Two years after his wife’s death, namely, in 1784, Jefferson was chosen by Congress to serve as envoy at Paris, with John Adams and Benjamin Franklin. The appointment came at an opportune moment, when his mind was beginning to recover its tone, and he gladly accepted it. It was deemed necessary that the new Confederacy should make treaties with the various governments of Europe, and as soon as the envoys reached Paris, they drew up a treaty such as they hoped might be negotiated. It has been described as “the first serious attempt ever made to conduct the intercourse of nations on Christian principles;” and, on that account, it failed. To this failure there was, however, one exception. “Old Frederick of Prussia,” as Jefferson styled him, “met us [pg 72]cordially;” and with him a treaty was soon concluded.

In May, 1785, Franklin returned to the United States, and Jefferson was appointed minister. “You replace Dr. Franklin,” said the Count of Vergennes when Jefferson announced his appointment. “I succeed,—no one can replace him,” was the reply.

Jefferson’s residence in Paris at this critical period was a fortunate occurrence. It would be a mistake to suppose that he derived his political principles from France:—he carried them there; but he was confirmed in them by witnessing the injustice and misery which resulted to the common people from the monarchical governments of Europe. To James Monroe he wrote in June, 1785: “The pleasure of the trip [to Europe] will be less than you expect, but the utility greater. It will make you adore your own country,—its soil, its climate, its equality, laws, people, and manners. My God! how little do my countrymen know what precious blessings they are in possession of and which no other people on earth [pg 73]enjoy! I confess I had no idea of it myself.”

To George Wythe he wrote in August, 1786: “Preach, my dear sir, a crusade against ignorance; establish and improve the law for educating the common people. Let our countrymen know that the people alone can protect us against these evils; and that the tax which will be paid for this purpose is not more than the thousandth part of what will be paid to kings, priests, and nobles, who will rise up among us if we leave the people in ignorance.” To Madison, he wrote in January, 1787: “This is a government of wolves over sheep.” Jefferson took the greatest pains to ascertain the condition of the laboring classes. In the course of a journey in the south of France, he wrote to Lafayette, begging him to survey the condition of the people for himself. “To do it most effectually,” he said, “you must be absolutely incognito; you must ferret the people out of their hovels, as I have done; look into their kettles; eat their bread; loll on their beds on pretense of resting your[pg 74]self, but in fact to find if they are soft. You will feel a sublime pleasure in the course of the investigation, and a sublimer one hereafter, when you shall be able to apply your knowledge to the softening of their beds, or the throwing a morsel of meat into their kettle of vegetables.”

These excursions among the French peasantry, who, as Jefferson well knew, were ruinously taxed in order to support an extravagant court and an idle and insolent nobility, made him a fierce Republican. “There is not a crowned head in Europe,” he wrote to General Washington, in 1788, “whose talents or merits would entitle him to be elected a vestryman by the people of America.”

But for the French race Jefferson had an affinity. He was glad to live with people among whom, as he said, “a man might pass a life without encountering a single rudeness.” He liked their polished manners and gay disposition, their aptitude for science, for philosophy, and for art; even their wines and cookery suited his taste, and his preference in this respect was so well known that [pg 75]Patrick Henry once humorously stigmatized him as “a man who had abjured his native victuals.”

Jefferson’s stay in Paris corresponded exactly with the “glorious” period of the French Revolution. He was present at the Assembly of the Notables in 1787, and he witnessed the destruction of the Bastille in 1789.

“The change in this country,” he wrote in March, 1789, “is such as you can form no idea of. The frivolities of conversation have given way entirely to politics. Men, women, and children talk nothing else ... and mode has acted a wonderful part in the present instance. All the handsome young women, for example, are for the tiers ÉtÂt, and this is an army more powerful in France than the 200,000 men of the king.”

The truth is that an intellectual and moral revolution preceded in France the outbreak of the populace. There was an interior conviction that the government of the country was excessively unjust and oppressive. A love of liberty, a feeling of [pg 76]fraternity, a passion for equality moved the intellect and even the aristocracy of France. In this crisis the reformers looked toward America, for the United States had just trodden the path upon which France was entering. “Our proceedings,” wrote Jefferson to Madison in 1789, “have been viewed as a model for them on every occasion.... Our [authority] has been treated like that of the Bible, open to explanation, but not to question.”

Jefferson’s advice was continually sought by Lafayette and others; and his house, maintained in the easy, liberal style of Virginia, was a meeting place for the Revolutionary statesmen. Jefferson dined at three or four o’clock; and after the cloth had been removed he and his guests sat over their wine till nine or ten in the evening.

In July, 1789, the National Assembly appointed a committee to draught a constitution, and the committee formally invited the American minister to assist at their sessions and favor them with his advice. This function he felt obliged to decline, as being [pg 77]inconsistent with his post of minister to the king. No man had a nicer sense of propriety than Jefferson; and he punctiliously observed the requirements of his somewhat difficult situation in Paris.

What gave Mr. Jefferson the greatest anxiety and trouble, was our relations with the piratical Barbary powers who held the keys of the Mediterranean and sometimes extended their depredations even into the Atlantic. It was a question of paying tribute or going to war; and most of the European powers paid tribute. In 1784, for example, the Dutch contributed to “the high, glorious, mighty, and most noble, King, Prince, and Emperor of Morocco,” a mass of material which included thirty cables, seventy cannon, sixty-nine masts, twenty-one anchors, fifty dozen sail-needles, twenty-four tons of pitch, two hundred and eighty loaves of sugar, twenty-four China punch-bowls, three clocks, and one “very large watch.”

Jefferson ascertained that the pirates would require of the United States, as the [pg 78]price of immunity for its commerce, a tribute of about three hundred thousand dollars per annum. “Surely,” he wrote home, “our people will not give this. Would it not be better to offer them an equal treaty? If they refuse, why not go to war with them?” And he pressed upon Mr. Jay, who held the secretaryship of foreign affairs, as the office was then called, the immediate establishment of a navy. But Congress would do nothing; and it was not till Jefferson himself became President that the Barbary pirates were dealt with in a wholesome and stringent manner. During the whole term of his residence at Paris he was negotiating with the Mediterranean powers for the release of unfortunate Americans, many of whom spent the best part of their lives in horrible captivity.

Mr. Jefferson’s self-imposed duties were no less arduous. He kept four colleges informed of the most valuable new inventions, discoveries, and books. He had a Yankee talent for mechanical improvements, and he was always on the alert to obtain anything of this nature which he thought might be [pg 79]useful at home. Jefferson himself, by the way, invented the revolving armchair, the buggy-top, and a mould board for a plough. He bought books for Franklin, Madison, Monroe, Wythe, and himself. He informed one correspondent about Watt’s engine, another about the new system of canals. He smuggled rice from Turin in his coat pockets; and he was continually dispatching to agricultural societies in America seeds, roots, nuts, and plants. Houdin was sent over by him to make the statue of Washington; and he forwarded designs for the new capitol at Richmond. For Buffon he procured the skin of an American panther, and also the bones and hide of a New Hampshire moose, to obtain which Governor Sullivan of that State organized a hunting-party in the depth of winter and cut a road through the forest for twenty miles in order to bring out his quarry.

Jefferson was the most indefatigable of men, and he did not relax in Paris. He had rooms at a Carthusian monastery to which he repaired when he had some special [pg 80]work on hand. He kept a carriage and horses, but could not afford a saddle horse. Instead of riding, he took a walk every afternoon, usually of six or seven miles, occasionally twice as long. It was while returning with a friend from one of these excursions that he fell and fractured his right wrist; and the fracture was set so imperfectly that it troubled him ever afterward. It was characteristic of Jefferson that he said nothing to his friend as to the injury until they reached home, though his suffering from it was great; and, also, that he at once began to write with the other hand, making numerous entries, on the very night of the accident, in a writing which, though stiff, was, and remains, perfectly clear.

Mr. Jefferson’s two daughters had been placed at a convent school near Paris, and he was surprised one day to receive a note from Martha, the elder, asking his permission to remain in the convent for the rest of her life as a nun. For a day or two she received no answer. Then her father called [pg 81]in his carriage, and after a short interview with the abbess took his daughters away; and thenceforth Martha presided, so far as her age permitted, over her father’s household. Not a word upon the subject of her request ever passed between them; and long afterward, in telling the story to her own children, she praised Mr. Jefferson’s tact in dealing with what she described as a transient impulse.

After this incident, Jefferson, thinking that it was time to take his daughters home, obtained leave of absence for six months; and the little family landed at Norfolk, November 18, 1789. They journeyed slowly homeward, stopping at one friend’s house after another, and, two days before Christmas, arrived at Monticello, where they were rapturously greeted by the slaves, who took the four horses from the carriage and drew it up the steep incline themselves; and when he alighted, Mr. Jefferson, in spite of himself, was carried into the house on the arms of his black servants and friends.