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 measures," for the obvious reason that the majority possessed the initiative. The purchase of Louisiana seemed to them to transfer the power of the Union to the southern and frontier states, the seat of the political theories which they regarded as reckless and lawless. They feared that the power of the Union would be used to sacrifice commerce and to put in operation wild theories by which the interests of the northern and eastern states would be imperiled, and the inherited institutions of constitutional liberty, which they valued as their best possessions, would be overthrown. The Embargo and Non-intercourse Acts seemed only the fulfillment of these fears. The recourse of a minority has always been to invoke the Constitution and to insist upon the unconstitutionality of what they could not resist by votes, each party in turn thereby bearing witness to the truth that the Constitution is the real safeguard of rights and liberty. In the last resort also the minority, if it has been local, and has seen the majority threatening to use the tremendous power of the Confederation to make the interests of the minority subservient to the interests of the rest, has felt its loyalty to the Union decline. How far the Federalists went in this direction it is difficult to say, but they certainly went farther than they were afterwards willing to confess or remember. They gradually faded out of view as a political power after the second war and in the twenties "Federalist" became a term of reproach.

The opposite party, called by themselves Republicans after 1792, took definite form in opposition to Washington's administration on the question of ratifying Jay's Treaty. They were first called Democrats in 1798, the name being opprobrious. They adopted it, however, first in connection with the former name; and the joint appellation. Democratic Republicans, or either separately, was used indifferently down to the middle of this century.