y public man that appeared before the
West began to produce a new type, he felt America as a whole. He had
great administrative talents of which he was fully conscious, and the
anarchy which followed the conclusion of peace was hateful to his
instinct for order and strong government. But the strong government
which he would have created was of a different type from that which
America ultimately developed. Theoretically he made no secret of his
preference for a Monarchy over a Republic, but the suspicion that he
meditated introducing monarchical institutions into America, though
sincerely entertained by Jefferson and others, was certainly false.
Whatever his theoretic preferences, he was intensely alive to the logic
of facts, and must have known that a brand-new American monarchy would
have been as impossible as it would have been ludicrous. In theory and
practice, however, he really was anti-democratic. Masses of men seemed
to him incapable alike of judgment and of action, and he thought no
enduring authority could be based upon the instincts of the "great
beast," as he called the mob. He looked for such authority and what
seemed to him the example of history, and especially to the example of
England. He knew how powerful both at home and abroad was the governing
machine which the English aristocracy had established after the
revolution of 1689; and he realized more fully than most men of that
age, or indeed of this, that its strength lay in a small but very
national governing class wielding the people as an instrument. Such a
class he wished to create in America, to connect closely, as the English
oligarchy had connected itself closely, with the great moneyed
interests, and to entrust with the large powers which in his judgment
the central government of the Federation needed.

Jefferson came back from France in the winter of 1789, and was at once
offered by Washington the Secretaryship of State. The offer was not a
very welcome one, for he was hot with the enthusiasm of the great French
struggle, and would gladly have returned to Paris and watched its
progress. He felt, however, that the President's insistence laid upon
him the duty of giving the Government the support of his abilities and
popularity. He had accepted the Constitution which he had no share in
framing, not perhaps as exactly what he would have desired, but
certainly in full good faith and without reserve. It probably satisfied
him at least as well as it