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can understand why so able a historian as Von Holst pronounces Jefferson a cross between a statesman and a demagogue. If such a man can hold such

Von Holst on

an opinion, it is easy to see how Jefferson's Jefferson. enemies would regard him. In the letter

to Bayard written in 1801, from which I have already quoted, Hamilton said: "Nor is it true that Jefferson is zealot enough to do anything in pursuance of his principles which will contravene his interest or his popularity. He is as likely as any man I know to temporize, to calculate what will be likely to promote his own reputation and advantage; and the probable result of such a temper is the preservation of systems, though originally opposed, which being once established, could not be overturned without danger to the man who did it."

As an estimate of Jefferson this is certainly erroneous. It was not true that he sacrificed his principles for the sake of popularity. On the contrary, he sought popularity for the sake of his principles. To Jefferson, the Golden Age was in the future. How to bring it a little nearer, how to strike off the fetters which had bound men so long politically and intellectually, how to throw open the doors that guard the treasures of art and science to man as man, without regard to birth or social position, that seemed to Jefferson the noblest object of human endeavor. He had just led Republicanism to a great victory. Monarchism, that enemy of progress and liberty, had been put to flight. To make that victory

decisive, to win over the rank and file of the enemy, to make impossible and hopeless a successful attack of the stronghold in which Republicanism had intrenched itself, above all, to gain as much power as possible for the people, seemed to his sanguine temperament another long stride toward the Golden Age of the world.

Under some circumstances this attitude would have exerted less influence. If there had been in Congress a man of great ability, without Jefferson's devotion to the people, but with as much devotion as Jefferson to States Rights Republicanism, and with a clear perception that if its victory over the advocates of a strong central government was to have any value, its doctrines must be carried out, the history of the country might have taken a very different course. But the only man of first rate ability in either House on the Republican side was John Randolph, and his eccentricities and inconsistencies made it impossible for him to bring about a "substantial reform" in the government. It is not to be denied, however, that Jefferson's love of popularity for its own sake had something to do with his policy. As his character was a strange mixture of lofty, impracticable idealism, and hard, shrewd common sense, so his policy was in part the outcome of the most ardent devotion to the cause of progress, and, in part, to the much more common desire to be the popular leader of his party to a triumphant and decisive victory.

In the debate on the bill repealing the Judiciary Act, John Randolph ventured a step beyond any of his

party associates. "If the intent of this bill is to get rid of the judges," he said, "it is a perversion of your power to a base purpose; it is an unconstitutional act;" "it is a mode of doing indirectly what the constitution forbids to be done directly. It is not on account of the paltry expense of the new establishment that I wish to put it down. No, sir! It is to give the deathblow to the pretension of rendering the judiciary a hospital for decayed politicians; to prevent the state courts from being engulfed by those of the Union; to destroy the monstrous ambition of arrogating to this House the right of evading all the prohibitions of the constitution and holding the nation at bay."* If his party had fully developed the ideas merely hinted at here, it would have been consistent with its past. But consistency would have required a remodeling of the Supreme Court, and that would have driven out of the Republican party all men of conservative habits of thought. Consistency and certain defeat, inconsistency and possible victory, were the alternatives submitted to Republicanism.

QUESTIONS.

1. What three important laws were proposed by the Congress which met in December, 1801, and what was their connection with Republicanism?

posed?

2. Of what two classes were Jefferson's followers com

3. Give a detailed account of Giles' speech and of Bayard's reply.

4. What was the Federalist opinion of the intentions of their antagonists?

*Annals of Congress, 1802-1803.

5. Who besides the Federalists were opposed to radical changes in the government?

6. Give an abstract of the letter written by Bayard to Hamilton in 1802 and point out its significance.

7. What characteristic of the American people stood in the way of an attempt to realize the ideals of Jeffersonian Republicanism?

8. Why did Leib withdraw his motion to appoint a committee to consider the question of abolishing the navy?

9. What alliance was necessary to keep the Republican party in power?

10. Who is Von Holst?

11. What does he say of Jefferson? Mention some facts in Jefferson's life that may have led to the opinion?

12. Why was Jefferson so desirous of popularity?

13. Compare him and Hamilton and Washington in this respect.

14. What do you know of John Randolph ?

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THE

CHAPTER XXVII.

THE PURCHASE OF LOUISIANA.

HE territory of Louisiana had been ceded to Spain by France in 1762. As the country on both sides of the mouth of the Mississippi was a part of it,

Attempts to se

cure the right to

the free navi

gation of the

Mississippi.

Spain claimed, and for a long time exercised, the right to exclude all foreign ships from that river. She would not make a treaty with the United States in 1780-2, because Jay, our foreign minister, insisted on her giving the United States a right to the free navigation of it. In 1784 another attempt was made to make a treaty with Spain. Her minister, Gardoqui, was willing enough to make a commercial treaty, provided the United States would give up all right to navigate the Mississippi below the Yazoo river, which was the northern boundary of the Louisiana territory on the east side of the river. After a year of unavailing arguments, Jay advised Congress to make a treaty giving up the navigation of the Mississippi for twenty-five years. This recommendation made the people of Kentucky very indignant. Separated from the Atlantic by the Alleghany mountains, the right to navigate the Mississippi was absolutely essential to their prosperity. Franklin's metaphor that the mouth of the Mississippi was the front door of the west did but represent the truth. When the

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