Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power

by Jon Meacham

“A high-flying politician,” Hopkinson wrote, “is I think not unlike a balloon—he is full of inflammability, he is driven along by every current of wind, and those who will suffer themselves to be carried up by them run a great risk that the bubble may burst and let them fall from the height to which a principle of levity had raised them.”

The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure. Our Convention has been too much impressed by the insurrection in Massachusetts. Jefferson acknowledged he was being hyperbolic. “The want of facts worth communicating to you has occasioned me to give a little loose to dissertation.64 We must be contented to amuse, when we cannot inform.”

Aegis

traducers

pecuniary

calumnies

I ask your indulgence for my own errors, which will never be intentional, and your support against the errors of others, who may condemn what they would not if seen in all its parts.

calumniators.”

majordomo

polemicist

sinecure

slovenly

ostentation

pasha