C. C. Pinckney and Rufus King. The completeness of Jefferson's victory marks the measure of his success and of popular approval. He carried fifteen of the seventeen. states of the Union, and in the electoral college received 162 votes against 14 for the Federalist candidates. ******* During his four years of office, Jefferson's private correspondence is naturally less voluminous and varied than usual. There are several long and interesting letters to Dr. Priestley, which taken together give a very accurate picture of Jefferson's views on the destiny of the United States, both in America and in relation to Europe. Thus on June 19, 1802, he writes:—
"Our people in a body are wise, because they are under the unrestrained and unperverted operation of their own understanding. Those whom they have assigned to the direction of their affairs have stood with a pretty even front. If any one of them was withdrawn, many others entirely equal have been ready to fill his place with good abilities. A nation, composed of such materials, and free in all its members from distressing wants, furnishes hopeful implements for the interesting experiment of self government; and we feel that we are acting under obligations not confined to the limits of our own society. It is impossible not to be sensible that we are acting for all mankind; that circumstances denied to others, but indulged to us, have imposed on us the duty of proving what is the degree of freedom and self government in which a society may venture to leave its individual members."
On April 9, 1803, he transmitted to Priestley a sketch of his religious opinions, and on April 21, he enclosed to Dr. Benjamin Rush, a "Syllabus of an Estimate of the Merit of the Doctrines of Jesus compared with those of others":—
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