on the one hand, and on the other the expenditure
of money and loss of life, which would bear as hard on England as on the
United States. Both parties at last wearied of a contest which promised
no permanent settlement of interests or principles. The Federalists
deprecated it from the beginning. The Republican-Democracy sustained it
from the instinct of national honor. Probably it could not have been
avoided without the surrender of national dignity. It was the last of
our wars with Great Britain. Future difficulties will doubtless be
settled by arbitration, or not settled at all, in spite of mutual
ill-will. England and America cannot afford to fight. Our late Civil War
demonstrated this,--when, with all the ill-feeling between the two
nations, war was averted. The interests of trade may mollify and soften
international jealousies, but only forbearance and the cultivation of
mutual and common interests can eradicate the sentiments of
mutual dislike.

However, it was not the Embargo, nor the meditated treason of Aaron
Burr, nor the purchase of Louisiana, important as these were, which
gives chief interest to the eight years of Jefferson's administration,
and made it a political epoch. It was the firm growth and establishment
of the Democratic party, of which Jefferson was the father and leader,
as Hamilton was the great chieftain of the Federalist. With the
accession of Jefferson to power, a new policy was inaugurated, which
from his day has been the policy of the government, except in great
financial emergencies when men of brain have had the direction of public
affairs. Democratic leaders like Jackson and Van Buren, representing the
passions or interests or prejudices of the masses, it would seem, have
been generally unfortunate enough to lead the country into financial
difficulties, because they have conformed to the unenlightened instincts
of the people rather than to the opinions of the enlightened few,--great
merchants, capitalists, and statesmen, that is, men of experience and
ability. And when these men of brain have extricated the country from
the financial distress which men inexperienced in finance and ignorant
of the principles of political economy have brought about, the
democratic leaders have regained their political ascendency, since they
appealed, more than their antagonists, to those watchwords so dear to
the American heart, the abolition of monopolies, unequal taxation, the
exaltation of the laboring