Having denounced Parliament as “a phalanx of mercenaries” and the English constitution as “a conspiracy of the rich against the poor,” he was fated to whirl into Republican circles in America and write for Benjamin Franklin Bache’s Aurora.17 In later years, Jefferson condemned Callender as “a poor creature . . . hypochondriac, drunken, penniless, and unprincipled.”18 But at this time, when Callender flung his darts at the Federalists, Jefferson glorified him as “a man of genius” and “a man of science fled from persecution.”
