, President of the United States." The
letter laid bare most mercilessly the weakness in the nature and the
defects in the administration of John Adams. Material for the recital
had been furnished Hamilton by his tools in the Cabinet. Hamilton had
his revenge on Adams, but he paid dearly for it in the estimation of
every non-partisan American. Simply because the national structure was
not being built to his own plans he would endanger the fabric by giving
it over to those whose theories tended to weakening instead of
strengthening it.
CHAPTER XIV
THE ADVENT OF DEMOCRACY
The presidential election of 1800 was epoch-making in several meanings
of the term. It was a reaction against the bold and defiant attitude
of the party in power. It was a revolution of the people. Yet it was
neither a dissolution of all government, as it appeared to the defeated,
nor a permanent conversion of the people to democracy, as the victorious
element was inclined to consider it. Sixty years later, the people
would rise against the victorious party, grown to be a slave-truckling
organisation, overscrupulous of the individual when the world was
turning to aggregation, and would take the sceptre from them for a
quarter of a century at least.
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