3
Jefferson referred to his election as "the great revolution of 1800," but more than anything else it was a revolution in the mind. No great policy was altered, but a new tradition was established. For it was Jefferson who first taught the American people to regard the Constitution as an instrument of democracy, and he stereotyped the images, the ideas, and even many of the phrases, in which Americans ever since have described politics to each other. So complete was the mental victory, that twenty-five years later de Tocqueville, who was received in Federalist homes, noted that even those who were "galled by its continuance"—were not uncommonly heard to "laud the delights of a republican government, and the advantages of democratic institutions when they are in public."[1]
The Constitutional Fathers with all their sagacity had failed to see that a frankly undemocratic constitution would not long be tolerated. The bold denial of popular rule was bound to offer an easy point of attack to a man, like Jefferson, who so far as his constitutional opinions ran, was not a bit more ready than Hamilton to turn over government to the "unrefined" will of the people.[2] The Federalist leaders had been men of definite convictions who stated them bluntly. There was little real discrepancy between their public and their private views. But Jefferson's mind was a mass of ambiguities, not
- ↑ Democracy in America, Vol. I, Ch. X (Third Edition, 1838), p. 216.
- ↑ Cf. his plan for the Constitution of Virginia, his ideas for a senate of property holders, and his views on the judicial veto. Beard, Economic Origins of Jeffersonian Democracy, pp. 450 et seq.
