ng genius in political management told him that he
could never raise a party or make a party-cry out of the statement
that, while he favored a democratic republic, the men to whom he was
opposed preferred one of a more aristocratic caste. It was necessary
to have something much more highly seasoned than this. So he took the
ground that his opponents were monarchists, bent on establishing a
monarchy in this country, and were backed by a "corrupt squadron"
in Congress in the pay of the Treasury. This was of course utter
nonsense, but it served its purpose admirably. Jefferson, indeed,
shouted these cries so much that he almost came to believe in them
himself, and sympathetic writers to this day repeat them as if they
had reality instead of having been mere noise to frighten the unwary.
The prime object of it all was to make the great leaders odious by
connecting them in the popular mind with the royal government that had
been overthrown.

Jefferson's first move was a covert one. In the spring of 1791 he
received Thomas Paine's "Rights of Man," and straightway sent the
pamphlet to the printer with a note of approbation reflecting upon
John Adams. The pamphlet promptly appeared in a reprint with the
note prefixed. It made much stir, and the published approval of the
Secretary of State excited a great deal of criticism, much of which
was very hostile. Jefferson thereupon expressed extreme surprise that
his note had been printed, and on the plea of explaining the matter
wrote to Washington a letter, in which he declared that his friend
Mr. Adams, for whom he had a most cordial esteem, was an apostate to
hereditary monarchy and nobility. He further described his old friend
as a political heretic and as the bellwether Davila, upon whom and
whose writings Mr. Adams had recently been publishing some discourses.
It is but fair to say that no more ingenious attack on the
Vice-President could have been made, but the purpose of it was simply
to arrest the public attention for the real struggle which was to
follow.

The true object of all these movements was to rally a party and break
down Jefferson's great colleague in the cabinet. The "Rights of Man"
served to start the discussion; and the next step was to bring on from
New York Philip Freneau, a verse-writer and journalist, and make him
translating clerk in the State Department, and editor of an opposition
newspaper known as the "National Gazette." The new journal proceeded
to d