f-created, without delegation or control, not emanating
from the people, or responsible to them; not open in their
deliberations; not admitting any but those of their own political
opinions; permanent in their constitution, and of unlimited duration."
These, he said, "modestly assumed the character of popular instructors,
guardians of the people, guardians of the government. Every man in the
administration who had assented to its acts they had loaded with every
species of calumny--slanders--which they knew to be such. They had not
even spared that character supposed to have been clothed with
inviolability--not the paltry inviolability of constitutional
proscription, but an inviolability infinitely more respectable, founded
on the public gratitude, and resulting from disinterested and invaluable
services."

The motion upon which this debate arose was finally carried in committee
of the whole, but by a very small majority. The struggle was renewed
when it was reported to the house. Finally, a compromise was effected by
inserting in the address a declaration of great concern on the part of
the house, "that any misrepresentations whatever of the government and
its proceedings, either by individuals or combinations of men, should
have been made, and so far have been credited as to foment the flagrant
outrage which had been committed on the laws."

It was very evident, from the debates and the votes on this and other
questions brought up by the president's message, that the government was
growing stronger, and the opposition in Congress weaker. Jefferson, the
father of the opposition, who had declared that his retiracy from the
political world should be profound, was alarmed at these manifestations
of the declining strength of his party, and he was moved to let his
voice be heard once more. On the twenty-eighth of December he wrote to
Madison, the republican leader in the lower house, an angry letter
concerning the president's remarks about the "self-created societies,"
saying:--

"The denunciation of the Democratic Societies is one of the
extraordinary acts of boldness of which we have seen so many from
the faction of monocrats. It is wonderful indeed that the president
should have permitted himself to be the organ of such an attack on
the freedom of discussion, the freedom of writing, printing, and
publishing." After making an ungenerous attack upon the Society of
the Cincinnati, he pro