At that time a vague idea that he could turn a new leaf and start a new life may fugitively have crossed his mind. He had respectfully but profoundly admired Madame de Corny when he was in Paris. News from her had come through Mrs. Church; Mr. de Corny had died; Madame de Corny left a widow in very limited circumstances had retired to Rouen.[308] It seems that he entertained the hope that she might decide to move to America and in that case he would have liked to see her at Monticello: "Madame de Cosway is in a convent ... that she would have rather sought the mountain-top. How happy should I be that it were mine, that you, she, and Madame de Corny would seek." But he had seen too many of these brilliant French women in Philadelphia to believe that a Parisian could ever become accustomed to the simplicity of Monticello and to its lack of entertainments, and he made the suggestion very timidly: "I know of no country where the remains of a fortune could place her so much at her ease as this, and where public esteem is so much attached to worth, regardless of wealth; our manners & the state of society here are so different from those to which her habits have been formed, that she would lose more perhaps in that scale." After all, he had not changed so much since he had declared his flame to Belinda, almost in the same terms, twenty years earlier. This was the typical Jeffersonian way of presenting his own wishes, of letting the others decide after he had stated the pros and cons; clearly he was not made to win personal triumphs, either in love or in politics.
Of politics he was utterly sick. He pictured himself spending the rest of his days in bucolic occupations. "The length of my tether is now fixed for life from Monticello to Richmond," he wrote to Gates. "My private business can never call me elsewhere, and certainly politics will not, which I have ever hated both in theory and practice."[309]
Writing to Mrs. Church, he had gone into more details.
I am to be liberated from the hated occupations of politics retire into the bosom of my family, my farm, & my books. I have my house to build, my family to form, and to watch for the happiness of those who labor for mine. I have one daughter married to a man of science, sense, virtue and competence; in whom indeed I have nothing more to wish. They live with me. If the other shall be as fortunate in the process of time, I shall imagine myself as blessed as the most blessed of the patriarchs.[310]
At Monticello he found Martha and her husband, Thomas Mann Randolph, and induced the young couple to stay with him. Maria was now a tall girl, vivacious and witty, who would soon find a suitor. Devoting himself entirely to his family and domestic cares, Jefferson plunged into the reorganization of his estate left to an overseer for more than ten years, and granted so little attention to politics that he did not even subscribe to any newspaper, being quite content with those published at Richmond. "I think it is Montaigne who has said that ignorance is the softest pillow on which a man can rest his head," he wrote to Edmund Randolph. "I am sure it is true as to everything political, and shall endeavor to estrange myself to everything of that character."[311] Since that time there have been in American politics many instances of politicians who left for a hunting party, or retired to their farms in order to avoid responsibility. This was not the attitude of Jefferson; his was no temporary retirement while waiting for the storm to blow itself over. Had he chosen to remain in Philadelphia, as he had been asked to do by Washington, he would have at least checked Hamilton's personal influence and counterbalanced in Washington's mind the advice and counsels of his enemy. His party had been reorganized and the republicans had just obtained a majority in the new Congress, but his principles were far from being secure. He indicated it himself in the same letter to Randolph when he wrote:
I indulge myself on one political topic only, that is, in declaring to my countrymen the shameless corruption of a portion of the Representatives to the first and second Congresses, and their implicit devotion to the Treasury. I think I do good in this, because it may produce exertions to reform the evil on the success of which the form of the government is to depend.
Shortly after coming back to Monticello, he discovered, somewhat to his dismay, that the rank and file of the good people of the country did not pay much attention to the political battle which was still raging in Philadelphia. He went to "court" at Charlottesville at the beginning of February and was amazed to find that his neighbors had not heard of Madison's speeches in Congress or even of the recall of Genet.
I could not have supposed—he wrote to Madison—when at Philadelphia that so little of what was passing there could be known even at Kentucky as is the case here. Judging from this of the rest of the Union, it is evident to me that the people are not in a condition either to approve or disapprove of their government, nor consequently to influence it.[312]
This would tend to give confirmation to the supposition I timidly ventured in the last chapter. Neither the inflammatory speeches made in Congress, nor the foundation of democratic clubs, nor the newspaper battle between different editors had been able to rouse the people of the country. In America, as in every other country, the rural population, at that time the majority of the population, remained passive and took little interest in discussions that did not immediately affect their interests. Then, too, as in our days, the press was able to modify and to influence to some extent public opinion, but did not express it. Editors were years in advance of the slow-moving masses in their prognostications. It takes a national emergency, a violent crisis or a well-organized political machine to coalesce the great majority of a people and force them to see beyond the limited horizon of their village, their county or their State. This is so even now, and it was certainly so a century and a half ago, when the parochial and provincial spirit was still stronger than the national spirit.
Since this was realized by Jefferson, it is difficult to understand how he did not come to the conclusion that his clear duty was to go back to Philadelphia and do his utmost to educate an apathetic people. But he was not the man to enjoy strife and struggle; he was too sensitive of personal criticism and attacks, too timid also to care to exchange blows with an opponent. He was the type of man who likes to play chess by correspondence, to suggest solutions, but not the one "to knead the dough", as the French say, and to take an active part in the daily game of politics.