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The Jeffersonian Vision - Lance Banning, Liberty and Order: The First American Party Struggle [2004]

Edition used:

Liberty and Order: The First American Party Struggle, ed. and with a Preface by Lance Banning (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2004).

About Liberty Fund:

Liberty Fund, Inc. is a private, educational foundation established to encourage the study of the ideal of a society of free and responsible individuals.


The Jeffersonian Vision

As he entered the campaign of 1800 and, again, as the Congress began to act on the suggestions of his message of December 1801, the president sketched his program and intentions in letters to his friends. For years, he was to prove remarkably successful in keeping his party behind him. But there were dissidents on both of his extremes.

Letters of the President 1799–1802

To Elbridge Gerry 26 January 1799

… I shall make to you a profession of my political faith, in confidence that you will consider every future imputation on me of a contrary complexion as bearing on its front the mark of falsehood & calumny.

I do then, with sincere zeal, wish an inviolable preservation of our present federal constitution according to the true sense in which it was adopted by the states, that in which it was advocated by its friends, & not that which its enemies apprehended, who therefore became its enemies; and I am opposed to the monarchising its features by the forms of its administration, with a view to conciliate a first transition to a President & Senate for life, & from that to a hereditary tenure of these offices, & thus to worm out the elective principle. I am for preserving to the states the powers not yielded by them to the Union, & to the legislature of the Union its constitutional share in the division of powers; and I am not for transferring all the powers of the states to the general government, & all those of that government to the executive branch. I am for a government rigorously frugal & simple, applying all the possible savings of the public revenue to the discharge of the national debt; and not for a multiplication of officers & salaries merely to make partisans, & for increasing, by every device the public debt, on the principle of its being a public blessing. I am for relying, for internal defense, on our militia solely, till actual invasion, and for such a naval force only as may protect our coasts and harbors from such depredations as we have experienced; and not for a standing army in time of peace, which may overawe the public sentiment; nor for a navy, which, by its own expenses and the eternal wars in which it will implicate us, will grind us with public burthens, & sink us under them. I am for free commerce with all nations; political connection with none; & little or no diplomatic establishment. And I am not for linking ourselves by new treaties with the quarrels of Europe; entering that field of slaughter to preserve their balance, or joining in the confederacy of kings to war against the principles of liberty. I am for freedom of religion, & against all maneuvers to bring about a legal ascendancy of one sect over another: for freedom of the press, & against all violations of the constitution to silence by force & not by reason the complaints or criticisms, just or unjust, of our citizens against the conduct of their agents. And I am for encouraging the progress of science in all its branches; and not for raising a hue and cry against the sacred name of philosophy; for awing the human mind by stories of raw-head & bloody bones to a distrust of its own vision, & to repose implicitly on that of others; to go backwards instead of forwards to look for improvement; to believe that government, religion, morality, & every other science were in the highest perfection in ages of the darkest ignorance, and that nothing can ever be devised more perfect than what was established by our forefathers. To these I will add, that I was a sincere well-wisher to the success of the French Revolution, and still wish it may end in the establishment of a free & well-ordered republic; but I have not been insensible under the atrocious depredations they have committed on our commerce. The first object of my heart is my own country. In that is embarked my family, my fortune, & my own existence. I have not one farthing of interest, nor one fiber of attachment out of it, nor a single motive of preference of any one nation to another, but in proportion as they are more or less friendly to us. But though deeply feeling the injuries of France, I did not think war the surest means of redressing them. I did believe, that a mission sincerely disposed to preserve peace, would obtain for us a peaceable & honorable settlement & retribution; and I appeal to you to say, whether this might not have been obtained, if either of your colleagues had been of the same sentiment with yourself.

These, my friend, are my principles; they are unquestionably the principles of the great body of our fellow citizens, and I know there is not one of them which is not yours also. In truth, we never differed but on one ground, the funding system; and as, from the moment of its being adopted by the constituted authorities, I became religiously principled in the sacred discharge of it to the uttermost farthing, we are united now even on that single ground of difference.

To P. S. Dupont de Nemours 18 January 1802

Dear Sir,—It is rare I can indulge myself in the luxury of philosophy. Your letters give me a few of those delicious moments. Placed as you are in a great commercial town, with little opportunity of discovering the dispositions of the country portions of our citizens, I do not wonder at your doubts whether they will generally and sincerely concur in the sentiments and measures developed in my message of the 7th Jany. But from 40 years of intimate conversation with the agricultural inhabitants of my country, I can pronounce them as different from those of the cities, as those of any two nations known. The sentiments of the former can in no degree be inferred from those of the latter. You have spoken a profound truth in these words, “Il y a dans les etats unis un bon sens silencieux, un esprit de justice froide, qui lorqu’il est question d’emettre un vote comme les bavardages de ceux qui font les habiles.” A plain country farmer has written lately a pamphlet on our public affairs. His testimony of the sense of the country is the best which can be produced of the justness of your observation. His words are “The tongue of man is not his whole body. So, in this case, the noisy part of the community was not all the body politic. During the career of fury and contention (in 1800), the sedate, grave part of the people were still; hearing all and judging for themselves what method to take, when the constitutional time of action should come, the exercise of the right of suffrage.” The majority of the present legislature are in unison with the agricultural part of our citizens, and you will see that there is nothing in the message to which they do not accord. Some things may perhaps be left undone from motives of compromise for a time, and not to alarm by too sudden a reformation, but with a view to be resumed at another time. I am perfectly satisfied the effect of the proceedings of this session of congress will be to consolidate the great body of well meaning citizens together, whether federal or republican, heretofore called. I do not mean to include royalists or priests. Their opposition is immovable. But they will be vox et preterea nihil, leaders without followers. I am satisfied that within one year from this time were an election to take place between two candidates merely republican and federal, where no personal opposition existed against either, the federal candidate would not get the vote of a single elector in the U.S. I must here again appeal to the testimony of my farmer, who says “The great body of the people are one in sentiment. If the federal party and the republican party, should each of them choose a convention to frame a constitution of government or a code of laws, there would be no radical difference in the results of the two conventions.” This is most true. The body of our people, tho’ divided for a short time by an artificial panic, and called by different names, have ever had the same object in view, to wit, the maintenance of a federal, republican government, and have never ceased to be all federalists, all republicans: still excepting the noisy band of royalists inhabiting cities chiefly, and priests both of city and country. When I say that in an election between a republican and federal candidate, free from personal objection, the former would probably get every vote, I must not be understood as placing myself in that view. It was my destiny to come to the government when it had for several years been committed to a particular political sect, to the absolute and entire exclusion of those who were in sentiment with the body of the nation. I found the country entirely in the enemy’s hands. It was necessary to dislodge some of them. Out of many thousands of officers in the U.S. 9 only have been removed for political principle, and 12 for delinquencies chiefly pecuniary. The whole herd have squealed out, as if all their throats were cut. These acts of justice few as they have been, have raised great personal objections to me, of which a new character would be [faded]. When this government was first established, it was possible to have kept it going on true principles, but the contracted, English, half-lettered ideas of Hamilton destroyed that hope in the bud. We can pay off his debt in 15 years; but we can never get rid of his financial system. It mortifies me to be strengthening principles which I deem radically vicious, but this vice is entailed on us by the first error. In other parts of our government I hope we shall be able by degrees to introduce sound principles and make them habitual. What is practicable must often control what is pure theory; and the habits of the governed determine in a great degree what is practicable. Hence the same original principles, modified in practice according to the different habits of different nations, present governments of very different aspects. The same principles reduced to forms of practice accommodated to our habits, and put into forms accommodated to the habits of the French nation would present governments very unlike each other. I have no doubt but that a great man, thoroughly knowing the habits of France, might so accommodate to them the principles of free government as to enable them to live free. But in the hands of those who have not this coup d’oeil, many unsuccessful experiments I fear are yet to be tried before they will settle down in freedom and tranquility. I applaud therefore your determination to remain here, tho’ for yourself and the adults of your family the dissimilitude of our manners and the difference of tongue will be sources of real unhappiness. Yet less so than the horrors and dangers which France would present to you, and as to those of your family still in infancy, they will be formed to the circumstances of the country, and will, I doubt not, be happier here than they could have been in Europe under any circumstances. Be so good as to make my respectful salutations acceptable to Made. Dupont, and all of your family and to be assured yourself of my constant and affectionate esteem.

edmund pendleton “The Danger Not Over” 5 October 1801

Reprinted by the Aurora on 28 October from the Richmond Examiner of 20 October and picked up from there by other papers, this essay by one of Virginia’s most venerable revolutionaries and jurists insisted that a change of men, without a change of measures, would not correct the problems of the 1790s. Appearing just before the meeting of the first Republican Congress, it outlined a program of radical reforms grounded on ideas and assumptions that would eventually flower into an Old Republican opposition to the more moderate course of Jefferson’s and Madison’s administrations.

Although one of my age [eighty] can have little to hope, and less to fear, from forms of government, … and possibly may be charged with intermeddling where he has no interest whenever he utters opinions concerning social regulations; yet I feel impelled by an anxious desire to promote the happiness of my country to submit to the public consideration some reflections on our present political state.

It is far from my intention to damp the public joy occasioned by the late changes of our public agents or to disturb the calm which already presages the most beneficial consequences; on the contrary, I consider this event as having arrested a train of measures which were gradually conducting us towards ruin.

These changes will be a matter of tenfold congratulation if we make the proper use of them: If, instead of negligently reposing upon that wisdom and integrity which have already softened even political malice, we seize an opportunity to erect new barriers against folly, fraud, and ambition; and to explain such parts of the Constitution as have been already, or may be, interpreted contrary to the intention of those who adopted it.

This proposition does not argue a want of proper confidence in our present Chief Magistrate, but the contrary. It can be no censure to believe that he has a nobler destiny to fulfil, than that of making his contemporary countrymen happy for a few years, and that the rare event of such a character at the head of a nation imposes on Us the sacred duty of seizing the propitious opportunity to do all in our power to perpetuate that happiness. As to that species of confidence which would extinguish free inquiry and popular watchfulness, it is never desired by patriotism nor ought to be yielded by freemen.

In pursuit of our purpose, we ought to keep in mind certain principles which are believed to be sound; to enquire whether they have been violated under the Constitution; and then consider how a repetition of those violations may be prevented—As thus:

1. Government is instituted for the good of the community and not to gratify avarice or ambition; therefore, unnecessary increase of debt—appointment of useless officers such as stationary ministers to foreign courts with which we have little connection and sixteen additional judges at a time when the business of the federal courts had greatly diminished—and engaging us in a war abroad for the sake of advancing party projects at home, are abuses in government.

2. The chief good derivable from government is civil liberty; and if government is so constructed as to enable its administration to assail that liberty with the several weapons heretofore most fatal to it, the structure is defective: of this sort, standing armies, fleets, severe penal laws, war, and a multitude of civil officers, are universally admitted to be; and if our government can, with ease and impunity, array those forces against social liberty, the Constitution is defective.

3. Peace is undoubtedly that state which proposes to society the best chance for the continuance of freedom and happiness, and the situation of America is such as to expose her to fewer occasions for war than any other nation, whilst it also disables her from gaining anything by war. But if, by indirect means, the executive can involve us in war not declared by the legislature; if a treaty may be made which will incidentally produce a war, and the legislature are bound to pass all laws necessary to give it full effect; or if the judiciary may determine a war to exist altho’ the legislature hath refused to declare it; then the Constitution is defective, since it admits constructions which pawn our freedom and happiness upon the security of executive patriotism, which is inconsistent with republican principles.

4. Union is certainly the basis of our political prosperity, and this can only be preserved by confining, with precision, the federal government to the exercise of powers clearly required by the general interest or respecting foreign nations and the state governments to objects of a local nature; because the states exhibit such varieties of character and interests that a consolidated general government would be in a perpetual conflict with state interests, from its want of local knowledge or from a prevalence of local prejudice or interest, so as certainly to produce civil war and disunion. If, then, the distinct provinces of the general and state governments are not clearly defined; if the former may assail the latter by penalties and by absorbing all subjects of taxation, if a system leading to consolidation may be formed or pursued, and if, instead of leaving it to the respective states to encourage their agriculture or manufactures as their local interest may dictate, the general government may by bounties or protecting duties tax the one to promote the other, then the Constitution has not sufficiently provided for the continuance of the union by securing the rights of the state governments and local interests.

5. It is necessary for the preservation of republican government that the legislative, executive, and judiciary powers should be kept separate and distinct from each other, so that no man or body of men shall be authorized to exercise more than one of them at the same time. The Constitution, therefore, in consigning to the federal senate a participation in the powers of each department, violates this important principle and tends to create in that body a dangerous aristocracy. And

6. An essential principle of representative government is that it be influenced by the will of the people, which will can never be expressed if such representatives are corrupted or influenced by hopes of office. If this hope may multiply offices and extend patronage, if the president may nominate to valuable offices members of the legislature who shall please him and displease the people by increasing his power and patronage, if he may be tempted to use this power and patronage for securing his reelection, and if he may even bestow lucrative diplomas upon judges whilst they are receiving liberal salaries paid as the price of their independence and purity, then a risk exists lest the legislature should legislate, the judges decide, and the senator concur in nominations with an eye to those offices, and lest the president may appoint with a view to his reelection; and thus may at length appear the phenomenon of a government republican in form without possessing a single chaste organ for expressing the public will.

Many of these observations were foreseen when the Constitution was ratified by those who voted for its adoption, but waived then because of the vast importance of the union, which a rejection might have placed in hazard, of the provision made for amendments as trial should discover defects, and the hope that in the meantime the instrument, with all its defects, might produce social happiness if a proper tone was given to the government by the several agents in its operation. But since experience has evinced that much mischief may be done under an unwise administration and that even the most valuable parts of the Constitution may be evaded or violated, we count no longer to rest our security upon the vain hope which depends on the rectitude of fallible men in successive administrations. But now that the union is as firmly established by the general opinion of the citizens as we can ever hope to be, it behoves us to bring forward amendments which may fix it upon principles capable of restraining human passions.

Having, I trust, shown the utility and necessity of such efforts at this time, I will venture to submit to the consideration of my fellow citizens, with great humility and deference, whether it would not be advisable to have the Constitution amended.

1. By rendering a president ineligible for the next turn and transferring from him to the legislature the appointment of the judges and stationary foreign ministers, making the stipends of the latter to be no longer discretionary in the president.

2. By depriving the senate of all executive power and shortening their term of service, or subjecting its members to removal by their constituents.

3. By rendering members of the legislature and the judges whilst in office [and] for a limited time thereafter incapable of taking any other office whatsoever (the offices of president and vice-president excepted) and subjecting the judges to removal by the concurring vote of both houses of Congress.

4. By forming some check upon the abuse of public credit, which, tho’ in some instances useful, like fleets and armies, may, like those, be carried to extremes dangerous to liberty and inconsistent with economical government.

5. By instituting a fair mode of impaneling juries.

6. By declaring that no treaty with a foreign nation, so far as it may relate to peace or war, to the expenditure of public money, or to commercial regulations, shall be law until ratified by the legislature, the interval between such treaty and the next meeting of Congress excepted, so far as it may not relate to the grant of money.

7. By defining prohibited powers so explicitly as to defy the wiles of construction. If nothing more should be gained, it will be a great acquisition clearly to interdict laws relating to the freedom of speech, of the press, and of religion, to declare that the common law of England or of any other foreign country in criminal cases shall not be considered as a law of the United States, and that treason shall be confined to the cases stated in the Constitution, so as not to be extended further by law or construction or by using other terms such as sedition, etc.—and

8. By marking out with more precision the distinct powers of the general and state governments.

In the Virginia Bill of Rights is expressed this inesti-mable sentiment: “That no free government, or the blessing of liberty, can be preserved to any people but by a firm adherence to justice, moderation, temperance, frugality, and virtue; and by frequent recurrence to fundamental principles.” A sentiment produced, no doubt, by the experience of this melancholy truth, “That of men advanced to power, more are inclined to destroy liberty, than to defend it; there is of course a continual effort for its destruction, which ought to be met by correspondent efforts for its preservation.”

These principles and propositions are most respectfully submitted to my fellow citizens with this observation: “That it is only when great and good men are at the head of a nation that the people can expect to succeed in forming such barriers to counteract recent encroachments on their rights; and whenever a nation is so supine as to suffer such an opportunity to be lost, they will soon feel that the danger was not over.”

fisher ames “Falkland,” No. 2 6 February 1801

In the aftermath of his famous speech on Jay’s Treaty, Ames, who had been suffering from pneumonia and perhaps from tuberculosis for much of the session, declined to stand for reelection. Although a brief term on the governor’s council in Massachusetts would be his only later office, he wrote numerous essays condemning Jeffersonian pandering to the people. This one appeared in the Palladium a month before Jefferson’s inauguration.

… The jacobins and anarchists … will act at first, and until they have brought things into the confusion that democrats ever do, … according to the forms of the Constitution. The legal powers of a president are not too great, and unless a majority in Congress should cooperate in the abuse of them, we have more to apprehend immediately from their neglect. The executive department will probably be suffered to droop in imbecility and to struggle with embarrassments. The men who have hitherto opposed order have not understood nor respected its principles, and it is expected they will more frequently obstruct than enforce them. The Secretary of the Treasury will be treated as a head clerk—his reports and plans will not be asked for nor tolerated, much less adopted. No department of power will be allowed to be safe except that of the House of Representatives—nor that in opposition to a rabble. What if the pipe should get choked up through which the funding system is nourished, what is that to the people?

If, merely by neglect, the work of destruction, though sure, should appear to be too slow and they should be impatient to hasten it by projects of innovation, there must be a majority in Congress. At present, the Senate of the United States is disposed to stand as a barrier against the democratic flood, the very office for which it was erected. Accordingly, we see that the imported patriots of Pennsylvania are already armed to assail the senate of that state as a useless and dangerous branch of government. The like attempt will be made against the Senate of the United States. Indeed, Virginia proposed, some years ago, so to amend that branch that it should become in future a tool in the hands of faction, not a defense against it. All barriers against the licentiousness of democracy will be called usurpations on the people—meaning always the vile, and ignorant, and needy—and be rendered odious in order to be broken down. Demagogues found their influence on the popular passions—they are certainly sincere, therefore, when they execrate senates and courts, and Sedition Laws, and all other impediments to the current of those passions. They pretend to be the friends of liberty, but all demagogues are the rivals and the enemies of free government. The most conspicuous of the new men are demagogues. New York and Pennsylvania were subjected to such influence, and Virginia was trained and disciplined according to its tactics. Hence their victory.

The leading men of the ruling party will certainly endeavor to support and exercise their power in the way that they gained it, by soothing the meanest of the vulgar prejudices and exciting and assuming the direction of their passions. Things that are to be destroyed must be made unpopular, and whatever is popular in Virginia must be attempted. What is popular then? Is credit—is finance—is impost or excise, or the carriage tax, or the stamp act, or the compulsory payment of debts, is trade, and especially trade with the British dominions, popular among those lazy feudal barons? But regulations and restrictions on the commerce of other states, projects and visionary schemes to make France rich and to starve British manufactures, projects of finance to pay debts by discrimination, pretending to give to original holders what we do not owe and denying to purchasing holders what we do. Projects to administer the government without departments, without banks, and without compulsion have been popular, and we are to expect they will be resumed. Impracticable theories will be recommended and if possible established by law, because they are not British, and because they seem to be philosophy.

It is very much to be apprehended that the next House of Representatives in Congress will be hurried away by a democratic impulse. If the majority should be great, they will feel incited to execute the most extravagant of their plans, for which they have long sought the opportunity, conscious that this may not last long and that they may never enjoy another. What will they do? is the question. It has been already hinted, as one equally momentous, what will they not neglect to do? Waiving that consideration, however, for the present, it is material to inquire into the state of their inclinations and of their power; in other words, what they will desire and what they will be able to do.

They will desire to reduce their darling theories to practice. There is in the democratic sect, which will be the prevailing one, a fanaticism that disdains argument and is mad with zeal to make converts; a presumption that disdains experience and is blind to difficulties. … The people are deemed to be perfect in their intelligence and all rulers corrupted by their power. The will or the caprice or, if that could be, the vice of the people, whether regularly and distinctly known or only guessed at, is a law paramount to all laws, not excepting those of public faith and honor, of God and virtue. Hence the instructions of a representative bind him more than the constitution or his oath, his duty or conscience. With all democrats, the state of nature is still assumed as existing, each man being a sovereign invested with power which he has delegated to his representative in Congress as his ambassador, but no man is a subject even of the laws. The very name subject stinks of slavery and is disdainfully disclaimed in the gazettes of the democrats.

There is no temperate man of sense who will take the trouble to examine these gazettes for the last twelve years, who will say that any sensible or safe system of administration could be extracted from them. He will pronounce with decision that their principles are absolutely chimerical and impracticable. It is observable that the machine of our government has moved with a great deal of friction and a very feeble and intermitting momentum. Sensible men have seriously dreaded that it would stop or drop to pieces. The government has not been obeyed in the back country. It has not dared to enforce obedience nor to punish rebellion. Yet the democrats have professed unfeignedly to fear this nerveless government, that could not stand up, but was ever to be held up, as a necromancer whose magic would bind the people in chains of slavery; a giant whose colossal tread would crush them into the earth. Accordingly, for twelve years there is no measure now a law that they did not obstruct in its passage; and not one of any importance that is a law that they originated. Mr. Madison’s abortive commercial resolutions were projected and urged against the opinion of every well-informed merchant in the United States. There is no other plan or system that has even been so much as proposed by the democratic party in Congress. It has been their sufficient employment to oppose all business but to do none. It has even been avowed as a salutary principle of duty thus to check the proneness of our government to extremes unfavorable to the liberty of the people. That our farmers may at once comprehend the usefulness and good sense of this democratic principle of opposing, let them apply a like rule in their own business. Instead of trying to make it easier to do, what would they think of schemes to make it harder? What would they say if, while two of their laborers were getting a load of hay, a third should think it his duty to pitch it off? Would they like to have their axle-trees made square or eight-sided, in order that the wagon wheels might not turn so fast, and perhaps not turn at all? For it is not the fault of this party that the wheels of the government have not stood still.

In a word, the fundamental principle of the democratic system is to consider their own power as liberty and all other power, even that ordained by the Constitution, as despotism.

Accordingly, we may expect that they will feel neither affection nor reverence for the Senate nor the departments, nor even for their democratic president, except as the head of their party, but not as president. They will profess to obey the popular prejudices and passions and rely on their cooperation to sustain their power. Of course, it will be a system of demagogy. Let it be repeated, the power gained by flattering the prejudices of the whisky, the treaty, the French, the house tax and the stamp act and sedition act mobs, and mob-meetings, must be supported as it was obtained. It is hostile to law, order, property, and government, in feeling, principle, tendency, and object.

This is the general description of the party. The detail of the measures that they will probably pursue is only a matter of conjecture. But the most fearful conjecture is corroborated by the analogy of the party here with the principles and examples of France. If they should exercise power, now they are in, with the same spirit that they have opposed while they were out, revolution and confusion have no terrors that would deter, no extremes that would stop them. Is there one principal head of legislation on which their ideas have been temperate, rational, and salutary? On the contrary, is there one on which they have not avowed and urged the wildest and most disorganizing theories of their own, and like objections to the systems devised by others? Banks, credit, finance, revenue, commerce, manufactures, fisheries, army, and navy are subjects that have afforded so many classes of absurdities. Within, they would restore chaos by the jumble of committees, instead of the heads of departments.—Without, they would court the curse of a French alliance, while they inconsistently affect to separate America from Europe and its politics. They have tried on all momentous questions to interpret the Constitution to mean nothing and to pervert it with amendments that would make it mean less—and worse.

What, then, are we to expect from such men but the execution of their systems? But will they be able to do it?

There will be impediments. Let us examine their nature. It is not the nature of democracy to stop short of extremes, and least of all in the delirium of newly acquired power. The Senate of the United States will be truly republican and a barrier against licentiousness. Such will be its disposition. But its firmness will much depend on the energy of the true federal republicans dispersed through the nation. We are to expect every method of intimidation will be used by the jacobins, as in Pennsylvania, to bend the Senate from virtue. Finding, as they will find, that these men will not change their principles, they will raise a clamor in all the federal states to change the men. This, however, will take time that is precious, because it is short—for such the reign of democracy will be. In Massachusetts we have had experience of the noble firmness of our senate when they saved the state from Shays, perhaps the union from civil war and confusion.

The judiciary is another rampart against the foes of all right. There is no question of the virtue of the judges. But when jacobin juries have to determine on great contested cases, we have seen enough to make us dread their perversion of the law. The best things, when misapplied, are the worst. Jacobin verdicts for damages might prove proscriptions and confiscations to the federalists.

There will also be a spirited and able minority in Congress, who will expose the bad principles and tendencies of the democratic measures. There public opinion will discern a center of light and heat. The old republican principles, the wise and tried measures and institutions of the federal administrations, will there have skillful advocates and bold champions. It cannot be that such champions will not be strongly reinforced from the sound and enlightened part of the public. New England is not democratic, and many who now think the system of the party delightful in prospect will abhor it in the trial. It cannot be tried without shaking New England to its center. All its interests and systems and even its institutions, political and religious, are such as are detested by the democrats, because they are the strong entrenchments of an enemy. Expect, then, to see them often mined and at last battered in breach.