sections mean well, but their good intentions will produce great public evil. The minority, whichever section shall be the minority, will end in coalition with the Federalists and some compromise of principle. Republicanism will thus lose, and royalism gain, some portion of that ground which we thought we had rescued to good government."
The idea that "royalism" could in any case gain support among the factions of Pennsylvania democrats was one which could have occurred only to Jefferson, who saw monarchy, as the New Englanders saw Antichrist, in every man who opposed him in politics. Apart from this trick of words, Jefferson's theory of his own duties failed to satisfy his followers. Dallas was disgusted at the situation in which he found himself left.
- "It is obvious to me,"[1] he wrote to Gallatin soon after the schism broke out, "that unless our Administration take decisive measures to discountenance the factious spirit that has appeared; unless some principle of political cohesion can be introduced into our public councils as well as at our elections; and unless men of character and talents can be drawn from professional and private pursuits into the legislative bodies of our governments, Federal and State,—the empire of Republicanism will moulder into anarchy, and the labor and hope of our lives will terminate in disappointment and wretchedness. . . . At present we are the slaves of men whose passions are the object of all their actions,—I
- ↑ A. J. Dallas to Gallatin, Jan. 16, 1805; Adams's Gallatin, p. 327.
