Chapter V: Member of Congress (3)

In the balance of opinion there are no certain weights and measures. The preponderance of causes cannot be precisely ascertained. The freedom which the people of the United States enjoy to-day is not the work of any one party. Those who are descended from its original stock, and those whom its free institutions have since invited to full membership, owe that freedom to two causes: the one, formulated by Hamilton, a strong, central power, which, deriving its force from the people, maintains its authority at home and secures respect abroad; the other, the spirit of liberty which found expression in the famous declaration of the rights of man. This influence Jefferson represented. It taught the equality of man; not equality before the law alone, nor yet political equality, but that absolute freedom from class distinction which is true social equality; in a word, mutual respect. But for Hamilton we might be a handful of petty States, in discordant confederation or perpetual war; but for Jefferson, a prey to the class jealousy which unsettles the social relations and threatens the political existence of European States.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 4: Lord Sheffield to Mr. Abbott, November 6, 1812. _Correspondence of Lord Colchester_, ii. 409.]

[Footnote 5: Gallatin later described Jackson as he first saw him in his seat in the House: "A tall, lank, uncouth looking individual, with long locks of hair hanging over his brows and face, while a queue hung down his back tied in an eelskin. The dress of this individual was singular, his manners and deportment that of a backwoodsman." Bartlett's _Reminiscences of Gallatin_.]

[Footnote 6: The phrase "stop the wheels of government" originated with "Peter Porcupine" (William Cobbett) and was on every tongue.]

[Footnote 7: Charles C. Pinckney, when ambassador to France, 1796.]

[Footnote 8: Jefferson to William Duane, March 28, 1811. Jefferson's _Works_, vol. v. p. 574.]

[Footnote 9: Jefferson was born in 1743, Madison in 1751, Gallatin in 1761.]