quest of the wilderness, and demanding the possession
of the lands for which they have fought the Indians, and which they had
reduced by their ax to civilization, without recognizing in these
frontier communities the cradle of a belligerent Western democracy. "A
fool can sometimes put on his coat better than a wise man can do it for
him,"--such is the philosophy of its petitioners. In this period also
came the contests of the interior agricultural portion of New England
against the coast-wise merchants and property-holders, of which Shays'
Rebellion is the best known, although by no means an isolated instance.

By the time of the constitutional convention, this struggle for
democracy had affected a fairly well-defined division into parties.
Although these parties did not at first recognize their interstate
connections, there were similar issues on which they split in almost all
the States. The demands for an issue of paper money, the stay of
execution against debtors, and the relief against excessive taxation
were found in every colony in the interior agricultural regions. The
rise of this significant movement wakened the apprehensions of the men
of means, and in the debates over the basis of suffrage for the House of
Representatives in the constitutional convention of 1787 leaders of the
conservative party did not hesitate to demand that safeguards to the
property should be furnished the coast against the interior. The outcome
of the debate left the question of suffrage for the House of
Representatives dependent upon the policy of the separate States. This
was in effect imposing a property qualification throughout the nation as
a whole, and it was only as the interior of the country developed that
these restrictions gradually gave way in the direction of manhood
suffrage.

All of these scattered democratic tendencies Jefferson combined, in the
period of Washington's presidency, into the Democratic-Republican party.
Jefferson was the first prophet of American democracy, and when we
analyse the essential features of his gospel, it is clear that the
Western influence was the dominant element. Jefferson himself was born
in the frontier region of Virginia, on the edge of the Blue Ridge, in
the middle of the eighteenth century. His father was a pioneer.
Jefferson's "Notes on Virginia" reveal clearly his conception that
democracy should have an agricultural basis, and that manufacturing
development and city life were dangero