The reversal of party position on both sides was due not to choice,
but to interchange of situation. The very act of conducting the
government on the one hand and of opposing it on the other brought
this exchange. Jefferson, the former advocate of peace, from his
retirement now urged a vigorous policy which involved retaliation on
England, if she burned American cities, by hiring discontented workmen
in London to burn British buildings, by conquering Canada, and, after
dictating terms of peace with Britain, by making war upon Napoleon.
The reversal of party brought consequent exchange of policy. Instead
of Federal encroachment on individual rights, the Republicans must now
become aggressors, and the Federalists protestants. Instead of the
protests coming from Virginia and Kentucky they now emanated from the
New England States. Instead of regarding the State Legislatures as the
ultimate protectors of the States, the resistants now went beyond that
agency and adopted the very expedient so frequently urged by Jefferson,
and the one which Madison testified that he had contemplated in 1799--a
convention of delegates from the States.
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