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CHAPTER XXIV.

THE DILEMMA OF THE REPUBLICANS.

Jefferson's de

the Federalists.

FEW days after his inauguration, Jefferson wrote a letter in which he said that he hoped that the body of the nation, even that part which sire to conciliate French excesses had forced over to the Federal side, would join the Republicans, leaving to the opposition only those who were pure monarchists, and who would be too few to form a sect. This hope, expressed in many letters, exerted an important influence upon his policy during the eight years of his two administrations. It determined the tone of his inaugural address" Let us unite with one mind; let us restore to social intercourse that harmony and affection without which liberty and even life itself are but dreary things. And let us reflect that, having banished from our land that religious intolerance under which mankind so long bled and suffered, we have yet gained little if we countenance a political intolerance as despotic, as wicked, and capable of as bitter and bloody persecutions. During the throes and convulsions of the ancient world, during the agonizing spasms of infuriated man, seeking through blood and slaughter his long-lost liberty, it was not wonderful that the agitation of the billows should reach even this distant and peaceful

His inaugural address.

shore; that this should be more felt and feared by some and less by others; that this should divide opinions as to measures of safety. But every difference of opinion is not a difference of principle. We are all Republicans, we are all Federalists." Jefferson knew very well that this was not what the extreme partisans of his own party expected. On March 31, he wrote: "I am sensible how far I should fall short of effecting all the reformation which reason would suggest and experience approve, were I free to do whatever I thought best; but when we reflect how difficult it is to move or inflect the great machine of society, how impossible to advance the notions of a whole people suddenly to ideal right, we see the wisdom of Solon's remark that no more good must be attempted than the nation can bear, and all will be chiefly to reform the waste of public money, and thus drive away the vultures who prey upon it, and improve some little on old routines."*

Republicans had condemned the levees and speeches of Washington as savoring of monarchy, and our diplomatic establishment as unnecessarily expensive. To do away with the levees, therefore, to communicate with Congress by message, to reduce the diplomatic establishment, was, in the eyes of Jefferson, an "improvement on old routines" which would not antagonize the "Republican Federalists" whom he hoped to win over to his party.

* Works (Washington's Edition), IV., 392.

In stating his reasons, in a letter addressed to the President of the Senate, for substituting a message for the

Jefferson's reasons for substituting a message for a speech, and for recommending

ternal taxes.

speech with which the first two Presidents had opened Congress, Jefferson showed his

desire to conciliate the moderate Federal

a repeal of in- ists. Ignoring the real reason, that in making speeches to Congress Washington and Adams had imitated the monarchs of England, he said that he did it out of regard for the convenience of the legislature, the economy of their time, and so on. The same characteristic appeared repeatedly in the message itself. The Republicans were opposed on principle to internal taxes. But when Jefferson recommended their repeal, he did it for reasons which no Federalist would have objected to who agreed with Jefferson as to the facts. "Weighing all probabilities of expense," he said, "as well as of income, there is reasonable ground of confidence that we may now safely dispense with all internal taxes, and that the remaining sources of revenue will be sufficient to provide for the support of government," and to pay the interest and principal of the public debt within a shorter period than had been expected. In the paragraph immediately following, Jefferson showed his hand most clearly. "These views," he said,

He recommends

expenses.

"of reducing our burdens are formed in a reduction in the expectation that a sensible and at the same time a salutary reduction may take place in our habitual expenditures. For this purpose,

those of the civil government, the army and the navy, will need revisal. When we consider that this government is charged with the external and mutual relations only of these states; that the states themselves have principal care of our persons, our property, and our reputation, constituting the great field of human concerns, we may well doubt whether our organization is not too complicated, too expensive; whether offices and officers have not been multiplied unnecessarily, and sometimes injuriously to the service they were meant to promote." In other words, there had been an unneces sary multiplication of offices, because of the Federalist theory of the functions of the national government. Supposing that the general government had domestic functions to perform, that it had more than foreign concerns" to attend to, that the state governments were not the domestic branch of our governmental system, the Federalists had multiplied offices to undertake work with which the national government ought to have nothing to do. But he did not state what was, to his own mind, the strongest argument against it. He did not object to the Federalist theory of government because it endangered liberty and tended towards monarchy, but because it was unnecessarily expensive. "Among these [officials] who are dependent on executive discretion, I have begun the reduction of what was deemed unnecessary. The expenses of diplomatic agency have been considerably diminished." After suggesting that Con

gress should pass in review the offices that had been established by law, he continued: "Considering the general tendency to multiply offices and dependencies, and to increase expense to the ultimate term of burden which the citizen can bear, it behooves us to avail ourselves of every occasion which presents itself for taking off the surcharge; that it never may be seen here that after leaving to labor the smallest portion of its earnings on which it can subsist, government shall itself consume the whole residue of what it was instituted to guard."

Why the Federalist administrations were not more extravagant.

If it be said that had lack of economy been the sole ground of objection to the Federalist administrations there would have been little reason for criticism' the reply, from Jefferson's point of view, is twofold: Granting, as the facts compelled, that the current expenses of the government in 1800, including the expenses of the quasi-war with France, were only about $7,000,000, and that the average annual expenses for the preceding ten years, including payments on account of the public debt, had been only about $9,000,000, the credit for this condition was by no means to be given to the Federalists.* They were con stantly urging measures which would have increased the expenses of the government far beyond that point, and were only prevented from passing such measures by the Republicans. The chief objection to their policy, however, was not its extravagance, but the motive that Compare Henry Adams' History of the United States, I.,