contributions to the science of free government.
It is fortunate that this commentary upon the
alien and sedition laws was written by a man so
firm and so moderate, who possessed at once the
erudition, the wisdom, and the feeling that the
subject demanded.
Happily the presidential election of 1800 freed the country from those laws without a convulsion. Through the unskilful politics of Hamilton and the adroit management of the New York election by Aaron Burr, Mr. Adams was defeated for re- election, the electoral vote resulting thus : Jeffer- son, 73 ; Burr, 73 ; Adams, 65 ; Charles C. Pinck- ney, 64; Jay, 1. This strange result threw the election into the house of representatives, where the Federalists endeavored to elect Burr to the first office, an unworthy intrigue, which Hamilton hon- orably opposed. After a period of excitement, which seemed at times fraught with peril to the Union, the election was decided as the people meant it should be: Thomas Jefferson became president of the United States and Aaron Burr vice-president. The inauguration was celebrated throughout the country as a national holiday ; soldiers paraded, church-bells rang, orations were delivered, and in some of the newspapers the Dec- laration of Independence was printed at length. Jefferson's first thought on coming to the presi- dency was to assuage the violence of party spirit, and he composed his fine inaugural address with that view. He reminded his fellow-citizens that a difference of opinion is not a difference of princi- ple. " We are all Republicans, we are all Federal- ists. If there be any among us who would wish to dissolve this Union or to change its republican form, let them stand undisturbed as monuments of the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it." He may have had Hamilton in mind in writing this sen- tence, and, in truth, his inaugural was the briefest and strongest summary he could pen of his argu- ment against Hamilton when both were in Wash- ington's cabinet. " Some honest men," said he, "fear that a republican government cannot be strong — that this government is not strong enough. I believe this, on the contrary, the strongest on earth. I believe it is the only one where every man, at the call of the laws, would fly to the stand- ard of the law, and would meet invasions of the public order as his own personal concern." Among the first acts of President Jefferson was his pardon- ing every man who was in durance under the sedi- tion law, which he said he considered to be "a nullity as absolute and palpable as if congress had ordered us to fall down and worship a golden im- age." To the chief victims of the alien law, such as Kosciuszko and Volney, he addressed friendly, consoling letters. Dr. Priestley, menaced with ex- pulsion under the alien law, he invited to the White House. He wrote a noble letter to the ven- erable Samuel Adams, of Massachusetts, who had been avoided and insulted during the recent con- test. He gave Thomas Paine, outlawed in Eng- land and living on sufferance in Paris, a passage home in a national ship. He appointed as his cabinet James Madison, secretary of state: Albert Gallatin, secretary of the treasury ; Henry Dear- born, secretary of war; Robert Smith, secretary of the navy ; Gideon Granger, postmaster-general ; Levi Lincoln, attorney-general — all of whom were men of liberal education. With his cabinet he lived during the whole of his two terms in perfect harmony, and at the end he declared that if he had to choose again he would select the same in- dividuals. With regard to appointments and re- movals the new president found himself in an em- barrassing position, as all our presidents have done. Most of the offices were held by Federalists, and many of his own partisans expected removals enough to establish an equality. Jefferson resisted the demand. He made a few removals for strong and obvious reasons: but he acted uniformly on the principle that a difference of politics was not a reason for the removal of a competent and faithful subordinate. The few removals that he made were either for official misconduct or, to use his own language, " active and bitter opposition to the or- der of things which the public will has estab- lished." He abolished at once the weekly levee at the White House, as well as the system of prece- dence that had been copied from the court etiquette of Europe. When congress assembled he sent them a message, instead of delivering to them a speech, which had the effect of preventing, as he remarked, "the bloody conflict to which the making an an- swer would have committed them." He abolished also all the usages that savored of royalty, such as the conveyance of ministers in national vessels, the celebration of his own birthday by a public ball, the appointment of fasts and thanksgiving- days, the making of public tours and official visits. He refused to receive, while travelling, any mark of attention that would not have been paid to him as a private citizen, his object being both to repub- licanize and secularize the government completely. He declined also to use the pardoning power unless the judges who had tried the criminal signed the petition. He refused also to notice in any way the abuse of hostile newspapers, desiring, as he said, to give the world a proof that " an administration which has nothing to conceal from the press has nothing to fear from it."
A few of the acts of Mr. Jefferson's administra- tion, which includes a great part of the history of the United States for eight years, stand out boldly and brilliantly. That navy which had been created by the previous administration against France, Jefferson at once reduced by putting all but six of its vessels out of commission. He de- spatched four of the remaining six to the Mediter- ranean to overawe the Barbary pirates, who had been preying upon American commerce for twenty years ; and Decatur and his heroic comrades exe- cuted their task with a gallantry and success which the American people have not forgotten. The purchase of Louisiana was a happy result of the president's tact and promptitude in availing himself of a golden chance. Bonaparte, in pursuit of his early policy of undoing the work of the seven-years' war, had acquired the vast unknown territory west of the Mississippi, then vaguely called Louisiana. This policy he had avowed, and he was preparing an expedition to hold New Or- leans and settle the adjacent country. At the same time, the people of Kentucky, who, through the obstinate folly of the Spanish governor, were practically denied access to the ocean, were in- flamed with discontent. At this juncture, in the spring of 1803, hostilities were renewed between France and England, which compelled Bonaparte to abandon the expedition which was ready to sail, and he determined to raise money by selling Louisiana to the United States. At the happiest possible moment for a successful negotiation, Mr. Jefferson's special envoy. James Monroe, arrived in Paris, charged with full powers, and alive to the new and pressing importance of the transfer, and a few hours of friendly parleying sufficed to secure to the United States this superb domain, one of the most valuable on the face of the globe.
