ved by
the wholesome action of such an autocrat as Jackson in the Nullification
troubles with South Carolina, and the successful maintenance of the
Union by the power-assuming Congress during the Rebellion; while
Jackson's autocracy in general, and the centralizing tendency of
Congressional legislation since 1865, are instances of the complications
likely to arise from too strong a government in a country where the
people are the final source of power. The value of universal
suffrage--the logical result of Jefferson's views of government--is
still an open question, especially in cities. But whether good or bad in
its ultimate results, the victory was decisive on the part of the
democracy, whose main principle of "popular sovereignty" has become the
established law of the land, and will probably continue to rule as long
as American institutions last.

The questions since opened have been in regard to slavery,--in ways
which Jefferson never dreamed of,--the comparative power of the North
and South, matters of finance, tariffs, and internal improvements,
involving the deepest problems of political economy, education, and
constitutional law; and as time moves on, new questions will arise to
puzzle the profoundest intellects; but the question of the ascendency of
the people is settled beyond all human calculations. And it is in this
matter especially that Jefferson left his mark on the institutions of
his country,--as the champion of democracy, rather than as the champion
of the abstract rights of man which he and Patrick Henry and Samuel
Adams had asserted, in opposition to the tyranny of Great Britain in her
treatment of the Colonies. And here he went beyond Puritan New England,
which sought the ascendency of the wisest and the best, when the
aristocracy of intellect and virtue should bear sway instead of the
unenlightened masses. Historians talk about the aristocracy of the
Southern planters, but this was an offshoot of the aristocracy of
feudalism,--the dominion of favored classes over the enslaved, the poor,
and the miserable. New England aristocracy was the rule of the wisest
and the best, extending to the remotest hamlets, in which the people
discussed the elemental principles of Magna Charta and the liberties of
Saxon yeomen. This was the aristocracy which had for its defenders such
men as the Adamses, the Shermans, and the Langdons,--something new in
the history of governments and empires, which was really subverted