rica, it was all-powerful. Against this he
asserted an intense belief in the value of freedom, in the equal claim of
men of all conditions to the consideration of government, and in the
supreme importance to government of the consenting mind of the governed.
And he made this sense so definitely a part of the national stock of
ideas that, while the older-established principles of strong and sound
government were not lost to sight, they were consciously rated as
subordinate to the principles of liberty.

It must not be supposed that the ascendency thus early acquired by what
may be called liberal opinions in America was a matter merely of setting
some fine phrases in circulation, or of adopting, as was early done in
most States, a wide franchise and other external marks of democracy. We
may dwell a little longer on the unusual but curiously popular figure of
Jefferson, for it illustrates the spirit with which the commonwealth
became imbued under his leadership. He has sometimes been presented as a
man of flabby character whose historical part was that of intermediary
between impracticable French "philosophes" and the ruffians and swindlers
that Martin Chuzzlewit encountered, who were all "children of liberty,"
and whose "boastful answer to the Despot and the Tyrant was that their
bright home was in the Settin' Sun." He was nothing of the kind. His
judgment was probably unsound on the questions of foreign policy on which
as Secretary of State he differed from Washington, and he leaned, no
doubt, to a jealous and too narrow insistence upon the limits set by the
Constitution to the Government's power. But he and his party were
emphatically right in the resistance which they offered to certain
needless measures of coercion. As President, though he was not a great
President, he suffered the sensible course of administration originated
by his opponent to continue undisturbed, and America owed to one bold and
far-seeing act of his the greatest of the steps by which her territory
was enlarged. It is, however, in the field of domestic policy, which
rested with the States and with which a President has often little to do,
that the results of his principles must be sought. Jefferson was a man
who had worked unwearyingly in Virginia at sound, and what we should now
call conservative, reforms, establishing religious toleration, reforming
a preposterous land law, seeking to provide education for the poor,
striving unsuccessfull