these few servants which worried the President during his first months in office, for the federal offices were held by Federalists almost to a man. He hoped that he would have to make only a few removals any other course would expose him to the charge of inconsistency after his complacent statement that there was no fundamental difference between Republicans and Federalists. But his followers thought otherwise; they wanted the spoils of victory and they meant to have them. Slowly and reluctantly Jefferson yielded to pressure, justifying himself as he did so by the reflection that a due participation in office was a matter of right. And how, pray, could due participation be obtained, if there were no removals? Deaths were regrettably few; and resignations could hardly be expected. Once removals were decided upon, Jefferson drifted helplessly upon the tide. For a moment, it is true, he wrote hopefully about establishing an equilibrium and then returning "with joy to that state of things when the only questions concerning a candidate shall be: Is he honest? Is he capable? Is he faithful to the Constitution?" That blessed expectation was never realized. By the end of his second term, a Federalist in office was as rare as a Republican under Adams.

The removal of the Collector of the Port at New Haven and the appointment of an octogenarian whose chief qualification was his Republicanism brought to a head all the bitter animosity of Federalist New England. The hostility to Jefferson in this region was no ordinary political opposition, as he knew full well, for it was compounded of many ingredients. In New England there was a greater social solidarity than existed anywhere else in the Union. Descended from English stock, imbued with common religious and political traditions, and bound together by the ties of a common ecclesiastical polity, the people of this section had, as Jefferson expressed it, "a sort of family pride." Here all the forces of education, property, religion, and respectability were united in the maintenance of the established order against the assaults of democracy. New England Federalism was not so much a body of political doctrine as a state of mind. Abhorrence of the forces liberated by the French Revolution was the dominating emotion. To the Federalist leaders democracy seemed an aberration of the human mind, which was bound everywhere to produce infidelity, looseness of morals, and political chaos. In the words of their Jeremiah, Fisher Ames, "Democracy is a troubled spirit, fated never to rest, and whose dreams, if it sleeps, present only visions of hell." So thinking and feeling, they had witnessed the triumph of Jefferson with genuine alarm, for Jefferson they held to be no better than a Jacobin, bent upon subverting the social order and saturated with all the heterodox notions of Voltaire and Thomas Paine.

The appointment of the aged Samuel Bishop as Collector of New Haven was evidence enough to the Federalist mind, which fed upon suspicion, that Jefferson intended to reward his son, Abraham Bishop, for political services. The younger Bishop was a stench in their nostrils, for at a recent celebration of the Republican victory he had shocked the good people of Connecticut by characterizing Jefferson as "the illustrious chief who, once insulted, now presides over the Union," and comparing him with the Saviour of the world, "who, once insulted, now presides over the universe." And this had not been his first transgression: he was known as an active and intemperate rebel against the standing order. No wonder that Theodore Dwight voiced the alarm of all New England Federalists in an oration at New Haven, in which he declared that according to the doctrines of Jacobinism "the greatest villain in the community is the fittest person to make and execute the laws." "We have now," said he, "reached the consummation of democratic blessedness. We have a country governed by blockheads and knaves." Here was an opposition which, if persisted in, might menace the integrity of the Union.

Scarcely less vexatious was the business of appointments in New York where three factions in the Republican party struggled for the control of the patronage. Which should the President support? Gallatin, whose father-in-law was prominent in the politics of the State, was inclined to favor Burr and his followers; but the President already felt a deep distrust of Burr and finally surrendered to the importunities of DeWitt Clinton, who had formed an alliance with the Livingston interests to drive Burr from the party. Despite the pettiness of the game, which disgusted both Gallatin and Jefferson, the decision was fateful. It was no light matter, even for the chief magistrate, to offend Aaron Burr.

From these worrisome details of administration, the President turned with relief to the preparation of his first address to Congress. The keynote was to be economy. But just how economies were actually to be effected was not so clear. For months Gallatin had been toiling over masses of statistics, trying to reconcile a policy of reduced taxation, to satisfy the demands of the party, with the discharge of the public debt. By laborious calculation he found that if $7,300,000 were set aside each year, the debt—principal and interest—could be discharged within sixteen years. But if the unpopular excise were abandoned, where was the needed revenue to be found? New taxes were not to be thought of. The alternative, then, was to reduce expenditures. But how and where?

Under these circumstances the President and his Cabinet adopted the course which in the light of subsequent events seems to have been woefully ill-timed and hazardous in the extreme. They determined to sacrifice the army and navy. In extenuation of this decision, it may be said that the danger of war with France, which had forced the Adams Administration to double expenditures, had passed; and that Europe was at this moment at peace, though only the most sanguine and shortsighted could believe that continued peace was possible in Europe with the First Consul in the saddle. It was agreed, then, that the expenditures for the military and naval establishments should be kept at about $2,500,000—somewhat below the normal appropriation before the recent war-flurry; and that wherever possible expenses should be reduced by careful pruning of the list of employees at the navy yards. Such was the programme of humdrum economy which President Jefferson laid before Congress. After the exciting campaign of 1800, when the public was assured that the forces of Darkness and Light were locked in deadly combat for the soul of the nation, this tame programme seemed like an anticlimax. But those who knew Thomas Jefferson learned to discount the vagaries to which he gave expression in conversation. As John Quincy Adams once remarked after listening to Jefferson's brilliant table talk, "Mr. Jefferson loves to excite wonder." Yet Thomas Jefferson, philosopher, was a very different person from Thomas Jefferson, practical politician. Paradoxical as it may seem, the new President, of all men of his day, was the least likely to undertake revolutionary policies; and it was just this acquaintance with Jefferson's mental habits which led his inveterate enemy, Alexander Hamilton, to advise his party associates to elect Jefferson rather than Burr.

The President broke with precedent, however, in one small particular. He was resolved not to follow the practice of his Federalist predecessors and address Congress in person. The President's speech to the two houses in joint session savored too much of a speech from the throne; it was a symptom of the Federalist leaning to monarchical forms and practices. He sent his address, therefore, in writing, accompanied with letters to the presiding officers of the two chambers, in which he justified this departure from custom on the ground of convenience and economy of time. "I have had principal regard," he wrote, "to the convenience of the Legislature, to the economy of their time, to the relief from the embarrassment of immediate answers on subjects not