ho had a
single republican qualification or idea. Freedom was an old fireside
acquaintance; they knew that the dishevelled, hysterical creature the
Gallo-Democrats worshipped was a delusion, and feared she might prove a
snare. Their common sense taught them to pay little attention to _a
priori_ disquisitions on natural rights, social compacts,
etc.,--metaphysics of politics, nugatory for all practical American
purposes,--and to reject as ridiculous the promised millennium of
supreme reason and perfected man. From a long experience in the
management of public affairs, they learned that our new government was
in danger from its weakness rather than from its strength; hence they
rejected the fatal doctrine of State rights, the root of the greatest
political evil, Secession. In the theories and in the measures of the
Democrats, in the very absurdity of the accusations made against
themselves, they thought they perceived a reckless purpose to relax
authority for the sake of popularity, which would lead to mob-rule, more
distasteful to the orderly Yankee than any other form of tyranny.
Moreover, in the Eastern States most of the Anti-Federalists belonged
to the lowest class of society; and, not content with urging their
pernicious public policy, the more turbulent of the party showed a
strong inclination to adopt French principles in religion and morals, as
well as in government. Robespierre had announced pompously, "_L'Atheisme
est aristocratique._" New England Federalists thought it democratic on
this side of the ocean. If they must choose between the Tri-Color and
the Cross of St. George, they preferred the Cross. There was no
guillotine in Great Britain,--no capering about plaster statues of the
Goddess of Reason; people read their Bibles, went to church, and
respected the holy sacrament of matrimony. But they wished for neither a
France nor an England; they desired to make an America after their own
hearts,--religious, just, orderly, and industrious; they believed that
on the Federalist plan such a nation could be built up, and on no
other; they opposed Jeffersonian politics then as they oppose
Jeffersonian-Davis politics now, and they were as heartily abused then
as they have been since, and as foolishly.

It must be confessed that the Hartford Wits did ample injustice to their
antagonists. Mr. Jefferson was certainly not an Avatar of the enemy of
mankind, nor were his followers atheists, anarchists, and rogues. But in