and illustrations of the most enlightened publicists and
statesmen, and now yield the most familiar and emphatic precedents for
political speculation and faith. In England, Pitt, Burke, Fox, and
Mackintosh represented, with memorable power, the opposing elements of
conservatism and reform, of social order and revolution, of humanity and
of authority; while in America, Hamilton, Adams, Morris, Jay, and other
leading Federalists, repudiated the license and condemned the
encroachments of France, as Jefferson and his followers advocated the
French republic on abstract principles of human rights and as having
legitimate claims upon American gratitude. No small part of the
bitterness exhibited toward Jay by the latter party arose from his
having testified, with Rufus King, that Genet intended to appeal from
the Government to the people of the United States--an audacious purpose
on the part of the French envoy, which excited the just indignation of
every citizen whose self-respect had not been quenched in the flame of
political zeal: accordingly he, to a peculiar extent, 'shared the odium
which the French Revolution had infused into the minds of its admirers:'
partial to the spirit if not the letter of the English constitution,
convinced by the absolute moral necessity of a strong central
Government, an enlightened and strenuous advocate of law, a thorough
gentleman, and a sincere Christian--his undoubted claim to the
additional distinction of pure patriot did not save him from the
aristocratic imputations, which professed champions of popular rights
then and there attached to all men who recognized as essential to social
order and progress, respect for and allegiance to justly constituted
authorities in government and society: jealousy of the rights of the
people was the ostensible motive of a political opposition to Jay,
which, at this day and with all the evidence before us, seems
inexplicable until we remember how the mirage of party fanaticism
distorts the vision and perverts the sympathies of men.

But to a well-poised, clear-sighted, upright character like his, the
storms of faction seemed innocuous: how candid is his own confession of
faith, how just his reasoning, and enlightened his principles, and
patriotic his motives, as revealed in every act, state and judicial
paper, recorded conversation, and private letter! 'Neither courting nor
dreading public opinion,' he writes (in his account of the Spanish
mission), 'on