Jefferson and his Colleagues [6]
keep down the cost of administration and avoid all the ills which follow too much government. The President: After all, we are chiefly an agricultural people and if we shape our policy accordingly we shall be much more likely to multiply and be happy than as if we mimicked an Amsterdam, a Hamburg, or a city like London. Madison (quietly): I quite agree with you. We must keep the government simple and republican, avoiding the corruption which inevitably prevails in crowded cities. Gallatin (pursuing his thought): The moment you allow the national debt to mount, you entail burdens on posterity and augment the operations of government. The President (bitterly): The principle of spending money to be paid by posterity is but swindling futurity on a large scale. That was what Hamilton -- Gallatin: Just so; and if this administration does not reduce taxes, they will never be reduced. We must strike at the root of the evil and avert the danger of multiplying the functions of government. I would repeal all internal taxes. These pretended tax-preparations, treasure-preparations, and army-preparations against contingent wars tend only to encourage wars. The President (nodding his head in agreement): The discharge of the debt is vital to the destinies of our government, and for the present we must make all objects subordinate to this. We must confine our general government to foreign concerns only and let our affairs be disentangled from those of all other nations, except as to commerce. And our commerce is so valuable to other nations that they will be glad to purchase it, when they know that all we ask is justice. Why, then, should we not reduce our general government to a very simple organization and a very unexpensive one--a few plain duties to be performed by a few servants? It was precisely the matter of selecting these few servants which worried the President during his first months in office, for the federal offices were held by Federalists almost to a man. He hoped that he would have to make only a few removals any other course would expose him to the charge of inconsistency after his complacent statement that there was no fundamental difference between Republicans and Federalists. But his followers thought otherwise; they wanted the spoils of victory and they meant to have them. Slowly and reluctantly Jefferson yielded to pressure, justifying himself as he did so by the reflection that a due participation in office was a matter of right. And how, pray, could due participation be obtained, if there were no removals? Deaths were regrettably few; and resignations could hardly be expected. Once removals were decided upon, Jefferson drifted helplessly upon the tide. For a moment, it is true, he wrote hopefully about establishing an equilibrium and then returning "with joy to that state of things when the only questions concerning a candidate shall be: Is he honest? Is he capable? Is he faithful to the Constitution?" That blessed expectation was never realized. By the end of his second term, a Federalist in office was as rare as a Republican under Adams. The removal of the Collector of the Port at New Haven and the appointment of an octogenarian whose chief qualification was his Republicanism brought to a head all the bitter animosity of Federalist New England. The hostility to Jefferson in this region was no ordinary political opposition, as he knew full well, for it was compounded of many ingredients. In New England there was a greater social solidarity than existed anywhere else in the Union. Descended from English stock, imbued with common religious and political traditions, and bound together by the ties of a common ecclesiastical polity, the people of this section had, as Jefferson expressed it, "a sort of family pride." Here all the forces of education, property, religion, and respectability were united in the maintenance of the established order against the assaults of democracy. New England Federalism was not so much a body of political doctrine as a state of mind. Abhorrence of the forces liberated by the French Revolution