classes,--whatever promises to aggrandize the
nation in a material point of view, or professes to bring about the
reign of "liberty, fraternity, and equality," and the abolition of
social distinctions.

It cannot be doubted that the policy of Jefferson, while it appealed to
the rights and interests of "working-men," of men who labor with their
hands rather than by their brains, has favored the reign of
demagogues,--the great curse of American institutions. Who now rule the
cities of New York, Philadelphia, Boston, Cincinnati, and Chicago? Is it
not those who, in cities at least, have made self-government--the great
principle for which Jefferson contended--almost an impossibility? This
great statesman was sufficiently astute to predict the rule of the
majority for generations to come, but I doubt if he anticipated the
character of the men to whom the majority would delegate their power.
Here he was not so sagacious as his great political rivals. I believe
that if he could have foreseen what a miserable set the politicians
would generally turn out to be,--with their venality, their
unscrupulousness, their vile flatteries of the people, their system of
spoils, their indifference to the higher interests of the nation,--his
faith in democracy as a form of government would have been essentially
shaken. He himself was no demagogue. His error was in not foreseeing the
logical sequence of those abstract theories which made up his political
religion,--the religion of humanity, such as the French philosophers had
taught him. But his theories pleased the people, and he himself was
personally popular,--the most so of all our statesmen, not excepting
Henry Clay, who made many enemies.

Jefferson's manners were simple, his dress was plain, he was accessible
to everybody, he was boundless in his hospitalities, he cared little for
money, his opinions were liberal and progressive, he avoided quarrels,
he had but few prejudices, he was kind and generous to the poor and
unfortunate, he exalted agricultural life, he hated artificial splendor,
and all shams and lies. In his morals he was irreproachable, unlike
Hamilton and Burr; he never made himself ridiculous, like John Adams, by
egotism, vanity, and jealousy; he was the most domestic of men,
worshipped by his family and admired by his guests; always ready to
communicate knowledge, strong in his convictions, perpetually writing
his sincere sentiments and beliefs in letters to his friends,