Page:Henry Adams' History of the United States Vol. 1 (wikilinked).djvu/96

1800. and virtue. A paragraph from Dennie's "Portfolio," reprinted by all the Federalist newspapers in 1803, offered one example among a thousand of the in­fatuation which possessed the Federalist press, nei­ther more extravagant nor more treasonable than the rest:—


 * "A democracy is scarcely tolerable at any period of national history. Its omens are always sinister, and its powers are unpropitious.  It is on its trial here, and the issue will be civil war, desolation, and anarchy.  No wise man but discerns its imperfections, no good man but shudders at its miseries, no honest man but proclaims its fraud, and no brave man but draws his sword against its force.  The institution of a scheme of policy so radi­cally contemptible and vicious is a memorable example of what the villany of some men can devise, the folly of others receive, and both establish in spite of reason, re­flection, and sensation."

The Philadelphia grand jury indicted Dennie for this paragraph as a seditious libel, but it was not more expressive than the single word uttered by Alexander Hamilton, who owed no small part of his supremacy to the faculty of expressing the prejudices of his followers more tersely than they themselves could do. Compressing the idea into one syllable, Hamilton, at a New York dinner, replied to some democratic sentiment by striking his hand sharply on the table and saying, "Your people, sir,—your people is a great beast!"

The political theories of these ultra-conservative