the extent to
which they were sacrificing a desirable liberty to an undesirable
equality.

On this, as on so many other points, Hamilton's political philosophy was
much more clearly thought out than that of Jefferson. He has been
accused by his opponents of being the enemy of liberty; whereas in point
of fact, he wished, like the Englishman he was, to protect and encourage
liberty, just as far as such encouragement was compatible with good
order, because he realized that genuine liberty would inevitably issue
in fruitful social and economic inequalities. But he also realized that
genuine liberty was not merely a matter of a constitutional declaration
of rights. It could be protected only by an energetic and clear-sighted
central government, and it could be fertilized only by the efficient
national organization of American activities. For national organization
demands in relation to individuals a certain amount of selection, and a
certain classification of these individuals according to their abilities
and deserts. It is just this kind or effect of liberty which Jefferson
and his followers have always disliked and discouraged. They have been
loud in their praise of legally constituted rights; but they have shown
an instinctive and an implacable distrust of intellectual and moral
independence, and have always sought to suppress it in favor of
intellectual and moral conformity. They have, that is, stood for the
sacrifice of liberty--in so far as liberty meant positive intellectual
and moral achievement--to a certain kind of equality.

I do not mean to imply by the preceding statement that either Jefferson
or his followers were the conscious enemies of moral and intellectual
achievement. On the contrary, they appeared to themselves in their
amiable credulity to be the friends and guardians of everything
admirable in human life; but their good intentions did not prevent them
from actively or passively opposing positive intellectual and moral
achievement, directed either towards social or individual ends. The
effect of their whole state of mind was negative and fatalistic. They
approved in general of everything approvable; but the things of which
they actively approved were the things which everybody in general was
doing. Their point of view implied that society and individuals could be
made better without actually planning the improvement or building up an
organization for the purpose; and this assertion brings me to the
d