us to the purity of the body
politic. Simplicity and economy in government, the right of revolution,
the freedom of the individual, the belief that those who win the vacant
lands are entitled to shape their own government in their own
way,--these are all parts of the platform of political principles to
which he gave his adhesion, and they are all elements eminently
characteristic of the Western democracy into which he was born.

In the period of the Revolution he had brought in a series of measures
which tended to throw the power of Virginia into the hands of the
settlers in the interior rather than of the coastwise aristocracy. The
repeal of the laws of entail and primogeniture would have destroyed the
great estates on which the planting aristocracy based its power. The
abolition of the Established Church would still further have diminished
the influence of the coastwise party in favor of the dissenting sects of
the interior. His scheme of general public education reflected the same
tendency, and his demand for the abolition of slavery was characteristic
of a representative of the West rather than of the old-time aristocracy
of the coast. His sympathy with the Western expansion culminated in the
Louisiana Purchase. In short, the tendencies of Jefferson's legislation
were to replace the dominance of the planting aristocracy by the
dominance of the interior class, which had sought in vain to achieve its
liberties in the period of Bacon's Rebellion.

Nevertheless, Thomas Jefferson was the John the Baptist of democracy,
not its Moses. Only with the slow setting of the tide of settlement
farther and farther toward the interior did the democratic influence
grow strong enough to take actual possession of the government. The
period from 1800 to 1820 saw a steady increase in these tendencies. The
established classes in New England and the South began to take alarm.
Perhaps no better illustration of the apprehensions of the old-time
Federal conservative can be given than these utterances of President
Dwight, of Yale College, in the book of travels which he published in
that period:--

The class of pioneers cannot live in regular society. They are
too idle, too talkative, too passionate, too prodigal, and too
shiftless to acquire either property or character. They are
impatient of the restraints of law, religion, and morality,
and grumble about the taxes by which the Rulers, Ministers,
and Schoolm