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would be an injury to the country, that the interest of CHAPTER the debt so transferred could only be paid by the exportation of coin, and that all capital invested in stocks was 1792. so much withdrawn from commerce and agriculture, evinced no very great knowledge of finance or political economy; nor was this horror of foreign creditors very compatible with the idea of paying off the debt in two thirds of the time by borrowing at two thirds of the interest, which only could have been done, if at all, by converting the domestic into a foreign debt.

These carping criticisms on the funding system-the established privilege of opposition-were indeed of very little consequence compared with the more serious charges urged by Jefferson, and of which he must be taken to be the responsible endorser, if not the original author, of the existence of "a corrupt squadron deciding the voice of the Legislature," and under the control of a monarchical party, who intended to avail themselves of the majority thus obtained to overthrow the existing republican system, and to establish in its place a monarchy after the British model. Who were the individuals composing this corrupt squadron? In what particular way had they been corrupted? To the like charges of corruption and corrupt influence, reiterated in Freneau's Gazette, it had been well replied by the Federal newspapers that, until the individuals intended were pointed out, until specific cases of corruption were stated, this accusation, hanging unfixed over the heads of some fifty members of Congress-that being the number, both houses included, of those who had sustained the funding system throughout-must be regarded as an impotent piece of malice, contemptible alike for its falsehood and its cowardice. To this reasonable challenge, repeated afterward on the floor of the House, no reply was ever

CHAPTER made; and this charge of corruption, affecting the honor V. of some of the most distinguished men whom the nation 1792. has ever produced, was left to rest on vague suggestions,

that several members of the first Congress were large holders of the public debt, and that two or three of them, among whom Sedgwick and Smith, of South Carolina, were afterward specified in private letters or by irresponsible pamphleteers, had gained money by buying up stocks in anticipation of the adoption of the funding system.

The same

But it was not merely as to the funding system that corruption was charged to exist. The funding of the public debt was not an end, but a means. corrupt squadron by whom that measure had been carried, by means of that very measure had been purchased up generally to do the bidding of the Secretary of the Treasury—such was the charge-having sold themselves, in fact, as tools to a conspiracy for overturning the Federal Constitution, and setting up a monarchy in its place. Under this strange hallucination of a monarchical conspiracy for the destruction of the Constitution on the part of those by whom its adoption had been secured, from which the country was only saved by the republican zeal and virtue of himself and his anti-Federal friends and supporters, Jefferson labored to his dying day; and to impose a like delusion on posterity seems to have been one chief object of the carefully prepared collection of papers and letters which he left behind him for publication.

Of Jefferson's political bigotry we have already had occasion to speak. With a very acute intellect, he had in his constitution a strong tinge of fanaticism. His imagination so far predominated over his reason as to lead him to see things, not as they were, but as he hoped.

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wished, suspected they might be; and, as is very apt to be CHAPTER the case with men of a fanatical turn of mind, there was nothing bad which he did not suspect of those who did 1792. not share in and subscribe to all his dogmas. Suspicions and facts he confounded together into one indistin guishable mass. The mere figments of his imagination or the circulating scandals of the day seemed to him more actually facts than the very facts passing before his eyes. This quality of mind was inconsistent with sound judgment, but it admirably qualified him for a party leader in excited times, bringing him into close sympathy with that great mass who feel keenly, guess wildly, reason little, and believe unhesitatingly.

What Washington thought of this pretended monarchical conspiracy, and of the general course pursued by the opposition, of which Jefferson began now to be the recognized head, sufficiently appears by a conversation which took place at Philadelphia shortly after Washing- July 10. ton's return from Mount Vernon, of which Jefferson has preserved a memorandum in his Ana. Not having reached Washington at Mount Vernon, Jefferson's letter had followed him back to Philadelphia. In an interview on the subject of it, Washington remarked, "that, with respect to the existing causes of uneasiness, he thought that there were suspicions against a particular party which had been carried a great deal too far. There might be desires, but he did not believe there were designs to change the form of government into a monarchy. There might be a few who wished it in the higher walks of life, particularly in the great cities, but the main body of the people in the Eastern States were as steady for Republicanism as in the Southern. Pieces lately published, and particularly in Freneau's paper, seemed to have in view the exciting opposition to the government, and

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CHAPTER this had already taken place in Pennsylvania as to the excise law. These pieces tended to produce a separa1792. tion of the Union, the most dreadful of all calamities; and whatever tended to produce anarchy, tended, of course, to produce a resort to monarchical government. He considered those papers as attacking him directly, for he must be a fool indeed to swallow the little sugarplums here and there thrown out to him. In condemning the administration of the government, they condemned him; for if they thought measures were pursued contrary to his judgment, they must consider him too careless to attend to, or too stupid to understand them. He had, indeed, signed many acts which he did not approve in all their parts, but he had never put his name to one which he did not think eligible on the whole. As to the bank, which had been the subject of so much complaint, until there was some infallible criterion of reason, differences of opinion must be tolerated. He did not believe that the discontent extended far from the seat of government. He had seen and spoken with many in Maryland and Virginia during his last journey, and had found the people contented and happy. He defended the assumption of the state debts on the ground that it had not increased the total amount to be paid. All of it was honest debt, and whether paid by the states individually or by the Union, it was still alike a burden on the people. The excise he defended as one of the best laws that could be passed, nobody being obliged to pay who did not elect to do so."

The great seat of this supposed monarchical conspiracy Jefferson imagined to be the Eastern States, precisely that part of the Union of which he knew least, having never had any relations of business or intercourse with it; yet, beyond all question, the part of the Union in

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which republican ideas were most thoroughly established CHAPTER and most completely carried into practice. Having, in the course of the Revolutionary war, been brought into 1792. intimate connection with New England, Washington knew thoroughly the character of that people; and however Jefferson might surpass him in some other qualities, in freedom from passion and prejudice, in sound judgment as to the realities of life, there was no comparison between them. In New England, as elsewhere, some few individuals might have entertained a speculative preference for monarchy. They might even have believed, as seems to have been the case with Adams and Hamilton, that, with the progress of wealth, population, and civil dissensions, and perhaps speedily in the latter case, such a form of government, through the inevitable tendency of things, would be ultimately established. But that Hamilton, or Adams, or any body else had any plan or scheme for bringing about such a change-that there was really on foot any such monarchical conspiracy as Jefferson suggested-was, as Washington pronounced it, an idea utterly baseless. Preliminary to a plot for establishing a monarchy, it would be necessary to fix upon somebody for king; nor was there any other person but Washington whom any body could have thought of for such a purpose. Yet of Washington's inflexible republicanism not even Jefferson, who has spared nobody else, ever presumed to breathe a doubt, unless, indeed, such a doubt may seem to be implied in the care taken to record the insensibility and incredulity of that great man as to dangers from this monarchical conspiracy, from which we are, perhaps, impliedly called upon to believe that the country was saved even in spite of Washington himself.

The antagonistic modifications of political sentiment