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Show 18 nESPOTISi\1: some real or fanciful analogies; but absolutely, its extension to all men,-the love of freedom wherever, by whomsoever, exercised, as an abstract good. It is evident that the love of liberty in this high sense, can shine out in perfection only from hearts the warmest, souls the most cultivated, minds the most lofty, unclouded and serene. llut fragments of it sparks from this celestial flame, sometimes but dim' the smallest atom almost, and that too buried, and quit~ smothered amid the ashes of selfish passions,-yet dtm or brtght, smothered or burnmg clear, this passion for universal f:eedO!fl is. still a part of hum~n nature, but a part of tt winch hes dead and dark m tmcnltivated souls, and which only begins to kindle and to blaze, in the forward and quick feeling minds of a polished and reflecting age. To this latter feeling, noble and refined, and which lurks, however invisible, even in the hearts of a slave· holding aristocracy, Jefferson did not dare to appeal. He was content to act the humble and comparatively mconstderable part of a champion for equality among the anstocrats; and laboring to forget that the unprivtleged class-some of whom, to believe the voice of common report, were his own children ,-had any great~r capacities or rights than beasts of burden, he curtailed the expansive and universal clauses of his political creed, till the mantle of liberty which should lu~:ve. e~tendcd Its protectiOn to every citizen, embraced Wtthm tts torn and mutilated folds only the privileged order. Th~ oligarchical party in the southern aristocracies, the anstocracy, so to speak, of the privileged order, though they were richer and better educated than their neighbors of the common sort had no such moral hold up~n mon's minds as the hiera~chy of the north. The preJUdtces m favor of family and rank to which they were indebted for the general acknowledgment of thetr supenonty, had been shaken by the revolution, and after a short and in efTcctual re~istancc the oli~ garchical party in Virginia and the Carolit;as was IN AMERICA. 19 completely broken down by the vigorous assault which the Jeffersonians made upon them. Henceforward the most complete and democratical equality among all the members of the privileged class, became the settled and established creed of southern politics. But the Jeffersonian party, while it aimed at overturning the oligarchies of the southern states, aimed also at supremacy in the federal government; and the same victory which assured their ascendency at home, raised their leader to the presidential chair. From that elevation, Jefferson stretched forth a helpmg hand to the struggling democrats of New England; and by means of the honors and offices within his gift, he enlisted into their cause divers mercenaries of courage and ability, who were seduced from the ranks of the hierarchy, and having taken pay at the hands of democracy, fought valiantly in her cause. As the Jeffersonians con tinned for twenty~four years at the head of the federal government, and during all that time, consoled, comforted, aided and abetted the democrats of New England, the party began presently to grow somewhat more respectable; and as the advantages to be derived from belonging to it became more and more numerous, converts were multiplied, and presently there might be numbered among them even some of the clergy and the lawyers. It is evident that this process alone would at length have given to democratical principles a nominal, if not a practical ascendency. llut as I have mentioned, there was another cause in operation, in itself sutlicient to have ensured an ultimate, and a more sub~ stautial triumph. Notwithstand ing the grand array of followers mustered by the hierarchy, there were many among them who at heart were traitors to the cause. They had been bied up in . a horror of democracy, which they were taught to regard as the con~ centration of all possible evil, and to the repetition of certain dogmas containing the substance of the oligarchical creed. Yet insensibly they became democrats themselves i and the superior order, to maintain its |
