ral sentiments, like the French revolutionists,
and became a nuisance, it was deemed right, and a wise precaution, to
authorize the President to send them back to their own countries.

Now it is probable that these aliens were not as dangerous as they
seemed; they were ready to become citizens when the suffrage should be
enlarged; their discontent was magnified; they were mostly excitable but
harmless people, unreasonably feared. Jefferson looked upon them as
future citizens, trusted them with his unbounded faith in democratic
institutions, and thought that the treatment of them in the Alien Laws
was unjust, impolitic, and unkind.

The Sedition Laws were even more offensive, since under them citizens
could be fined and imprisoned if they wrote what were called "libels" on
men in power; and violent language against men in power was deemed a
libel. But all parties used violent language in that fermenting period.
It was an era of the bitterest party strife. Everybody was
misrepresented who even aimed at office. The newspapers were full of
slanders of the most eminent men, and neither Adams, nor Jefferson, nor
Hamilton, escaped unjust criminations and the malice of envenomed
tongues. All this embittered the Federalists, then in the height of
their power. In both houses of Congress the Federalists were in a
majority. The Executive, the judges, and educated men generally, were
Federalists. Men in power are apt to abuse it.

It is easy now to see that the Alien and Sedition Laws must have been
exceedingly unpopular; but the government was not then wise enough to
see the logical issue. Jefferson and his party saw it, and made the most
of it. In their appeals to the people they inflamed their prejudices and
excited their fears. They made a most successful handle of what they
called the violation of the Constitution and the rights of man; and the
current turned. From the day that the obnoxious and probably unnecessary
laws were passed, the Federal party was doomed. It lost its hold on the
people. The dissensions and rivalries of the Federal leaders added to
their discomfiture. What they lost they never could regain. Only war
would have put them on their feet again; and Adams, with true
patriotism, while ready for necessary combat, was opposed to a foreign
war for purposes of domestic policy.

Yet the ambitious statesman did not wish to be dethroned. He loved
office dearly, and hence he did not yield gracefully to the triumph o