and nobles, who had always lived in the next street
in inconceivable luxury wrung from the blood and sweat of the poor; to
form Jacobin clubs pledged to the suppression of the tyranny of
aristocrats in a country where, as Samuel Dexter said of New England,
there was hardly a man rich enough to own a carriage, and few so poor as
not to own a horse; for men thus to ape those revolutionary ways, which
meant so much in Paris, may have seemed at the moment, to sober-minded
people, more fantastic than harmful. It was harmful, however, insomuch
as it substituted sentiment for common sense, and made enthusiasm, not
reason, the guide of conduct. A character was given to political
conflict which obtained for years to come. There was, it is true, a
certain manliness about it in remarkable contrast with that maudlin
sentimentality of our time which is rather inclined to ask pardon of the
rebels of the late civil war for having put them to the trouble of
getting up a rebellion. It was a conflict, nevertheless, more of party
passion than of principle, wherein it is impossible to see that either
party was absolutely right, or either absolutely wrong. The Francomania
phase of it disappeared for a time in John Adams's administration; but
it revived again, and gave intensity and virulence to the political
struggles, in the first decade of this century. Then it was that men
went about their daily affairs with cockades on their hats as
distinctive party badges. In their social as well as in their business
relations they were governed by party affinities. Neighbors differing in
politics would hardly speak to each other, and each was always ready to
accept the other's political crookedness as the measure of his possible
depravity in everything else. They would hardly walk on the same side
of the street; or sail in the same packet; or ride in the same
stage-coach; or buy their groceries at the same shop; or listen to the
preaching of the gospel from the same pulpit; indeed, if the preacher
was known to have pronounced political opinions, he was held, by those
who did not agree with him, as one from whose shoulders the clerical
gown should be torn.

Gratitude to France had not yet even become traditional, and it was
intensified by the deepest sympathy for a people struggling for what, by
their aid, Americans had so recently gained. Added to this was the old
hatred to England, which England as carefully nursed as if it were her
settled policy,