the
visionary; but it must never cause them to get out of touch with the
practical. Burr was capable of conceiving revolutionary plans on so vast
a scale as to be fairly appalling, not only from their daring but from
their magnitude. But when he tried to put his plans into practice, it at
once became evident that they were even more unsubstantial than they
were audacious. His wild schemes had in them too strong an element of
the unreal and the grotesque to be in very fact dangerous.

The West Had Grown Loyal.

Besides, the time for separatist movements in the West had passed, while
the time for arousing the West to the conquest of part of
Spanish-America had hardly yet come. A man of Burr's character might
perhaps have accomplished something mischievous in Kentucky when
Wilkinson was in the first flush of his Spanish intrigues; or when the
political societies were raving over Jay's treaty; or when the Kentucky
legislature was passing its nullification resolutions. But the West had
grown loyal as the Nineteenth Century came in. The Westerners were
hearty supporters of the Jeffersonian democratic-republican party;
Jefferson was their idol; they were strongly attached to the Washington
administration, and strongly opposed to the chief opponents of that
administration, the Northeastern Federalists. With the purchase of
Louisiana all deep-lying causes of Western discontent had vanished. The
West was prosperous, and was attached to the National Government. Its
leaders might still enjoy a discussion with Burr or among themselves
concerning separatist principles in the abstract, but such a discussion
was at this time purely academic. Nobody of any weight in the community
would allow such plans as those of Burr to be put into effect. There
was, it is true, a strong buccaneering spirit, and there were plenty of
men ready to enlist in an invasion of the Spanish dominions under no
matter what pretext; but even those men of note who were willing to lead
such a movement, were not willing to enter into it if it was complicated
with open disloyalty to the United States.

Burr Begins his Treasonable Plotting.

Burr began his treasonable scheming before he ceased to be
Vice-President. He was an old friend and crony of Wilkinson; and he knew
much about the disloyal agitations which had convulsed the West during
the previous two decades. These agitations always took one or the other
of two forms that at first sight would seem d