of the Virginia school to their extreme practical consequences.[1] He "said that the measures of our present government tended to the establishment of monarchy, limited or absolute. . . . If . . . the government were a social compact, he pronounced monarchy to be near at hand, the symptoms and causes of which he particularly pointed out; and concluded that the State legislatures alone, at this time, prevented monarchy." In language perfectly intelligible to his friends he hinted that his party "had not arms, but they would find arms." Even men naturally benevolent, like Jefferson, could rarely resist the conviction that the objects of political opponents were criminal, but Giles exceeded every prominent partisan on either side by the severity of his imputations. As late as June, 1801, he wrote from Richmond to President Jefferson:[2] "The ejected party is now almost universally considered as having been employed, in conjunction with Great Britain, in a scheme for the total destruction of the liberties of the people." No man in the Union was more cordially detested by the Federalists; and even between parties that held each other in little or no respect, few men of so much eminence were so little respected as Giles. The dislike and distrust were mutual. Giles's nature was capable of no pleasure greater than that of exasperating
