the many for the many. That Jefferson was an opportunist the purchase of the Louisiana Country shows. That Adams was a legalist is indicated by his signature to the Alien and Sedition laws-laws which Jefferson successfully combated as violative of "the rights of man". And by "the rights of man man" he particularly referred to the Bills of Rights, expressed or implied in every American constitution and familiar to Jefferson not merely as the work of Somers but peculiarly of George Mason, the Virginian, of Gunston Hall. As to the meaning and spirit of the Alien and Sedition acts, every federal administration since Jefferson has been Jeffersonian.

Like Washington, John Adams believed that "influence is not government"; whence the military trend in Federalism, its notion of a "strong "government. Jefferson believed in popular government, even weak, if only popular. Both Jackson and Cleveland (Jeffersonians by profession) were disciples of Washington and Adams: the one at Charleston, in the days of Nullification; the other, at Chicago, at the time of the railroad strike; and doubtless their action has done more than any other of their administrations to perpetuate their memory. Jefferson, at the time of his election, compares the Government to a spent clock, "running down". Were John Adams to make such a comparison, he would give the clock perpetual motion. John Marshall, echoing Hamilton, ever emphasizes the fact that "the whole is greater than the part". Jefferson ever emphasizes the fact of individual rights, rights which must not be invaded by the community. Nevertheless, in America, the trend is to eliminate the individual and to exalt the community. Jefferson never philosophizes on "social rights". He would have us believe that when individual rights are realized, social rights are realized. He would have slight respect for current teachings of so-called "economics". The Eleventh Amendment, denying to the United States jurisdiction in any suit in law or equity brought by an individual against a State, is fundamentally Jeffersonian and was a sign, at the time of its adoption (1798)—and it was in John Adams's administration-of the impending political "revolution", quite at the outbreak. Reduced to final political fact, all Jefferson's political ideas enthrone the individual, whence their

popularity. Strip these ideas of their real significance, and Jeffersonianism becomes mere vulgar political party opposition. Neither Adams nor Jefferson was a military man, though each became, as President, Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States-a lodgement of power which, as President Hayes once said, in the hands of a Napoleon would wreck our republican institutions. Jefferson believed that America should remain agricultural, the producer of raw material for European manufacture. To him the ideal citizen is a farmer; the ideal trade, free trade; a protective tariff, like a national debt,— advocated by Hamilton,-a curse to the country. One of his favorite rules was "Pay as you go". He would preclude America to manufacturing; factories and factory-folk to him a foundation of sand for a free State. Adams made no pronounced advocacy for manufactures, but accepted and applied Hamilton's economic theories. Jefferson's industrial theories were strictly in keeping with his devotion to the theories of the physiocrats who taught the "grand doctrine" of "return to nature". This “naturalistic" bent in Jefferson has no parallel in Adams; it made Jefferson what Huxley would call an "agnostic".

Contrasting Adams and Jefferson in the large, politically, Adams would have the wise few safeguard the foolish many, the rich give employment to the poor (rich and poor being of a different "order" of men); Jefferson would have the individual, whether wise or rich, foolish or poor, govern himself, pursue his own essential interests, trusting to the ultimate supremacy of a sane, general average. Whether Jefferson fully believed in the individual equality of men, he proclaimed the equality ideal in one of the "glittering generalities" (as Rufus Choate described it) of the Declaration of Independence. There is no positive proof that he considered a slave as more than three-fifths person. Deploring slavery, he remained an owner of slaves all his life. Yet John Adams, on the floor of the old Congress, when the Articles of Confederation were under discussion, declared that the mechanics of the North were comparable to the slaves of the South. Doubtless had African slavery existed in Massachusetts, the sage of Braintree would have worked his farm by slaves. It should be remembered, however, that the slavery question did

not become a national issue until the Missouri Compromise (1820) and then rang out, sudden and unexpected "as a fire-bell at night" (to use Jefferson's words, spoken at the time); and this was five years before the death of the two patriots.

Their Ministries abroad, both in France, Adams in Holland and England, made them both intense Nationalists; even as evidenced at the time of the Monroe Doctrine when Jefferson wrote Monroe that America has a set of interests distinct from those of Europe. There is no evidence that either statesman would have advocated America's joining the League of Nations. To both, as to Washington, such a conjunction would prove an "entangling alliance". In their day international relations scarcely went further than as set forth by treaties, and the United States, as late as the day on which Adams and Jefferson died, had made only thirty-three treaties, though it has since made more than ten times that number. True, the Constitution recognizes international law (the first such recognition in history), but in the days of Adams and Jefferson the people of the United States were not, as today, related to the people of other continents by commerce, art, science, education, religion, literature, travel and thought. Nor Adams, nor Jefferson, nor any other man in their day, seems to have thought in terms of all mankind.

The extreme age these statesmen reached-Adams ninety years, Jefferson eighty-two-has been interpreted as indicative of temperamental poise of a high order. Few men live busier lives than those who participate in great events, and eminent statesmen, in all periods of time, have lived far beyond the Psalmist's limit of years. And aged statesmen may be said never to give a hint of senility. Thus the correspondence between Adams and Jefferson when both were aged men remains a chapter in the history of philosophy, as well as proof of the vigor of their minds. In these men was realized Wordsworth's "philosophic calm". Optimists to the end, neither sought to reform the world. Jefferson believed that his political system was as natural as the law of gravitation; Adams nowhere hints that mankind would go to the dogs unless his political notions prevailed. Old age softens the asperities of life and the public memory of these men today is of two aged patriots, not of two mutually hostile politicians.

It is true that Jefferson built a sawmill on top of a hill, seemingly forgetful of the lack of water power, or of the waste of labor in hauling logs to the mill. It is true that John Adams left Washington in wrath, refusing to participate in the inauguration of his successor, Jefferson. It is true that Adams advocated a strong navy and that Jefferson pursued a ridiculous "gunboat" policy. Research always reveals human weaknesses, but the world adjudges a man according to his contribution to civilization, not according to his defects, his errors, his negative virtues. Adams gave America its great Chief Justice and Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence: and here the world rests the case. From the day Adams left the White House till his death, a quarter of a century later, he lived isolated, aloof from men, his only public service the presidency of the Constitutional Convention of his native State, in 1820. Jefferson, on the contrary, from the day of his retirement from the Presidency, in 1809, till his death, was neighbor to all Americans, was building up a great political party, writing, ceaselessly writing to all sorts and conditions of men, at home and abroad, teaching democracy. Adams died an Ex-President; Jefferson, not only an Ex-President but a living, a perpetual force in American politics.

No man, today, testing John Adams by his political principles, can disprove his devotion to American nationality, neutrality, sovereignty, primacy in trade and commerce, "a government of laws and not of men". When, twenty years after his Presidency of the United States, the venerable man was called to the presidency of the Massachusetts Constitutional Convention, the principal issue before it was the basis of representation, whether of property or persons. Daniel Webster in his great speech before the Convention, a speech which, a week later, he delivered, quite word for word, as the well-known "Plymouth Oration", declared almost in the opening words that the basis of government is property. The entire career of Adams confirms Webster's assertion. Thomas Jefferson was not chosen President, in 1800, because Adams so believed, but because he represented a state of mind of America which Adams and the Federal party never represented. In his oration on "Adams and Jefferson", Webster eulogizes Adams and speaks with political politeness of Jefferson. Webster

was himself the last eminent Federalist. His great colleagues and rivals, Calhoun and Clay, were not disciples of Adams. Clay was a compromiser, Calhoun out-Jeffersoned Jefferson. In 1850, that critical date in American history, when Webster and Clay and Calhoun were the second Triumvirate as Jefferson, Madison and Monroe were the first, so greatly had the American mind changed that had John Adams been mentioned, he had been spoken of merely as one of our early Presidents.

A critical examination of the evidence shows that despite Adams's political principles, he was forsaken by his party and its leaders on personal grounds, as a tactless, obstinate man, facing the blast but never bowing before the wind. Firm in his convictions, he would not pay the price of popularity, even at the cost of reëlection to the Presidency. Jefferson's description of the office as "a splendid misery" would never have been made by Adams. Indeed there is much evidence that Jefferson rated the Presidential office far below political leadership and the founding and organizing of a powerful political party. There is inferential evidence that Adams made precisely a contrary rating. Since the French Revolution, during the early days of which Jefferson was American Minister in Paris, his political ideas have moved forward steadily and triumphantly in Europe. His famous letter on the incapacity of kings and royal families generally was an early epitaph on monarchy. Within recent years his ideas have made yet greater strides. It was Cavour who said, nearly three generations ago, "Society is marching with long strides toward democracy. **** Is it a good? Is it an evil? I know little enough; but it is, in my opinion, the inevitable future of humanity". Whether or not we like the Jeffersonian trend in government, the Jeffersonian trend is on. No sane man, with the évidence before him, can justly accuse John Adams of lack of statesmanship, or that he failed to follow in the footsteps of Washington, as far as he could follow them. It was the man, Adams, not the statesmanship, that lost. In Jefferson it is the man and the statesmanship which have won.

FRANCIS N. THORPE,