er drank, particularly the champagne, which was indeed
delicious."

It was in the circle of his intimates that Jefferson appeared at his
best, and of all his intimate friends Madison knew best how to evoke the
true Jefferson. To outsiders Madison appeared rather taciturn, but among
his friends he was genial and even lively, amusing all by his ready
humor and flashes of wit. To his changes of mood Jefferson always
responded. Once started Jefferson would talk on and on, in a loose
and rambling fashion, with a great deal of exaggeration and with many
vagaries, yet always scattering much information on a great variety of
topics. Here we may leave him for the moment, in the exhilarating
hours following his inauguration, discoursing with Pinckney, Gallatin,
Madison, Burr, Randolph, Giles, Macon, and many another good Republican,
and evolving the policies of his Administration.

CHAPTER II. PUTTING THE SHIP ON HER REPUBLICAN TACK

President Jefferson took office in a spirit of exultation which he made
no effort to disguise in his private letters. "The tough sides of our
Argosie," he wrote to John Dickinson, "have been thoroughly tried. Her
strength has stood the waves into which she was steered with a view to
sink her. We shall put her on her Republican tack, and she will now show
by the beauty of her motion the skill of her builders." In him as in
his two intimates, Gallatin and Madison, there was a touch of that
philosophy which colored the thought of reformers on the eve of the
French Revolution, a naive confidence in the perfectability of man
and the essential worthiness of his aspirations. Strike from man
the shackles of despotism and superstition and accord to him a free
government, and he would rise to unsuspected felicity. Republican
government was the strongest government on earth, because it was founded
on free will and imposed the fewest checks on the legitimate desires of
men. Only one thing was wanting to make the American people happy and
prosperous, said the President in his Inaugural Address "a wise and
frugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another,
which shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of
industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the
bread it has earned." This, he believed, was the sum of good government;
and this was the government which he was determined to establish.
Whether government thus reduced to lowest terms would