ither the
Jeffersonian nor the Hamiltonian doctrine was entirely adequate, and
that in order to reach a correct understanding of the really formative
constituent in the complex of American national life, a combination must
be made of both Republicanism and Federalism. But while the necessity of
such a combination is fully realized, I do not believe that it has ever
been mixed in just the proper proportions. We are content to say with
Webster that the prosperity of American institutions depends upon the
unity and inseparability of individual and local liberties and a
national union. We are content to declare that the United States must
remain somehow a free and a united country, because there can be no
complete unity without liberty and no salutary liberty outside of a
Union. But the difficulties with this phrase, its implications and
consequences, we do not sufficiently consider. It is enough that we have
found an optimistic formula wherewith to unite the divergent aspects of
the Republican, and Federalist doctrines.

We must begin, consequently, with critical accounts of the ideas both of
Jefferson and of Hamilton; and we must seek to discover wherein each of
these sets of ideas was right, and wherein each was wrong; in what
proportions they were subsequently combined in order to form "our noble
national theory," and what were the advantages, the limitations, and the
effects of this combination. I shall not disguise the fact that, on the
whole, my own preferences are on the side of Hamilton rather than of
Jefferson. He was the sound thinker, the constructive statesman, the
candid and honorable, if erring, gentleman; while Jefferson was the
amiable enthusiast, who understood his fellow-countrymen better and
trusted them more than his rival, but who was incapable either of
uniting with his fine phrases a habit of candid and honorable private
dealing or of embodying those phrases in a set of efficient
institutions. But although Hamilton is much the finer man and much the
sounder thinker and statesman, there were certain limitations in his
ideas and sympathies the effects of which have been almost as baleful as
the effects of Jefferson's intellectual superficiality and insincerity.
He perverted the American national idea almost as much as Jefferson
perverted the American democratic idea, and the proper relation of these
two fundamental conceptions one to another cannot be completely
understood until this double perversion