,  and,  in  a  twinkling,
ran  up  the  pedigree  of  his  horse  to  the  grand  dam. Treating  his
importunity  with  little  respect,  I  became  near  being  involved  in  a
boxing-match,  the  Irishman  swearing  I  did  not '  trate  him  like  a
jintlemati.'  I  had  hardly  escaped  this  dilemma,  when  ray  attention
was  attracted  by  a  fight  between  two  very  unwieldy  fat  men,  foam-
ing and  puffing  like  two  furies,  until  one  succeeded  in  twisting  a
forefinger  in  a  side-lock  of  the  other's  hair,  and  in  the  act  of  thrust-
ing by  this  purchase  his  thumb  into  the  latter's  eye,  he  bawled  outi
Ein^s  Cruse,  equivalent,  in  technical  language,  to  Enough."

There  was   in  Virginia   an    unusually  large  proportion  of  thi«


NEED  OP  BEFOBM  IN  OLD  VIRGINIA. 201

larage  ignorance,  easily  convertible  into  fanatical  ignorance. 